Thor Nystrom of SKOR North joins 312 Sports for a weekly NFL conversation

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2:06Thor Nistrim is an NFL draft analyst and the co-host of Sweating Sundays. He's worked for NBC Sports, wrote a world for fantasy pros, her Matthew Berry's fantasy life and currently runs the largest fantasy football league in the world. We are pleased to call him our fantasy betting and overall NFL data expert. Thor, welcome to Forward Progress. Welcome to 312 Sports. Very, very happy to be working with you this season. Thanks for having me boys. It's great to be here going to be, I mean, we got football coming back. Obviously this weekend got started yesterday with the NFL. We got a big slate both NFL and college football this week. So it's a good time to be alive and happy to be here with you. Did you watch all that game last night? Did you watch the whole game? Most of it. Yes. All right. Most of it. Okay. That's an acceptable answer. Yeah. I lived through it. One of the ask from your perspective as data oriented as you are.

3:06For the first game of the season, when you're flying blind a little bit before these teams have established patterns, before you really understand what they're doing differently from last year, how do you compile enough information that gives you a large enough sample to do your work? This is a great question because I grapple with this every year with the handicap. You do so much research on all these teams and you build your models over the summer and over the off season. And you begin to tell yourself a story of how that team season is going to play out. And then when you get to week one, if something happens, that great, greatly deviates out from one team, how much do you adjust that? Right? Like and go and forward with the early amount of data. How, how quickly do you ingratiate the new data those first couple of weeks into the way that you're sort of seeing that into your mathematical models? But yeah, I mean, all you can do is the most research that you can get the most data that you can over the summer. And then we all got to adjust the sports books adjust the betting market adjust.

4:09You have to adjust your expectations after that. But yeah, it's an always fluid kind of a deal. Yeah, so to follow up on that, you look at what happened last night with Sam Darnold goes out after the first series. And reading today has a hip fracture MRI coming to see the length of time out for the the sea hawks. So something like that happens right away and everything that you've researched and planned and maybe thought about this season for the sea hawks just changes instantly. Sure does. Yeah. And what is the what is the value on the line going from Darnold to lock, you know, for however long that that's going to be. I mean, you're you're talking about a significant drop or five points, maybe four and a half points. The difference between the two on the line and Seattle has to play totally different as well. So like when you're going through and thinking about their future games, it's not just sort of that qualitative drop in a vacuum. It's also how much more of the usage is going to get funneled to the running backs. How much more ground heavier they're going to go.

5:10And obviously right now, you know, they lost Kenneth Walker over the outseason to the cheese. Zach Sharman is still getting healthy. So you have to put a lot then on on Jadirian price, but then the way you think about those games coming up as well. That stuff all has to change as well. But yeah, really bad news for Seattle. I was really poor way to start out this season. What does your model tell you about the truth of the 2026 Chicago Bears? Just like the rest of the NFC North, there's kind of a big band of outcomes there. You know, I'm coming to you from anyapolis. The Vikings have a big band of outcomes. I think the Bears also have a bigger band of outcomes, but for different reasons. Right? Like last year, you all jumped up. It was against a lesser strength of schedule. There was a lot of one possession wins, etc. This year, you guys have to play the gauntlet schedule. Right? And that has to play in as well. But yeah, I mean, the Bears are going to be in this thing. I mean, it wasn't fluky what they did last year. They're going to be in contention for this thing. But I wouldn't have them at the top of the division right now, mostly because of the jump up in that strength of schedule.

6:14Now also to looking at your model for the Bears and along those lines there, what you just said about it. Knowing what we knew about the defense from last year and the turnover margin and what happened there. We know that's not going to happen again. They're not going to be close to that turnover differential. If they would, it would be historic. So how does that come into play with what you look at for the 2026 season, given the offensive output and expecting growth on the offensive side. But expecting regression on the defensive side. That's very well said, because both the turnover margin from last year and then the record in one possession games that come back wins there at the end. That part of it is not sustainable. Of course. And then when you think about it going to the much harder strength of schedule this year, that's where you get some of the flashing indicators of a lot of time. And when you think about the polishing indicator, there's a lot of time. You're not going to be able to push and push and push indicators of a little bit of regression. But your points really well taken there early on their development curve.

7:15Right? I mean that all the young talent obviously a couple years ago it was just the tear down and just been building it up building it up and Ben Johnson's done a great job there. And you're expecting improvement from the offense. felt like I think Vikings and Bears are right up there as two of the teams that have sort of the biggest bands of all come. But yeah, you definitely have to weigh all that stuff because the one thing's not sustainable. We all agree with that, especially going up against that harder schedule, but you are going to get further improvement from the offense and obviously the coaching staff now feeling ingratiated there and everything like that go on forward. So it's on both sides of it, I would say. So when you finished your fantasy rankings this year, when you said, well, this is it, I'm done. Here's where we are for the first week at least. And I assume that obviously with each next week of data, you're like you say, it's fluid. Rank your NFC North quarterbacks at this point by overall fantasy value. By fantasy value, different question than just qualitatively.

8:19Right. I would, well, I'll start out at the, I would put Kyler at the bottom. Because they, you know, you're projecting out the entire season that that durability stuff there, a new offense, etc. I think the Vikings are going to be running a little bit more this year as well. Certainly around the goal line. At the Caleb, I probably go Caleb one in terms of fantasy. And then I probably go love second and goff third just from a fantasy perspective is where I would be with that. Because I was looking at some of the overrunners for Caleb's production for this year. And they seem fairly conservative where if he gets what was it? The 3600 yards or something. Yeah. And if healthy, if healthy or 3700 healthy, that's easy. I think 25.5 touchdowns, you're like, you should have that in this offense. Unless you got stuff that is like an outlier level of vulturing that occurs near the goal line. And I'm wondering if this is set where it is,

9:21what don't I know? Why? Why? Because something like that should never feel that easy. What's being factored in that I'm missing? I think that the models from the sports books and then the betting market that also helps inform some of these lines. I think this is all a response to that increased strength of schedule. And I think that they're baking it in that way. But like for every individual case, you look at the player props, there's factors, right? That you have to consider sort of on both sides of it. And when you're like, for instance, Kyler Murray with the durability or you know, you look at some of that stuff the other way around. Caleb Williams, obviously the offense is going to funnel through him and he's going to be in as long as he is healthy. So I agree with you. I think some of that stuff is a little bit too tough. And maybe they've gone a little bit too far. But the betting market, they're looking at some of these historical signals. And I think that's why some folks have come in and lower on the bears because of some of those regression sort of indicators and signals. And I think some of that stuff also bleeds down to

10:22and informs and manifests in the player prop lines as well. The season long ones for the bears. And I think Caleb is a good example of that. Before we get into bears and Carolina looking forward to game one here of the season, I want to go back to Dan's first question. I'm really fascinated by the data that you use and compiling it to make models and look towards the season because I'm always fascinated with the NFL season. A team can get off to a really rough start in the first six games even. You know, a team can you worked identify who they are. They can go two and four. And a team can still have, you know, 11 games left in the season to really build on who they are to even make a playoffs. So when you when you when you're looking at your data and you're compiling what to expect in the 2026 season by each team as you're adjusting week to week. How much like how much time does it generally take for you to look at an NFL team and say, all right, this is who this team is. How many games how much data do you need?

11:23Well, I mean, you you change every time, right? So like you you I mean the way that I do it is I have a power rating for every team like coming out of the summer. And like I said, you you you have to sort of divorce yourself from that in some ways once you get into September because after you spend months like getting in the weeds with a you you feel like you have a really good idea of what you know, what every team is and where you sort of come down on them. And then you have to adjust week in and week out. And there's a bunch of different things that go into that, of course, play on the field injuries, different stuff like this. You go up and down. And the bigger question becomes like how much will you go down if the week one result week two result is way off where you thought it was going to be. And this one college football really presses you with this because you'll see some big vacillations between your expectations and the early weeks. NFL as well, maybe not as wild as that, but but that's kind of how I do it. You don't want to get out over your skis with changing what you thought just a week ago just because of one game. But

12:25it's all circumstantial, right? I mean, like a great example of this is the the team from last night Seattle, if Sam Darnold is out for a while or if he's out for the entire season, God for bed, you have to drastically change your expectations of that. But even a team that comes out of a game healthy, right? If they play lower than the expectation, how much you lower that without going to the point where it's not realistic or predictive for the next week. So that's where like the art of some of the prognostication and some of the handicap income them. Hmm. What bears when you look at fantasy production are going to live up to these, I think, and maybe minor wild expectations because I keep joking bears are going to win some games 52 to 50. Yeah, these are going to be 45 42. I keep looking at that Bengals game last year. It seems like regardless of the bears record, there are a lot of yards and touchdowns to go around.

13:29And we know who the the usual suspects are right here. But there's questions about who's that third tight end? How will will Sam Rausch? Perhaps find a way to pass coal commit as the why tight end at some point? What's Khalif Raymond going to do? How are they going to use a V on Thomas? We don't know these things yet. Overall, do you agree that the size of the scoring pie, however it's divided up is large for the bears? Oh, for sure. Yeah, they have a lot of different options. Even, you know, even obviously trading on DJ more over the offseason, but you have so many weapons here, even after that. And yeah, we know that the bears are going to continue to just pile up the yards. And then the points as well, you have one of the great offensive play collars that we have in, you know, in the sport in Ben Johnson and and talent just all over the place. So and that's the thing looking at it from, you know, whether it's a fantasy perspective, whether it's the DFS perspective, um, player props, where a team like the bears, you have your eye really close on them, you know, through the prison of the betting market early on, because you

14:32want to see where that usage is going, right? And how it gets redistributed, um, sort of in this new environment there. And but yeah, they they have talented playmakers all over the place. And they added a couple obviously over the season on Xavier on man, that guy can fly. Um, but yeah, really interesting in in the bears scale guys. And then the usage we get early on here. All right. So when you looked at the bears Carolina game here for for week one, what stood out to you in the data and the numbers? Uh, what, what concerns you about either team? The thing that would like of this matchup, it's Carolina in the trenches, concerns me a bit for Carolina. And I think this is the thing where the bears can can take advantage of it on both sides of the ball. But Carolina's offensive lines been something they've been trying to build up for a while. And they have, you know, a Guanu's out and they they're not where they want to be yet. Man, roll free link. The guy that they spent the first round pick on the offense attack off from Georgia. I love that pick because of the upside. But man, roll free link. I mean, that's a boomer bus kind of a guy. He's not ready to go right now. So the panthers still have issues on the offensive

15:37line. And we've seen Bryce Young's play sharply regress or go down when he's under pressure. Right. And so turning up the heat on Bryce Young on the one side is going to be a really big deal. And then Carolina, they have the injuries on the defensive front too, right? Like with Scorton, what not so, so you have a depreciated front as well. Ken Chicago sort of, um, can they enforce their will there on both sides of the ball in the trenches? I think they have a great opportunity to do this. You're going on the road, the first game for sure. The line I think is fair. You know, it's two and a half three, you know, but to me, that that's a fair market kind of value on that one to the point where I wouldn't bet this one. I'm curious what you guys think. But this, we're pretty close to the margins. You know, with the three point road favorite there. But, um, yeah, that it's in the trenches there where I think Chicago can really sort of enforce their will on Carolina. Yeah, it's interesting to hear you to call that out because all off season we've had nothing but concerns for the Bears defensive line. Now, the offensive line is very solid with the

16:38question mark at left tackle. See, I'll break some Jones plays out. But it's interesting to hear you think that the Bears defensive line, um, which wasn't very successful last year. Uh, best player on that line is Montess sweat. And they added a lot of new bodies, including the six-round draft pick in Jordan Van der Berg that has really opened a lot of eyes and, and, you know, earned himself a spot on this 53-man roster. So do you hear you think that they can impose their will when I just have nothing but concerns and questions for how they're going to pressure opposing quarterbacks? Uh, it's encouraging to hear that, but still a big concern for us here in Chicago. Yeah. And, and perhaps more that that, uh, Verbi H to the offensive line in Chicago on, on the other side, but I do think that Caroline Caroline is offensive line. I'm not concerned about that at all. So at least it's a good sort of opening matchup here for the Bears defensive front. The, I was a little bit confused by that Gervin Dexcher trade, but you brought up Jordan Van der Berg. I was, you know, in a draft analyst based in Minneapolis all spring long, I was banging the table

17:42for the Vikings to draft Jordan Van der Berg because I love him as a sleeper. That guy, that guy tested historic for interior defensive lineman, the athleticism. And then when you started getting into his profile the last couple of years at Georgia Tech, it's like, man, this guy wreaks havoc. Um, and he's a really, really, really good run defender. And, and that's the thing thinking like, you know, it's a guy that started the sport late. And you can explain to yourself why some of the past rushing metrics might not have kept up, but like the fact that he's good at run defense, the fact that he's an absolute freak of an athlete and that he has gotten better every season. To me, that pretended well for a potential draft sleeper that everyone was sort of overlooking at the time. And I thought when Vanderbrike tested, I thought that was going to be the alarm clock for the rest of the NFL. But then as he kept falling down the draft of, but the Vikings, of course, had taken interior defense lineman with two of their first three picks. So that kind of ended the Jordan Van der Berg dream for me and and Vikings nation. But when you guys got him, I was like, you know, anytime a

18:46division rival gets a player in the draft that you like and add a good value, it's just, it just burns a little bit, but that was a great pick. We've had a lot of debate on this show about quarterback metrics and about where the signal is as opposed to the noise when it comes to measuring what a quarterbacks job is and to what standard to hold them. Meaning we can look at efficiency all day and there can be really, really efficient quarterbacks who don't score any points. And you can have quarterbacks with poor efficiency numbers, but they're constantly chucking it down field and looking for chunks and looking for explosives. A lot of this has been about the Caleb Williams debate and saying he's breaking the models or measuring him in different ways. Do you have any go to any just baseline? I need to look at something that tells me something I can trust about a

19:48quarterback. How do you go about doing that? In terms of like statistical metrics, yeah, there's seven, eight, ten or so that are that like I hold nearest and nearest to my heart. But the thing with football evaluation, it's different than for instance, baseball, which is a individual sport that's masquerading as a team sport. And football, wow, you just you just won that over. You're like bouncing me over here. Yeah, it was pretty easy for I shouldn't say easy, but Bill James, you could put the analytical metrics to baseball because of the one on one matchups, right? Whereas in football, the 11 on 11 in one singular play on spooling the one guy's performance from the others. And that's before you even get into game conditions that with a play that was called and all this different stuff, it's much harder. So like in baseball, whereas you can sort of judge guys or release form an opinion and project them forward. Just without even watching them, just based on the numbers, you know, money ball was all about this. In football, I truly believe that you need both.

20:52You have to both watch watch the film, watch the games, but then also have, you know, whatever you're understanding of the data is and the data sets that you most value there. To me, you have to marry those two things together because of the sport of football, it's just so difficult to unspool one guy from the others. Are there a few of those metrics you can give us like off, stop your head. You talking about quarterbacks? Adjust the completion percentage for sure. And then you're looking at metrics of the field down there. I'm curious about the short, the intermediate, the down field and then the different sectors that you're doing at the average time to throw pressure to sack ratio. There's a couple different pressure to sack ratio was super popular. It was like a in the NFL draft community a couple of years ago, got really ubiquitous. There's a couple other pocket management metrics that I've added into that as well for my understanding of that. Try to sort of them put all them together and then kind of come up with pocket navigation kind of metric. But then again, you have to marry it back to what you're seeing

21:52on the field. Same thing goes with the accuracy and what metrics of the field, right? Like go back to Minneapolis and where I'm coming from here, Kyler Murray, you think about projecting him into this new Vikings offense and we don't exactly know what the Vikings offense is going to look like. They brought in Frank Smith and Frank Smith and the promoted offense align coach Keith Carter. They've been putting together this new wide zone system offensive run game scheme that the Vikings are going to have and then the Vikings, we know they're going to go to more pistol and more shotgun to accommodate Kyler Murray as well. But Kyler Murray throughout his career, he's been awesome short within 10 yards. One of the most accurate quarterbacks in the NFL at that going back several years. He's always on time with that, etc. It's when you start going down the field where some of the accuracy starts to go down a little bit and now you're projecting him into this new offensive system. Or even though I was down in Egan at practice, you know, quite a bit this summer last month in August, watch out they're they're preseason games. I don't know exactly what that offense going to look like. Number one, and then number two, will the deep down field slow developing

22:58sort of prerogative of Kevin O'Connell's traditional passing scheme? Is that going to win the day here because I think Kyler Murray will struggle throwing 20 plus yards into windows down field on the slow to he always has. Or is Kevin O'Connell going to go more to the quick hitting passing game in order to set up the down field shots? Because that's when Kyler Murray has succeeded more down the field. But when you're sort of projecting in the summer, you know, some of these guys new scheme, new team, all this different stuff, you have to make some situational assumptions. Some people might put it logical leaps, but then we get into the season, we get to see it a little bit more and and the eye test and everything like that and sort of modify some of the things that we thought heading in. But that's an example of that. Very cool. Last thing I have for you, before we let you go Thor and very excited to have you joining us every Thursday here on Ford Progress through the football season. Looking at week one, there's some significant divisional matchups. We have one tonight in San Francisco and the Ram is out in Australia. Monday night football Kansas City

24:00is hosting Denver. But let's let's stay in the division and you've given us a little insight into the Vikings right now. But when you look at that green Bay and Vikings game, man, to come right out of the gate with such a big divisional matchup, too, what do you see when you look at the Packers at Minnesota here week one? Yeah, fascinating matchup. Vikings right now point in a half favorite on Sunday against the Packers. And this is a great scenario for the Vikings. The situation they're getting the Packers in here. Obviously at home in the season opener, but then also this new offense where it's the mashup of the old Miami Dolphins sort of offensive scheme. Some of the stuff that Kyler was doing in Arizona, mashed up with some of the Kevin O'Connell ideology that nobody knows exactly what it's going to look like. You get to ambush the Packers with that. They don't have tape on it. They don't even have practice clips. The Vikings were were way cracking down on folks with their cameras out at practice in Egan. You know, people that were putting it up on Twitter. There was a guy that got trespassed for that. The Vikings have gone to this extreme degree. Wait,

25:03they prosecuted? There was a guy that got trespassed for a year for posting practice footage on Twitter. Yeah, they do not the Vikings did not do not want, but in particular, this off season did not want you posting those those clips from practice on Twitter. And I a part of this thing I think is modifying the offense that agree that they are. And then of course the new quarterback. They don't want to give the Packers any information on that. So that that part of it is good for the Vikings. Then obviously the situation that the Packers are in is good for the Vikings. You don't have Micah Parsons there on defense. We saw how sharply their defense were aggress without them. It's like a 10 point difference, you know, in terms of when they were playing with them and and without before you even get into its individual stats. The Packers have issues with their cornerbacks. It's one of the worst cornerback rooms in the NFL by any objective metric. So that stuff sort of concerns you going up against what might be the NFL's top three receiver trio. And then you also on offense for the Packers, no Josh Jacobs, they have a wasteland of a running

26:04back room right now without them. You know, it's Brooks Caleb Johnson with the Steelers desperately wanted to get out of there. And then Chris Brooks, I guess are the three there. And then the offensive line they lost both their they lost Rishi Walker, they lost Elton Jenkins and then two of their best returning offensive linemen both have health concerns right now in Zack Tom and Aaron Banks. So you have a lot of things there for the Packers and now you're going to have with the offensive scheme for love. Love was great last year on a per pass basis, but he was throwing less than 30 attempts a game. I don't see any scenario where he attempts less than 30 30 throws on Sunday against the Vikings, which puts him right into the shark tank for what Brian Flores wants to put a quarterback in of we're not afraid of your run game. And we know that you have to pass watch this and they're going to bring the pressure and then the exotic coverage looks behind it. Ken Jordan love with the offense having to go through him and he has to win this game on the road season debut. Can he get it done? I'm pretty fascinated to see that outstanding stuff for this. I'm really going to look

27:04forward to Thursdays here. Once we have all of these games to talk about and all of this new data, not just looking at the bears, but looking at what league wide trends, et cetera. This is just going to be packed with content packed with information every Thursday and an opinion as well. So I'm really looking forward to it. Awesome to join you guys. Thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to it as well. All right. Thanks, Paul. Enjoy the first weekend. Appreciate you guys. You too. Okay. That is Thor Nistrum of our sister podcast network in Minneapolis score north outstanding. That's fascinating about the Vikings. I mean, a guy gets charged with trust. How about that? And so you remember we talked about Jeff Hattley down in Miami. Halfway. Halfway. Halfway. Halfway. Yeah. From now down in down in Miami coming from Green Bay, he talked about one of the Eagles assistant coaches who is now with him in Miami used online video from fans at Packers practice to game plan against the Packers. Wow. So yeah, it might sound crazy what the Vikings did with

28:10that guy and how they get more strict, but dude, if teams are going to like social media to get video footage of opponents and using it to game plan, yeah, they can see more than the average eyes. You know, they know by by personnel by positioning with formations and any tiny little bit. If you hear them after the Super Bowl saying, boy, I sure am glad that we found that one piece of video that got us ready for that one game that made the difference. He talked about it. He said there was a play that they didn't even run. It was never even on footage, but because they had so much video from media, they were able to pick out this play. They haven't even run yet. And he literally said word for word. Baseball is an individual sport that mass grades as a team sport. Yeah, I know you're you're I was I was hooked when I saw his backdrop. I'm sure. I mean, it's like, all right. Okay. What's this guy into in his life? I don't know the NFL maybe. So no, that's great. Thank you.

29:13Thanks, the NFL. And remind me what we did a show about a quarterback stat. Was it a adjusted, expected points added? Something like that. I could no, but yeah, would you please do that? Yeah. Because or I'm sure somebody will email it in. We did a whole thing that was the best way to that's why I asked because I it's not it's not just completion. Right. No, it's not it's not at all. Anybody a lot of bad quarterbacks can have high completion percentages and good quarterback efficiency repasser efficiency ratings. I'm I'm saying and as soon as I see the word efficiency, somebody from the athletic just made a new thing called QBI, which is you know, quarterbacking index. And again, it's all about efficiency. Like that's not what we're measuring anymore. Right. Are you scoring? Remind me next

30:15week to ask Thor because we ran on a time that 25 minutes went by super quick. That was 25 minutes. Yes. Yeah. Okay. One by very fast. I wanted to ask him how Kevin O'Connell is actually doing. So remind me. I totally I mean, I want to ask you okay is Kevin okay. That's all it's all I want to know. Well, and the fact that they now made McCarthy the number three. He's the number three. Why is he? Why is he even there? No, Carson went to their number two. So a year ago, we're not a year removed yet from JJ McCarthy leading a furious fourth quarter comeback to steal a game from the Bears with his arm and with his feet. And now he's a three. He's the third string. In a year. Yep. That's wild. It is wild. Every headline hides a deeper story. Goatty on all 20 counts. That is the verdict. Christine's body laid undiscovered for more than 15

31:19hours. Five seasons, five haunting stories. You didn't want to question him there at the jail. Let's just get him and go her entire head was just crushed. Here are the stories that turned real life into the stuff of nightmares. American nightmares, all five seasons wherever you get your podcasts. Backpacks or packed schedules are filling up and somehow everyone's hungry at the exact same time. It's back to school season when you need an easy win, make it a G or Dono's night like we did last night. I had I had thin crust pepperoni, I had thin crust sausage, I had thin crust margarita, and I had the deep dish. What did they say? Call it meat meat and more meat meat more meat. I had deep dish cheese and then I did also tried the barbecue bacon pizza. Oh, I didn't try that. It was good. Can I also say this too? Those oatmeal raisin cookies were sensational. Okay, the brownies were out of this world. Yeah, I so I took a napkin and I'm like, okay,

32:19I'll bring some back for for Beth and Zoe. Oh, look, Dad's homies got cookies, right? They didn't make it. Okay, dude, all right. So here's the deal. I started it. I didn't realize I just kept I they're in the passenger seat. And here I am a drive home. And the next thing I know, I got to bring the cookies and they're gone. I did the I know I know how you like your treats and your sweets and you know, after you have your dinner. Yeah, and I saw you stacking up and I'm like, what is this guy doing? And then you're like, Oh, I'm taking these home for Beth and Zoe. And I'm like, he is so full of shit. There is no shot that those those treats make it home from the right. Here's the thing. I did intend to bring them home. And they didn't they just give you that. I just didn't make it. I had to call it audible. And I said, you know, what's it sucks for them tonight. So no, disappointed. I didn't have cookies because I had and then they brought these but see they both got mad at me because I told them that I intended to bring

33:25them cookies and admitted to eating them. And they and they both said it next time don't say that you were bringing cookies. You know better than that. You didn't have to tell them what you got. You know, we don't we don't keep secrets in our house. That's not a secret. It is. This is you be the fat ass. Again, both things can be true. You're okay. You're exactly right. I treat the kids and yourself to the Chicago style pizza. Everyone loves and I'm telling you, oatmeal raising cookies. Whether you're celebrating the first day back or just surviving the first week, dine in, pick up or order delivery, visit geardanos.com or visit your local geardanos restaurant today. Well, I know one thing that we have is our first actual real Wednesday injury report from yesterday. Yeah. And it wasn't very long, which is a good thing. Tyson Beigeant did not practice yesterday because of that back issue he has. And this is fascinating to me. I see Chappilla with the knee was limited in practice, which is just that's just mind boggling that he's

34:29practicing at all. Like it's fascinating that he's actually able to do anything. I didn't not think he'd start the season on the active roster. I thought that was that was celebrate the fact that he was even on the public list. And he was believed to be ready after four games. He might be ready for the next game. Right. Yeah. It's right. This game. Now the most important aspect of this three man injury report was Roma Dunesay. And remember we discussed it yesterday because I think Yahoo Sports took some liberties in what Ben Johnson said about the foot injury because it wasn't a foot injury. It was a calf injury he's dealing with right now. And he was limited in practice also. So he was able to do football things just not everything. So it's a calf injury that he was dealing with. Okay. Okay. Well, that's it. All right. Well, I don't like all the soft tissue stuff because we're now conditioned to to build in all sorts of like again,

35:33another wide band of possibilities here. And he's played hurt before. He usually answers the bell regardless. He doesn't seem to make a lot of excuses. So I hear here's hope and he's ready to go. I don't know. We talked about him at length yesterday on the show and that he just he needs to catch more passes that his catch efficiency needs needs to be much better this year. Now here's the thing though that doesn't have me as concerned. Even if he is limited but can still play and get out there and be a warrior and battle through whatever he's dealing with. He can contribute positively to the offensive pass game with his blocking with running routes would still being a perceived threat by the by the Carolina Panthers. But why I'm not super worried because there are so many weapons. It's not like we need everything to come through Roma Dune's a like the the

36:34passing game success. All those eggs aren't in the Roma Dune's a basket. You know, so I'm okay. Like I of course I want the guy one hundred percent healthy and good to go and not be on the injury report at all. I don't want him to have a calf injury at all. But as long as you can get out there, there are so many other weapons available in the passing game that it's okay. And it's it's a it's a we're working from a place of surplus and it's so unusual and it's hard to grab a hold of as a bears fan to think, Oh my God, I think the offense is going to be okay. Like in years past, if your number one guy was questionable at all, it was like, well, shit, man. Oh, that's our guy who gets open. Right. That's the guy who catches the balls. That's the open guy. Now what are we going to do? Exactly. We don't have that anymore. Well, because we we trust that there's going to be a design and a plan to to how things are called when things are called where the design of the play

37:36itself will result in someone being open. It's been a long time since we've had that. Yeah. And I would encourage you if you're not a regular listener of Dan Bernson unfiltered, you should be first of all, but go back to today's episode where Dan talks to start off at length about Ben Johnson that the honeymoon is over. And he wants it that way. Ben Johnson knows it and he embraces it and he is prepared that he is the right coach at the right time for the Chicago Bears team. In a long time since I've had that level of trust, we have something for you that you're going to enjoy. And we are calling this the 312 sports pro football picks. If you think you can pick pro football winners, prove it because this NFL season, you can play 312 sports pro football picks. All you do is pick the winners each week. You see how you stack up against the competition and you make your picks. You beat the field. You win the week. What do you get for winning the week? You get a gift certificate to a Chicago area restaurant for $100. And that's

38:38what we're doing. It's going to be every week. Sign up now on the app. Go to the free 312 sports app or go to 312 sports.com. And you can sign up for the 312 sports pro football picks. They'll be compiling leaderboards and we'll know if somebody wins multiple weeks all that but there's go. Give you a little bit of an incentive. Give you something to win and have fun with it. Maybe Maddie. You'll jump in a given week. Maybe I will pick up thoughts and picks for you. So that is it's brand new. This NFL season 312 sports pro football picks on the app or 312 sports.com. And also big news here at 312 sports for today as the first episode of Jason Gough unscripted. We'll drop this afternoon. People have been asking. You know, we announced it at our one-year anniversary party a little over a week ago. And yeah, that first pod will drop today looking very forward to listening to that. And of course, so excited to have Jason as part of the 312 sports team. It's a very special time for 312 sports. I mentioned this on DBU that when you survey

39:42the landscape in this city with all of your options for Chicago sports content and unique interesting entertaining and compelling voices, it is my belief that 312 sports is offering your your best place for growing dynamic, energetic and by definition unfiltered and unscripted, unfettered talk about the things that you care about in Chicago sports and beyond. And we are just ecstatic to have you here as a part of this at this stage. And from the beginning and from wherever we are going on this course right now, these are exciting times and we appreciate you listening. I may actually do Matt a badakola unmasked, but I but to be ironic, I'm going to wear a different mask every episode. Oh, MF doom. Do that one. That would look awesome on you.

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41:47G or Donos the one for Chicago style pizza and were driven by the Roarman automotive group home of the $50 full synthetic oil change schedule online at Roarman dot com for progress is stopped. 10 to 90. Forward progress. A Chicago Bears podcast with Dan Bernstein in Madabeticola on 312 Sports. A Chicago Bears podcast with Dan Bernstein in Madabeticola on 312 Sports.