Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show - Mike Florio talks Bears' 'leverage play' in pursuit of new stadium

Episode Date: August 20, 2026

This hour is brought to you by Jule Osco. Ladies and gentlemen, joining us now is a man who's got a massive brain. Mike Florio. He used to be a lawyer, then he decided to take his talents to the internet. NBC sports. I'm sorry I'm late. I was talking to Robert Kraft. That is at the time for an airing of grievances.

Pro football talk. I got a lot of problems with you, people. No, you're going to hear about it. On Chicago Sports Radio, 1043, the score. I want to keep talking Lego. We talk to Mike Floreo every week on Rahimi Harrison Grotie. He is the creator and editor-in-chief of Pro Football Talk. He is at Pro Football Talk on X, joining us on our hotline and on Twitch,

twitch.tv slash the score Chicago. Mike, thanks for pushing your visit back. One day we had crossed town yesterday between the Cubs and the White Sox. How are you today? I'm doing great. How are you? I get like a little shaky when my routine gets disrupted, but it's okay. It was exactly 24 hours, so I can tell myself it's Wednesday.

Okay, we appreciate that. Marshall also thought it was Wednesday today, so everybody's kind of in the same place. I do want to ask you, it is funny. You're the one who brought this up originally, and I just realized it as you were coming on. You know, we joked and had the whole idea of Bears, too, which was your idea of Cincinnati coming up and combining resources with the Bears whenever they couldn't get their stadium renovations initially off the ground. Well, guess who's at joint practices today?

if it isn't the two, the bears and the Bengals tangling it up right now. And, hey, you know, the Bengals have solved their issue. The bears are the ones who are still looking. And I continue to believe that under the right circumstances, there could be two teams in one stadium in Chicago. New York has it. L.A. has. And I think Chicago is big enough.

We know it's big enough for two baseball teams. And it becomes a lot cheaper to pay for a stadium if you've got 20 games there by NFL teams instead of 10. So my pipe dream is not over. It's just not the Bengals. Maybe the Buccaneers, if they can't get the deal they're looking for in Tampa Bay. The Chicago Buccaneers has a certain ring to it. I don't know.

I feel like we did such good work with Bears, too, being the Bengals. It was, and now, as we pointed out earlier, Mike, this might just be the meeting of two offense of junkies between Zach Taylor and Ben Johnson. And then his brother Press also getting in the mix, too. The more I think about it, the more I realize that may have just been what this was about, was guys trying to work on their offenses together. Well, and hey, these joint practices have value. And as the season gets bigger and bigger and the preseason gets smaller and smaller,

we're going to see a greater focus on the joint practices. It's a more controlled setting, except for the fights. Other than the fights, it's a more controlled setting for your players. It's not full speed, full contact game conditions, as long as you don't have the fights. It's interesting, Mike, that you mentioned the Buccaneers as a candidate to join. the Bears because the Bears, they wish they could have maybe a guy like, I don't know, Vita Vaya, who signs a one year $30 million deal

to end that kind of a hold in, hold-in, holdout situation with the team. What do you make of Vita Vaya agreeing to just stay put as opposed to demanding a trade, beating the drum loudly for the last few weeks? Oh, it always comes down to money, and he's now said he never wanted to leave. There's certain pressure points that get applied. Remember when DiBo Samuel was never going to play for the 49ers again, and then he signs his long-term contract. It's all part of the negotiation.

Sometimes elements become public. And at the end of the day, he gets a $6 million raise this year, $24 million next year, guarantees beyond this year. And he's content. At the end of the day, signs a deal that he's happy with. And now they've got to make up for lost time and get him ready for week one. Mike, I know you touched on the Bears Stadium. And I know you've talked about it with our morning show, Mully and Haugh.

But there's no better example of terrible messaging surrounding this. and just once again, reflective of poor strategy, then them coming out last week, George McCasky, Kevin Warren, I'm glad they did. Like, credit to them for doing that. I know it's part of what they do every preseason. But they say that Hamond, Indiana is their sole focus, and yet we find out that the NFL and Roger Goodell himself

is helping the Bears also talk to the state of Illinois. Well, that's not soul by any means. As a lawyer, I think you know that would get torn up in any court. But how do you describe what you've been observing out of not just the messaging, but the whole process and the latest development that Goodell might be involved to this extent. Every additional fact that comes out as this unfolds reinforces my belief that someone decided that the bears needed leverage to get a deal done in Illinois, and the light bulb went off over someone's head, possibly after the chiefs reached a deal to cross the border from Missouri

to Kansas. Hey, we've got a border. We can go to Indiana. We can do a deal with Indiana. We can act like we're going to do a deal with Indiana, and we can see if that's enough to rattle the cage with the Illinois lawmakers to get them to do a deal that will keep us in Illinois. Because there's nothing stopping them from going to Indiana. Nothing.

They have a deal with Indiana. They're not using the lingering possibility of Illinois coming to the table as some sort of mechanism to get a better deal from Indiana. They're not trying to leverage Indiana. Indiana is the leverage, and it's obvious, and the problem is it's too obvious. So at some point, if your leverage play doesn't work, your leverage play possibly becomes your only outcome. So they may have entered into this Indiana thing with no intention of moving to Indiana, but if it doesn't work, you may have to go to Indiana.

Mike Florio, the creator and editor-in-chief of Pro Football Talk, joining us as he does each and every week, this time on a Thursday here on Rahimi-Hiris. Grotty. Mike, Dan Campbell says the window is not closed on the lions, much to the dismay of course of, I don't know, the Bears team that got swept by him and embarrassed early in last season. I wonder, though, is the window starting to close? Is it halfway close? How would you look at where the lions are right now and how hot is the seat that Dan Campbell sits on this year in Detroit? Right now it's not hot, but if they missed the playoffs again this year, I think, come next year, year seven? And there's never been a coach of the Lions who lasted more than nine

years. Wayne Fonce is the record holder in franchise history at nine seasons. If they fail to make it this year, then next year there are going to be real questions. Now, last year the problem was they lost eight coaches, including both coordinators. And John Morton was not a suitable replacement for Ben Johnson. They're now excited about Drew Pedson. And if you look at his resume, this isn't Bill Walsh 2.0. So, hey, maybe he'll get it done. they have the talent. Talent helps a coach look a lot better than he might be. But I look at the schedule that they stumbled into by finishing fourth. You know, of the 17 games on your schedule, 14 of them come from a formula that applies to all four teams in the division. Only three games are

different. But when you look at those three games, the Lions have a much more favorable three games than the Bears or the Packers who finished first and second. And those three games, in a division that was separated by two games from top to bottom, those three games could be the thing that makes the difference for the Lions to win the division this year. Well, that's it, Mike, is I feel like everybody has a different answer when it comes to who the regression candidate is in the NFC North. You know, was obviously the Lions last year. They were the regression team or who they think is going to win the division or how the division shakes out. And the fact of the matter is when the Bears had a losing record in that NFC North and still won the division,

I think that kind of factors into the parity that we're going to see. It might be the most wide open division in football this year. Well, the NFC South is pretty wide open. I think any of those teams could finish first and any of them could finish last. You could make the same argument for the North. And really, the schedule used to have more flexibility that was based on strength of your finish the year before to induce parity into the next season. It's down to three games. it used to only be two games until they added the 17th game.

That's still enough. Three games is enough to potentially make a dramatic difference because the margins at the end of the day are very small. And the way the Lions schedule is set up this year out of the gates, their first five games, they should at least be four and one. But you know what? They were four and one last year, too. And then the wheels came off.

So they need to deliver this year. They had that 2023 season where they were up 17 points in the second half of the NFC champion. chip and blew it. They had the one seed, two home games and you're in the Super Bowl for the first time ever. They got blown out by the commanders. Last year, they don't make the playoffs. So if the windows open this year, it potentially can start to really close if they don't take advantage of the fact they still have a lot of great players. And each passing year, everything changes. But the expectations have become high for the Lions now. And this arguably is a year that

they need to deliver. Mike, I know you said the NOC South. I think that's fair, but I always make the joke that nobody actually wants to win that division. So I just wanted to point that out. In the meantime, I want to get into, I think, a new story that looked like a very big headline when it came out a few days ago, but really needs some backup from a professional like you and some perspective. The document provided by Corn Ferry that you called the Smoking Gun document and how it can shake up the Brian Flores case, which we now is going to see the light of day.

Can you explain why this document is so crucial to what we may see play out with the NFL? Well, I don't know specifically why it would be crucial because it's currently under seal. And this is a common tactic in civil litigation. The two sides work out the agreed terms of a protective order. And then you just flag willy-nilly whatever documents you believe are confidential and fall within it. And then they fight over which ones should or shouldn't be available to the public. there's a fight over whether or not this specific document from Corn Ferry, a search firm should be made available to the public.

But it's believed based upon the people who received the document, you look at it and it could be potentially impactful in a big way for the Flores case. It arose from one of the many Raiders coaching searches, and I don't know which one, and there's been like seven of them over the last 10 years. But Corn Ferry was involved in helping the Raiders, a document created in that process, ended up being one of the documents produced by Corn Ferry under subpoena to Flores lawyers. And that's what can turn an entire case. When I used to practice law, and part of the challenge is you'll get a stack of documents,

literally three feet high. And you've got to sit down and you've got to have the discipline to look at every single one of them, top to bottom, everything on there, stray marks. maybe a word written in the margin. One case that I worked on 30 years ago, there was a word written in the margin that made all the difference in the case. You got to look at every one of those documents

and you have to be vigilant and conscious and alert and all it takes is one. And it sounds like Flores lawyers found out one document that they think is going to make a huge difference. And we'll see because, you know, this is how litigation goes and it's how our political reality has become. Everyone's got an answer for everything.

They're going to come up with the best possible spin in response to anything that would be problematic. So I'm sure the NFL will have an explanation. The question is whether a judge or a jury will buy it. Mike Florio, the creator and editor-in-chief of pro football talk, joining us here on Rahimi-Harris and Grotie. Layla Rahimi, Marshall Harris, with you until 2 o'clock. Hey, Mike, you're bringing up some of the off-the-field drama

that makes football and all of sports extra salacious. Do you have a guilty pleasure of a team that you're following right now in terms of, oh, I'm kind of interested in what happens in, this current situation. For me, it's always going to be the Cleveland Browns because Deshaun Watson added with Shador Sanders. It just makes for interesting talk, chat, if you will.

Do you have something that you follow and you're like, people really need to be paying attention to this? Oh, it's the team that's 90 miles up the road from me in Pittsburgh with 19 years of Mike Tomlin, who never had a losing record and who I think always managed to take whatever talent they had and

put together a team that outperformed what the various would suggest. Now the transition from him to Mike McCarthy, who of the three teams to coach for your career, good Lord, the Packers, the Cowboys, and the Steelers, how could you pull a better hand than that? But he's coming in with a new approach and there's buzz about what he's doing with the young quarterbacks. Mason Rudolph recently said he's jealous of the kind of tutelage that the young quarterbacks are getting. That could be viewed as a backhanded slap at the development he didn't get when Mike Tonlin was there and there have been chronic issues with the

offense in Pittsburgh ever since they ran off Bruce Ariens. So it's going to be an interesting case study. What can Mike McCarthy do with the players he's inheriting from Mike Tomlin? Will he make them better? Will he make them worse? And will that 30% of the Steelers fan base that was always quick to argue that Tomlin should be fired if they'd lose two or three games in a row? How will they be feeling when the dust settles on this season? That to me is going to be very fascinating, if the wheels come off, there's going to be a lot of stress on that that full circle relationship

between Mike McCarthy and Aaron Rogers and I think it has the potential to get very entertaining if it's time for people to start pointing fingers. Mike, I know this is not football related, but it just seems like a story you would be interested in. The Lakers get sold. We're seeing how Jeannie Bus is trying to put up a fight. It's appropriate, I think,

when it comes to her trying to assert what power she has on that board. but really the story then became, what is going on with Mark Walter? And now the Dodgers are being discussed as possibly their finances being looked into. It feels like this is all coming to a head very quickly. Are you familiar at all with what's happening? And what are your observations, if so, just having your law background? I know just enough about those situations to know that I'm glad that it's not an NFL story

because it would require a ton of time and effort and explanation. at a time when we're thick into the preseason with the regular season coming and there's only so much bandwidth that can go around. But I look at these scandals in other sports and I just wonder when if how something similar

could happen in the NFL and typically I've been looking at gambling scandals from that perspective. But when you start looking at financial irregularities and potential ownership battles and you look at how the values of teams are going up, and you wonder what's really behind the curtain.

We only know, as to the Packers, what the books look like. But if this stuff is happening with other teams in other sports, can't help but wonder whether or not there's an NFL franchise that if you scratch hard enough in the right spot, you're going to find something that could become a powder keg for the NFL. It feels like scratch and sniff, and I don't think we're going to like the smell when we actually scratch it up. If we're even allowed to know.

Whatever happened to scratch and sniff. Scratch and sniff was horrible. Well, maybe that's what happened. I blame forever chemicals, Mike. Something tells me those were chock full of PFAs. Fair, fair. Not to have a buzzkill, but, you know, that's kind of how we do. Mike, thanks as always for your perspective and your legal understanding.

We appreciate it. Enjoy your lunch, Mike. Thanks for great weeks. Yes, enjoy your Thursday lunch now that you can have it. That is Mike Florio, creator, editor-in-chief of pro football talk, joining us every week here on Rahimi-Harrison-Grady on 1043, The Score. Football fans, join Mark Grody and Dan Weir. for a special Take the North live this Monday night.

TTN. TTRN live. It'll be from 6 to 8 p.m. at Gurney Hyundai, featuring appearances from, yes, Tyson, Bejant and D'Andre Swift. And a complete breakdown of the biggest training camp storylines ahead of the season. It is all sponsored by the Rorman Automotive Group. Get full synthetic oil changes for only $50. Visit Worman.com.

Coming up next year on Rahimi Harrison Grotie, let's stay with football, because Dennis Allen was asked about Jalen Johnson and really kind of let you into what a test for the defense this Bengals team can be in joint practices. So we'll examine next.