Is this real?
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What is the “Is This Real?” segment and why is it a weekly tradition?
Welcome to the Athletic Football Show, brought to you by the U.S. Bank Smartly Visa Signature Card. I'm Robert Mays. Every year, two weeks into the season, we like to have a show in the middle of the week where we play Is This Real? We have two games worth of evidence for these teams. That's still probably not enough to know definitively how the NFL season is going to play out. But we like to do this. Two weeks into the year, some of the things that have surprised us, both good and bad in the NFL. Is this stuff real? We always like to do this with Bill Barnwell, my buddy from ESPN. That is who joined us today. We dug into the Panthers' offense, which we haven't really talked about, the Packers, the Bills, the Chargers.
A lot of fun conversations here. Let's get to all of it with Bill Barnwell right now.
Playing a little game today that I always like to play two weeks into the season. Barnwell, I think we did this last year. Do we do this two years ago? Is this the third straight year we've done this? Or was this last year? We've been doing Is This Real since we were children. That's what I'm saying. But I was trying to think of how many years in a row we've done it. I think it's a lot of years in a row, isn't it? Two weeks into the season? It feels like a tradition at this point.
We are always in one form or another doing Is This Real, whether it's as strictly as a podcast topic or whether it's just kind of testing little things in season. I feel like that is a constant back and forth between us.
It's a fun game to play two weeks in because the question is super relevant for pretty much every single team in the league. I will say, and I preface this, I think on Sunday night when we were talking about the fact that we were going to do this this week, a lot of times you have a team that did the same thing two weeks in a row. And we ask, is this real two weeks into the season? There was such a swift change for so many teams from week one to week two that I think the pool of potential candidates was For is this real this year might be a little smaller than normal, but we still have enough stuff to dive into today.
We could do a different show, which is I don't want it to be real. And we could do a lot of stuff after we saw on week two.
Yeah, you and I both riding high after week one with watching our teams and the young quarterbacks and then we're in a very different place now. At least mine gets to come back. All we're really enduring is one week of Case Keenum and a bunch of memes. You're enduring a season without your team starting quarterback.
Yeah, there was a lot of the reaping, sowing tweet. That was me on Monday night.
Is Bryce Young’s early‑season surge with the Panthers a sustainable trend?
Good thing I didn't pick the Giants to make the playoffs. That would have been a stupid thing. Did you really do that?
I did. Oh, wow. Well, why would you ever do that? Where is the potential upside in doing that? Well, I'm foolish is what it boils down to. We do have some candidates for is this real, and the exercise is as simple as the format. I mean, we're going to ask is this real for
something that we've seen. This sounds like you being Bob Barker explaining a game on The Price is Right.
It's a very simple game. We're going to take a topic from the first two weeks of the NFL season. We're going to ask, is this real? And we're going to try to figure it out. Let's start with one of the motivations for wanting to do this show this week on top of it being an annual tradition. But the first one that came to mind, a conversation we haven't really had on this feed. They played the Falcons on Sunday night. We talked mostly about the Bears offense coming out of week one. But something I was very excited to dive into today. Bryce Young. The Carolina Panthers, two weeks into the season, fifth in EPA per dropback. The four teams ahead of them, Niners, Bills, Cowboys, all predictable coming into the year.
All thought those would be good offenses. Number four, the Seattle Seahawks and Drew Locke. So we made that one probably isn't worth the conversation because Sam Donald is going to be back.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the “Is This Real?” segment and why is it a weekly tradition?
0:00–2:33
2
Is Bryce Young’s early‑season surge with the Panthers a sustainable trend?
2:33–4:31
3
Is the Cincinnati Bengals’ defense finally turning the corner after a disastrous 2025?
4:31–7:47
4
Why are the Green Bay Packers’ offense ranked 30th after two games?
7:47–11:08
5
Are the Los Angeles Chargers’ offense really that broken in 2026?
11:08–13:52
6
Can the Bengals maintain their low‑blitz, high‑pressure approach for the rest of the season?
13:52–17:16
7
Will Josh Allen be able to replicate his MVP‑level performance this year?
17:16–19:41
8
What can listeners expect from next week’s week‑three preview and Thursday night match‑ups?
19:41–57:09
Speakers
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