Week 9 Preview: It's Bills-Chiefs Week
The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL
The Athletic
4.6 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 31 October 2025
⏱️ 91 minutes
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Summary
We've talked a lot in recent weeks about how every NFL season is going to throw us its fair share of curveballs. There are constants, however, and one of the most constant of the constants is Bills-Chiefs Game of the Week. That's where Robert Mays, Derrik Klassen and Dave Helman begin the Week 9 preview episode of The Athletic Football Show. The guys give the "One Thing From..." treatment to Falcons-Patriots, Colts-Steelers and Broncos-Texans, take a stroll down Sicko Street with Saints-Rams and Bears-Bengals, and ponder this question: Has it turned out that the Vikings actually had the worst offseason in the league?
Rundown (timestamps are approximate)
5:12 It's Bills-Chiefs Week
33:03 The diverging paths taken by the Patriots and Falcons
41:22 The Colts and Steelers show us the duality of believing you're "a QB away"
47:28: Texans offense vs. Broncos defense
53:38 Taking stock of the AFC Wild Card picture
1:05:37 Sicko Street: Saints-Rams...and not for the reason you'd think
1:12:44 Sicko Street: The Bears better be able to score against this Bengals defense
1:16:00 Take Tribunal: The Vikings made the wrong bet this offseason
1:31:08 What do you wanna know in Week 9?
Host: Robert Mays
Co-Hosts: Derrik Klassen and Dave Helman
Executive Producer: Michael Beller
Video Producer: Katy Duffy
Audio Producer: Michael Beller
Social Producer: Scott Krinch
Follow Robert on Bluesky: @robertmays.bsky.social
Follow Derrik on Bluesky: @qbklass.bsky.social
Follow Dave on Bluesky: @davehelman.bsky.social
Follow Robert on X: @robertmays
Follow Derrik on X: @QBKlass
Follow Dave on X: @davehelman_
Theme song: Haunted
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. I'm Robert Mays. The week nine preview is here. Really fun show for you guys today. |
| 0:10.1 | Doug into Chiefs Bill's as the game of the week. Hit one thing from Falcons Patriots, Colts Steelers, and Browns Texans. A lot of like existential conversations in those one thing. Just kind of taking stock of where a lot of those teams are as we get to the midway point. |
| 0:23.4 | I think that makes sense, right? Like we know what the teams are schematically. We know what they want to be. We know what their identities are. And so just kind of taking a step back and wondering like what are they really over the first half of the season. I think that kind of bled into a lot of the conversations we had on the show today. |
| 0:37.2 | That extended to a discussion we had about the AFC playoff race, the wild card race, which team |
| 0:42.4 | we preferred in that group. Two of us picked the Broncos. One of us picked the Chargers. |
| 0:47.2 | I'll leave you to guess who sat on which side of that line. Hit a little Sicko Street with |
| 0:53.4 | Saints Rams where Derek talked about what he wants to see from Roger McCreary in the most during classic moment of the entire season so far. Hit a little Bears bangles there as well. Talked about the Vikings offseason and whether or not how they approached it is already a mistake even before we find out how good J.J. McCarthy is. So that was a fun conversation. |
| 1:12.6 | Before we take into the show, one thing I wanted to mention to you guys, exciting news. |
| 1:17.8 | On January 7th, so right after the regular season ends, right before we start the playoffs, |
| 1:23.3 | we are doing our first live show for the athletic football show in Chicago at Lincoln Hall, |
| 1:30.6 | a venue that is near and dear to my heart, a place I've seen a bunch of concerts. |
| 1:33.9 | My friends got married there. |
| 1:35.5 | So couldn't be more excited about that being the setting for our first live show. |
| 1:40.4 | Tickets will go on sale first for members of our Discord channel on November 6th. So that will be next week, next Thursday. Join the Discord if you haven't. So great time to do it. So you have your first crack at those tickets. There are just 250 seats in the venue. So hopefully those will go pretty quickly. So the Discord is a great way to ensure that you're going to get in. The link to the Discord is in the show description, and we will share the pre-sale password in the Discord. Tickets go on sales to the general public on November 10th, but we are pumped to finally be making this happen. It's been something that's been in the works for a very long time, something I have pushed for. I love doing these live shows, and we are thrilled to have our first one on the books. January 7th at Lincoln Hall, tickets will go on sale for members of the Discord |
| 2:22.3 | on November 6th, the general public on November 10th. So with that, let's get to the week nine |
| 2:28.5 | preview with me, Derek Klesson, and Dave Hellman right now. |
| 2:35.8 | Week nine is here. |
| 2:37.9 | We're getting to the halfway mark of the 2025 NFL season. |
| 2:41.5 | We got a lot of fun stuff to dig into today. |
| 2:44.1 | The week 9 slate isn't overly exciting. |
| 2:46.9 | Like we only have one game of the week, |
| 2:48.6 | but I'm really looking forward to some of the conversations |
... |
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