PTI - Why Washington Star QB Demond Williams Entering Portal Sparked Drama!

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser discuss the ongoing college football portal and NIL drama across the league, the recent firing of former Ravens head coach John Harbaugh, and a potential Trae Young trade. 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 Welban. Tony. A woman from Belarus set a new record for sky surfing by jumping out of a helicopter at 21,000 feet.

I'm telling me, Cornheiser, wow, that beats my personal best by 21,000 feet. Have you ever been in a helicopter? I have not, have you? Yeah. Did you enjoy it? In Alaska. Oh, so you was as a tourist helicopter? Scared me to death.

Really? Yeah. Do you know that I've been told by guys who fly the planes that go up and down on the aircraft? aircraft carrier, those guys, fighter jet guys, that the greatest pilots in the world are helicopter pilots. They say that. Helicopter pilots. So better now. Yeah. Welcome to PTI, boys and girls. In today's episode, the University of Washington has a quarterback quandary. The Hawks are working on a Tray Young trade, and Steve Young joins us for five good minutes. But we begin today with the continuing saga of John Harbaugh. His agent is saying that he received calls from seven different NFL teams yesterday

within 45 minutes of Harbaugh being fired by Baltimore. So if Harbaugh wants work, he will get it. But he still has to be replaced in Baltimore, a team with a two-time league MVP at quarterback. Wilbon, what are you more intrigued with, where Harbaugh ends up or who the Ravens replace him with? Well, I am a resident of the state of Maryland. I live about 38 minutes from the ballpark

where the Ravens play their home games. So I'm curious. It's not my team. but I'm naturally curious. You get to see more of that. You hear more of the chatter of that. And I'm genuinely interested, but Harbaugh, to me,

if he's going to work this year, we don't know, he doesn't have to. He can wait until something better. Unless he wants to. If he wants to, he wants to, he's going to work. And Atlanta seems to me, as I mentioned yesterday,

and had changed since yesterday, the place where you have a great running back in Bejan Robinson. You have a serviceable quarterback at least, if not more so, very competent. Very competent. Even a backup. A young backup.

You've got a lot of things in place there if Harbaugh wants to do that. But the Ravens, Tony, you got a two-time MVP in Lamar Jackson. There seems to be, I hate to say this, some underachieving there, if you compare him to his peers and the number of playoff games that they have won, even Josh Allen. So I think the answer ultimately narrowly is I want to see what happens in Baltimore. I am more interested in where Hart is. I am more interested in where Harbaugh goes.

You are, okay. Okay. I mean, let me go through this. There are at the moment seven teams with official coaching vacancies. One of them is the Baltimore Ravens. I doubt they called up the agent and wanted to offer Harbaugh a job, which means at least one of those calls came from somebody with a coach already in place. And I will bet more than one came from a team with coaches already in place.

I'll just throw out a name here. Miami Dolphins. I don't know how committed they are to Mike McDaniel. Would they scrap Mike McDaniel if they could get John Harbaugh? Would Dan Quinn stay in Washington if Washington could get John Harbaugh? Let me go to Green Bay. If Green Bay loses the first round of playoff games to your bears, will Matt LaFleur stay there if John Harbaugh is available?

I know Todd Bowles says he's back in Tampa Bay. How secure do I feel that Todd Bowles is? The thing about Baltimore is I think whoever they bring in, I'll get out of here quickly. They've got to run it by Lamar Jackson because it does seem to both of us that Lamar Jackson wasn't 100% tied to John Harbour. He may not be good in the playoffs,

but he's great in a regular season. You've got to run it by him. And by the way, whoever gets that job, you've got to win quickly. It's there for you. You've got to win quickly or you're out. But you know what, Tony, let's not make Baltimore, Philly or New York or Boston,

the city is all immediately north. Baltimore doesn't have that kind of pressure to win. This pressure in every NFL City to win, particularly when you got an MVP. But let's not, I think Baltimore... If you have Lamar Jackson and you have a great running back. And you don't win, you'll be just like the previous coach you didn't do. And I say you only have two or three years to do it.

Let's move to college football and the tenuous relationship between the University of Washington and its incumbent quarterback, DeMond Williams, Jr. Williams had 3,065 passing yards, 25 touchdowns, eight interceptions for the Huskies this season. He also had six rushing touchdowns, 611 rushing yards. Washington wanted to keep him. Williams signed a contract to stay on January 2nd. Now Williams is saying on social media he's going to enter the transfer portal.

Washington is furious, and Yahoo says it plans to present evidence of tampering to the Big Ten to enforce Williams' contract. Wilmaon, what should happen between Washington and DeMond Williams Jr.? I have no idea. I've read it over and over and over. I have no idea because we have entered a territory at a time that no one has any idea. We've never had it before. And I know you can put all the lawyers in the room,

and they will all get in a room sometime soon. Sure. And they'll try to sort it out. And maybe they'll sort it out, but maybe they won't. My first instinct, my God, we live in the shadow of more lawyers, you and I than any place on earth. My first, my inclination is to say, you just signed a damn contract, kid.

You got to live with this. And somebody must have represented him. I don't know that he went out there and did a wild card. And if he did, he's older than 18. is older than 21. But, Tony, we don't know that that rules the day. We don't know what the rules are

and which ones have to be adhered to and which ones perhaps do not. Welcome to NIL kids. College football players and all college athletes are professional athletes tonight. It's that simple. They get paid.

Washington is paying him and he just signed on to be paid by Washington. Literally days after the ink is dried, he says he wants to go somewhere else. I don't know what kind of advice he got. I don't know how many lawyers are involved, but it would seem to me, as it would seem to you, that that contract is probably upright, and they could compel him to go under it. But do you want a player who doesn't want

to be there, what I would call the Kevin Durant syndrome? I don't know that you want that, and I don't know that these young kids getting all this money have any sophistication in the ways of contract law, because you and I don't at this point. This is the transfer portal is this golden highway, a hundred years of no official money, and now all the money in the world. And I don't know what you do here. No one knows what you do here.

And Tony, so this, you talk about slippery slope. This is worse than that. There's a mountain of backsliding down. I will say this. There's a factor in here that's important. What? One of the schools that may want this kid going into the transfer portal as a quarterback

is LSU with your best friend, Lane Kiffin Jr., The kid committed to him when he was in high school, then decommitted, then followed the guy at Arizona who then went to Washington. It's so hard to connect the dots here. I would say this, though, real quickly, I would say this. For all those schools like LSU and Washington and all those schools, there's another quarterback coming. Yep.

There's a kid we haven't heard of today who has no NIL money today, who may have all the NIO money in the world a week from Thursday. Who heard of Fernando Mendoza last year? Exactly. Nobody. Nobody. Let's move to the report that the Atlanta Hawks and Trey Young are working together to find a new team for that expensive borderline superstar guard.

Young is a four-time all-star, and the franchise's all-time leader in threes and dimes, but he's also a defensive liability. Who over the next two seasons is owed $95 million. Tony, you've been a Trey Young guy. Yeah. How valuable is he? I'm not going to say he's a borderline superstar.

I'm not going to have. No, no, no. That's got to be a, that's a pretty big order. Well, it's a big line. You hated him in college. You didn't like him at all. I didn't. Okay. So I think this is a very good thing, potentially, for Tray Young, who will otherwise be remembered always and compared to unfavorably with Luka Donchich, who he was traded for on Draft Day, 2018. The Mavericks drafted with the third pick. They drafted Tray Young. With the fifth pick Atlanta drafted Luca Dantzich, they were swapped.

And with all of Tray Young's accomplishments. And he led the league in assists last year. He ain't Luca Donchich. And even Nico Harrison would not trade Luca Donchich for Tray Young right now. I look around the league, Mike, and I see good players in not good situations. John Moran, what's he ever going to accomplish in Memphis? Bradley Beale, what has he ever accomplished? And that's why DeAaron Fox is so fortunate because he ends up in San Antonio

and he gets out of Sacramento before he dies there. Trey Young's done in Atlanta. They're two and eight with him and 15 and 13 without him. So if he can get on an upward trajectory, great. But if they say Washington, Washington's not an upward. No, it's Devil's Island. But you go there and you can survey the landscape and you just sort of showcase yourself for teams

who are contenders who will come looking for trades either before the deadline, which is about a month, or in the summer, in the offseason. And so then you can wind up restarting your career. You hit a reset button. But the Wizards are just where you go to stage before you go somewhere else. We

see this happening all the time in the league now. By the way, I got it wrong. I had reverse order. What did you do? Dallas drafted fifth and Atlanta drafted third. Okay. And it was Atlanta. Either though, but Dachach was involved in that draft night. But Trey Young, Tony, is an interesting face. Can I ask you a question? Everybody's fixating on

Washington. Doesn't Minnesota need a point card? Maybe Houston? Do the L.A. Clippers want to go all season with a 36-year-old point card in James Harder? Yeah, they do. Okay. Does Detroit need a real point? The thing is, he's such a terrible defensive player. There's a statistic that is mind-blowing. When he is on the court for Atlanta, Atlanta, is five points worse on defense than the worst team in the league, Utah. What about six-man? What about coming off the bench? I mean, I refuse to think, and you know where I was when he was. He's not John Haplech, it's a lot of money. Wait a minute. He can score a

And he can hand it out. There's no role for him in the NBA? Come on now. Which camera am I looking at? Okay, let's take a break. Coming up, what kind of a coach would be best for Lamar Jackson? We're going to ask Steve Young. We're also going to ask him whether he's more impressed by Justin Herbert or Jake May.

They face each other Sunday night. I worked hard on getting that trade right and I got it wrong. I mean, I got the right people, but I got the draft order wrong. The NFL playoffs begin on Saturday, which makes it the perfect time for a visit from our great friend and a man with whom I combined for two NFL MVP's. Yeah, he had both. Full of Fame quarterback, Steve Young, we're going to start with this. We're going back to the 49ers.

Brock Purdy sounds confident that Trent Williams will return from his hamstring injury against the Eagles. If you are in his shoes, how much does Williams's presence matter? Look, I don't think you can understate it. I mean, there's four positions that you have to have in the NFL to be any good as quarterback. Shut down tackle, shut down corner and edge rusher. So if you've got to tackle, and look, it's not as big a deal, Tony, today, because you're in the shotgun most of the time. The shotgun, you're already kind of preset. You don't have to turn your back.

If you're under center, you have to turn your back, and the blind side becomes a much bigger deal. But yet, if you have a tackle that can take a three-way rush and swab it down or stone it right where it is, that leaves you an angle now to escape. and then if he goes around the end, the circle gets so much bigger because the tackles that's so much more athletic. If you don't have that guy, everything gets squeezed.

It's concentric circles. All you do is just feel this kind of presence all the time. And then what that gets into your head too because you know the pocket. If the pocket starts to shrink in the playoffs, it eats at you. And so having him back and having Trent ready to go will be huge. Wow.

We'll go to another Williams, Caleb. Because he and Ben Johnson, if both said the Bears quarterback is bad, built for big games. God only hopes for some of us that that's true, Steve. Is that a thing? Does that sound like wishful thinking or nonsense to you? It's a shock. You're asking me this question, Michael. You better hope. But look, it's a three-ring circus, right? You've got to have a coach that's going to call the plays. That's what Ben has brought. What's happened? Why is Caleb playing so well? It's Caleb. And he's got a coach that's innovative, thoughtful, puts play calls together.

and that's how you handle big games. And then you have to have the talent around you to go catch it and block and all the rest of it. So it takes it all. But the real what he's saying is in a big game moment, your brain doesn't shrink. Great quarterbacks, the bigger the game, the more kind of expands, the more presence you get. And that's what he's saying about Caleb. And what you can't have anymore is a 42-38 game in Chicago. Like you've got to play defense.

Like you love 38. But the 42, that's not going to work. Yeah, we've given up a few 42s when we get out in the Bay Area. Justin Herbert and the Chargers are going to face Drake May and the Patriots Sunday night, which you know. Which quarterback has impressed you most so far? Well, I mean, the surprise, obviously, is Drake. It's really, he's the MVP.

I mean, obviously Matthew Stafford as well, but he's a kid that if you, however you want to cut it, He's that guy. But because he's new and because no one really, you know, knew him as well as, you know, nationally, it's a little bit of a surprise. And so I think this is a huge game for him because it's his kind of coming out. Look, I know I'm overstating it, but it's a big deal because I think he's that good. The problem with just, you know how much I love Justin Herbert. The idea that he is still in a run first offense is, makes me crazy.

Like he is all of any, he's as good as anybody. but I want to see the full measure of Justin and now he's got his legs going. He's running for 80 yards a game. If he can stay healthy, I love him. But this is why I love the playoffs. It's the best quarterbacks show up. We will get you out of here on this.

Lamar Jackson, speaking of best quarterbacks, regular season, he's one of the best quarterbacks. He's suddenly in need of a new head coach. If that was you, if that was you, what would you want? I think I just talked about it. Like, remember I, told you many times the OGs of the new rules, innovative offensive minds, Sean Payton, Sean

McVeigh, Kyle Shanahan, and Andy Reed. And you look at their tree of coaches. They're now infiltrated throughout the league because all those four gave everything they had to their assistance. So they've now, the fruit of those trees are all over the NFL. And so if you're not going to, if you're being one of those teams that's going to ignore that trend, you're at your own peril. Look at the playoffs today. Everybody is running by an offense that's doing that. So bring that to Baltimore. They tried to transition. John tried to do it with Lamar to give him more exposure to a sophisticated pass game. They got further along, but let's go full in to see if we can find out the full measure of Lamar Jackson. Like, come on. I think he can be that great if he can stay

healthy, but please hire a head coach that's going to bring that innovative mind to the offense and a sophisticated passing game. But look, like Chicago, you better play some defense too, so figure that part out. But, you know, I, In Chicago, Michael, they're like, bro, this is Chicago at the end of day. This is Baltimore. We've got to play some defense. All right. Let me follow up and ask you this.

Please hire an offensive. Offensive money. That guy, you're describing Bill Walsh. Doesn't it make you jealous or crazy that all these people, it's all derivative, all they're doing is what Bill brought to the league 50 years ago? But remember, don't forget, Michael. I don't want to run out of time, but he packaged everything he knew up. I was there.

when he was filming and he was trying to, like, he would tape everything. And I thought he was building it for a museum, a Bill Walsh Museum. But I said, what are you doing, taping yourself going into the locker room, going out to practice? He goes, I'm building a repository of everything that I know at the height of my career because I'm going to hand it to my minority assistant coaches who are not getting head coaching jobs. And with this repository of everything that I know, I'm three generations ahead of everybody, they're going to go get those jobs. And he handed it to them, he handed it to Mike Holger and he handed it to everybody.

And then on the way out, he said, I'll see you in the championship game. That's insane. I said, Mike, Bill, they're going to come back and compete against us. And he goes, that's what I want. That's how I sharpen my saw. That's how I get better. Think about that for a second. And now, the NFL should be called the Bill Walsh League at this point.

It really is. This is so nice. It's such a good tribute. It is. Thank you so much to be on. Thank you, Steve. Thank you, Steve. Appreciate it.

Good, boys. Happy New Year. Let's take you, too. Let's take one last break still to come. Is it time for Matt Nagy? to get another head coaching job. You want to make me angrier? I know you would not like that.

And how excited should we get for tonight's game between the Lakers and Spurs? Bill Walsh. Yeah. None of these people is Bill Walsh. None of them. That's right. All of them together.

Oh, I don't know about that. All right. Well, then they'd be half Bill Walsh. Go on now. Together. Come on now. Yes. You were there.

Walsh. I know how much you lost. Let's put the in in innovation. Happy time, people. Happy 42nd birthday, John Lester. The left-handed starter pitched for 16 seasons of the majors for five different teams. The Red Sox for nine seasons, the A's, the Cubs for six seasons, the Nationals and the Cardinals. Lester was 20117 over his career with a 366 ERA. Lester was a five-time All-Star, three times for

the Red Sox, twice for the Cubs. He was the NLCS MVP in 2016 for the Cubs, where he gave up just two earned runs and 13 innings against the Dodgers. But perhaps the most striking claim Lester can make is that he won World Series with the Cubs and the Red Sox. Come on, Wilburne, who can say that? Okay, John Lackey and David Ross. Who else? Theo Epstein? Oh, as a, yeah, in administration. Because he was responsible for all of this. There's over 100 years. But we don't win without John Lester. We do not win in 2016 without his contribution. It was huge. Happy anniversary, Trevor Lawrence, on this day seven years ago as a true freshman, Lawrence threw for 347 yards and three

touchdowns on his way to being named MVP of the national championship game as number two Clemson dismantled unbeaten in number one Alabama 44 to 16 finish their season 15 and oh current jaguar's teammate Travis Etienne was also on that Clemson team he scored three touchdowns in the game Lawrence became the overall number one pick in 2021 and had been teetering on the edge of mediocrity in recent years until Liam Cohn whispered in his ear the result a 13 and 4 season a division championship 8 straight wins and 19 passing touchdowns and five rushing touchdowns in those eight games. Who did you get him or Josh Allen in the upcoming? I know where you're going.

I'm going to go the other way because I think it might be his last chance, Josh Allen. I think the way is not as good. No, but I think it's the way is clear for him if he can do it. Happy Trails, the last night's game for the Devils. New Jersey got hammered by the Islanders. Nine nothing. Nine. That's the largest margin of victory in the league all season.

Anthony Duclair of the Islanders had a hat trick less than four minutes into the second period. What makes this lopside to score even stranger is that the devil's outshot the Islanders 44-24. Devil's goalie Jacob Markstrom was never pulled, saying afterwards, quote, we want to apologize to the devil's fans, I've got to be better. We put up 40 plus shots. They put up 20. Scored 9. I'm embarrassed of myself.

I hate that those two teams have become, relatively speaking, irrelevant. While we got a steady stream of Tampa, Bay, and Florida. Yes. Really? Yes. I grew up with the Islander. Yeah. Let's go to big finish.

The NFL Network says the Titans, Cardinals, and Raiders have all requested interviews with Matt Nagy. Does that make sense? I'm not going to do what you think, which is jump all over this. He's not unemployable, okay? Six men's college basketball teams are still undefeated? Is that significant? It's very late for that many to be undefeated. Nothing significant to lay after the Super Bowl.

The Cubs landed Marlon starter, Edward Cogrera, for three prospects. Is that a big deal? Yeah, he's talented, but he's hurt a lot. And they traded Owen Cassie to get him? Really? The Pacers lost their franchise record 13 straight game last night. Is that a big deal? This is what happens when your best player gets hurt

and your second best player leaves with free agency. You take a team that was in a finals last year and they can't compete. Last one. Lakers at Spurs tonight. I bet you're excited. Oh, yeah. The Spurs. I don't know whether Wimbunyama's going to play.

Played last night. Would you play him back to back? I would not. Not yet. I would not. He's going to want to play against the Lex. And I want to see. He's going to want to.

We're out of time. We'll try to do better. the next time i'm tony cornhine i'm mike wilbon same time tomorrow knuckleheads the bears have to win because the cubs are making me angry and we're not even to february yet trade no and castie please