The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Football GM: Cardinals GM Steve Keim taking leave of absence, remembering Mike Leach, concern for Dak & the Cowboys & more

Episode Date: December 15, 2022

Mike Sando and former GM Randy Mueller begin the show by remembering Mike Leach and his impact on the game of football. Then, they share their concerns for Dak Prescott and the Cowboys before discussing Mike White’s future as an NFL starter. Plus, they talk about Kyler Murray’s ACL injury and react to the news of GM Steve Keim’s leave of absence. Finally, they discuss faking injuries on the field and their Week 15 picks.Follow Mike on Twitter: @SandoNFLFollow Randy on Twitter: @RandyMueller_Subscribe to The Athletic Football Show...AppleSpotifyYouTube3:38 Remembering Mike Leach10:30 Concern for Dak Prescott & the Cowboys?15:54 Is Mike White a long-term NFL starter?27:47 Cardinals GM Steve Keim taking leave of absence35:32 Faking injuries & NFL fines44:01 Are the Titans close to a tipping point?48:34 GM Notebook1:00:30 Week 15 Picks Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the Athletic Football Show. Welcome everybody to the Football GM podcast, Mike Sando here from The Athletic, along with the GM, Mr. Randy Mueller. How you doing, Randy? I'm doing great, Mike. It's been one of those days where, as you know, we've had a few conversations. And for the listeners, they don't really need to know how the sausage is made. Yeah. But sometimes I'm with you.

I think we should record our pre-show conversations. they may have to go on cable or satellite or what is it called where language doesn't matter. That's probably where they should go. But they might get a kick out of some of the gibberish that we talk about. I know. I know. I always cut off our phone calls because like, hey, let's save this for the show. I think Marissa just did that.

She cut us off to say we got to start recording because she was afraid we were going to give up too much pre-show. I get it. That's right. Well, we got a lot of great stuff. It's funny how our little show comes together. We start with a blank slate. Sometimes it's blank like a couple hours before. like my mind. Yeah. And then by the time we get this thing ready, it's like we've prepared for the whole week. So I don't know how it happened. We're going to, we got a lot of stuff here to talk about. We'll share a Mike Leach story, obviously with his very sad passing this week at age 61. We're going to talk about Dak Prescott. I don't know if a lot of people are talking about Dak Prescott, but Randy's thinking about him. We're going to talk about Mike White, very interesting stuff from Randy on Mike White with the Jets. Always interesting quarterback situation. Of course,

the Kyla Murray News. The faking injury story, wow, we're going to, we got real history on this one with the Saints getting fined. We're going to go back to sort of the origins of this being a really big deal that Randy lived. Great stories there. I went to the archives, pulled out a good old newspaper story from back in the day. That'll be good. We'll follow up on John Robinson, the firing of the Titans.

I'd written about that on Monday. The GM notebook, you'll just have to wait to see what's in there. It's always one of the highlights. We've got three or four things in there. We got our picks. I don't know. Hopefully we don't have time to get to. to the picks, Randy.

Yeah, we can skip that section. Most of our listeners want to skip it too, I'm sure. They're all broke. They're all broke after following our advice. It wasn't that bad. But, yeah, there were a couple surprises. That's why you talk about the NFL. You don't bet on it, right?

Right. I always told people for betting. If you're a fan of football, just bet against your team every week. You're insured. Whatever price you were willing to pay for them to win, you get insurance on it. They lose. You get money. That's exactly what I would do if I was a fan.

It's crazy. I have buddies, and one in particular, who always ask me about the spread and the picks and this. And I tell them, you're crazy. What are you doing? I don't know. And I'm supposed to know. And I have no clue. I might be the worst guy to ask.

But you know, no, you do know exactly what should happen. But in this game, there's a lot of, there's so many different things that can happen. It is, it's fun. It's fun to go through. It is. I think at least our reasoning going in is good. And sometimes they surprise us. And we're hard on ourself.

And we're probably around 500. about the end of each season. So that isn't far from making money in the real world. I always say anyone, if you're in the league long enough as a coach or administrator, you'll be 500 eventually. At some point, you may think you're smart riding that wave for 10 years, but it's coming back to you. No doubt.

What goes around comes around. Yes. Think how great Bill Belichick's been as a coach. He's won about 75% of the games. If he coached another 100 years, he'd probably be 500. It's just the way it goes. The league will catch up to you. So let's start a lot of.

off with the Mike Leach news, man, I guess I knew that he had had some health issues this season, but that was just a shocker and happened so fast. I think the stories about him, though, have really done him justice. I mean, you talk about a character and somebody who was loved and appreciated by people that knew him or just knew him from afar. I thought Bruce Feldman of the athletic did a great tribute to him. He had written a book with Mike Leach called Swing the Sword that you might have heard of, might have read. And there were just a couple of beauty stories in there showing that not only was Mike Leach, not your typical football coach, not your typical anything.

The guy had a law degree from Pepperdine, he had a master's. And I thought one of the interesting stories, right, I know you've got one, but one of the stories in there that Bruce wrote that I thought was classic was, he said this, Leach was the most accessible coach in the history of football, at least to the media. You could give Mike's cell number to anyone, and if they texted him, they'd probably end up in a rambling yet profound conversation. Bruce wrote, one day when I was in Lubbock working on the book, I was watching practice

and noticed a shorter guy in his 50 standing next to Leach as he ran his offense. I asked a tech staffer if the guy was a Red Raiders booster. The guy said, nah, I think that's a homeless guy who was standing near the building. And Mike brought him out to practice and has been talking to him the whole time. I thought that was just a classic story because he talked to people who knew Leach. He might be on the phone, and you think it's an important call. He's just talking to some guy who had the wrong number, you know? That was also in there from Bruce.

I don't know if you knew Mike Leach. Certainly you saw him here recently coaching Washington State in the area where we live. But you got a Leach story or reflection on Mike Leach? Well, I think everybody has a reflection, and everybody came to touch him in some way. And I think it's almost, you know, it is a sad occasion for really everybody in football. but anybody who knew Mike Leach, it almost makes you just smile talking about him, the person. And I agree with you. The tributes that we have seen over the last 48 hours, I think, have been awesome.

I mean, how can you not respect and enjoy the quirkiness of what was Mike Leach? It's crazy. And I guess I'll say this. And you said he was the most accessible guy. He was not accessible to us as scouts or NFL people. I never really had a real conversation with him. It's almost like he didn't want to talk football. What's he going to talk to me about, pirates or something that I know nothing about?

Maskots. Yeah. So I always felt like he doesn't want to really talk about football. That's why he never would converse about any of this stuff. But you hear everything that he conversed other than football. And it was crazy. I'll tell one story. And I believe it was with I might have been at the Chargers at that time.

But I remember going to practice at Texas Tech. And I had a couple of buddies on his staff that actually followed him in. his coaching career where he went. And we're standing there waiting for practice to start. And it's like maybe 155. Practice is supposed to start at two. And nobody sees Leach, but the players have all been out there loosening up. Pretty soon they go into stretch. And they stretch for 15, 20 minutes. Still, no Mike Leach. I'm thinking, what the heck's going on here? This team's going to be tired before the coach comes out. They get done stretching. And you know, when you're trying to warm up, you're like shaking your legs and trying to stay warm. And so the players,

have stretched, they've done individual, they're trying to stay warm, and the coach isn't out there yet. And I asked one of my buddies about this time. I said, hey, it's about 220. What times the two o'clock practice supposed to start? Yeah. And the guy said, well, when Mike comes out, we're going to get rolling. And I said, well, what could he possibly be doing? I mean, it says practice was two o'clock. He said, I think, because he started every practice that this guy knew of with a little bull in the ring drill. And those old school football people know what bull in the ring, that kind of drill is. Nebraska group.

It's mono a mono. Yeah. You stand in a circle and it's mono a mono an offensive and a defensive guy and they try to push the other guy out of the ring. Well, they said, I think Mike's in there figuring out who he wants to pit against the other in bull in the ring for the first four or five reps of this to start practice. And I couldn't help but laugh, but it just showed you how quirky. Nobody does bull in the ring. Nobody does that.

It's 2020. I mean, it's not 1968, you know, Junction Boys, you know. Yeah, yeah. That drill doesn't even get done anymore. Remember Mike Singletary did that. Remember when he came back and coached? And how that work out. Yeah, not so good.

It's a little out, but anyway, that's just the quirkiness of Mike. And he would do all these crazy things. I remember being at a BYU game one time, and this was when he's at Washington State. And everybody's out there warming up, going through warmups. And he strolls out about halfway through warmups with a big cup of coffee in his hand, on the field. He just came from Starbucks. Yeah, like, hey, what's going on here? I was driving by and I just saw a bunch of people, so I thought I'd stop in.

They were going to kick off in 45 minutes. But that's the kind of laissez-faire, you know. I worked with Nick Saban for two years or for Nick Saban for two years. So that was a different mindset for me to see and hear the Mike Leach stories. But I'll be honest, I love that. There are more things in the world than football. Absolutely, yeah. It's funny.

You know, when you look at the, someone had posted one of these recently, I thought I saw on Twitter and it reminded me those game day itineraries in the NFL where literally like things are planned out to the second like the the schedule for the we'll say like at you know 1.04 p.m. and 30 seconds the national anthem to be played and you're supposed to be standing here with your hands in this manner right I mean down at the helmet here yeah yeah this group of players come out at 1242 and they stand on this part of the field. That doesn't sound like Mike Leach.

Right. No. No. He was perfect for the college game and perfect for the little offbeat program style, right? Like Texas Tech or like Washington State or even like Mississippi State. It almost came with a little disrespect, but the people loved him, anybody that was around him, respected him. And he was a good football mind, no doubt about it.

It was an irreverence. I think he had an irreverence to him that people appreciated and, no. not taking everything overly seriously, having a sense of humor, being fun about it. And, you know, his legacy is on the field every week. I mean, the concepts. And I think he went to BYU was there when LaBelle Edwards was there and just got into brands of football that really changed the game. So he definitely lives on in his legacy on the field. But I don't know if you could ever top the stories.

I really encourage people to check out that Bruce Feldman article that I talked about. It was amazing. I'm probably going to read it again. Back in the NFL, one of the things you had texted me about earlier in the week that you wanted to do on the show was about Dak Prescott. Of course, the Cowboys, you know, came back or were able to hold off Houston, had the 90-whatever-yard drive late in the game. And Jerry Jones was asked about it afterwards because, you know, every owner talks after the game, right, Randy? Yeah, right. They all need to have their opinion.

Speaking of unique setups, yeah. A unique setup. So he's like, oh, you know, we got the drive. It makes it all good. That's what I wanted to see.

We were behind, whatever. That's what I wanted to see. Could we come back and win? Is that what you wanted to see? What did you see? And why do you want to talk about Dak Prescott and the Cowboys this week? Well,

I've been a cowboy believer most of this season, and especially with Kellyn Moore, kind of putting together game plans and more complete offensive schemes that I think have been really hard to stop. But I did pause a little bit when I saw this week's game and it did send me back to the film room. And I started watching the Houston game on tape. And I said, I've seen this act.

What the heck? So I went back and looked at my notes from a year ago, I guess. We even talked about it on the podcast when he was coming back from injury and some of the things that he was not able to do initially when he came back from a long layoff. Now, this, it was either last year, it could even have been the year before when he did break his leg. but he went through a period of about a month or so after he got healthy, really struggling. And some of the things I saw last week in the Houston game were eerily similar. I mean, looking for the big play, didn't hit the checkdown, wasn't seeing the field, wasn't anticipating, kind of predetermined some targets because he wasn't confident, threw into coverage a couple times where I just shook my head.

What the heck, you know, trying to make a tight window throw that, you know, really wasn't there. So his accuracy was limiting a little bit. And I saw receivers that were limited and run after catch because the accuracy wasn't there. So I was just a little concerned. And I'm thinking, what's going to be the difference? That's going to have to get better for this team to go far in the playoffs. Now, it's not all DAC. The receivers I was less than impressed with.

The Gallup kid really wasn't right last week. Didn't play well. The offensive line for the Cowboys, I think, got handled by the. Texans up front, which I don't, I couldn't tell you the last time I've said that, but Houston got after that offensive line, kind of outplayed them. The receivers are lacking. I understand why they have been in the OBJ sweepstakes per se. They need another receiver. But my fear is if they bring in a new receiver, and we'll see because they signed T. W. Hilton this week, we'll see if that camaraderie and that chemistry ever happens. Because it looks to me like DAC might be one of those guys that

needs time with his guys. He needs time to adjust. I thought the coverages that Houston played kind of surprised Dack in the offense, and they didn't really catch on until late in that game. So their ability to adjust on the move, I was a little concerned with that, and we know what the second half of these NFL season brings. It's all about adjustments. I thought they were a little slow at the wheel, and DAC was a little slow at recognizing

things. So it just made me pump the brakes a little bit because I'm really high on Dallas and their roster and the people they have around. I love what Dan Quinn is doing, but I felt like this team, Dak maybe held them back a little bit last week, so we'll see how that plays out the next couple weeks. Yeah, the part of that that's concerning is if that is a reflection of the weaponry. And because that's not going to be seriously upgraded this year.

I don't care if they signed somebody or whatever. Even OBJ, I don't know. It's going to take a while. That's my point. No. And so if you look at DAC before this season, I'm just looking at the interceptions. So his interception rate this year has doubled.

It was exactly the same for like five years before, okay? But he's to a point right now that if he finishes the season with 23 touchdowns and one interception, he's going to match his numbers to last year. Wow. So sometimes, you know, you play a tough spade of opponents or you just have, you know, the numbers just sort of get out of whack for a while. But if it's a reflection of something that he can't control, which is the weapon, the comfort with the weaponry,

then is there any real expectation that it's getting a lot better? You know, the thing that Mike McCarthy said that was pretty smart, I thought before the season, or he said it during the season, but he said, I could tell from that we're going to be a defensive operation going into the year, and that's what we're going to do, and we're going to play a certain way. And I think in the back of our minds, we thought, yeah, you'll do that, but Dak Prescott's going to give you another gear. It may not be the Patrick Mahomes gear,

but it's going to be something. And if they don't have that something, then I don't know how far they go. No, I hear you. I just think the cloudiness by which he saw the game last week gave me concern. That's all. And maybe that goes away. Maybe it was just a bad week. But I've seen it enough to where it's happened a couple times now over the last couple years with his career.

And it just made me not be quite as jubilant about the Cowboys and the Deep Run that I thought. they were going to make a couple weeks ago. Yeah, we'll see. Things change quickly in the league and maybe he gets it going, but that is something to have on our radar. The Jets are also on our radar from a quarterback standpoint. Obviously, it's been an eventful year with Zach Wilson kind of talking and somewhat playing his way out of the lineup.

And then Mike White comes in. The team is getting off the plane, going to Minnesota, wearing Mike White shirts. It's pretty obvious that everyone's excited to have him in there. I think I saw this, somebody posted this on Twitter, and then I went and looked it up myself. For example, Garrett Wilson, who didn't seem all that happy with Zach Wilson, when they were playing together, is averaging like 18 yards every time Mike White targets them. It's like 50% more than it was with Zach Wilson and the other guys. So he's happy and see the team respond. What did you see with Mike White and where you sort of absolutely?

And where are you sort of at with him and them? Yeah, it's interesting. And it's kind of a cause and effect that it makes you shake your head a little bit. You mentioned Garrett Wilson. I would say this. Garrett Wilson plays a lot harder when Mike White's the quarterback and doesn't screw things up like he did when Zach Wilson was there running wrong routes, maybe cutting some routes. So there's something there that they want to play for and with Mike White for sure. I think the things that I saw last week kind of confirm what I saw a couple of weeks ago.

go, I really think someone's going to pay Mike White as their starting quarterback next year. That's the end of the story. How they get there, I don't know. But I've seen enough from Mike White that I think he has the skill set, that somebody's going to say, let's make this guy a quarterback. Let's pay him a reasonable amount because he's a free agent at the end of the year. And somebody is going to step to the plate. He's displayed all the characteristics for me. Size, arm, can process.

He's accurate. I saw, and they got killed last week. actually should say he got killed physically last week. Buffalo put it on him. I mean, they about broke this guy in half in accordion fashion. And he left the game a time or two, came back.

I saw old school toughness, but what I really saw was three or four more big time throws that make me say, wow, this guy's got it. You know, he's got it. I could watch tape on several quarterbacks for three days

and not see the wows. And, oh, man, that was a big time throw. You know, you see that crisp accuracy. when his feet are set, he can drive the ball, stuff that people get paid a lot of money to do every weekend out there, and some guys can't do it. But I see Mike White doing some of that stuff.

And I think the design of the Jets offense is, I mean, we've talked about it. I think it's incomplete, far be it for me to be criticizing a coach or a staff. But I think the offense has a little bit to be desired. I think the same offense, Zach Wilson does less with, Mike White does more with, if that makes any sense. I just think he can do more with it. But Mike White's in year four. Zach Wilson's in year two. So people can't forget that Mike White's been around.

He's more mature. He's more process-oriented. He gets it a little more. But he's got two more years on the learning curve. And I think that's a process to learn your job and your trade. So I think what it made me think about was, how about this? Give Sean Payton Mike White next year somewhere somehow. And he might end up with a pretty good NFL quarterback.

That's just Randy's opinion. People might think I'm drunk. I don't know, but for my money, I've seen a lot, and I've seen enough of this guy to where he might be worth a chance for somebody makes. Yes. So I got a couple follow-ups on that, but no doubt about some of these throws. I went back and watched the game. Second quarter, their scoreless game, they got a first and 10, their own 26, the Jets do.

There's about six or seven minutes left. And this is one of those where he took the huge hit. But they are in a spot where they need to get points before the half. and he throws that thing 20 yards downfield to Elijah Moore, and he takes a shot from Ed Oliver. I mean, a hit to the ribs, like you don't see many of those types of hits in the NFL anymore. And Ed Oliver's 6 foot 1, 290 pounds, and he got a free shot on the ribs, and he took it. And this guy, white, I told my son, when I saw that, I said he's not coming back.

We're not seeing him again. That is not good. But now all of a sudden he's back. We're 13 minutes left in the third quarter, and he hits Braxton Barrios outside the numbers before the safety can get there. And it's just a thing of beauty. Ball on the money. Big time. Yeah, big time.

Yeah. He had to be torquing on that thing to get it in there. Now, one of the things I'm curious about is sometimes we see backups come in and they play a little wild. They take some big hits. They rally the team, but they don't have a long-term sustainable mentality. And I always felt this way about Ryan Fitzpatrick. You know, he was out there diving, extending the ball, you know, taking hits. And I always felt like his teams were okay with it because they knew he wasn't the guy long term.

But the hits that Mike White took were like off of those old 1980s Sports Illustrated Crunch Course videos where they're showing Chuck Bed and Eric standing over Frank Gifford. And you're like, is he going to get up? Yeah. So my question is, what do you make of these hits that? he's taken, just bad luck against good pass rushes, or is he too courageous for his own good? Because I feel like the good quarterbacks usually are there most weeks. You know, it's a fluke almost if they get hurt. And he's been banged up in a very short amount of time. Yeah, I think that

comes with his style for sure. He reminds me of a quarterback that we had, and you probably remember, you remember John Freeze? Yeah, I know. At times couldn't protect himself because he was tough and wanted to stand in there and throw a little bit statuesque at times. And so I do think that's an issue and something Mike will have to get better at. He's so dang tough and he doesn't care. He throws caution to the wind. I also think it's a little bit of reflection of, like I said, that offensive scheme and their past protection, they're going to get this guy killed. So they do have to find ways to get the ball out quicker, sooner. Obviously, you have a chance for a big play the longer you can hold the ball, but you can't put everything else in jeopardy, including your own livelihood.

I'd like a guy to be able to come back to the next play. And sometimes you've got to know when to throw it away and fight another fight on the next play. I think what we're going to see is, and it's a hard one, I'm just, I'm trying to put myself in Joe Douglas's shoes or Robert Saul's shoes because you know at some point and they've kind of, and I think they've done it right by the book and I agree with everything they've done to this point. At some point, they're going to have to figure out a way to get Zach Wilson back in the game here. And I don't know how, when, what happens. But if you've heard Robert Saul over the last few weeks, he's always left that window open, in fact, more than open,

saying, Zach is our quarterback, you know, but I think at the point where they made the move, Zach was holding them back. And this is a playoff team, and they didn't have any choice but to make it. Now, I don't know how it ends. I have no clue. But as long as Mike White is not the reason for them losing, I don't think they can take him out. I think they've got to play him.

So the development of Zach, again, it's got to take back burner. It can't be involved in this decision to me at this point. And, you know, as we know, you can't fool the locker room about who that's quarterback is for the team. Yeah. And yet you drafted Zach Wilson. And you probably would, I mean, Zach Wilson's probably more talented than. Oh, no question. No question.

So there's a physical upside to Zach Wilson that you'd like to beat it. But at the same time, you have what looks like is going to be a really good defense for a while now. Yep. And obviously you talked about, you know, just with Garrett Wilson, a young player, you know, looking like he's playing differently when the other guys in there. The team's responding to Mike White. This may take care of itself. Mike White may miss time and not be reliable enough to be in there. And we just reset next year for the Jets and go with Zach Wilson because Mike White's going to be a free agent. But at the same time, I mean, Gall, they're already, you know, they've already had such a problem getting quarterbacks over

the last however many years. You look, Gino Smith has survived it, came out, and is looking like he's fairly productive with Seattle. You've, is Mike White, if you said gets with a Sean Payton or somebody like that, and suddenly next year he's a winning quarterback or having good success and the team's buying into him and you've got the same issues with Zach Wilson and we're waiting another year, that doesn't do anyone any good either. So, you know, when I look at Zach Wilson, his contract, he signed through 2004 and the cap numbers, Randy, are like backup quarterback money, 10 million bucks a year or so.

So it's not like, you know, that the cap would prevent them. I don't know what it would cost to keep Mike White. But what would be your consideration taking into account the fact that we have invested in Zach Wilson? We kind of bet on him. We, in some cases, are going to be measured by how well he does. But what if in our heart we just don't feel like it's right and we feel like we want to see more from Mike White? Can you have it both ways? do you have to make a hard choice?

How do you feel about going the next year with Zach Wilson? Well, I think it's the market that will determine it. I think that's what it comes down to for me is what kind of money Mike White's going to demand on the open market. I don't think they can just let him walk out the door and turn the team over to Zach Wilson. Now, it depends on how these next four weeks go. But like you said, Zach Wilson's cap number is one thing. The investment you've made in him is another thing. But the locker room is a total different animal.

And as a GM, and I say this all the time, it's the most critical component of decision making is what's going to be said in the locker room. I don't know. It's a tough spot. If someone wants Mike White and if they see what I've seen and it continues for another three or four weeks, he's going to get a pretty good number. I don't know what that number is going to be. But it's going to be a pretty big number. And it might take multiple years. So if you're the Jets, and like you say, if Zach Wilson,

has a $10 million cap number, what if Mike White comes in at, I don't know, $25, $30 million a year, if someone sees enough to pay him like that, what do you do? Yeah, that'd be a pretty big number for him. I'm just saying, if you're, and name some of these teams, Houston, New Orleans, yeah, Indianapolis, I don't know. They all can't draft, they're not going to draft rookies in rolling. them out there like half the world wants him to draft a rookie in the top 10 and and just roll him out ready to go. They're not going to do that.

Carolina with a decent defense and, you know, he would certainly be better than what they've had. You could probably name, I mean, shoot, Denver. If you're not, you're not going to probably be able to pay that much with your guy. You could make a case for it, but yeah, money will probably exclude him. Money will probably exclude them. But yeah, yeah, there's a lot of teams out there that you could look at and say, hmm, maybe that wouldn't be a bad move for them to make. So the Jets could, the worst case scenario for the Jets is they just sort of find themselves stuck and making the wrong decision for the wrong reasons. Right.

And then watching somebody go. Watching another quarterback walk out. Yeah. And then if you, yeah, I was doing this before the show I was looking at, these are the jet starting quarterbacks the last 10 years by most starts. Sam Darnold, Gino Smith, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Zach Wilson, Josh McCown, Joe Flack. Bryce Petty, Mike White, Mike Vic, Luke Falk, and Trevor Simmons. So it has been a wild ride for them.

We'll see if it continues to be a wild ride. Speaking of wild rides, Randy, we're going to talk about the Arizona Cardinals. And since we started recording, across the news wires, Cardinals, GM, Steve Kime, taking indefinite health-related leaf of absence. That is on my screen here. I just, while we were recording this, I got a message, Hey, what's the deal with Steve Kime? I said, oh, I better look.

So we were going to talk about the Cardinals losing Kyler-Murray to a torn ACL and what the ramifications are. Steve Kime has obviously been with the Cardinals for 20 years. He's had some highs. They got to the Super Bowl during the Kurt Warner years. They did a great job with Bruce Ariens. More lately, it's been tough. the Josh Rosen draft pick, Kime himself had a real bad DUI,

like an extreme DUI a couple years ago. They've got it going a little bit with Cliff Kingsbury, but now it's going back the other way. And now an indefinite leave of absence. That's not, and it says health-related leave of absence from the team. So just what the Cardinals need here, that now we thought their coach was kind of imperiled. here, but now their quarterback has a torn ACL, their GM is taking an indefinite leave. Wow.

Yeah. I mean, I'm seeing your notes here before we knew that, in your notes, it says, owner has his plate full and has to make calls on his own. Well, he really has it full now because the GM's not around. What are, right? I mean, we got to take a second to assess. Yeah, no, I agree. It's been a tough year in the desert, and obviously we didn't know anything about this till right now. So my first concern is for Steve and that he is okay and that health is not a, you know, a life or death situation. That's for sure. We don't know anything about that. But you're right.

It kind of leaves. I don't think there's any question that Steve Kime has been Mike Bidwell's lead advisor and his right-hand man for half a many years. So you're correct. I think Michael Bidwell is in a really tough spot now. I don't know who we would lean on. I don't know the rest of their football staff at all. I've known very few people within that organization, so I don't know where he goes. But yes, it is a, it's a mess.

And just set Steve's health aside, you're talking about a quarterback with an ACL now who's probably going to miss a lot, if not most of next year. He runs an offense that if you make a coaching change, probably not going to be able to run the new offense if you have another coach come in there. Probably not a great fit. I don't think there were a lot of teams that would have picked Kyler Murray number one had they not, you know, run the Cliff Kingsbury offense. So the quarterback fits the coach. I don't know that he fits all coaches. So that's an issue. It's just a multi-level issue that I don't know how I would advise. I really don't because they've got a lot of problems. It could be that he just has, Mike has to, Mike Bidwell has to just write checks to everybody and kind of make the best of it. I think the only one for sure that's there because the contract is the quarterback. You're probably going to be, you're going to have to have to deal with him at some point. You know, I don't know. I watched the hard knocks and you and I have talked about it. I try to

get inside that building a little bit. It's different. I mean, it's, Kyler does things different, you know, and you can't take what is portrayed on TV to be facts and truth, but it's a different setup. You know, we'll see. I'll be honest. You're not feeling real strong leadership. Yeah, I'm not. I'm not. I'm not feeling it anywhere. And I think Cliff actually could be a good leader. I don't know that this offense is going to allow him to be a good leader because I'm not sure everybody believes in it in that building. That's what I see. And I see a scheme that works probably more detailed when, what's the quarterback's name? Colt McCoy is running it. And Kyler, and he's not as talented or skilled as Kyler at all. But he seems to understand it and it's more structured when he's in there,

obviously. So it is more questions now, and especially after what you just said, than ever before with the Arizona Cardinals. And I think one of the things that doesn't seem that complicated, but is we see this happened in Denver with the Russell Wilson contract. When you have significant questions about somebody, don't go over the top investing in them. That just seems like a normal thing, right? I mean, if you had questions about a car you were going to buy, you wouldn't just pay the maximum price for the car. Right. And so there were certainly questions about Kyler Murray and no looming deadline that they had to sign them. There were questions about Cliff Kingsbury, certainly, coming in. And even though, you know,

Steve Kimes has been a great confidant for Mike Bidwell, it wasn't like things had gone so well. There was no need to do three of people with new contracts. You weren't going to lose them, unless just for the sake of stability, you thought it was important. But wow. Well, the only one you'd have to live with, in my opinion, is the quarterback because that has cap ramifications. Yeah. Obviously, there's no cap. It's cash. It's cost for the GM.

It's cost for the coach. It's cost for a new coaching staff. If you did that, and I'm not saying they're going to, I'm just saying there's, those costs can be overcome. It's the cap count and the cap cost to Kyler's contract. Now, I understand it's an extension. And next year's number isn't crazy. So you can probably live with that.

It's 2024, where you probably. have to make a decision on Kyler Murray if you're going to have him because I think the cap count goes up substantially in 24. Oh yeah. Once you get to that part, now you can't do, you're limited in other areas because of him and he has to be good enough to overcome that. And if the cap number next year, and I don't have that in front of me, I've been told it's like 16 million next year. If that's the case, guess what it's going to be in 24? 50 million. So it's going to go crazy in 24. And again, that's when you have a problem because you're talking about really a quarter of your cap now. Maybe it's 15 to 20 percent in two years if the cap goes up.

So those cap numbers are problematic. Absolutely. It is 16 million next season. Then it goes to 51, 45, 55, 45, 43, 46. That's a lot of money and commitment on a team that really needs more around him to help him. And I think that's one thing in fairness to Kyler Murray. So he comes into the season. You've got an offense that we think maybe has been figured out or has some limitations.

They don't always have the answers. And some of that's because of, it could be because of some limitations of Kyler Murray. But he spends the first six games without his number one receiver, DeAndre Hopkins, one on the top shoot when Rogers has no receivers. We talk about it every week. So no number one receiver. They trade for Hollywood Brown. He's dinged up, banged up.

they lose Zach Ertz partway through the year. They go to Mexico, their offensive line coach gets fired for doing something with a security guard down there. I mean, that's a lot of stuff around your franchise quarterback that isn't helping your franchise quarterback look in the best light. And so I think it's fair to point that out as much as we have concerns about Kyler Murray, somebody like that needs a lot of good things around them. And where are those things?

They're not there. Yeah. No doubt. The leadership is in question because of all those things. Yeah, Michael Bidwell's got some tough calls to make for sure. I don't envy his position, and Cardinal fans are probably in for a rocky road here for the next couple of years until they get it sorted out.

We're going to shift gears here, and, you know, I bet a lot of people, you have next level Twitter, Randy. You have Twitter that only the really knowledgeable football historians understand sometimes, and I thought that was true when the NFL. I don't know about that, but okay, I'm listening. You draw me in a little bit. Next level. We're going to talk about faking injuries.

Randy's got great story on this, and I even dug into the archives on this one. So recently, the NFL fined the Saints $350,000, head coach Dennis Allen, $100,000, defensive line coach Ryan Nielsen, $50,000, and defensive end Cameron, Jordan, $50,000, for violating the league's rule on faking an injury during a week one loss to Tampa Bay. And this is just such a fascinating thing, because there's been gamesmanship going on in the NFL forever. But Randy, when this happened, you tweeted something about Joe Nash. And for most people out there, unless you were following, you know, top nose tackles of the 80s. From the 80s, yeah.

Yeah, 90s. Joe Nash played 200 plus games for the Seattle Seahawks from 82 to 96, made a pro bowl, was all pro, nose tackle out of Boston College. And Randy was there, those, his entire career, right? You were in Seattle his whole career. But you were tweeting about, you were tweeting about Joe Nash. and faking injuries, and there's some great background here. You want to take it away? Well, the first thing I'll say is the Saints have been fined all this money,

and it's not shocking to me that Mickey Loomis and the Saints are appealing every one of them, every one of them, all the fines. He's saying it's all bullshit. How would they know if these guys are hurt or not? So I understand the Saints come back. Hey, but even better than that, Mickey was with you in Seattle with Joe Nash. So Mickey's got no denial. ability here.

Mickey came from the factory on this. What are we talking about, Mick? We had Mickey on the show last year. I mean, I know you're still buddies with Mickey, but I'm calling, you don't have to, but I'm calling, wink, wink, BS on Mickey Loomis here because we can tie him back to the scene of the crime. Take us away. Joe Nash, faking injuries.

What are we talking about? Scene of the crime, I guess, but, you know, we played the Bengals back in. Did you ever figure out what year this was? I think it was the end of the 89 season. And I think it was a playoff game. if I've not mistaken. It was in Cincinnati. If not, it was close to that.

It was toward the end of the season. Sam Weish was the coach of the Bengals. They ran what was called the sugar huddle at the time where they would stand about two yards behind the ball and huddled and Boomer Seison would call out the plays. And it was really the, it was really tempo offense before tempo offense. That's what it was. Yeah. But it made Chuck nervous.

It made Tom Catlin, our defense coordinator nervous. So he said, heck, we're not going to let them do this. Every time we're uncomfortable with the people we have in the game, and if we don't like the matchup, Joe Nash is going to have a cramp. He was our noseguard. He was the guy coming out anyway because most of the time it was going to be a sub-package

against passing offenses. So Joe wasn't going to be in the game for that anyway. Joe must have went down six or eight times that game and talk about booze and people in old Riverfront Stadium. They were killing us, throwing stuff on the field, and they were so mad that they couldn't run this high-powered offense because every time they wanted to hustle up to the line of scrimmage to get another playoff, Joe would go down.

and he just cramped. He was an older guy. He didn't get enough hydration. It was just part. He was legitimately cramping up. Then, obviously, I'm saying this tongue and cheek, but it got us through the game. And I remember we laughed about it on the plane all the way home. Everybody was shaking their head.

I can't believe we just got away with this. This goes on. And in the league meeting the next year in March, Sam Weish and Chuck Knox verbally get into this spat in front of the whole congregation over Sam was saying, we got to make rules against this. It's challenging the integrity of the game. And Chuck just gave the same kind of speech I did is, you don't know if he was hurt. He had cramps. He didn't get enough hydration. You can't judge this on the field. So you're going to put this in the referee's hands of why this, why that you can't call penalties on this. You can't find us for this. And really nothing happened.

Now, I say that, and I think you found out that some rule maybe got tweaked a little bit or read, you know, adjusted, but they did not change the rules because of this. And it became a laughing thing in the league for 10, 15 years. And for some of us that have been around a long time, even longer than that. So injuries have always played a part, whether they're real or not. I'll let the guys on the ground determine that. Hey, I love Sam Weish talking about integrity of the game because Sam Weish was the beauty, coach of the Bengals.

One time he was so pissed off at Jerry Glanville that he ran out to score 61 to 7, and he called a timeout with three seconds left and they kicked a field goal. They were at 58 to 7, kicked a field goal. And after the game, Sam Weish was talking about, he wished there was a fifth quarter. You know, he wanted to run it up even more. So integrity of the game, integrity of your offense, Sam, the late Sam Weiss passed away in the last couple of years, was a beauty. So in that game, in that game, I believe that Joe Nash went down six times with injuries. It says, to counteract the no huddle, Seattle nose tackles, Joe Nash and Ken Clark went down with injuries six times last week, all on third down, stopping the clock.

And this is a great quote from Fred Smurlis. He was a great nose tackle who went to college with Joe Nash. He said, Joe Nash and I went to school together. Every time he went down, I called his wife in Seattle. I must have spent $100 on long distance. He had me fooled. He was laughing. He was like, every time he went down, he's like, oh, I got to call Joe's wife.

I mean, clearly Joe's injured here. Then Joe's back in the game like two plays later, you know, it's outstanding. And even the doctors were going out there. I saw the picture in the old newspaper. Yeah. Kevin Alld never got so much here. Team doctor never got so much coverage. I saw all I saw Stan Herring out there too, I think, going out.

So these guys, you know, we might have to put them on the witness stand with Mickey here and see, you know, to see wink wink. I think you're right. Mickey's integrity may be tainted just a little bit. So we'll see. Now that you bring that up, I understand. Yes, absolutely. what a beauty so yeah they never did

they never did put in a rule because Art McDanielie the head of officiating at the time he said hey I don't want the officials having to decide what her guys are really hurt which is a fair point yeah so he took Chuck's side yeah he took Chuck side on it but that's about the only time Chuck and the officials agreed I actually called one of my

retired official today that I've gotten to know over the years and I asked him about that and he was laughing and he said hey he said actually Chuck was not afraid to make medical evaluations. He said one time, he goes, one time I'm officiating a Seahawk game and the CX are having this good drive going on. And in the middle of the drive, the umpire gets injured during the drive. So the referee goes over to Chuck and says, hey, you know, it's going to take a minute

here. The umpire's injured because Chuck is going, what the hell? Why are we slowing up the game? And so he explains the empire and Chuck being very concerned about the empire's health, basically said, drag his ass off the field. We got a rally going here. Let's go. Killed our momentum. It's killed our momentum. That's great. You know, the colorfulness of the league, the color of the league, the characters of the league. I did a piece a couple years ago on the feud between Sam Weish and Jerry Landfla.

I actually looked that up because Weish was just a beauty. He was in the middle of everything. I mean, and he wasn't afraid to say anything. I think the irony is that this penalty, these fines against the Saints are helping the Tampa Bay Buccaneers now. Sam went and coached to Bucks. he probably couldn't get a break. He couldn't get the call back then. He's probably been arguing for this Tampa Bay's offense

probably had the same thing happen. Now it happens retroactively all these years later. So I think the officials, there's no rule, but the officials can file a report after the game if they think it's something the league should look at. And I bet you that's probably something that happened. I feel like it's happened more than this one time, Mike, in the game this year. I think I've seen it three or four times where guys just went down, right?

I mean, craziness. They're going to probably have to address it in the offseason, but I don't know how you legislate something like that. How do you tell if somebody's hurt or not? Yeah. The integrity of the game clause is not going to fly. I'm telling you, they want to win the game. So they're going to do whatever they've got to do to win the game.

Yes. Absolutely. I'd sit off the top. We were going to revisit the situation in Tennessee with John Robinson. I had written about that Monday. I don't know that I want to spend a ton of time on it because we did talk about it last week. We've got some stuff from the GM notebook. Did you have any additional reflections on that?

The thing I had basically written was that, you know, drawing the comparisons to the Houston Texans. Maybe we'll spend them in on it. Right. Because Mike Vrable and Bill O'Brien, good buddies. And when you look at what happened in both places, they both were kind of winning more than people thought, got some juice. And then pretty soon the GMs they were tethered to who had winning records also were kicked to the curb. And so my concern for Tennessee was that they could be vulnerable with kind of a hard charging coach and Mike Vrable to go down a round. road now where you're having GMs that really take a back seat to him don't have the same type

of pedigree. And then you start making decisions kind of like the Houston Texans made where you're suddenly trading DeAndre Hopkins or Jackie Easterbee is getting hired or the next GM is getting fired as well. And pretty soon you're just kind of in a different realm than you were. And I almost feel like the Titans are there anyway. They've lost three in a row. Maybe some of their personnel issues you know, or coming back to get them. Do you feel they could be on the verge of a tipping point here? And are you, what are you expecting them to hire? I'm really not sure.

A week later, now that we revisit this, that we have any more facts than we did a week ago. But to answer your question, I think it is a pivotal hire. It'll be really monumental in that they can go a couple ways. They can go with a young guy that Rabel picks or that has something to do with it. I don't think they'll ever come out and say,

Rabel is going to be in charge, but somebody else that might acquiesce to Mike a lot. But I'll be honest, I think John did a lot of that too. John is a good guy. If the coach wants something, he's going to find a way to do it in most cases unless it makes no sense. So I don't know that, I'll be honest, I don't know how much better or different you're going to get than John, to be honest with you. Maybe you get some selections in the draft that work out better, but I don't know. I think it would be a mistake to hire someone that doesn't have. some skins on the wall that Mike doesn't necessarily respect or that could be used. And I'm not insinuating that Mike wants that either because we really don't know. But I do think it would benefit

the franchise going forward if they had somebody who's been through some wars who could handle and work with Mike in every facet of the job. I always say two heads are better than one. They've got to work together. If they don't agree, they're probably better off going a different direction. You know, we saw the video of Mike's reaction when they traded AJ Brown last year during the draft or what we think was his reaction. If that was going to be the reaction, I don't know that I could have made the move based on the fact that if the coach didn't want to do it, I think we'd have found another way to improve our team. That's a different philosophy, but that is one that some teams use. And that's one that I used forever is that if we don't agree, we're probably not going to do it.

We're going to pick a different lane. So maybe that happened a few times where John forced a square peg into a round hole? I don't know. I like John. I respect him and I think he's done a really good job. So I don't know if that was the case or not. Sometimes a coach can be more impulsive, can be more reactive. And I think a calmer influence in the other side of the building is helpful to that, to that personality. I'll be honest, Jim Haslett, one of my best friends and actually my coach in New Orleans and is now in the XFL, we're totally opposite in in just this regard i'm i'm a little i'm going to go about it a total different way but i think we're good for each other and work good for each other because of that it's interesting you say that

because jim was a linebacker too just yes he was a linebacker you get some of that linebacker mentality don't you 100% and that's why i think the guy in the other office is really important and his personality is really important too there has to be respect for starters because that guy has to be able to say what he wants and and and the coach has to understand and respect that and vice versa So I think it's really important for this franchise, probably for the next 10 years, who they end up hiring and putting in that chair. That's interesting. And you were a quarterback, Randy.

So we brought a quarterback into the room with the linebacker. We got the linebacker in Tennessee. Maybe we need to find a quarterback for Mike Brable. Probably would make sense. I'm telling you probably would make sense. Not get a special team's gunner or. Yes. Yes.

That's right. Like that. What's in the GM notebook this week? Well, that's a good question. We've talked about a couple of the things. one of the topics that I did have in there was a little bit on the Marcus Marriota thing and what happened in Atlanta. And I don't have all the answers to that. And if what we read is to where Marcus has been replaced by Desmond Ritter and kind of wanted to get away and walked away,

I just thought that peculiar and it made me think back of my time had I ever had this happen. And I could think of one time in my GM career where a really good player, a focal point on our team, walked away, but it was really because there was some personal things going on in his life that he just had to go handle. So it wasn't based on any decisions that we had made with regard to playtime or moving somebody in and out of a lineup. I don't know, maybe you know more than I with regard to that. I just, I don't know if I've ever, I know Marcus Marriota to be really even keel and really solid and not emotional and not impulse. Maybe we should hire him as the GM back in Tennessee. But that kind of personality, I just, yeah.

I just don't know that this didn't seem, it seemed very unmarriota like, if that makes sense. Totally. I gave him benefit of that 100%. I had read somewhere, I think his wife may have had a child this week and I know he's being put on injured reserve and having surgery. There were a couple things there, but yeah, that was unusual. I would think he's probably done as a starter in the league, wouldn't you? Well, it depends on what they get out of Desmond Ritter.

Desmond Ritter was a third round pick, and I get a kick out of social media people and fans in general say we got to see what we got in in desmond richard why do you got see what you got why don't we try to win some games this guy's a third round pick or in another franchise it's the fifth round pick just because he's a quarterback we don't have to see what we have right now we got this guy for three or four more years he's going nowhere so i don't know maybe they want to get as much information about desmond ritter right now as they can maybe they don't think they can make a playoff run this year so they're gathering information i don't know that one there's a little fog around that decision for me.

It's been an interesting handling of the quarterback situation for them because when they had Matt Ryan, some people were like, you got to move on from Ryan. We got to just rebuild. Start over. You've been pushing, kicking the can down the road and leveraging your contracts with Julio Jones.

Let's just start fresh. Well, then, of course, no coach wants to do that. You want to be as competitive as you can. They keep Matt Ryan a year. They draft the tight end, Kyle Pitts.

And then they get rid of, they get rid of, of Matt Ryan and bring in Marcus Marriota and now we're sort of convinced from afar before the season. Well, they're not going to be in the mix. I mean, maybe this is the year that they're just kind of taking a reset. Well, then they're in the middle of the mix because it's a bad division. And Tampa Bay falls off. It almost feels like they haven't had their opportunity to to evaluate something else. Marcus Mariotta is not going to be the quarterback. So what do you do when you don't, when your upside is 500 if you're lucky, which you can't be 500 now unless you

games. But you know what I mean? For who, for what? 500 might get you in the playoffs, though, in that division. Yeah. And that's worth it to you to chase with Marcus Marrida because you don't, at what value is there to you to seeing six games of Ritter before next season? I would think just from afar, that seems like an important thing because you want to make your evaluation going in the next year and know if he's a part of it. I just wouldn't do it at the expense of making the playoffs this year.

I think that can change your demeanor of everybody in the building. I think you can gain from that. that more than just deciding on the quarterback. And, you know, maybe that the reason they're doing it is just what you said. It's almost, it's almost, and I hate the term and the tanking philosophy, but are we doing that by making a decision like this? Are we saying, okay, we're just going to take a step back? Or do we really think Desmond Ritter is better than Marcus Marriota right now?

Yeah, I would love to know how unified they are throughout the whole building. I would love to know what Marcus Marriota was told. Obviously, Arthur Smith has had that team playing hard, and they've been going after it every week. And he's had an edge to him, I thought, this year, Arthur Smith, and you watch their team. It's like, we know they're not overly talented, but they've gotten about as much out of that team more than I would have thought. So they obviously, at some level, have that mentality. And Marcus Mariotta has that mentality. And apparently, he's been playing with this knee the whole year.

And I'm sure if that's for part of the year. So if that's true, then he's got a lot of respect of the guys around him, right? And now so if you made the decision like, hey, we want to look at Ritter and now you're covering it by just he goes on IR because he's not going to play a ball with it. I'm not saying that happened, but there's just a lot of questions around what happened that make my mind go to places like that. And it just these things are hard. Well, and that might be the reason Marcus walked away from it. Maybe he's saying, I don't want the surgery to happen now. I'll do it after the season.

And they're kind of pushing him that way. And I could see how that would rub some. That would make a lot of sense. We'll have to hear from that. It's a little bit like the Vrabel situation where you're just sort of connecting dots, but a weird one for sure with Mariotta, giving his temperament, demeanor, history. He has not been a rash guy, you know. So we'll see there.

What else he got in the notebook? Another note that I had, and this came from last weekend, really when the Adam Schaefter stuff came out about Domechle Ryan's and the defense coordinator of the 49ers with the talk of him being a head coach, which Adams' note really is old news, right? he, D'Amico was interviewed last year for a job or two. Do I think he will be a coach this year? Probably. But it made me think, give me another name or two that's out there. And I keep coming back to the Eagles and what they've done with Jalen Hertz. And who should be credited for that? And I know Nick Siriani gets a lot of credit for where that team is and he should. But I think Shane Steik and the offensive coordinator there has done an outstanding job. And I've known Shane from my time in

San Diego and L.A. with the Chargers. I've known him as an assistant coach. I think he will be on everybody's hot list this year too. And how could you not with what he's done with Jalen Hertz? And I'm not crediting him for making Jailen Hurts. Jaylon Hertz has worked his tail off to get where he's at. But I just think the vibe is that Shane Steichen is also going to be on that Dimeico Ryan's train, probably going to get some interviews this year. And I think that's a name we'll probably start to hear more of over the next month or so. It led me to a funny discussion with you in text when I mentioned it. And you mentioned back to me the offensive coordinator for the lines.

And you said, Ben Johnson, I'm thinking, Ben Johnson, he's a track guy. I'm saying he's fast, but he's not going to get interviewed for him. I said, what the heck's he talking about? Canadian sprinter. Yeah, Canadian sprinter. And so I'll let you talk about Ben Johnson in the standpoint of, I don't know that, and from my opinion, he's got a full enough body of work. But he's probably a guy that is going to be credited with a lot of stuff the way their offense has come around in Detroit.

I know that I know if I had an opening, I would want to interview as many guys as I can. Oh, yeah. You should use the process to gather information for sure. Absolutely. He may be someone down the law. You get Intel then. Maybe your rival hires him, whatever. You just can't go wrong doing that.

And he just seems like somebody that I've heard good things about in Detroit. Their offense is coming around. He's probably someone to keep your eye on. I've heard good things about Stikin, too, you know. And I have had some interactions. with him, was impressed in those. It seems like he's got a lot of energy for sure. And you said you were with him enough. So you have a good feel. I just want to ask you, because the coordinators by default get talked about for head coaching jobs, but they're not all good head coaches.

What makes you, is there anything specifically about him that you think translates? I think the translation of he has kind of come up through the ranks. He's not one of those hot candidates. He was the coordinator in Chargerland. So he's had this role for. several years and built a little body of work. He comes from the Norv Turner tree, and that's really who got him into the league. And I love Norve's offense in his own version, not so much what's happening in Washington nowadays, but I love what Norve did with us and the Chargers. And I think Shane is more off of that tree than anything else. So I think his demeanor is good. He has that quarterback coolness to him, I think. He was our quarterback coach for a couple years. He's coached

receivers. He's just done a lot for such a young guy that I think it's not a rush and it's not a reach to see him as the leader of a franchise. Yeah, so he was with Norv, with the Chargers starting out, and then he was with Wisenhunt also with the Chargers, right? So he would have gone across a couple of those guys interesting. He's been around. He's learned from some good people and I think he hasn't forgotten where he's come from. And I think he's very sharp. Yep. All right. What else he got in there? Well, that leads us to the D. assistant and did you happen to see the Dan Campbell stuff on McAfee the other day? I laughed so hard. In fact, I forgot to show that to my wife. I was laughing so hard. I got to

get to the thing. I've watched it four or five times, Mike, and I laugh my guts out every time I see it. And it just made me think. And if you haven't, if our listeners haven't, they ought to look it up. Google it. Dan Campbell on McAfee yesterday. And I don't know how much of that story we can tell. But the point is, these things happen in the NFL. We're all people. These things come up. I remember one time in our coach's box in Seattle and our offensive coordinator, it was third and seven. And we called an off tackle running play. And I remember looking at him saying, what the hell? What are we doing?

He goes, hey, Randy, I forgot it was third down. So that kind of stuff happens. And Dan Campbell's story about he was distracted by the wave and he couldn't really hear the question that was being asked to him about what we should do. And the next thing he knows, he looks up and he said, we're throwing a pass to Penaiseul. He said, what the hell we do it? Yes. But the question had been muffled, and he said, I wasn't really paying attention. I was watching the wave and I was distracted.

And the next thing you know, they throw a pass to the tackle offensive lineman, and then they win the game because he stayed in bounds and ran the clock out. But the crazy things like that, this happens more than fans know. I'm telling you around. Absolutely. Because we're all human. That was so funny because they really teed up Dan Campbell. He could have said, oh, yeah, in that situation, we knew we could get him with the tackle pass, you know.

And instead he's like, shit, I didn't even know about it, you know. And when I looked up, I couldn't do anything about it. After the game, I was like, man, Dan Campbell, because they do a lot of fake ponds. They're doing this type of stuff. That was balsy. Yeah. And I do give them credit.

I do give, though, I think Campbell has created an atmosphere where that's what his coordinator is going to do. That's what they want to do. So I give him, I give Campbell some credit by extension that that would even be up for the game. He's, he's empowered him. Yeah. He's empowered him. He's pushing him.

But that was really, really funny. It reminds me, Kyle, there's so many good. I got another. have a story off of something like that about a coordinator who actually got so ticked off with the coach during the game that he went down and took a shower the second half of the fourth quarter. I don't have permission to tell it, but it's not any recurrent. It goes back a long ways. But hilarious where the coordinator had to, the coordinator, no, the quarterback coach had to act in front of the head coach as if he was talking to the coordinator. And the coordinator was so pissed.

He just left and went to the locker room. So screw you guys because he had overheard the coach questioning the play calling. You know, this is going way back. It's a great story. I hope I could tell it sometime. But that's the type of, these are the types of things that go on behind the scenes that are that are comical that. Best in the world.

We're supposed to be the best in the world at what we do. And sometimes it just, you shake your head and you say, what the hell are these Keystone cops doing? Yeah, it's very funny, very funny. All right, you had one more note in there? No, that's all I got. I think we talked a little bit about Arizona, but I think I'll save that for next week, the completion of that. Yeah, we'll keep them coming back.

All right, we'll get into our picks. Last week, Sando, two and one, one with San Francisco, given three and a half, barely one with the Jets, getting nine and a half. Lost with Kansas City giving eight, that's one I would have felt the strongest about. And all of a sudden, the Broncos had a good offense. Randy also won with San Francisco, but came out on the wrong side on a couple here with Seattle, Miami, Minnesota. It happens. It happens.

I'm telling you. I did not see Seattle laying an egg. I didn't see Miami laying an egg. I didn't see Minnesota laying an egg. So I got slapped upside the head. Yeah, it was a weird week that way. Seattle was one that I was a little concerned about for them because of they, they just suddenly can't stop the run again.

And that is a, they are, that is a helpless feeling. I think they're going to be playing the 49ers. I mean, yikes. Not only that. It's a, when you don't stop. the run, Mike, it's a gut punch. It's a, it takes your morale down a level or two. And this has happened to them or time or two. And I give Pete credit for bringing them back. But when you get 200 yards of running on you, it demoralizes you. It's just different than losing a game or a guy

hitting a big play on you. You kind of think, all right, that happens. Maybe it's the cumulative body blows that a running game gives. If you're the recipient of that, it is, it, it's, it's downtrodden the next week in your building. So I don't feel good about the Seahawks from that standpoint. They've got to fix that somehow. Absolutely. Yeah. But I think the course of a season tells the truth. And I think for them, it's been a great year regardless. They made the right Colin Russell Wilson. They've gotten way more than they thought from Gino Smith. They've got some young players. They can be excited about the corner. You know, it looks good. Running back looks like two tackles. Yeah. Two tackles. But they're not a content. You know, they're not.

not going to the Super Bowl. And so you just sort of get reminded in their excitement and, you know, I'm sure their fans' excitement, like, there's still a ways to go. And so you can see them, you know, shoot, they got the second pick in the draft next year from Denver right now. So, you know, we'll see what they do? This week's picks, what do you got? Well, this week for me, I had two games that I liked. I'm going with the Jets and I'm given the one point against the Lions. I think the Jets defense is going to be problematic for golf. I just see the Lions coming back to earth a little bit. I like the Jets desperation. Now, if, I guess, if Mike White doesn't play, he's questionable right now with the rib injury, maybe Zach Wilson comes back. I can't imagine

him rolling out Joe Flacco, but, you know, crazy. They did last week, and he showed his age there, too, but I think the Jets are better than the Lions. I think they'll prove that. This is a road game for the Lions. So I'm with the Jets. The other game for me is, and I've been part of this, people wonder why you pick in this game. I like the Saints, given the four points against Atlanta. I think the rookie quarterback, Desmond Ritter, is in for a long day. This is a kind of an under the radar rivalry, Mike. You may know about it because you've been around almost as long as I have. These two teams, these two fan bases, these two cities do not like each other. It is a knockdown, drag out no matter what, and we always say this about rivalries, but the Saints and the Falcons,

it's a big one. Before I got to New Orleans, I didn't know anything about it. So those of us out West here didn't really feel it. You're involved in a couple of those games. You understand the passion is deep. And so these two teams, for a pro rivalry in the NFL, it means a lot. It's a home game in New Orleans, so I'm going with New Orleans and giving the four points against Atlanta. Those are fascinating games.

The Jets Lions game is fascinating. I kind of like your pick on that. We'll see, I am not rolling with the Jets a second week in a row. But I like that as well. And if Mike White could come back in that game, maybe it was just adrenaline or they shot him up or something, but, uh, then I would think he plays after a week, you know, having a week to get ready, just looking at what he did. So, well, he can always, if it's ribs, like they say, I've been around a lot of quarterbacks

that have got a little medication and help them get through rib injuries. What, you're not going to get hurt any worse. They protect it. So just a matter of being able to play with the pain. And Justin Herbert has had those ribs and, you know, he, he's been able to throw the ball and function. Yeah. So, um, I am going to take the bangles and give the three and a half.

Maybe I'm overestimating what happened to the Bucks last week. But Cincinnati just seems like a team headed in the right direction. The Bucks just seem to be like, what do they have to play for? I know they've got a couple NFC South games late in the year, the last couple that could get them into the playoffs. But just not feeling a lot of juice. You know, when I looked at their team, Randy, there's a lot of people that played for them in the last couple years

that aren't playing for them right now. And it's a different team. They have names like Indomacan Su and Rob Grunkowski and Fork, of their offensive linemen, you know. Yeah. So that's why I'm going to go with Cincinnati. Tell me if I'm, this is probably a dangerous one, but Tennessee, you get three points going to the Chargers.

And I thought the Chargers did a real nice job on Miami, but I think some of that's Miami. They came back to Earth against the 49ers. I think they're going to stay on the Earth and maybe get pushed down under the Earth against Buffalo and the cold weather. I may just take Tennessee and just bet on Derek Henry and Mike Rable. and just maybe having a back against the wall, tougher team, getting those three points against the chargers. What do you think about that one?

I like the Tennessee logic. I just don't know where the chargers are going to come in at. They are so all over the place. It just, it's hard for me to. Now, they got after Miami pretty good. Miami's front. Miami's front couldn't handle them. They blitzed.

They got to the quarterback effectively. I mean, they took Tua really out of his game completely. Tua needs a clear pocket to be successful. I don't know that Tanny Hill needs that clear of a pocket, but I do know the running game will show up for Tennessee. I just don't know what you're going to get with the Chargers. That's my biggest what if. Every week in and week out, I have no clue. Yeah, so they may, that may be, that's why I picked the games.

I didn't say I'm betting on them, Randall. I love picking them. I'm great at picking them. I don't like to bet on them. So I'll take Tennessee. I'll get the three points. I'll take Cincinnati. I'll give three and a half.

And I think our time is up. That's good. Yeah, that's good. That's good week. Everybody, you can find Randy Mueller's work on mueller Football.com. You can find Randy on Twitter at Randy Mooder underscore. I'm Mike Sando at Sando NFL on Twitter and on the athletic app and theathletic.com. Thanks for coming along.

We'll do it again next week. This was the Athletic Football Show.