The Tom Gazzola Show - Sept. 10th, 2026 - Arif Hasan

0:00Arif Hassan from White left football and all ball podcasts joins us now. Arif, good morning. Thanks for hopping on, man. Listen, I'm seeing a lot of Drake May hate. I was saying to the boys when I got in studio today, I was like, boy, did Drake May look good on that final possession at times and boy did he look terrible at times on that final possession. And unfortunately his third interception of the game seals the deal for the Seahawks. I mean, where do you come out on what we saw from a talented young quarterback that looked like he was just pressing a little too much? I think you characterized it perfectly. He's a talented quarterback. When we saw a lot of that, he was pressing a little bit too much and Seattle did a really good job of testing his patience even set after the game that the problem he had was that he was getting impatient. He kept on taking these short shots. The lowest depth of target I think at the regular season we've seen from him, at least in some time, certainly last season. And they forced him into it. And then he kind of pushed it a little bit too far and it ended up throwing three picks.

1:02I would say that it was a lot of relatively, like if you look at the percentage of plays that were positive, it was actually really high. He actually did a really good job from play to play, but his mistakes were catastrophic. There were such huge mistakes, especially obviously that last one where you could just throw the ball away. And so the impact of these high, high impact mistakes that are relatively low frequency for him, I think that's the narrative. He certainly deserves to shoulder blame for the loss. But if we're going to ask the question, what does this mean going forward? What does this game tell us about who he is as a quarterback? I would say that, yeah, sure, it knocks him down a little bit in our estimation, but I think he's actually still quite a good quarterback. And he demonstrated that in a lot of ways yesterday, just gets overwhelmed by a couple of plays here and there. He, last year, one of the most effective things he did consistently was scramble. He had the third highest scramble rate in the NFL last year. He scrambled so effectively and efficiently in this game to generate so many first downs,

2:04kind of this hidden yardage that we don't count in a bunch of our traditional box work. That's always going to be there, at least this season. And that's always going to give them a little bit of a floor to work with. Now obviously he has to tighten up some things. But I don't think that this really takes Drake May out of this conversation about this bright young star up and coming quarterback. Are we going to talk about him as a potential MVP candidate? Probably not anymore, at least for a couple more games, but that was an outside shot anyway. So I don't know that we should let this move our expectations of him too much. And unless it's one game, it's the stage and the spotlight is massive. Everybody's anticipating this game and you have the banner on Valiant. You're an enemy, enemy territory. It's very hostile and Seattle crowd was fantastic. Seattle's defense and that front line, like how much of their pressure and them getting to him, maybe gotten his head later in the game and caused some of those mistakes that he made. And listen, again, it's one game, but he can recover. And like you said, and he's young, he's talented.

3:06But there are some other factors that went into this too, isn't there? Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, you take a look at some of the offensive linemen that were expected to perform at a really high level. Elijah Vera, Tucker in addition that they had who's injured all of last season. He had one of the worst games I've ever seen him put together. Will Campbell, who was actually pretty good in the regular season before he got hurt. And then as you coming back from injury, look very poor in the playoffs enough that people like, I don't even know if he's a tackle, maybe he's a guard. You know, I think we expected higher levels of performance from a lot of these players. And we just, we just didn't get it. Right. This was a really catastrophic game from a past protection perspective. And then, you know, AJ Brown gets injured immediately and that kind of cuts them off at the knees and then Romeo dobs is like, you know, supposed to be one of the marquee additions. He drops a really critical pass for that. We actually probably drink my best. Yes, big honest unbelievable drop. Seriously. Yeah. And I don't say any of this to say, you know, the loss isn't his fault. It is.

4:07This is not about shifting blame, but it is about trying to figure out how good of a player he is. And for that, we need to figure out this kind of context. What kind of pressure was he under? Who was he up against? He had a lot of defense that admittedly they were missing two safeties. I don't want to oversell, you know, kind of what Seattle was dealing with, but they were playing its high level. The pressure package was so fantastic. And they were and they were taking away all these deep routes constantly. You know, we want to give credit to good teams for playing. Well, and that's exactly what they did here. And so you're left with this kind of supporting cast that shouldn't have been as as as low performing as it was. You're left, you know, playing against really high level defense. I think all of the conversation about like, hey, he hadn't easy schedule last year. That's fair. And I think we saw that kind of materialize again. But none of that tells us he's a bad quarterback. I think he's a good quarterback, way to back game. Yeah. That's totally fair, totally fair indeed. And then you touched on the AJ Brown injury. How concerning is it? It looked like he was holding his ankle. Listen, I'm not a doctor. And obviously they're going to have to do everything in their power to make sure they figure

5:10out what's wrong and how long he'll be out for and what they can do to rehabilitate him. But is that concerning? And like you said, it cut them up down at the knees early in the game. It is really concerning. He's a marquee player in their offense. I mean, they want to be a deep ball offense. We saw that a little bit. And he is a premier deep ball receiver. That was his primary complaint in Philadelphia last years that, you know, they weren't pushing the ball down field enough to take advantage of what he can do well. And what's really amazing about a player like AJ Brown is that, you know, first of all, he's a lot faster than I think people, you know, think or remember, you just take a look at his combined scores. They were outstanding. But even as he slowed down a little bit and he's like 28, we're not talking about like a 32 year old. Right. Even as he slowed down a little bit, he has been such an amazing deep ball receiver because he understands the nuances of the game really well. He understands like how he can apply physicality. He has an instinct of understanding where that five yard zone is where you can be a little bit more physical. And he just knows how to get away with with certain types of contact and certain types

6:10of route running. And he can just be open deep and having that reliable option instead of having to throw to Keishan Boudi deep, who is a fine receiver, but he's not a premier receiver. The way that they designed their offense this year, it seems like was with the expectation that he'd be taking a bunch of snaps. So it is really concerning as we get more news about what is availability will look like for the rest of the year. Well, maybe adjust for expectations for what that offense can look like, but it is, it is I think a pretty big concern. Okay. And then on the saddle side, Sam Donald goes down there. I think they're saying hip. What do we think of that injury and how will it affect the the Seahawks going forward and you know, Drew lock steps in and what was for the most part like a kind of a sleepy game until the fourth quarter and got a little bit more interesting. Yeah. Some of the news I saw today suggested that the hip wasn't a fracture, which is, you know, really good news. Yeah. But and this is this is just me quickly scanning the news. So hopefully I didn't make a mistake there, but that was the concern last night is that

7:12that hip injury would be kind of a more permanent injury or take them out for the entire season. And so hopefully, you know, that bears out and that it's not an injury that takes them out for a full season. My expectation if it's not a fractured would be that would be a couple of games. I'm not a doctor. So, you know, that's my best guess having, you know, experienced and watched, you know, football injuries. And of course, that's, you know, that's a pretty significant problem. Same Donald, I think by like yards per attempt was second or third last year. I mean, he wasn't really in the MVP conversation in the way that, you know, like Matthew Saford, who ended up winning. It was a trick May was, but he was one of the most valuable quarterbacks in the NFL last year, along with him and like Jordan love and all of them. So, you know, again, when we're talking about the ways that you design an offense, this is a deep down field, push the ball offence, just like New England's. And you need a quarterback that has the ability to push the ball with accuracy, deep down field. Drew Locke isn't that guy. I mean, he ended up getting a little bit better as the game progressed, which was kind of cool to see.

8:12But it wasn't a good game and it might have been the best game of his career, right? Yeah. And so, you really limit like what, and we saw Jackson's spith and jik-beth do some crazy stuff, but you really limit what you can do with Jackson's spith and jik-beth, especially if Abraham Lucas is going to continue to give up pressure like he is, you want a quarterback that performs under pressure like Sam Donald, which is a crazy thing to say. He's given where he was three years ago. And not somebody like Drew Locke who does react to pressure very poorly. So it is a huge limiting factor. They were a team that was built both on their offense and their defense. They were performance on both sides of the ball. And given that they're in the same division as the Rams, they're going to need to be. I'm watching the replay of the injury in studio as you're discussing it. And he knew right away. He's pointing to his hip, goes off. At least he was able to walk off on his own if that's any solace whatsoever. But yeah, that's definitely concerning. And I think you outlined that very, very well. We've got to reef Hassan with us from Wide Left Football and the All Ball podcast. Okay, let's look at today's game.

9:14We're going down Australia, which is interesting. I don't remember. Has the NFL gone down and had a game in Australia yet? Or is this the first foray down there? Not a regular season game. And in my research, not as far as I can tell an exhibition game either. So I believe this is the first NFL game. I believe there have been a couple of college games down there, but the first NFL game. Yeah. It's interesting and the matchups decent. Obviously, if you're a fan of the NFC West, unfortunately, my team sucks in the NFC West. I'm not going to say which team that is. You can figure it out yourself. But the fact is in Australia, the fact we've got, you know, pretty much football all week long up here north of the border. Obviously we got the CFL going to, which is fantastic. College football is going. But what do you make of this 49ers matchup against the Rams and where this might be going? Because these are two teams that have a lot of high end potential. Obviously the Rams a ton of it. Yeah, yeah. And I think the 49ers are pretty happy that Aaron Donald didn't make the trip. Yeah. So it would probably be only good news that the 49ers had heading into this game.

10:19I think the other, I think the most intriguing storyline and a lot of people have touched on this. But it is worth mentioning is the two different approaches that these teams have had to kind of like sleep science and nutrition and getting the body ready. Yes. And so for people who are unfamiliar San Francisco, they traveled a week early, tried to get the bodies acclimated for the game and Los Angeles Rams were like, no, we're going to stay on our body schedule. We're going to sleep on the plane and then sleep as soon as we land and then we'll wake up and play a game at what is essentially 10 a.m. local time, which is a little bit early. There's not many West Coast games that are in the 10 a.m. slot. But there are football games that are played at that. So they're going to try to match that sleep schedule with their local time as opposed to Melbourne time. And I don't know, it's really interesting. They they they did this for the London game. They actually stayed in in the East Coast for a week before traveling to London because they had a game against Baltimore. Yeah. And they did a short schedule there and then they sent out like 15 different staff.

11:22And they're so close to the sun and tracked. They did it like very methodically, but intuitively, it just seems like such a risk to not try to acclimate your body beforehand, but they've got like a whole set of sleep time. So that's an interesting, interesting storyline. But if we move away from sleeping, right, and go into kind of the football game, right? You have a couple of teams that we consider to be Titans, right? You know, brought pretty Matthew Stafford, both very productive quarterbacks, Christian McCaffrey, a really remarkable running back. And you pair that against the skill players that the Rams have in Puka. And it's just a really interesting scenario, but the 49ers are in a spot where, you know, they turned over like something like 70% of their receiver snaps. And and of course, like they've got all of these players on IR, they had another player getting injury in Australia. And so you've got, you know, a returning receiver in Devo Samuel, you've got Mike Evans, you don't know what skill level is that anymore.

12:23You got a rookie into Sean scribbling and that's who Brock Perdi is throwing to. And it is kind of in the offense has become more improvisational, but it is still like a very systematic offense. And if these receivers don't know the system that well, I'm going to assume Devo does. But if the receivers aren't in sync with Brock that well, then it's going to create some problems against a really high level Rams defense, at least when we expect to be a high level Rams defense. That is added to the secondary, the biggest problem that they had last year that still has a halacious password. So it's upgraded, even without Aaron Donnelly, by bringing Miles Garrett in over Jared verse. It's just it's going to be I think a really rough day for San Francisco, but they are a really, really talented team. And I don't want to like take away from that. Yeah. You got to play the game. We'll see what they do. And I'm sure there's going to be a lot made about the methods in which these teams have gone about preparing for the game. Obviously, I find it intriguing that the Rams decided to sleep and, and listen, they probably chartered a sick plane that has those nice pods or whatever where you can sleep and everything

13:28is calm. And it's not like you're stuck with two fat guys and you're in the middle and you try not to lean on them. Everybody got those lay flat beds like that. That's what I'm hearing. So boy, I would love that. Yeah. I know everyone's got their own little TV. I'm sure there's like curtains and like a thing where you can darken your section of the plane. Like listen, they're not they're not flying economy here. These guys have it figured out. This is the NFL. So I'm curious to see how this all plays out. And I know when NHL teams go over to play in Europe like they will this year, like they have in years past, they get those double-decker planes that even have like a little bar in them and stuff. Not that they should be using it. But these guys travel well. That's that's for damn sure. Jerry, what other games got your attention going into the weekend here? Well, of course, I follow the Minnesota Viking. So I've done a little bit looking into the Green Bay and Minnesota matchup. Jordan Love was, you know, aside from injury, one of the most efficient quarterbacks in the NFL last year and the thing that changed for Jordan Love last year over his previous

14:31years is that he was much more consistent from play to play. You know, I mentioned, you know, a Drake May, the positive play rate was really high. Well, Jordan Love had one of the highest positive play rates in the NFL last year, which is not something he had in previous years, but he performs really poorly against Minnesota's blitz against every other blitz he does really well against Minnesota's blitz he does really poorly. And so I'm kind of curious to see what approach the Packers are taking this year. My understanding based off of what they've been doing in training camp and in the preseason is that they're it was a deep ball passing offense or reliant on explosives. It seems like this year they want to focus more on consistent games getting those eight, nine, ten yard passes, taking more banjo Matthew Golden who I think had some like 360 yards last year, their first round pick and getting him more involved now that they've had, you know, a couple of receivers to part. Christian Watson is going to be their big play guy and they expect to get more than 700 yards, probably a thousand. So yards, especially based on that contract this year. So we'll see. I'm kind of curious about that. Minnesota returns Harrison Smith. I don't know how many snaps you'll play in this game if you'll play at all, but, you

15:34know, he's always done really well against Green Bay, but there's a lot of turnover on that defense. And so we'll see, you know, there's not a lot of confidence right now in the immediate play capability of their first front pick, Caleb Banks. And so they're going to rely on some of the other, you know, pressure packages that they have in order to get things done. So I'm kind of curious about that, especially because the NFC North might have the highest floor potentially out of all the divisions, right? Their fourth place team might have more wins than any other fourth place team, which probably not a bunch of consolation when the year comes to the end, but it'll tell us how tough that division is. So that game is definitely on my mind. And then I think outside of that, there's a couple of games where I just kind of want to see like, where are we with these teams? Washington and Philadelphia. Oh, yeah. Like, Philadelphia, they're one of the favorites. I believe they're second in NFC North odds, but like there's always this question mark about Jalen Hertz and how he can perform and what's going to happen with him and whether or not he can run a particularly like a regular passing offense.

16:34They keep on going through offensive coordinators. They want to see how that goes. They've got a really good defensive line, but it's not as deep as it usually is. And then Washington, I have no idea what's going to happen. The injury at left tackle is a big deal. Jalen Daniels returning. There's a question marks at receiver. I don't know. There's a lot of questions. I like sunny styles a lot. I love that draft pick. And I think there's some criticism he got in the preseason. I actually thought his preseason was really good. But I think that that'll give us a lot of information about the NFC East. One of the more intriguing divisions, right? And then we've got Dallas and New York playing each other too. And so we'll get maybe a couple more answers there. But yeah, I think that's kind of curious. And then Denver, Kansas City is the other one, which is the Monday Night Game. It's Patrick Mahomes going to return to being an explosive playmaker. I don't know. It's been a couple of years. He's been kind of a short passing guy for a couple of years now. And then, you know, Rishi Rice, Xavier Worthy, are we going to see some growth from them? Are we going to see, you know, some positive movement in the Kansas City offense?

17:37Is that defense going to recover from losing all those corners? That kind of stuff. Yeah. I want to ask you just to circle back to the Vikings. Is Kyler the right guy? At quarterback for them in your opinion? Well, he's the best guy they have. Yeah. Yeah, that's different. But yeah. Yeah. As for Is it the right guy? I mean, he's got a lot of potential, right? And, you know, you don't want to hear that about a guy who's in his eighth year in the NFL. But he has reached that potential before, which is kind of unusual when we're talking about a guy who has a lot of potential. He has actually reached, he was a pro ball caliber player in 2021. His 2024 was actually quite good. It was just last year, you know, he played not that well. Then he got hurt and then he got benched. And I'm kind of curious to see if, you know, this guy who's a quarterback whisperer, Kevin O'Connell, has the ability to regain that reputation after losing it. So, Katos Broffickley last year. With Kyler, especially a quarterback who's style of play, Kevin O'Connell has not really had the coach. Even he's coach Sam Darnold, they're described him as a guy who's going to stand tall in the

18:39pocket, take it on pressure and throw the deep ball. That's who he knows, his cousins to be, that's who he knows Sam Darnold to be. That's who he drafted, Jay-Jim McCarthy to be. That's in his draft profile. That's very good at that. But that is his style of play. And then even some of the guys that Nick Mullins, their backup, Joshua Dobbs as a backup, these are guys that even though Dobbs would scramble around and had a lot of athleticism, would stand tall in the pocket of 30, Kyler doesn't do that. You can't stand tall, for example. But beyond that, he refuses pressure. And so while cousins would stare down the barrel of the gun and throw as an offensive line, or a defensive line, who's hitting him, Kyler scrambles out. He's afraid of pressure. But he does extend the play really well. And so I'm kind of curious, when you've got a guy that doesn't like under center that mudge, that doesn't do that kind of play action, that moves around in the pocket a lot more, how he's going to adapt and whether or not there needs to be adaptation, if he can maximize Kyler Murray. Kyler loves number one receivers. Whenever he has a guy that he targets a lot, that guy like leads the NFL in target percentage.

19:41Justin Jefferson is going to get like 30% of the targets is not more in this offense. So I'm kind of curious to see how that's going to go. But I think that the upside of Kyler is like a top eight-ish quarterback. I don't think he's ever going to hit like Lamar, Josh Allen, Patrick Mahol, even Joe Burrow. But I do think that he could kind of flirt with that at the high end. And at the low end, I think that the floor is a lot higher than it is for Carson Wentz, Jay-Jim and Cartier, et cetera. I think that he could be an average quarterback at the low end. And so is he the guy? I think he'll force his way into the Vikings extending him. Whether or not Vikings fans will be happy with that. I don't know. But he'll play well enough, I think, to get an extension. I'm curious to see his attitude and motivation, which he should be both having a good attitude and highly motivated, like you said, to get that next contract. And by the way, Josh Dobbs, what is his 19th NFL team now? The NFL's reigning Nomad. Good to hear. He landed. He's good. He's gunning for Josh Johnson's title, I think. I know.

20:41Every time you hear from Josh Dobbs, like, always on another team. So good for him. They'll carve a note of career. And we'll see what happens at the Vikings. Or if this was awesome, I really appreciate it. Creative formation. We're going to do this again at some point in the season, okay? Absolutely. Thanks for having me on.