NFL Insider Mike Garafolo Talks Aaron Donald, Darnold & More

The show found the one thing in the league capable of rattling Josh Allen, and it is roughly the size of a fingernail.

Allen does not care for spiders. Neither, it turns out, does most of the staff, which produced a lengthy accounting of household arachnid policy before anyone talked football. One person found a black widow behind the couch, a foot from where he sits to watch television, and responded by having an exterminator treat the entire house and sleeping on his boat for a day and a half.

Mike Garafolo was asked where he lands on this, and his answer was not ambiguous.

"I have so much spider blood on my hands."

His wife wants no part of them. His girls want no part of them. Garafolo himself is fine with a spider minding its own business, but the job falls to him regardless.

"I am the hired assassin. And if God is an arachnid, I'm going to have a lot of answering to do in the afterlife."

Then, business. Colleen started with the Rams, who lost to the Niners in Australia, watched Myles Garrett land on injured reserve, and are still waiting on Aaron Donald.

Garafolo expects him Monday night.

"Sounds like the hope is that he's going to be on the field and back in action on Monday night, and not just because Myles Garrett is not available, but because at this point, given another week of preparation, he should be where he needs to be."

The context is the whole comeback process. Throughout the decision, Donald kept telling the Rams a version of the same thing.

"I need more information from my body."

He made the call before the cutdown to 53 and was on the roster, so Garafolo is not surprised the caution extended into Week 1. Add a trip to Australia for a player who has not been in the mix all offseason, and the math gets harder. Everyone saw what that trip did to guys who had been in the mix.

Now it is a home game, on a Monday night, with another week of work behind him.

"I'm looking for Aaron Donald to be back out there on the field on Monday night and playing well," Garafolo said. "The way he went through the process, the same way with this preparation into the season, I would not be surprised if he comes out of the gate and has an impact."

Colleen asked the obvious follow up. Is the panic warranted after one game?

No, and Garafolo's reasoning is more interesting than the answer. He is not handing out excuses so much as pointing at a leaguewide trade-off.

Some of the Rams' performance was Australia and the travel, probably a good bit of it. The rest may be that they did not play their starters in the preseason. Jim Harbaugh has said the same thing about his own team. The Eagles looked sluggish in spots and won anyway, and Nick Sirianni does not play his guys either. Add a new system on top.

"You almost say we're okay with being sluggish in Week 1 and being a little bit rusty, in exchange for not losing a guy in a game that doesn't matter in the standings."

The 17th game accelerated it. Week 1 matters less than it did in a 16 game season, and Garafolo expects an 18th game would push teams further in that direction.

From there it was quarterbacks, starting in Atlanta, where Colleen wanted to know where Kevin Stefanski goes in Week 2.

"I would not be surprised if it's Cooper Rush one more time."

The reason is Tua's oblique, which Garafolo notes is extremely painful and familiar to anyone who follows baseball. Sam Darnold had one during the playoffs last season, and if it had not been the postseason he likely sits a week or two.

Michael Penix is close. Somebody put him at 90 percent last week, and the remaining 10 percent is the part that lives in a player's head.

Garafolo drew a direct parallel to Malik Nabers, whose availability was touch and go until a couple of hours before kickoff.

"How much is it physical and how much is it mental as well?"

His larger point about Atlanta is that the roster is not the problem. There are a lot of good players there, and the fact that the Falcons were in that game at all is a testament to how hard Bijan Robinson is to defend.

"The quarterback position is not going to be right this entire season," Garafolo said. Even when Penix is back, he will not be 100 percent. It has to get to a point where he can set foot on the field and feel comfortable.

Then Cleveland, where it is never not a quarterback situation. Deshaun Watson said Wednesday that he is focused on winning rather than job security.

Garafolo's frustration was less with the Browns than with the loop everyone is stuck in.

"Out of Cleveland they'll say, well, it wasn't as bad as it looked. How many times can we do this before we just say it's just never going to happen?"

What bothers him is his own role in it. Reporters check in, get told it is not that bad, report that it is not that bad, and repeat.

Colleen offered that this sounds like the definition of insanity.

"It's the definition of insider, apparently," Garafolo said. "Insanity, insider. They both begin with the same three letters."

The show played Watson being asked whether he needs to put up big numbers to keep the job.

"I think all that is for the media," Watson said. "The media has this expectation that I'm supposed to throw 400 yards and five touchdowns every week, so until that happens, I guess it's going to be the same situation. My job is to make sure I'm operating well so we can try to get a win."

Colleen pushed back that it is not only the media. It is the team, the head coach, the general manager and the owners.

Garafolo's defense of Watson was narrower and more credible than most. He won the job legitimately.

"Every day in training camp, he's got talent, he still does. There'd be a throw and it'd be like, okay, that's the guy making the throw that's going to win the job."

He made one honest concession. If the last preseason game were the only evidence, Shedeur Sanders would be starting, because Sanders outplayed him that day. But Sanders does not have that same arm talent, which is why he slipped in the draft and why he sat as long as he did last season.

"He did earn the job in the preseason and in training camp. You've got to give him a little bit more run than just one week."

The caveat is that everybody on that offense has to be better, and the deadline is short.

"It's a performance business."

Garafolo did admit he wants to see Watson start again at home in Week 3, and he was candid about why.

"I'd love to see it for the sake of theater."

It is the same instinct that had him hoping for a blowout in the Australia game, because a bad football game would have produced a great conversation about the travel, which it did. He does not want a home opener where consternation hangs over the entire stadium. He also would like to watch it.

Minnesota came next, with Carson Wentz playing well in place of Kyler Murray and a division game against the Bears ahead.

Murray is feeling better, but concussion protocol does not run on a schedule. Entering the week, the thought was that the Vikings had to prepare as though Wentz were starting.

The part Garafolo finds most interesting is the third man. Minnesota is one hit away from turning to J.J. McCarthy again, and there was a real organizational conversation about whether to simply cut him if he was not even going to be the backup.

They kept him, and the reasoning has a few layers. He still has not played much football. The general manager now is not the one who drafted him, which removes the usual incentive to protect a pick rather than admit a mistake, though the head coach is the same. And there may be a better trade return available later if another team suffers an injury, even if Garafolo does not really foresee it.

Mostly it comes down to a phrase he has heard throughout his career, the same one that kept Anthony Richardson in Indianapolis.

"Don't quit on talent. Sometimes it clicks for you and it just takes a while."

On Seattle, the news is better than it looked. The Seahawks opted against short term injured reserve for Sam Darnold, which is itself the tell.

"I've got it at about four weeks. I think it's going to be a max of four weeks. There's a chance he comes back inside that time frame, so it could wind up being three."

Garafolo called it a unique injury, a glute injury rather than a fracture, and the distinction matters enormously. When Darnold left the field there was fear of a hip fracture, which would have ended his season and potentially threatened his career, the category of injury that runs from Tua all the way back to Bo Jackson.

The IR math explains the decision. Injured reserve requires a minimum of four weeks, and Seattle thinks it might have him in three. The Week 3 game sits 17 days from the injury, and the following week would be 24. Ian Rapoport reported an outside shot at Week 3. Garafolo leans Week 4 into Week 5.

In the meantime, Colleen noted, Drew Lock is more than capable and among the better backups in the league.

Chris asked about a rookie who went down in the Australia game and looked to be in real trouble. The word Garafolo got was around a month, and Adam Schefter has since reported injured reserve, which lines up with that four week window.

It stung more because of what preceded it. Two rookies went off in the preseason and gave everyone about two minutes of regular season football, one of them losing a touchdown to a penalty flag that landed behind him while he was in the middle of a Ray Lewis squirrel dance.

"I felt so bad for him."

The last question was about San Francisco's running back usage and whether it signaled anything about managing Christian McCaffrey this early.

Garafolo's answer was a principle rather than a read.

"You have to have in this league two running backs."

Which is why he finds Detroit's approach mind boggling, leaning entirely on one back when an injury there would change the entire offense. If you have a second player with a different skill set who can run hard and physical, there is no reason not to use him.