The Hardline- Daryl "Moose" Johnston

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2:28Prize picks, run your game. Darryl, how are we, buddy? I'm good, Corey. How'd you play today? Thank goodness I didn't have to. I was just, it conflicted with our airtime. And so we got to watch from afar. My game is not up to speed. Bob's probably is. He's ready to tear it up. Oh, yeah. I really excel over 100 degrees being a scot tonight. That's the other thing. We're trying to get these boys to move this turn of it to November when it cools off a little bit. It's hot. Yeah, it's into the 80s. Yeah. All right. So we can even start with the bad news from last night. It's been a carnage so far in the NFL and the giant. I mean, you were at a game where, you know, the, the Niners were dropping. Couple of guys were dropping. And last night, the big news happened with, with Jackson Dart. This league is, it's tough, man. It's really tough. It is. And I think all of them, you know, there's really nothing you can do. I think sometimes, you know, you wonder, are we working hard enough in the off season, you know, from a strength training and injury prevention perspective.

3:32But when you, you know, you look at Caleb Williams, you look at Jackson Dart, you look at Jaden Daniels. I mean, I just don't know what to do there. And yeah, I just, it's amazing how fragile this game is from week to week. So, yeah, I just, I hate to see that happen to a team. Especially the giant is not for the start, but the big win over the Cowboys last week and everything positive with a new head coach. Jaden Daniels coming back, you know, trying to get that team back on track. Caleb Williams trying to follow up last year and all the hype around the Bears. And then, I mean, it's week two and we're already looking at it through a different lens. Yeah, and I feel like week two or week three, we sort of do this every year. And I don't know if the game is getting more violent. I just think over the course of the off season, our brains forget just how violent it is. And really just how random a dream season is often where you can avoid the landmines of catastrophic injury.

4:33I almost think it's our mindset as we dive back into the sport on a daily basis. Do you buy that at all? Yeah, I think it plays a role. But I do believe that some of it can be prevented with a more robust off season. I think it would be interesting to see some of the teams that kind of pressed the arm a little bit. And I think that the John Harbaugh, Andy Reed, a couple old school coaches, you know, kind of that way. It's a little bit more physical training camp. I just getting ready for San Francisco. You saw the intent that the strength and conditioning and performance staff from San Francisco had put into the trip over to Australia and had their voices heard at the table. And when we talk to Kyle Shanahan, you know, he goes, yeah, we give him a game ball after the Rams game. You know, I'm going to give him another one if we win, you know, against Miami. He's been phenomenal. He's been phenomenal. It's just everything that he talked to us about is kind of come to fruition.

5:37And the guys felt great and we fought through it on the way back and he's got us ready to go again. So I think that there's a lot of information there that we maybe were not tapping into enough. Maybe yeah. That's very possible. I love the 49er style and I love how they prepare. But I also have to concede. It doesn't seem like anybody gets more injuries than San Francisco. So I just, I don't know. If I was running a team and I know you, you ran a league in many respects, but I just don't know how physical practices can be where you don't actually do more damage in an effort to be more prepared for physical football. It's a really interesting conversation. I guess is what I'm saying. And I don't, I don't know the half of it. Yeah. And you're exactly right about San Francisco. Since Kyle became head coach, I think the only team with more games missed by starters to injury are the giants. And I think last year, I mean, what they did last year going 12 and 5. I mean, Nick Boas is out week three, Fred Warner is out week eight.

6:40You know, I think it was 74 games missed by wheat one starters last season. And they still make it a 12 and 5. So yeah, I think we need to, we need to take a longer and a harder look at this because you don't want team destinies being changed. You know, week two, week three with season ending injuries to key players. After that point, and we already kind of touched on Jaden Daniels, we were talking about it the other day with that, you know, the left arm and the left elbow. Now it seems like it's going to be a chronic problem throughout his career, much like Ramos collarbone. And it could end up cutting his career short like it did for RG3. Yeah, those are the ones when you get a chronic one that you keep re-injuring. And you know that everybody did everything they could to make sure that he was in the right space, not just physically, but also mentally. So you're doing everything he possibly can when you have an existing injury. The advancements from, it's funny when we were playing the advancements that had happened

7:42from the generation prior to ours where you saw an ex-player who had a scope that looked like he had an ACL repair. And then, you know, the ACL repair is now look like scopes. I mean, it's amazing, you know, how advanced the medicine and everything happens. And it's been the ability to get the guys the best chance to get back and get back on the field. So, yeah, we always would say we just hope that, you know, the medical staff's key pace with the, you know, the increase in the injuries of the game. Would you have him in an arm brace or anything like that moving forward? I feel like the nature of that injury popping up three times in four starts. I don't know. I'm not a doctor. I just, I feel though that the idea of trying to reinforce that arms a little bit, if you can't catch yourself on a fall, man, that's some really bad, that's a bad scene right there.

8:46Yeah, I think it's definitely something they have to take a look at. And the materials that we have today, when we do braces, I mean, how light they are, how strong they are, how much stability they add to the joint that they're trying to protect the start to well, why didn't we, why wasn't that there last night? Why wasn't that something they had thought about coming into season? If it's not going to impact anything that he's doing from playing the quarterback position, why wouldn't you be a little bit more, a little bit more careful? So on the Cowboys side of things, the offense opened up and, you know, the Washington could have made four or five plays that would have flipped the game completely. They didn't in the end and the Cowboys kind of walk away with it. But offensively, Shady was pretty adamant about we planned on throwing the ball, we did throw the ball, we executed that to a pretty high level. And I'm wondering, moving forward, you know, maybe even going into this week specifically, how that attitude, if it changes at all, I don't see it because that's what works and they're having trouble running the ball and it looks like that it is very difficult to

9:47cover those two guys in any scenario. Yeah, I think you want to get back to the point where, you know, you can kind of adjust to what the defense is trying to take away. You know, what have they decided on, you know, this series, this nap, this down and distance that they feel Dallas is going to do and, you know, you need to get that confidence back in the run game and, you know, just haven't had the opportunity to visit, you know, with, you know, coach, coach Foster and coach Adams with the run game, you know, that they're frustrated with the production that they've had so far. But it's also hard when you're not getting a lot of reps at it during the course of the game. I mean, we always felt like we got better as a game. Or on the other is a couple of games where we kind of started out, we were, we were in sync right away, but that run game is something that takes a while to kind of get in sync. When you talk about the start of the season, we always felt you need, you know, seven to eight guys doing the exact thing, you know, for a play to be successful, especially at

10:48the point of attack. If you've got a couple of misdecimates at the point of attack, it's very possible that that's going to be, you know, a no gain or a negative run. So all that stuff takes a little bit of time at the beginning of the season. So it's not time to panic yet, but yeah, I think everybody's probably a little bit frustrated that they haven't had the success that they expected to have in the run game. We have a test against the Baltimore Ravens down in Brazil. There are a million talking points, but for me, for me, the number one item on my list is just flashbacks to the last time they played the Ravens. I want to say something like 250 yards rushing and it could have been worse. Something like 20 misdecimates. It was, it was a half time score a lot. And I want to say 28, 28, 28, 28, 26 going into the fourth quarter, in fact, as I recall. But the overall point here is I think after the Giants game, people think they can bully

11:53the Cowboys with heavy personnel and just ram it down their throat and with Derek Henry and Lamar Jackson. I can't think of a better candidate to do that. So how we feel about this one, Darryl? I think we get a much better feel for where that defense is after this game than we did after the last game. So I hope that everybody realizes how close that game was at half time and that swing with them being unsuccessful, with three seconds left going for the touchdown and then the injury to Jaden Daniels and then the opening drive of the second half. And the call being upheld that it was not a catch and not a touchdown. So that game was fragile for a while too. So let's not pat ourselves on the back. It was still kind of a tight fit there towards the middle of the fourth quarter, with the starting quarter back being out of the lineup. So there's a lot of things to have to correct, but there's nothing better than correcting

12:55things after a win. So I think this is kind of like what we're hearing. When we talked at the dolphins this week and it was just Jeff Haathley is just doing such a good job in a really challenging situation of finding the small victories every week to celebrate with this team because he knows it's going to be a tough season when it comes to wins and losses. And that was one of the things that I kind of took away from that game and that's something that Dallas needs to do. Hey, we haven't got this thing solved yet. Let's make sure we're celebrating the little victories, but not lose sight of the other things that we're still not quite up to our standard. And that's going to take time in the first year of a pretty significant change in the style of defense. So still lots of work to do, but it was a positive step. And the charge to the dolphins and their players is let's get better game to game to week to week in every area without regressing. And I think that every team in the NFL should have that perspective coming into the start of the season, regardless of what status you are and how long you've been together.

13:56Back to the Rio game really quick. The other storyline that everybody's talking about is the condition of the field potentially and kind of brings to mind the NFC championship game in candlestick. And I wondered when you guys went out there, did you bring multiple sets of cleats? I know that Jimmy had walked the field and made maps of where the footing was good and where the footing was bad. And how does that affect your preparation when you know that it's going to be a slog like that? Yeah, you're hoping to get the run game going, which is tough to do in a situation like that. The championship game, the good thing was between the numbers, the field was good. Once you got outside the numbers, it was kind of what was there from the week before. So there was actually a transition from a really well done, when you talk about less than a week, firm, secure, good traction from 20 to 20, from number to number. But then once you got outside those areas, it was really soft.

14:57So that was the unnerving thing for us. It's just the difference in the surface in the certain areas of it. So for me, when we did Mexico City and when we were at a tech stadium, we kicked up a ton of big chunks of sod. And we went the Wembley, the original Wembley. We kicked up a ton of big chunks of sod. It's soccer field is not meant to be able to hold 300 pound guys with cleats on. And I know the NFL is more conscious of that. They get their people over there and they're doing everything they possibly can to make sure that surface is up to the NFL standard. But when you hear concerns about the playing surface this far in advance, there's something that's going on down in Rio. While you got San Francisco again and Brock Pertis on a heater right now, that guy's playing out of his mind. Yeah. And Fred Warner said he saw it during train camp.

15:57You know, I, you know, piles on board now. I think he was, he was waiting a little bit. But after the way that Brock played on Sunday, you know, it's just, he had a couple of throws that were just amazing. You know, he throws a linebacker on a bootleg, got him off the ground, you know, moved to his left a little bit and hit Mike Evans with, like literally inches of separation from Dante Trader, the safety. So he had two or three throws in that game that were unbelievable. He's 20 out of 22. You know, that gives him the highest completion percentage. You know, the top one and top two, you know, completion percentages in a game. And the franchise of San Francisco, by the way, who has Joe Montana and Steve Young involved with it. Yeah, he is, he is playing really, really well right now. And you know, that, that's with a lot of injuries at the wide receiver position. I mean, it's, it's amazing what that offense is doing, you know, without rookie per se all, you know, without the show and struggling. They lost to Marcus Robinson on Sunday. So even, even when these guys are getting to hurt, it is not impacting about 31 bit.

17:02All right, man. We'll have fun calling them once again. And we will do it again next week. Enjoy the rest of the week. Yeah, but forward to it until we'll talk to you next week. All right, Darrell. We'll see you, man. Thank you very much. There he goes. Darrell Chasbos. From Fox. Kitchen and bathroom professionals know what goes behind the tile matters. That's why trade pros trust Fiber cement party backer board to keep tile firmly in place, resist cracking and held block moisture. Chosen over 40 million kitchens and bathrooms, party backer board, what the best build on. Shop now at participating home depot, lows and floor into core stores. For more information, visit James Hardy.com slash Hardy Backer.