We always felt like this should be more of a “rivalry” than a novelty. Luke Jones and Nestor get ready for a high-stakes battle between the team from the south in the burgundy in gold coming to Baltimore to face the Ravens as a 4-1 upstart NFL darling. Should be plenty of offense in this one on Sunday.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Washington Baltimore week, Pizza John’s, crab cakes, Maryland lottery, Raven scratch offs, Washington Commanders, Jaden Daniels, Ravens defense, Dean Pees, Marlon Humphrey, Mark Andrews, offensive diversity, ticket prices, fan interest, injury report
SPEAKERS
Luke Jones, Nestor Aparicio
Nestor Aparicio 00:00
Uh, welcome home. We are W, N, S T, am 1570 tassel, Baltimore and Baltimore positive. Welcome in. It is Washington Baltimore week. We it’s hate on the Yankees week. If you’re feeling that, or be happy about the Phillies or be, be whatever you want. But the former Washington Redskins. Now commanders are making their way up to Baltimore. We’re going to be celebrating with some pizza on Friday at Pizza John’s. It is my birthday on Monday, it was Luke’s birthday. Last week, it’s Leonard raskins birthday. He’s coming out. My wife made some crab soup. We’re going to have crab cakes. Yes, they have crab cakes. And Pizza Johns are delicious. Actually, they have a country club crab cake. There you go. Check it out. But nobody gets a crab cake because they get the crab cake because they get the pizza. But we’re going to talk about that, as well as the meatball subs and this cheese steaks and all the great things, the critical cut french fries and gravy, all the brought to you by our friends at Maryland lottery. We’ll have Raven scratch offs to give away. Have the these have been a lucky batch, so all I can say is come to Essex on Friday and say hello and wish this guy happy birthday. Although he’s already into the next year. He’s already on the Washington Luke Jones joints. Now he is Baltimore. Luke, you can find him out on social media. He covers all things sports for us. Little shake up going on at the warehouse this week. We’ll talk some baseball at some point when things are less shaken up and we have true Al and NLCS, but in the meantime, a way better football game, Luke, then maybe we drew it up back in April and just put Washington that begins with a W. Let’s call that a W. I don’t know. I don’t know this is, this is a real game this week, certainly
8
Luke Jones 01:33
more real, right? I mean, certainly a more imposing of opponent than anyone would have anticipated. And I say that even as someone who really liked Jaden Daniels coming out of the draft and watching him at LSU last year and wondering if he was the best player in the draft. But it looks like the commanders, the Washington football team, the team formerly known as the blank skins, it feels like they have a real quarterback. I mean, this kid, if you’ve watched him play, and I had a chance to review the Cleveland game this past Sunday, but you know, even going back to what he did against the Bengals a few weeks ago, although I think we certainly acknowledge at this point, the Bengals have their defensive challenges, but this kid can play. And I’ll say this much, yes, the ravens are favored. Yes, they should be favored. Yes, I expect the ravens to win. I do have my questions about Washington’s ability to stop this ravens offense nearly enough, but this is a Washington offense that with a rookie who is not playing like a rookie, quite frankly. And I mean that as a major compliment. They’re they’re functioning at a high level. They’re running the football. And Jaden Daniels, I mean, he can spin it, he can throw the football, and he can throw the football deep, as the Bengals found out a few weeks ago, as the Browns found out this past Sunday, and for a Ravens defense that just brought in Dean peas, of all people, as a senior advisor, and we can get into that in a moment. Certainly going to be some challenges that they present. But I think, just in a general sense, and you just said it, this is exciting from a standpoint of how many Baltimore, Washington ravens team, formerly known as the Redskins, games, have there been over the years? First of all, there hadn’t been that many, because they played once every four years. But how many of those games have really been all that relevant in terms of both teams being good, both teams having optimism, both teams having aspirations for playing in January? Those examples have been few and far between. I mean, maybe 2000 even though obviously Washington ended up flopping and firing nor of Turner, even though they beat the Ravens that year. Maybe, you know, 2016 that was early in the season. I think both teams had some aspirations then, but, but by and large, it’s been, typically, the ravens, good. Washington, not so good. And to your point, the W in Washington, representing what was always anticipated to be a victory, the Ravens. They’ve got to do more than show up on Sunday. They’ve got to make sure they’re doing some work on the defensive and to make sure that Jaden Daniels doesn’t do what Joe burrow just did against them this past Sunday.
Nestor Aparicio 04:16
Yeah, go back to 96 and we play them in in Olympic years. You know, we played them in the 2000 season rain one, Stephen Davis ran over rod Woodson, if you remember that down there, um, I remember the rain game with Ray Lewis. You know, the first time we ever went down there, and the stadium was falling apart before it was built. Sarah Gusa came out, drank beer with us. You sure remember these games. I remember there was a Sunday night game. We had a bus trip down there. I want to say it was in Oh, four, you know, that sounds right, and so in and out through the course of this rivalry. And you’ve covered a few gnats Orioles, tussles, and they’ve always, you know, we’re 20 years into that, and that doesn’t mean anything to anybody. I mean literally nothing to anybody. I i. Don’t know an Orioles fan that hates the NATs, even though they want I don’t know a nats fan that hates the orals. They hated Peter because he screwed up their television network. I get that, but the rivalry itself, I mean, your old man’s been gone 20 years. He came back. My dad’s been gone 30 years. They’d say, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we’re not supposed to like them and this whole DMV, and we’re all one, and we all root for the Terps, and he a Terp and all that. I’m a stock market guy when it comes to this, you know that? And last week I told you, no one wanted to go to the Orioles game. You now I know because there were 10,000 seats in the upper deck, and it wasn’t price point tickets for 10 bucks, and people didn’t want to go for whatever reason. They didn’t want to go, or they didn’t get there, they couldn’t work. We can go through all that, right, right now, $300 get ins on Sunday for this game. Now, I had a few poor suckers licenses that I threw back over the side of the boat when Chad Steele told me I couldn’t sit with my wife in the upper deck after sitting there for 26 years. But my seat right now is is being scalped for about $400 so it’s $300 to get in right now. That’s Ravens fans gouging commanders fans, dude. They haven’t filled their own stadium in 15 years. I don’t know who their fans are. Their fans clearly have more affluence, probably than our fans, or more interest or whatever. But I don’t know anybody that’s run back to the commander’s tree, although I had Tom lavero on this week out of chick Hernandez, I’ve had Dave Preston, one of your pals from WTO P on, talking about how quickly people will come back to a winner when they’ve been starved and when their other options are the Nationals, the wizards, capitals, and, let’s be honest, the Washington football team, the former Jack Kent cooks, they were always the number one thing in DC, right? They were always this dormant franchise that, over the last 15 years has been, I don’t know, dude, it’s one in one a with him and Angelo’s and that creep out in Oakland. You know, there’s just really been some really, really bad ownership in sports. These cities have endured that, and you know what I’m talking about. But on the other side, I don’t know what makes a commanders fan run back and be a part of it, but Jaden Daniels is a part of that. But these are people didn’t want to spend $5 on a ticket last year, let alone two or $300 that’s the interesting part to see. And Dennis brought this up. Dennis kolatzos joined me this week as a guest on the show, and he’s like, it’s going to be interesting to see how many of them versus how many of us. Yeah,
Luke Jones 07:30
I think that’s fair, but I mean, I think it does speak to everything you just acknowledged how a franchise quarterback or the perception of a franchise quarterback, does bring hope, and it does change everything, and it does rejuvenate a fan base that, I mean, let’s face it, I mean, you meant, you said 15 or 20 years. I mean, really, that Washington was a major force in the NFL. You have to go back to the early 90s. I mean, you have to go back to Mark rippin and Art Monk, you know? I mean, that was over 30 years ago. So you are talking about a franchise that has undergone a lot of damage, as you mentioned, from ownership and off the field, and just not being very good, save for a handful of years where, okay, they made the playoffs, maybe they’d win eight, you know, be in a position where they felt like they had a chance to win a full of a playoff game. But the last time that you viewed Washington through a lens, and I don’t think anyone’s buying them as a championship team this year, but I think you look at the landscape of the NFC East, and you look at the landscape of the NFC in general, and if Jayden Daniels, five games into his career, already looks the way he does, there certainly is optimism. And there’s certainly optimism that that he might be everything they thought. RG, three was going to be, prior to him hurting his knee late in his rookie year. So So it is interesting from that standpoint. And yeah, I’m going to be interested to see what the makeup of that crowd is, because I was even talking to someone on Wednesday out at the facility, you know, that they knew a couple people that were trying to get tickets, and they were saying that the secondary market had, you know, that it, but, like you said, kind of gone through the roof for, you know, mid October and mid mid October game between two teams that are rivals In terms of geography, but in no other way, right? I mean, well, I mean,
Nestor Aparicio 09:24
8from our fan base, I don’t think everybody’s like I got, we got to go beat the Redskins. I mean, I don’t think they thought like that this century ever, or thought this is a big game or a marquee game. So when I see $300 pricing, that’s clearly them saying we want to be there, because our fans had half the time they’ll show up to begin with. The last five, six years, since the Wembley knee, there’s always empty seats. There’s always giveaway tickets, there’s there’s always ads. Come see Lamar. Buy tickets. Buy tickets. I get served tickets to ads to buy my own tickets back all the time. This is the week that if I want to buy my own tickets, back $336 for a pair in road. 12 and Section 513, and then 446, in the last row. I mean, clearly the ravens are scalping the tickets too. So I mean having the tickets internally has blown up. And I would think the skyboxes, the regional part of this, that if you are a bowie Laurel rockville company, and you know someone who knows someone, there’s nobody. It’s like, Well, I’m not giving my tickets to a commander fan, dude. That was last century. That’s what we did in 513 we didn’t let the Steelers and the browns and the certainly not the Washington football team fans come up in our section with burgundy and gold. That just didn’t happen in our section. Um, that’s over. I mean, it’s over. It’s over when they start throwing people like me out, but it’s also over over the last six, seven years, where those empty seats fill in with Bills fans two weeks ago, or in this case, where the team’s 30 minutes away, I am fascinated. I’m fascinated when the Eagles play here, right? Like, what that will look like for and even in preseason. I mean, even when the Phillies played the Orioles back in the summers, all Phillies fans. I look my ego is not tied to it anymore, right? Like I used to get in fist fights 30 years ago about this fan stuff, and your team sucks, all that, like I used to, I would think it’s embarrassing to have 30,000 Washington fans in the stadium, but the Washington football team has had 50,000 eagles, Giants cowboy you know, that’s the NFL at this point, when the Steelers travel and the Packers travel, they’re coming, and they’re going to bring their fans, and this is a week where I think you’ll feel it and see it a little bit. It won’t look it won’t feel as much like a raven home game, yeah. Well,
Luke Jones 11:41
and I would say on the flip side. I mean, Ravens fans travel to other places. I mean, we’ve seen that over and over and over, so some, some of it, especially when you have these AFC, NFC games, when you’re not just talking about the division rivals that you play at home, you know, home and home every year, you do have a little bit of a novelty factor. I mean, I think for commanders fans one, yeah, they’re excited about Jaden Daniels too. It’s like, okay, I can go see my team and I get to go see Lamar Jackson. That’s appealing. I mean, I think it is. So, yeah, I mean, I don’t know if it’s gonna be a takeover, but it’s certainly gonna be a presence. I mean, I think that you’d be kidding yourself just looking at the prices to not think that. But our
Nestor Aparicio 12:17
fans aren’t paying $300 I know that. I mean, I’ve watched our market here for seven years. Our fans didn’t pay $10 for a playoff game last week. So, I mean, I know we’re in a different spot here, Luke, and I’m not going to cry poverty and do small market, big market and all that. And football doesn’t matter, and baseball matters a lot, a lot in regard to payroll and what players you’re going to have this time of year to win baseball games for you. And I know you’ll say, well, the Mets, you know, whatever, you know, teams get through. I hear all of that, but the NFL, that’s not the issue. I mean, the NFL is monoi, mono and, you know, they all have plenty of money. They’re all swimming in money. So, you know, then it’s about how put the team of field. Maybe this brings us to Dean peace, because the one space place they could spend a lot of moneys in coaching. And I talked to Tom lavero about this this week, and I talked to chick, and I, you know, I’m trying to figure out this Washington commander things like, alright, new ownership, because we have that on the baseball side. And I’m like, what do we look what are the, what are the vital signs that people want to spend $300 and run up here and buy a ticket in our ballpark? Right? How did it happen? So quick. You say quarterback, like all of that. Their coaching staff, I look like Dan Quinn’s got like three former head coaches on the staff, Anthony Lynn Kingsbury, like all this stuff. In regard to the ravens, we’ve been bitching the deficiencies in the defense. Rookie defensive coordinator, we go through that we like Zach or I like Zach or and they go and they go and get Dean peas. This is the one spot where Dean peas can say, I want a half million to come in for six weeks. You know, whatever it is, whatever the price is, they can afford it. And whatever the idea is, it’s coaching staff. You can do whatever you want. Over there, the Dean peace thing I, as you wrote on Twitter, I didn’t see that one coming. Yeah, and
Luke Jones 14:02
look, I don’t mean this in a way that I don’t like the move or that I dislike Dean peas or anything like that. I guess for me, I’d be lying to you if I didn’t say that. It didn’t raise my concern a little bit, just from the standpoint of, okay, this isn’t just chalking it up to Okay, some early season hiccups and and new defensive corner. I mean, we talked about this with Mike McDonald two years ago. I mean, there were hiccups Mike McDonald’s first year. Now, Mike McDonald’s a head coach and was highly regarded as a defensive coordinator, you know, in just a matter of two years. So, so I guess for me, like, I don’t want to go as far as say, I feel like it’s a panic mode, but it is a acknowledgement of there are things that we’re concerned about here and that go beyond just okay, it’s the first few weeks of the season. I mean, I guess a coach needs a coach, right? Like, it’s way it looks, right? Yeah, yeah. And that’s and look, do I think this is something that was. Forced upon Zach, or I don’t think so. I think the reality is that Dean peas was zawars defensive coordinator for his three years as a player when Zach, of course, had his congenital spinal spine condition that forced him into retirement. He transitioned into coaching. Dean Pease was coordinator for one more year under that condition, and obviously was someone that he remained in in touch with. I know that. I mean, I’ve talked to Zach goret at different points over the last seven years, where Dean Pease has been a mentor to him. Was
8Nestor Aparicio 15:33
Zach on that when His neck was bad, did he start coaching right away? It felt like maybe he did like he did. So it wasn’t out of the building for a year, right? Like he was there. I think he was there. He came
Luke Jones 15:44
in so, so he retired after the 2016 season. So it was January of 2017 if you recall, he had a temporary comeback attempt. He wanted to come back. He visited with some other teams. But ultimately, it kind of sort of felt like no one was going to clear him. So, you know, that was in June or July. It was, I want to say, late August. Training camp had already started, and they brought him in. And he was a kind of a hybrid his first year, you know, kind of like what Ozzy. Ozzy Newsome did in the early 90s with the browns, right, basically, right, yeah. So he did some scouting stuff and he did some coaching stuff. So it was kind of a hybrid analyst kind of role. But a year into that, I mean, and I remember vividly talking to talking to him about that, where he knew that coaching was his passion, that’s what he was really going to get into. So, so, you know, he learned from Dean Pease, and he’s kept in touch with him. I know that. I mean, he mentioned him, cited him even during his introductory press conference, back in what January or February, whenever it was, and so he’s had a relationship with him that he’s kept up. So, you know, I don’t think this is, you know, a power struggle or anything crazy like that, but it is an acknowledgement of you have a first year defensive coordinator. You also lost Anthony Weaver as your defensive line coach. You also lost an ARD Wilson as your defensive backs coach, and we’ve seen them have all kinds of issues in the secondary. So you bring in another set of eyes, another mind, someone who knows this system, albeit a system that has changed and evolved since 2017
Nestor Aparicio 17:21
and you just have someone with experience. I mean, Dean Pease started coaching in the late 70s, you know? I mean, he’s coached over six different decades, so he can’t stay away, right? Like he talked retirement, oh, sure, he’s retired amount, and then he went back and worked at Tennessee, right for a while, and he’s 75 and just wants to do it right. Literally, I
Luke Jones 17:41
8mean he, if you recall, he, he retired when the Patriots wanted to fire him, and then he landed in Baltimore as linebackers coach, coach Ray Lewis for a couple years. And then, of course, he replaced Chuck pagano the Super Bowl year as coordinator. So lots of, lots of experience there. But again, just for me, I guess the perception of doing something like this, I admire the fact that they’re leaving no stone unturned. If they really feel that this is a move that’s going to help them, at the same time, it the perception of it is, I don’t panic. Move would be strong because, you know, we’re not talking about firing your coordinator or anything like that. But it is an acknowledgement of, oh, this is not where it needs to be. So again, you can look at that as a positive or a negative. I don’t think it’s a negative move, but it was eye opening to me, right? I mean, I I wasn’t sitting here at the beginning of the week thinking, Hmm, could the Ravens bring back Dean peas? I mean, he retired from the Falcons a couple years ago, and I know Zach Gore’s close I that hadn’t even entered my mind. So for them to do it again, you can look at it one of two ways it. You know there, there is a little bit of a, oh no, this is they’ve got to bring in someone with more experience here. Or there’s a, hey, there are no egos here. Things aren’t where they need to be. Let’s bring in Dean. He knows the system. He knows our defense. He knows not, not too many of our players. I mean, the only guys left are Michael Pierce, brand urban, Marlon Humphrey, although, interestingly enough, Kyle Hamilton. I asked him about just the fact that the Ravens did this. He actually spent time with Dean peas on his top 30 draft visit with Atlanta a couple years ago. So got to know him a little bit. So it’s just interesting to hear him offer his perspective. But, you know, Hamilton kind of said it, look, we’re confronting everything right now as it pertains to our defense. I mean, we haven’t been where we need to be. Yeah, we’ve stopped the run really well, but the past game, I mean, the 31st in passing yards allowed, we’re, I think, tied for 26th and scoring defense needs to be better, need to be better in the red zone, need to be better on third down, need to be better across the board. So, you know, this is a move to your point. It’s not something that requires salary cap space. It’s not even something that requires someone else to be fired. I mean, he’s brought in as a senior advisor. So we’ll. See, I think it’s one of those moves that probably, if we’re looking out into the next few months, that if they improve, it’s probably going to be an overrated move, because I don’t think Dean peas is going to come in and turn the defense upside down in terms of what they do. They’re not going to change their system in week six or anything like that. But it’s just another voice. It’s another set of eyeballs, it’s another brain, it’s someone else to you know, as John Harbaugh described it, to be a sounding board, but they need to be better, you know, Hamilton said it. I mean, we can’t just keep talking about, oh well, we need to play 60 minutes, or we need to tackle, we need to cover. We need to not have miscommunication on the back end of the defense. They need to do it. And even though this Washington offense isn’t as talented across the board as Cincinnati last week, you know, they don’t have two receivers in Jamar Chase and T Higgins, although Terry McLaren is pretty darn good, you know, so don’t sleep on him. But you know that they certainly this is a move that certainly reflects emergency to say, okay, all’s not well here, and we need to tighten things up. And if we can bring in someone with this kind of experience, who knows us, who knows our defensive coordinator, and can be, you know, bend his ear a little bit, be a sounding board, then that makes sense. So, you know, I was surprised by it, but that doesn’t mean I think it’s a bad move by any means. I, you know, I think it’s one of those moves that if you have an opportunity to add someone and add another voice, then why not do it when you’re having some issues, especially in the back end of your defense.
Nestor Aparicio 21:31
Cdnps, ask him if Tom Brady and Bill Belichick were systemically deflating footballs in Foxboro. There’s, there’s some rumors linking him to that information now that he’s here. You know, I beat up on hardball last week about the clock management and the red flag and all that stuff. Not that Dean Pease is a clock management game management head coach kind of guy, but I did mention John could use a Marvin. I’m used Marvin Lowes. I use Dick Vermeil. I mean, I’m just throwing stupid names out, but somebody to help him in the games. You know, the Dean peace thing to me is an acknowledgement that they they need to get better. And I’m not shocked that that they did it, honestly, like when I saw it, I’m like, oh, kind of makes sense. Rookie coordinator, guy they know, guy he knows guys he trusts. You know, guy that can’t stay away from football, guy that has to be around it, and especially if they can get along, because that was always your thing with Rosberg back and forth and his daughter and special teams, he and John are close, but how close are they? Do they really want to work together? Does Jerry want to work elsewhere? Peace is retired? No, he’s not. He’s not. He’s gonna go work for one of his other buddies. You know, I don’t need to tell you, there’s a lot of lujah involved with John Harbaugh and relationships. John still thinks he has a relationship with me and my wife. It’s amazing. But nonetheless, um, the Dean peace thing, I thought it kind of maybe didn’t end. So, you know, I didn’t I never know when guys leave and they say, Oh, I really enjoyed my time here. Wink Martindale, I really enjoyed my time here. Or whether it’s I wouldn’t work for him again. You know, Rex Ryan and John Harbaugh made it work here for about a minute and then, and they knew each other from Cincinnati to egos in the coaching and just all of that. Mike silver wrote a book on it. Mike’s been on the show this week about, believe it or not, part of the Washington the Shanahan tree, the Mike Shanahan tree that begat the Kyle Shanahan tree, which begat everything you see around the league, which would be Raheem Morris, and just a whole bunch of coaches that were McVey, that were a part of it. The coaching tree really is weird like that when they bring guys back, and that’s why it was a little weird for me. I’m like, Oh, he’s still in good because I don’t think peas and Bella checker in any way, right? I mean, there’s some relationships you don’t go backwards, right?
Luke Jones 23:56
Yeah. And, I mean, let’s also not use revisionist history here. I mean, Dean P’s last game as ravens defensive coordinator was the Tyler Boyd game. I mean fourth and 12. I mean that knocked him out of the playoffs. He retires the next morning. Now you and I can sit here and really wonder, was Dean peas going to be retained as defensive coordinator after that? You know that? I mean, I’m not saying he wasn’t contemplating retirement, because, I mean, Team peas, he’s 75 now. I mean, he was in his late 60s at that point in time. Wink
Nestor Aparicio 24:27
was getting that job, right, pretty much. Is that right? The numbers, I’m trying to think of who was in line next, because that’s what it’s always, that’s always sort of the game is who’s in line next. I mean, I know that from 30 years ago when Marvin and Brian were here. I
8Luke Jones 24:42
mean, I don’t know, I don’t know if that was, I mean, they interviewed other people for that job at that point in time. I think they, you know, they decided on wink Martindale, but I’m not sure. The point I’m making is he might have been fired if he didn’t retire at that point. I mean, you know, I mean, we talked about that. I mean, I. Remember vividly the radio that we did in the hours after that loss, where we were, we were wondering what steeper shot he was going to do with the head coach, let alone the defensive coordinator at that point. I mean, this was a 2017 they had missed the playoffs three straight years at that point in time. Yes, yeah, this was, this was four, five months before drafting Lamar Jackson, right? I mean, that’s what we’re talking about here. So, you know, that was a very different time. However, I never got the sense that there was a falling out between John Harbaugh and Gene Pease. I think, if anything, at that point in time, it would have been, it’s just time to go in another direction. We love you. Thank you. You know you, you are our coordinator when we won the Super Bowl five years before that, but it’s time. I think there was a sense that it was time, and I think that may have led to Dean Pease saying, Hey, I’m retiring, but then coming back out of retirement, what, three weeks later, when we were at the Super Bowl, because Mike Rabel wanted him to coach his defense in Tennessee at that point in time. So, you know, he’s a lifer, right? And lifers never really truly retire. You know, they get to a point where maybe the phone doesn’t ring anymore for them to even do something like this. But you know, with Dean peas again, there’s a familiarity here. I think there’s a sense that, hey, he can help out one of his former players, someone that he, you know, early on what was a mentor, too, in terms of making that transition to coaching and, you know, see if he, if there’s anything that he can bring to the table to clean things up, ultimately, I’ll still come back to players. Gotta do it, right? I mean, Kyle Hamilton that. That’s why I said, I mean, Hamilton didn’t mince any words. He said, we, we gotta stop talking about this for five weeks. We’ve gotta do it. I mean, we’ve shown we can do it for for stretches. I mean, go back and look at the first half of the Raiders game compared to what happened in the fourth quarter. Go back and look at the Dallas game. You know, the first three quarters of the Dallas game, before what the Cowboys did in the fourth quarter the Buffalo game. Everyone thought, okay, the defense is fine. And then found out that it wasn’t in Cincinnati. So you know that Dean Pease isn’t going to come in and fix all that. You know, he might be able to offer a tip here or there, or clean up, you know, something schematically here or there, or offer a suggestion that might do the trick from a personnel standpoint. I mean, who knows. But at the same time, you know, I don’t look at this defense and say it’s all on Zach or because, I mean, we’ve just seen it. Guys are missing tackles, guys are blowing communications, guys have, you know, inopportune penalties. I mean, those aren’t all things that you just put on coaching. You know, I certainly don’t want to be in the space. And I’m not suggesting you are either Nestor Aparicio get all the credit when you win and the coaches get all the blame when you lose. Because that that’s a growing that’s a growing mindset that I see not not specifically with Ravens fans, just with sports fans in general, on social media. You know, it’s the first the first reaction every time a team loses is fire the coach, or fire the manager. And the first reaction when a team wins is it’s all the players. You know, all the players are great, and the coach is an afterthought. So, you know, I by no means am I putting all all of their early season issues on Zach or but you do bring in Dean peas and see if he can make a tweak here or there, or a suggestion here or there that might help this thing get to be more consistent. I still think the talent is there for this to be a really good defense overall. But it’s like Hamilton said, You got to go out and do it, and you can’t just chalk it up to oh well, it’s been a tough schedule. Yeah, I get it. Joe burrow, I get it. Dak Prescott, sure. Patrick mahomes, of course, in week one, but you know, Gardner Minshew also carved you up in the fourth quarter, and he just got benched by by his team. You know, he’s no longer the starting quarterback. So you know that there’s certainly when something like this happens. I think it’s a, you know. One, it’s a reflection that you’ll leave no stone unturned. And two, it’s a wake up call to for everyone to say, hey, you know, this isn’t where it needs to be, and we just brought someone else in. So if we brought in, you know, an advisor for the defensive coordinator, don’t think for a minute that we won’t bring it bears here or there to compete if it comes down to that. So, you know, I think it’s it certainly serves as a message to everyone that things need to get better, and they do talk
Nestor Aparicio 29:25
personnel. Luke Jones is here. He is Baltimore. Luke, you can find him out knowing Bill’s fine anywhere at Baltimore. Luke, that social media served and obviously out of Baltimore positive where we keep all of these wise conversations and our little repository. Great week around here. Todd rungren checked in. He’s playing Sunday night up in York, Pennsylvania. I’m going to be going up there. To be going up there after the game at the Appel center, formerly the strand up in up in your neck of the woods in York, PA. So you got to give me a dinner recommendation up there in the way in there. Also just great conversations all week long with Washington media folks, folks like chick Hernandez and and Dave. Preston and Tom lavero from the Washington Times, people I really respect with a lot of information about this game, this quarterback, this team, um, but we’re here to talk about ravens injuries. Marlon Humphrey walking boot, where, like, um, you mentioned the defense. The one thing that I would say for this team, and knock on wood, which is my head, in this case, my birthday this week. Um, they’ve been relatively healthy, you know, I mean, at three and two, wherever they are, whatever, the foot on the line in Kansas City, and bad things and good things that may or may not have happened to them on the record, the one thing for sure is that they have been far more fortunate on an injury front than they have been in recent years. Yeah, they have
Luke Jones 30:41
been. I mean, there’s no question and, and I think that even adds to the disappointment defensively. I mean, even two years ago, with what was going on early in the season with Mike McDonald, you know, transitioning as the new defensive coordinator, Marcus Peters was coming back from a torn ACL, right, and he wasn’t quite right. And they had some other guys that were coming back. You know, Tyus Bowser wasn’t playing yet. For example, and you recall he was an important part of their defense at that point in time. So, you know, they have been healthy. I mean, they’ve they have been in a position where, I mean, what the only starter who’s really missed time, you know, Andrew Voorhees the last couple weeks, and I’m not sure he’s getting his starting job back. They might just keep McCarey at left guard and Rosengarten at right tackle. I think that’s quite possible, you know, with Voorhees even back practicing fully this week. So so that is where it’s a little unsettling. And as you mentioned, Marlon Humphreys on the injury report, you know, I don’t get the sense that this is anything overly serious, but I did go back and review it on the the interception, he’s running down the field and celebrating. And you know, you don’t see any issue with the ankle. Let me be clear, I didn’t, I’m not suggesting he tweaked anything in the process of doing that. However, he did sit out the final six defensive snaps, the final drive of regulation and the final drive of overtime, when the Bengals ran it three times into the teeth of the Ravens defense. So, so that was notable, you know, Ronnie Stanley dealing with the toe issue. Rashad Bateman, you know, with what was listed as a groin after his best performance of the year. Again, it’s earlier in the week, if these guys are back come Thursday, Friday, you know, if we’re talking, you know, as someone’s listening, if they’re back on the field by that point in time, then then there are no major issues, right? But we’re kind of just going off of where they are right now in the week. And when you do have five or six guys that are missing practice on Wednesday, you at least pay attention to it, right? So, you know, so those three guys, Arthur millet, still dealing with a hamstring from, you know, when he returned to practice last week, so he’s not, I don’t expect him to play this week. And you know, a couple other depth guys, Malik Harrison’s a little banged up project. Washington’s banged up so, but to your point, they have been very healthy. And that’s again, where, for me, where it has been disappointing on the defensive side and saying, Look, this is basically been their full cast of characters, and we’re still seeing the inconsistency. I mean, the run defense has been great. I mean, the run defense has been outstanding. But, you know, when it comes to the pass, and even in situations where they know the opposition is passing, I mean, we’ve seen this, right? I mean, there have been times where they flat out, have known the cowboys were going to pass, or they knew that Cincinnati was going to pass as that game went on, because they knew that, you know, that the Bengals really just couldn’t run other than what Chase Brown had a couple runs early in that game. So you know, even when they’ve been able to make teams one dimensional, that hasn’t seemed to matter and and that’s disappointing. You know, that’s why you are looking at this. That’s why you bring in an experienced coach as an advisor and Dean peas to see if there’s something else that you know, that the coaches are missing, that the players are missing in terms of what they need to do so, but we’ll keep an eye on the health again, anytime someone’s in a boot after a game with Marlon, you know, talking about Marlon Humphrey, you’re at least going to question whether he’s going to be out there the following Sunday. So, you know, I do have some questions until we see him back on the field. But, you know, have not gotten any indication whatsoever that this is, you know, a major concern. But could it limit him? Could it potentially keep him out this week? I mean, who knows? I mean, again, you don’t just wear a boot for the sake of doing it. So we’ll see how the rest of the week goes as we get closer and closer to Sunday.
Nestor Aparicio 34:19
8Um, you know anything else on this Jaden Daniels and stopping him, and the fact that, I don’t know they have to stop Lamar and practice on certain days, lots of days, and running some level of scout team that maybe this defense is a little bit more prepared for what they’re going to see. And it’s not a Lamar offense as much as it might have just been more I don’t they, I don’t, I don’t know what it is. It’s five weeks. I’ve watched highlights of it. I watched one part of one of their games two weeks ago just to watch them run around a little bit. But it’s a mystery to me. I just see the highlights. Yeah.
Luke Jones 34:55
I mean, I think, I think the key for Jaden Daniels, and this is what’s challenging, I think. You do need to pressure him. I don’t think you just let him stand back in the pocket. Because, I mean, like I said, he can spin it. He throws. He already is one of the best deep ball throwers in the NFL. I mean, just look at the deep passes he has made, whether standing back in the pocket or even on the run. So you need to pressure him. You need to find ways to put heat on him in the pocket. However, when you do that, you can’t let him escape, because he can also run. So this is definitely a challenge to your point. I think that the fact that you go up against Lamar Jackson throughout training camp does help. They did just face Josh Allen a couple weeks ago, which isn’t exactly the same. But Josh Allen, we know can run away from you or try to run over you. So you know, there’s certainly a dual threat, dynamic, dual threat ability there. So, but again, with Jaden Daniels, I think what helps is the Washington running game has been critical to what they’ve been doing. And let’s face it, no one’s been able to run on the Ravens. So is Austin Eckler and Brian Robinson going to get enough room to keep Washington ahead of the chains and keep them in second and short and third and manageable? That’s a big question, because I think that puts a lot more pressure on a young quarterback going into what’s going to be an exciting environment, whatever the breakdown is of ravens versus Washington fans. I mean, it’s going to be fun, right? It’s
Nestor Aparicio 36:22
going to be full, yeah. So, so
Luke Jones 36:23
it’s going to be a fun atmosphere, regardless of how it sounds on any given down. But, but, yeah. The the challenge is, I think you absolutely need to put heat on him in the pocket, but can’t let him bust out, because he can also run 70 yards on you if you are undisciplined in your rush lane. So, so this is a challenge again. I don’t think he has a dynamic group of past catching weapons other than McLaurin. I mean, McLaurin is great, you know, he I think Zach Ertz has been nice for him in the in terms of such a knowledgeable tight end, but he’s so limited physically at this point in time. I mean, you know, he can catch one and get you five yards, but only if there’s five everybody in a foot race at this Yeah, he’s, he’s not breaking a bunch of tackles and running away from you for 25 yards. So that hopefully, should help that second to third level, the defense that’s had issues. You know, he’s not, certainly not dynamic, like the Bowers kid for the Raiders a few weeks back, you know, at that position. So, yeah, the rest of their receivers are, you know, I mostly guys, you know, you got to cover them. Let’s be clear. I mean, you can’t, you can’t have miscommunication and breakdowns that we’ve seen the Ravens have, quite frankly. But you know, I think you’ve got to know where McLaurin is, and certainly, you know, they’re going to try to throw to their backs. You know, with Austin Eckler, I think that’s a key. That’s going to be really key. You know, with whether it’s Hamilton roquan Smith, whoever, who’s going to be responsible for running backs in the flat. You know, that’s something to watch, but you know, it very simplistically, you need to drop, you need to stop the run, and you’ve got to get heat on this kid, you know, if you just let him stand back there in the pocket, he’ll find someone open, and he’ll throw it into a tight window. I mean, he’s capable of doing that. He is. He’s not playing like a rookie. Let’s put it that way. You know, it’s five games. I get it, and Cleveland’s a disaster. The Bengals defense stinks. We saw that last week. But you know, let’s face it, ravens defenses is far from elite right now. You know, Let’s call a spade a spade five weeks into the season. So they’ve got to do the things to make him uncomfortable, but they have to be disciplined in the process of doing that, and that’s going to be the challenge on Sunday. As you know, I expect the ravens to score plenty of points, plenty of points. The question is going to be, can they limit Washington enough to to keep this from turning into a shootout that feels reminiscent of what we saw in Cincinnati last week,
8Nestor Aparicio 38:51
take care of the football. There’s my warning for you. Anybody Listen, take care of the football, because you think we’re just going to go up and down the field. You go up down the field five times, but you turn it over twice. That there’s a problem, and take care of the football will be paramount in this game. Speaking to Zach Ertz, um, we’ve talked a little bit about Mark Andrews earlier, just in the framework of the offense seeing so much. And by the way, Charlie Carr, Charlie Kohler, got big run. I don’t know Charlie Kohler, but I want to know him. He would be the first guy I want to bring out to the barn for a crab cake, and you let him know that back in the in my previous life, we would do that. But, you know, he’s a bit of a disappearing part of this, and they reemerged last week, like he’s got to be a thing, right? I mean, unless likely is going to be a thing, but somebody better be a thing. Yeah.
Luke Jones 39:40
I mean, it’s just, and that’s what’s just been so and I don’t even mean this as a knock on them, because, I mean, look at the numbers, they’ve been one of the best offenses in football. I mean, you could argue right now that they’re the best offense in the league. When you look at it statistically, you look in terms of DVOA, what they’ve done with the run, what they’ve done with their passing efficiency, even if not always high volume. It’s. Works. So you don’t want to sit here and say that something’s been bad, because it hasn’t been but it has been odd, right? You know, just to see what it’s been on a week to week basis, and so much of it, let’s face it, I know you don’t play fantasy football, but everyone else does, and there definitely is an element of just looking at the stats and it just feeling so odd and not seeing Mark Andrews anywhere close to their statistical leaders in terms of catches and receiving yards. However, go look at it. His four catches were in the fourth quarter on Sunday. He would have had a touchdown if Lamar Jackson doesn’t underthrow him. He would have had, you know, he also had the tough luck of the face mask on the last drive of regulation that, if you kind of think about it, we it was kind of lost in our discussion. If that face mask call is made, maybe they score a touchdown and they don’t even force overtime, maybe they win in regulation. So he was very much involved there. If you look at pro football focus and some of these different analytics sites that track separation and things of that nature. There’s nothing that’s a major red flag as it pertains to mark Andrews. It doesn’t, you know, there’s nothing that suggests, well, he’s not getting open anymore. It’s just they’ve just become so much more diversified in how they try to attack you. And that’s why, you know, as you and I were kind of breaking down the Cincinnati game, and, you know, I’ve made the point of saying that, you know, the best offenses aren’t necessarily ones that have this ironclad identity, that they do the same exact thing every week. I mean, of course, the running game has been the foundation of what they’ve done for six years. Now, you know, we know that with Lamar Jackson and whoever else, and now you add Derrick Henry into that mix, but that said you don’t want to have an identity that’s so rigid that a team, the opposing team, says, Okay, if we stop this and this, Hey, we’re fine, we’re going to win. You can’t really say that about the ravens, because, I mean, Cincinnati bottled up Derrick Henry for four quarters and until, until the the penultimate play of the game, right? I mean, Derrick Henry was largely a non factor until that final run. But what did the Ravens do? Well, they were able to chuck it all over the field. And what, I think, six or seven different guys caught passes in that fourth quarter, you know, when they were trying to stage a comeback from 10 down. So it’s just become much more expansive. And I think, you know, with the tight end specifically, it’s an interesting dynamic, because when you look at their personnel groupings, they like having Patrick Ricard and Charlie Kohler on the field when they’re running the ball. However, defenses notice that. So you want to be in a position where you have them on the field that you need to throw to Charlie Kohler sometimes, or maybe Patrick Ricard on a rare occasion, because you become less predictable. So I’d much rather my identity overall to be as multiple as possible, assuming you can do all those different things. Well, you know, you don’t want to do things you’re not good at. So, you know, we’ve just seen a much more multiple, much more diverse, much more of a contrast from week to week in terms of how guys play. I mean, we’ve seen weeks where zay flowers is barely involved, and zay flowers was incredible on Sunday, one of the best players on the field on Sunday. So it really is week to week in that regard, you know, I think it’s safe to say Mark, Mark Andrews isn’t going to have 1000 yard season, you know, it does. Certainly doesn’t feel like that’s, you know, that ship’s long sailed. But at the same time, I still think he’s going to be critically important at some different points here, coming up, you know, maybe not Sunday, but in the coming weeks. Because, again, I think with Todd monkin, his identity is wanting to make things as difficult as possible for the opposition. And again, it’s not just about being predictable. It’s not just handing the ball to Derrick Henry 25 times and Lamar running it 14 times. We’ve seen that that works. That will work again at some point in time, no question. But you also need to be able to throw, and you need to be able to throw to your backs. We’ve seen them do that. How about the fact that we haven’t even mentioned haven’t even mentioned how good has this team been running screens? When have we said that about a Ravens offense? It’s been years, you know, maybe Ray Rice, if not longer than that. You know that they’ve run effective screen passes. So they’ve been able to do that with Justice Hill. So they can throw to their backs. They throw to their tight ends. Okay? They don’t the best wide receiver group in the NFL, and they’re one’s suggesting that, but zay flowers is pretty darn good, and Rashad Bateman had a really good game this past week, and even tylen Wallace, the little used tylen Wallace had two big catches in the fourth quarter on Sunday. So, you know, I can run through a dozen names that aren’t all great, aren’t all going to make the Pro Bowl or anything crazy like that, but guys that are contributing, and when you have that kind of an offense, you know, Todd munkens talked about this. Greg Roman tried to do this at times, not successfully. But the key to having a great offense is you want to make the opposing defense have to defend every. Of grass on the field, and the Ravens hasn’t been perfect every week, but with their offensive line improving the way that it has the last few weeks, they’ve become much more dangerous in their ability to do that. So yeah, I’ve wondered about I’ve Mark Andrews on two of my fantasy teams, Nestor, that’s hurt me from a personal standpoint, because he’s not putting up many points, but the ravens, They don’t care about that. They they care about the fact that they’re winning football games. And Mark Andrews, his time’s going to come. We saw it in the fourth quarter on Sunday, and you know, whether that means a breakout game this week, who knows. But I still think he can play. And I still think when it’s all said and done, he’s going to have some very big moments for this 2024 team. Yeah,
Nestor Aparicio 45:40
it doesn’t feel like a three game winning streak because of, I guess, how you you flap around to the end and try to win a game might have lost it had the kid hold the seams the right way on Cincinnati, you probably lose that football game. So good vibes. Washington coming north. Good matchup. Expensive tickets. Two great quarterbacks, two great black quarterbacks, which I had John Eisenberg on this week talking about his book and the history of all that. But I talked a lot more baseball with John, because he’s more baseball oriented. So baseball, some football, a wide mixture of things, some changes going on down at the warehouse as well. He is Luke Jones. You can find him in Baltimore, Luke. You can find me anywhere Baltimore. Positive is served. You find us together at Pizza John’s on Friday for our birthdays. On the 11th, we’re putting the Maryland crab cake for back out on the road. It’s all brought to you by the Maryland lottery, in conjunction with our friends at Liberty, pure solutions, they make my water crystal clean. I have well water. If you have well water, you need someone like them, nobody better than them. 800 clean water speaks for itself. Liberty, pure solutions, as well as plumbing needs, also our friends at curio wellness and foreign daughter putting us out on our 26th anniversary oyster tour. Oyster day, every day. I did that last month. You’ll be seeing them platform this month, and just a lot of great guests this week. In regard to the Washington football team, Todd rungren, the great Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, is going to be playing up in York, Pennsylvania, at the Appel Center on Sunday night, stopped by for about 40 minutes, had a great conversation about meatloaf baseball. Todd rungritz Kids played minor league baseball. He didn’t know anything about baseball. He got in Philadelphia. So really good stories all the way around. And also, I want to point out for the very first time, because it’s the end of the week and I won’t have a chance to do this, and I’ll cry if I talk about it too much. We lost Phil Jackman, who was really a father to me this week. So Phil Jackman at the age of 87 which, as his daughters said to me, he had a good run, not long enough, but long enough that we got to take it to a capitals playoff game and watch them lose in game seven in overtime to the fly as so I have hours of Phil Jackman and I discussing Earl Weaver, Muhammad Ali,
47:50
8the bullets,
Nestor Aparicio 47:52
the capitals, Pete Rose, just all sorts of things. So a life well led Phil Jackson. So I just want to give him some love, because I’ll talk about it more. Other than Ed frankovic, I don’t have a lot of people in my world that really knew Phil well to be able to have him on but you’ll get to know Phil well probably next week, because I’m going to clean up these tapes, because I did some retrospective work with him over hours, and he was he always hated doing my show. He hated nasty Nestor, all of that. He was old and Frankie and curmudgeonly, but usually, when I got him in here, had to tell you about the time I saw Ali Frazier, let me tell you. So we’ll get Phil Jackman, and that’s a pretty good fill, too. That’s not bad. I am Nestor. He is Luke. We are wnst. Am 1570 keeping the lights on for the legacy people that helped build this joint Phil Jackman was one of them. I.
