NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal - NFL ATL: Coaching carousel and Best of 2013

Episode Date: January 1, 2014

A room full of heroes -- Dan Hanzus, Gregg Rosenthal, Marc Sessler and Chris Wesseling -- dissects the changing coaching landscape following the conclusion of Week 17 action.  The heroes also share what they loved most about the 2013 regular season, as well as what they are looking forward to next year. Join the conversation on Twitter: @NFL_ATL or #NFLATLLearn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comNFL Daily YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/nflpodcastsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. The Around the League podcast only follows the winning Harbaugh. Welcome back to another edition of the Around the League podcast. My name is Dan Hansis, and I'm joined by a room filled with heroes. Chris Wessling, Mark Sessler, and Greg Rosenthal. What up, boys. Hey, Dan. Happy New Year's Eve.

First time the four horsemen have been together in the same room. for a while. Four horsemen. I don't know. That's really not it. Which one of us is pestilence? You're too smart for us. Yeah, since I don't know if that good or bad, is that the good one or bad one?

Who knows? This, yes, this is New Year's Eve. Mark and I, big New Year's Eve planned. Marking at five tomorrow, me and at six, party time at our respective homes. Party till about 745, then it's like lights out Apple drops mentally. Greg actually took off the two days after New Year's Eve, so you can figure out. out what's going on. It's going to be a wild party for Rosenthal tonight. I am working tomorrow.

It's not going to be too excited, but I'm not coming in there. My wife is... In there being the place we're going to be. Into the office. You know, New Year's Eve, it's a big holiday for my wife. She does all these traditional holiday things. Interesting. New Year's morning, breakfast.

So I've got to get that done. The boss operates with a different set of rules than his minions. You earn this, right? And he's taking advantage, and he's cashing in. Wes has love coming into his life tonight. It's like Love Actually. You're the plot of Love Actually amongst the ATL crew.

You have a woman coming in. Hopefully, Tybee Island is not listening in because we don't want to give him too much of your personal life, but you're going to the Rose Bowl tomorrow with the love of your life. Is that correct? Yes. You can't divulge any more information? I am not at liberty to say. There's a lot of privacy involved with Wes's relationships, but we're going to get it all out of them eventually.

All right. So let's get to some football. Greg, why don't you set us up? Because right now, obviously, it's a weird time for the NFL in terms of news coverage because the biggest games of the season are coming up on Saturday and Sunday or the start of the biggest games of the season. Yet nobody's really talking about the games yet. We're talking about the coaches and Black Monday.

Dha! Was that a question? I don't know. Get us going. It's such a weird time because Sunday was one of the best week 17s I can ever remember between the Packers' Cowboys game, I mean the Packers' Bears game, the Cowboys game at night, and the Chargers game. Usually there's not so much in the line.

It was awesome. And then it quickly changes gears into where you guys are talking Chudzinski on Sunday night. And now we're looking at six head coaches have been fired. And it's just such a dramatic change from one day and next. It's one of our busiest days of the year working. I know we were all a little out of our minds. Three teams, I think, are still up in the air. If you go to NFL.com slash coaching tracker, we've got it all there, all the latest.

Another perk of being the boss, this is the coaching tracker is under Greg's byline. So the metrics going through the roof, compromising the metrics percentages. There's like a robotic group of like 14 people working on this at all times. It's a general rumor mill that people can't get enough up. Greg Rosenthal's little one inch by half inch photo up at the top left. Do the four of us have like baseball cards? these stats stick with us for the rest of our career? It's in a shadowy league figures.

That's why your employee just, you know, has been on the rocks a little bit because I wasn't aware of that. Your number's shaky. So why don't we go, yeah, we'll go through the head coaching tracker. We'll kind of go down the list. We'll start with the Detroit Lions where Jim Schwartz was fired on Monday after, what was it, four seasons? Five seasons.

One playoff season, not a very good record. And now the Lions are moving forward. Where are we at with this team right? now. I had a conversation. We started talking about which of these jobs is the most attractive and we're going to go through them all. But I think the Lions is because they have a quarterback, they have two great defensive tackles, they have an ownership that I don't think really wants to get too involved, which is really what you want out of your boss, to stay out of your hair. I think this is a great job. I don't know what direction they're going. We haven't really gotten

strong rumors for Detroit yet. Bill O'Brien's name, like almost every, head coaching vacancy has been thrown out there. But I don't think this is a big rebuilding job at all. It's a credit to the Schwartz-Mayhew regime of the last five years that this is. It's seen now as the best job, whereas five years ago, you would say the Lions were 31 or 32 in the NFL. Yeah, I mean, you just went through that list and didn't even mention Megatron. Right. I mean, you've got a lot of elements in place.

It's also the vacancy. I mean, these are all important, but what Chicago did last year when they found a guy to come in and fix the most important position on the field. Man, Detroit needs that because Stafford needs that teacher. Well, it kind of comes down to what you think of Stafford. Would you rather have Stafford in hand or what's behind door number two, which is like a high draft pick or veterans? Do you guys think that Stafford is a guy that you can build around and win Super Bowls with,

or is he always going to be this mildly frustrating guy that drives you a little crazy and gets you to seven to nine. I think we're getting close to the he is what he is territory with him now. Now that he's been healthy for three straight seasons, we've gotten a good look at him. And I don't know, I don't want to put too much into what he said last week about, you know, I'm good with the QB coach, which is funny. But, you know, I think that he could use some tutelage, but I still don't think that's going to change much who he is.

Now, is that enough? I don't know. I'm kind of up in the air. I'm on the fence about the Matthew Stafford era. I would take Stafford in a second over door number. A or B because the problem I think if you roll in as a coach get the number one pick. Why did they number the door

with letters? I don't know. Door number one. One B or two. But if you're a new coach and you take that quarterback with your top pick, your fate is tied to that quarterback success so often in the NFL that you're going to get two or three years to find out if that guy flubs it, you're

gone to. And in Stafford for what he is, we know the guy's productive. He's got issues. Can you fix them? Yes. We'll see. He's a younger Jay Cutler. In Cleveland, you won't get two or three years. No, you get a couple months, and then they're already talking to people behind the scenes. It's a disaster. Too soon.

I think he's a younger Jay Cutler. He has all the tools in the world. There's always going to be a coach that says, I can fix him. There seems to be something missing. Maybe there is a coach like Tresman that can fix him. I was going to say, has anybody actually tried to fix him yet, or was it kind of hands off under the Schwartz? And now somebody can actually dig in. We don't need to even, his mechanics are fine.

I mean, whether they really believe that, we don't know. But it seemed like they did. I'd like to know if they tried because publicly they made apologies and excuses the whole time. Well, no apologies. They just made excuses and acted like it never happened. But you had to think that Linnehan is trying to fix his mechanics behind the scenes. So does that mean the lines definitely higher an offensive-minded coach? It sounds like that.

From everything our NFL media insider, Ian Rappaport, earned his money on Monday. Everything he's saying is that they're looking offense. That makes sense. All right. Let's move on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. fired Greg Shiano, a big victory for Team Hansis and I believe Team Wessling, who said all along that Shiano was done if they finish slowly and they lost out in the last three games and Shiano's out. He had a really depressing press conference. What do you guys look at each other for?

Well, you're just dancing on the grave of Shiano. He's got like five young children that now, where will the bread come from? And Dan's just dancing on the wall? The assistant equipment manager who makes $25,000 a year was just like. Just one guy who's five. You realize it's like 10, 20, 30, 40 people. This past summer when Shiana brought his entire family through the newsroom. And it was like, oh, it looks like a really nice family.

So now I feel bad. Now they can't go to the best prep school in the city. Now they have to go to the third best prep school. When coaches get fired, everyone gets fired. And Mark Dominic got fired too. So this is a full house cleaning. They're going to look for a new GM, I guess. And everything we're hearing, by the way, at least on the coach end,

is that Lovey Smith is potentially the fit here, right? It sounds like it. I'm intrigued by this. They're bringing the whole band back together. It sounds like Jerry Angelo would come with him. Tim Ruskell, the same group that built the Buccaneers, well, along with Rich McKay in the 90s, and then went to the Bears and built another great defense,

and in both places never could find a franchise quarterback. It's intriguing to me because there's talk that they would bring in former Calhead coach Jeff Tedford, who was one of the best quarterback gurus in college football. That's got to be the difference, right? Because the one issue was Chicago, any Bears fan having to go back to that kind of an offense was it was a disgrace. I think this team has a lot of talent on both sides of the ball. And I think it's one reason Shiano deserved to go, whether or not we predicted that.

And we didn't, Greg and I, that he really didn't do a lot with that talent in the end. I mean, they looked lost in the last couple games of the season. Dan doesn't have a lot of predictions to get behind. I mean, it's a little bit outrageous. Like the Jets celebrating an 8-and-8 record. Dan was celebrating his fourth-place finish in picks the other day. It was very emotional in the Hanzas household when closed out in fourth place. That's moving up in the social standing from last pace last year.

Fourth place. Next year, look out, bronze medal. I thought this was the second best job because of what you said, because of the talent. And you could make a case that it's the best job because the defense is stacked. I don't think we'll ever see Greg Shiano, though, again in the NFL. I did a ranking of the six coaches that got fired, which would be most likely to ever get a head coaching job again? And now you think, well, none of these guys will because none of them were thinking well.

But sometimes it happens. Shiano would be last on my list, and Mike Shanahan would be next to last. I don't think there's any chance either one of those guys. Who would be first on your list? Well, there weren't many good options, but I went Kubiak because he's an offensive coach with a track record. And collapsed with a mini-stroke on the field like a month ago. He's an off, you know, offense sells. You want to hire offensive coaches, I think, and he at least has some playoff appearances.

Did anybody watch the Greg Shiano press conference at the area hotel yesterday that he called himself? We all did. I did. I was really taken. It'll stick with me. He looked haunted, like the light had been turned out from inside of him. Like he was no longer the Greg Shiano we knew. He had just been fired.

There's possibly a reason for that. But I think he was a guy that had just started to realize the enormity of his failure in the sense that he had probably burned some bridges or definitely burned some bridges across the league thinking that he was the man in Tampa and he was going to be building something and he got the rug taken out before he was able to really establish anything. And that plays into, he probably knows it that it's going to be hard for him ever to get back into the fraternity. Well, you're like Belichick's pal and so you're thinking I'll just go and run in with the same level of command that Belichick runs the show except you haven't done anything in the NFL. Belichick's like a mountain that you're flying over and it has its own weather system. Being his pal doesn't mean anything.

We've seen all these guys like having a relationship with Belichick can actually screw you more than help you. Manjini got totally, he psyched himself out by being the Belichick predecessor. That whole thing was a debacle. Shiana was weirdly sort of likable in it. It was humble and you could tell. But it's a bad idea to hold your own press. conference at a hotel that the team, team wasn't sanctioned, and he just looked crushed.

Mike Shanahan looked like it was a regular Monday. He held the press conference, too, but Shiana looked crushed. There was no need to do that. Mike Shanahan was shown the door in Washington officially. Another total non-surprise. It was a little funny seeing the Twitter feed of how the Redskins handled the dismissal. It was basically treated like the president was in the building. But now Shanahan's gone, and they are starting over there.

I guess the biggest thing for me that I took away from it was Bruce Allen, he believes that he is the man now making decisions there. That's what I took out of yesterday. Yeah, you wrote about that this morning. He sounded awfully authoritarian about it. He said the control is mine. He is the one leading the search for the head coach. Sounds like the buck stops with him. Do we believe that?

I do now because he's the last man. It was really a partnership between him and Shanahan. And the interesting thing with Alan is he's never been that personnel control guy. He's been running the entire organization. He had a very similar setup with John Gruden in Tampa when Gruden was really picking the players. So I think he's going to set up some sort of structure underneath them. He said a lot of the personnel department will stay. I don't think he's the guy making trades.

He's the guy doing contracts. My favorite thing from yesterday out of Redskins Park was they asked, they were trying to get some of these players to talk about Shanahan when they were clearing out their lockers, and Alfred Morris said, he's like, I'm in a rush, Chick-fil-A breakfast runs out in like 10 minutes. I've got to get in my car and get that. He wouldn't even talk about the guy that drafted him, just had to get out of it. Hey, Alfa's the coolest guy. He's the most normal guy in the NFL. Has anyone here ever had Chick-fil-A? I was told that it's delicious. I have. I've never had before. I have, but not for breakfast,

and now next time I'm in the South, check it out. People speak highly of it. No, it's good. Wait, was that the place where the owner came out as being an anti-gay dude and You know you're doing something right with your chicken if the whole country disagrees with you and you can still sell it. Yeah, that was it. When I was talking about, not to pivot off of chicken. Yeah, nice transition. Yeah, thanks, man. When I was thinking of good jobs out of these, I think this is one of the worst jobs.

I don't like that. I mean, I know it has Robert Griffin the 3rd, so it's better than a couple of them. And that goes a long way, but I'm not totally sure what you have with him. I think he'll – but I think the rest of the organization and just the tracker, of the last 15 years makes it scary. The roster is a mess underneath. We talked about a couple of potential star type players.

There's just no depth. Well, I wasn't surprised to hear that Daryl Bevel is getting the interview because the first priority, the second priority, third priority has to be Robert Griffin III. Who else is on that roster? Right. I mean, there's nothing on defense that you're going to build with. You don't need a defensive guru to work

with Ryan Carrigan at a bunch of bombs. I think it comes down to if you have RG3 of year one, it's an awesome job. If you get the RG3 of year two, it's a terrible job. It's on you to make sure you get the RG3 of year one. Ian Rappaport also reported they're interviewing Panthers, defensive coordinator, Sean McDermott, on Saturday,

which is a surprise. I mean, he was a guy that the Panthers fans wanted out not too long ago. The Eagles sent him out after one year as defensive coordinator. Right. The Vikings announced Monday morning that they had fired Leslie Frazier following a 5-10-1 season. Ian Rappaport reported shortly thereafter that the Vikings have inquired about Broncos' offensive coordinator and the architect and genius of what the Broncos have done this year, the 600-point juggernaut Adam Gays,

and Seahawks coordinators, Dan Quinn and Darrell Bevel. So you don't buy the Gay's hype train here. I like to call him the Broncos Observer. Honestly. He's also two years younger than Peyton Manning, and he's been a coordinator for one. year. I like everything I've heard from Adam Gase when I've heard him talk, but how can you possibly give him all the credit for that offense?

Sounds like he won't get a job unless teams wait around for him because Ian Rapporte said he's not going to take any interviews until the end of the season. At that point, maybe the Raiders will have finally gotten around to making a final decision. They might hire Madden by then. Was the right to move on from Frazier? Oh, yeah. Yeah. That team was uninspiring.

I think this is the worst job, too. I mean, they have Adrian Peterson and Corderell Patterson, but it's not a great roster. There's not much to get excited about. I like their roster on offense. Even with bad quarterbacks, they had the 10th most points in the NFL. You've got a running back. Rudolph will come back.

You've got a good tight end. You've got Cordero Patterson. You've got a cut. You know, Greg Jennings. You do have Matt Castle. Haven't even brought him up. You need a quarterback. We're not bringing up.

Listen, the new guy's going to come in. They pick number eight. They're going to take a quarterback. This is one inside the coaching mill where these guys all know each other. Frazier is like one of the most respected dudes. I think to us he seems rather milk-toast. Isn't that the same description of every protege of Tony Dungey, widely respected, kind of uninspiring to hear him as press conference or something like that?

Players love him. Yeah, players love them. I don't think any – this is a different NFL now, and I don't think any of these jobs are rebuilding. If you told me any one of these six teams made the playoffs next year, I wouldn't be surprised at all. Here's why the NFL, we all know this, but it's such a fickle game from year to year. Leslie Frazier got three votes as the coach of the year last year, and now he's on the street. So, you know, what have you done for me lately?

That's a good pull, Dan. Thanks, buddy. We talked about the Cleveland Browns. That was the first firing, almost impossibly. Rod Chudzinski was let go. Sessler vented a bit on Sunday night. But let's now kind of spin forward if you're comfortable. with it, Mark. And are you? Let's do it. Let's spin forward Cleveland Browns looking ahead.

We got the same old lines from Jimmy Haslam yesterday saying that the Browns and the people of Cleveland deserve a great team. How many times will we heard that? Now they've got to figure it out. They've got to find the coach. They're starting over again. I'll say one quick thing. I think if you look at this roster, there's a lot to work with. You're not taking over the team that was there four or five years ago. But what coach is going to want to come and deal with what looks to be a completely bizarre structure. I know Greg will say they'll definitely get interested. I mean, we talked with this yesterday, but it's like...

Every job is a great job. I don't know, though, because here's the one thing I'd say, you have to make, you don't make a splash, but you have to have a, there must have been a plan here. Money. How the heck are you going to get? Tell me the person that you know in the world that's ever going to even think twice about getting a 400%, you know, salary bump. Well, look at two guys turn them down already.

So, you know, we'll have to see who they get Josh McDaniels potentially lined up for an interview. That's my big question. How do you feel about Josh McDaniels? The Patriots gave permission for them to interview Josh McDaniels. How would you feel about going back to the assistant from the Patriots? Once again, they've already done it with Romeo Cronnell. They've done it with Eric Mangini. The only person left is Charlie Weiss.

I think he's available. I feel the same way that you guys would feel. I mean, you know, it's still fresh in my mind that Josh McDaniels was run out of Denver with a videotaping scandal and losing like a hill of games to end his career there. And the owner basically saying I will never in my life hire that type of coach. Speaking of McDaniels, that's one guy that is enjoyed living on Mount Belichick and has gotten a lot of perks out of it. Somehow getting a second chance.

We think Greg Shianno will never get a second chance. McDaniels, it looks like he's going to get it, so maybe it's not impossible. If McDaniels gets this job, what are the odds that Tebow is on the Brown's roster in 2014? 150 percent less than the odds of johnny mansell being on that roster i think zero or close to zero i don't think they're going to go back to that well what's the point i michael lombardi who is probably the one engineering this josh mcdaniel's interest he has written columns on nfl dot com very supportive of josh mcdaniels thinking he'll be a great coach in the future i can't imagine uh that he would want to bring in tibo he was about as anti tibbo as possible

All right, and then Gary Kubiak, obviously, he was the first coach fired during the regular season. We continue to hear Penn State Coach Bill O'Brien connected to the job. Is this going to happen? They're supposed to announce it today, right? Or come to a decision today? This was the deadline they wanted to have for an announcement. We don't know. Who knows?

By the time you hear this, this will be, that part will be, I don't, it doesn't seem like they're that close. Who else is in the mix there? right now they've they've interviewed Wade Phillips they've interviewed Wade Phillips they've interviewed Lovey Smith and they wanted to interview Ken Wisenhunt but he's busy with the playoffs right now so they're reportedly not going to wait around for him

seems like they're either on O'Brien or in a holding pattern or O'Brien is making people think they're on them you never know I want them to hire Wade Phillips just to see how John McLean of the Houston Chronicle reacts all right so let's move on so now they're about let's say three teams

And according to Greg's stat tracker, that is just going bonkers in the metrics and is going to lead to Greg having a corner office in about six weeks. We'll start with the Miami Dolphins, who obviously flamed out at the end of the season, lost their final two games. Joe Philman, the coach, it's uncertain what his status is. GM Jeff Ireland, even more uncertain. How do we see this unfolding? Stephen Ross said he had a lot to think about after the games, and there was a subsequent article in the Miami Herald saying Monday was a quiet day in Miami

because he didn't expect to be in this spot. He expected to bring both of them back and expected to be in the playoffs. My thought to that is like there was only two possible outcomes to the final week's game. Wouldn't they have been prepared somewhat for one of the two possible outcomes? Did you give it any thought that you might not win that game? This is like the one situation I have no read on. I kind of expect Ireland to go. I have no idea what they want to do with Philbin.

Well, there's a report today in the Herald about Ross's potential affinity for having Eric Mangini as a general manager. So I think things have gone utterly haywire. I do think the guy who will not be back, though, probably is offensive coordinator Mike Sherman. Yeah, I agree with that. And it's tough because it sounds easy. Oh, change the GM, keep the coach. But do you have to decide if you really want to do that? I mean, whether you want to hire a GM that doesn't even get to choose his own coach, that you're stuck with Philbin.

If we have to hear Eric Mangini press conferences on a weekly basis again, you guys are going to be looking for a fourth member of the ATL crew. By the way, Jeff Ireland is not going anywhere. Ginger's cannot be killed by conventional weapons. It's proven time and time again. Ireland's safe. The dolphins are... Proclamation.

The dolphins are one of those teams that reminds me it's a lot of times when you lose the games, not how many games you lose. If the Jets were 8 and 6 and lost in the same way that the dolphins lost, their last two games, I don't know if they're, you know, celebrate, they're certainly not celebrated. I don't know if Rex Ryan is staying. You know, if the Dolphids, if you reversed it, then I think everyone's feeling this stupid momentum. I don't really buy that. It's like John Gruden, when he went 9 and 7 in his last year in Tampa, he lost the last four. It's all about when you lose those games. This vague sense of, oh, we're going into the offseason with

optimism makes such a big difference. That's true, but there's also the incognito Martin factor, too. Yes. Coach Mike Muncheck, as of right now, remains employed by the Tennessee Titans, but that is very much up in the air. He's been part of organizational meetings this week, meeting with the new Titan CEO and President Tommy Smith. Apparently, there's some heat with the offensive coordinator about how he factors into this and whether he can lead to some friction between the two sides.

How do we see this plan out? Cut the fish loose. They're just torturing him. I think it's a tough decision because he's been with the Titans and previously the Oilers for like 32 years. They drafted him. I mean, it's not the same as partying ways with a three-year disaster. And you've got a new young owner coming in that needs to make a tough decision, but they are dragging their heels. It felt weird when they asked Munchak about it, and he didn't know where Tommy Smith was.

They asked him as Smith in Nashville. Do you know when you're going to meet him? Later that day it came out that they would be meeting this week. But they're kind of old school. Raiders, you know, which we can talk about too, that's up in the air. These are two old school teams that the old owners have passed away, Al Davis and Bud Adams, but they're not operating under the old rules. They're kind of waiting and seen, and they're not in a huge hurry to make a decision.

I feel like this is just, how do these teams, especially the Titans Raiders, who have been out of the mix for weeks, how are they not decided at this point? And aren't you falling behind the rest of these teams that get a head start going after guys? I know one factor is if you are, you know, Mark Davis and in the back of your mind you want one of these guys that's still in the playoffs, a coordinator type person. You know, all these teams that make a decision in 24 hours, the guy you might want is three weeks away from being available. It's true. Greg Roman is out there. I mean, all the best coaches in theory, a lot of them are in the playoffs.

and Mark Davis cracked me up with this interview, and I loved it. He really embodies the spirit of Al Davis, and he said basically that he expects Alan to be back, but he didn't want to totally shut the door. He wasn't for sure. And he said in a couple of weeks, you never know. Maybe John Madden will become available. I kind of want to watch the playoffs. He's making jokes about it.

And it's totally out of the Al Davis playbook. And I actually don't think you need to be in that big of hurry. Why do you need to be in hurry? I don't know. I will say my favorite part of Super Bowl. Super Bowl week and I won't get too much into it is seeing Mark Davis all week. I love that guy. Yes. An interesting character.

Oh, league figure, creeping in. All right, so then there are three teams that we have on the tracker that are safe. We know that Rex Ryan's coming back to the Jets. Tom Coughlin is not going anywhere. He'll be back for another year with the Giants. The Dallas Cowboys are a little interesting to me that

Jason Garrett is seemingly safe and it's surprising to me. I thought that he was going to be gone, but that doesn't seem like it's going to be the case. Jerry Jones says He never even considered it. He said he decided weeks ago that Garrett was going to stay. He said it never even crossed his mind to replace Garrett. He said today he's confident.

Well, he's like, we're doing a little bit better than most of those teams that fired their coaches. He did point out that Garrett had a better record than I think all the fired head coaches, including Mike Shanahan, who's won a couple titles. He pointed that out. They also asked him about his job as a GM, and he said he thought he handled the salary cap issues very well. One quick thing on DELS. Like, they keep saying, oh. They're not going to get rid of Garrett because they've been invested all this money into him over the years. Is it really that much more money than they've invested in what would have been their previous head coach or someone else?

Is that really the issue? Yeah, I mean, I think that's part of it. There's got to be a pride factor of all Jerry Jones handpicked Jason Garrett a long time ago, brought him up, groomed him. You don't want to admit that you failed in that regard. He seems like he's been there so long, but he actually has only been the coach. for three full years. His three full years were all eight and eight. That's the Jason Garrett era.

And then he was there as offensive coordinator before that. And Troy Aikman's backup. I mean, he's got a long history there. It feels like it. I'm just saying you could make the argument. He hasn't been given that long of a window. It's been three years. It's just crazy because it ends the same.

It's the exact same every season. There's no reason to think that they've made any progress. So we, just doing some math, we actually forked nine of these 12 teams that we just went. through big year for the fork the fork lives ladies and gentlemen the ATL crew forked god knows how many teams about 15 teams or so and they all died they met none of them came back in stick a fork in them and we will bring back the series in 2014 much to my excitement well we can thank the referees

in the Kansas City Chargers game for that. Yeah, we got a little help. And as Damashik said, the Ryan Suffolk Suckup Spork Award. It trailed through the spork on the missed field goal. Well, Greg, you saw I was almost in a state of denial as they were lining up for that game-winning field goal, the Chiefs, which would have allowed the Steelers into the playoffs, had the charges lost, and then the Steelers, who we forked,

would have destroyed the Fork Series. I was in denial. I was very upset about it. I was ready to use this microphone to turn the people against the other men in this room and bring back the fork regardless of the promise that we made. But it didn't have to come to that. That's probably good. We learned a lot about Dan when the pressure was on Sunday afternoon.

Because I've never seen him so panicked. I think he was getting upset with me. I was just saying how the fork, the whole fork series was about to die because the Steelers were going to mess. make it to the playoffs. And Dan immediately started bargaining. He's like, well, we're not really going to kill it, are we? You said ethics don't matter.

It was like, well, we got to bring it back. I mean, I know we've said that. We've said that all year. If we killed that we, I have confidence, we can come up with another great segment. I mean, we're gold that we can live on. This podcast can survive. We said it. We have to be men of our words.

Chris Wesleyan agreed. Mark agreed. Dan did not want to hear anything of it. I believe the exact phrase was integrity is overrated. Well, I had already, yeah, I was already going Machiavelli, and this is right before Suckup Miss the Kick, because I knew that it's something that the listeners like, and you guys were, Greg had said that it had to be a unanimous vote if we're ever going to keep it going, if we blew the fork, but however, I was going to use Twitter to create an avalanche of support

as your bully pulpit. As a bully pulpit, exactly, but instead didn't need to go down that route, so perhaps it was great. However, you guys did learn a lot about me what would have. happen in like a foxhole. Yes, we did. If there's ever a Lord of the Fly situation, I'm not letting you have the conk. So you are the first person, actually, that someone would say, that's a guy I would not want to be in a foxhole with it.

Right. And actually, I kind of like that. It's likable quality. A, foxholes are overrated. Foxholes are over. What are you doing in a foxhole in the first place? That's not a very secure place to be. The football gods spoke.

I mean, the football gods wanted to keep this segment going. And we heard from a lot of our Twitter followers, which I was a little. surprised and impressed that you guys really liked the Fork Series, so that's good. You were worried that it was going to die. And then the football gods are, they're smart. There's a reason why the NFL is number one. You know, they called

forward progress. They called the fake punch. Greg, you're like an evil dictator right now with these hand motions. By the way, was the most botched call of the entire year. The penalty. Oh, you're getting too caught up with that, Mark. That's what happens. You know, in fairness, suck up might have missed the 36-yard or two. That's true. Maybe

you know, it's so a same result. They made this comeback, it was great. Thank you at Gridiron Zeus. Gridiron Zeus. Who's that? Football gods. Oh, good. Yeah, before we get off this topic, we'll never get it right again, by the way.

I've decided this is really hard to get them all right. And we got it by the skin of our teeth this year. We forked, I think, 15 teams, and we got it right. We didn't get it right last year. We missed two. When we bring it back next year, I can almost guarantee we won't do it. That's the allure of it. Yes.

Oh, I'm not saying one way or the other. It's just so hard to do. We'll be even more painfully conservative than we were this year in picking teams to fork. The Steelers had a less than 1% chance at the time we forked them or something crazy like that. So much had to happen. It just made it. It's going to help our ratings. I like it.

All right. Moving on. So it's New Year's Eve, as we said earlier in the program. I had sent an email earlier this morning, a idea for today's show to talk about New Year's resolutions for all of us. that was shot down in the words of my boss as quote cliche so we are not doing that however we will do something that's almost like a crude facsimile which is a story that's going up on the website that we we worked on this week you're totally twisting how this is having products online you could not have twisted this anymore it sounds accurate

we have a post going up this week is it today Greg that it's going up what we liked in 2013 and what we're looking forward to in 2014. It will be going up on Tuesday evening, New Year's Eve. So unless you're listening to this right when it comes out, it should be up there. It'll be on their New Year's Day, front and center. And we're looking back and we're looking forward. What are some things we're excited about? So why don't we go around the room since we all took a stance on both 13 and 14?

Greg, you started off. What did you love about 2013? It sounds like a stupid answer, but I like the crazy finish. I like the crazy finish to the season. I like that we're getting so used to the crazy finishes to the game. Games are closer than they ever have been. Games are within one score in the fourth quarter, almost more than it's ever been.

All these coaches that got fired could have had winning teams if a few things broke differently. And that's the NFL that we're living in now. And we're just used to it now. It wasn't totally like this 10 years ago where every other game would be that bonkers. And it's backed up by the numbers. there's such a little difference

between the top of the league and the bottom of the league and I like that. Some people call it mediocrity. Some people will call it parity. The other thing I like, I'm just going to go for two because Kevin Patrick threw this in there.

He's not here. All right? He talked about Chip Kelly and the Eagles. I love the fact that Chip Kelly came in. He did his thing. I don't know if he revolutionized the game, but I think he stuck to what he believes in and he proved everyone that was on him wrong,

and he lit it up. And now he gets some original thinkers maybe coming into the NFL. You can do things a different way. Wes. You mentioned Chip Kelly, original thinker. My favorite thing about 2013 was Riverboat Ron's football epiphany, which happened around week two. Kelly is an outside-the-box thinker.

He's a critical thinker. He's been this way his whole life. This is who he is. Riverboat Ron was the most conservative coach in the NFL, arguably. A week before his epiphany, Mark wrote an article. saying that Riverboat Ron failed to see the advantages of Chip Kelly's offense. I don't understand what advantage you get out of being fast-paced. A week later, he's talking about touchdowns are more valuable than field goals.

You can't settle for a field goal. He had been the second most conservative coach in the NFL on fourth downs over his previous 34 games as head coach, suddenly started going for fourth downs, said I've been playing it by the book my whole life. He was raised by Mike Dicka and Lovie Smith in the NFL coaching fraternity. He couldn't be any more hidebound on playing by the book. And a week later, he's citing a professor from Cal Berkeley on conventional wisdom in the NFL on Fourth Downs has been wrong all along. To me, it was just so fascinating to see a guy ditch his lifelong belief in how football is played in key situations

and be open-minded enough to approach it from another angle that might be a better that really got his team fired up and went on an eight-game winning streak. But did he do it for good? That's what I'm worried about. I don't know if you've watched that week 17 game because Riverboat Ron was about as conservative as it gets, and it could have killed them. It should have cost them a buy. If not for that stupid snap by the Atlanta Center

when Matt Ryan didn't know it was coming, the fact that Rivera would not throw a pass in the last two drives almost killed them. So you're saying a leopard can't change his spots? He just defaults to who he naturally is in key situations. He went to a fourth for fourth doubt in that game too, but I just worry that in a big spot, he got really conservative there. He says he has a list of 30 priorities for all situations,

and he goes down the list and factors them all in. So maybe that situation, he just, it wasn't on his 30 list. Are you guys saying that the riverboat is kind of petered out, and now it's like that carnival cruise where it's stalled and people are doing number two in garbage camps? No, I would say it started in Cincinnati. It's just now about to get to New Orleans. The site of last year's supermod.

I'm a little worried when, you know, the waves start getting a little bigger and it's a stormy season that he's just going to turn around and head right back. Sizzler. We almost got Greg out of his seat there. I'm glad that we moved on. You know, listen, I don't know if we have riverboat run in the way that we do now if that defense didn't do what it does in Carolina. And my thing is probably some of the front sevens that popped up,

not entirely out of nowhere, but really bloom this season. A. in Carolina, I think we saw right away in that preseason game against the Ravens where it was like, wait a minute, this defense is for real. I think that arguably that defense has saved Rivera's job. I look at the Jets situation. You take away that front seven and Rex Ryan doesn't have a job right now. I think they saved Rex's job. I look at what potentially starts in Cleveland as a good young line. That fizzled out down late, but they haven't had that ability to stop the run in 10 years there. Buffalo's defense is really interesting and one of the reasons the dolphins aren't in the playoffs right now I like the young defenses

I see all the offense stuff you're talking about but you know what defense always one step behind I think they're going to find a way to shut some of this Chip Kelly business down next season Mark always a fan of the oversized men I found I'm not sure if that's

documented offensive linemen defensive linemen the trench warfare and the foxholes. Forget about the foxhole. I'll tell you what I loved. There's a big year for uncles. Drunk uncle emerged as the heir apparent to Stefan on Weekend Update for S&L,

John Stamos, Uncle Jesse, back on tour at the Beach Boys. But America's uncle, Peyton Manning. What a year! And I know that everyone's talking about Peyton Manning, but I still think that somehow everyone knows about what Manning's done this year setting all these records at 37 years old somehow to me feel strangely still underappreciated that's how I feel anyway and all this kind of rolls away if he peters out in January again I understand that but I don't think we should belittle no matter what happens what happened this

season this is an absurd record setting season by a guy at an age when everyone is usually either at the end of their career or retired Joe Namath was doing off Broadway at Jones Beach Amphitheater, Damn Yankees when he was 37 years old. Joe Montana was a game manager in Kansas City. Troy Aikman was in a booth with Jack Buck, or excuse me, Joe Buck. Look at, man, he's the best quarterback alive. Give him some credit. Who likes drunk uncle?

I love drunk uncle. Oh, it's the worst. I love SNL, and that's one of the few fast forwards. The only thing that I heard in that entire diatribe was Dan saying, I feel unappreciated. A little nugget. the middle of all that. It was all about you, wrapped up in a Peyton Manning speech. Really? Did you pick that up? Did anyone else hear that?

So if I see Peyton Manning, he's going to, like, take a quarter from behind my ear or give me a knuckle sandwich or something? I'll give you a knuckle sandwich. He'll say something inappropriate to you at Thanksgiving. Didn't Aryan say yesterday that he's the uncle that wants to come over and... That's true. That's true. Got a little competition from it. He said, I'm the uncle. Everyone wants to have a drink with around the holidays. I'd have it. I would rather have a drink with Peyton Manning. That's fair. Oh, I'd much rather than drink with With Aryans. I don't know.

The best you can do is John Stamos and drunk uncle with Peyton Manning. I don't know if it's been that strong a year. By the way, I lifted that directly from the post that will go up later today. I just realized what it's like for Rick Riley who gets paid like $7.4 billion to just do a voiceover of his crappy columns. Or I thought you meant to plagiarize yourself. Yeah, well, that too. All right. So let's move forward.

Mark, what do you make of that face for? Like, he's a sacred cow, Rick Riley? No, I'm just thinking, is that your trajectory? I'll take it. I'll tell you what. No, you wouldn't. No, no. Well, the house would be nice.

All right, let's look forward to 2014. We'll start again with Greg. I'm looking forward to more fourth downs. It sounds stupid. You were talking about Ron Rivera going forward and fourth down. Now I see coaches going for it on their own 37 with like seven minutes left in the game. And we don't even think twice about it. That never happened before.

It's been coming. You guys sit next to me on Sundays. All I do is complain that people are punting too much and that they're not being aggressive and that's so conservative. And slowly it is turning. It's a lot different than five years ago. We don't think twice about them going for fourth and two in certain situations. Chip Kelly went for it on his own 25 at one point with a ton of time left the game

and that didn't even make news. It's changing. From when Belichick did it, you know, five years ago now against Indianapolis, it's changing. It's not that big a deal anymore. How about when we all did it in, like, TechMobile and Madden for 20 years? It's not, come on. They give you four downs. Use them.

I remember the automated response from Summerall or Madden in those games was like, I can't believe they're doing this. Every single time in every game. That's not how you win. I don't care about anything. They need you to chastise me about my strategic decisions in a video game. They need to see Riverboat Rons. That's professor.

Very true Wes Well you know The shortest memories in America belong to football fans Robert Griffin III What I'm looking forward to Is his furious vengeance in 2014

We forget that he was the most dynamic player in the NFL He was the most charismatic Possibly in the NFL The most exciting guy to watch And really the best rookie quarterback I've ever seen So I'm looking forward to he's not the first guy to suffer through an ACL injury and not play well.

Tom Brady took a while to come back from his ACL injury, so I'm looking forward to him really turning it around next year. By the way, you, Greg, you said you wanted us not to repeat in the post in an email chain we had today. I was going to do that RG3-1 because I feel the same way as you. I'm really excited to see him potentially get his swerve back. We like to bury guys before they should be buried. Remember Randy Moss in Oakland?

and then he comes in and sets the NFL record for touchdown receptions. Everyone decided he was done. And Griffin could be the symbol of that whole class. I mean, Kaepernick, I think the sky is still the limit for him in terms of taking a big step. And as good as luck and Wilson have been this year, don't you think that they can just take it to a whole other? Okay, now we're talking about them as they're legitimately one of the couple best quarterbacks in the league. Yeah, the next step is to start doing what guys like Breeze, Peyton, and Manning do. and that might take a couple of years.

I'm looking forward to, this is a little more personal. I'm looking forward to Rex Ryan, another season with the Jets. I was really worried that they were going to react poorly off a non-playoff season and not see the forest through the trees on this situation. But they did. They got it. He's coming back. And I think it's a good sign for the franchise.

And it just makes me feel like they know what they're doing. And it's good. And I don't feel like happy past. passing it off to you, Mark, especially you, but to get that stink off the Jets as the laughing stock franchise, I feel like we're starting to get back into the mix of just being another team trying to get better as opposed to being in the crosshairs of ridicule. Yeah, I feel like now I know how Dan was feeling for months on end

where your franchise that you've rooted for since you were a child is just lamb-based as a clown car. Right. He'll get back to it next off season after their miserable five-and-11 year. Let me tell you what I'm excited for. And, you know, look, RG3 is exciting and everything, but he's old news because we got Johnny football coming into the scene next year. Hasn't declared yet. And, you know, I guess there's a, what, a 0% chance that he would stay in college.

A guy's coming in the pros. And there's four or five teams right at the top of the draft order that need a quarterback. And we don't know where he's going to go. But anyone's saying, oh, he's going to go in the middle of the first round, you've got to be. kidding me. Haven't we seen enough where even average quarterbacks get elevated? Jake Locker, Blaine Gabbard, getting picked in the top 12 or 13

way farther than they should have. Johnny Football, someone's going to lock on to this guy and even trade up for him, I think, if they want him. And I think he's Tebow, but a better player. In terms of the attention level he's going to draw, his name is Johnny Football. That's my

only concern, by the way. There's a lot of concerns. That's what's good about him. There's a lot of concerns. The Tebow parallel, and I don't think he'll ever become the pop culture sensation of Tebow because the Jesus factor's not involved, which was like the really underlying thing with all the Tebow to me. I think Mansell will instantly become one of the most famous athletes in America. He kind of already is, but it will go next level. Because he's at all right. You go and you search for him and there's stuff all out that you wouldn't want your 19-year-old doing if you sent them off to college necessarily. If I were you, I would

copyright Naughty Tebow right now. Monitize this. Yes. Mark. Yeah. Listen, I mean, I mean, he's going to make some bad team relevant because whatever team gets him is suddenly on television three or four times this season. I couldn't agree with you more. I'll be shocked if he's not one of the first three picks in the draft. I don't care what people are saying now. By the time the draft comes,

somebody's going to fall in love with him and move up or draft him early. He's a lot more fun to watch than Tebow. Tebow, you know, the games were interesting because they were bizarre to see in the NFL, but it wasn't fun to watch. Johnny Football's fun. Can we chip in our money and pay for a community college business course for Sessler?

So he realizes that getting a copyrighted a trademark is not just looking into your mic and going trademark. Listen, why don't we spend the money on a lawyer to get that done by nightfall? Why put me through an entire college course to learn that? That's true. Can I give what I'm not looking forward to in 2014? I am not looking forward to the looks on your faces as I watch the Patriots lose the Super Bowl in New York because I just feel. like that's what's coming. I think you'll be lucky if you're just going to be annoying to be around.

You have problems that are so far and above beyond what we've ever dealt with? This is like Shiano's kids not being able to afford the best prep school in the city. I guess if we're going to say what we're not looking forward to, I'm not looking forward to an NFL network in mid-June, the Is Eli Still Elite Roundtable discussion. Oh, it's coming. You don't need to wait until June. That's better that if you want to have some fun, Google.

Instant debate. Wesley knows where I'm going with this. Instant debate. Who is better? Peyton or Eli? NFL.com 2013. I have never been more proud of a contribution into anything in my life. It is a treat.

I've never been more proud of looking at this article running directly to Greg and saying, we better get a voice in this. It's a disaster. All right. You have enough hints to look it up. All right. That's it for. Tuesday's show. Happy New Year's to all the listeners.

We will be back on Thursday. Is that correct? Correct. And that will be, obviously, we'll do some more coaching chatter. But then I think in earnest we will spin forward and talk some playoff football. It's playoff football time. I know. I would have break down games for like 10 minutes at a time. I'm going to start getting demonstrative like Greg, waving my hands, jumping out of my chair.

It's playoff time. Yeah. Get ready. Get ready. Everybody get excited. We know you are. Anyway, so we'll be here on Thursday. Until then, this is Van Hansa signing off for the mailman, the sizzler, the boss, the gold standard.

Until Thursday. Seriously burn this. This is an I-Heart podcast. Thank you.