Change isn't coming. It's already here. Commerce is going digital and tax complexity is multiplying.

Tax rules evolve, rate shift, data floods in. Vertex connects it all.

A global tax compliance platform powered by tax-ready data and intelligence systems.

Smarter tech, continuous tax compliance, built-in confidence.

Learn more at vertexinck.com. This is the athletic football show.

Welcome to the athletic football show.

I'm Robert Mays.

Joining me tonight.

It's my good friend Nate.

Tice Nate, how you doing, buddy?

I'm doing wonderful. That was a quaint little game that we just finished with with some interesting clock management and just end of game situations. Greg Olson got to put on a clinic about explaining like five different rules and clock management stuff. So it was almost like he did an audition tape. like, oh, okay, this guy, like his agent's like, hey, okay, now this guy's going out of balance.

Now explain what's going on there. It's like boom, boom, boom. But eventful day, I guess is a good way to put it. We had a snow game, which is always a good day. I finish it with that game in the Bay Area. It was just, it was an interesting day. I don't know how to like explain it. It just felt

stuff happened, but I don't know how to go about it yet. That's why I can't wait to dive in. We'll get to the first game a little bit later. We'll start with Cowboys Niners. Let's start with the end. That every moving part of that final play, just to end it with Turpin getting absolutely destroyed. I'm glad we got a timeout just so I kind of marinate.

Let it all sit and just sit in our brains a little bit. Yeah. I've been in an offense that we had a play like that, but we went all skill guys. I think we kept the center in. And then everybody else was just a skill guy. Same thing. It was kind of like a almost looked like a punt formation,

and all the skill guys would say ineligible. So like the other four guys, and it acted like opposite to do a lateral play. But Zeke ended up looking like Vadi Divok there, taking the charge on that last play. I mean, everything was just, it was just, it was special. It was special. So it's one that I'm going to remember for quite some time.

I hope other people do too.

Might have spent that practice time that was devoted to that play, figuring out a way to get the ball to somebody that wasn't CD Lamb, but, you know, we can get to that. Let's start. So there's so much, so much to dig into from this game. I want to start with just the Niners defense because I don't think Dak played well, but I think today was just a reminder of how terrifying they can be

and just how much ground they can cover, you know, just how much space gets condensed

when you play against them and you don't really have a field stretcher, which the Cowboys don't do. And when you have to play in that compressed space, how difficult it becomes to do it. And I think we saw that over and over against tonight. I mean, I just thought that the Niners back seven in zone coverage, because the front, the pass rush didn't take over this game. But I just thought that the windows and their ability to move the ball at all through the air was just sucked out of this entire game because of the way the Niners defense played.

I mean, and Fred Warner just erasing the middle of the field.

And if you have CD-Lam who makes a living off that and all the underneath stuff that DAC loves, I mean, the quick game, they, after a rough start after the first interception,

the Cowboys had a really nice drive, but they started going to Quick game, which is fine for a

...