Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show - Anthony Herron was surprised the Patriots didn't utilize Drake Maye's running ability more

Episode Date: February 9, 2026

Leila Rahimi, Marshall Harris and Mark Grote were joined by Score football analyst Anthony Herron to share his takeaways from the Seahawks’ 29-13 win over the Patriots on Sunday in Super Bowl 60.

This hour is brought to you by Vesectomy Clinics of Chicago. Anthony Heron, score football analyst. It's been fun watching the fantastic physical specimen that Darnell Wright is. It was on full display last week, and there was some really big moments he had against the Bengals, but he's going to have a unique challenge this week against the leading sack artist in the national football league. But we have heard the term unicorn utilized when describing Darnell Wright. Just look how much time. Caleb Williams has its max protection.

Colston Loughlin runs what they call a sail route. He's wide open. Former NFL defensive lineman and Iowa Huckoff. Anthony Herron received credit for it. It's a gracious job by Anthony Herron number 99. Mr. Hadden, I want to compliment you doing a fine job. Big Ann Herron on 1043 The Score. We do want to compliment Mr. Hadden on doing a fine job.

Anthony Herron, our football analyst, also for Fox 32, Big Ten Network. and he broadcasts with us on the Circus Sports Illinois hotline. Download the Circus Sports app today and is also on Twitch, twitch.tv, slash the score Chicago. Hey, big aunt. What's up, my good people? Yeah, man, we had the Super Bowl last night,

had all the festivities, the festivists that was Super Bowl 60s. That was fun. And then I, we hadn't actually hosted at our spot. This is the second Super Bowl. Bowl that we've been in the Burbs now. But last night was the first time we actually hosted people over at the house. And my wife is a huge Patriots fan and things weren't going well. But then I had to leave before the end of the game to go into the city

because I had some NBC5 duties last night with Lucanellus after the game and after the Olympics coverage. And then we were part of the newscast there at the end of the night. So I wasn't there to sort of see the tail end of it, just where Patriots fans, even though, as I've said to her and to my in-laws, been very spoiled this entire century, but at a certain point that reality sets in on the direction the game

is not taking further squad. I wasn't able to be there at the true end of the game to give her the warm embrace of what that defeat for the Patriots must have felt like. Wait, you had people over you say. We're trying to figure out if Grotie was at a party or a gathering. So how many people did you

have over and what would you call it? Oh, okay. So I don't, I don't think it's accurate to only base it on the amount of people there for whether or not you would call it a party because we also did order a bunch of food too and you know we all gathered within our you know our fairly you know decent size theater space we have in our basement and had to get some things corrected on Friday to make sure that was going to be as pristine as we wanted it to so I think in the end between family

and friends I have to look at the pictures probably probably 12 people yeah that's a party I mean family and friends that's yeah that's a party as opposed to what when you say that as that that gathering. Enemies. Yeah. That's what you're going to say. I'm going to make it real simple. I think a gathering is fewer than, less than 10 people.

Less than 10 people. Yeah. And you know them pretty well. What if some of those people are kids? Do you need like three kids to count for a full adult? Two and a half counts as a full adult. Kids being at a party is a game changer because they have to be accounted for. Right?

Like that's a whole thing. At all times. At all times. Depending on the age, yeah. Even though they're probably desirous of going into other rooms and hanging out. Running around. Going in the basement and whatnot. Yeah.

Thank you for answering our survey. Yeah. Was Lou Canellis? Does he a different? Because, boy, he got his picture up there a few times during the Super Bowl. Right. Like looking like a badass up there. I mean, I don't know, Lou might be a different person now that he's gotten all that Super Bowl shine.

So far so good. I just called him in the direct aftermath. I mean, maybe a week from now. We're going to see Lou with like blonde hair or something like that. You know, maybe at least frosted tips. You know what you're having a relapse to that guy Fiery commercial. I forget what the product was. Oh, right.

Bosh. It was Bush. It was Bush. Unrecognizable. I had no idea. I'm like, is that Jimmy Johnson? Have they used like CGI to make Jimmy Johnson look younger? Had no clue.

It was amazing, right? Yeah. Ant, this game was bad. I'm just going to throw it out here. No, no, because look. He might do differently. You play defense, man. No, no, I'm going to give it to you like this.

I like a defensive play. I like a strong defensive performance, but I can also recognize when offense is bad. Is it fair to say the Patriots offense was bad in this game? Yes. Thank you. I would agree with that. And they throughout the postseason, they've obviously been bad.

Now, great defenses. will make you look bad, but the Patriots offense has not consistently been a consistent world beater this year either. There was some boom or bust element to the Patriots offense during the regular season also. Now, Drake May's accuracy, his completion percentage being as consistently excellent as it was, was a huge part of what kept the chains moving for them. But in the postseason, that hadn't been the case. As the competition is ramped up, that hasn't shown up. And we certainly saw that play out a decent bit with the Bears throughout much of the regular season. But the Bears sort of regardless of opponent, regardless of defense, they had that surge, that finishing kick that they could establish.

And the Pats throughout the postseason haven't necessarily needed that because their defense has performed so well. But neither quarterback really had a strong game. Sam Donald between the two of them, to his credit. Because I think I was speaking to you guys about this maybe a little bit last week. You even go back to college, where I called a bunch of Sam Donald's games in college. The reason he was the number three pick instead of the number one overall pick in that draft cycle was not because of, you know,

the ceiling not being immense by comparison to his counterparts. It was that he was a turnover machine his entire time at USC. It has been that throughout his NFL career also was even that this season led the NFL in turnovers. But this playoff run, he's protected the football at a much higher level. he was the guy who didn't take sacks and didn't turn it over in the Super Bowl, Drake May took sacks and turned it over multiple times. And that was really the main deciding factor when comparing one QB with the other.

Was it just the, I guess this is way too narrow, but how much was the Seattle defense responsible for Drake May being bad for the most part in this game? He was uncomfortable both physically and mentally throughout the entire game. And those are really the two ways that you pressure a quarterback. You either pressure them physically by putting that pass rush pressure on them, having a QB under physical duress, where they either need to try and extend the play if that's within their bag of tricks or just to be able to get the ball out quickly.

And if they feel like they don't have a target to throw it to, then they're going to hold the ball as Drape May was holding the ball throughout much of the postseason and in the Super Bowl yesterday. you also put mental pressure on them. And that's what really makes the Seahawks defense, I think, unique by comparison to a number of other defenses throughout the league where they can get home with four with the best of them. They will rush the quarterback without the blitz and still have you feeling that heat.

But then they also do have this exceptional blitz package that Michael McDonald will rush you with. And that's where the mental pressure comes into it because you don't know for sure which it's going to be if they are going to lay back in coverage and just rush with four and get home that way, but you still have to respect the Devin-Witherspoon blitz that they are willing to throw at you as well. They can bring it from all angles, but both are really effective. And some defenses will just lean into either version of themselves,

but the Seahawks can do both, and they do both really well. So, you know, Drake may look like a really young QB, and he looked like a young QB against the majority of the defenses they faced in the postseason, but specific to the Super Bowl that they played last night, his inexperience showed up and, you know, to some extent, the lack of playmaker as well, that the Patriots just didn't have someone other kind of electrifying enough to consistently put some fear into that Seahawks defense.

We're talking to our football analyst, former Iowa Hawkeye, NFL athlete as well, Anthony Herron, here on Rahimi Harrison Grotie on 1043, the score. And I'm glad you brought up Devin Witherspoon. We had talked about him. I think he had a tremendous playoffs, but the stat that he had 21 pass rush snaps in 14 games this season before the Super Bowl and then had six. That was clearly a wrinkle that the Seahawks defense had unveiled specifically for this game. You know, what do you think about that, the idea of just building your game playing throughout the playoffs, especially when you have two weeks?

And then also the way that they utilized him and how disruptive he was in this game. That's a great word for him, disruptive. That's precisely what he was. He likes to reroute receivers in coverage, but he's shown in kind of limited availability, limited opportunity to do it going back to his college career at Illinois. But even to your point throughout his time in the National Football League, a young career, but he hasn't been a consistent part of the Blitz package. But his physicality shows up. He's physical in coverage. He can support the run with physicality also because he's willing to do that.

And I was just waiting for, like I described the other day. that I feel like Drake May is kind of what Josh McDaniels hoped Tim Tebow would be for him, not only in his day-in, day-out, attitude, demeanor, maturity, but the sort of multidimensional ability he could bring to the table because we know he can be remarkably accurate with the deep ball, and he's also an exceptional athlete as a quarterback. This should have been a double-digit carry game for Drake May, because you had to know going in.

You've seen the film. know what the Seahawks defense presents and you know what you lack on offense. And Drake May's legs, they should have gone into this game with the game plan that the running ability of their quarterback would be a bigger part of how they try to gain some advantage on one of the top defenses in football. I was really shocked that they didn't go in with that as a focal point. You know, 10, 12 carries, maybe not 20 plus carries. If you asked Drake May to give you 20 carries, I'm pretty confident he'd give it to you.

you, but at least 10, 12 carries, and then just depending on how many snaps of offense, they run throughout the game. That, to me, could have been a separating factor, but it ended up being a situation where he's standing in the pocket, and they could just bring a very similar blitz with Devin Witherspoon over and over and over again. And even when it didn't completely get home, you could tell it was just speeding up the timing mechanism of that Patriots passing attack, heating up the pocket in that way. That was part of the mental pressure that was there.

So it was masterful for Michael McDonnell to do that and to continue to throw it at them because they showed that they just didn't have an answer for it. And when we look at this game and the way it went down and really the way this entire season went down, I feel good knowing that the best team in the NFL, at least through my eyes, won the Super Bowl. That's not always the case.

And I also feel a little scared because I feel like because they're not in this Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson formula, where you're paying the quarterback so much money, and they got that defense, they could come back and make another run and be successful doing what they just did. Not paying the quarterback all this money yet.

I will be fascinated to watch how the offseason plays out for Sam Darnold. I think it was a fairly short deal he signed with Seattle. I don't even know the deal terms off the top of my head. But if you got a guy who's on like a three-year deal or something like that, he just finished the first season, to a Super Bowl championship.

Quarterbacks tend to feel like that's time to come up, you know, to get that full bag, because bags of cash can always be bigger. Yeah, three years, $105 million just so you do. I'm sorry, $100,500,000 just so you know. That, to me, screams renegotiation from Sam Donald's representatives. Would be my anticipation. That's my assumption going into this. Now, are they going to demand him to be the top paid quarterback in the sport?

I think that would be flawed logic. But for him to step in and be a guy who, led them to a Super Bowl championship. I'm confident there's plenty of bonuses, worked into his deal for the postseason success that they've experienced. But now that he's shown, I'm a Super Bowl QB, and there's nothing about this team that indicates I might not be able to do this again. So I got a free agent in K-9, Kenneth Walker III.

He's going to be looking to get paid as he should as well, because he's really one of the main engines of this offense throughout the season. He's the Super Bowl MVP. But I wouldn't anticipate that the, the amount of the cap that Sam Donald takes up right now will be consistent. And that's where, from the Bears perspective, kind of like I was texting about with you guys a little bit during the game here,

the quarterback position and where they're at in that space right now, knowing they've got a couple of more years, well, at least another year. We'll see here, you know, how things go after season three. But potential for another couple of years here where Caleb Williams continues to be on that rookie deal. You know going in what percentage of the cap he takes up. So to take advantage of this next couple of seasons here where he will be essentially a cap-controlled piece of your salary cap, then you take advantage of it now because, you know, Sam Donald's going to be in a stronger position to kind of get more and more money for the success they're having as a squad.

And he's earned it, but he hasn't earned it because he is, to your point, that Patrick Mahomes type. He's a key engine, but they're not winning because they have the best quarterback in the sport. They're winning because they have a very talented QB and an exceptional roster of talent around him. By the way, this gives me an opportunity to slide in a bear's question. That is. That is.

You just mentioned Caleb Williams and the importance of any team winning when they have a good quarterback on a rookie contract. They just hired Press Taylor to be their offensive coordinator, hire from within. You seem like that was the right idea, just to keep it buttoned up, just hire from within.

Let's keep whatever you have from the inside going with Ben Johnson because he could just literally take the baton and keep running. There's a lot about it that I like. The main thing that excites me about it is key figures, like in the orbit of teaching and developing Caleb Williams,

get to maintain their current position. J.T. Barrett continues to be the QB coach in a similar capacity to what he already was. He gets more time on task and more kind of career development as the QB coach that is most directly responsible for hands-on with Caleb Williams, as Caleb continues to skyrocket, then the perception of J.T. Barrett will continue to skyrocket as well.

So you don't have to switch him around. Antoine Randallel as the assistant head coach and receivers coach. That's a meeting room as well that will need continued development and has the potential to continue to show that. Think about the example from Seattle, where the Seahawks move on from D.K. Metcalfe, their proven commodity, their big play wide receiver whose overall game as a wide out isn't completely as fleshed out as you would like it to be.

There's kind of some limitations to the full scope of what D.K. Metcalf is excellent at as a wideout, but he's an excellent player and he makes big plays. They decided to move on from D.K. Metcalf with the ascension that they believed was coming from J.S.N., from Jackson Smith and Jigba. Do the bears feel like there's that potential from a Luther burden? I don't know.

But you could draw some comparisons from that with Seattle and say, all right, they had a big time wide out. Bears have a big time wide out and DJ Moore. But they also have a young, developing, impressionable receiver room beyond DJ Moore as well. So to the press Taylor question, I like the fact that J.T. Bear is in his spot. Antoine Randallel is in his spot. And you elevate a guy who has had the responsibility of implementing a game plan in NFL offenses before. He knows how to do that. And so now you can elevate him in.

that role and then you've still got one of the best play callers in the sport as your head coach slash offensive play caller and Ben Johnson. So it allows a degree of continuity to the Bears offense that shifting someone else around into that role would have kind of been a little bit more disruptive. That's not the only Bears adjacent question. I think we have for Anthony Aaron. We have more coming up. Bears adjacent. Yeah. Bears adjacent. Maybe we just bring back Tony Gill and Russ Dorsey and Colin today. You're a real one, they did do the real one test. You're right. I'd say you'd qualify. Well, thank. Next with Anthony Heron, let's do a little more of that, the bears adjacent

lessons and maybe thoughts that we were having watching the game and even with personnel questions. So we've got more of those with Ant. Join us on the other side of this. This is 104.3, the score.