All right.
My first guest covers the Reds and the Bengals with Charlie's chalkboard. You can get an email to you daily for free through Substack. Also rad him at Fox nineteen dot com. He's a regular contributor to Fox nineteen now Digital shows. We welcome in Charlie Goldsmith. Charlie I said earlier today, the more Joe Flacco talks, the more interesting I find him. I wonder what has most impressed you about him since his arrival.
It's the fact that he feels like he's done this before. It's just walking around the building, the way he fits in, the way dropping back in the pocket, he seems to know exactly where to go, the way that he's turned an incredibly bizarre, for lack of a best term experience of coming into a new team and becoming a starter and just popping right up and saying all right, let's go, let's do this. And this will never be totally normal.
You know, he's not gonna get a full training camp, but it feels like everyone's reached a point now where it's like, yep, we know the drill, we're rolling, We're going, this is what it's going to look like for the rest of the season.
I don't think anybody expects them to rush for six point two yards to carry every game from here on out. But can the run game the success they found Thursday night? Can that be replicated or is that more of a one off because of the Steelers.
I went through all the runs and all the most notable runs especially, and all those plays, you can see Chase Brown just doing remarkable things. And like, Chase Brown is in Jamar Chase, But you know how, we just expect Jamar to do remarkable things every week as long as he has a quarterback who can functionally get him
the ball. Well, as long as Chase Brown has a quarterback who can functionally run the offense and make defenses, you know, play certain coverages and do this and that schematically, then yeah, I think Chase Brown is a guy who's more than talented enough to break a lot of tackles, to break off one or two big runs a game. It's those explosive that really rack up the average, and that's just who Chase is. When it's any sort of
functional offense. I think it wasn't even anything schematic. I just think by having Flaco Chase Brown gets to be in self again.
You wrote an excellent story earlier in the week, or may have been tail end of last week about this defense being young by choice, Charlie. That feels like something a rebuilding team would do as opposed to a team and contention. Does it say more about the youth or say more about the reality of their veterans.
Yeah, if they wanted to, they could be starting Logan Wilson Orrin Burkes. You know Cam Taylor, BRIT's a fourth year veteran. They could be starting all of these older players, some of the veterans. You know, you look at Cam, you look at Geno Stone. I think Logan Wilson has been fined, but put them in this group as well.
Just have regressed. And that's concerning for a defense that was counting on some semblance of veteran presence to lead an otherwise young unit through the hide lows, because you know Barret Carter, Demetrius Knight, Josh Newton, Volph Murphy, Samar Stewart, who, by the way, played a very poor game against the Steelers that hasn't been talked much about, but he kind of quietly got his role reduced significantly, not quite benched, but that happened with Schamorrow over the course of the game.
Like that's life. When you're playing that many young players, it's about what you expect, So there should be a lot of attention on man, these veterans are letting the defense down significantly because those are the guys you thought you'd be able to count on.
Charlie, you study these guys, and you've studied cam Taylor Britt for a couple of years. How do you begin to explain the fall off of a guy who at one point looked like an emerging core player to now being inactive.
It's just a massive organizational loss. Like I know, I don't expect the Bengals to, you know, be in the divisional round this year. Maybe they do it for our comes back, but these are the types of developments that cost you Divisional AFC Championship game. When you have a guy who's supposed to be a corner giving you a matchup advantage against Josh Allen and it turns out doesn't
even have a place on the field. It reminds me of a pitcher who just can't find the strike zone and the way that that leads to an individual I don't want to use the word spiring, but snowballing would be the word I'm going for, because then you start trying to do so much. And Cam it's just been such a hyper active player as opposed to just locking in on the fundamentals, the details. He's trying to use
another baseball analogy. You know, hit an eight run homer when he steps up to the plate, and then when he's over ten, then he's trying to hit a sixteen run homer. And he keeps digging and digging and digging that hole. And you know, now today he's working on special teams. I mean, this is seemingly how it's going to be with him going forward.
You also had an excellent piece about the possibilities of Jamar Chase and receptions, and I mean, if it sounds funny to say out loud, but twenty catches isn't out of the realm of possibility at a game Jays, isn't.
I don't have the stats in front of me, Blake, He's already one of six players in NFL history to have two games of fourteen catches and one of eighteen players to have I believe more than like however, many games of ten plus catches, but he's already proven that he can get the ball as well as any receiver in the history of the league at that level on
a consistent basis. Sixty catches on Thursday, there were two catches overturned by replay, there were two so called drops, there were two defensive pass interference, Like he legitimately could have gotten twenty four catches. It was a really like they're all fun, but this was a really fun story work, and I just wanted our asking people how many could Jamark get, like twenty twenty five? Thirty? Oh cool? Thirty was crazy. My answer after doing this deep dive and
talking to people is twenty five. Part of that too, is the big thing with Jamar this year is they've remade the screen game and that's really helped him.
You have the you've had your finger on the on the pulse of this team through ups and downs over the years. I wonder about the vibe now and the is there a true sense of found juice and now possibilities for this team.
I think that's the power of Flacco just in terms of everyone feels like they can do their job again and operate in exactly the way I was described with Chase Brown. But I also want to be a little cautious too, because, like you know, Joe Fla will look like twenty twelve Joe flaccol the other day. He's still going to take a lot of stats. He's still going to abandon downs by throwing the ball away too quickly. Turnovers have been his biggest problem over the last few seasons.
We haven't seen any yet, and that will probably come. So you know, Flacco's probably what the twenty fifth ish best quarterback in football, and he's performed at the top ten level over the last couple of weeks. So you have some concern as the pass rushers get more daunting, as you face some sticky secondaries, as Slacker himself just has games where he's not humming, where he's not rolling.
That's something they'll have to guard against. That will be the challenge they face during the second half of the season. But right now, Flacco has brought juice back to an organization that had no juice, and that is worth a lot.
Try to I gotta drop a reds question too before I let your run always great catch it up. I talked to La last night. I'll ask you what, in your mind, what is Elie's best position for him and this team in twenty twenty six, And do you get a sense that is an internal conversation.
Yeah, it's a conversation. I'm going to be at the GM meetings in a couple of weeks, and that's my number one question because you know, when I asked a couple of weeks though, I think those conversations hadn't yet been had. I think the underdiscussed Sure, you could very well talk me into Elie playing center, but the underdiscussed part of this is where the heck with the then find another middle endfielder because Edwin Oriyo. We like Edwin Arroyo, but the plan would not be to just plug Edwin
into a spot in twenty twenty six. We like Avin Lux you know, I think he's a polished hitter, but the limitation t show defensively. The plan would not be McLain at short, luckst second, you know, is it Stewart at second? Like? Where are you finding that second basement? If the Reds can find that and target that and move pieces around and get Elliot center, Yeah, you know you could talk me into that. You can also talk me into the fact that they just don't have a
way to find realistically that type of player. So the best combination that they can come up with still when include Elliot's short We'll see, you know, we'll see. I think it's just the true answer on that, the most accurate thing I can report, and we'll see how the market unfolds.
Charlie, tell everybody what you've got cooking and where they can read watch follow along?
You hit it off the top Charlie Stockboard, substat Fox nineteen. It's it's a fun time of year ago, you know. So with the Bengals, we know who they are. Again I mentioned some Reds off season stuff. So thanks for having me.
You got it. Always good catching up. Hope we can do it again soon.
Thank you.
There you go, Charlie Goldsmith Charlie's Chalkboard. How about that for a jam packed, informative ten minutes plus with Charlie G very much enjoy it.