"It isn't decided": Susan Herzog speaks up, and the IR Kings wait on Monday night

For most of this fall, Susan Herzog let her roster do the talking. I sent the IR Kings owner questions about her receivers, her kicker, her 2-4 start and this week's trip to Fifth Quarter, and for a long stretch the answer was quiet. That was her right.

Sunday night, with her team's game still hanging, she answered all of it at once, on the record. The first thing she wanted understood was simple.

"It isn't decided," she said.

I'm going to be careful here, because the final isn't posted and I won't guess at one. Here is what I can tell you. Fifth Quarter has nobody left to play this week. "Fifth Quarter is finished," as Herzog put it. The IR Kings still have three players going Monday night when Dallas visits Philadelphia: Javonte Williams in the Cowboys' backfield, and Jalen Carter and Cooper DeJean on the Eagles' defense. A running back and two defenders have swung closer games than this one.

What struck me more was how she talked about the people in it.

Start with Puka Nacua. The Rams listed him as questionable all week with a calf injury, and he didn't practice. He played anyway. "Puka played through the calf," Herzog said, and she was plainly glad of what he gave her. Quay Walker, the Raiders linebacker who was also listed questionable, with a chest injury, played his first game for the IR Kings. "Quay's settled in," she said. "He plays every snap."

Then she brought up the obvious one before I could: Bo Nix had a big Sunday, and he had it on her bench. "Everybody saw it," she said.

I wrote last week that the bench is one sentence in an IR Kings story, not the story, and I'm holding to that. I'll add this much: an owner who brings up her own bench before the reporter does has earned the right to move on from it.

The line I keep coming back to is about Christian Kirk. He came off injured reserve Saturday, listed questionable with a calf injury despite a full practice. I've written about this receiver room as a revolving door all fall, a steady line of new faces underneath Nacua and Terry McLaurin. Herzog isn't treating Kirk's return as a promotion.

"I'm so happy he's back," she said. "He sat on my IR a long time, and he earns his way up from the back of the room."

That's an owner telling you nobody gets handed a starting job, not even the one she waited on. She said much the same about the rest of the room. "Puka is Puka, Keenan's been a pro, and Kyle Williams is exactly what I wanted, a young guy who could step in with Terry out on bye," she said. "We needed bodies and we got good ones." I've been calling it churn. She calls it depth. After Sunday, I'm not sure we disagree as much as it sounds.

And then there's the kicker. Regular readers know my soft spot. Last week I wrote that the IR Kings have a touchdown problem, not a kicker problem, and that Daniel Carlson was the steadiest thing on the roster. I didn't have the owner's view then. I do now.

"I lean on him and I'm not one bit ashamed of it," Herzog said. "A 58 and a 51 in one afternoon is a man kicking from the parking lot. I'll take the missed 55 for that every week."

It's the plainest thing anyone has said about this team all year.

None of this changes where the IR Kings stand. They came into Sunday at 2-4, three games back in the Remote, and Herzog didn't pretend otherwise. "I don't like it and I won't dress it up," she said, "but three back in October isn't buried."

Here's where we part ways a little. I wrote last week that two 2-4 teams meeting in Week 7 felt like a must-win. "Must-win? I don't love that phrase in October," Herzog said, "but two teams at 2-4, one walks out 3-4 feeling a lot better." Fair enough. I'd still call it a must-win. She sets the lineup, though, and I only second-guess it.

One correction I owe, since she was kind about it. In a note to Herzog last week I put Fifth Quarter's big win over Sports Ballers in the wrong week; it was Week 4. She thanked me for fixing it and said nobody in her house took Fifth Quarter lightly either way.

Her plan for the race is not complicated. "Win Monday," she said, "then win the division games. That's all it is."

Herzog told me she wanted her team to play loose this week, have fun, and let Nacua and Javonte Williams do what they do. One of them is done. The other gets Monday night in Philadelphia, with Carter and DeJean on the other sideline playing for her too. For one more night, the IR Kings still get to have fun with it.