The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Bruce Arians announces retirement, Todd Bowles named Buccaneers head coach + examining the NFL’s new overtime rule

Episode Date: March 31, 2022

Robert Mays and Lindsay Jones react to Bruce Arians’ retirement, the timing of the decision and his legacy as a coach. They also discuss Todd Bowles’ promotion to head coach, how he’s setup for success in his second stint and what this all means for the 2022 Buccaneers. Plus, they talk about the new overtime rules, what impacted the change and more news and notes from the NFL owners meetings this week.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the athletic football show. Welcome to the athletic football show. Today's Thursday, March 31st. I'm Robert Mays. Joining me today, my good friend, Lindsay, how you doing? I'm great. I am freshly back from the owner's meetings. It was a really productive couple days, but now we've got more crazy news because the NFL

cannot go more than about, I don't know, 17 minutes without shocking breaking news developments. So I promised you guys that me and Nate were going to break down the quarterbacks today. unfortunately Bruce Ariens had other plans last night. I got a message from Marissa. She was like, all right, what are we going to do about this? I was like, oh, God, what happened now? And the timing of it is just crazy. I mean, obviously, the details here.

Bruce Ariens is retiring. He is stepping into the Buck's front office. Todd Bowles is taking over as the Buck's head coach. A lot of things that we can dig into here. But when you heard the news, I mean, what do you make of this? What was your first reaction? Well, so it literally popped up the second that my flight, landed home from Palm Beach. I had the Wi-Fi going, and so I would have seen it, I guess,

while I was in the air. But it was literally like as our plane touched down. And there were a bunch of Broncos personnel folks on my flight home. And a couple of them were sitting near me in the Economy Plus section, George Payton, I believe was up in first class. But we kind of like we're all standing up to get our bags and we're kind of all looking at each other like, whoa, wow. And I think it's one of those moves that's like, it's surprising but not shocking. It's another one of those like, yeah, I mean, he's one of the oldest coaches in the league. He's accomplished a lot. He's gone through a lot of health issues. He left the owner's meetings early this week. He was there Sunday and through Monday morning. And then he left. They said this is not health related.

But, you know, you do have to say, okay, you know, he's, you know, he's, I don't know if any of us thought he would, how long he would coach in Tampa after he already had taken kind of a brief retirement after leaving Arizona. So it was like surprising in the timing of it all. And I think there's a lot of stuff that will go that goes into that and questions that come after that because of, you know, it's really rare for a guy to leave a team on March 30th, right? And I think a lot of that is going to get answered, hopefully, by Bruce Ariens and Todd Bowles and Jason Light. Today, they are going to be doing kind of a joint news conference in Tampa later after we're done recording. But yeah, so I guess it was just like, you know, wow, here's another huge move. And this is a franchise that has kept us on our toes for months from. Tom Brady retiring to not retiring, to them, you know, who are they bringing back? And now all of a sudden, a major coaching change. If you told me the broad strokes of this, that Bruce Ariens was retiring after three years in Tampa, that they had won a Super Bowl and that one of his coordinators was taking over for him,

I wouldn't blink an eye. I assume that's always what the plan was. Initially, I thought it would be Byron Lefich. I thought that that was part of the reason that Bruce wanted to come back was to give Byron a chance to call plays and kind of set him on this path. It makes sense that it's Todd Bulls, we can get into some of the details of that later. The broad strokes, I totally understand. The timing is strange.

We don't often see this. And I get, so their reasoning, the reasoning that Bruce laid out yesterday when they put out a statement was, he wanted to put things in a good place for Todd taking over this job. They got their free agents back. Most of their free agency work is probably done. Brady is back. He has put Todd Bowles in the best position possible for his. second go around here. And I understand wanting to do that if you're Bruce Ariens. So that timing

of it on its own isn't that strange to me. That timing of it combined with the Brady saga is where I put my tinfoil hat on and start trying to figure out what this could possibly mean. Is there any sort of connection with the ups and downs of the Brady drama and the timing of that combined with this? Because we're about two weeks removed, two and a half weeks removed from Brady saying, from Brady coming back and from Brady having that meeting with the glazers. And is there any possible world where part of Brady coming back was contingent on Bruce no longer being the coach because their relationship had frayed a little bit? If you told me that was part of it, I wouldn't necessarily be shocked, even if I'm not diving headfirst full on into the conspiracy theory part of this. Yeah, I mean, the timing of that is going to do nothing to calm whatever buzz was out there.

There was, you know, rumblings. like could this be related? Are they not getting along? And look, they're both really big personalities. Bruce is not a easy guy to play for by anything. He's a current person who's now in his 70s. Yeah, I mean. He's not getting any, not getting any warmer or fuzzier as he's getting older, I don't think.

Yeah. And I think, you know, over the years, Seth Wickersham from ESPN has written a lot about, you know, kind of the Brady-Belichick dynamics. And, you know, I don't want to say Brady has thin skin because I don't believe he does. But there was a lot of stuff that happened in the Brady Belichick era about like wanting to be named team MVP and, you know, wanting to be, you know, brought along a certain way or whatever. And, you know, look, Bruce is a very blunt guy. He curses a lot. He tells you what he thinks. He runs practices really hard. But he also treats his veterans really well. So when they're practicing, they are going. But he is really intentional about giving days off and letting older guys take care of their bodies and really, you know, understand. what players want. So look, look, I think that stuff is still going to be out there until we hear more from either of those guys or until we get, I don't know, a Jeff Darlington like exoset.

I'm trying, you know, who are the Brady insiders here? But I think just heads up. We're recording this around 930 Central, 1030 Eastern. So this is a couple hours before they're going to give their press conference. Just some context while you guys are listening to. Yeah. And Brady, you know, and Brady immediately put out a statement, you know, kind of gushing in praise for BA and how much they've meant to each other. And Bruce is still going to be around. I loved the

text that Bruce sent to his players. He kind of had to do it in a mass text. And he said, I'm still going to be around to curse you out because that is 100% BA. So I'm sure this can be a little bit more golf in Bruce's horizons, though, than there would have been otherwise. Yeah, maybe a little bit more, you know, happy hours. Yeah. You know, cigars on the patio. But, but I think, you know, I think this is kind of what he wanted to do. He's he's coached a really long time. He had a tremendous career, you know, as an assistant coach where he, you know, grinded for a long time. I think he believed he deserved a shot to get a head coach. And that didn't come until he was an indie. And he had that interim job when Chuck Pagano was out because of his cancer treatments and kind of realized,

like, this guy's a really good coach. He interacts really well with players. He's a really creative offensive mind. And he finally got that, that chance really late in his career. And, you know, I always love to see a guy being able to kind of dictate the next step of his life on his own terms. And Bruce absolutely got to do that from basically going from he was fired in Pittsburgh. Yeah, after not having gotten to do it for a really long time. I mean, the fact that he was pushed out in Pittsburgh and then he lands in Indy and he didn't even get to dictate the terms of him getting that job and getting his first first head coaching job. And so what's happened over the last decade, it's, it was never in the cards necessarily for him to, to have. have this happened. He needed a couple breaks near the end, and he turns into a really good head coach.

I mean, I talk all the time about the warm feelings I have about that 2015 Cardinals team and what that stretch looked like for them offensively. He was a very successful head coach. And I was listening to Jason Light on Thomas Dimitrov's new podcast last week and talking about how obviously the Brady thing is definitely the feather in his cap and the move, the bold move that has benefited them the most probably. But he said outside of that, coaxing Brooks Sarians back to coaching. is been the most important thing they've done in Tampa. And because if you can get a coach like that, who's got some skins on the wall and has some success,

they gave them instant credibility. I'm not sure if Tom Brady is there, if Bruce Ariens is not the head coach. And that Lombardi Trophy probably isn't sitting down there at one buck's place, and we're not having this conversation. So what he did in his short 10-year stretch as a head coach is pretty remarkable. And he should be incredibly proud of that. We'll get to some of his legacy and other elements of that here in a second.

him, but I want to talk a little bit more about the timing of this and his reasoning that they wanted to put Bowls in a position to succeed and how they wanted the free agency to be over and they wanted to go through this run. I talked to someone this morning that was in free agent meetings with the bucks and they had zero idea that this was on the horizon. That's the only thing about this that I think is a little bit shady. The fact that you're convincing players to come back or you're going out to sign players and laying out a plan for it, this is why you should be here, this is why you should be a part of this. And those players had absolutely no idea that the head coach as part of those recruiting

processes, it was not going to be there. Outside of that, I completely am on board with this entire thing because for a lot of different reasons, I think it's important to give Todd Bowles every single shot here. But that part of it gives me a little pause. Yeah. And I don't want to short Bruce Ariens because we're obviously talking about like how great of a coach he is and this massive legacy and stuff that he has. But I think it is really telling that, you know, guys want to play for Todd Bowles.

Todd Bowles has complete ownership of that defense. So if you are a defense guy who resigned if you're Carlton Davis, for example, I don't think you have any qualms of saying Bruce is gone. I mean, okay, I like, I like Bruce, but like Todd's my guy. Totally. Todd's the guy here. And, you know, and I think somewhat to Bruce's credit, he's let Byron be the guy on offense, too.

And he's been the voice in the headset. He's been the primary play caller for a number of years. there now. And has worked, Bruce has worked more in personnel than he had in years past. I mean, that's been part of his purview in a way that it wasn't before. So him stepping away is definitely less jarring than it would have been, let's say, if this was Arizona in 2015. So I will say the one important timeline, and hopefully we'll get a little bit more clarity on this from these guys when they speak this afternoon, is what exactly Brady knew and when he knew it. Rick Stroud from the Tampa Bay Times reported that Brady knew that this was coming at the same time that

he announced his unretirement or I don't know if we at this point we should even call it an unretirement now again the conspiracy wheels are um conspiracy wheels are turning but so that this wasn't something that you know necessarily caught brady off guard you know the flip side if you're you know reading pro football talk or whatever is like okay was there some sort of i'll come back if if bruce doesn't or if he moves out like we'll see but um this shouldn't be something that caught brady by surprise um this news i will say being around the owners mean this week, there wasn't, there was no buzz about this at all. We knew, everybody knew that Bruce had left, that he had to go home. But the kind of the explanation that was given for that

was like he had a stomach bug and he wasn't feeling well. But it wasn't like this, okay, there's a major change coming. And I spent a considerable amount of time over the last day or the previous day, I guess, what, today's Thursday, so Wednesday, Thursday night and Wednesday, or Tuesday night and Wednesday, excuse me, with people who would know. And there was not a lot of like, oh, there's a major change coming. There's going to be a big coach. I mean, it was not really out there. So one of the other things that we're still working to get details on.

And, you know, I've been efforting last night and into this morning is kind of like the TikTok on like what were the conversations between the bucks and the league, winded, Bruce and the glazers and Jason Light let Roger Goodell and company know that this is happening because there are some like hoops that they have to jump through. Sure. And one of the things that I was told last night was that during one of the many DEI sessions, there were three diversity equity and inclusion seminars or sessions at the owner's meetings one each day, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday.

The one Monday was the big one that had all of the owners, GMs, head coaches, kind of like the big DEI session. At one point during that session, Roger Goodell re-informed, you know, got in part of his comments, reminded teams that any coaching changes made after March 1st are not subject to the Rooney rule. So you don't have to, if you had a coaching vacancy, you don't have to interview two minority head coach or coaching candidates to fill that job. This is the specific for coaching positions, not for other like senior front office,

those type of jobs. It was not made in reference specifically to the Bucks, but now obviously I want to know if that's, you know, if Roger knew that. if that was in the back of the head. It becomes relevant very quickly. Yeah, absolutely, because you know, certainly this is a succession plan. This is something that the Bucks had in place. But I'm wondering if they had to get it kind of approved through the league office to say, because they didn't have to go through a typical hiring process. It works out okay in this case, but you can definitely see a team trying to exploit it in a more

nefarious way a little bit further down the road. So with that in mind, just the idea of this job going to a black head coach. I want to explore that a little bit more. One, I feel like giving this to Todd Bowles and not to Byron Lefich makes sense on a few different levels. One, Todd Bulls deserves it. I mean, he's done a very good job as the defensive coordinator of that team. They've been really successful on that side of the ball. He's widely respected. He has justifiably gotten head coaching interviews and looks at his second shot after the way that it went with the Jets. Todd Bowles is 15 years older than Byron Lefich. Byron Lefich, hopefully, will have have more opportunities at this down the line.

Todd Bowles is a defensive head coach. As the way the league is going, the opportunities for defensive head coaches are going to be fewer and further between than they're likely going to be for offensive head coaches. Second opportunities for black head coaches are almost non-existent. Very rarely does this happen. I think that this was, to no fault of his own, maybe Todd Bowles' best chance at getting another shot at being a head coach in the NFL. even though he does deserve one.

And I think this is another instance of Bruce Ariens trying to look out for the minority coaches on his staff and elevate the people around him in those positions the same way that he's done since he was given the opportunity. You know, when you hear Bruce talk about this, part of the reason that he is driven to do this, even though this has been his personality for a very long time, you know, I think that he's been, it's been something that's been important to him for a very long time. But the way that he explains it is that he was looked over. in ways that he did not appreciate.

And he's going to do everything he can now that he's in a position of power to make sure that the people that are usually passed over aren't, that they are given opportunities that they wouldn't be otherwise. And he has been a champion for minority coaches at every step of the way in his 10 or so years that he has been in this sort of position. And I think this is the next step in that. Yeah. And I think a word that came up a lot in the conversations I was having with people in Palm

Beach this week when it comes to DEI stuff is intentionality. 100%. something that is missing, I think, in a lot of cases and a lot of places around the league where when you're talking about, you know, Rooney Rule interviews and the new policy that the league just put in place to require teams to hire a minority offensive assistant coach. If you're not intentional about it, otherwise you could just be kind of filling a quota. That's where the sham interview language came from from Brian Flores. If you're just checking boxes. Bruce Ariens was never checking boxes.

He was never hiring women on his staff because he felt like he needed to check some sort of box or because there was no box. Exactly. Like he was making an intentional decision to improve the diversity on his staff because he believed, one, it was important for those coaches, for the black young assistant coaches, people like Byron Leftwich to get those opportunities to be in the offensive rooms and not just be there, but to get the chance to call plays. Bruce Ariens very early, even when they were in Arizona together, he started giving fire and more of those type of duties just so that he was around it and familiar with it. There's a lot of white head coaches, offensive play callers who do not do that. Most. Yeah, most of them have not.

Bruce was intentional about doing that. Bruce was intentional about wanting to make sure, you know, he wanted to have all minority coordinators in Tampa Bay. And it was because he believed. that all of the men that he hired for those jobs were the best men for those jobs. But he also knew that there was a purpose behind it. And then I think it's also really important that he kind of showed one of the hard things when you have these DEI conversations in the context of football is they're having to convince

owners in a lot of cases of why diversity matters that it's you're having to make like a winning argument. This is better for your football team. This is better for your players to have a diverse set. of coaches, a diverse set of voices, men on the coaching staff that they can identify with, that know their life story and can connect on a different level. And then it's a winning argument. These are really smart men. They are great leaders. And the Bucks winning the Super Bowl last year with three black coordinators and two women on their staff. What better argument is that,

right? You can have the most diverse staff in the NFL. You can have women in full-time roles, and you can win the Super Bowl. So if you want to go out and say, why should, why does diversity matter? Why should you care about what the makeup of your coaching stuff is? It's because you win, because your team and your franchise is better for it. And that ultimately, I think, should be Bruce Ariens legacy to this game. Specifically to what he's meant for women in football is huge. I remember back in, shoot, was it, was it 2015?

I believe it was 2015 when Bruce Ariens hired Jen Welter to be the first, female coach. And he brought her in as a training camp, intern, coach, but he brought her into coach linebackers. He actively was looking for a woman to add to his staff. He wanted somebody who had a lot of experience playing, coaching. Because he just, he believed that that was something that needed to happen. And he just kind of cracked that door open. Jen Welter came in. Ultimately, you know, she didn't end up staying on the Cardinal staff. He didn't end up hiring her full time. But him opening that door to women really set the stage for tremendous progress over the last seven or eight years where, you know, 2015 was not that long ago where there was one woman working as a training camp coaching intern.

And now there's probably almost a dozen women working in coaching jobs, more, you know, even more than that working in personnel where we're no longer talking about the first. Now we're talking about women being, you know, full-time coaches on staffs year after year. Presidents of football operations in certain places. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, Catherine Rache interviewed for a general manager job this year. So, you know, I think Bruce deserves a ton of credit for what he's meant for women in football. And, you know, ultimately, you know, for me as a woman who for a long time covering this league almost never talked to anybody who looks like me, he did a lot of work to change that.

Intentionality is, I think, exactly the right word. because we've had this conversation so many times. Even you and I have had this conversation before, that individually you can understand a lot of these decisions that get made. When you take each of them individually, it's like, okay, I get why this was made. I get why this was made. And then you look at them in their totality when they're done, and nothing has changed. Because it's so easy for inertia to take over and for people to just keep doing what they're used to doing.

And sometimes you need someone or you need some sort of directive to say, let's stop this. Let's press pause on this and intentionally change the way that we're going about this. And that's exactly what Bruce Ariens did. And I think stopping that inertia and asking yourself why we're making these decisions and understanding what it takes to change them and channeling that intentionality is a really important part of this process. And I think that's exactly what he did. And I think that's how we should remember him because that's how I will. I mean, I will remember sitting there in Bruce Ariens's office and talking to him about Byron's trajectory as a coach,

why he wanted to have him call plays and what the thought process was behind that. Why he wanted to do it, how he wanted to bring him along, just every single aspect of that and how intentional he was in that process. That's how I will remember Bruce 10 years from now. And when I think about this succession plan here too of like why Todd Bowles, maybe why not Byron LeFwich, I think this is setting Byron Leftwich up really well. He was a head coaching candidate, I guess two years ago while they were making their Super Bowl run. I think there was a sense that like, okay, maybe it was just a little early for him.

He had only been calling plays for one year. And then last year he was, or this most recent cycle, he was a candidate again, seemed like Jacksonville was probably the most likely spot, didn't happen. But now he's set up where he's almost like free of any of the ties to Arians. There will be no questions of, well, what is his responsibility? Is it Bruce's offense? You know, he'll always have the link to Brady, obviously, of like, well, what is how much of it this is Brady, how much of this is left which or whatever. But I think this is

really setting Lefich up to have it like a showcase, right, for who he is as a head coach. And, you know, hopefully this time next year, we're talking about Byron Left, which is a head coach of another team. I would just like to say just that before we add in, I did just get, this is an on the record message from Troy Vincent, who is executive vice president of football operations and he is involved in a lot of the DEI efforts. And he wanted to share a message about the succession plan. So I'll just read it because he said, this succession plan is a model of growing and developing from within leading to a natural progression of the football meritocracy. Given Coach Ariens's philosophy on diversity in both were indeed a level playing field afforded

an inherent opportunity for Coach Bowles to transition with a strong foundation for success. So to me that says that, you know, this is something that has been improved by the league office, obviously. But, you know, the intentionality behind it and an understanding of, you know, these are jobs that these coaches have earned. And Bruce Ariens really set them up for success. And now we'll just see what the 2022 bucks are going to look like with this next version of Tampa Bay football is going to be. Yeah, part of this conversation has always been that you can't make ownership want to do the right thing. You can't make this important to them in the moment, even if you put certain measures in place. And it was important to Bruce Ariens.

And I think that having people go out of their way to champion this is a really important part of the process. And so that's the last question, something you just kind of alluded to. What does this mean for the 2022 Buccaneers? Because beyond Bruce Ariens walking away and this being a chance to kind of look back at his career, this is a team that is one of the favorites to win the Super Bowl, or at least, was. I mean, what does this mean for them in the short term kind of making the most of this window with Tom Brady? Yeah, I mean, honestly, I don't think it changes a ton of their prospects. I mean, I think the NFC still, there's a fairly clear path to being one of the very best teams in

the NFC for the Bucks, the Rams, the Packers, probably. I mean, I think that this is not a very top heavy division. I don't think there's a ton of parity going on across the NFC. So it's crazy to think that, you know, losing a Super Bowl winning head coach, a guy that we've just spent 20 minutes talking about how important of an NFL figure he is won't make that much of a difference. But ultimately, I don't think it's going to really change their long-term prospects and what their goal is going to be. They still have their offensive play caller in place. They have the bulk of their offense returning in place. They've got Tom Brady. Tom Brady back. And look, maybe out Tom Brady, if there were issues going on behind the scenes,

that we didn't know about. Maybe Tom Brady would be happy. I don't know. But, you know, I don't think ultimately it's going to change a ton. I think their identity is still going to be the same. And it'll just be less of Bruce Ariens, fun, funny quips and gruffness, at least in front of the cameras. I tend to agree. And you look back at the situation with the Jets.

And I mean, the roster was a mess. And the Mike McCagnan era is, it's pretty rough when you look back at the set of decisions that was made during that stretch. And the offense never got figured out. I mean, they had a little glimmer of hope with Chan Galey, but the quarterback situation, I mean, bouncing between Ryan Fitzpatrick and Gino Smith. And this is, to me, an exercise in how much the initial circumstances matter for a coach.

For the most part, when you take over a new job as a head coach, the circumstances are shitty. I mean, you're taking over a team that just fired a coach for a reason. They were probably bad. You're starting in a hole. And now he's starting as one of the favorites in the NFC. I mean, you can't be further apart in terms of the situation he had with the Jets and the situation he has right now. And I think that's where I would root the optimism I would have for Todd Bowles in his second stand,

not only from whatever he learned and the fact that we can all grow in these jobs, but the fact that he's in a much, much better position to succeed. And I do believe Bruce Ariens, at least in part, that the timing was driven with a desire to put him in that spot. All right. One thing we did not hit earlier this week just because the timing of when we recorded on Tuesday is the new overtime rule that was passed while you were at the league meetings earlier this week. 29 to three owners voted to change the postseason overtime rules ensuring that each team now gets a possession. How are you feeling about this? I'm okay with it. I mean, it very much felt like this was kind of a compromise.

So I remember I spent a lot of time around the competition committee and meetings at the combine in. early March. And at that time, it didn't feel like there was much momentum to actually getting anything done. Like there was a lot of kind of like public outcry, obviously, from the, the Bill's chiefs game and, you know, fans wanting to be a change. But in early March, when you talk to members the competition committee, they were like, I guess, I know there's going to be a lot of discussion about it, but we got to be really careful when we consider when we change, why we change, what the, what the changes are. That shifted over the course of the last three weeks or so when they really kind of got into the data of it, when they looked at the numbers about overtime outcomes.

And so ultimately what happened was they arrived in Florida with two different overtime proposals that were submitted by teams. The first proposal was submitted by the Eagles and the Colts. And this was a proposal that would change the rules for the regular season and overtime to guarantee both teams at least one possession. And then after both teams had touched the ball one time on offense, the game, it would be decided by sudden death. The other proposal was submitted by the Titans and was specifically written and kind of like created by Mike Rable where a team could win the game with an opening drive touchdown after winning the coin toss, provided that they converted or they, They successfully converted a two-point attempt. So the idea behind that was, and I talked to Mike Brable about this on Monday, was his words were that a touchdown would need to be validated.

So let's say there was, you know, a past, let's say there was like a pass interference call. And all of a sudden the offense, you know, gets the ball, you know, the moves from the 25 all the way up to the opposite 30. And it's almost like a cheap touchdown, right? Or there's, or there's one big long play, like, you know, Tim Tebow did Marius Thomas 80-yard walk-off, which almost kind of felt like a fluke at some levels, whatever, you would have to kind of prove it with go get the two-point conversion.

It's putting ball don't lie into the rule of law. Like, that's what it is. It's writing ball don't lie into the rules. So I'm not a golfer, but Rabel very much likened it to like a skins golf game. So like if you get a birdie, you have to like do it again the next hole. Like there was some some golf analogy that will make a lot more sense to golfers than it does to me. But it was kind of like very much like a competitive element. And I talked to a number of like offensive minded coaches, some of like the younger, more progressive, analytically minded guys who were really intrigued by this proposal. Because I think they like the idea of like, yeah, I've got a I've got a shit ton of two point

plays and, you know, let me be aggressive. I want my offense to go out and win this. but there are a lot of football purist traditionalists who were not willing to go there. So ultimately that that Titans proposal, they withdrew it in the course of the discussions over the couple days there. So that one never came up for an actual vote. So the one that did get into the big competition committee session, the one that has ownership, GM head coaches, everybody, was the Eagles and Colts proposal where each team would get a possession. it was not going to pass in the original format because there were a considerable number of owners

who did not want this to be in place for the regular season. There were a lot of concerns about making this the regular season over time. Are those player safety concerns for the most part and just extending games? Yeah, a lot of those are player safety concerns. And then also the data didn't really support that the current format is unfair. Yeah, it's just over 50%. It was almost right at 50% prior to 2017 when overtime was 15 minutes. When overtime was short into 17 minutes, it ticked up to 54%.

I also think that there's an uptick in offensive efficiency during that time that might contribute to that as well. Yeah. So there were a couple things there. But the data that was ultimately really compelling and a lot of people that we talked to about this said that the overtime, the data about postseason overtime was very, very compelling. It's a relatively small sample size. It was 12 postseason games over the course of 12 years. But in those 12 postseason games, the team that won the coin toss was 10 and 2.

Seven of those games were won on the opening drive. So that was the chiefs this postseason beating the bills on the opening drive. It was the Patriots beating the Chiefs in the AMC championship game a couple of years ago. It was Tim Tebow and the Broncos in the very first game walking off against the Steelers without, you know, a higher-seeded Ben Rathesberger Steelers team getting to touch the ball. You know, those were the cases there. Only two times did the team that lost the coin toss end up winning the game in overtime. Obviously, one of those cases was the Bengals this year winning in overtime to get to the Super Bowl.

But yeah, and another, oh, and another time that counts in the first drive touchdown was the Super Bowl that the Patriots won against the Falcons. I so seven out of 12 seven times the first possession out of 12 games that is not statistically significant to me I mean that the math does not dictate you need to change the rule this is an optics change this is a change driven by the dissatisfaction with the way that bill's chief's game ended it was a thrilling game and I understand being a fan or being anyone that loves football stepping back after that game and saying it's bullshit that Josh Allen didn't touch the ball. This satisfies that. This satisfies that desire to see both quarterbacks and to see them both get a chance. To me, that's what this does. It's an optics conversation. It's about satisfying

fans. That's really all this does. And if that's what you're trying to accomplish, that's fine. I don't have strong feelings either way about this. I understand why we landed on it. I don't think it's some great bit of justice in writing the wrongs of how football games are decided. Yeah, and I think ultimately that's where a lot of the teams came down. Like, they don't think it's going to make that big of a difference. I think the ones who have been in that position, you know, the bills, obviously. And I think the chiefs are kind of, Andy Reid talked about this, obviously can see both sides because they won because of it and they've lost because of it. And they're kind of like, you know, if it, you know, if it maybe improves postseason overtime, if it makes it slightly more fair.

But I don't think anybody is looking at this and going, okay, it's. fixed. This is going to be perfect because it opens up a whole new case of, you know, or situations. The moment that a team gets the ball in the third possession and scores and the other team doesn't get a chance to answer, there's going to be complaints about it. But at a certain point, you can't play these games into infinity. This isn't basketball or baseball.

It's just, it's difficult with football when you consider the toll on players' bodies to just play another quarter. You just can't do it. Yeah. So there's never going to be a really good solution. This is a really difficult problem to solve. Yeah, and that's ultimately was, you know, when you asked a lot of these coaches and, you know, GMs and stuff, like, well, what do you think is their proposal? And they're kind of like, well, you know, I can go either way, you know, I'm okay with it. And, you know, ultimately, I think they looked at engagement data and fan data and TV ratings. And they knew that ratings were really, really high in postseason overtime. And people want to see their quarterbacks. And they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they know, they, they made a decision that they thought was in the best football interest, but certainly in the best

kind of business slash fan interest of the game as well. I don't know. Will the games be more fair? I don't know. But if, look, we all wanted to see Josh Allen get the ball, right? Yeah, and now we get to. And that's fine. So the two considerations, I have no problem with just being for the playoffs.

I think you have different rules for the playoffs. Who cares? Like, if there are ties in the regular season, who gives a shit? Like, but there can't be ties in the playoffs. Or if it ends in one possession. and I don't get to see, like, I don't know, Jalen Hertz get the ball after Carson Wentz had the ball or vice versa. Like, that's fine. It's week seven.

We'll get over it. I'm okay. I'm totally fine with that. And then the other side of this that I do find compelling is that now you have strategic decisions to make. Do you want the ball first or do you want the ball second when you understand what you have to do to win the game? And the next layer to that is that the third possession is more valuable than the fourth possession. even though the second possession is more valuable than the first possession. So how teams and different coaches approach this is going to be fun.

How they kind of sort through all the different data and the strategic elements of it. I mean, we're going to see different coaches approach this different ways in the same way we do everything, right? So I'm really excited to watch how that unfolds. Yeah. And I will say one other thing that when we're talking strategy, Rich McKay, who's the chairman of the competition committee, one of the things that he said kind of almost in passing, but that kind of has stuck with me as we're talking about strategy, is he said that he left those meetings with a sense that coaches

would be inclined if they are, if they're the team with the second possession, the first, let's say the first, the team that wins the coin toss, scores, gets a touchdown, they kick the extra point, that he left that meeting with a feeling and a belief that more coaches

who go second would attempt a two point conversion to have the game there. So that will be really exciting because those stakes then are really high on those two-point plays. So Mike Frable will get a little bit of what he wanted there, right, with like you can win the game with the two-point conversion and don't put the game back in the hands of your defense and go ahead and win it now. But then knowing that if you don't get that two-point conversion that the game is over is pretty significant. So I think it'll be fun. It'll be really interesting to see how it works. I mean, look, the data shows us that what, there were 12 overtime games in the postseason of the last 12 years. We've been lucky at what last season there were a couple.

So maybe we'll get a couple this year. There's extra postseason games now with the extra wildcard game in each conference. So the chances that we're going to get more overtime is going to happen, I think, in the over in the postseason. So maybe we'll get to see more of this. But it's something that we can talk about in January now. We can think about it until then. All right. Any other odds and ends from your time in Florida that you wanted to hit before we.

we got out of here today. Sure. I mean, I just think that, you know, these meetings are, it's a really interesting time in the calendar. This is the first time that the annual meetings have been back in person since 2019. It was like the first thing that was canceled on, on the NFL calendar back when the pandemic began two years ago. And from like a reporting perspective, I always really appreciate these meetings because I'm going next year. I feel, I feel silly that I didn't go this year, but it was just hard to get down there, all the other things that I've been doing. It's just, it's a good time because, you know, when we, the last time that we had kind of mass access to coaches and GMs and stuff was at the Combine, which was pre-free agency before the start of the league year. So there's always

that weird dance of like, well, we can't talk about potential free agents and, you know, we want to keep all of these guys. But at that point, you don't really know what the market is going to be. You don't know what position is going to go wild. You don't know which guy is going to get the stunning contract that's going to change everything. And in the three weeks since then, or really four weeks, I guess, since the combine. I mean, massive trades. Russell Wilson, Devante Adams, Tyree Kill, you know, Khalil Mack, you know, Aaron Rogers staying in Green Bay. I mean, just like massive move after move after move after move. But the quarterback market looks like now. The seismic shifts have happened. The big things have happened. Yeah. So I always think this

meeting is a really good time where you, if you're a beat writer, you get to learn a lot more about kind of where this team is at. It's a really good point. It's a good starting point to like, okay, no, what does this team look like? What is this offense going to be? Okay, you have Tyree Kill and Jalen Waddle. We can talk to Mike McDaniel about like what are your plans for those guys as opposed to a couple weeks ago where either you're still like the signing had just happened or it was all kind of hypothetical about like, well, what do you envision your team looking like? Well, now we know. Now we know what a lot of the roster looks like and you can start figuring out with the exception of the draft picks, the rookies who are going to come in. I will say the thing that was probably, you know, the topic, right, that people were talking most about privately was Deshaun Watson and the Browns and the contract, especially. Owners are not happy with the Haslums as a whole for it. And it's not because there's-

Steve Boshaddy alluded to as much. Yep. Yep. And so did Arthur Blank and a lot of other people privately. And it's not because they are thinking that the Browns took, you know, made some giant moral failing by trading for Deshaun Watson. They're pissed about the $230 million contract the way it was structured and what it's going to mean for future quarterback negotiations. So, yeah, I'm sure Mike Brown notoriously cheap, Mike Brown in Cincinnati, who is going

to have to pay a fortune for a quarterback contract coming up as looking at his peers across the state of Ohio and being pretty pissed. Yeah, Steve Biscotti. It's a lot of money in escrow. a lot. Well, that's the thing. And I talked to somebody there who was like, I would be fired if I did this. Like, if I tried to put, because when you, explain to people what the rule is with guarantee money. Because I think a lot of people don't know this. Yeah. So the rule with guaranteed money, it's like, why don't you just guarantee contracts? Well, so the NFL requires, I believe it's 80% of that

money has, whatever is guaranteed, has to go in escrow. So you're not looking at like, okay, we're paying him $230 million over the course of five years. And so. And so, you're not looking at like, okay, we're paying him $230 million over the course of five years. and you can just pay, this is how much you pay each of those five years. So the Browns, as of the, it's very soon, they have to put $180 million into escrow. If you've ever bought a house, you know what putting money into escrow means. It is, that money is out there. It is out of your bank account. You are having to write that check. This is not like future years. You're not kicking that can down the road. Like this is cash out of your bank account now that is going into escrow and it is going to be held there. So it's one of the reasons that we haven't seen a lot of these hugely guaranteed contracts, you know, fully guaranteed contracts. It's where, you know, portions of contracts become guaranteed each year. So, you know, when somebody's, you know, they hit that, whatever, March 16th, the 2022 salary

becomes guaranteed. Then that money gets paid. It goes into that escrow fund or whatever. What the Browns have done is they've put about $180 million of that is paid out now. It is into this bank account now. And so when you hear cash versus cap, a lot of times cash is what's most important. How much cash do teams have available to spend? It's for these reasons.

So yes, Deshaun Watson is only going to be making about a million dollars in salary this year. But the Browns have completely shifted the landscape now for future contracts. And now as other guys are going to be coming up, Lamar Jackson obviously is kind of the first one. although it seems like there is no rush on Lamar Jackson side to get this deal done. He seems willing to play this out. And I believe you and Nate talked about that on your mailbag show. So go back and listen to a listen to the discussion about Lamar's contract there. But it's going to matter.

You know, Aaron Donald is working on a new contract. I would be shocked if he got any sort of long term or fully guaranteed type of contract there. I just don't think many other teams are going to be comfortable. going the route that the Browns did with this Watson deal and all the fully guarantees. And if many teams are actually going to be able to put that much, you know, just be able to pay out that much that cash into escrow. I'll be curious how this rule ends up shifting over time. If something like this brings it back to the table with collective bargaining where the league

reevaluates whether this rule is archaic and should be removed because right now it is archaic, right? Yeah. This rule is a vestige of an era where, you know, a small family was running the Decatur Staley's, and there was a question of whether you'd be able to pay out deals. This was a way to protect players from organizations that potentially couldn't pay out these contracts. That's no longer part of the concern. The landscape, I mean, this is a $25 billion a year business or whatever it is.

It's not a problem anymore. But it is a convenient reason for organizations and owners to say, well, we can't pay out guarantee contracts, because we have to do all of this stuff in escrow and the cash flow just doesn't make sense. We'll see if this ends up kind of restarting a conversation about whether that rule should be changed. I think that's going to be interesting to watch. All right. The last thing I wanted to mention, something I did not bring up when Nate and I were talking about this earlier this week and something that was a point of conversation at the owners meetings. The Jimmy Garapolo Baker-Mayfield trade discussions.

Yeah. We just kind of talked about it off the cuff and I didn't think of this example. but the one thing I wanted to mention is that there is good reason for both the Niners and the Browns to want to hang on to these guys if they have no trade value. And the example that I would throw out is what happened with the Eagles in 2016. When they signed San Bradford, they had Chase Daniel and they drafted Carson Wentz. And when that happened, I was like, well, why would they do that? I mean, that's so many resources to tie up in a quarterback. They hold on to Bradford until training camp.

Teddy Bridgewater tears in ACL, they trade San Radford for a first round pick. So that is, if I'm those teams, that's what I have in mind, is that something will happen where a market will be created for a quarterback I have on my roster and I can recruit some trade value for them. Because it's such a unique position that the market can exist, it can cease to exist one day and then exist in a robust way 24 hours later because something happened. So I think that's what they probably have in mind. Yeah, I mean, neither of those teams, the Browns and certainly the 49ers, imagine that they were going to be in this position here at the late March, the beginning of April, where their quarterback rooms have shifted so much.

You know, the Niners, I think especially, I don't want to necessarily say they misplayed this. I think that Jimmy Garapolo's shoulder injury and the timing of his surgery really messed up their plans. Absolutely. So that was kind of the risk that they took here. I think at least in San Francisco, that idea of we can hold on to him. At some point, we're going to be able to move him. You know, they like Jimmy. They know Jimmy.

I don't think, while I'm sure Garapolo is not like thrilled about how all of this is played out, I don't think he's going to be like a pain in the butt about it. I'm really curious what would happen in Cleveland because this is a very contentious situation now. You don't say. You know, so at some point if Baker has not been moved. So the idea of like, obviously they're at kind of a breaking point, these two sides where Baker wants a trade, they've already gone out and acquired another quarterback. But the idea that like, well, let's hang on to him in case, because we're going to need a starter at some point, assuming that Deshaun Watson is suspended. I mean, how's that going to go over in that with Baker?

I mean, Baker didn't want to play when they were just talking to Deshaun. and now the fact that Deshawn Watson is actually there and is going to be their starting quarterback when OTA is open in a few weeks, it's going to be a really, really awkward situation. I would be shocked if Baker is around in the spring when he doesn't have to be when all of that stuff is voluntary. If he's still on the roster when we get to July,

that's where things get really interesting because he would have to show up or else they would be finding him. So it's just, it's all really complicated and messy. But I very clearly left, or I left Palm Beach with a very clear sense that there is very little trade market for either of those guys right now. There's no open seat. The teams who were actively looking for quarterbacks and free agency have gotten them.

And the teams that still need them seem to be very focused on the draft. All right. That's all we got. So Nate and I will be here tomorrow Friday breaking down the quarterbacks in this year's draft. So if you guys were looking for that today, it will be available to you overnight first thing Friday morning. so please come back and check that out. Please rate and review the podcast on your podcast platform of choice. I sincerely appreciate that.

Please subscribe to The Athletic. Theathletic.com slash football show. We have a dollar a month promo going right now. I highly encourage you guys to go check that out. Dane's draft guide, The Beast, will be available very soon. You can only get that with an athletic subscription. So that is worth the money right there. Plus everything else that we have going.

If you want to go read some of our coverage from the owner's meetings, Zach Kiefer, writing about all the Colts, weirdness and everything Jim Ursay had to say about the Carson Wentz situation I thought was really interesting. There's plenty of other worthwhile stuff on the athletic right now. So please go check that out. We'll be back tomorrow. Appreciate you guys listening. Talk to you later. This was the athletic football show.