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Carolina 📈

I know I’ve alerady gushed about Bryce Young once, but Christ on a cracker, this is a different person playing football right now.

The crazy segment of the internet pushed a conspiracy theory a few years ago that Damar Hamlin actually died on the field that night and what we were seeing waving to us from the press boxes after his recovery was actually a clone.

I (a sane person) never bought into that for obvious reasons but, if you floated the same theory to me regarding Bryce Young, I just may hesitate for a moment before dismissing it.

No longer a sad lonely dot on the far left/bottom of charts, Bryce has been closing in on something I never thought we’d see: league average. It doesn’t change much about how this year ends up for Carolina. The defense is still abhorrant, the offense has more holes than Sonny Corleone at a tollbooth, and the nine losses sort of eliminate them from some late season run even in the joke of a division they reside in.

I suppose this is more of an exciting revalation for next season’s team. Looking forward to what this team can do in free agency and the draft to finally release them from this post-Cam funk (last winning record was in 2017).

A lot of glazing for my 27th rated team, but I’ve always been on record as saying: more good quarterbacks make for a better product. We should cheer for them all to succeed.

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Other upgrades: Tampa, Philly, Green Bay

• Even in a pretty poor showing from the defense, the Tampa offense looked solid at times and may have gotten the best of the rookie running backs in Bucky Irving. It wasn’t Baker’s best day, but they managed a top-5 running offense vs Carolina.

• The Packers defense giving up what they did to Tua (by all acconts, a top-5 performance) has me concerned for this weekend, but the offense had the 2nd best EPA/dropback week, only behind the Buffalo Bills.

• The Eagles got a big win even after getting punched in the mouth to start the day. I was a bit worried about the defense after some losses up front, but this was a complete performance heading into the home stretch.

Tennessee 📉

On the surface, the stats don’t look that horrible, but if you sort out some garbage time, this is what you get:

Unable to get much going on the ground while the defense was getting ragdolled, it got out of hand in a hurry last week. A bottom-2 performance from the offense and the defense against a team that had been reeling a bit. Possilbly down another cornerback after Roger McCreary suffered a shoulder injury.

Other downgrades: DET, SF, LAC

• I don’t want to say bad things about Detroit. I simply had them a titch too high. The defensive injuries are mounting at the wrong time for a team that has the Vikings and Eagles hot on their heels. Going from the presumptive one seed to a wildcard isn’t that wild of an outcome if they are forced to be perfect on offense for the final five weeks.

• The 49ers are injured. Not sure how much more I need to elaborate on that. Sending two RBs to the IR and possibly missing your best offensive and defensive linemen again this week may be the end of trying to catch up and win the NFC West

• The Chargers defense did a great job of standing in the way of Kirk Cousins’ errant passes, but the offense was absolute ass in the 2nd half. If the Falcons had just punted on every first down, the game would have likely been closer. A look at 2nd half performances from all 32 teams last week:

  

🚨Podcast Tonight Today🚨

I’m flying out to Florida early tomorrow for a few days on the beach followed by a week at sea, so we’ve gotta get the live stream done early again this week.

NOON Central time live on the YouTube channel and released later on in podcast form.

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