Sal Capaccio on Drake Maye's Struggles & Bills Injury Updates

0:00the game week the NFL season underway. The bills are tied for first in the AFC East because the Patriots are O and one. They lost to the Seahawks last night. Drake may three fourth quarter interceptions. A rough go for the second in MVP voting last year and doing one zone one. And Seattle loses Sam Donald early in the game and wins anyway. It was Drew Locker to come from behind victory there on 10 points and they win the game. AJ Brown left for the injuries. So you know injuries a big storyline to come out of that game. We'll get to sell thoughts on as well. We'll also get the bills injury updates here on WGR. Good morning, Sal. Good morning. Yeah. Ironically, they're actually on WQ AM and Miami and WFAT in New York this morning saying the dolphins are jets are tied for first place in the AFC East also. Enjoy it. Enjoy it while you can, right? Yeah. I was I made that joke yesterday that there is a world where if the bills were to lose the Houston, which I think is possible. The jets open with the Titans and the dolphins open with the Raiders. So you know, it's

1:03possible. I don't think it's exactly likely and I don't think it'll last very long. But on last night's game, Sal, I found myself thinking about the division because you know, in tracking New England, you're going to have two games head to head. You're going to have different schedules and one difference is they play Seattle. And I would have been locking that in as I think as a loss. I think they should lose that game. I hope they lose. And if they'd find a way to get out of it with the win, all of a sudden, like the bills margin for error, in my opinion, would have would have shrank a little bit. 100%. I was as well. I think it's natural. You're watching that game like, okay, this is one where I mean, this is not the bills are no longer the hunted. They're now the hunter. They are trying to win the division. They're trying to reclaim the division. And after four years of winning it, the Patriots have it. And like you want to go after it. You want to get it back. That's a game where you look at the schedule and say, okay, that's one where maybe we can get them to get a loss. And you know, however, it works out throughout the year. That's just one on the ledger, basically. Then on top of that, as the game is going on, Darnell leaves

2:06the game. Obviously early Patriots aren't playing really great football. And yet they're still there and looks like they're going to win the game. And you get frustrated thinking about, is it going to be another one of these years where here's this team in your division that seems like it seems like getting breaks on who they're playing and the schedule looked like it's going to be really tough out of the gate. But now they're getting this backup quarterback. And it got frustrating thinking about that way. I'm sure. And then at the end of the at the end of the game, you look up, okay, oh and one like that's that's that's a loss for them that's needed. If you want to get back to where you need to be, which is winning the division. And you know, the three games, the three games that are determined by your schedule are the bills are supposed to get the easier because they finished second, right? Quote unquote, where the Patriots are supposed to get the harder because they finish first. But we know that's not the case this year. Really, I mean, you think about it. The Patriots have the Seahawks. The bills have the Rams. Maybe a wash, whatever. I mean, the Rams, obviously, the Rams want me to be better now because of everything that they've done in the off season. But then the Patriots get the Jags where the bills get the Texans.

3:09And the Patriots get the Steelers where the bills get the Ravens. I mean, you know, those three games, you could argue the bills actually got a tougher schedule this year. Yeah. And that loss for New England means like if you're just lining them up kind of, whatever in a column, if the bills were to lose to the Rams, now that game becomes kind of a push, right? So it's tough test. But if you win over the Rams again in a divisional race, the division on record counts, but only after the overall record counts, which is kind of funny. Anyway, I'll throw this in to Jeremy. Have you looked at their next several games, the Patriots? Yeah. It's a tough test. I mean, Steelers are next and then it's the Jaguars and then the bills, right? So like, yeah, I mean, you're right. I mean, you could say tough test next couple weeks. But I think that I mean, we don't know what the Steelers are and then the Jags. Yeah, they're going to be tough. They have to go down there. I mean, they do have the Raiders and the Jets after that. If they can get, if they can win the next two games, which is possible, they'd be two and one and they get the bills Raiders Jets, you know, that bills games tough and then Raiders and Jets. My point is up until really November, they have opportunities for wins, right? So you got

4:13to, if you want to get back to the division, you want to give them a couple of wins, a couple of losses, excuse me here early. Yeah. South Capaccio joining us. So before we get to the Bill's injuries, thoughts on that game last night or just whatever if they're on Drake May, the Patriots, the NFL in general, we saw an offside call on a push push. Maybe that's going to be a point of emphasis this year. Who knows? Like we're always hearing point of emphasis stuff. AJ Brown got hurt. The Seahawks defend their crown. Their defense looks amazing. And I think Mike McDonald is starting to be recognized. If he wasn't already as like the guy defensively in the league right now. It was it was a, whatever. It was an opening night game. I thought it was a good game. It was a fun game. And Drake May looked the part of a guy that was overmatched. Yeah, good start for the NFL for sure. And for all the talk about, oh my God, I can't believe they're playing on a Wednesday night and then a Thursday night. I mean, people were dialed in and they were watching. They're going to watch tonight. You're like, Oh, yeah, give me more of that. Right? I mean, that's what the NFL wants. Honestly, wake up this morning. You're like, man, that was cool. And give me more of that tonight. We're going to get Rams and 49ers in Australia tonight.

5:16Right? Then we just wait a couple of days and you have more football. Seahawks, I don't know how to kind of handicap them offensively because there was no darn old, but they're different. They're different. They're different. They're they're they're I guess, you know, overall on paper, even on defense, they're different than they were last year on both sides of the ball. They have some different parts. But man, you know, they have some talent. Jackson Smith and Jigbo that play he made the fourth down play terrific. Great, great job by Drew Lock by the way, by the way, to come in and do what he did defensively. They just, yeah, they know how to push buttons and come at you from all different places. They know how to confuse you. And that's what they did to Drake May last night. Now listen, Drake May's three interceptions. They'll get to in a second. Obviously, that's the story. But man, some athletic plays made to make those interceptions, right? Yeah. The ball that was tipped up and the guy staying with it. And then at the end, that played a toe tap to stay in bounds is incredible. But for Drake May, I mean, boy, I don't know two things. His arm did not look right. I know you noticed that too. I saw you tweeting about it. His arm just did not look right. I don't know what's going on there. But how can you make a few of those

6:20throws that he made? I just don't, those were really, really poor decisions. And you have to be better than that if you're him, especially the last one, you are infueled. The game is tied. There is literally one thing you can't do. Maybe two, you can't sack and fumble, right? Don't take a huge sack and fumble, right? We know that. And you can't throw that ball. You just can't throw that ball that he did. And he threw really three poor passes all in the fourth quarter that cost his team. And that's just just something that you can't have. Yeah. It's early season stuff like, you know, we might, we might see this with Houston. We might see this with the bills on that interception that ISIS the game, the tackles cut block. And it looks like he's looking for somebody short. And it does, it's not there. And then he panics and throws it to the sideline and, you know, either throw it, I mean, it's Mac Holland. It's not Calvin Johnson. You know, a couple of Johnson, it's Mac Hollins, whatever. Patriots lose. Good.

7:21So good. Well, I want to ask you, Sal, how surprised were you? Well, first of all, like the Patriots kind of unveil their new group of wide receivers, right? The weapons that they acquired this off season. And we didn't get to see a full game from AJ Brown who goes down with a look like a, could be a lingering ankle injury. It didn't look great. And people were talking about him for a week for the bills. There's no doubt. Absolutely. Less than a month away. And Romeo Dobbs, I don't know, did not really look good. Just a rough game. Overall, I think the biggest surprise for me, Sal, was it took until the third offensive possession to be like, Hey, we're going to design a play to make sure AJ Brown gets the ball. I just thought out of the gates. And this is what I would expect the bills with DJ Mortadoo is feature their new toys early in that game. And they just didn't. No, right. And they just feel like this team that plays a little bit of throwback football offensively, right? You have this. And I still, I think Drake's making Drake May is very talented. Now, you know, the way he's looked towards the end of last year.

8:22And now, you know, there's questions. You have to start questioning that. But I think he's really talented. But it feels like they're not, they're not going with the style of offense that you have a talented young quarterback. It's more like, don't make a mistake. Be conservative or on the ball a little bit more old school. And then that's what happens. You get in your self-disposition where when you play a game like that, and we've seen this in Buffalo at times in years past, you play a game like that. The margin for error is just smaller. And when you play a low scoring game, you have to make really good decisions in critical moments. And one bad decision can cost you because of what you said, Nate, which is you're trying to run the ball. You're not highlighting your big time players and weapons. And that didn't happen necessarily. They have a better offensive line running the ball. I thought they did a good job last night. But again, here's Drake May getting some trouble late in the game on some pressures and taking some sacks and someone tweeted me last night. If you really watched, if when Drake May has to stay in the pocket, he's just not as effective as a lot of, as you might think, like he's really good when he especially rolls right.

9:23He uses his legs a lot. And yeah, that's probably right. I mean, like he hasn't been, he wasn't really great last night. Just standing there throwing darts down the field. It was, he made some plays when he had some outlet passes. A lot of his passes that were, you know, the numbers. He found his running backs out of the backfield. And he was able to move with his legs a little bit. Looks a hostile environment. Seattle. It's not an indictment on him and, you know, his career and you know, he's a third year player here. We'll see what happens next week. But you're right. I didn't think they played offense necessarily the way that you should play offense in 2026 where they talented young quarterback. Yep. So Kupaccio joining us. All right, so the Bills injury report, how things look. It was a day waiting for updates kind of on six players that have been affected. And good news. The number is small in that. They're going in very healthy. Yeah, very healthy, but still a couple very notable losses yesterday or missing players, I should say yesterday from practice. And that is Ty Johnson and Jordan Hancock. But the really good news is getting Kulosekier back more than anything. When you, all of us, I mean, that bovine, I did a podcast

10:24like great one during practice, basically the part we weren't allowed to watch. And we both said the first guy we both look for when we went to practice was number 10 Kulosekier is the out there is such a massive piece for this offense, especially in a game like this where Josh owned has, you know, obviously been sped up a little bit and had to and taken some hits and sacks and you want to be able to get rid of the ball. You want to have guys available. That's Kulosekier. That's your slot receiver and Kulosekier practice yesterday. Excuse me. He talked with the media after said he felt good, really good to get back out there. You just want to get back out there with his teammates. You know, that happened. So that was really good. And Ty Johnson not back that to me is a story today. If Ty Johnson is not back today and it's trending towards him not playing on Sunday, like I think that's a really big loss for the bills offense considering this defense they're playing. He is a third down back who provides an outlet for Josh and he provides past protection. He's smart. He understands the offense, loud environment, noncommunication, nonverbal communication, all those things matter in a game like this. And when he's on the field

11:28on third down, the Texans can't just pin their ears back. They have to kind of account form a little bit as well. Jordan Hancock as a nickel back. He has also been out. He missed yesterday. This is really interesting because both these guys kind of are related guys to in a where, where what do you do at punt return? Because if you're going to be missing, Jordan Hancock, do you have D Alfred return punt still as your only, your only nickel back truly available? I mean, you could elevate to a Corey couch. But if you do that, can you elevate Greg Doritz because you might have to elevate Frank Gore. You only get two of these, right? So there's some roster gymnastics. The team has to play. But yeah, you said they were getting healthy and a little bit better too. Juvon Solomon was returned, Jude Bowie returned. Good news there. Who am I missing? One of the person returned yesterday that I saw. But I want to, but yes, for the most part, it was a lot cleaner yesterday. So Kapacho, what do you think the plan would be if Ty Johnson doesn't go there at the elevator back? But did they split that role? Did they give

12:29a little more responsibility to James Cook? Is it Ray Davis? Is it an elevated back? Who would they trust in that spot in that environment? Um, I'm sorry. In punt return, if Ty Johnson's unavailable. I'm sorry. So this is really interesting. So it would be Frank Gore to be elevated out of a third running back with question is do you go with three or two? And you're talking about third down. Yes. I think it would be Ray Davis. Yes. I think it would be Ray Davis as a third down back. Now you could put James Cook on the field for sure. And, but I think Ray Davis would become a little bit more of the Ty Johnson. You probably see him both on the field actually. Or here's something maybe, maybe this is a spot where you use more of a tight end in H back or, you know, in someone in that role, uh, also nox days and a little bit more. You go a little bit more double tight. You don't have to have necessarily that extra guy in the backfield next to Josh. You could have, you know, an extra tight end on the field a little bit more often. You can run with three tight ends and more of a pass set than a run set of that makes sense, right? You could do things differently. You don't have to have the guy with the name RB attached to his

13:34position to be able to do that. So I'm interested. I, I wonder about the roster part of it. If do you, if you don't have Ty Johnson, do you elevate Frank or junior? Do you go with just two running backs? If you do elevate Frank or junior, then you, if you, if you want to have Greg Dorch, but what happens at Nickel, do you need a guy there to Corey couch? Like I said, so there's a few decisions here. They have to make. So Capaccio joining us on the Western hotline previewing bills and Texans, which would be Sunday and one o'clock. The Patriots are all in one. There's the game in Australia tonight. So have you seen, there's anything else I've forgotten on the bills we can catch up on. Jalen Kilgore was the other guy we talked about. Okay. There you go. Jalen Kilgore. So I, I, I did, uh, I, I missed him, but, um, I don't even, I don't even know he'll be active for game jersey, but he could. If, if Jordan handcux out, Jalen Kilgore might be a guy that you need, uh, need as an extra defensive back, by the way. Yeah. Um, I want to ask you about the international game that's going to be today, uh, from Australia, because the bills are likely to be international next year, right? And who knows where they go if it's Germany or if it's, it's probably not

14:35Australia. Have you been following the differences in approach from the Niners and the Rams and how different those approaches are for this game today? Yes. So from the fact of, I know that the Niners went like last week. Yeah. Rams went like yesterday. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. A lot of sleep study stuff and yes. One thing to watch for next year again, there's a new bills head coach here, right? And when they went out a couple of years ago, there was a lot of controversy, but if they did it wrong, they looked like they might have been asleep. They weren't ready. Their body clocks had to adjust it. And the Jaguars had played back to back games out there. So they were able to adjust a little bit better. I wonder, you know, how the bills might monitor the situation for the, for these two teams, granted, they're not going to go to Australia. I don't think, but still, it's certainly something that in the NFL, the training staffs and, you know, coaches have to be copycat leaking. Who's got the right approach? Not only that, Jeremy, I would say though, there's been enough international games now, enough trial and now, and that's not necessarily to Australia,

15:38right? This is a little different now. But there's so much crossover on staff, so people who've done this. So there's been, there's going to be a lot of opinions. So let's say bills next year, I said, maybe they go to Europe to play. Maybe it's not London. Maybe it's Germany, maybe it's Spain, whatever, something like that. And then they say, well, on our staff, we have, you know, three people who've done this before and coaches, you know, what do you think? They're going to get a lot of input. So I think we're to the point now where you can really start to kind of dig into the experiences that people have had and players too. There's been enough international games, whether you're on the bills for the last six, seven years, or you come from somewhere else and, you know, Bradley Chow's played multiple international games now, right? I mean, like you could ask him, like what it was it like for you? And you could start to gather that data. And of course, I think today is, and tonight is going to be really big with this, what you said, which is try and find out what you can gather from how they took their approach. But look, I've always said this. I remember the first game in London that the bills were a part of that I went over there with the team as part of the radio broadcast. We left the week before the game. The bills played the Bengals on a Sunday.

16:42And the team left Sunday night for the following Sunday game. We're there all week in London. That was the game. EJ manuals, the quarterback in London, right? And they lost the Jags and they came back, but they want to blues in and controversial calls and all that. And then you have a game, like a couple of years ago where they went a little bit later and want to blues in that game. I've also seen where teams have gone later in one or earlier in one later and lost earlier and lost. I respect the science that everyone brings to the table. I just think that there's no one right way to be honest with you. And especially when you're talking about 53 guys on a roster, I think everybody's body can be a little bit different and how they react. And we all, we all different sleep patterns. We all sleep differently and wake up differently and we're morning people or later people and all those kinds of things. I get it. And I want to respect the science behind it. And I know everybody spends a lot of money. These teams spend a lot of money to do all this stuff to get peak performance. I get it. I understand why. I just don't think that you could ever really get

17:46to a point where you know exactly how to do it. Yeah. So Kupaccio on the Western hotline. Artzel will we'll talk tomorrow on a football Friday. Okay. I will be at North Town Kia today for the extra point show. I'll be there 10 to 12 people come by. I think grab some free Paul is don't that's why they last say hi. I'll be hosting Zach and Derek will be back in studio. I'll be there. We'll have WGR merch and then later today and another practice for the bills will hear from Jim Leonard and Pete Carmichael today. By the way, before practice and then we'll go out there and get to another injury report a little bit later in the day. All right. Very good. Thank you, Sal. You got it. So Kupaccio. I listened yesterday to follow up on that story about the sleep science. And it might be right. Like you might need a hundred games to figure it out. But for sleep science, the podcast I listened to him and trying to find exactly who this was. Okay, here. Kathy, Dr. Kathy Goldstein of the University of Michigan. She's of the belief that one team going over for tonight's game has a major advantage on what they're doing. And that is the Rams.

18:47To her belief, the Rams have the advantage. And we kind of talked about this a little bit maybe last week. Yes. Or Monday. And especially after the Shanahan quote came out. We didn't even know what day it was. And I just kind of guessed my way through a lot of it. And I was half right. So here's basically what she had to say about it. It was on the podcast with Ed Feng of who's Ed with here. Analytics, the power of the power rank, college football stand for PhD. Okay, somebody on Twitter with a lot of education. Anyway, this sleep doctor said every time zone you travel, you need a day to actually get your circadian rhythm back five time zones. You really don't get fully back for five days. And Australia is way over there. 17 time zones. So what's going to happen is even if the 49ers in a week adjust the game is 10 30 AM local time. And the body does

19:52not perform at peak at 10 30 AM in the afternoon is your peak performance. So if the Niners were to successfully get there and successfully adjust, they'd be playing at a time of day that is not their peak time of performance anyway. And they won't be adjusted. And the Ram side of it is they travel out yesterday. If they go out there and they can get sleep on the time zone that they live in, they'll be playing the game in the afternoon and they don't need to adjust to anything. They can really fly in and fly out and sure travel is tough. And maybe you're dehydrated. You want to make sure you're limber or whatever. But from a sleep standpoint, the Rams are treating it like just live on your schedule. Don't adjust to anything. Go there and play a game in the afternoon. And the Niners are trying to adjust to play a game at 10 30 in the morning. And that doesn't make any sense. Yeah. And if anything, what I feel like I'm understanding now about this is that not only has the decision the 49ers made to go down as early as they did potentially hurt them for this game.

20:57But it also potentially hurts them because they're trying to assimilate to a time zone that they're going to leave immediately from back to that. It could affect them for two weeks. Right. A very good good. And to the point that, well, NFL teams on the West Coast normally play games at like 10 a.m. when they come east. That's right. How do they fare? They usually don't do very well. Usually in West Coast teams coming east at 1 a.m. the body clock is not optimally ready at 10 a.m. So anyway, just ask my golf game. I feel like better after the player. I'm a better player. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. 803 05. Bye. Don't move in the morning. Johnny Buffalo. Johnny. Good morning. Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my call. You know, after washing the last night's game, and I know it might be a bit of an overreaction on this Thursday morning. But why not? I just feel like the Patriots don't have it this year. And part of it is just because they look really past is calling plays less night. They look like they were just scared of that Seattle past rush. I think

21:59they had some glaring holes on that offensive line still. And I think everybody expects their defense to kind of remain dominant. They were they're pretty good defense last year. And I think they're still well coached by Ravel. They only allowed 13 points. But that was, you know, partly due to that quarterback change last night. But unlike the Texans who just returned like all of their unbelievable starters, it doesn't really have that many dudes on defense besides Christian Gonzalez in my opinion. You know, Houston's got so many more guys on that defense who are just dominant. And I think everybody expects during the defense not to take a step back. I think the opposite. I think we'll take a step back. They expected maybe New England's offense to take a step up. And I don't know if they can. And part of it is either I don't know if it's straight May kind of people figure in a mile a little bit. Or if it's more or less, you know, and I know AJ Brown went down. But they just looked off and they looked like they don't trust that line even to block. I thought

23:01they had some success when they let May kind of drop back a little bit and when Seattle, they read their blitzes pretty well. But man, they just something's off. And to be honest, I don't think they're a real true threat this year. And I know it's no reaction. I'm fully, fully aware of it, fully guilty of it. But to me, they don't scare me at all. And who does? I gotta say who does? In the AFC? Yeah. Maybe Denver, maybe yeah, I don't know LA, the Chargers might. I think they're going to be pretty good this year. I know they've kind of got some early offensive line issue again this year with their center going out. But you know, Houston, Houston could, I think getting them early helps because we're fully healthy going into that game. Hopefully we have some things skeamed up. Well, thanks, John. We got these to a break. I asked that because it's a perfect setup,

24:02like who scares you in the AFC. One prominent NFL prognostiator who I do not consider to be a hot take artist posted his predictions yesterday and predicted the bills to miss the playoffs. Yes, I did see that Benjamin Solack of ESPN. I think it's great. Yep. And would not do it for clicks or rage bait, which just honestly predict the bills to miss the playoffs, which I found interesting. Like, okay, there's one. I decided to look into the odds that that happens. Like, how likely is that to happen? Get that on the other side for you. What would happen if that did happen? And a follow up to your point about about may here, like they looked off the Seahawks, the stats on the Seahawks defense. They have given up one play of 21 yards or more in their last six games. Six teams don't get anywhere on them. So I want to be I feel like judging the Patriots on the last offense on the last night's game would be akin to judging the bills offense

25:02on last year's Houston game. Also, like, yeah, I mean, it happened. It's real. It exposes flaws. I do not think you should take that's their offense every single week. Will it come back to earth? Very well might, but this is the toughest hole in the golf course. Yeah, you know, you're going to have a rough day out there sometime also just quick on the Patriots defense. They have two absolute dogs. Milton Williams and Christian Gonzalez are dogs. And then they have nine Jags. They have just a cut. They have just guys. They got a couple guys out there. The rookie pass rusher had a nice game. Gabe J. Yes, he did a head of sack. Well said, they feel like they can have a lot of guys. Okay. Kind of like the bills. Kind of like the bills. Yeah, I don't know that you said like they're all defense is going to regress. I don't know anybody thought that it was all that. Yeah, I don't think the people it was it was fine. It was fine. And with Milton Williams and it's very good. And they played well in the playoffs against back of quarterbacks. Bad quarterbacks. Yeah. Yeah. 803 05 50. Thanks, Johnny, for the phone call. All right. So on that

26:04prediction about the bills making the playoffs, you think like that's that's preposterous, right? How unlikely is it and what would happen if it did happen that come up with that here in WTR?