‘Higher Register’ – NFL Week 8’s Top Less-Than-Convincing Takes

The Higher Register Take of the Week is where the crew on The Rich Eisen Show says the thing it half believes, and this Thursday edition delivered three takes that each needed a little extra volume to sell.

Chris went first, and he went somewhere nobody else was looking. "I'm going to talk about this division. No one gives it any credit. No one even thinks twice about it. It's the NFC South," he said. His call: "I think the winner of Falcons Bucks is going to win the NFC South."

Pressed on whether the Bucs could really turn it around, Chris had his evidence ready. "Baker's back. Bucky Irving looks good." He pointed to what Tampa had just done to Carolina as proof. "They crushed them. They took them right out. They got two points off of a blocked extra point. It was all working." The verdict on the division was simple: "This thing's wide open."

TJ took the floor next, opening with a "sir Richard" that earned an immediate groan. His take centered on Monday Night Football. "The winner of Monday night football's Bears Seahawks game, they might be the favorite in the NFC," he said, noting that both teams had made big moves.

The table did not exactly fall in line. Someone pointed out that the Niners had the week off and were being forgotten. Another voice asked about the Lions and the rest of the NFC North, which apparently could "just go pound sand."

Then came the take built to get under somebody's skin. It started with a history lesson about Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and other quarterbacks pushing for their own footballs, home and away, because of a place in Miami where "the home team is handing you a football that's fresh out of the box, slick, it slips out of your hands."

The receipts followed. The Patriots won in Miami in 2025, but lost there in 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021. With the Dolphins coming off a bye and their first win, the suggestion was that weird things happen when New England heads south, and that Jeff Hafley "might be cooking something up." The Patriots fan at the table was not amused. "Oh, please don't," came the reply, followed by, "I don't want this at all."

The best moment, though, was the meta point about the whole exercise. "Upset alert is a higher register term without having to go higher register," the crew noted. Every pregame show flashes an upset alert graphic, but "no one's going to sit there on any pregame show and go Miami's winning this game." Upset alert, in other words, "gives you the higher register opportunity to have it both ways."

Nobody fully committed to anything, which is exactly the point of the segment. Higher register is the sound a take makes when the speaker is not quite sure it's true, and this week, the NFC South, the Bears and Seahawks, and the Dolphins all got the treatment.