Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - Bonus Episode: Super Bowl & Beyond - with Mike Tanenbaum

Episode Date: February 11, 2023

Mike Tannenbaum has more than 2 decades of experience in NFL team front offices. He was an executive vice president of football operations for the Miami Dolphins (2015-18), and executive vice president and general manager for the New York Jets (2006-12). Under Mike’s leadership, the Jets advanced to the playoffs in three seasons, won four playoff games and made two AFC Championship game appearances. Mike’s tenure as general manager of the Jets marked the most successful seven-year period in franchise history.He’s also worked with legendary NFL coaches, from Bill Parcells to Bill Belichick. Today Mike is an ESPN analyst – ESPN’s NFL Front Office Insider. In addition to his ESPN role, Tannenbaum is the founder of football think tank and news and commentary platform, The 33rd Team, and he teaches Football Business Management: The Inner Workings of the NFL at Columbia University. Mike began his NFL career as an intern for the New Orleans Saints in 1994. Discussed on the show: The33rdteam.com

everything you need to know about this weekend's super bowl and the off season that will follow it today is one of our special episodes on the call me back podcast what we call our free apps free appetizer not a whole full episode, but still meaty enough to listen to. It's a little bit of a detour from what we normally cover in these conversations, but we still try to bring on interesting folks for these conversations. So whether you're a football junkie or not, I think you will enjoy Mike Tannenbaum, who I'm thrilled to have on. Mike has more than two decades of experience in NFL team front offices. He was an executive vice president of football

operations for the Miami Dolphins and executive vice president and general manager for the New York Jets between 2006 and 2012, when I first got to know him. Under Mike's leadership, the Jets advanced to the playoffs in three seasons. Imagine that, Jets fans. The Jets won four playoff games and made two AFC championship game appearances. Mike's tenure as general manager of the Jets marked the most successful seven-year period in franchise history, and I do have the receipts to prove it. Mike has also worked with legendary NFL coaches, two in particular we talk about in this conversation, Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick. And today, Mike is an ESPN analyst. If you are a sports media consumer, you see him all the time. He's what ESPN calls an NFL front

office insider, and he's on all their shows. In addition to his ESPN role, Mike is the founder of a football think tank and news and commentary platform called the 33rd Team, which I have become a reader of and we will talk about in this conversation. And he also teaches football business management, the inner workings of the NFL at Columbia University. Mike began his NFL career as an intern for the New Orleans Saints in 1994 and then went on to have this storied career. And that's important for my special co-producer to hear today, Eli Senor, my son, who is a massive Mike Tannenbaum fan and helped prepare this episode. This is Call Me Back. And I'm pleased to welcome to this podcast for the first time, my longtime friend, Mike Tannenbaum, former general manager of the New York Jets, former executive vice president for football operations with the Miami Dolphins, currently an analyst for ESPN and co-founder of

the 33rd team, this excellent media site, which we'll talk about a little later. And he does a bunch of other interesting things that we'll talk about, including teaching a course about the business of the NFL at Columbia University. Mike, thank you for joining me today. Dan, great to be with you, and happy Super Bowl week. Happy Super Bowl week. It's like, I got to tell you, Mike, it's kind of like the most fun week, one of the most fun weeks of my year, and one of the most depressing weeks. Because the Jets aren't in it?

Well, that's, we'll get to that, because the Jets aren't in it. That's sort of like a steady state of like, you know, that's nothing new. No, it's sad because it's like, you know, it's the end of the season. And it's just a reminder that all good things must come to an end. But we'll get to the Jets in a minute because I actually have much hope for them right now. I'm happily happy about them. They have been a long time. But all right. So, Mike, we'll talk about what's going on in the NFL, but before we do this,

the Superbowl this Sunday, uh, you know, Eagles, uh, and the, and the, uh, chiefs, you know, what are, to you, what are like, what are the big storylines? What are the big themes going into this game? Yeah. yeah um a couple of them really stand out so what's remarkable is jalen hurts this is an unbelievable statistic jalen hurts in the 2022 season dan has thrown 22 passes the entire year in the second half when they haven't had the lead that shows you the dominance that the eagles have had So the best chance for the Chiefs to win is by them playing well on offense early in the game to put pressure on Jalen Hurts. Now, we don't know if he can't throw the ball from the pocket. I'm assuming that he can and will.

He's an MVP candidate. But the Eagles have been so dominant this year that they've been able to stay balanced in offense. And if they can do that on Sunday, I would expect, you know, a pretty significant Eagle win. So that to me would be the first key to look for. And are you surprised by how well the Chiefs wound up doing in the AFC championship game, given Patrick Mahomes' injury, this supposed high ankle sprain or whatever it was?

So the definition of greatness is making those around you better. We could look at stats and say, you know, player A is better than player B, but there's this great intangible in sports known as greatness, and that's impacting those around you. And Patrick Rooms came out of the womb with greatness. He's going to go to the grave with greatness, and we're seeing it before our very eyes. They lost a great player in the offseason, by any measure, in Tyreek Hill.

He wasn't 100% in the championship game, and there were other games where he was nicked up as well, but they just kept on rolling, and remarkably, in five years as a starter, Dan, this is probably a record that will never be broken in all sports. He had five consecutive home championship games. He's actually never played a real game in the playoffs. They consider the Super Bowl a neutral site. That's how dominant they've been. In terms of, there was all this excitement about Brock Purdy,

the 49ers quarterback, and he sort of came out of nowhere. I actually thought the 49ers were going to win that game the nfc championship game against the eagles if he had won that game and the 49ers had made it to the super bowl and he was healthy he would have been i think the first uh rookie qb to lead a team into the super bowl what kind of i mean and yet he was like the 200th or 199th, some crazy irrelevant draft number. So he was on nobody's radar screen, and then he's starting for an NFC Championship game. Sadly, he didn't finish the game. What do you see as this guy's future?

He's really smart. He has great anticipation and accuracy. I think he will be an NFL starter. And all of us that have run teams and drafted quarterbacks, it just shows you how inexact of a science it is. If San Francisco felt better about him, Dan, they wouldn't have waited to the last pick in the draft. And I was actually looking at it this week, just in terms of preparing for ESPN and looking at some of the contracts coming up in the last five years. And preparing for the Call Me Back podcast and preparing for this conversation.

For the most paramount part of the Call Me Back podcast. In the last five years, there's been 56 quarterbacks that have been drafted in the NFL, 56 total. I have a total of eight that you would say without question are quote unquote hits just in terms of they are surefire starters. And those eight are Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, Gardner Minshew, Jalen Hurts, Justin Herbert, Joe Burrow, Trevor Lawrence, and the aforementioned Brock Purdy. That's 14%. You're a hall of famer in the world of finance and business. You would have been fired several times over, Dan, if you were right 14% of the time.

But when you look at it over a five-year period, these are the best of the best evaluators on the planet. They run 32 teams as a whole from a macro standpoint. So either based on performance or injury, like in Tua's case. But if you look at it, of the 56 quarterbacks taken eight are surefire nfl starters so all right we're going to talk about the jets then i didn't want to get to it right now but let's because you're you're you're touching uh you're you know touching a nerve here so zach wilson had all this promise two years ago he was the number two draft pick. He was our highest draft pick in that draft for the Jets. And he was kind of a bust.

So how is it that we picked such a quarterback that turned out to be such a bust? He may not. He could potentially go into the position. And then the last pick was a guy who won, I think, eight games in a row at a pivotal point of the season for the 49ers. Like, what's wrong? Is the process broken? Yeah, the process is definitely broken. And look, my track record was more good than bad, but it was also far from perfect.

So I'm not saying, like, what's happening now is, you know, just on the people making those decisions. I would say it's a couple of things. Number one, there is a herd mentality, which is guys get a little bit of a buzz. You look at Zach Wilson at BYU, he played really good football. But one of the things that Coach Parcells instilled in me was, there is something to be said for physical measurements. And when you look at Zach Wilson from the waist down, he's not a very big guy. And typically, over time, those guys get hit.

They're not the same player. And that is something that I know a lot of teams had concerns about Zach Wilson. And you want to know why Brock Purdy was the last pick of the draft. Physically, he's an average guy. He's average size. He's average speed. Obviously, he has a great processor of information. He's very accurate.

But that is why players will be picked in a sort of a disparate place from where they should be. Who are the quarterbacks you, when you were general manager of the Jets, was that Gino Smith? Was that your? It was Mark Sanchez and Chad Paynton and Brett Favre. Okay. So, oh, that brings up two questions then. One, if the Jet, first of all, do you think the Jets are going to trade for Aaron Rodgers? I think they should try. This is a little bit more complicated than when we trade for Favre because it's a three-team transaction. Most notably, he's going to make roughly $58 million this year if he plays.

So I think if you saw his body language, he was interviewed by CBS at the end of the pro-am in Pebble Beach, Dan. There's no doubt he's playing. His body language was way too engaged with that discussion. Plus, I don't think he's going to walk away from $58 million. So taking a retirement off the table, he is not a free agent. He is under contract with the Green Bay Packers. They have to acquiesce if he wants to be traded. This is a very complicated transaction where you need three parties to all agree. And if I'm the Packers, I'm a little bit- Three parties are who? I mean, you mean it's the Jets, the Packers, and Aaron Rodgers?

Yeah. It's either the Jets or, just for the sake of discussion, slash the Raiders, let's say. So Aaron Rodgers may knock on their door and say, hey, I want to be a Jet. But if the Raiders are offering two ones and the Jets are offering a seventh round pick, the Packers are going to say, you know what, Aaron, like you're either going to be a Raider, you're going to be a Packer, or you're going to retire. You are under contract. You are not a free agent. And while we're going to try to work this out for everybody, just understand that team A is offering two first round picks. The team you want to go to is offering a seventh. We're not just going to indiscriminately make you happy out of our expense. Right.

So they almost turned him into an advocate to put pressure on the Jets. A hundred percent. Like it is a bonafide three team, three party transaction. Okay. And if the Jets and you, does it feel to you, I mean, you're following this all closely. Does it feel to you all the momentum is moving towards the Jets, towards Rodgers at the Jets, and does it feel to you, I mean, you're following this all closely, does it feel to you all the momentum is moving towards the Jets, towards Rodgers or the Jets?

I think it's very likely it would be either the Jets or the Raiders. The Raiders make a lot of sense for a couple reasons. They need a quarterback. They have a really good offense. Devontae Adams, who he's obviously very close with, and they have an offensive head coach who's had a historic amount of success with Tom Brady and Josh McDaniels. And if the Jets don't get Aaron Rodgers, who do you think they wind up with?

By the way, this is like extremely valuable intel. At some point, I'm going to get to other questions that don't have to do just with the Jets. For my son who's sitting right next to me, this is chock full of intel. If the Jets don't wind up with Aaron Rodgers, where do you think they land QBY? Yeah. And your son's on IR, so we want to make him feel as happy as possible here. Exactly. My son just came out of knee surgery. So this is exactly. All right. So what other- Yeah. So the verb I would use here, Dan, is I would scour. So I would, first of all,

bring Zach Wilson back. Whatever we get out of Zach is a lottery ticket. I would re-sign Mike White and I would draft the player. And when you look at the best organizations and look at the Philadelphia Eagles, they did a great job. They extended Carson Wentz and within a year of that extension, Dan, they drafted Jalen Hurts. And I think that's sort of the mindset that the Jets need to have, which is Mike White, you know, we could argue, is he a B? Is he a B minus? How good is he? Those are great discussions to have. He's okay. He's not a championship level quarterback, but for now, he may be your best non Aaron Rodgers option. And then I would, like I said, continue to try to develop that position and draft another.

Okay. Lastly, before we move off the Jets, were you surprised by Gino Smith, the former Jet, and how well he did, at least for the first half of the season with the Seahawks? Yeah, a little bit. And I will say this, Dan, like one of the most underrated aspects of team building is to correctly evaluate your own and give Pete Carroll and their GM, John Schneider, a lot of credit. They moved on from Russell Wilson. I don't know if they thought he'd be this good, but it's a great reminder that the quarterback's a developmental position. And as the year went on, Geno Smith just got better and better.

Okay. I want to talk to you about another team that we Jets fans care a lot about, but the whole kind of global football fandom world cares about, or it's historically cared about, which is the New England Patriots. Over the last three seasons, they have lost more games than they have won, which has been a shock. I love this book. Here it is. It's called Seth Wickersham's book, It's Better to be Feared, which is a book about the Patriots. I've read a bunch of books about the Patriots and just the management of the Patriots.

And then they've gone through this horrendous, at least a couple of seasons since Brady has left. And there was this big Boston Herald sort of investigative piece, trying to understand what went wrong at the Patriots this season specifically, but really over the last couple of seasons, I highly recommend the piece. We'll put it in the show notes. It's a fascinating kind of business management, sort of your world of the Patriots and what went wrong there.

So it's basically a deep look at what happened at the Patriots over the last couple seasons. I'm going to quote from it here. It says, they averaged, they the Patriots, averaged 18.1 offensive points per game, and quarterback Mac Jones regressed despite having made in Bill Belichick's words, quote, dramatic improvement over the previous off season. In the words of other Patriots, the offense was worse than numbers could capture. It was broken, dysfunctional, riddled with distrust. What happened from this juggernaut, this steamroller of a machine that had one of the longest running empires in professional sports anywhere is suddenly being described as broken, dysfunctional, and riddled with distrust.

Well, look, Coach Belichick deserves a ton of credit, Dan. I mean, what they did was historically great, as we all know, and transitions are tough, and you're transitioning from the greatest of all time in Tom Brady. And I think the most effective leadership that I've been around in 20-plus years of being with teams is player-led leadership. And I think what happens is when you don't have that buffer between management and sort of like your locker room, you're going to have confrontation. You're going to have difficult sort of conversations, and you're going to tell people things. Look, when you're running a team, and you know this from senior management, every day someone's not going to be happy with their title, their money, their responsibilities, and now you have 90 of those players, 90 dreams,

90 goals, 90 insecurities, and now all of a sudden, like, Coach Belichick is a really smart guy that, let's face it, sometimes he's not going to have the best bedside manner. And I think that's where the Tom Bradyades and some of the Teddy Bruskis, Rom Ninkovichs of the world, those great leaders were great buffers. And when you don't have that, I think those are some of the things that you hear. And so what do you think happens now with the Patriots? What is Kraft and the other leadership of the team and ownership of the team,

what do they do with Belichick now? I could tell you firsthand from working do with belichick now i could tell you firsthand for working with coach belichick twice there is nobody harder on bill belichick than bill belichick and the fact that he went out and got bill o'brien um and moved you know and is presumably going to reassign both joe judge and matt patricia last year's offensive play caller and quarterback coach is him saying like the results weren't good enough. And he knows we're in a results-oriented business. And I thought by him taking that step was his way of saying, hey, it wasn't good enough.

The standards are the standards, and we've got to make a change here. My son pointed out to me that when I told him you and I were going to be talking, he said, ask Mike about his view that the Chicago Bears should trade to get a first round pick and get a new quarterback. He apparently saw you talking about this. He was perplexed by it. So explain, by the way, I've got some fans, some friends who listen to this who are Bears fans.

I'm thinking about you, Roger Bennett. So what's your view on the Bears here? They had this amazing quarterback, or who we thought was an amazing quarterback in Justin Fields. He was a high draft pick for them, and you're saying get rid of him? Yeah, that's exactly right. And I hope your son is as studious with his academic pursuits as he is with following the sport of football.

I know my son, I have the very same concerns, Dan. So anyway, I like Justin Fields. So let's be really clear about that. I think Justin Fields is a solid NFL quarterback who can make great splash plays. And that's why the crowd loves him and the fans love him. He can make a few plays that nobody else on the planet can make. However, I think Bryce Young is going to be a better quarterback. Bryce Young is smaller.

He has a more accurate arm. He has great anticipation. And one of the best values in all of the North American sports is a rookie contract for a first-round quarterback. And what I mean by that specifically is with the market being reset at $50 million and more per year, you could save tens of millions of dollars on a rookie contract. So with Justin Fields going to year three,

and now you could reset that rookie quarterback contract back to year one, it gives you three more years before you have to deal with a massive increase. And just to put context on that statement, Dan, look at the Jaguars. They go out, they have Trevor Lawrence. In year two, they get Evan Ingram, Brandon Scherff, Christian Kirk, all these really solid B-level players. And now if I'm Chicago, I draft Bryce Young, I trade Justin Fields for a one, maybe more. I take the best defensive player I can get. And with all this massive amount of cap room, I signed three or four solid players and now I'm fortifying my team. I have a better quarterback and I have three more years until I have to deal with his next contract.

I want to turn to the business of the NFL in a moment. Before I do, one last personnel question. Lamar Jackson, who's a very impressive quarterback for the Ravens. There was early buzz following the regular season. The Jets were going to get him. My son tells me the Ravens are likely to franchise tag him, which means he won't go anywhere. What do you think is going to happen? They're going to keep him and they'll franchise him. He's a really good player. I think what is happening there, and this transitions a little bit into the business discussion, Dan, and one of my biggest frustrations certainly representing teams is agents holding on to a deal in a market. And clearly what's happened here is Lamar Jackson is saying, hey, in our division is this player, Deshaun Watson, who got $230 million guaranteed, who's had very significant, let's face it, civil allegations with multiple women

who are alleged victims of some very bad behavior by Deshaun Watson. And despite all that, he's still got $230 million fully guaranteed. I've been the league MVP. I've played great. I'm impeccable off the field and I'm not taking less than him. We're in the same division and we're competing against one another. And what presumably Baltimore's argument is, Hey, look, that's great. What they did Lamar. And we love you, but here's 10 other deals that have very significant guarantees. Patrick Mahomes, Aaron Rogers on and on and on. But guess what? Like they're not fully guaranteed and we're not going to be fully guaranteed. So we're going to take those other 10 deals and not one and figure out something that makes sense. And he's like, look, I'm not taking less than

Deshaun Watson. And that's where we are. Okay. So now let's talk about the business and then we'll let you go. So you've recently started this new site called the 33rd team, which I highly recommend. We'll put a link to it in the show notes. It's the33rdteam.com, which I want you to describe the sort of conceit and the impetus behind it. But before I do, just a snapshot of the state of the NFL. It is, according to one stat I read, literally the most valuable entertainment business or sports entertainment business in the world, which blows me away

because it's up there with like the Premier League and soccer and all these other all these other sports it's like a whole other level in a sense and i'm i've been following the nfl my whole life i really did think beginning in 2014 with the ray rice scandal that we were at the beginning of this potential you know now i would say winding down of the nfl i thought the eulogies were written prematurely but definitely um it was headed for a very rough patch. And you had the Ray Rice scandal, which was obviously very worrisome, you know, comparable to this, to the Sean Watson stories you're talking about. We had the CTE, the wrist to head injury. This season, we had multiple concussions, players being carted off the field. We had a cardiac crisis during the Bengal, during a very high profile bengals uh bills

game we we had covid for the last couple of years and yet the nfl seems to be as strong an enterprise as ever with a strong and growing following as ever and i have a bunch of stats that i was recently looking at um that show that but live football is the most watched television entertainment in the United States on a given year. Even bad games, the numbers are off the charts and beat anything else from the Oscars to the World Cup. So what happened over this last decade in this business? Yeah, watching it, I think ironically one of the seminal moments was a New York Times op-ed article by none other than Adam Silver, the great commissioner of the NBA, who said,

the time has come to legalize gambling. And I think that's really when we get right through it, we have the greatest sport, we have the best competition, we have a salary cap that truly equals the playing field. But from a fan interest standpoint, the numbers are overwhelming from fantasy to gambling to daily fantasy. Everybody is engaged. The sport is just tailor-made for that.

And if we're having this conversation 10 years ago today, Dan, or in 2033, it's going to be the same. I think the moat the NFL has is tremendous. I think the emphasis on player health and safety will continue to go in the correct trajectory, which is it's not perfect, but I think Roger Goodell has done a great job, Dan. And because of the interest of the sport, the betting on the sport that's now legal, the fantasy around the sport, every team is actually mandated to put up fantasy rankings every week, not as much as regular standings. There was 3 million people that applied to buy a ticket for one regular

season game in Germany. And what did the NFL do? They pivoted to two regular season games this year. The amount of interest in our sport has never been more. Three million people tried to buy a ticket for that. It was a game, I think, in Munich. Yeah, three million. Three million people.

That's unbelievable. Yeah, and look, the numbers bear it out. A regular season game beats out the playoffs of any other sport, and that's not going to change. The number of great young quarterbacks is just, you know, going to drive the interest that Jalen Hurts, Justin Herberts, Joe Burrows of the world. The sport's never been healthier in my opinion. And the macroeconomics like underpinnings of these national deals is just going to add more fuel to the fire.

Okay. So can you tell us about the 33rd team and what, what you're thinking was behind it and how it's doing? Yep. So the 33rd team is comported of former players, coaches, and GMs that have actually run teams. And our standard is that of the 32 other teams. And, uh, I have partners, uh, Joe Banner, Tony Petitti. We have great investors in Liberty Media and the Bow Post Group. And we want to put out content that's differentiated and unique and give our followers a peek behind the curtains on how decisions are made. So if you want to hear Bill Cowher or Bill Parcells, if you want to hear about offensive quarterback play from Mike Martz

or Marty Moringwig, Mark Trestman, Rich Gannon, I would urge you to visit our site. And is it right now it's focused on football. Will it broaden beyond football? We have had interest from other sports, you know, in terms of like there's always people that are in the cycle between their transitioning. So we know we're just trying to capture that content and again,

give people a very differentiated and unique view. So we are actually looking at other sports as well. And the idea is like you mentioned, you know, the bow post group, I'm a, I'm a big fan of, uh, of Seth Klarman. So the idea is like in the finance or business business world, you'd want to hear what Seth Klarman has to say, not just as a subject of reporting, but actually if he were doing the writing on a particular trade or a particular macro strategy. So here you have actual practitioners, not just observers, but people who've actually been in the business doing the writing. And the comment. Right. So right now NFL staffs are being, uh, comprised. Sean Payne gets hired by Denver. Bill Parcells just wrote an article about why he hired certain people to be on his staff. Very few people on that planet have hired better people. Bill

Parcells hired Bill Belichick and Tom Coughlin, Romeo Cornell and Sean Payton. And he goes into great detail of why he hired those guys. And lastly, in terms of, so Bill Parcells is a great example, former head coach of the New York Giants, of a guy who has these incredible coaching trees where all these people who worked in his organization wound up going into these incredible leadership roles. So there's something about his leadership style that cultivates so many leaders. People talk now about that being with Kyle Shanahan and the 49ers. There are so many leaders, including the coach of our New York Jets, who come from his world. And they're obviously the defensive coach for the 49ers, I think just signed with the Texans.

And there's plenty of other examples. Who is that net? Who is the Bill Parcells of our era in terms of developing all these tremendous leaders? And what should we learn from them? Yeah, it could be Kyle. When Kyle's put out a lot of Matt LaFleur, he said Robert Sala, D'Amico Ryans.

I think Kyle has the sort of, he's at the right point of his age, his credentials, his expertise, has a lot of his data. And Mike Shanahan was a great coach. And his sort of acumen around quarterbacks is second to none. So I think he's well positioned to maybe be

sort of like that next generation of having a meaningful coaching tree. All right. Mike, you've been very generous with your time. I know this is an incredibly busy week for you. So I appreciate it. We'll post the 33rd team into the show notes. And I highly encourage our listeners to read, subscribe, uh, consume. You will be enlightened. You will be illuminated. And, uh, it really is like a, a much different

platform than the traditional, uh, sports media out there. Nothing against the traditional sports media out there, but this is, uh, like I said, this is from the perspective of, of practitioners. The practitioners are the writers and the journalists. So congratulations, Mike, on the launch of the 33rd team. And I hope to see you soon. All right, great. Thanks so much, Dan. That's our show for today. To keep up with Mike Tannenbaum,

you can follow him on Twitter at at real, R-E-A-L, Tannenbaum. And of course, we talked a lot about the 33rd team. Highly recommend it. You can find the 33rd team at the33rdteam.com, the33rdteam.com. And of course, you can track a lot of his commentary and analysis on ESPN. Special thanks to my son, Eli Senor, for helping with the Mike Tannenbaum

conversation and co-piloting it with me. He was sitting next to me when we spoke to Mike. Call Me Back is produced by Alain Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.