PTI - Did Dante Moore Make the RIGHT Decision?!

Episode Date: January 14, 2026

Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser discuss the NFL Coaching Carousel, Dante Moore's decision to return to Oregon, and Giannis booing his own crowd. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, sports fans, the ESPN app has all of ESPN all in one place. The ESPN app is your home to thousands of live events, ESPN shows, and originals across every ESPN network and service. And now you can check if you already have ESPN Unlimited as part of your TV package for no additional calls. Visit activate.esPN.com to learn how to access your account or sign up, then start streaming in the ESPN app. It's all of ESPN all in one place. Sign up or activate now. Pardon the interruption, but I'm Mike Wilbon. We are just 97 hours away from kickoff of Rams, Bears, Tony. I'm headed to Chicago to watch.

Tony Cornizer, put the steakhouses on alert. Prepare to comp Wilbon. You got Prime 112, you got Tray Dita. Prime 112 is in Miami. Oh, it's not in, they don't have one in Chicago. What about Tray Dita that you were telling me about? Yeah, I don't think they comp anybody. Oh, they don't comp you.

Come on, we just gave them all this point. One to custody. Warm, toasty. Welcome to PTI boys and girls in today's episode, Janice Boo's back at Milwaukee fans. Dante Moore returns to Oregon. And Steve Young joins us for five good minutes. But we begin today with an offshoot

of Mike Tomlin's decision yesterday to leave the Pittsburgh Steelers. Our question is not necessarily who is the best replacement for Tomlin. Our question is about the attractiveness of the Steelers' job. It is currently one of nine NFL openings, Atlanta, the Giants, Tennessee, the Raiders,

Baltimore, Arizona, Miami, Cleveland, and now Pittsburgh. Wilbon is the Pittsburgh job the most attractive one? Nope, not to me. No, no. And by job, I don't think you could just look at football personnel. You've got to look at the history of the franchise management. So many of these things are still family-owned. You know, working for the Roonies is a pretty good way to go.

That's right. So that vaults you ahead of some other people that might have better personnel on field. But even with that, Tony, I'm going to. say Atlanta because it looks like they got people, the Falcons, where you could go if you're a really good coach. And you could either win now, particularly in that division, or come close now. And I'm looking at Bejohn Robinson, and I'm looking at Pitts the Tide End, and I'm looking at Drake London. They got players, they got a couple of players defensively that you just say, okay, there's a half dozen people here at the core of this. I'm ready to coach them.

So I think Atlanta. So my answer to this question is quarterback dependent. Okay. Who is going to be the quarterback for the Steelers? Is the new guy going to come in here and wave a magic wand and just get a quarterback? Because in the last, what, five or six years, Kenny Pickett, Mason Rudolph, Mitch Chubisky, says Ben. Justin Fields, Justin Fields, says Ben.

Russell Wilson, Aaron Rogers, without particular success. If they made the playoffs, they went out immediately. So, I mean, let me refer to my notes here. I mean, I thought there was a chance after the game on Monday night that Aaron Rogers was indicating he wanted to stay, that he was opening that window because he talked about how much he enjoyed himself that year. But when Tomlin left, I think that window closed for Rogers as well. I don't think a coach is going to come in and want a 42-year-old Aaron Rogers,

unless that coach is Mike McCarthy. And I think like you, you need a quarterback. So I would put Atlanta, but I'm thinking of Kirk Cousins in Atlanta that makes it attractive. I'm thinking Cam Ward makes Tennessee attractive. And I'm confident that Lamar Jackson makes Baltimore attractive. The other teams, I don't know, although at least with the Raiders, you have the number one pick. So if you want a quarterback, you can go get one.

The Raiders we both have said in the last week are broken. And I've got to see a whole lot more. Here's the problem with the Steelers. And their ownership is great. And they have a long and storied history. They have no offense. They're 175 yards of offense against Houston. That's a rebuild, Mike.

That's a rebuild. Rebuilds in the NFL. happen more quickly than they do, say, in the NBA. That's right. And Major League Baseball. They do. But they're doing on the team that turned it offensively in a year. So maybe Pittsburgh could do that too.

Maybe. Let's move to college football quarterback news. Dante Moore is returning to Oregon rather than entering the NFL draft. But Alabama quarterback, Ty Simpson, is sticking with his NFL draft plans, despite transfer offers that approach 8. figures, if you believe, his agent. Tom, what do you make a Morris decision to stay at Oregon and Simpson's decision to leave Alabama for the NFL?

Both decisions seem to me like they are economically based. I'm going to start with the Alabama kid. I think he's betting on himself. I think he's betting that he can be a first-round pick because even if he is the 32nd and last pick in the first round, he will get a contract worth $16 million over four seasons. So he's got, I think, one year left in college. What can he get in college?

$4 million, $6 million, $8 million. The report was $6.5 million. It's not $16 million. You're better off if you can make the first round. It's not a quarterback heavy draft. Mendoza's going to go on. Now what Moore just did, more acknowledged that people watch the Indiana-Oregon game,

where he had a bad game. So he's going to go back and prove himself so that he can get more money down the road. I mean, I think if the Alabama kid can show well in the combine and get to the first round, that's a big deal. Maybe Pittsburgh will take them. They need a quarterback.

Tony, you know, the great thing is these decisions are no longer perilous because there's some money. Yes. Right now. Yes. So who else who walks across the graduation stage at Alabama or Oregon of the classmates walk across in a cap and gown? Not going to make that much.

Anybody going to have three, four million waiting on them? No. They're not. No, no. So even if there's injury, even if there's underperformance, even if there's something else befallen to kid that we can't even identify, there's money there and there's an opportunity to, as Moore says, get better. He's going to go playing something familiar with a team around him

that could win the national championship. People thought Oregon was a year away anyway when we got to this year. But there is more money in the pros. If you are a starter, if you're starter at Alabama, let's go backwards. Jalen Hertz, Alabama, to a tugger. of Iloa, Alabama. Even Mac Jones, Alabama. The amount of money they have made in the pros right now, dwarfs whatever you could get in college right now. Yeah. So, and if you're an Alabama kid, you go, if you're the quarterback of Alabama, you are assuming you're going to

get a chance at the pros. That's why you go to Alabama. What's the smart path? And now you've got options. You do. I think both these kids made the right choice for them. Made the right choice for them. Okay. Let's move to the NBA where the boo birds were out, last night in Milwaukee. The Bucks fell behind in the first half by a billion points to the Timberwolves who were without Anthony Edwards and Rudy Gaubert. The Bucks crowd booed the team.

They booed their best player, Yannes Ante Cunpo. Ante Cunpo booed back early in the second half, sitting on the court after scoring a bucket and getting fouled. Wilbon, what does all of this say to you? Okay, Janus, for anybody who's covered the league and been around, if you're around Milwaukee,

Yanis is a very, very, very, very, very likable guy anyway. This makes me love him that he booed back, that he gave them two thumbs down. Now, you know, look, you spent some, you covered the league. Milwaukee is still a small market. That's right. And there are sensitivities maybe in Milwaukee that don't exist in New York and Chicago and Boston and Philly in L.A. I don't know how this is going to play. But if I'm Montecoumpal, you know, I don't think.

he's going to be there that long anyway. I'm going to get to all of these things. And so I love that he booed them. I don't care what the reaction is if I'm Janus. Because you know what? I'm going to say yes to some deal at some point anyway. I am the one person in this show who is apparently getting tired of Janice Santo Tocompo and all of the drama surrounding whether he's going to stay or whether he's going to go. He doesn't create it. Yes, he does. He's part and parcel of it. He allows. Whether he's going to ask for a trade or not ask for a trade. But he has it.

Whether he's being treated fairly or unfairly. Right. You know, look, we got into the Mike Tomlin story because five or six or eight weeks ago, people started to chant fired Tomlin. Yeah. And I sat here and I said, that's wrong. Yeah. He was a Super Bowl champion.

I think it's wrong to Buantat Kumpur. I do, too. He is an NBA champion. Yes. But the story, there's a sameness to the story that for me is just getting me down. I don't know that I would have said this. Anta Tocompo said this last night. I don't think anybody has the right to tell me

how I should act on the basketball quarter or if I've been here 13 years, unquote. You're down 31 at the half at home. He did acknowledge they didn't probably play as hard as he'd like to. You have said consistently, he will be traded before the trade deadline. I think this might hasten it because I think, unlike you, I think this is a bad look.

I think it's a bad look when your best player is sitting on the court, booing the home fans. I think it's a bad look, too. I think that's not bad. But I'm glad he did it. I mean, any of people, you want to boo Yannis? Tell me exactly how many championships, how many banners are hanging in Milwaukee?

Two. One with Kareem and one with Yonahis. So the other part that I would say to this is they've been a very disappointing team in recent. They have. They got rid of two coaches and he had a part in that. Right? And now maybe it's landing on him. Maybe as we said about Tomlin, maybe he's there too long.

My cautionary word on this is he can win a championship. Don't get rid of him and then get angry if he wins a championship somewhere else. He's got to play in the playoffs, which seems to be a problem almost every year since he did win. Let's take a break. When we come back, C.J. Stroud had five fumbles in the Texans wild card win. We will ask Steve Young how he took care of the ball. We'll also ask him if quarterbacks can actually love playing in the wind and cold like Matt Stafford claims he does. You're still sure, auntie Kumpur will be gone.

How about 80 percent? 80 percent. I think you've got to, you can't have that. No. You can't, it's Milwaukee. It's not New York City. You can't have that. We've got NFL playoff questions for our great friend and the man who I urged as a young quarterback to own the data.

Hall of Famer Steve Young will start with this. C.J. Stroud says he's got to work on ball security after putting the ball on the ground five times. Yes, I would think so. What did you do, Steve, to keep the ball secure? Well, the challenge, of course, is that unlike accuracy, you can't teach accuracy. You can teach ball security. You can, in the offseason, two hands on the ball. When you go to move in the pocket, you can get better at it.

And CJ obviously needs to get better at that, but that can't happen this week. The other problem that we have with more dynamic quarterbacks is the second that the most intense moment in the pocket happens as you realize, I got to go. And then as you start to go, if you not protect the football, it's now exposed. And so a lot of times the more dynamic, the game is from a quarterback position, the more likely you're going to have the ball on the ground. And that's why, again, going back to just drilling, drilling, drilling, that's the key to making sure that you're better in the pocket with the ball. And look, CJ's got another problem.

He's big enough, like Ben Rathesberger, where he can stiff arm the lineman. He's the sixth lineman, right? He's like, here, take that. Now with one arm, I'm going to rip it, and that exposes the ball as well. So CJ's got two problems. He's dynamic. He can get out. and he's big enough to step on the offensive lineman and put it at risk.

I would think wind and cold might have something to do with ball security, but Matt Stafford tells Jim Gray, he loves the wind and the cold, and he's going to be just fine in Chicago, Steve. You've played in that stuff. Does any quarterback love the wind and the cold? The cold, nobody. If you're down under 10 degrees, Fahrenheit, no one's going to be happy. And the ball gets a pain.

and the ball gets slippery. It's like no one's going to say, oh, I'm great at that. But the wind and the rain are both related to why you like, it's not like, oh, I can't wait to play in the wind or the rain, but you can kind of be neutral about it. It's like it's fine because the way you throw the football is you throw with your fingers where other guys will throw with their hand.

I don't know any other way to describe it. And when the hand throwers struggle because they lose the grip and the, and Cal Brady talked about this over the weekend about how to throw in the wind, Now, that was a good little repertoire about it, but you've got to have the nose down. And the only way to get the nose going down the way you wanted to is to come out of your fingers. And so the most accurate passers generally are great in wind and in rain.

And that's why they kind of go together. Do you remember that game in Chicago? I think Joe started. I'm not sure if you even played in it, but the NFC championship game where it was like zero. Do you remember that game? Minus 28 wind chill. That was a remarkable game.

And 28 to 3, the Bears never got off their back. They never, as good as they were, they never got off their back. It was a rough ride for them. So much for the cold for the California boys. The Patriots faced a very fierce Texas pass rush. With an offensive line, if it's not shaky, it seems vulnerable. How would you approach that challenge? What you do is want to be a sitting duck.

And so it's all the aspects of it, right? It's like, I remember we used to kind of attack the defense alignment, make them worry. Like all of a sudden we bring Ben Jones down in motion, and then he would, you know, block the tackle out of nowhere. I don't know if the play even work, but it made the tackle the whole day think, where are you guys coming from?

Kind of slowed things that you want to get that. You want to be third and short, of course. You don't want to have long yardage. You want to, the quarterback's got to get on the move, get out of the pocket, kind of change the, the rally points. So in many ways, the toughest job

when the world's played quarterback behind a line that's, you know, against the best defensive lines in the league. And this defensive line doesn't have one star. It's got four stars.

And in that way, they come relentlessly at you and that makes it super difficult. So you better, to me, run the football. Right? Everyone says, what's the answer in football?

Run it! Well, that's a way to handle this kind of a dilemma. And then third in 10, third and 12, third and 15. You know you're going to be in a jam. You don't want to be in that. 10, you know, if you want to be in third and third down 12 times,

nine of them need to be shorter than five yards. That'd be amazing. So this defense too, Steve, this, this defense is that good? There's, there's no hype involved for what you see. Yeah, they're really, they're integrated. They're not just a bunch of good athletes. They're integrated in how they play defense and they pass it off and they work together. It's like a symbiotic kind of feel that that's the most dangerous, you know,

those great Raven defenses, they were all integrated. It's like they all work together. like they saw like avatars, like they connected. And you couldn't beat them because they all, they knew what was coming kind of as a group. They didn't play individual defense. And so, yeah, I think they're that good. We will get you out of here on this.

You can't get through an interview about football without Wilbon talking about as Bears, which, of course, you watched him do just now. But we will talk about your team, the 49ers. George Kittle is the latest Niners to go out. What does the loss of a player like that mean on a macro and a micro level to a quarterback like Brock Purdy.

Well, the macro level is that, you know, he's the face of the 49ers with Fred Warner, with experience, coming out of the locker room, in the locker room, leadership, on the, you know, on the field. Like, he's the guy that people, you know, he'll rally people, he'll make a speech, he'll, those are all big aspects that you lose in the macro level. And then also, you know, you know, in a micro level,

he's he's the guy that is all pro tight end. And when you have an all pro tight end, there's nothing greater as a quarterback to have an all pro tight end because the proximity of all the plays are nearer to you. You know, Jerry Rice is out there 30 yards. It's not as intimate, right? It's like I need, I'm third and four, and I need somebody to get open.

Like I want that all pro tight end to kind of go up and rub against the linebacker, turn around, and throw him the ball and get another first down. So missing George is a problem. The issue for the 49ers, though, it feels like injuries with Fred Warner and Nick Bosa, like this whole year has been. so injury prone that it was the bug in the system.

But suddenly after last week's game, it feels like it's the feature. Like, yeah, we lost George Kittle. But how do we respond? We rallying. We beat people on the road in the playoffs. So I'm not demeaning anything about George. It's amazing. It's a terrible loss.

But the 49ers seem to be a team that kind of figures out a way to rally and go get it done. As always, it's a great pleasure to have you. Thank you, Steve. Thank you. Okay. See you guys. Let's take one last break still to come to Red Sox make news and free agency. And a victory celebration during an Aussie Open qualifier proves premature.

Steve is the first person to use the word avatar in conversation without referring to a movie. I think he has to get a lot of credit for that. Happy time, people, happy 27th birthday, DeAndre Swift. Yeah. Will bond this one's for you. Swift is the Chicago Bears lead running back. In the regular season, Swift rush for 1,087 yards and nine touchdowns. career highs. In the wild card game against the Packers, Swift had 54 yards and a rushing touchdown in 13 attempts.

He also had two catches for 38 yards. Swift is in his second season with the Bears. He was originally a second round pick by the Detroit Lions in the 2020 draft out of Georgia. He had a Pro Bowl season in 2003 in Philadelphia, his hometown, when he rushed for 1,049 yards and five touchdowns. Swift went to the Bears as a free agent. Will Bon the Floor is yours. A great many of us, by us, I mean me. I started the season thinking, you know, Swift is nice. He's not the guy who's going to lead a real rushing attack. And he did against the Cowboys in week three when we were already owing two.

And then after the by week, when Ben Johnson got him and a rookie, Kyle Minunganonga, got those guys together. And they have been beastly ever since either first or second in the NFL in rushing. Yay, Mr. Swift. Oh, for the halcyon days of your O'N-5 prediction. Happy anniversary, Ben Watson. On this day, 20 years ago, the Patriots' tight end chased down speedy Broncos cornerback, champ Bailey, after Bailey had picked off Tom Brady in the end zone and was headed for a pick six.

Watson knocked Bailey out of bounds on the one-yard line in what turned out to be a 100-yard interception return. Denver ultimately won the game, knocking the Patriots out of the playoffs, ending their hope of winning a third straight Super Bowl. Bill Belichick later said, if there was ever a picture of a play, that the Patriots would hang up for all to see that occurred during a loss, Watson's play would be that one. Such a great play. What was more impressive? That or the play in the Super Bowl,

Pittsburgh, Arizona, on the chase down. Harrison. That's the most... Just check. Happy trails to Sebastian Offner's victory celebration at Australian Open Qualifying. The 29-year-old Austrian thought he'd won a qualifier when he went up 7-1 in a third set tie break, only to be informed by the chairump

that final set Grand Slam tie breaks or the first to 10 by two. No problem. Often still had a six-point lead, but not for long. I hope I get this name right. American Meshesh Basava Reddy, or Basava Reddy,

stormback to win the tie break and the match, and then celebrated by giving the choke sign. Look, it's great that he won, but you can't give the other guy the choke sign. Didn't that read somewhere? He's like a Pacers fan or Indy. He got it from Reggie. We're going to blame Reggie Miller.

Reggie Miller was specifically... One of the greatest... Okay. It was specifically aimed at Spike Lee. It was. Who had been ragging on him for the whole year, if not his whole career. But if this kid's a pacer guy? I mean, come on now.

You don't do this to somebody who is your opponent. You should have known the rule. Would you have known the rule? Yeah. That it goes to 10. Yes. I think I would have known the rule too. But the choke sign.

Is there any empathy? Is there any sympathy? No, the chokes sign. Awful. Let's go to the big finish. Let's do it. The Thunder beat the Spurs last night. Aha, that's significant, isn't it?

You've been waiting on that one game. You're right. They knew they had to beat San Antonio. They could not go through with another one of those and get swept. So it is significant. FBS. FBS coaches change the redshirt rule from a maximum of four games to nine. You approve?

So you're telling me that a player can play nine games in a 10 or 11 game schedule and still registered. That's ridiculous. It is. That's completely ridiculous. Rice and Deschambo, John Rahm, and Cam Smith all committed to the Live Tour this year. Is that a big deal? You think it is? Yeah, I do think it is because I think the PGA needs these guys.

You don't seem to think so. Not as much as you do. Especially, Rom? I mean, you know, are you beating the best in the world if Ram's not there? Well, yeah, but they play in the major, so you get a sense of it. I see every week. I think it's a big deal. Red Sox agreed to five-year $130 million deal with Ranger Suarez.

Okay, by you? He was really good in Philadelphia. That's a good get for them. Last one, Kansas gave second-ranked Iowa State its first loss of the season last night. How'd you know they would do that? Just home court advantage. You know we've both been there. If that's not the hardest place in America to play, it's in the top three, right?

Yeah, I think that's absolutely. We are out of time. We will try to do better the next time. I'm Tony Kornhaj. I'm Mike Wilbon. Same time tomorrow. I'm not going on.