NFL Week 1 Friday Night Football: Packers vs Eagles | Full Game PREVIEW

Hello and welcome in to this Friday edition of HQ presented by Capital One. Banking with Capital One is the easiest decision. What's in your wallet? Jordan. Giorgio Emily. Proud here with you today. The NFL season is officially back and back in a big way. Well, we had drama. We had controversy, we had everything. And I want to apologize for this ahead of time. But I have to say it. We had some unlikely stars, didn't we? We did. It was jam packed tonight, though. Packers. Eagles. Hopefully the guys are taking notes. Just wear the white cleats, man. What are we doing? What are we doing here? The NFL will play though tonight. Emily. Their first game ever in South America 815 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Both teams having some high hopes of being NFC contenders last season. Philadelphia and Green Bay made the playoffs, but failed to get past the divisional round. For more on what to expect tonight, though, let's go ahead and welcome in CBS, NFL writers John Breech and Ryan Wilson. Gentlemen, great to see you. More NFL football on tap tonight out in Brazil between the Packers and Eagles. Philly the home team in this game. And because of that they get the closer hotel to the Sao Paulo stadium. Meanwhile though the Packers as the away team in this game depending on the traffic close to a two hour drive to the stadium. On top of the already insane travel to get to Brazil, Ryan, talk about a long work trip. Yeah, I feel. Good for Darius Slay, the cornerback for the Eagles who was already complaining about having to go to Brazil on that ten hour flight. At least he's closer to the stadium than if he played for the Packers. But this is just one more cultural difference, I guess, because this is more soccer related than than American football related. And just in terms of the wearing green because of the colors of the teams involved, when we're talking about soccer in this stadium, to try to fit American football into South America, I think it's going to be exciting, but different. The 1.5 hour commute, as Brian wrote about on CBS sports, it's like Friday night high school football. You're hopping on the bus, you're going to go face your rival an hour and a half away. And the only thing I can come up with is like, after the game, they're going to drive an hour and a half back. I'm sort of surprised there's not more than one hotel close to the to the stadium, but maybe again, maybe that's the competitive advantage of being the home team. Look, Ryan, I know the Packers are from green Bay, the smallest city in the NFL. They don't have traffic in green Bay, but surely someone in that organization has been to a big city like New York or San Francisco? Sao Paulo is a huge city. Huge cities have traffic. So what you do, you had four months to find a hotel and say, hey, let's let's plan next to the stadium, let's get a hotel near the stadium. The NFL puts you in a hotel far away from the stadium. You call them back and say, no, we want to be near the stadium. We don't want to be on a bus for two hours on the way to the game. You might as well just fly in from green Bay to Brazil on Friday morning. If you're going to be in a bus for two hours at this point. If I'm the Packers, I'm just jumping on the subway and taking the public transportation to the stadium. So I do think this absolutely gives the Eagles a little bit of a competitive advantage. You've been on a bus for 90 straight minutes. Then you have to play a game. You're a little stiff. It's tough to get loose. So this is definitely an interesting situation, something that I'm sure the NFL will look into more if they return to Brazil next year. I like it, John. Put your foot down man. And guys, luckily though, the game is not tomorrow because we just checked. That is actually Brazil's Independence Day. So just imagine the traffic if the game was on Saturday. Well hopefully the long travel won't affect Packers quarterback Jordan Love too much as he looks to live up to that big contract and prove that last season's late run, it just wasn't a fluke. John, how can he take that next step? Well, I think what he can do is go out against the Eagles and have a huge game. Look, we all saw what Jordan Love did. The final ten games of the 2023 season. We see the numbers right there. First in the NFL 23 touchdowns with just three interceptions. I mean he caught fire. And this is a guy that the Packers were literally thinking about. Hey do we need to bench him. This was the talk in early November. And then the switch just flipped. He knew exactly what he was doing. He was reading defenses. He was he was making all his read, making all his throws. And he just played great football. And now he gets to play an Eagles team that really struggled to stop the pass last season. Of course you know Vic Fangio is going to look to make that defense better. But this is exactly who you want him facing. If you are Jordan Love you have a solid group of receivers Romeo Dobbs Christian Watson a very underrated Jalen Reed. So I think Jordan Love this is exactly who you want to be playing. If you want to go out and prove you are ready to take that next step, and I won't be surprised at all if Jordan Love has a huge game tonight. And I think this is a great example of a young quarterback coming into the league as a first round pick who wasn't forced to play right away. Maybe it wasn't the best circumstance with Aaron Rodgers, who didn't seem happy about Jordan Love landing in green Bay. But at the end of the day, it worked out and you talked about last year when he started the season, there were some Rocky moments, but he caught fire at the end, in part because athletically he is so incredibly gifted, but also because he had time to learn that offense and not be rushed on the field. And also, he had the run. He had the confidence in himself and also had the confidence of his head coach, Matt LaFleur. You talked about all those young playmakers he has around him at the wide receiver position. The tight end position is just as deep and just as young. They have Josh Jacobs now at running back and I think this defense is going to be a lot better than it was a year ago, which also makes his life a little easier on the offensive side of the ball, should they happen to go three and out. It's not the end of the world. So the arrow is pointing up. Jordan on Jordan love and I think Bryce is right. This is going to be an exciting season for him. It could start tonight. You mentioned Josh Jacobs I want to talk about him a little bit here. We know love will lean on him including a bunch of other weapons. Jacobs though makes his debut for the Packers tonight. He'll be working overtime as the only healthy running back on this green Bay roster. Ryan, what is the latest there? As we dive a little bit deeper into him and what can we expect really from this Packers offens? Right. AJ Dillon is not even on this list because he's out as well. So this is going to be the Josh Jacobs show. I think Josh Jacobs is okay with that. I think he was happy to get out of Las Vegas and go to a place where he was wanted. In green Bay. There's less tumult, if you will, in green Bay than Las Vegas. It feels like, at least during his time there, as he went through several coaches and there feels like there's a ton of stability in green Bay. We just talked about Jordan Love. We know Matt LaFleur is one of the best young coaches in the NFL. He had to handle the Aaron Rodgers situation with some aplomb. And he did that. And he certainly transitioned to what it is, what it means to coach Jordan Love. And I think in the backfield what you have in Josh Jacobs, whether he carries the ball 15 times and catches ten passes or whether he carries it 30 times, is that he is a workhorse. He is a first quarter to fourth quarter guy. He doesn't seem to run out of energy by the end of the football game. And that's exactly what this team is going to need in some trying circumstances. Hopefully he can rest on the bus ride over there because he's going to get a lot of use tonight. Yeah, he might need to. This is a fantastic situation. If you are Josh Jacobs or Josh Jacobs, fantasy owner, because he is really the only option. But if you are the Packers, you are a little bit worried here because remember, Josh Jacobs is a guy who missed a few games with the Raiders last season due to a quad injury, and so you don't want him to go out there after that hour and a half bus ride to the stadium, maybe pull a hamstring in warm ups or early in the game. So you do. You're going to worry about your depth a little bit. The Packers do have a few players on their practice squad who they could potentially call up to back up Josh Jacobs in this game, but look, Josh Jacobs is going to want to hit the ground running in this game. And he's going to play in an offense that he didn't get to play in last year in Las Vegas. That offense didn't really have much firepower with the Raiders in 2023. But now you're playing with Jordan Love, now you're playing with a team that can throw the ball and now so defenses aren't going to be so much paying so much attention to you. So I think that Josh Jacobs can go out there and have a huge game. The Packers just have to keep his keep their fingers crossed that he stays healthy. But with that he'll be an instant test for this. Eagles shuffled front seven now under the leadership of Vic Fangio, John where do you see Fangio turning things around? Well I think that Vic Fangio is the polar opposite of what this team had last year. I mean, this is no nonsense. All discipline, everyone needs to do their job. And that's kind of what the Eagles need, because you look at what they did last season, they could not stop the pass. This team gave up the second most passing yards in the NFL last season. They were just getting diced up. We saw them use their first two draft picks on defensive backs this season. We're going to see probably both those draft picks tonight. Quinyon Mitchell probably going to be on the field a lot. And so Vic Fangio is what you want. He can mold these rookies into what he wants. He's going to mold this defense into what he wants. And so that Vic Fangio identity it works for some teams because he's an abrasive coach with an abrasive style. And as long as the team is winning, the defense is playing well. I think Fangio is going to work now. Will that happen? If the Eagles kind of start slow out of the gate, I don't know what's going to happen. But for now, I think Vic Fangio is the right guy in Philadelphia. Ryan Vic Fangio era officially begins and he will have to do it without Devin White. As we know he is sidelined due to an injury. I want to ask you could Nakobe Dean be the top inside linebacker for the Eagles with this news? Now, even though he's unproven, how do you see this playing out? Yeah that's a good point about Nakobe Dean. He was a third round pick several years ago coming out of Georgia. He had first round potential, but he was a little undersized and he struggled with injuries at times. He hasn't quite had put together the seasons that they're looking for in Philadelphia Philadelphia excuse me had a fantastic training camp preseason and there were even conversations that he was going to beat out Devin White anyway. So I think Nakobe has a chance to differentiate himself. And Bryce talked about Vic Fangio and the edge he brings. And sometimes that's what you need to get the team where they're going. Because Jordan, when you look at this roster on defense, there are so many dudes front line linebacker in the secondary, there's no reason for them to play the way they did last year. They're going to get after it with Vic Fangio, Nakobe will be in the middle of that defense, but we'll have a lot of guys around him to help make that defense successful. Certainly more successful than it was last year. Next man up mentality. I love to see it. Fangio you guys new to this defense. Meanwhile head coach of this team is not. Nick Sirianni enters his fourth season at the helm, 36 and 20. In those three seasons, he's on his third set of coordinators. As we know since the start of 2022. He also lost two big leaders in the locker room who we know he is openly talked about, leaning on how hot is Nick Sirianni seat right now entering this season? John, I'll come to you first on this one, Jordan, it's so hot that I'm guessing he stood up on the ten hour flight to Philly, to Sao Paulo, because he didn't want to sit down. He is so afraid of that. Look, we've all seen the reports from the past few months, from the end of last season, that there has been some drama kind of a rift in the relationship between Nick Sirianni and his quarterback, Jalen Hurts. The collapse last season that no one could really put their finger on exactly what happened. Well, it's the buck stops here. He's the head coach. He's the one who has to figure out what went wrong. He's the one who has to figure out what happened. He's the one who has to fix it. The responsibility ultimately falls with him. So this is a team that is going to have a lot of pressure on it early in the season, and especially tonight against the Packers, because if they go out and they don't look like they're in sync, they don't look like a cohesive unit and they don't look well coached. That is going to fall on Nick Sirianni. And he is going to be hearing questions about his job. Every time the Eagles lose. So I think if you're Nick Sirianni, there is a lot of pressure to win tonight and especially the first few weeks of the season. I don't know if I'm willing to go that far, guys. I don't think he stood up the whole flight. John. I think he probably leaned against the airplane a little bit on the way there, only because despite that, with the graphic, we just saw where they went one and six in the last seven games and the wheels fell off, and then the doors fell off after the wheels fell off. This team has been pretty successful under Nick Sirianni, and I'll give him credit, he's gone from trying to be micromanaging everything to more of a CEO role. He leaned on Don Staley this offseason. The South Carolina coach. He talked to, Jay Wright, the former Villanova coach, to get some insights on what it means to lead people. And he's taken more of a hands off approach. We know Kellen Moore is now the offensive coordinator. He and Jalen Hurts appear to be in the right direction in terms of that relationship you're talking about, John. We just talked about Vic Fangio, so there are different ways to figure out how to get the most out of your organization. But when you have the record that you just mentioned, I think you said 36 and 20, Jordan, if it's anything close to that, you're not quite on the hot seat, but you can't go one and one and seven down the stretch. Fair, fair. All right, gentlemen, before we let you go, let's get a game pick spread on this one. Two and a half over under set at 49.5. What's your play here, Ryan? I'm going with the. I'm going with the Packers. I love Jordan love I love how this offense gelled down the stretch. All these young players, their offensive line's revamped a little bit. They'll have a rookie on the offensive line in Jordan Morgan at Arizona. But I think this team is going to be better offensively. And I think defensively with Jeff Hafley, the new defensive coordinator, they're going to make some strides they didn't have last year. Wilson and I rarely agree on anything and this game is included in that. I am going to roll with the Philadelphia Eagles. I think it's close. I like Philly 2724. I just like what Saquon Barkley brings to this offense. I think we're going to see him get a lot of use tonight. The one thing the Packers really struggled with last season was stopping the ru. Will that translate over to this season? Will that continue I don't know for sure, but it's going to be tough for them to slow down. Barkley and if they decide hey look, that's what we're going to do. We're going to try and slow down Saquon. We know what the Eagles have on the outside. They have DeVante Smith. They have AJ Brown. So I just think Philly's offense can have a little bit more firepower. So I like the Eagles by three John Breech and Ryan Wilson joining us here for a preview as Friday Night Football in the NFL kicks off from Brazil at 815 tonight A look at all the NFL games coming. Your way this week on CBS. You'll get to watch the new highest paid corner in NFL history. Jalen Ramsey takes the field at hard Rock when the Dolphins welcome the Panthers and the 4:00 hour, the Raiders open theireason against the