Empire. As you can see, if you're watching us on the live sheet, Nikki's with me, of course.

If you're listening to us later we can find us on

YouTube as part of Empire Media AMPIRE you can always read my work on dspr.com you can read

nicky's work at washington post.com and you know all that good stuff there that's that's all the

introduction we need there again Nikki's joining me. We're going to talk about the state of

this team, which is the same state it was in last week, which is chaos, confusion. Actually,

there's no confusion about what's going on because they're bad. Anyways, thanks for joining me

again, Nikki. Let's start with Sam Howell, because again, this whole season is boiling down to one player

in the direction of this franchise seems to be boiling down to one player not his best game

on Sunday.

No.

Where are you at with him after these last several weeks?

Yeah, I mean, honestly, it's less him than with the team.

After he was pulled in the fourth quarter,

Ron Rivera said afterward that it was to protect him.

But the truth of the matter is Sam Howe had only,

he was only hit twice in that game, sacked once.

And if you're not going to pull him against the bills when he's sacked nine times and hit 14 times, then how can you claim it's about protecting him here?

And he was pulled right after he threw an interception.

So the optics. With a lot of time left in the optics, yeah, the optics don't quite align

with the messaging there. Um, but yeah, and I think that the, just the fact that they pulled him

and then Jacoby Brissette came in quickly through two touchdowns like it was nothing.

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