1200 CC’s of Sports Podcast – Episode 2

Podcast written and created by Cameron Erickson and Cory Sparks

Transcript typed up by Matty Roell

 

CAMERON: Welcome to our second ever podcast, what we have decided to call 1200 CC’S of Sports.

 

CORY: So any big events going on sports-wise we will be delivering tons of facts, along with our opinions on the various topics.

 

CAMERON: Speaking of what’s going on at the moment, the MLB playoffs start next week, with the first wildcard game taking off on October 2nd.

 

CORY: So, we are going to cover both the NL side and the AL side of baseball, since the postseason is approaching so quickly. For my standouts, I have the Cubs and Dodgers as the most dangerous teams in the MLB heading into the postseason.

My reasoning for the Cubs is that, despite their recent struggles, they are scoring five or more runs on a consistent basis. I know that pitching staff hasn’t been the sharpest, but there is so much experience in that rotation. Cole Hamels has a world series championship under his belt, so does Jon Lester, and so did Kyle Hendricks with the Cubs two years ago.

There’s too much experience on their side in my opinion, the only things stopping the Cubs is the fact that they are right with the Brewers right now. The Brewers are only a half a game behind them in the MLB Central. If the Brewers catch the cubs, if they surpass them, the Cubs are going to have to play a one-game wildcard round, and if they lose that, their postseason is over. As for the other team, I have the Dodgers. Justin Turner has the best batting average in the MLB ever since the trade deadline, and Yasiel Puig has been batting three hundred and thirty-three throughout the month of September, and he also has that rocket arm out of right field.

For the AL side, I have the Red Sox, who have won the most games in the history of their team. They added their one-hundred and six tally in the win column on Tuesday. Outside of the Yankees and maybe Astros with their impressive middle end field. I don’t see anybody putting up a fight against the Red Sox on the AL side – the dominance of Mookie Betts, J.D. Martinez, and then Chris Sale on the pitching end…it is a deadly combination, and I don’t see anyone putting up a fight. Maybe until the World Series, even.

 

CAMERON: Alright, let’s segway into some NFL news.

Baker Mayfield lead the Browns to their first win since December 24th, 2016. That was an amazing game to watch. As the Jets were leading, like fourteen nothing at half, the Browns just sent in Baker Mayfield, and he just connected with his team right away – he just lead them to that victory. It was amazing to watch.

 

CORY: And then just to put everything into perspective, the last time the Browns got a win in the NFL, Donald Trump had just become president, and he had only been one month into it. Yeah, I think Mayfield really connected with them well. The thing that is most interesting to me is Hugh Jackson was not going to put him in at all.

Tyrod just happened to get a concussion and called upon Baker, and sure enough, he came through. So, now we’re going to focus on the Bears. Probably the worst two-and-one team performance-wise so far, but they are leading the NFC North for the first time since 2013, and that is because Khalil Mack wracked up two more sacks against the Cardinals, basically saving the entire game. I mean, the Bears found themselves down fourteen to three to a team that didn’t even have a touchdown on the season before that game. But, I mean, the defense shut off the Cardinals for those next two quarters, and Khalil Mack was a big, big part of it for sure.

 

CAMERON: And now we talk about the biggest injury of week three, and that was Jimmy Garoppolo, tearing his ACL. As a 49ers fan, I can see that our season is over. CJ Beathard is coming in to start week four against the L.A. Chargers.

 

CORY: I mean – he’s not full of experience, but keep in mind he did go to school in Iowa, he played against a bunch of good, big ten defenses! So I think he’s got some experience under his belt, but Jimmy Garoppolo had four or five years under his belt of being on a Patriots team that took home multiple championships. It’s going to be a tough loss, for sure.

 

CAMERON: This just happened, but Panthers sign safety Eric Reid – former 49er to a one year deal – is a veteran player, and he will definitely add some versatility to the Panthers secondary. It’s also worth mentioning that Reid was one of the players that kneeled alongside Kaepernick during the National anthem. But, just with some of the new rules they placed this year, I don’t think that’s going to be a problem. Reid is going to add some good colors to the Panthers secondary.

 

CORY: For sure. And if anything, with the whole kneeling thing, I think it was just him being a good teammate. I mean, that’s up for interpretation, but he was just supporting his teammate. Kaepernick seems to be the only one getting negative attention for that right now.

Now we’re going to go on to the fact that the Vikings lost to the Bills this week. And they didn’t just lose – they lost twenty seven to seven. This is the biggest upset since December 3rd of 1995, when the seventeen and a half point underdog Washington Redskins beat the Dallas Cowboys. The Vikings were not supposed to lose this game. Kirk Cousins was supposed to dominate, and he ended up giving up three turnovers, and there was also a span where he lost a fumble on two consecutive drives. Josh Allen with – I believe – two rushing touchdowns. He only had one pick. My question is; are the Bills better than we thought, or did the Vikings just have a bad game?

 

CAMERON: I mean, I don’t know. The Bills came off of last season – they made it to the playoffs – so they definitely have some talent on their team. I don’t think that they’re trash, I just think they had a rough two weeks kind of just getting started, and I think Josh Allen has a lot of potential – that he could be something the Bills haven’t had in awhile, and that’s a good starting quarterback.

 

CORY: Yeah, I definitely agree with that. I think a lot of people were discrediting the Bills after that 0-2 start. Nathan Peterman was in there, and the guy just…he’s not ready for the NFL. I don’t think he has been for the past year, when they threw him in last year and he had a five interception game. He just needs to develop. You throw Josh Allen in there, it’s a world of a difference; the offense had command, the offense had tempo, they were pushing the Vikings of all teams around. And as for the Vikings, I also think they just had a bad game as well. I think some things weren’t connecting.

I mean, Kirk Cousins has been a producer for the past three or four years since he took over for RG3. That was very uncharacteristic of him. And then you have that defense with Trae Waynes, Xavier Rhodes, the whole defensive line, I think it was a little bit of both, for sure. Now we’re going to move on to the Clay Matthews controversial hit on the quarterback. It hasn’t just been Clay Matthews, it’s appeared in multiple games, if you want to talk about that a little bit.

 

CAMERON: Yeah, I mean, watching the Steelers Tampa game the other night, there was a good five or six calls on roughing the passer. That honestly seems just absolutely ridiculous. Like, the exact rule is that it prohibits defenders from landing on the quarterback with their full body weight or driving them into the ground with excessive force. To me, that sounds like tackling.

 

CORY: That’s the game of football! Tackling exactly! I don’t think the quarterback should be an exception. He is a main player, and your objective as a defense should be to knock him down. To get in his head, it’s not just sacking him, it’s knocking him around a little bit. Taking a mental toll, that’s all strategy. The NFL is stripping that from the defenses right now, I think.

 

CAMERON: I think there’s just been a bunch of bogus calls going on, and I think that the NFL needs to be consistent with it, and needs to call everything, because there have been a few times where they’ve let it go. Like, they either need to be really consistent with it, or they just need to reword the ruling where, you know, it’s either hitting the quarterback late – I think that’s on roughing the passer, or if you’re just being way excessive with your Ndamukong Suh’ing the guy.

 

CORY: Yeah! For stepping on him and stuff.

 

CAMERON: That’s roughing the passer. I don’t think grabbing him and tackling him as hard as you can is bad. That’s the name of football.

 

CORY: And that’s where this rule is so vague. If you’re – I just don’t like how that rule is worded. “Driving them into the ground with excessive force” – every single ref in the entire NFL has their own interpretation of what excessive force is, so I just think it needs to be more concrete.

 

CAMERON: Yeah, I agree.

 

CORY: So now we’re going to move on to Bold Predictions. We both came up to a conclusion about a guy. I think we’re both agreeing on he’s going off this week. Matt Ryan is going to drop five touchdowns on the Bengals defense this week. Something about Matt Ryan that a lot of people may not know, he has the third best third down conversion rate on throws since the year 2001 at forty-five point six percent. So almost half the time, Matt Ryan, when he throws the ball, they’re getting a first down. Bengals on the other hand, who he happens to be playing this week, their defense is allowing a fifty-two percent conversion rate on third down during these first three games.

This is the worst in the NFL right now, and it’s the worst that they’ve ever had in the Marvin Lewis Era when he’s been coaching for them. This is going to be deadly for the Bengals. Matt Ryan and Julio Jones have had a chemistry for years that has just depleted the secondaries. And with the hot start of Calvin Ridley, I don’t think the possibilities are – I don’t think they have a ceiling that they’re going to go off on. And then also, third downs are where defenses can prove themselves, and where momentum shifts can occur, and if offenses can’t be made uncomfortable on third downs, they’re going to step all over this defense.

So, five touchdowns for Matt Ryan this week, and the Falcons are going to even the record out at two and two. Now we’re going to go with “Use Him or Lose Him”. For my “Use Him”, I have Carlos Hyde. I think he’s very underrated, probably because he is on the Browns right now despite them getting their first win, unfortunately. But he scored at least one touchdown in all of their games, and he’s gotten sixty one touches in three games. As impressive as Baker Mayfield’s performance was, I think it’s going to be a couple of weeks before Hugh Jackson gives him the keys to the offense.

He’s got some chemistry to develop, he doesn’t have any people to throw to besides Jarvis Landry. I think it’s gonna be ground and pound for that Browns offense.

 

CAMERON: Alright, for my “Use Him”, I’m going to do the Atlanta wide receiver, Calvin Ridley. Dude had eleven catches for two hundred and ten yards, four touchdowns, only in two games, and I think that if Matt Ryan is not throwing to Julio Jones, which, guaranteed he’s not going to throw to Julio every single play, he’s going to be going to Ridley.

I think Ridley’s going to have a huge day against the Bengals, like what you were saying with how they’re just terrible on third downs, or how the Falcons are leading in third downs. It’s going to be huge for Ridley, and I think he’s going to get another hundred yard game and two touchdowns, I think.

 

CORY: Yeah, I wouldn’t doubt it at all. That Bengals defense is looking horrible, and every team going up against that passing game is going to be in my opinion. Now, for “Lose Him”, we have Case Keenum. So far this season, I haven’t seen the Case Keenum that I saw on the Minnesota Vikings last year. He’s thrown only three touchdowns against a whopping five interceptions throughout the first three games. He hasn’t even thrown a touchdown pass since that first week.

Additionally, Keenum hasn’t been racking up anything in the yards category since week one. Last week, he posted the least amount of yards he’s had all season, with only one hundred and ninety-two. If you’re not throwing touchdowns, and you’re not throwing for a lot of yards, you have no start reason to Keenum on your team in Fantasy in my opinion. They don’t have a wide receiving core anymore. I mean, Demaryius Thomas has, like, one hundred and fifty yards on the season so far, he’s older, and Emmanuel Sanders is like their only glimmer of hope, so I don’t think there’s much to hold on to there.

 

CAMERON: For my “Lose Him”…maybe a little bit premature to be assuming this, but I think Josh Gordon. He’s suffering a bit of a hand strain injury, and it’s not likely that he’s going to play this week. And I thought as soon as that he got signed for the Patriots, he was going to come on the next week and just go off. I was expecting it, you know, one hundred, one hundred and twenty yards, with Brady connecting with him, but he’s just been injured. And don’t forget Julian Edelman is coming back next week and that is Brady’s number one wide receiver, and I just think that Gordon is a waste of space on your Fantasy team – as of right now.

We’ll see a couple of weeks down the road, if Gordon can get healthy and if he’ll come and be a strong wide receiver. But as of right now, I think…bench him, lose him, whatever.

CORY: Yeah, I definitely agree. And then not to mention, who’s the tight end? The best tight end in the league, Rob Gronkowski, and then you’ve still got Chris Hogan who he is somewhat throwing to. I mean, Tom Brady hasn’t even been producing that well, either, so if he’s not producing well, who says he’s going to prioritize “Oh, it’s going to be Josh Gordon’s game this week!” I think he’s in a load of trouble Fantasy-wise…

Alright, that’s all we’re going to have for today on 1200 CC’s of Sports! Thank you guys for joining us, so, so much, and we will talk to you guys next week.