Team-by-Team: Everything To Know Heading Into Week 6 (Episode 1034 with Evan Silva and Adam Levitan)

Adam Levitan (0:15)

Hello, and welcome to Episode 1034 of the Official Establish The run.com Podcast. My name is Adam Levitan. I am one of the co-founders here at ETR.

As always, joined by fellow co-founder, Evan Silva, Week 5 is behind us, Evan. How's it going?

Evan Silva (0:33)

It was a really fun Week 5

Sunday's continued to be for the Poly Bros. You had a sick pull-up play in Jalen Warren, who by the way, right now, across the NFL, ranks third in the NFL in yards from scrimmage. Behind only the number one overall pick in All-Fantasy Drafts, Jameer Gibbs, and the number two overall pick in All-Fantasy Drafts, Bijan Robinson. But yeah, a lot to get to today. But we're off to a great start, I think, entering Week 6 with four teams on by.

Adam Levitan (1:02)

Indeed. On today's show, we are going to go team by team through all 32 NFL franchises, discussing the most important things we saw in each and what it means going forward. Usage, injuries, performance, everything.

Quick note before we get into it here today. The NBA season starts in one week. We cover the NBA with the same intensity. We cover the NFL. Our NBA product is led by Drew Dinkmeyer and Mike Gallagher. If you are interested in the hoops, we have three products at ETR. Best Ball product, Draft Kit product, and NBA in season. So head to establishtherun.com and the NBA subscribe page. For details, that is the NBA product at establishtherun.com.

All right. Going to start with the five biggest stories of the week, and then we will go team by team in alphabetical order after that.

Story number one, Evan, we have to start with the Steelers. Rico Dowdell was out again with a toe injury. So you know what that meant. Time for one of the best running backs in the entire NFL to do his thing. Jalen Warren goes off here on the Colts. 15 carries, 101 yards and a touchdown rushing, six catches, 87 receiving yards, and another touchdown.

Steelers beat Colts 34-22. The big question coming out of that game was, what will happen when Rico Dowdell returns, which is likely week six? We had actually a lot of commentary around that coming out of the game. We can talk about what McCarthy said, we can talk about what Roger said. Evan, how do you think this goes now for Jalen Warren?

Evan Silva (2:46)

Well, right after the game, Mike McCarthy was asked by reporters, well, what's going to happen when Rico Dowdell comes back? Mike McCarthy was like, well, we're going to have a one-two punch, it's going to be nice to have Rico Dowdell back. Then Aaron Rodgers spoke about Jalen Warren, and he had this to say, first of all, he's one of the best people I've ever been around. He genuinely cares about his teammates, he cares about this game, does things the right way.

The first guy rarely brings him down, he's so dynamic with the ball in his hands, I keep coming back to the kind of teammate he is, that's why everybody loves him, wants to block hard for him, blocks downfield for him, we want to get him the ball. And then, after Aaron Rodgers said those things, Mike McCarthy came out and said, well, this is going to be our featured guy going forward.

Adam Levitan (3:29)

Yeah, so the exact Mike McCarthy quote that Evan is referring to is, Jalen is our featured player right now. Let's make sure we all recognize that he's hot, he's playing great football for us. So it's important for us as an offense, coaches and players alike, to continue to put him in position to make plays, that won't change. Sometimes I watch these coach speak or I think it's a leading question and I don't buy it. I watched this one and shout out to the guys at Mike Nuggets for posting this. I watched this clip.

I thought Mike McCarthy was telling the truth and I rarely think NFL coaches are telling the truth when they stand up there in press conferences, especially about player usage. I thought he was. And so we are going to have, I think, a pretty big bump here on Jalen Warren in the rest of season top 150 if he's truly going to be the one and they're going to relegate Rico Daddle to the two, which frankly, if you have two eyes, I don't know how you couldn't do that. Now, previous coaching staffs don't have two eyes. They have not let Jalen Warren, who might be better than Austin Eckler, Austin Eckler-esque may be better.

Previous staffs have not done this. So I don't want to say it's definite, but I feel really good right now about Jalen Warren.