Broncos Browns TNF Recap with Special Guest

weren't even starting for this team weeks ago. Men in the background, de Ernest Johnson. The story of the night, A hundred and forty six yards and a touchdown at six point six yards per carry. The offensive line did its job in a gritty, uh gutsy tough in over Denver. And I promised um a special guest tonight and we have delivered. It is a Broncos Hall of Fame quarterback and current general manager John Elway, who is nicely enough. Okay,

noel Way. We have our friend Connor Or, who I don't think everyone knows uh is a bit of a brown You are a Browns fan Connor, is that where was your fandom on display this evening? Yeah, you know, it was nice to sit there and and watched like

I was reflecting a little bit. I remember a couple of years ago when I worked for the NFL um you and I were walking up to tape of Post Draft podcast after they had selected Cam Irving, and you and I were just like, this is gonna fix everything, Like, um, you know, he can play multiple positions, like the offensive lines finally going to be secure, and uh, that promise was just realized with other players finally, like eight years later, and uh, like watching Jed Will's play the way he

played tonight was just like, God, it's nice to have like a capable left tackle, you know, post Joe Thomas. Yeah, and you know Connor now working for Sports Illustrated, one of my favorite writers. I'm not just saying that because he's here, but yeah, any Browns fan of of long standing has been through a lot. I know. I I I lived in Denver for a while and had some

Broncos fans chiming off tonight that they were annoyed. I mean, it was a game that pitted Teddy Bridgewater against case Keenum, who was in for Baker Mayfield von Miller, who promised and vowed to essentially assassinate whatever tackle he was up against. Um we left the game very early and was a non factor, and we're waiting to see more about what's going on with von Miller. But it was an ankle

injury that looked like a gruesome leg injury. And then Jeremy Fowler VESPN reported after that that it sounds like von Miller has no structural damages and is fine. Uh. Jarvis Landry left this game. Denzel Ward left this game.

So the injuries continued to mount. And you know, I looked at Denver for a big chunk of this performance and thought they just simply we weren't able to master what Cleveland was doing with these long drives that I mean, I it seemed at some point this game that started at five twenty pm on the West Coast might be over by seven fifteen. I think we caught our producer Ricky out picking up a sandwich at the end of

this thing. It ended so fast, But the Broncos did I thought on offense looked good during thirteen and seven. Team played touchdown drives that made this maybe closer than it would have been in another situation. But I mean, we came out a halftime with Troy Ackmen trying to discern whether Drew Lock or Teddy Bridgewater was going to start, because they both had helmets on, they both were ranging up and down the field, and Teddy had not done enough in the first half to suggest that he maybe

keep the job in the second half. And that was what was so surprising to me, Like, I thought that he had won the job decidedly out of camp, and you know, I think the one thing that you heard about Drew Lock was that there was an immense amount of armed talent, but most of his success had come in situations where he was sort of you know, I hate to use such a condescending word, but sort of like puppeteer, a little bit like Jared Goff right with Sean McVeigh, where you know, he has a lot of

instruction pre snap and he knows where he's supposed to go with the ball. Um. You know, he went on that little run there initially as their starter, but beyond that, we haven't seen him sort of take command of the game. And he's been what he has been. He's been raw arm talent, that's never been formulated. And I always thought Teddy Bridgewater would imperfect for Pat Shermer's offense, and in some ways he has, but it's still a Pat Shermer offense.

And you know, I think that's where you keep kind of running into brick walls here, where it's not going to be anything remotely sexy or exciting, and certainly not enough to beat a Browns team that is as versatile defensively as they are. Yeah, I mean, remotely sexy would have been um an outrageous descriptor for what Pat Shermer done. I mean, and he and Pat Scherm obviously was the Browns coach, and I thought it was kind of stunning to watch, you know, his offense, um, in comparison to

his offense was not stunning. But Kevin Stefanski I thought played um with some he coached with some fire tonight. I think they just sort of have after two weeks of chaos. I mean, to go out and lose to the Chargers the way they did and then to get

flattened by the Cardinals. Uh. I mean, I did Cleveland Radio today and I just thought the mood, the mood in general seem to be down on a team that maybe, like some of these other teams that get a bit of success, you find out they're not all the way there. And I thought they just they were who they were tonight. They stuck to their identity. Bill Callahan maybe the most valuable assistant coach in the a f C on some level.

I mean it, what what he cooks up, even with four or five starters in the lineup, m was remarkable tonight. And you know Stump Mitchell, basically the running backs coach, saying, I finally got to do some coaching because with Kareem Hunt and Na Chubb, you know, you look real good. But I'm not sure he's telling Nick Chubb what to do at this point. But Deernest Johnson again, I mean I think that you know, Browns fans have seen him in the preseason, They've seen little flashes here and there.

But to think that this guy is sitting on your roster this whole time and just to plug him in the way that he did and to form and the way he did, I thought he created a lot of extra yardage for himself, broke tackles and did a wonderful job with his opportunity Demitric Felton is an interesting back

as well. So you look at the team building in Cleveland, you say, look at even when guys go out, they've found these guys that are behind them, that fit the system, that come in and produce, and that you know, for for people that have followed a middling team and midling is strong. Um, you just start You're not used to that. That's something you see from other franchises. So I thought it was a nice signature victory. UM an ugly victory

to some degree by Kevin Stefanski. Who can who really you know, he only lost two games in a row for the first time these past two weeks. He wasn't going to allow it to be a third. Yeah. You bring up an interesting point with Bill Callahan. I did a story this offseason on the scarcity of offensive line coaches good offensive line coaches, and what I heard back when you know its texting people about this was the bidding.

More like he instantly creates a bidding more every time he hits the open market, and it's almost like he gets hired before offensive coordinators because he's so important and so valuable. UM, and he gets abnormally long contracts. For position code. Just he gets you know, coordinator money um, you know, and has like helped kind of rise the tide of offensive line coaching salary. You know, it's it's

pretty incredible thing. But you're right. I mean, what he was able to do and create on a regular basis is is pretty phenomenal. And I'll say this to about Cleveland's offense in general, they just look so much better when the ball is out on time, when it's three steps your back heel hits the ground and the ball

comes out. And that's when Baker Mayfield looked the best, right And I don't know about you, but it felt like the last two or three weeks it was back to Freddie Kitchen's era football where you kind of felt him hit that third step and then float backwards and try to, you know, make these plays. And the route concepts were painfully long, and it just, you know, it didn't make any sense. And I don't know if they were trying to play a different brand of football or

with injuries forced them to pigeonhole into that. But tonight was one of those things where it was just another meat and potatoes game plan for case Keenum And that's why you have case Keenum right, the ball is gonna be out on the third step. It's not gonna be anything wonderful. I think it was like a hud yards and a touchdown or something like that tonight. But it's you know, that's that's how this offense functions. It's not

supposed to be beautiful. And it stinks that you have Odell Beckham and you're not really going to be able to use them the right way. But you know, it's almost better off that way, and Baker Mayfield was better off that way. Well, I'll give you the last word on this game because I already can you know you've already seen this creep up. You know. I our friend Dave Damnaschek put a tweet out there called Baker Pip

based off the old Wally Pit play. I mean, or is any isn't it this just a backup quarterback coming in and doing what you'd want and on the on the Baker side and the O'Dell thing. These are just these sort of um radioactive topics that aren't going to go away in Cleveland anytime soon. I mean, I don't know when we'll see Baker again. I mean, they seem to be in really good hands with case Keenum, who i'd call the best backup in the league. I think you could throw Andy Dalton into that mix. Um uh,

what is there any controversy here? They just they just need to ride this out. I mean with the Odell in the Baker business, I think that Baker, you know, the way that he motivates himself, um kind of you know, it puts you in the cross hairs a little bit, But I like the fire. I think you do too. I think we've come from decades of like soft and just defeated men trying to run this position. And the fact that he's showing a little bit of life, I

think we need to appreciate. Is he you know, is he making a candidacy for a forty five plus million dollar extension at this point? Probably not, you know, And I think that you know, all along, Paul de Podesta Andrew Berry were probably open to the idea, as a lot of coaches are. That you're starting to hear this around the league that like there are a million of these guys, Like there used to be five franchise quarterbacks

and now there's like a hundred. And I was talking to a quarterbacks coach the other day and he said, like I have, Like I have an eleven year old that could probably play in college right now as a freshman, you know, and like that's how good these kids are becoming quicker with special I have a nine year old

who could not. But I that's intriguing. Oh yeah. So it's like, you know, they're kind of thinking, do we you know, especially in a night like tonight, where you win the way that you would like to win, right, you run, you run the ball um, you know, you create those running lanes and then you just let case keenan basically complete play action passes you know, of of a middle range distance, and you can win. You know. Then I don't think it builds a grand can't you know,

candidacy for this extension. But at the same point, Baker I think is still a special player. He's exceptionally accurate, and I think that given time to blossom in this system, I think he can. But it's like, you know, when that's gonna come to a head. I don't know on the Odell front, like I'm particularly callous and I know I'm like kind of a one note writer. Sometimes I wrote that the Giant should trade se Kwon Barkley last week.

I think the brown should trade alde Backham. There's just you know, he doesn't fit what you need um, you know, and he would be great in other places, you know. I think it would be fantastic to see him on the Cardinals or something wild like that, you know, after they loaded up the way that they did and make them uncoverable. But you know, he's just not doing anything right. I feel like with Odell Beckham, it's like when you go camping, I could just I'm fine with like a

plastic fork or a spark, like just bare essentials. I don't need to bring fine China. And it's like Odell Beckham in theory is fine China. And I don't think the last time you went camping, well it's been a while, but I mean we you know, with with I have been camping, if you have had the experience as Ricky you know to you know, have have we been unbiased enough in our coverage here? Have we? Have we covered a little bit of everything? Or was it broncos we

we mentioned the whole Pat Schermer Teddy Bridgewater business. They were very banged up at linebacker. But let's get down to one thing that we uh that we'd like to discuss before we get out of here. Ricky, some of you may know, not all of you. Some of you were wondering what you're doing here. But in the years past, Connor Or and I had a I'd call it a side project. I'm not going to call it a vanity project, because it was about the good of others, not our

own good. UM called the Heat and Light podcast that covered a wide variety of topics, maybe a little bit of an art belt type production. We dug into a series of um very thorny topics that included top secret government projects, alien life. At one point we unveiled um incredible proof suggesting that there is a second Um Beatles frontman Paul McCartney, that the actual Paul McCartney perished back in the sixties or seventies. It got too hot. Connor, I mean, at one point, people like, why did the

podcast go away? It wasn't by our choice. We got touched, we got reached. Someone basically said you need to shut it down. Now we have worked through some red tape, some blue tape, all the tape, and we are going to be coming back in March of two Uh, that is an announcement that we're making right here. Well, that's what we're telling you right now. That's the plan. And Connor, I you know, I know you've been you that you're a dogged reporter. Um, you've been looking into a few things.

Do you want to maybe preview something that you've seen of late that made maybe it makes its way onto one of these Heat and Light episode two reboot shows. First, we need to set the stage of the fact that when we started doing this, I can't understate how fingernail thin my thread was at NFL Network and how like how close I was to being fired on a regular basis. And then we decided to drop like a jfk assess Nation pod and like it did you know, favors. There's

no doubt about that. There was just like there was already like a massive concern with how I was spending my day and then just in the middle of nowhere, and uh, yeah, I didn't shoot up the corporate ladder um necessarily, but yeah, I would say that. Um, you know, we're we're gonna be looking a lot into Antarctica, you know, obviously the the final frontier for secrets and um, but

while I was prepping for the show. I looked on Amazon for some really good, um, you know, some deep Intarctica reads, and uh, there was a Antarctica Conspiracy Theories book and uh it had two star rating on Amazon. And the loan comment was a bit disappointing, as there are just several blank pages in the middle of and I was like, you know, you could read that one way or you could read it as that's what that's what the government wants you to think. Heavily heavily redacted content.

That's how I'd view that. Those books, UM typically come with a flood of spelling mistakes and you know, sentences that just end with no period, so the people putting those together sometimes suspicious. We will be back in March of two. UM It's a podcast that promises to grow almost as big as this one, but not nearly as big as Split Ends Erica and Curlin Wolf's new pod,

which is just UM taking the NFL by storm. I want to mention one thing before we get out of here, is that for those of you that watch our digital show on Friday or which is are essentially are around the NFL broadcast show, which will appear on Saturday, on NFL Network, UM TV D on the time. It's very early in the five am, is that right, Erica on the West coast, eight on the east right, it's early,

but you know, just you tape that thing on your TV. Uh. There is a very UM special feature coming out on tomorrow's show. Lakisha Jackson Wesleying the wife of our dear friend Chris Wesleyan who passed away in February. UM. She has put together a feature on the life of Chris wesley the accomplishments his incredible personality. We haven't seen it yet. We're gonna see it UM with her live on the show and right. We can't wait. So it's something that you can all watch too. So I just want to

put it out there on your radar. Um Connor, I know you were very close to west as well, and we have so many wonderful memories and it's just like you know, every time you think about them, all this stuff comes back. Um. But this promises to be a

special production. It's uh, that's awesome. That's uh, that's really cool to hear, and it's uh, you know, he's he's one of those people that is so special that you know, He'll just keep recirculating in your memory, you know, Like, uh, you know, when I go for a run, I always I always put um, this must be the place um by the Talking Heads on my playlist because that was

like a song that UM. We would meet each other at the cozy when I would come out to to visit NFL Network, and whenever I knew he was coming, I would put it on touch tunes UM. But then he would come and put it on touch tunes and then skip my because he just wanted to hear it immediately when I was set down, So like it would be like a situation scenario where would be like three or four times in a row, UM, we'd hear the

same song. But you know, every time that comes on, it's just like a flood of memories come back and we uh, you know, he's missed dearly in the football space, but he also left a mark where you know, nobody's been able to occupy that. And I think that that's that's a really cool thing that you can say about somebody. Yeah,

it will not be occupied by anyone else. And you know it was back on November six in a in a tweet to Matt Harmon, our friend in NFL Fantasy Guru, where Chris Wesleyan tweeted out that night, let your case Keenum Flag Fly. He was one of the earliest case Keenumites out there. Um. I I think he would have enjoyed this performance quite a bit, as did Brown's face ends and not so much Broncos fans. Both teams will return to see another day. Thanks for joining us, Connor.

Great to have you, Ricky. Thank you for everything. Connor. What's coming up on your podcast this week? Well, that makes some sense to ask that thank you, I would I will first I want to say that I appreciate just that so many of the listeners who have come from the Around the NFL podcast and also subscribe to the mm QB podcast. I hear from a ton of you guys regularly, and it just means the world to me and to us. Um, as you know, we're and and so yeah, UM, I would say, every Monday morning

and Wednesday morning we have new shows. Monday as a Sunday recap obviously first thing in the morning, and the Wednesday is sort of like a deeper UM produced feature. UM that kind of is in the vein of our sort of magazine traditions, so it's a lot of fun um and uh I would uh, you know, I would suggest joining it. I don't, I like, we don't want to run up too much interest, or at least if there's a group of people that can only have time for one show that I this whole they're listening to

both business sounds a bit dodgy. They start to get tired of us. Um So nice job, Connor, but that's enough on that subject. All Right, I love you guys. We'll talk soon. Kevin Stefanski is the nicest human. Couldn't be a bigger fan. Text from Colleen Wove to us just now. So Mark, you've got a long night ahead of you. Good looking man too, all right, fair well m