After watching three decades of Ravens football here in Baltimore, we aren’t the kind to overreact to a 27-20 loss to the World Champion Kansas City Chiefs to start the season. Luke Jones and Nestor discuss the surprises and storylines as Week 1 kicks off a long season.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
ravens, raiders, bengals, season, week, team, play, talking, oysters, game, chiefs, lost, year, point, sunday, friday, cincinnati, patriots, couple, gardner
SPEAKERS
Luke Jones, Nestor Aparicio
Nestor Aparicio 00:00
8
You welcome home. We are wnst tassel, Baltimore. Baltimore positive. I’ve got lottery tickets on Friday at the Fells Point oyster festival. We’re gonna be that Cooper’s in the morning before Springsteen before sticks I’ll be hungover from Pearl Jam. The Orioles will still be heading to Detroit, and the Ravens will still be taken on the Las Vegas Raiders. It does not roll off the tongue. I’m eating oysters every day. It is our 26th anniversary here at wnst. I’m doing 26 oysters, 26 days, 26 ways. So far, so good. Oysters are better than I think, especially when they’re prepared in unique ways. And I’m not having 26 oysters every day for 26 days. And they’re little boogers. They’re just tiny little things so they don’t really fill me up. So I’m having some fun. We’re getting out. We’re going to be at Riley’s oyster this week. I’m going to be with my dear friend Ray Bachman down in Anne Arundel County later on in the week, and we’ll have plenty of opportunities for folks to come out, including Costas on the 27th that’s Friday the 27th I’ve already decided to cost us. I’m doing the Oysters Rockefeller, because it’s so freaking good. And we’re also going to be at state fair on the 24th with Angela, also Brooks, and then next Friday the 20th, Luke and I will be at Faith leagues together before the Detroit Tigers come to Baltimore. And we’re also going to be joined by John Sarbanes, Congressman Sarbanes that day, lots of politicians, friends, athletes, Dave, shining from the Washington Post, going to join us on Friday down at Cooper’s, just back from the Olympics and covering all things in Paris, as well as Chad weaseling to talk about salaries, NFL, all of that. He is an NFL agent extraordinaire, and he’s based right here in in Canton. So great show on Friday. Great show every day. Render Mark Viviano is going to be here all week. Mike rasigliano, sticks come into town. Lawrence Gowan, keyboard player replaced. He hates the word replaced, by the way we talked about that. He plays the role of, I don’t know what he is. He’s in sticks. He does the things Dennis de Young used to do a long time ago for 25 years. He’s on the program this weekend. Nils Lofgren could not join me this week, although we were back and forth and I went to the DC show on Saturday. I have great conversations with Nils that you will hear during the week to prepare for the boss. What a week. Luke boss, coming to town. Springsteen coming to town. Sticks coming to town. My wife’s avoiding it all. Going to see Lake Street dive down a beautiful merweather Post pavilion. Um, the Raiders are coming to town. Gardner, mint shoes coming to town this week. We have all that happening. Um, but what a weekend to start the season right? Like they play Thursday, there’s all the drama they lose. It’s not particularly good. Friday, they go down to Brazil and tear up the turf down there, and then all day, Sunday, and I know you were at the ballpark in the early part of Sunday, because you don’t have Roku and watching football and the season’s off to an interesting start, as you pointed out, with passing touchdowns, with the weird kickoff thing, with trying to figure out who’s good and who’s not. Who we perceive to be good, the Bengals and they might not be. And the Steelers won again, didn’t they, and the Browns lost again. It’s like a normal Sunday. Yeah. I
Luke Jones 02:59
mean normal in some ways, other ways, not so normal. And it’s week one, and there’s overreaction, and inevitably, we’ll look back at this even six weeks from now to let alone four months from now, and there’ll be a couple results there. And maybe it is as simple as the Bengals losing to the Patriots being the result, where you just say, What the heck happened there? Or maybe it is Sam darnold kind of looked like the guy that he was drafted to be once, once upon a time in his what is Vikings debut? It’s still kind of weird. I still think of Kirk Cousins as a Viking. For some I saw
Nestor Aparicio 03:33
showing the ball for Atlanta. I mean, week one, part of that is it’s where he’s playing. There, my wife quizzed me in the four o’clock hour. She she saw Jim Harbaugh running around four or five of the charges. We’re watching Scott Hansen. And she’s like, All right, let’s do a little quiz. Do you know all the NFL head coaches? And I’m like, I said, what’s good? We’re not doing this on the radio because I’m trying to think of a couple of Matt Heber flusses and a couple of Dennis Allens and like, because I’ve been to the owners meetings every year, I would always sort of know those things. But the Tennessee Titans were playing, and I said to her, I’m like, I know variables, not the coach. I don’t know who the coach is, not Jeff Fisher either. So I was thinking, and I’m like, Who is it? It’s Callahan’s kid. And I didn’t know that I anybody in my audience know the Tennessee Titans coaches probably know more about the Oilers logo. And then I thought, Tampa Bay, who’s bulls? Okay? Like I’ve just jumped up trying to go around and Peyton’s in Denver and the other hardballs in city. But San Diego is not San Diego anymore. And I’m thinking, who’s the Raiders? Oh, I said to her, I said, Aaron Pierce. She’s like, Antonio. And I’m like, yeah, yeah, yeah, all right, got the wrong Pierce. So I, like, I had this thing going through the league trying to Seattle. Oh, that’s Mike McDonald. Oh, look, he bought me beer back in March. Yeah. I
Luke Jones 04:57
mean, there’s plenty of that going around. And. Look, that’s fun. There’s also just that element of the unknown, right? I mean, we’re talking about that with the Ravens. We kind of look at it. We’re so ravens centric, and our focus in the off season, and then you do see the rest of the league play, especially when the Ravens open the season on a Thursday night and you have a wide open Sunday to just watch NFL action. And you know, there’s plenty that happens that doesn’t necessarily surprise you. And there are other things that happen where you say, Where in the world did that come from? So
8Nestor Aparicio 05:29
Carolina Panthers are ever going to try?
Luke Jones 05:33
I mean, I think for as much as I’m not surprised that they’re still bad, how about I mean, like, give the saints some credit. Like, what was I would not have expected if you’re going to tell me the Panthers would be blown out early in the season, I don’t think that would be the game that I would have anticipated that. So you never really know. And again, we talk about it every year, yet we do it anyway. We’re going to overreact and we’re going to see things that happen where you say, Okay, well, that team stinks. And you know, the Bengals are a good example of that. I mean, how in the world did they lose to the Patriots? But then you remember, hey, for as much as they’re not the Tom Brady Bill Belichick patriots anymore, far from it, they still have a decent defense, and they can still run the ball a little bit. And when you couple that with Cincinnati, with all the distractions they had with Jamar Chase, I mean, leading up to kickoff in terms of a deadline for him to get a contract extension. T Higgins, who didn’t play on Sunday, but you know, franchise tag and all the drama with him, not drama, but just uncertainty with him. You know, you’re talking about two of Cincinnati’s very best players, and when one’s not available and the other one, you kind of wonder where his head space is going into the opener. Maybe we shouldn’t be that surprised by that, especially considering the Bengals have kind of been the poster child for starting the season off in a lousy manner the last few years. I mean, go back. Look at last year. You know, people were leaving them for dead. And okay, when Joe burrow got hurt, their season was over in November, but they had gotten off the mat by that point in time. So, but you see that, you know, you see teams that have new head coaches to your point. You know, whether it’s the chargers, and I mean old friend JK Dobbins and what that looked like, lots
Nestor Aparicio 07:19
of old friends there. I saw Bozeman in the huddle. I said to my wife, I’m like, it’s half the team. And then I’m like, Oh yeah, Joe Ortiz, these are his guys. So, you know,
Luke Jones 07:27
8did you happen to see the video clip of their post game locker room? You know, predictably, it’s Jim Harbaugh. And yes, Joe Ortiz got game balls. JK Dobbins got a game ball as well. So, so, you know, you see those good stories, you see those not so good stories. And I mean, I think the juxtaposition of the Cowboys considering what their off season was, and Dak Prescott getting a new deal right as the season starts, and all their drama with CD lamb and they still have to do the Michael Parsons deal at some point. I mean, there’s so much about Jerry Jones, and you know his comments about them being all in at the beginning of the off season, and then you see their off season, and you say, Wait, Zeke Elliott’s running the ball for them again. What is this? 2017 but they go to Cleveland, and they handle their business, and they played at a high level, so give them credit. But the browns, it’s they’re right back to, I mean, at some point in time we just call a spade a spade to Sean Watson stinks. I mean, how much longer do we need to see this? And you just say, for all the other variables you can talk about with an offense, I’ll give some love to Joe Flacco for a moment here. Can you really say that it’s all those other things and not to Sean Watson, when Joe Flacco comes in off his couch. And wasn’t the only reason the Browns made the playoffs last year. I mean, they had a really good defense last year, let’s be clear. But he played so well for them, and yet, Deshaun Watson looks so lousy, and he continues to look
Nestor Aparicio 08:52
so amazing game in and won four games. So,
Luke Jones 08:54
yeah. So, so you look at that and say, Okay, well, this iteration of the Browns looks like the same old browns, right? I mean, slightly different details. But so
Nestor Aparicio 09:05
JOCO got hurt as well. We start talking about injuries early, yeah, that, you know, that affect the team and, you know, knock them out of it kind of early, before they even get going. I mean, that’s the thing about the browns and the Bengals. Push them around early, have them start one and three, one and four, then they kind of, you know, go to sleep. I mean, and that’s the bank. The Bengals are shocking to me because I thought they were going to be formidable this year. Well, you’re
8Luke Jones 09:29
overreacting, because, you know, I mean, we’ll see what it looks like the Bengals like. I said, go back and look the last few years they’ve done this. I mean, if there is a case study for a team that, and maybe they’re not the best, because Joe burrow has dealt with, you know, remember last year he had the calf in training camp, and, you know, he’s been banged up some in this over the summer. But if there is a poster child for arguing that at starters should play a little bit in the preseason, man the. Bengals. They’re it because they’ve come out in week one a few different years, and you just look at them and say, What the heck was that? Now, what’s tough for them? They go to Kansas City on this week, so they could be staring, oh and down the barrel of Owen too, which isn’t insurmountable, but, boy, you’d rather not be Owen too, if you can avoid it. So, but just, you know, you see some of that in week one. I mean, it’s Well, speaking of
Nestor Aparicio 10:28
that the Ravens better not be owing to because I saw the Raiders play. Oh, sure. I
Luke Jones 10:32
mean, if they, if they lose to the Raiders at home, then, boy, we’re having there’s a way different tone. Look as frustrating as it is to be Owen one. And you know, you sit you have to stew about it over the rest of the weekend. And fans do this too, right? I mean, it’s part of being a fan. You’re stewing about it, and you’re still a little teed off about it. And you know, you hear the news over the weekend that you and I hadn’t touched on, but Kyle van Noy orbital bone fracture. You know, I would assume he’s gonna miss at least a little bit of time with that. But, you know, you look around the rest of the league, though, and you know, you say, Okay, some other teams all in one some other teams that like the Bengals, who, you know, if we’re going to talk about comparing losing to the Chiefs compared to the Patriots, I mean, it’s night and day, right? I mean, as frustrating as it is for for not being able to get over the hump against Kansas City. But you know, you you look in week one, you have to live with the result. You hope you didn’t deal with any major injuries. I mean, you already mentioned David and joku. You know fear of a high ankle sprain. You know Pro Bowl caliber tight end when he’s right. Physically, you look at Jordan love with the bet with the Packers on Friday night. Now it looks like that’s an MCL that, you know, it’s not a season ending, but, you know, even if he has to miss two or three weeks, I mean, that could, that’s the difference between winning your division and scratching and clawing just to be a wild card. So, but
Nestor Aparicio 11:55
8that’s also a thing. When you have a running quarterback with an MCL, or if anything goes wrong with Lamar, he can’t run the way he needs to run. And it completely changes everything about what you’re doing with a quarterback, what you’re doing with an offense, what you’re doing with a season when it’s your your quarterback, and it’s week one and the first month you’re trying to figure this out. Look, the injury thing’s good. That’s the league, right? Like we’ll be talking we’re talking about that on the baseball side right now. And baseball’s not typically the type of sport where you have six guys you’re waiting on to get back for the playoffs, right? But in the case of the football thing, the injury bug starts to happen early, and real teams become not real teams quickly when that starts to happen. And that’s why losing the way the Bengals lost, you start to put yourself backwards, losing the way the Ravens lost, losing a tie breaker type of thing to the chiefs that it, it becomes a lot more, a lot harder to overcome that, especially when you’re healthy and you feel like you should be having prosperity.
Luke Jones 12:51
Yeah, and again, I mean, it’s tough because it is only week one, but each it’s not baseball, where you play 162 right? I mean, you have 17, you know, you have 17 data points, but each of those data points is really important as well. So yeah, no one’s sitting at Owen one right now. Season is over by any stretch of the imagination, other than maybe the Panthers. Because, oh, it’s the Panthers, right? I mean, I’ve seen how no one had high expectations. And boy, they certainly lived up to that, or lived down to that, I guess. But yeah, you want to you have to be able to turn the page, and you need to be able to clean things up. We said we talked about the Ravens offensive line at length in our previous segment. But every team has some area of concern. Even the Chiefs have elements of their roster that they would like to have better in an ideal world. So, and that’s where the injuries become so such a critical factor, because you look at the position where maybe you’re not quite as deep, and that’s where I’ll go back to Van Noy for just a moment for the ravens, where, okay, you have a dafeo away. You feel pretty good about his chances to take the next step. You know, it had a low key better season than a lot of people wanted to give him credit for last year, but, but now, if annoy has to miss some time. Now, David ajabo means more. Malik Harrison means more. Tavius Robinson is on the sideline. So now you look at that, and that becomes, you know, not that outside linebacker was fine, but that becomes a, you know, the increase in concern for that position changes. It’s no different for any of these teams that in the salary cap era, no one has perfect depth everywhere. So you’re, you know, you’re going to have injuries. You just hope that those injuries come at where there are some position groups where you have some depth, and you can endure a little bit of that. You know, the Ravens right now, you look in their secondary, their secondary has some depth. Now that doesn’t mean you want three, three guys to go down. That’s a different story. But. You know, if they have one injury, like, for right now, they don’t have Arthur Millett, for example, they seem to be able to endure that right personnel wise. But, you know, outside linebacker or, heaven forbid, if something happens, like Tyler linderbaum, I mean, my goodness, we’re already talking about the offensive line. Can you imagine what we’re we’d be talking about if he something were to happen to him. So all these teams in week one, you can’t win the Super Bowl. You can’t lose it either, but if you have that wrong injury, and again, Jordan Love feels as close to that as we might see so far, because obviously, he’s a quarterback, but you know, you don’t want to be in a position where suddenly you’re staring down the barrel at, you know, a one in four start or something like that, for even a good team. Boy, I mean, your chances of of climbing out of that hole. Okay, it’s easier with three wild cards and a 17 playoff field in each conference, but you don’t want to be dealing with that. So that’s where, with Cincinnati, and again, we’ve already talked about it. I mean, they didn’t have T Higgins on Sunday. The Chase situation has been less than ideal, and Joe burrows healthy, but coming off of, obviously, uh, off, you know, a season ending wrist surgery and injury. But now they’re playing Kansas City, and now they’re in a position where, you know, it’s not must win in the sense that, oh, and two major seasons over, but boy, that drastically alters the trajectory, and especially if you’re talking in terms of having any designs of one, winning the division, and two, wanting to be right there duking it out for Kansas City, trying to be a number one seed, you know, which I think Cincinnati went into the season thinking in those terms, right? So, boy, it can get away from you quickly. I mean, you these teams that stub their toe in week one, and you know, I mean the ravens, They lost to the chiefs, right? They lost to the defending champions. Of all the losses that occurred in week one, the Ravens had the one, if we’re being objective about it, looking at it from a big picture standpoint, that’s the one where you can look at it and say, okay, it stinks to lose, but it doesn’t really change how you ex. You know your expectations for the season, right? I mean, we’ve already talked about that so but, but for these teams that go out there and lose to, let’s call it a spade a spade, an inferior opponent like the Bengals did. I mean, the Bengals are better than the Patriots. I think I’m pretty sure, I’m still pretty sure about it. But what the heck was that? I mean, you go, you go through a three hour performance after you’ve been waiting eight months to play a game and and that’s the best you do. I mean, that’s, that’s a head scratcher.
Nestor Aparicio 17:40
Luke Jones is here. He is Baltimore. Luke, the NFL is underway. We’re going to be up late, you know, on a Monday night, I see Thursday night, Friday night, Sunday night, Monday night, to kind of kick off the season. They figured out this prime time thing here, I think pretty well. We moved back to one o’clock this week, and a game that you’re going to poop, you’re poo pooing it already, right? Like you saw the Raiders play where, ah, the Raiders, Gardner, minshu, whatever, better not look up. And it’s 2323 minutes left to go at 345, on Sunday. And this goes back to my previous comments about running the ball, controlling the game, not making mistakes, getting up on the line of scrimmage, when the referees tell you to get up there instead of bitching about it after the game. Although, you know, we we could say that that was not called both ways, but the officiating such a weak thing. But they have 10 days of prep. They have off time. I mean, I other than van Noy, and that was, you know, kind of a key thing, and where you’re going to be on the pass rush and how you’re going to make life miserable for Gardner Minshew this week and shut them down. I have grave concerns about our offensive line and moving the ball, which means maybe there aren’t a lot of points scored, maybe it is a closer game, maybe there’s more field goals. Maybe you allow teams to hang in this better not be one of those games, dude. You know what I mean? Like, it better not be half time and it’s 1413, and everybody’s biting their nails and saying, Come on, man. Because, and the reason I say that Dallas buffalo, Cincinnati, and I know we’re not impressed with Cincinnati at this point, you can feel however you want to feel about buffalo, but these are potential playoff teams coming to down the pike. This has to be the Colorado Rockies. This has to be the Chicago White Sox. You know, hello, Orioles didn’t just sweep away in those series. And it’s always tough when you think in the NFL. You just got to make sure you’re not sleepwalking in this one the way maybe the Bengals did against the Patriots on Sunday well. And if
Luke Jones 19:43
I’m John Harbaugh, I’m reminding everyone that a gardener minchu LED team came into Baltimore last September and beat them, you know, and in Indianapolis at the time, remember, he was filling in for injured Anthony Richardson that week. And now go back and look at that game. Gardner Minshew didn’t do a whole lot. That game. It was really Zach moss in their running game, and the Ravens, you know, fair catch late in the game, you know, time management, all kinds of issues that that, you know, self inflicted or not, they lost the football game. So I I’m sure within the walls of the castle and those meeting rooms, that’s going to be mentioned, at least in passing a couple times that hey, Gardner mentioned came in here and won a game last year, so, but you’re right. I mean, gotta win this game, you know, I’m not, I’m not as concerned about the halftime score as much as what’s the score in the fourth quarter, right? I mean, even if you have a up and down first half, if you take control in the second half, then all is well and everything’s fine, but better win, right? I mean, there’s no doubt about it. I mean, it’s on paper. I mean, this is a Raiders team that is very much in transition. I mean, the quarterback position, and even though Devonte Adams says, you know, that he’s fine and content in Vegas with the Raiders, you know, there’s been all kinds of conjecture about that. And obviously, Josh Jacobs moved on in the off season, and
8Nestor Aparicio 21:06
his agent is joining us on Friday. By the way, Josh Jacobs agent, yes, will be with us, Chad whistling on Friday at Cooper’s and fell short.
Luke Jones 21:14
But I mean, you need to go out and take care of business at home. And look this back to back road games for the Raiders one o’clock start. You know, they’re not a, you know, Vegas isn’t the west coast, but obviously it’s not the East Coast either. So should have an advantage in that regard. Go out there. Start fast. Find some traction in the ground game. Do your thing. Let Lamar do his thing. Defense playing at home. You know, we haven’t talked to we talked, obviously, about the defense in the post game, but I expect their defense to be a cleaner operation as we get deeper into the season. I think so much of what they do is really predicated on communication and being on the same page and all that which, hey, you got a new coordinator and you’ve got new pieces in the defense. I mean that I’m not shocked to see them have some hiccups, especially against a team like the chiefs, but you better clean that up against the Raiders. Better not have busted coverages against the Raiders passing game, which, I mean, I know Gardner Minshew had 250 yards, but they scored 10 points. I mean, you need to be able to shut that offense down, and I think there’s a good chance they will, right. I mean, again, I’m not overreacting to a loss to the chiefs to suddenly say, Oh my gosh. You know, is this team that good? I I still think the ravens are a heck of a football team. They got to figure out the Kansas City thing at some point. But if there’s a nice thing for the ravens, their fans, media guys, we don’t have to talk about the Chiefs too much for a while, other than just monitoring how they are doing in a big picture sense. So for the ravens, it is nice to have a different opponent to focus on. And in this case, the Raiders, being a team where expectations are not very high, they went out to LA and lost to the Chargers. JK Dobbins ran all over them. And you know, there’s some some fighting in that game, late, late, you know, very late. Couple ejections, kind of an ugly, yeah, ugly, ugly scene for a few moments there. I mean, it took a little while more so than normal, to get, uh, order restored. Well, Jim Harbaugh was out there pulling guys off piles. It was crazy, right? Get back to huddle. Yeah. No, no question, I there will be quite a few individuals who get that, that letter, that FedEx certified letter, from the league later this week, you know, with some fines and everything, but, but, yeah, if you’re the ravens, it’s your home opener, you got to come out and take care of business. And I think they will. I fully expect they will, but, but you’re right, you know, if you’re talking about this being a one point game in the fourth quarter, and yeah, you’re depending on the officiating making a right call or not making a call. I mean, you don’t want to be in that position. And again, if you’re John Harbaugh, look back further than last year with the Colts coming in, you know, kind of a, not the same team, but similar in terms of perception. I mean, certainly there weren’t high expectations for the Colts early last year and or not high expectations for the Raiders right now. So to your point, with the schedule to follow the in the in the three games after that, man, you better be one and one come 415 on Sunday afternoon, or we’re going to be having a way different tone talking about this football team next Monday morning. But again, I expect them to take care of business and and do what they should do, which is go out there and win and and play a more complete football game than we saw last Thursday night.
Nestor Aparicio 24:33
Ravens are a nine and a half point favorite early line over under 22 and a half to make you laugh, couple interesting game bills are playing the dolphins on Thursday night. I know you’re anti Thursday night football and all that, but two teams that one that are thinking things, we play the bills in a couple of weeks, bills kind of scuffle with the Cardinals at home, a little bit, saints and the Cowboys playing early games same time we’re playing on on Sunday. You know, couple teams that played well over the weekend and you got some dogs in here. Well and some bad teams, but we’re monitoring the the Bengals. The Bengals have to go play the chiefs. Now, Bengals go on the road out to Kansas City to take on a cheese. That’s a four o’clock game. Steelers go to Denver. Steelers might be two and out. I mean, Denver’s no good. So, you know, in monitoring the teams in our own division as well, as you said, we can forget the cheese for a while. We’re not going to forget the chiefs, because every week we’re going to look up see here, are we a game behind them? Are we caught them yet? Because they’re going to have to lose for us to catch them, and we’re going to have to win for us to catch them. In a sense of where is that championship game going to be? And I’m not going to take the foot off of that, because as much we don’t care whether the Orioles are, you know, as long as they win some games in October, we can be there, I don’t know, man, if the Ravens don’t win the AFC Championship game, and I like the AFC Championship game at home, and I like beat downs of the I’m almost called to the Oakland Raiders. That’s going to happen. I’m probably going to happen when I’m on with JT the brick this week. Um, but beating up on a bad team when you’re nine and a half point favorite at home and you lost looking sort of half okay against the chiefs. Um, this is, this is when you’re supposed to look good. And I don’t know they’re gonna look great going to Dallas. I don’t know that you get style points for beating buffalo, who’s probably going to bring 20,000 fans down to our stadium. You know, I don’t know that you’re going to get style points if you beat Cincinnati on the road, and they get themselves righted. But this is where, you know, I want to see the 33 to 10 laugh, or I want to see Lamar off the field with nine minutes left to go in the fourth This has got to be that kind of game given the rest of the schedule ahead.
Luke Jones 26:36
8Yeah. I mean, I don’t know if it has to be where Lamar is replaced by Josh Johnson. I don’t know if it needs to be that, and that’s a lot to expect. You know, it’s still an NFL game. It’s still an NFL team, but yeah, you want to go out and start fast. You want to play well. You want to see improvement from the offensive line, no matter how it looks. You know, whether it’s the same group as last week, or whether it’s some changes and tweaks to it, you certainly want to see a more productive, designed ground game, not relying on Lamar Jackson to scramble for your rushing yards. So you want to see all that. You want to see them stay healthy. I mean, we’ll see about Kyle van Noy in terms of, you know, it’s an orbital fracture. And I saw, you know, the David Chows and some of the sports doctors that you’ll find on social media and everything you know, he made mention that, you know, depending on, you know, the surgery and the severity of it, and his vision and all that, that, hypothetically, he could play with a an altered helmet advisor. But part of what was so scary about that is Kyle van Noy already wears a visor. I mean, you looked at at that specific play, and that was the play early in the third quarter with Mata BK kind of just got weight, you know, a couple guys fell on him, and kind of just he got crunched, you know, into the ground. So, you know, if he has to have surgery and all that, I mean, you would think he’s probably missing a little bit of time at the very least. So what does that mean? But you know, you need to go out there. They’re mostly healthy. Van Noy aside, and you need to take care of business. It’s your home stadium. It’s a team that’s on the road back to back weeks to start the season, one o’clock start for a Vegas Time Team. I mean, come on. I mean, that’s again, if they don’t take care of business Sunday, then yeah, we’re having a way different conversation, knowing what a trip to Dallas Could, could look like knowing that, hey, say what you want. I mean, the bills got off to a slow start, but give them credit, they came back and won Cincinnati’s in desperation mode already. It feels like, you know, especially Thoreau and two. I mean, the the urgency they’re going to feel week four, week five, by that point, you know, so you need to, this is the one you need to have no doubt that you’re going to bank, right? I mean, if you’re an observer, it’s like bank this one. I don’t need you to score 50, you know, I don’t need them to win 50 to seven. But you don’t want this to get game to be 13, you know, 1714, with three minutes ago, and the rate Raiders are driving at midfield. You don’t want to, you don’t want to be in that position either. So, you know, just take care of business. Do what you’re capable of doing. The ravens are far superior in terms of talent compared to where the Raiders are at this point in time. Go out there and take care of business. I mean, to your point the point spread, for whatever that’s worth. Because, hey, the Bengals are a big favorite for the Patriots. We saw how that works. So you know that only means so much, but I fully expect this team, especially with the extra rest, to come out and take care of business. Not saying it’s all going to be perfect, but I certainly expect a more complete performance in week two than we saw in week one. But for me again. It begins with that offensive line and wanting to see some growth, if not, some changes to how it looks based off of week one.
Nestor Aparicio 29:48
He is Baltimore, Luke. He’s Luke Jones. You can find him out anywhere social media travels. You can find me everywhere. There is this week eating oysters. It is the 26th anniversary of wnst. We are eating 26 Oysters in 26 days, 26 ways to talk about the oyster recovery partnership. We’re doing it with our friends at Liberty, pure solutions. They’ve actually Doug’s given me some water here. I have water on the set Liberty pure 800 clean water is the way to find them. And they do well water, but they also do a lot of plumbing services. And we talk about the water in the bay being clean. The water in the Bay gets cleaned by the oysters. So and that’s how we get to enjoy all the crab cakes, including on Friday, when the Maryland crab cake tour takes over. The fellas point oyster tour, the oyster festivals this weekend down at Cooper’s. It’s indoor, it’s outdoor, it’s on the square. There’s music, there’s oysters, there’s beer. Jimmy Buffett once said, Give me oysters and beer for dinner every day of the year, and I’ll be fine. I’ll be just fine. So Friday, Saturday, Sunday, ravens are playing on Sunday, Springsteen in town, Pearl Jam in town, sticks in town had a visit from Lawrence Gowan from sticks this week. You’ll hear that I’ll be playing some Nils, Lofgren stuff as we get on. Going to talk some raiders as well. JT, the bricks, going to be here. Had an extensive This Is Your Life conversation with Mark Viviano, his first time he ever done radio together, although he did say we did a crosstalk 25 years ago that he remembers that I don’t remember when he was at CNN s i and i was at Sporting News Radio. So, strangely enough, but we do have the same dentist. We lived in the same neighborhood, and we had coffee together. So Mark and I have more of a relationship that maybe people realize, because he’s so clean cut and I’m such a bad guy as a media guy. So Mark and I had a blast. Rasig was with us. Marcella was with us, giving me my first oyster of the trip. I’ve had some delicious oysters. I hope everybody’s following along with that. The hashtag is MD, oyster tour out everywhere on social media. It’s big month. It’s rock and roll. It’s music. We got politics. We have great conversations ahead, and obviously we have a pennant race going on with the Orioles. Luke going to be monitoring that all week, as the birds are in Boston and in Detroit, and we’re going to be eating crab cakes, eating oysters, talking football. It’s what we do. We’re Baltimore positive. Stay with us. You.
