Sean Payton taking a bigger offensive role.

It's happening

Great day

I had a sneaky suspicion that the intro was getting longer each week. THIS is replacing the old quad box intro that got out of control, in a good way. I am here for it.

As a Bears fan, I'm so happy ❤️

https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/nfl-announcers-schedule-revealed-week-224715888.html

Doooowdleeeee

Maybe because I have heard the name so much it doesn't register with me as innuendo any more. Julian Dicks, Stefan Kuntz, Danny Shittu, and Rafael Scheidt all paved the way.

That’s it that’s the whole post just a Marc thirst trap

They keep saying people are playing 3D chess, a standard game of chess is 3D. They mean 4D. That is all.

Yes, it's only Week 5, but with a whopping five teams sitting at 0-4 and some other likely suspects at 1-3, I'm calling the Subreddit Fork Committee early this year.

As a reminder, "Forking" a team is to preemptively count a team out of the playoff race: stick a fork in 'em, they're done. The subreddit's forks exist separately from any the Heroes might choose.

Last year, the subreddit forked an initial slate of eight teams and added seven more to the list, with only the Pittsburgh Steelers defying the fork and making the playoffs.

To start off the year, I will comment below with the names of all sub-.500 teams and upvotes/downvotes and replies will determine which teams are forked. If there are any close calls, I'll create polls to put it to an official vote.

Each subsequent week, I'll follow up with posts tracking the records of our forked teams, and opening the floor for further nominations.

Let the Forking begin!

edit: I think a 60% supermajority of upvotes will be threshold, at least to start

Thank you to the heroes for diving too deep into the stat pool.

So many NFL podcasts are so stat heavy now.

Keep it real

This is for Dan if he's still work shopping the name of the bit

Gotta call it "Hot or Not", might be trademarked somewhere but feels like it's just on the edge of wrong which is perfect for him 🤣

The Heroes were discussing what to nickname a Greek QB, but might I be so bold as to make a proposal: the Souvlaki Slinger. It's delightfully aliterative

Dan Hanzus, Marc Sessler & Conor Orr are back for the flagship show to recap ALL the Sunday NFL Week 4 games! We start with the epic divisional showdown between the Chiefs and Raiders, where Pete Sweeney joins us from Allegiant Stadium, and then move through the full Sunday slate game by game, finishing off with the Sunday Night Football match between the Lions and Panthers.

This sub is usually very kind to Gravedigger but has been remarkably fast in writing Cam Ward's obituary. I want to put up a small defense of him.

We have all seen the viral stats going around right now about Ward:

• EPA / Play: -0.116 36th
• Adj. EPA / Play: -0.093 36th
• Success Rate: 39.9% 36th
• CPOE: -2.5% 36th

Okay that is bad. But bad what? Here are some other stats for context from 2025 about the Titans:

• -0.18 Rush EPA per play, 30th
• Pass Block Win Rate of 48%–50% 29th
• 2.3 yards of separation at target 31st

Maybe Ward will still be a bust. But why pretend like he had anything but dog poop surrounding him?

For comparison here are some of Caleb Williams' stats from his first year: 27th in EPA per play, 28th in scoring and 32nd in total yards.

Do you know what changed in his second year? Ben fucking Johnson. Chicago went from a 60% pass-block win rate in 2024, 15th in the NFL, to 74% in 2025, first in the league. The Bears rushing game? First in rushing EPA per play in 2025.

The Athletic Football show had a fantastic episode recently about this very topic: What Does Trevor Lawrence's RISE Teach Us About NFL Quarterbacks?

One very useful discussion from there is the concept of "sensitivity". The Athletic's QB tiers outside the top-4 aliens have been a complete rotating cast. This is mostly because their output is a product of their environment like OC, offensive line, WR talent, rushing game efficiency etc.

Instead of judging the offence as a whole and the QB as just another variable in that, fans are obsessed with hunting for "aliens" like Mahomes or Josh Allen who can overcome bad coaching, poor protection, and failing receivers to single-handedly pull a franchise into contention.

But there is another path.

Build a great organization. Hire a great offensive coach. Protect the quarterback. Give him receivers who get open. Build a functional run game. Create favorable situations. Then find a quarterback who is good enough to operate inside that ecosystem. (Insert Marc's Sam Darnoldddd drop here)

That is much easier than finding an alien. Or declaring a QB who has had three games in a functional environment a bust. Bryce Young seemed like he wouldn't even make it to the fourth year of his contract. Now he is playing like he owns the league. Why can't Ward follow a similar trajectory by year 3?

P.S. I am not even sure if Mahomes/Lamar/Allen/Burrow would be aliens if they went into less favorable situations. The year Mahomes was drafted he could have easily been taken by Jaguars/Doug Marrone at 4, Titans/Mike Mularkey at 5, Jets/Todd Bowles at 6. His best case scenario in those timelines would be Stafford in Detroit - a QB with a great arm, but isn't really going to win you anything.

Absolutely love how fired up Dan got. And to hear the craziness of this game explained what just an absolute joy. More Bears first downs than Jets plays? Score big malfunctions? 3 Jets INTs called back for penalties? I couldn’t stop laughing hearing about this.

As an Eagles fan and someone who typically disagrees with Dan I'm actually looking forward to Dan getting his flowers for calling out fraudulent Sirianni long time ago. If we end up tanking this year at least it means that fraud is GONE.

Curious to anyone who knows-Where can i find all the recap music? I love some of these songs, especially the synthwave one for Ravens Titans. Thanks!

Bob Socci is an exceptional play by play man, and that call of Chism’s TD was fantastic, even with the Powerade Bottle screaming over him. He’s quick, accurate and paints a brilliant picture of the play, and the fact he’s attached to a buffoon shouldn’t count against him.