NFL Network’s Brian Baldinger Talks Cowboys, Giants, Bills & More

Brian Baldinger turned up with a tan and a full week of tape, and Colleen started him on the game everybody watched last.

The Giants have spent years cycling through failed marriages at head coach. Ben McAdoo. Pat Shurmur. Joe Judge. The list keeps going. This one looks different, and Baldinger went to West Virginia during camp to find out why.

"It all changed the day he came on board," Baldinger said of John Harbaugh.

The mandate was to become a bigger, more physical team, the way Baltimore was for years. So they built the roster up and went looking for players who genuinely love football, which meant a lot of guys got jettisoned.

"You've got to love football to play for John, because he's going to keep you out on the field as long as anybody in this league. He's going to be very demanding of what he wants from you and how he wants to do it."

What makes Sunday night matter is not the win itself but what it proves internally.

"When it pays off on a Sunday like it did against the Cowboys, a division game, a game where everybody was optimistic about what the Cowboys could possibly be, and then you take them down and you're 1-0 in the division, it sends the message to everybody in the locker room that what we're doing is the right thing."

The players buy in further, because the template held up. Jaxson Dart played a very good style of football. The Giants pounded Dallas with a bigger team, with Patrick Ricard and Isaiah Likely doing the heavy work.

On the other sideline, Baldinger saw errors that have nothing to do with talent.

"You can't turn guys loose in the end zone. You've got to cover the backs out of the backfield. You've got to be assignment right."

Then he added the part that is harder to fix.

"Even if you are, I'm not so sure they have the necessary corners to play big time football in this league right now."

Colleen put it plainly. The performance the Giants gave on Sunday night was the one she expected from Dallas, and it came out completely reversed. How concerned should the Cowboys be?

Baldinger is concerned, with caveats in both directions.

The offense will be fine. He pointed out that George Pickens dropped passes he has to make, which might have changed the game, and noted that Dallas has invested heavily in Pickens and CeeDee Lamb. When those two let the offense down, everything looks worse than it is.

The defense is the real problem, and it is a communication problem before it is a personnel problem.

"They have a lot of new pieces on defense. They obviously are not communicating well."

He likes the coordinator, who came over from Philadelphia and is a good teacher. But the breakdowns were repeated and they were assignment failures, which is why Brian Schottenheimer addressed it immediately afterward. You actually have to cover the man in the flat. You cannot let Isaiah Likely sit down on a route uncovered.

Mistakes like that are correctable. Baldinger just keeps arriving at the same larger point, and he announced that he always will.

"Their best player now plays for the Green Bay Packers."

Micah Parsons is hurt at the moment, which does not change the argument.

"You can't let Micah Parsons out of your locker room. I don't care if you like him or don't like him. That guy changed the game every Sunday for the Cowboys while he was there. You can put all these pieces together, you're not going to get Micah Parsons on the field for the Cowboys."

That brought the conversation to Arizona, where Colleen admitted she is fully hyped after one win and wanted to know whether that is justified.

Baldinger started with the roster math, which is the fun part. Outside of two offensive linemen, this is essentially the same team that lost 11 straight games a year ago.

The difference is that there is now a real offensive plan.

Kendrick Bourne caught eight passes, and Baldinger's favorite detail about him has nothing to do with catching.

"You don't block, you don't get the rock. Kendrick Bourne is blocking at the point of attack, opening up runs, giving you the double bicep pose after some big blocks. That's pretty cool stuff."

Nobody can cover Trey McBride, which is not new, and Arizona made sure to get him the ball. What is new is the backfield, with Tyler Allgeier and Jeremiah Love giving them a tandem and a genuine emphasis on the run.

And then there is the quarterback, who has been around long enough to collect a shelf full of helmets.

"Jacoby Brissett found a home. He can run this offense. He's very efficient, he's accurate, he knows where to go with the ball, and they did a good job of protecting him."

Baldinger still has questions about what the Arizona defense actually is. He also thinks one play tilted the field.

"That hit by Mack Wilson on Ladd McConkey in the middle of the field changed the whole game. That was their offense for the Chargers."

Nobody wants anyone hurt. But that is what happens when you cross the middle against a defense with somebody roaming.

"You become more physical than the other team, and that's what they did in that game."

Colleen laid out the numbers, which are not what anyone predicted for a new Mike McDaniel offense. Arizona held Justin Herbert to 268 total yards and 17 first downs, forced two turnovers and got three sacks.

"It was pedestrian," Baldinger said. "Very pedestrian."

His diagnosis of the Chargers is about personnel rather than scheme.

"Mike McDaniel can draw up offense with the best minds in this business, but they don't have a lot of players that have real juice."

He went position by position. The tight ends are just okay, with Charlie Kolar functioning as a blocker and Gadsden fine. Quentin Johnston sometimes catches it and sometimes does not, so you never know what you are getting.

"The one guy that honestly it looks like Justin Herbert really trusts and believes in is Ladd McConkey. He's a great route runner, he gets open. But there's not a lot of explosive plays in that offense right now."

Which means the run game has to be far better than it was.

He also gave real credit to the other coordinator in the game. Nick Rallis was under fire last season with a defense that was terrible using basically these same players.

"He got them to play really good football. They didn't break down. They covered well enough. They didn't give up big plays."

Colleen then went where she had to go with an offensive line guy, asking how much blame the Chargers line deserves.

Baldinger's answer starts in the middle.

"You've got a rookie center in there. You've got to be strong in the middle."

The tackles are very good. The guards are average, and he expects the right guard to keep struggling, because Cole Strange has struggled throughout his career despite being a first round pick, and the Chargers are counting on him right now.

The frustrating part is that they thought they had solved this. Tyler Biadasz was supposed to be the center, then got hurt in the preseason, and now a rookie has to build interior chemistry on the fly.

A brief detour was required to explain the tan. With no football over Labor Day weekend, Baldinger went to Cozumel and did some deep sea diving.

"Baldi just out in the wild."

Back to the other LaFleur, and what went wrong in Green Bay. Baldinger's answer was one name.

"Brian Flores. He went nuts in this game."

Flores can draw up pressure with anyone who has ever done it, and it did not work immediately. Christian Watson went 81 yards across the field early, because Minnesota did not rob the middle the way it wanted. They got the throw they wanted and simply did not make the play.

That is usually where a coordinator backs off. Flores did the opposite.

"There's an old saying, sometimes you get the bull and sometimes the bull gets you. Well, sometimes when the bull gets you, you kind of back off. He just went hardcore, blitz zero looks like every play."

Jordan Love got hit 15 times. Green Bay coughed up a fumble recovery returned for a touchdown. It got ugly.

"That's just Flores. If you don't have an answer for it, you're just going to keep getting it, and everybody else is going to get it too if you can't handle it."

The Packers made it worse on themselves. They have two running backs who have not played much football in this league, and Matt LaFleur wants to run it. Once the lead started slipping, they went pass happy, which invited Flores to dial it up further.

"They're up 22-10 and they just got steamrolled once the blitzes started coming."

Then Houston, and Josh Allen finally settling an old score. Colleen framed it as exorcising demons. Baldinger went further.

"He eradicated the ghost."

The history is specific. Allen went down there last year, got hit 20 times and sacked eight, with Will Anderson and Danielle Hunter getting busy all afternoon.

This time Buffalo had an answer, and Baldinger credits the plan.

"Dion Dawkins played great, but they really protected the edges. That was Joe Brady's emphasis. We're not going to let these guys get free runs and overpower our tackles and get to Josh."

That falls on Brady as the head coach, the offensive coordinator and the play caller. Once Allen got comfortable, Baldinger is not sure he has seen him better.

DJ Moore helped. The tight ends were excellent in protection. The line performed. There was decent balance with James Cook in the run game.

"He was as good as I've seen Josh Allen against maybe the best defense in the league. One great decision and one great throw after another. But he had some time back there too. He wasn't under duress the way he had been in the past against that defense."

Looking ahead, Baldinger had a list. Detroit's offense looked dynamic on Thursday with a good plan from its new coordinator, New Orleans put together a real comeback, and Aidan Hutchinson was excellent, which sets up two good offenses going at each other.

He also wanted to talk about Denver, and he was not gentle.

"Denver's coming off a pathetic effort on Monday night. The tackling was atrocious."

He put a play up publicly to rip them, which he says he does not normally do, because he knew Sean Payton and Vance Joseph had already delivered the same message internally.

"You saw the play, Rashee Rice on a hit screen. Did anybody want to get to the ball? Did anybody want to tackle? It was awful."

The matchup he is most looking forward to comes out of that. Jacksonville went to Denver last year and handed the Broncos their worst loss, and Trevor Lawrence just played about as well as Baldinger has ever seen him.

The specific thing he will be watching is a rookie left guard.

"Emanuel Pregnon, out of Oregon, the third round pick. I remember telling Tony Boselli, you get a chance to draft this guy, don't screw it up."

The selling point is hands.

"He's got 11 inch hands. I've got big hands. His hands are another digit longer than mine. I love a left guard that has big hands, because you can't get those hands off you."

Baldinger wants to see what Zach Allen does against him at Mile High.

He is calling Alabama and Florida State on Saturday and Atlanta and Carolina on Sunday, a game that will send one of those teams to 0-2. His interest there is a defense that gave up 59 points.

"Carolina's tackling was atrocious. Just atrocious. Chicago scored four straight touchdowns, long drives. They didn't tackle anybody."

They also have good players everywhere, which is why he wants to see whether that unit wakes up.

The interview closed where it started, with the tan. Colleen wanted the name of the enormous ray Baldinger has invoked before.

"That's the Pacific manta," he said, recommending a night dive in Kona on the big island of Hawaii. "You just watch these tremendous animals with wingspans just circle around you. It's like you're in manta ray heaven."

Colleen announced she is hiring him as her travel agent.