The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Brian Flores files discrimination lawsuit against the NFL + more coaching carousel updates

Episode Date: February 2, 2022

Robert is in Mobile covering the Senior Bowl and welcomes Lindsay Jones to the show to discuss the breaking news that former Dolphins coach Brian Flores has filed a class action lawsuit against the NFL, the Giants and several teams alleging discrimination in their hiring practices. This is the type of lawsuit that the NFL has been scared of. Robert and Lindsay also discuss the on field impact of the Giants hiring Brian Daboll and the Raiders hiring Josh McDaniels. Is Jim Harbaugh's candidacy to become the next Vikings coach for real? Plus, what the heck is going on with the Jags, Texans and Dolphins openings? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the athletic football show. The athletic football show. Today is Wednesday, February 2nd. I'm Robert Mays. I'm joining me today. It's Lindsay Jones. Lindsay, how are you? I'm great, Robert.

How's Mobile? I'm in Mobile, Alabama. I'm here for the Senior Bowl. It's my first time. We were just discussing this. Usually, in a previous life, where I used to be an NFL writer, I would be reporting this week on the way to the Super Bowl. You'd start gathering string on stories.

And for two reasons, that is no longer as important because there is no access in person for to these teams before the Super Bowl because of the world that we currently live in. So I am here. I'm here going to. Yeah, it is a tough thing. It is a tough thing. But for multiple reasons, I am here. I'm going to be hanging out with a bunch of people we know.

You know, our friend Brandon Thorne, who's been on the show is down here, tweeting out videos of offensive linemen, all those kinds of things. So it should be a fun little week. And talking to some scouts, talking to some people who are very invested in the draft. Please come back tomorrow. Listen to Dane and Lance, who are also here, obviously, Dane Bruegler and Lance airline, doing their draft podcast from Mobile. I will try to sneak on there.

I'm not exactly sure what the plan is. But that's what we're doing. That's why I'm here. That's where I am this week. So today, we were going to dig into the coaching news and some of the hires that have been made and what we make of some of these hires. We were going to end that conversation with a familiar conversation as it relates to the NFL and the coaching cycle and what these hires typically look like. It was another year seemingly where head coaching candidates of color were being fired and not hired.

We were down to one in the entire NFL. And there were some names that were fairly prominent as options for teams. You think about Brian Flores, Todd Bowles, Byron Lefwich, Temeco Ryan's, Raheem Morris, even. None of those guys have been hired. We've had several jobs filled. No coaches of color. Before we started recording this, about 20 minutes before we started recording this, news came down about Brian Flores filing a class action lawsuit against the Giants and the NFL for racism as part of their hiring practices.

Lindsay, I'm sure you know the language a little sharper than that, but why don't you just walk people through what this lawsuit looks like and just your initial reaction? when you saw it come down here on Tuesday afternoon? Sure. I mean, so my initial reaction was, wow. I mean, when you start looking through the, it's 58 pages. It's been filed. It hasn't officially been updated to like the federal case system,

but it has been filed by his attorneys out of New York. And there are some like bombshell allegations in there, the sexy things that are going to make headlines. It's things like Bill Belichick, sending a text to Brian Flores thinking he was texting Brian Dable, congratulating him on getting the Giants job. Days before Brian Flores interviewed. This was before Flores had even interviewed. So without those texts and without Bill Belichick not knowing which Brian in his phone he was texting, none of this stuff probably would have happened.

I don't think this, you know, he wouldn't have, Brian Flores wouldn't have felt like using his words from this lawsuit. It was a sham interview. So that's going to be one of the big headlines. Also in the lawsuit, Brian Flores and his attorneys claim that Stephen Ross offered him $100,000 for every loss during the 2019 season as incentive to tank to try to get the number one overall pick that year. Flores in that lawsuit says that he did not comply, and he also did not comply with efforts made by Stephen Ross to tamper with a big-name quarterback. was not actually, the quarterback is not actually named in that lawsuit. So those are sexy things. And then the third one is he says that he was subject to a sham interview previously in 2018 with the Denver Broncos and also alleged that John L. Way and company showed up an hour late to

that interview appearing to be hungover. So there's a lot of like salacious stuff. Like those are, those are the headlines. That's the stuff that you're going to see across the ticker on Sports Center. It's certainly included in the news story that we've written at the athletic, everybody is going to be writing. My bigger takeaway is that this is the type of lawsuit that the NFL has been scared of and that NFL owners have been scared of

because they needed somebody like Brian Flores to come in and burn the bridge down and light this shit on fire and expose everything. Because what Brian Flores is doing today is in effect, probably killing his NFL coaching career.

Yeah. And he acknowledged that in a statement. Do you have that? Yeah, so his words were, and that was my first thought, was he is just an unlikely messenger for this, in my opinion, because he's currently getting head coaching interviews. And that's why it was so surprising, not because any of this might have happened. You talk to coaches of color around the league and we can dig into this. These stories are rampant. You hear it every single time this conversation comes up and this topic comes up.

But because he's somebody that is actively interviewing for jobs, he had a second interview with the Texans this week who's interviewing for the Saints. job. That's why I was surprised by it. Then I saw what he said and it addressed exactly what I was thinking about. His words in that suit were God has gifted me with a special talent to coach the game of football, but the need for change is bigger than my personal goals. In making the decision to file the class action complaint today, I understand that I may be risking coaching the game that I love and that has done so much from my family and me. My sincere hope is that by standing up against systemic racism in the NFL, others will join me to ensure the positive change is made for generations to come.

And that's a pretty powerful statement. It really is. And reading that and seeing that was his part of whatever was filed, it's like, oh, there it is. Like that was exactly my concern or my question when he did this is how is he taking his own personal future into account here? And clearly that's how he's thinking about it. And would I remember back to 2020 when the George Floyd protests and everything that

followed in 2020 and the league's really poor handling of that initially? the player response, Brian Flores and the dolphins were they were leaders in that space. They, in the preseason games, they put out of it. I mean, they were leaders in that space. And Brian Flores drove that with his players.

He had several, you know, very impactful player leaders that were part of that as well. But this is not new for him. But so when we talk about like what this means for the NFL landscape, I mean, it's embarrassing, first of all, in a year that has been

full of embarrassing moments. I mean, dating back to, you know, John Gruden, everything that's been going on with the Washington football team, which I believe there was actually a congressional hearing today, which was like 50th on the news, the news cycle of what's been going on in the NFL right now. Everything having to do with the Super Bowl coming in a few days or a couple, 10 days or so seems, you know, way back burner right now. But, I mean, this, if this gets to the discovery stage,

if Bill Belichick is subpoenaed, if John Elway and John Mara and who knows who else ends up being subpoenaed. I mean, this is the type of stuff that could expose all this stuff that minority coaches, specifically black coaches, have been talking about amongst themselves for years. And the NFL's, I'm sure, is terrified about this. The fact that this is a class action lawsuit is important. This tells me that Brian Flores was the one to put his name on it and to go first, but it tells me that he doesn't believe he's going to be the only one.

So what's important about a class action lawsuit is that others can join. They're inviting other people to join in it. The proposed class, I'm now reading from the lawsuit, the proposed class is defined as follows. All black head coaches, offensive and defensive coordinators and quarterbacks coaches, as well as general managers, and black candidates for those positions during the applicable statute of limitations period, to two-touchers. They're never getting back into it. But basically what this is saying is, were you denied an opportunity to interview for a job, to, were you put through sham interviews to use the words that they've used? Do you believe that, you know, you were passed over for

coordinator jobs, general manager jobs, and certainly head coaching jobs? So does Eric B. NME want to join this lawsuit? We don't know anything about if Eric Biamie would want to, but he would certainly be eligible. There are so many coaches. So many coaches. On the sham interview part of it, which is in the conversations I've had, I wrote a story a couple years ago when the kind of the new wave of the McVeigh clones was happening. And we had this movement league-wide in the NFL, which we can get into some of this

as we discussed this more, but how offensive coaches were becoming the thing. You wanted a play calling offensive head coach in that mold. All those guys are white. There are no offensive play callers in the NFL that are blind. for the most part. The only one coming into that season when I wrote about it was Byron Lefich. And as part of that story I wrote about Byron Lefich, I talked to members of that Buck staff, which is famously diverse, right? I mean, Bruce Ariens has done a pretty intentional job of elevating coaches of color on his staff to certain roles. And I remember vividly talking to Harold

Goodwin, who was their offensive line coach at the time, I think run game coordinator, longtime assistant on Bruce Ariens' staffs going all the way back to Pittsburgh, I believe. And I remember him telling me about the coaching interviews that he'd had. And you'd go into a head coach interview and the owner wouldn't even be there. He wouldn't even be in the room. The person who ultimately would have to make that decision wasn't in the room when they were interviewing for this job. And the whole question here is, what is the Rooney Rule? What is it supposed to accomplish?

And do these sham interviews happen in part because that needs to be satisfied? And I think that's at the crux of this is that are these sham interviews happening to satisfy the Rooney role. And obviously, Brian Flores thinks they absolutely are. And I'm sure there are a lot of other coaches. There are a lot of other coaches who agree with him. And there are people on the league side that believe that too. I mean, Troy Vincent, who is basically Roger Goodell's like top football operations, you know, lieutenant. I mean, he is, he oversees all of this stuff. He's been on the record for years talking about how the Rooney Rule is not sufficient. And, you know, within the channels that they have, they have expanded. the Rooney rule. So the differences that we've seen in the last two coaching cycles is that teams are now required to interview two minority candidates. And for coordinators now. And well, in coordinators, it has to be one minority candidate. But that not even one was a rule before. Yes. So it was expanded in 2020 to include coordinator positions and also multiple for general manager candidates.

And also other senior executive levels across your organization. So if it's a VP finance, Rooney Rule applies. So this is kind of across organizations. So the idea was, is if you're requiring multiple, you can't just do sham interviews. But what Brian Flores is saying is it didn't matter. It didn't matter. You just need one more sham interview. Exactly.

And so the giants on that, you know, have already put out a statement. They said that saying this is not true, that Brian Flores was a very serious candidate all the way till the end. We'll see. Right. I mean, this is all going to have to play out. But I will say Brian Flores is very credible. You know, he's earned that credibility over the course of his career. And it seems like he's just fed up with this process. And he's been through it before. This is not his time. He believes that there were racial elements at play while he was the head coach in Miami and with the perceptions of him there and why he was ultimately let go from the dolphins. And he's in the middle of it again. And I think he just said enough. And he was going to take one for the team, you know, to be the first guy to step out and do this. So now I'm really curious who else will join.

Will there be other black coaches, assistant coaches, guys who are out of the league now, who maybe have felt like forced out of the league because they did not have the upward mobility that they believed that they had earned? Do other people join him? And then what happens later in this lawsuit? How far along does this go? I mean, you don't, if you're Brian Flores, you do not put this out here. You do not file this type of lawsuit if you're going to quietly settle and get the New Orleans Saints head coaching job and say, oh, bygones. I'm sorry. You don't do that. You're not going to just like take a paycheck and walk away from this. The NFL settles, right? I mean, they settle everything. Ultimately, they settled the Colin Kaepernick lawsuit,

which we thought that might have ended up going a little bit farther than it did. DeAnfell surely want to settle this before it gets to any sort of discovery phase or places where, you know, Bill Belichick would get subpoenaed. But this is not a one-day story. This is potentially landscape shifting. And it is going to be the story, the off-field story of the next couple months. A couple of the things that we were going to hit as part of this conversation before the lawsuit news came down. Just the firings of Brian Flores and David Cully in general.

it's undeniable that there is a different set of expectations and a different barometer by which black coaches are judged. What more could Brian Flores and David Cully have done in their jobs with the Texans and the dolphins than they did over the last couple years? When both of those guys were fired, I feel like the general consensus when those guys were fired were, okay, what were they supposed to do? I mean, Brian Flores, if this lawsuit is true, was asked by his owner to lose games on purpose. He was too good at winning games with the Dolphins. And over the last two years of his time there, they did a pretty darn good job as a defensive staff especially. We could talk about the offensive staff turnover and some of the issues there. But I think if you look at the job that Brian Flores did is the Miami Dolphins head coach, it's a pretty admirable job.

It wasn't a situation like the one we saw with Joe Judge in New York, and they were considering keeping him. It had gotten to the point where it was almost an embarrassment. That's not what the dolphin situation was. David Cully fell on the sword in Houston. It was going to be a disaster no matter what. He did, again, an admirable job. They won four games.

They won four games. They have no business winning four games. Davis Mills looked like the second best quarterback. On the field, the production that Davis Mills had, was better than any rookie quarterback or equal to any rookie quarterback not named Mac Jones. They did a pretty damn good job there in Houston, all things considered. And now David Cully is fired. The bar you have to clear is so much higher.

And it just always has been. And with the Texans thing, he was hired to fail there. He was never given the opportunity to succeed. There was never a long-term plan there for him. And that job is still open and it's a mess. And I think, you know, we might get into that a little bit more here. But it always just felt like a one year, you know, I don't even know. Like we just have to get somebody here.

And he was like the sacrificial lamb to do this. And then if Josh McCown gets that job, then we have an entirely different conversation. Because that's what we're talking about here, right? If the Texans were going to hire Josh McCown, they missed their window to sneak that in there because now it's going to be even, it's going to look even worse because Houston is a place where Ryan Flores should have been the favorite candidate. He has the New England ties. You know, all the Deshawn Watson connections and all of that stuff, right?

He should have been the leading candidate there. And now that probably is not the case. This isn't about Josh McCown's quality as a candidate, by the way. Josh McCown, if he gets hired by the Texans, could very well become a very good NFL head coach. We don't necessarily know the makeup of what makes a good head coach all the time. Sometimes people surprise us. There's absolutely a chance that Josh McCown has all of the personality qualities and just the aspects you'd want as a head coach. But it is insulting to look at the pool of candidates who've spent their lives dedicated to the coaching profession,

who have worked their way up over years, decades in this business trying to get to the highest level and then have Josh McCown get one of these jobs. It's insulting to them. And it's one of those examples that's going to be held up as, are you kidding me? Are we going to continue to do this? So in addition to, you know, as you mentioned, the bar for success being higher, and we've just seen that time and time again, the other thing that is abundantly clear, not just in this coaching cycle, but in many head coaching cycles that have come before, is that the opportunities for black head coaches to get their second job, guys who have been fired, those second

opportunities are not there like they are for white head coaches. And that is something that Brian Flores was probably seeing for himself, where he was the most, he was the best recently fired coach, right, in this hiring cycle. The guy that should have been at the top of everybody's list, and he's seeing how hard it is to land that second head coaching job. When you see, you know, Jim Caldwell. Vance Joseph. Vance Joseph. You know, Eric B. Enemy has never even gotten his first job. But how many guys that have not gotten that.

Todd Bowles. that yes exactly that that second opportunity and then you see guys like josh m'daniels who is getting a second or third opportunity if we want to if we want to count the indianapolis colt situation that should have been you know kind of a red flag or dan quinn got six interviews exactly and yeah yeah so it's there are some and this is what brian flores is talking about when he's talking about the like inherent systemic racism that it's not just about him. It's stuff that he personally is going through right now,

but he has seen it happen for years with his peers and his colleagues. So these are the things that when minority coaches talk about the inequities and the roadblocks that they face, this is what they're talking about. And the other part of this that has been a conversation for a while goes back to what I said about Leftwich. It felt like we'd gotten to a place where maybe this was going to be just a different group of candidates,

a different group of guys that were hired from different backgrounds and different strengths. And you look at it, of the four jobs that have been filled so far, three of them are potentially play-calling offensive head coaches. The only one who is not is Matt Eberflus. And Brian Dable may not call plays depending on who the offensive coordinator is, but he could if they feel like he needs to. And the league, I think, wants to go that direction in part. If you talk to general managers, I think, some forward-thinking teams,

they know offense is king, and they want to go that way. there is not a pipeline for coaches of color on the offensive side of the ball in those roles. They're not black quarterback coaches. They're not black offensive coordinators. And that is going to continue leading to this problem. So a lot of things that we've talked about in the past, just all of the different reasons behind how this happens. And none of those things have changed, even if they've gone out of their way the league has to tweak some of these rules. The only thing that's a little bit encouraging is that some of the general manager hires in

this cycle have been people of color with Quasi Adolfo Menza and with Ryan Poles being the general managers in Minnesota and Chicago respectively. Hopefully more decision makers of color will lead to more head coaching candidates or more head coaching hires, but that's still something we have not seen yet. Yeah. And, you know, I just think, you know, it just keeps coming back to that this, you know, we said it about Josh McCown. This doesn't need to be a referendum on Brian Dable, whether or not he is qualified, whether he's going to be a good head coach or all at or not. it's just a reminder that the playing field is not level. Correct.

That the ground is not equal from where we're starting from. And as you're watching staffs get built in the next couple weeks, who is getting promoted, who are landing these offensive coordinator jobs, play calling jobs, pay attention to what those staffs look like. It's all about who you know, who you came up with, who you were quality control coaches with back in the day, who you were related to. All of these things matter. part of this larger systemic problem.

Guys like Pep Hamilton. Pat Hamilton's been the quarterbacks coach the last two years for Justin Herbert and for Davis Mills, who we've talked about twice on this show already. That one snuck up on me. Pat Hamilton should probably be getting looks over offensive coordinator jobs. There should be more people that come through that pipeline that are given chances to call an offense to work with quarterbacks because that has been the quickest path to get one of these head coaching jobs.

And it's just not happening often enough and it should be. Well, and one of the other notes that we have just on our, we might get to this here in a minute. My apologies of them jumping ahead. But Ken Dorsey has replaced Brian Davel as the quarterback's coach or as the play caller offensive coordinator in Buffalo. In internal promotion, he was the quarterback's coach. We haven't heard anything about who else was interviewed for that job.

If it was open, if the Rooney rule was satisfied, it's just kind of another reminder of like how this process works and it churns and you get into the quarterback coach role and that's how you're promoted. And then in a couple years, he'll probably be the hot candidate. And he might be awesome, right? I mean, he might be a great coach and a great play caller. But this is how the system is built. And when we're talking about the pipeline and who are the hot candidates, this is how the sausage is made. If you look at it, I just ran through it very quickly. By my quick count, there are four black quarterback coaches in the NFL, which is more than there used to be. And there are more black offensive coordinators.

And you look at the perfect example that goes against what you're just talking about with Ken Dorsey. When the Colts lost Nick Seriani last year, they elevated Marcus Brady to be their offensive coordinator, which I believe even in the moment may have doubled how many black offensive coordinators there were in the NFL. So you would hope that there's some progress being made here. Yeah, because previously it was Byron Lefuch and Eric Bianney. Yes. So, yes. So now it's three.

But left, which was the only one with play calling responsibilities. Yes. And still is, I believe. Yeah. There's been no further movement on the Byron Lefowitz head coaching candidate, friends since we talked a week ago. We'll certainly get there when we talk about the Jaguars here in a second. We're going to talk about some of these hires.

I know just tonally it's kind of a strange shift to go from that conversation to what do we think Brian Daibble is going to be as a head coach. But we have not talked about any of that yet. We're going to do that. Before we do that, though, let's take a quick break. All right. Let's talk about some of these hires that have happened since the last time we chatted and since the last time we were doing shows. Brian Daibble was hired.

Look, I think this is all about offense, right? I mean, this is the way the league is going. Did you watch the Giants offense over the last month of the season? It needs some help, right? And look, and they didn't have Daniel Jones for a lot of that time over the last month of the season. So that was an issue. they were playing with what Mike Glennon and Jake Frum come on now Jake Frum I was picturing what's the kids name from Georgia Murray the other the previous one Aaron Murray I had Aaron

Murray in my brain I was having images of Aaron Murray in my head instead of Jake Frum wrong diminutive Georgia quarterback it doesn't matter but yes but look so their offense is a disaster so you watch what Brian Dable did over the last four years with Josh Allen how much he evolved as a play caller, how exciting the bill's offense was. I don't think anybody, we should be comparing Daniel Jones to Josh Allen in too many respects. Other than they're both big, they're both athletic. Daniel Jones can move. Probably can't move quite the same way that Josh Allen does, but he can move.

He can move around. I watched his brother play college basketball live last night. Did they have an athletic family? He's probably faster. Then Josh Allen, he might not be as like, I'm going to run your ass over as Josh Allen is. But I think you have to look at what Brian Dable did with Josh Allen and the entire plan that the bills had in place. And Joe Shane is certainly a very big part of that, right? This is how you build around a quarterback and make him successful.

We don't know if Daniel Jones is going to be their long-term quarterback. But I think Brian Dable gives them a good chance to find out over the next year, when they have to make that decision whether or not they're going to stick with Daniel Jones or move on. The biggest thing with me on the, on the guy, on the X's and O's side with Brian Dable and the Giants, isn't that I think Daniel Jones is close to Josh Allen, is the same tier of quarterback as Josh Allen? The encouraging part to me is that the bills built an offense tailored to their quarterback. Whatever that ultimately looks like for the Giants, I think it's going to be an improvement. I've said this a dozen times on this show over the last couple months.

Brian Dable's strength is an offensive coach, in my opinion, is that he doesn't come from one place. There is no Brian Dable offensive system that they ran in Buffalo. They built the system around the players, and it ultimately ended up being a really good, really flexible system. Even the adjustments they made in season this year with how their running game expanded, with the ways they were playing with personnel down the stretch. Even those tweaks are encouraging, if you're a Giants fan, you're thinking about what Brian Dable. would be as a coach. The other parts of this that I really like, I wrote a story about Brian Daibble last year, I really enjoyed digging into how he's grown as a coach and just the elements of who he is

right now and who he is as a teacher and just the ideas he's willing to incorporate and the places he looks for those think are really interesting. I remember Derek Anderson who played for Brian Daibble early in his career in Cleveland when he was an officer coordinator and then again several years later in Buffalo, Talk to me about how in Cleveland, Dable was very demanding and very rigid. This is how it was going to be. He wasn't going to solicit ideas from guys. This is going to be the offense.

I think he was insecure. He would probably even admit that in who he was as a coach back then. He's far less insecure now. When Derek Anderson got there in 2018 and they needed him to spot start on a few days' notice, he was telling guys, I like this. This is what I let's run this from this personnel group. This is what I call it. And Dable let that happen.

There was another anecdote I remember about how in the Bill's facility, they will do walkthroughs with a giant projector. So they'll go out there and they'll show a play on the projector and then they'll walk through it on the field immediately. And they thought that that was a really good way for guys to synthesize information and understand where they wanted to be spatially because they could actually do it right away after seeing the play. Stuff like that.

There's just a flexibility in that type of thinking that didn't use to exist. My main concerns if I was looking at Brian Dable's history would be personality because there have been some bad stories. There have been some rough moments from his career. You think about the anecdotes about Colt McCoy. There are some things back there about issues with the way he used to coach. And I feel like a lot of that has changed. So I think it's a really exciting decision. I think it's an exciting move.

And I think it makes a ton of sense for where the Giants are right now and where they want to go. And a couple weeks ago we talked to Dan Duggan on this podcast. and we talked a lot about what was at stake for the Giants here because they've messed this up three times in a row where they have hired the wrong guy. It hasn't worked for whatever reason, personality scheme, a lot of reasons. So the Mara family, the Tish family, they cannot afford to have gotten this one wrong. And hopefully it's right. It's going to always now have this cloud with the Brian Flores lawsuit that now has like immediately followed it. But hopefully Brian Daibel can kind of get a fair shot at this now. I mean, it's this, none of this is Brian

Daples fault, right? I mean, no. None of this other stuff is Brian Davel's fault. So I think this is good news for Daniel Jones. Probably the best news for Daniel Jones that he could have, that he could have hoped for at this point. The organization is kind of reinforcing their commitment to him at least for 2022. So, yeah, let's see if it works. Yeah, I mean, the most important thing when you look at this hire and how it's different than some of the other ones, I think Brian Dable's background, just his on-field results have been better than some of the other guys that they hired. And two, alignment. It's going to be a topic and an idea we come back to and we talk about some of these other jobs. But having a head coach and a general manager now that are on the same

page that were hired at the same time. When you think about Joe Judge and Dave Gettleman and judge coming in with Gettlement having already built half the roster and it's just, it's so hard to get that right, in my opinion. You need such unique circumstances to get a situation like that right. You know, it's worked in Los Angeles, but Sean McVeigh is such a specific case. And even in Tampa, Jason Light was there for a while before Bruce Ariens was hired, they worked together for years in Arizona.

knew each other. And Tom Brady is part of that equation. Those examples that work when you have the general manager and you bring in a head coach and try to piece it all together, those are outwires, in my opinion. They work in spite of themselves because of some of the people involved. Bringing in Shane and Brian Dable together having it be, all right, this is our vision for what we want to do here. The success they had and the experience that they had in Buffalo doing exactly this where

you rebuild an organization and how it functions and what you. you want it to be. I'm far more enthusiastic about that pairing than I have been about anything the Giants have done in several years. I can confidently say that. All right. Speaking of alignment, Josh McDaniels is getting another head coaching job, this time with the Raiders, and Dave Ziegler, also from New England, is taking over as their general manager. Josh McDaniels during his introductory pest conference said something to the effect of I knew football a little bit when I got that job. I did not know people and I did not know how to deal with people.

And that, as he expressed it, was the biggest difference between what he is as a candidate now and what he was as a first time head coach in Denver 13 years ago, which is kind of crazy to think about. You were there. You watched that happen. I was like, are you just lobbing me a softball up over the plate and ready for me to go? What was your reaction when you saw that quote? I'm sure that it was,

that one hit a little close to home. Yeah. I mean, he was, he was right. He was 100% right. And I will say the 13 years since he was hired. I cannot believe it's been 13 years. I cannot believe it's been 13 years.

It's crazy. And I guess 11. And a half or so since he was fired. He was fired in November of 2010, late November. So 12 and a half, whatever time, time is a flat circle. I don't even know how the math works at this point. But in those. in the more than the decade that has passed since.

I think elsewhere in the NFL, they've kind of softened on like what happened in Denver. There have been a lot of stories written that have kind of just glossed over. Oh, he failed in Denver. That have kind of forgotten what a disaster it was. It wasn't just a failure. And I did hear, I did listen to his press conference. And he said, I failed.

I failed in Denver. And he did fail in Denver. But it wasn't just like this guy, lost a lot of games and it didn't work. This guy tore down an organization, like basically from top to bottom. Mike Shanahan was fired for a lot of reasons. I mean, his time had probably run out. He got fired mostly because of his executive decisions.

Mike Shanahan and the GM. Yeah. And, you know, and it just had, his defenses were historically bad. He had a fantastic offense that he left in place. And the last thing that Mike Shanahan said when he, they had a press conference when he got fired, him and Pat Bowlin together, which was just like wild in retrospect that that actually happened. He said, whoever they hire next, they'd be crazy to mess with this offense. And what was the person that Josh McDaniel did? He traded Jay Cutler.

He messed with the offense. But yeah, I mean, so it was, the failures were many. It wasn't just trading Jay Cutler. It was trading Jay Cutler, Brandon Marshall, and Tony Schaeffler, all because of personality conflicts that happened over the course of about a year, the first year that he was there. It was decisions like, I don't know if it was the first personnel move that he made, but he cut the longtime, really beloved, well-respected longsnapper to bring in Lonnie Paxton, who was a guy from the Patriots, just because he wanted to bring in his own guy. He didn't cut the long snapper because the guy wasn't good anymore. He cut him because he wanted to bring in his own guy. He cut Brett Kern, the punter, when the Broncos were 6 and O because Kern had one bad game.

And he told him, don't punt to Darren Sprouls. Darren Sprouls had a return for a touchdown. Josh McDaniels cut him when they were 6 and O. It's all these little type of things. And then it was just, yeah, it was the way that he treated his players, you know, that he had them in pads until the middle of December. And they lost a lot of games. And then there was the taping scandal.

It was the deflate gate, or not deflate gate. It was SpyGate 2.0 where they taped a walk through when the Broncos were playing in London. It was not just like a little thing. I mean, it was a massive scandal. And that's before getting to the Colts thing. Yeah. And what happened when we got that job? It's just there has been a lot of like, oh, he just failed in Denver.

It was a colossal failure. And look, I still live in Denver. I was a beat writer at the Denver Post when the Josh McClure. Daniels era happened, you could see how he was kind of out of his element when he was dealing with people, from players to coaches to somewhat to the media as well. It was very clear that he was trying to be like the tough side of Bill Belichick without understanding or having known how Bill acted behind the scenes. And I do think in the 10 years since, he's spent a lot more time understanding what has made Bill Belichick successful. I think, I do think Josh McDaniels knows more

who he is now. And I don't think he's going to approach this job with the Raiders like he needs to be Belichick because we have seen time and time and time and time again the guys who go out and try to be Bill, they fail because there's only one Bill Belichick. And it only works for Bill Belichick because of his coaching credentials and everything that he's won along the way. And he does a lot of stuff that he doesn't let his assistants see the way that he interacts with players one-on-one, the way that he works.

with agents and a lot of stuff that happens behind the scenes. Most of his assistants don't see that stuff. And so when they try to be like the tough guy bill, it just doesn't work. So I will say I hope it works out for Josh McDaniels this time. I hope that he's learned. We've had a decade's worth of stories about how much different he'd be in his second chance. And now it is finally here. I mean, I think he's a brilliant offensive coach.

He's evolved a ton as a play caller. I mean, he has led the Patriots offense through. the years when Randy Moss was their number one wide receiver, when they involved to being a too tight end offense, to old Tom Brady when they had no wide receivers, to one of his probably best coaching jobs that he's ever done in his career last year when he had Mack Jones and trying to tailor an offense with almost all new skill position players and a rookie quarterback.

So from a Derek Carr perspective, this is great, right? I mean, this is probably your best case scenario if you're Derek Carr. I just want to see if it, you know, if he's different. And I will say the Broncos Raiders rivalry had like kind of like become a little bit dormant from the fact that neither of them have won a lot over the last five years. But this is going to be a nice little, a nice little jolt. It has been 11 years since Josh McDaniels coached here, but he's still a four-letter word in Denver.

So it'll be fun. I saw him as an intriguing candidate when I was thinking about potential coaches for the bears and people would ask during the season before any of these processes got started. He was a name I threw out there just because if you're looking at somebody who has a proven track record on that side of the ball, proven track record for quarterbacks, just working with quarterbacks. Obviously the Tom Brady stuff, but what happened with Mack Jones this year, exactly what you said, and just a system that I think does a good job of empowering its quarterback in the way that

they do in New England. And you even saw that with a rookie in Mack Jones this year. There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical about this. and to be worried about this if you're a Raider fan. But it felt like he was going to get another chance and probably deserved another chance. And I'm interested to see how it goes. I think the biggest question now is Derek Carr.

Yeah, absolutely. And I will say another reason why I would be maybe more optimistic if you're a Raiders fan is that Dave Ziegler is going to be running the personnel side. He has final say over the roster. He's going to be one making the draft picks, orchestrating trades. He'll be the one who is the final say. I mean, obviously, they're coming in together. They have that alignment.

But ultimate little B Ziegler, who's making the decision on, you know, player contracts and those sorts of future things. Because that was a big reason why Josh McDaniels failed as a head coach the first time. And that was a huge failing on the Broncos side, but from Joe Ellis and everybody who empowered Josh McDaniels with full roster control at age 32, he wasn't ready for that. He shouldn't have had it. He was a disaster in the draft, all of these sorts of, you know,

and that's not just because he drafted to me. Tebow in the first round. It was a lot of other stuff. But Ziegler will be running this. He does have roster control. He confirmed that during their introductory press conference earlier this week. So that should help. But yeah, I mean, I think this is good news for Derrick Carr.

I think when you look at the quarterback landscape right now, the Raiders would be nuts, I think, to let him go. I think it be a mistake. But if I were other teams. Maybe not nuts, right? I think it'd be a mistake. Nuts isn't crazy to me to say because I do think he's better than a lot of the other options out there. But if I were other teams, I'd absolutely be on the phone over the next couple weeks.

Because who the hell knows? Does Josh McDaniels, would Joshua Daniels rather have Derek Carr than Jimmy Garoppola? Somebody he's worked with. I don't know. I'd rather have Derek Carr than Jimmy Garoppolo. I don't know what Josh McDaniels thinks. And if I'm a team that needs a quarterback and is looking for, potential upgrades this offseason.

And Derek Carr is a rare chance to have an upgrade when you look at the other guys. I think he is a better quarterback than a lot of the other, than a lot of teams around the league are trotting out right now. And when there are these changes and when there's this uncertainty, you have the potential to pry a guy away. So I would absolutely be calling the Raiders and trying to see what they would want for Derek Carr if they're not overly enthusiastic about him as he enters the final year of his contract.

They have to make a decision either way. So that deadline and that urgency, I think, could play into some other team's hands. A couple other things to hit here very quickly. The Jim Harbaugh rumors in Minnesota. I found these surprising. The idea that the Vikings are interested in Jim Harbaugh for their head coaching job. I don't know why I found it surprising. It just seemed like the background of their new general manager and how analytically forward

he is and just the ways that they might be thinking and kind of. of the thought processes that might be driving that organization here over the next few years. And then the guy who chugs a lot of milk and thinks that chickens are nervous birds. I don't know. Personality-wise, I just found it a little bit surprising. I don't know about you. Yeah, although they did overlap, right? They did overlap for a couple years in San Francisco.

So, yeah. So they were in San Francisco. So it's not like they're not familiar with each other. And that was when, look, Adolfo Mensa was a younger, newer in the league was, you know, working. I don't even know. I'll have to look and see exactly what their job titles were when Harba was the head coach there. I believe he was the director of research was already, if he had advanced to that level. I believe he had. But I don't know how much interaction they would have had in a day-to-day basis or even in general. But at least there is, there is some familiarity there of like, okay,

this is a guy who would at least listen to my ideas or through his department or. That's kind of Well, I'm surprised. It's just, I don't know if Jim Harbaugh is the logical fit in my mind with the nerd general manager. I say that lovingly. Yeah, I mean, I guess we'll see, right? I mean, for all of like the Harbaugh stuff, right? The other stuff, the pants and the chugging milk and the I want to have a throwing competition with everybody that I come in contact with and the peanut butter sandwiches. If you don't know the peanut butter sandwich reference, go read our story about the Peyton Manning free. agency pursued. It's one of my favorite anecdotes of all time. For all of that stuff, he's had tremendous success as an NFL offensive coach and the work that he's done with quarterbacks, whether that was Alex Smith or Colin Kaepernick. And Kirk Cousins isn't either of those guys, but the Vikings offense certainly could use a jolt. And I'll say the one thing, he does, you know, he's this reputation, he's a college guy, he's a college coach. But he's a really, he was a really,

good NFL head coach and probably a more successful NFL coach than he actually has been as a college coach at Michigan, right? He could absolutely argue that. I wouldn't say that it's about his quality as an NFL coach. It would be more about the shelf life of him as an NFL coach. Sure. Just because he has a reputation for somebody who kind of burns through jobs because he's an intense personality.

But we also know that one of the reasons that there was tension in that San Francisco front office structure is because Trent Balke was there. who doesn't necessarily get along with everybody, which we can get to here in a second. I think Jim Harbaugh as a coaching candidate is interesting. You know, when you look at his track record and if you can bring him in, somebody that's been successful in this role before,

it was they fizzled out a little bit in San Francisco, but it's not like it was some epic flame out. So I can understand pursuing him and being interested in him as a candidate. I just feel like the fit there in Minnesota is a tad bit surprising to me. Well, and the other thing is like he's been the guy who, I guess since John Gruden got back in the league, and now it was out of the league. But he was the guy whose name every time there was an opening, it'd be like, oh, is this the year that Jim Harbaugh is going to come back?

And a lot of it felt like it was driven by Harbaugh's camp, right? That his agent was due in the work. And then especially this coaching cycle, he's been trying to get a new contract out of Michigan. And it felt like it was a lot of like a leverage play, that it would always be like, oh, Jim Harbaugh could come back to the NFL. And it was always like, well, does the NFL want Jim Harbaugh back? is Jim Harbaugh, is that Harbaugh putting this out? And is that Harbaugh trying to, you know, get a new contract and, you know, make those plays that you need to do when you're trying to get a contract extension and all that sort of stuff? This has gone on long enough now.

There was a lot of smoke with the Raiders job for a couple weeks about could Harbaugh be in play here? When Brian Flores got fired in Miami, the initial, my very first reaction was, oh, he's going to go hire Harbaugh, because Stephen Ross has made no secret about how much he loves Jim Harbaugh and previous hiring cycles and how much he would want to hire him. It hasn't happened previously. And now that it's still out there, the fact that he went to interview with the Minnesota Vikings on signing day, whereas, like, look, I guess the bulk of his class had signed December that this wasn't like he was skipping out on some, you know, huge day where there

were going to be 100 faxes coming in or anything. But it is still, to me, this is a sign that this is a lot more serious, that his interest is serious and clearly the I don't think the Vikings are bringing him in for a courtesy interview right? Why would you do that? Why would you? This seems this I was on a text with a lot of college football people

the other night and I was like, oh, he's gone. Like if he's going now to interview on National Signing Day, it feels like this is, this is really moving. And we'll see who, I mean, where the rest of their candidates are, where that interview process is. Damico Ryan's pulled himself out of interviewing again in Minnesota. Disappointed by that.

I was very curious to see what he would be like as a head coach. And I think we, I got, okay. I don't want to say for sure he's going to be because too often these cycles move on and there become new hot candidates. I feel like he's a guy who's on a very rapid upward trajectory. Feels like it.

You'd hope so, but again, the conversation we had at the beginning of the show. Yeah, exactly. But, you know, hopefully next year he'll be,

he'll be the hot candidate, right? And he'll kind of have his pick of jobs. And I mean, maybe he saw some writing on the wall and said, I don't want to be the guy who's coming in here to, like, just talk to you if you're full steam ahead and you're going to hire Jim Harba. Like, I don't need to be subject myself to that. I'm wondering, I mean, this is all speculation, but if one of the reasons that he wasn't real warm to that job is that they might want to keep Kirk and they might not be into a rebuild. I mean, there's really no way to know, but there's a lot of different ways this could go in Minnesota, depending on the expectations that ownership has. think that hiring Jim Harbaugh is potentially an indication that you're not trying to tear this

thing down. But there's really no way to know. We'll see what their actions kind of tell us here over the next few months. Sticking in NFC North really quickly, the Bears hired an offensive coordinator, Luc Getsy, the passing game coordinator slash quarterbacks coach from the Packers. I am excited about this. I think that of the guys potentially up for this job and the potential offensive systems they could run, this is a good one. The Packers, His offense has the DNA that I appreciate in offenses, the idea of the reports that they were trying to find someone from that Shanahan tree to run a version of this offense. I'm excited to see Justin Fields in a system that looks like this. We'll see how different it is to the one they run in Green Bay.

There are a lot of Aaron Rogers specific elements to that offense. But if you're going to pluck a guy from a certain system, from a certain coaching staff that's worked with a certain quarterback, I think that you could do a lot worse than the guy who has worked. worked under Matt LaFleur for one of the most efficient offenses in football over the last two years to come and tutor Justin Fields. Yeah, look, future Hall of Fame quarterbacks working with those guys is the best way to land yourself another job. I mean, I don't know how many jobs. Peyton Manning has gotten people. Tom Brady has gotten a lot of people jobs. And Aaron Rogers is now getting a lot of people jobs.

And the number one priority in Chicago has to be developing Justin Fields. and Luke Getzzi, he got one head to coaching interview this time, right? He interviewed with the Broncos. Yes. And if he can turn Justin Fields from one of the statistically worst quarterbacks in the NFL this year to a capable starter, a mid-tier starter, if not better than that, he will be a legitimate head coaching candidate probably as early as next year. Yeah. So, I mean, we'll that will cross that bridge when we get there. If the bear's offense this year is so good that Luke Getzzi gets hired away as a head coaching candidate.

it, I'll do backflips. So I'm okay with that being the final outcome. Do you want to run through what the hell is going on with the Jags, Texans, and Dolphins jobs real quick? Obviously, all the other ones have been filled in ways that I think makes some sense. You look for the guys who are up for these jobs, how slow this has been going, some of the things that have trickled out, especially about the Jaguar's job. What is the most notable aspect to these three openings to you right now? And the most notable thing you've heard. Well, we've talked. I think today, and certainly over the last couple weeks, about kind of the deliberate process that a lot of these teams have been going through here and how slow this process has been. And in some cases, I think that's been really good. We see it in Minnesota where it was a very clear progression. We're going to hire our general manager, then we're going to hire our head coach. Chicago did the same thing. The Giants theoretically did the same thing. It always comes back to the Brian Flores lawsuit now, apparently. But the difference with these other three jobs that we're talking about right now, is that there doesn't seem to be like a deliberate process.

It seems to be moving very slowly because there is dysfunction. There is major concern probably on the side of candidates about do I want to take this job, about what sort of dysfunction is going on within those organizations, the people who are still in place there, the power structure in place at those places. So they all three feel messy for very different. different reasons. Yeah. And we talk about alignment with some of these other gigs.

You're walking into something that's already in place in all three of these spots. The dolphins don't need to go over what just happened with Brian Flores again. I mean, this is a scenario where Chris Greer's been there forever. You know, they just fired a coach who was on the brink of the playoffs after having to tank on purpose for his first year. I mean, that's a naughty situation. We don't know what's going to happen with Tua and what their offense is going to look like. With the Texans, there's been nothing but questionable things coming out of there over the last couple years.

And now you have to go with that power structure with Jack Easter being Nick Asario. And then in Jacksonville, you're going to work with a general manager that no one seems to want to work with. I was having a conversation a couple weeks ago. And somebody in the league just took a shot at Trent Balke, you ran. in a way that you just don't hear people talk about other executives in the NFL. And this is somebody that has no ties to the Jaguars. It's just something that happened in conversation. And the Jaggs seem to be willingly hanging on to this person,

even if he's potentially limiting the coaching candidates that they want, that they can potentially land because they don't want to work with him. And even if he wasn't a personality that people were concerned about, going back to that alignment consideration, you don't have to do this. There's no reason that you have to stick with this general manager that you've had for a year that helped build one of the worst rosters in the NFL. So I just, I don't understand it. I just don't understand why it's the path they seem intent on following.

And when you talked about Josh McDaniels and it was about people. And the problem was his dealings with people. That's what always comes back to with Trent Balke is when you hear people. is when you hear people take shots at him or whatever, it's because he's had a really hard time working with his coworkers, the people who worked under him, the people who worked in other departments, the people who were even tangentially related to the places that he's been.

So the fact that Shad Khan seems so committed to kind of staying with him should be a massive red flag for any of these coaching candidates. And there was also a report out there today, I believe that he's also considering, Balky is considering hiring an assistant GM to do more of the GM duty so he can spend more time with players, which sounds great. Sure. Great. You want to coach it?

Because that's clearly where this seems to be. It may come to that at a certain point if we keep going down this road. All right. Lindsay, that's all we got. As always, really appreciate you taking the time. Appreciate all of you for listening. We'll be back tomorrow with Dane and Lance from down here in Mobile at the Senior Bowl. In the meantime, please rate.

interview the podcast on your podcast platform choice. Please subscribe to The Athletic. Theathletic.com slash football show. We'll be back tomorrow. Until then, appreciate you guys listening. Talk to you soon. This was The Athletic Football Show.