The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Football GM: NFL owners meetings, Lamar Jackson’s trade request & more

Episode Date: March 30, 2023

Mike Sando is in Phoenix for the NFL owners meetings and he joins former GM Randy Mueller to break down the big news of the week involving Lamar Jackson and the Ravens. They also talk about OBJ’s appearance, the lack of rule changes and the Aaron Rodgers’ waiting game. Finally, they discuss additional free agency moves, the GM notebook and much more. Follow Mike on Twitter: @SandoNFLFollow Randy on Twitter: @RandyMueller_Subscribe to The Athletic Football Show...AppleSpotifyYouTube3:08 Lamar Jackson trade request30:05 Aaron Rodgers waiting game33:04 OBJ shows up at owners meetings37:52 Cowboys trade for Brandin Cooks40:22 Austin Ekeler seeking new contract43:43 Bobby Wagner returns to Seattle49:13 NFL doesn’t make any big rule changes55:25 GM NotebookToday's show is brought to you by...Atlassian: For projects impossible alone, visit www.atlassian.comBetterHelp: This episode is brought to you by Betterhelp, Visit betterhelp.com/mays today to get 10% off your first month. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the Athletic Football Show. Welcome everybody to the Football GM podcast. Mike Sandow here from The Athletic along with the GM, Randy Mueller. This is backwards this week, Randy. I'm at the league meetings down in Arizona. How many of those did you go to? You should be here. I've been to a few.

And I've got some stories about each of those places that are frequent in, too. It's funny. And I know the meeting this year was at the beginning. Biltmore in Arizona. That was where we got the bomb dropped on us about moving the team to L.A. Mickey Looms and myself. Yes. When you were with the Seahawks.

Ken Bering called us up to his room the morning of at the Biltmore and said, hey, we're going to move the team to L.A. And I, whoa, whoa, whoa. So every time someone talks about the Biltmore, that's what I think about. Wow. Sorry to get a sidetracked right off the bat. No, I can tell you one thing that they changed about this place out in this, they have this beautiful courtyard.

Remember that courtyard up there? They built a giant kind of monstrosity of a bar. It's like an outdoor bar. And now that it's kind of louder and all of that. So these are very much first world problems, Randy. Nobody cares about it. You're right about that. Because I'll tell you, I mean, this place, I don't know what it costs tonight.

I'm not staying here, but I bet you it's four figures a night. Those NFL owners can afford that, you know, with their billion-dollar TV contracts. So anyway, we are what? through three, four weeks of free agency. We got the draft coming in another month or so. But we got news. We always have news. And here, Randy, at the league meetings on, well, first off, at the league meetings, they discuss very important things like whether to add the jersey number zero to the rotation. I read that and I laughed. Are you kidding? critically important. Yeah, I've got the brightest people in the game coming together for stuff like that, right?

But from a media standpoint, one of the really cool traditions that has endured over the years, I think anyway, is that on one day, they'll have every NFC head coach available in a ballroom sitting at a table that maybe seats 10 people and reporters can sit down there with him. And then the next day they'll do the other conference, the 16. And it used to be an hour-long session for each, which was amazing, I thought. But it's a half an hour now. And it's still good. You know, I like to go in there and just watch and observe some of the coaches, right? Remember, we talked a lot last year about Sean McVeigh and what he was going through. I just stood there and watched Sean McVe for 20 minutes, you know, just to kind of size him up, see.

Holding court. Yeah, holding court. Yeah, holding court. What's his vibe, you know, all of those things. And then I stood there and I was talking or watching Dan Campbell because I'm interested in him. And then for the AFC session, right as it gets started, John Harbaugh, Ravens coach sits down, he's going to talk. And we get a Twitter activity from Lamar Jackson. It was unbelievable.

It was like Lamar had someone in there who tipped him off or he had a camera in there. But they make available these coaches. And like I said, the AFC was going on Monday. He said, Harbaugh sits down. And all of the sudden, all heck breaks loose because Lamar Jackson reveals that on March 2nd, he had requested a trade from the Baltimore Raven. So usually ran in these things, you know how it works. You might have a conversation with your PR director, maybe your owner. Hey, let's be on the same page here.

Talking points. Have a little media. Talking points. You don't usually get just absolutely blindsided with cameras rolling and 10 media people around. So you've got to be ready for everything. in this world, huh? Yep. Watch it all.

So basically he requests the trade and then kind of goes on and it was a little bit odd. I mean, he was promoting his fan page and an upcoming portable gymnasium product that's the brainchild of a business partner who allegedly, disputedly, maybe was or wasn't trying to contact NFL teams on his behalf. Randy, as a GM, what do you think? How excited are you to pursue Lamar Jackson? after all of this. Yeah, I mean, it's a lot, right?

It's, it, it kind of sets you back a little bit. As, as another team or as a GM, it was complicated already. But I think this, the last couple episodes, first, the pseudo business partner that's contacting a few teams and the memo comes out from the league, reprimanding the teams, but it really wasn't their fault. And now you have the tweeting trail out there. It's convoluted to say the least. It's already been awkward because obviously nobody really knows where to go to try to make a deal.

Nobody knows can they make a deal. Nobody knows if somebody on the other end can be trusted to make a deal. So there's just a lot of dynamics around it, to be honest with you. And I think the fact that he lets out that he ask for a trade is really nothing new because the teams have known all along that you could make an offer to. of the Ravens for less than the two number ones for Lamar Jackson. I've made trades before for or traded a restricted free agent who had a tendered amount on him, which came with a compensative package. But yet, if the guy signs the tender, you can trade him for anything.

So that's always been known by the teams involved that, hey, maybe we can offer them a one and a three if we can get a deal done and they may take it. So the fact that he has asked for a trade is really puts him in no different status than where he is already. So I guess the message there is that he wants to leave. So I guess that is a story. But it's essentially the same thing. Nobody really is even attempted to make a deal like this and put it all together in general. But now the moving parts are even more because of the things that he said. Teams have a lot of things at this time that they're going through. They have free agency that you just mentioned. They can't drop, they have the draft that they're doing. They can't drop any

of these things to hold the Mars hand and go through a complicated negotiation like this. Couple that with the other things that have come out, and teams don't really want any part of it. And I think that's what you're seeing now. I don't know that anybody's going to venture into these waters, anybody as in another team, to try to make a deal because it is convoluted. It's hard to come up with an answer as how this makes sense for this team. It's easy to speculate on TV as analysts have done. it really is hard to put together, put together a deal of this magnitude.

So I don't know where this leaves us, Mike. I don't know what the vibe was at the meeting. And it would be my opinion that a deal is going to be hard to come by. That's for sure. Well, absolutely. I mean, here's what happens. So I mentioned these coaches around the breakfast, or around their table, and there is breakfast afterward.

Of course, I would be fixated on the free food that was there. But they weren't actually eating breakfast during the thing. But, you know, so Dan Campbell's talking about the lion secondary or something with beat reporters. And then some reporter from Baltimore comes over and says, hey, Dan, any interest in Lamar Jackson? You know, and that was happening over and over. And all these guys are given the same, you know, the same answer. Hey, we've got our guy or we're doing this, that are the thing. I think so much of what gets lost in this is the fact that there is the tag and there are all these mechanisms in place that make it not as simple as just paying Lamar Jackson.

That's not what it's about. No, of course there's teams that would sign Lamar Jackson. You've got to be able to go to Lamar Jackson and give them a deal the Ravens wouldn't do and give up multiple picks. That's a whole different deal. Totally way more complicated. The thing I do think, though, is that there's always in these things kind of a dance in the public of perception. And teams are, you know, these are how you're perceived in handling your franchise quarterback is a big deal. And I think for the Ravens, the fact that Lamar Jackson publicized the trade request, to me,

that's actually probably helpful to the Ravens because to me it expands the number of kind of palatable options they have. What I mean by that is, while I think that they have liked having Lamar Jackson as their quarterback and they've obviously made offers to try to keep him, I think in the back of their mind too, they're alarmed by some of this and don't want to do the type of deal he wants

and have some real questions about what they do want to do. And moving on to a different quarterback, I think is something in the back of their mind. But that's hard to do if everybody is taking Lamar's side publicly, and he's handling himself completely perfectly and cleanly. And all he's doing is saying, hey, I want to be compensated fairly. And he just keeps his mouth shut on everything else, and there's no gyms for sale, and there's none of this desperation stuff. I think this now makes it, this gives the Ravens an easier out.

Hey, he's asking for it. So now, if you unload Lamar Jackson, we're just doing what he wanted. He asked us to do that. So I think that's an interesting shift in this. And then, you know, beyond that, I think, you know, it helps the Ravens bridge the gap between what probably some of the public and some of the media think of Lamar Jackson is versus what the team and teams think Lamar Jackson is. I did my quarterback Tears thing last year talking to the 50 coaches in the league.

He was like the 10th quarterback in the league. He's not number one. He's not number three. And so there's real fears in investing the very top money in him because we all know if you run the ball a bunch, you're going to wear it down and you're not going to play as long. And he's already been missing some of these games. but I think with the fact of Jackson asking for the trade

and kind of appearing a little more erratic lately all over the place, almost a little desperate, I think it becomes much easier for the Ravens to move on without necessarily looking like the unreasonable party here. Yeah, I would tend to agree with that. In fact, I fully agree with it. I think what's been proven out is his value to other teams does not match what most NFL analysts,

and most of those are ex-players, so most of them think he is. I mean, he and most that make a case for him are hanging their hat on, you know, a former league MVP. That's not really a real strategy for being in negotiations of this level, to be honest with you. The Ravens will pay him what they have to pay him. They're not going to pay him for being an MVP three years ago. They're not going to pay him for what people think he is on the street. That's not going to determine his value.

And at the end of the day, I don't think they'll bow down to any public pressure at all. I just think at some point, Lamar is going to have to be welcome to the real world. The rest of the league has shown no willingness to give up two number one picks. They've shown no willingness to give them a fully guaranteed deal. And they've showed no willingness to change their offensive scheme to fit his skill set. Any one of those would be hard to get done as a franchise if you were acquiring a quarterback, much less all three of them. So that's three giant asks from any franchise that even ventures to go in this water.

And then you add the complicating factors of no agent and some of this other stuff. It's a pile. It's a pile of stuff that nobody really wants to go through. And it's really, he's done himself a disservice because I think he's a better player who is more respected than the way this thing is going to end up. I just, I don't seal a deal breaking at any time when all these boxes have to be checked. It's just way too big of a pill for anybody to swallow to date. But I think those boxes could be checked easier if we get to a point where he's definitely on the market and the way out. I think the biggest problem right now is, wait, you're going to offer a deal that's so big the Ravens don't match it and you're going to give up picks.

That's the really tough sell to me. I think once he's available, those hurdles that you talked about, and you know you don't have to make an offer that's just so off the charts and give up the picks, do you think it becomes easier to do? It would be easier for sure. I think there is some doubt with teams as to if they could even get him for starters. So they have doubt. There's no doubt in my mind. I think that the criticism and the heat that the Browns have taken forgiven to Sean Watson, the fully guaranteed deal is real.

And that comes from the other teams, not in a collusion way, but in a bad business way for the operation as it goes. Nobody's wanted to give those kind of deals ever before anyway. I know Kirk Cousins got one when he was a free agent. Different set of circumstances for most part. I think if Lamar, if that's what he wants, he has to play it out to the end. He's got to play under the tag. He's got to be totally free. And he might get something close to what he's looking for.

I just think he's doing himself a business disservice for standing on that hill and screaming out. I'm going to take a guaranteed deal. This is what I'm going to do. I just don't think anybody's going to give it to him. Because like you said, at the bottom, at the end of the day, if someone thought he was a top five quarterback, they might think about it. But in most cases, and I think your quarterback tier result, tell you, most don't think he's, you know, a top 10 quarterback at this point and want to change their offense to run what Lamar's skill set would really accentuate. So it's an uphill climb.

Think about that what you described as Sean Watson. I was just thinking of this earlier today. If we just kind of zoom out from Lamar Jackson and look at the broader quarterback landscape to kind of see how teams might be proceeding with a little more caution. We mentioned those impediments, you know, in the franchise tag. I think that kind of puts Lamar Jackson in a little bit of a different category. But Deshaun Watson leveraged just this maximum deal

from the Browns that really was almost instantly regrettable, panned across the league in media too. I mean, everybody was... Well, because of the background stuff. Yeah. Because of the background stuff.

Yeah. But also, yeah. And now I think, you know, we'll see. We'll see how it plays out. But I think that deal was always a cautionary tale until proven otherwise.

That was not a model way to act. I mean, it was kind of almost a joke of desperation to go to that level. And so we have a cautionary tale there. We have a cautionary tale maybe with Aaron Rogers too. Aaron Rogers had the Packers over a barrel, whatever, a year ago. They paid him a ton, and now they've lived to regret it. And that's Aaron Rogers. Now they're trying to get pennies on the dollar from the Jets to get out of a situation.

Right. And by the way, the Jets aren't exactly rushing to acquire Rogers. get him, but they're not, they're exercising some discretion and saying, look, we're not going to do a bad deal. We're not going to go leverage ourselves too far. Let's go to Russell Wilson. He had some leverage over the Broncos, got a big extension before he played a snap for the team. Now they're living in a world of regret. They're hoping Sean Peyton can salvage Russell Wilson or give him a lifetime of the future, lifeline of the future without Russell Wilson. Right. Need I even mention Kyler Murray. Rising Star, right? Let's take care of Kyler Murray. Why?

Yeah. Now that's a regrettable situation. So where's all these examples of great, and those were all players. I mean, Aaron Rogers is a Hall of Famer. Russell Wilson might have been on that track, you know. We'll see how it comes out. Kyler Murray was the number one pick in the draft within the last five years. So if you're the Ravens or another one of these teams, are you rushing into a market-sitting deal for Lamar Jackson when you have to go to such a high level? I wonder what you think about that context. Do you think that teams are looking around at some of these regrets at the quarterback? And is it maybe not just a reaction to the fully guaranteed deals? But, hey, wait a minute. These quarterbacks are getting a little out of hand here.

You know, these guys are pushing themselves around to a degree that we don't like. Do you think that's happening with a little backlash in light of Rogers, Wilson, Kyler, the bad experiences, Deshaun. Yeah. I think all of that enters into the equation for sure. I think what it tells me is, and we throw around franchise quarterbacks, just like we throw around shutdown corners and all these extreme examples of players that are off the charts, there's very few of those guys. You're going to see Pat Mahomes get his. going to see Josh Allen get his. You're going to see Herbert get his, Joe Burrow get his. Jalen Hertz is probably going to get his. I don't think the league as a whole would see those as regrettable deals.

I think those are pretty predictable that that's going to happen. But it definitely tells you that beyond that, down the food chain, a deal, even like a Dak Prescott, was that a good deal? Did that make sense? Because look, they're going to redo his deal again soon. Trust me. So that is going to have more guaranteed. heaped on it. That's why I think it's somewhat not doesn't make sense to me that Lamar is is living on this hill of a fully guaranteed deal. If he can get the most guarantees he wants, these deals end up getting redone every two or three years and it just banks more guarantees on top of it. So I think he's fighting a cause for the union, but he's not taking care of himself at all. And I hope he doesn't regret that part of it. But you're right. There's a lot of deals that have been paid and everybody's regretful of that now.

I just think teams want to build their teams in the way they see fashioned. A lot of people that think taking care of these quarterbacks and paying them what they're worth, they are, and we and I've had this discussion, they're more of a single evaluator type mindset. But a team builder doesn't see it that way. That person knows that he's got to have a bunch of pieces that go with this to make it good. We've got to have receivers. is we've got to have other parts of our team that we can build.

And it does make it hard when you have a quarterback that is not top tiered. And I think you'll see the top five or six guys always be paid. I just don't think it's ever going to filter down to 10 and 12 getting this kind of money, or 10, 12 or below, if that makes any sense. Yep, absolutely. Yet he is perceived because of that MVP season by some as being something that the league doesn't perceive him to be, especially with an uncertain future. I think. I think the trend and shoot, I was talking to someone from a front office here this week who was just like, hey, name the last great quarterback who missed two Decembers in a row, you know, that sort of thing. You hear those types of comments.

Well, yeah, I think that the fault is on both sides, though. I don't think you can fault Lamar with everything, and nor can you fault the Ravens. But if I was the Ravens, I would probably be looking for other options sooner than they have or might in the future. Because I don't think, for one, I don't think Lamar is going to get a deal. I don't think he'll report on time. I think this guy will be out longer than we think. So I'm not willing to mortgage our season based on when he shows up. So I would have better options. Now, maybe they feel good about Hunley, the quarterback.

Maybe they, as the who finished the season with them, maybe they're okay with that. Yeah. I would have a hard time sleeping and knowing that this is the best we can do. But they've already passed on a bunch of stuff. So I don't know where they're going to come up with a better. interruption at this point. Yeah, and you know, they have a new offensive coordinator, too, which is no small detail when if Lamar is going to miss most of the offseason and into training camp. And I was looking, Todd Monkin's the coordinator, it's not like he's been a hundred places and

has, I was looking at the guys he's been with. He was with James Winston, Ryan Fitzpatrick, you know, who's actually here at the league meetings with media. There's not just some ready to go guy that I could think of that from his past that could come in and get you through or be, you know, be able to have you compete and win. And in the meantime, we've seen Mike White go elsewhere, you know, some of these guys that you maybe could have been in on and weren't. I don't know if they were afraid of hurting, escalating it unnecessarily, you know. Maybe they felt like they had a chance, but this was tenuous.

And if we bring someone in, it could really wreck the Lamar negotiations. I think the fact that Lamar has come out and publicized asking for a trade and really pushing that, you've got no choice now, but to give yourself an honor. option, right? They've got to do something in this draft, probably. I would think so. I think they've got to look at all options. They've taken the high road. Obviously, they've backed Lamar to the end. They've said they want him to be their quarterback. I push back on the narrative that Lamar's been a victim, because I don't think that's the case at all. They've offered him a really big pile of money. He doesn't have to take it. I get it. If he doesn't want it, that's fine. But then they have to play out

their options as defined by the CBA. They can't just pay him a bag of money. like everybody says because of what he was in the past. So I think it's going to come to a head at some point. Unfortunately, it may not be until September before he even shows up if he shows up. But I know this. If he wants to play football and if he wants to get paid, the Ravens can make him play for them and for the number they put on them. This is not, it's not a victim type situation. It is the rules and the guidelines set up by the CBA collectively bargained for by the players in their union. They're just playing the cards that are dealt with them. So I don't, I mean, I don't, I don't look at Lamar as, yeah, you know, as being, you know, victimized by this. Yeah, some persecution against Lamar.

That's not it at all. There's been a lot of players in this league that haven't been paid what they think they're worth. There's a lot of employees in the world that never get paid what they think they're worth. That's just the way the world is. You never get paid what you think you're worth. You're worth what you can get. That's exactly right. You are worth what you can get and what the rules, if there is some collective bargaining agreement that bases these negotiations on that, it is. You can get what you can get. And I guess he needs two suitors to get what he wants. And I'm not sure he'd still get exactly what he wants.

But good luck. I just don't think that's coming. Yeah. You know, when Russell Wilson did his extension and didn't go for the fully guaranteed thing, I think it was Richard Sherman who said, God, is he afraid of, did he want to give his money while he can? Is he afraid what's going to happen the next couple of years? Is he going to have a fall off?

I wonder if Lamar Jackson, after tasting some of these injuries that have kept him off the field, figures he better get this thing as much as he can guaranteed now because you understand there aren't guarantees, right? And maybe the trajectory isn't going up. Maybe there's, you know, obviously you criticize the Ravens with the weaponry they've had around them or whatever. We've got a change of the offense now. But maybe he figures this is the best chance to get a deal that it's going to be his star maybe hasn't, continuing to rise, you know? Well, if that's the case, he needs to go back and start negotiating with the Ravens

because they're further down this road than anybody else. And I think they're going to be further down than anybody comes up with at the end. Yeah, absolutely. So we'll see how that one plays out. I mean, I guess the draft will be interesting because we'll know if they take a quarterback, right? I mean, that's kind of the next thing that could happen. I guess.

I don't know how they would view the quarterbacks, but they drafted Lamar, what, 32? So maybe they find something in there that they like. you know, in rounds two or three as well. We know just as many of those guys work out as the high first rounders. So evaluating matters, and we'll see what Eric DeCosta and his staff can come up with. Yeah, I would say for Lamar, in terms of leverage, and we're going to talk about this in a minute when we get into some quick hitters around the league, including the Rogers situation with the Packers and the Jets,

it would seem like if Lamar is going to have any sort of leverage, at least over the narrative this year, it's probably now, right, in the off season. Don't you think when they go to training camp, the train kind of leaves the station? then and what do you think? I do think that's part of it. I do think the misnomer that the narrative that the media jumps on is you just can't have this distraction. You can't have this distraction. I always chuckled at that because I got news for you. Inside, it's not a distraction. Nobody's distracted by this except people that, you know, listen to the media. It's not really, we had this in Miami a couple times with disgruntled players. And I remember the media beating

us up saying, well, you can't take this distraction to camp. it really didn't bother us at all. We're going to do business the way we want to do it. It's not going to depend. It's not going to hurt our chances because you guys are writing and talking about it and on TV about it every day. It really doesn't affect the teams as much as people would think. So what you're saying is in my rookie year on the beat when I was writing about Warren Moons Holdout, you weren't rattled by the stories I was doing when I was quoting Lee Steinberg.

I knew that your status and the words you were putting out there meant so much to Seattle people. I was no doubt that I was nervous. I was nervous about it, but I put on a good face, put on a solid face, and just charged on. You powered through it. Powered through it. And we ended up making a deal. So we didn't have any repercussions. He did.

I remember Warren jogging out to camp as the hero, you know, he got his deal done. But you know what? He ended up, you guys won. He ended up not getting any more than I think he'd been asking for. So we'll see what Lamar Jackson can do going in the season. Because once the season starts, you know, that franchise tag, once he signs that, the $32 million becomes fully guaranteed. That's hard to leave, you know, what's that roughly going to be almost $2 million a week, right? It's going to be close to $2 million a week on the table if you don't play.

That's a lot. You're going to leave $2 million out there every week? He's awful brave if he does that. And the Ravens know that. The Ravens know the end game. It's not their first negotiation. Yep. So keep saying nice things about them.

Yes. They're going to take the high road. That's right, as they should. Yeah. One of the strategies I actually thought about was, you know, if it were to get two sideways. And I'm trying to think if I was, when I was covering the Seahawks, if they did this, they might have done this when the Walter Jones thing turned into three years of franchise tags. But at a certain point, you know, a team can publicize their offer.

Just say, hey, we have the highest, I saw you shrug there, so you have to explain why. What do you think on that? But if you, but if you were to lay it out eventually, if you were to lay it out and to say, hey, with all due respect, you know, this is where we're at. We've had trouble communicating with Amar. Love him to death. But we want to, you know, this is what we offered. I think most people then would tend to say, wow, that's a lot of money.

That seems really reasonable. What do you think of that type of a strategy? What do you think of it for this type of situation? Would you rather just high road it the whole way and never do that? Yeah, I don't like it at all. I would never lay a player out like that or his agent. I think you're partners in this business. and who knows how that would affect you down the road in your locker room.

I think your other players are really the judge and they want to know publicly how you're handling this. I would definitely take the high road, always did in any negotiations, would still do it, wouldn't let it get public if the player wants. And you know how it is. Every deal that gets done gets announced through who? The agent to the media. So it's always spun totally different. It's not really the way the team would view that deal.

let them have their day. Let them have, let the agent have his day, let the player have his day, run with it. All you care about is the facts and how much it affects you in your building of your team. So I think you just got to grin and bear it as a front office. And if you're affected at all by public perception or the public pressure, you're probably in the wrong business and you're doing your team a disservice if it allows you to adjust what you're doing because of it. Interesting. So yeah, I guess when you zoom out on it, that's probably the best thing because If you're operating from a place of good faith, you don't have a whole lot to worry about, right? I mean, it just shows in what you're doing.

So that would be escalating it for sure and make it more personal from the team end. And maybe not the best way to go. So our quick hitters for the week here, we've got a bunch of them here. We'll get through some of them we were going to talk about last week. But Randy, we dedicated the whole show to the quarterback thing. Hope you enjoyed that. Randy, last week, you can check that out. Ranked the quarterbacks in the draft.

And your rankings haven't changed in a week. have they ready. Nobody's raised. No one's fast going up the pole. No one's sliding down. No one's flying up the board. Oh, no one's flying up the board. Yeah.

That's the board. You know, some late film came in. You got to love it. So. . . . . . . . . . . . . that's the funniest thing ever. And we laugh about it in draft rooms every year. There might be one card get tweaked or something in our draft board. And we come back the next morning and we as scouts and we'd say, oh, we had another all-star game last night in the middle of the night. that card got moved around just a little bit. When you know it's just somebody's opinion moving it a tad bit, but we always thought it would have to be backed up because no more football has been played, so we've looked at everything we have. Oh, yeah. I like it when they move a guy at the last minute

so they can say they took the highest guy in the floor. Yeah. So they are worried about public perception. No doubt about it. So our quick hitters here, let's start off with Randy, another week, another week in the Aaron Rogers waiting game. I'm not too alarmed. What do you think,

Packers. I mean, we got to the draft basically until we got to worry about it, right? I think we do. I think that's the next leverage point. Do I think something will happen before the draft? Yes, because I think there will be some pick exchange this year. But you said it off the top. I mean, who are the Jets bidding against? Really nobody. They're bidding to acquire the player that nobody else has made a deal to even get involved in. So at some point, they're going to have to come together. The Packers are going to get less if they want to give them up. The Jets are going to have to give a little more than maybe what they think. Isn't that what negotiations is all about? We're going to have to hire a mediator to sort it out, but it's not going to be rocket

science at the end of the deal. I think what we'll get is a solid pick this year and a pick that floats next year, some conditional pick that could even go all the way up to a first round pick. But it probably starts at a third and goes to a second and then a first and, you know, Maybe some of it's tied to a year three if he ever signs an extension, too. That's what I was wondering about. What do you think about? One of the ideas kicked around was that, hey, if he were to not play in 2024, right, could the Packers or could the Jets get back some kind of a 2025 pick?

Is that too complicated for you if you're in the middle of the thing? I know I'm from Idaho, but I'm not that stupid. Come on. I didn't mean, can you understand it. I can understand it. I get it. Wait a second. You're a reasoning.

intelligent guy, let me just run this by. I kind of wish I meant it that way. That was been a great slam. But I mean, no, I understand it. I don't remember that, I don't remember that type of a thing, that type of a mechanism where you're getting to be multiple years down the road. Is that too complicated? Not for you to understand, but just to have in a deal or no, is that a good idea?

The only reason I don't like it, and this is the case with any conditional pick. And I learned this early on in the front office business, Chuck Allen and Mike McCormer taught me this. They said, if it's a conditional pick, all your picks are tied up. So let's say it is a third, going to a second, going to a first. Guess what? You can't trade. The third, the second, or the first in any subsequent deals. So those deals are all tied up. So that's why I don't like really conditional picks because you can't trade any of those unless there's some stipulation that it goes to another pick in a later year or something. But those picks are, you're stuck with them. Let's say another player that you really want becomes available.

Well, we can't trade the second because that might go to the Packers, you know. So it's that kind of dilemma that makes me not want it. And that's the complexity of it that I think you just got to think through the end game and figure out if you're okay with tying up all those picks, you know, as an acquiring team, then maybe you do it. But I don't know if we'll get that far. It'll have to be somewhat conditional in this one because I think that's the only way to get to common ground.

Okay. Next item, Odell Beckham shows up at the. NFL owners meetings. Oh, there you go. It has some informal chats with teams, including the Jets, who say, hey, you know, they might have some interest. I would guess because Aaron Rogers might have some interest. I'm interested in what your thoughts are on O'Dell. We've talked about him before, but I really thought, wouldn't have been something if Lamar Jackson showed up? What if Lamar Jackson walked into the breakfast, the media session, or even showed up here? That would have really made some headlines, probably scared off teams more than anything. But O'Dell showed up instead. What do you

think. I think it's actually good on his part. I think he needs face-to-face meetings. He needs face-to-face contact. Teams need to know what they're getting. They need to make sure they're not getting Antonio Brown. They need to make sure they're getting a solid dude. And maybe they even take some time to meet and talk some football with him. I would. If he was there, why not let's gather some information. Obviously, there's no doctors or medical team there. That'll be a big, you know, box to check at some point. But I like it. It saved me having to go track him down. I know that. So as a GM, I'd probably set up a meeting with him and just visit with him if I had any interest at all. So I like that idea.

What would you do if Lamar came in? What if Lamar did show up if you were a team? If I was a team that was interested, I would sit down with him. What if I'm a team that... Say what? What if you were kind of curious, but you didn't want to show your hand, then you can't do it? I just don't think that there's enough trust that teams would say I can sit down with Lamar without the whole world knowing about it. So that would be the hardest thing, the hard.

hardest hurdle across if I were a team. Even if I had some interest, can I really trust that nobody's going to say anything about this? Because you don't want the circus that comes with that. And that's as much of a detriment to making this deal as anything is it comes with a circus price. And nobody wants a circus over their franchise. And that's my whole point about why the agent's important. It's not to get value on the deal. Of course, an agent might get you an extra here or there. It's to negotiate. It's to be in good faith. It's for it to be. name your agent, Tom Condon or whatever. You've done 100 deals with Tom Condon, maybe 500.

I could trust him like a brother. That's right. You could trust him in a negotiation like a brother. So you could go in a private room and know he's not going to tell anybody because he knows it's in his best interest and there's some integrity there. And lots of agents you could do that with. Yep, no doubt. You can't do that with the actual player himself who might tweet about it, you know,

while telling you to come to his fan page. It's a giant opportunity lost and another one in Lamar's case. it definitely would send up a red flag. And it's a great point. If he had a valued, trustable agent that had really been educated in the whole process, I would have no problem meeting with them. In fact, spent many nights at owners meetings doing that and talking about players. And guess what?

None of it ever got out. There was no pomp and circumstance. There was no tweeting. There was no nothing. I mean, Dave Dunn and I used to make deals on a napkin at the resort in Cordo Lane. You know, nobody knew about it. nobody, you know, talked about it. And I guess those days don't have to be done if you have that kind of trust. And it's hard with a player who doesn't have an agent who's never been through

this, definitely a detriment, another detriment to making a deal. Who's emotionally invested in the whole thing and all that? And it's funny. You know, yesterday I was sitting out in the courtyard area here at the hotel. And in one of those kind of, you know, the little lounge chair there at my laptop out was in some work. One chair over was a prominent agent and shoot I could hear him he's checking in with all his clients you know but he's there to talk to people from me he goes he's actually sitting there and he's like hey I spoke to so and so I'm not going to name the GM you know but he's spoke to so and so it sounded pretty good you know how you feel and how's the rehab going you know that type of stuff and he and he's doing business

there the whole day on behalf of his clients with all of these teams available to him and he's getting the intel and he's got the trust with with them you know great opportunity and great opportunity, just completely how it works. And there's no way to know how it works if you're, you know, a player who's been in the league five years. As you know, the pulse and the exchange of information at a place like that is crazy valuable, crazy valuable. And again, Lamar's sitting there wherever he is, doesn't have access to this information. I guarantee you you could learn many things by being there as an agent for Lamar, which could help you make a deal. You in the whole process. It may not be about the negotiation itself, but it's more of having a partner.

None of us are smarter than all of us, and having a team that can have your back at a place like this and gather the information so that we can talk about. All right. Third item, that was supposed to be Odell, but I steered it back to Lamar. But a little free flowing exchange here. The third one was one we had down last week, and then we ended up not getting to. But the Cowboys was getting Brandon Cooks from the Texans. Looks like a pretty nice move, Randy. What do you think? I like that for Dallas.

Yeah, I definitely like it. I like the concept by which they made a deal, too. Houston ate some money. Dallas got some cap relief. As soon as they got him, they redid his deal. So it took his cap number way down. So they were able to,

that's kind of a new age trade to me, one where a team will eat some money. You see this in other sports, but not a lot in football until recently last couple years. And then Dallas does even more than that. When they get him, they reduce his salary all the way down to the minimum or close to it and end up coming out smelling like a rose on cap charges for the next year or two.

So I like the deal. Plus, I think Brandon Cook gives him an element that they don't really have. He's a guy that can stretch the field. He's still a good player. I'm interested, and I don't know Brandon that well, but for a guy to be traded as many times as he has for the amount of value that he continues to get, that's an interesting dynamic that there's probably a 30 for 30 on that alone, you know? You know, without him really ever being seeming like a bad guy

and he's in trouble or he doesn't seem to be a, you know, no off-to-field baggage per se. No, he's just kind of had this vagabond career. Maybe it's just the types of teams he's gone to or the reasons he's been brought in, right? But he's clearly brought in for that speed element. He's also, though, he's a guy who's kind of been a number one receiver. I mean, that hasn't he, Randy? I mean, that's sort of a, they have C.D. Lambs.

but you're adding somebody who could be your number one or on a different team, right? Could be. I think he's best suited with others around him, and I think he'll have that in Dallas. I think Dallas probably still needs another receiver, but yes, he has come from where he is. He's been paid his money, and that to me is as important as anything because he's not coming there for the money. He's coming there to win. And I think the dialogue that the narrative that some of these guys carry that have already made their money, they either go two ways.

They kind of mail it in or they really want to win and that becomes the most important thing to them. I think in a guy like Brandon Cooks, you might be getting a guy that only wants to win. If I got my money, I don't need that. Let's do what we can to win. Different attitude than if I'm going somewhere to get paid. Yeah, and we certainly saw that, you know,

Dak Prescott looked better as a lot of quarterbacks would when they had Mari Cooper, right, along there with them. So this is at least a step back towards in that direction. Okay. On the West Coast, Austin Echler, all but begging for a new contract. He is the nearly 28-year-old running back for the Chargers entering the final year of a four-year, $24 million deal.

He's earned about $18 million of that so far. He's going to get another $6 million this season. Pretty darned good money, actually, for a running back, I think, in this day and age. But he has led the league in scrimmage touchdowns each the last two years. He's been a little more available than I realized. I guess I sort of have always thought him as an injury risk, but he hasn't missed a ton of games. the last couple of years, pretty consistent production over that time. But I think he sees that window closing to get any more money.

What do you think? I can't imagine the Chargers doing a new deal with him. Well, you say that, but yet he leads, like you said, his statistical categories are some of the tops in the league. You know, he's the fantasy wonder of the world, right? Every fantasy football guy wants Austin Eagle because he scores touchdowns. The Chargers have always tried to pair him with a back that they have yet to find. And I think they could pay him an extension type money, not a giant raise, but they need to find a back that they can pair with him.

That's the big thing with him. He's not the bell cow so that you could say, hey, this guy is worth, you know, 12 million a year. There's probably some middle ground there as to he needs to be paired for somebody. I probably listen to what anybody would want. I think given him permission to seek a deal was probably a good decision by the Chargers. they don't necessarily have to be the bad guys. They can let him go, if you find a deal you want, we'll work something out with that team. I don't know where the charges are cap-wise, but my guess is they hadn't planned to give

Echler a giant deal. So I see both sides of that, but again, I go back to this and you're probably sick of hearing it. I don't want to see good players walk out the door. I think this guy's a good player. He's a little bit of a victim of, you know, he was an undrafted free agent coming out of college. So he never, he played there for, what, three, four, five years. years before he got paid. He got paid a little money and now he's in the last year of his deal. And it's a natural evolution to want to get paid as a running back before that last year runs

out. And at 28, people start to ask questions. But I think he's still a very productive player. I'd love to have him on my team. I think he plays, like you said, more than people realize because he's a smaller guy. He has been available a lot. Again, I can't imagine the Chargers on offense without him. Who are they going to go to? Because they don't. don't have a back. He's been their money guy, is my opinion. So, yeah, maybe there is a way to do something. I guess what I was thinking was, I can't imagine them doing the deal that he wants, right?

Well. The big thing that really puts you in a situation. And they've got, you mentioned their cap, they've restructured the number of prominent players. Which they'd never have done in the past. So, yes, they've spent some cash for a change. Yeah. With some, you know, with some decisions that are going to be reckoning next year because of that.

So I don't think they want to do anything with that clear that's going to get with that. Maybe they're, you know, maybe they can find a way to, to bend it around all of that. But certainly giving him a chance to look at the market lets them also say, well, see. Yeah, we're not the bad guys here. We're not the bad guys. And we're just more the bearers of bad news. But that's where we're at. So another one that I maybe wouldn't have expected to happen at one point, but the Seahawks re-signed Bobby Wagner.

Pete Carroll always kind of takes pride in the fact that, you know, even when guys leave the organization, they're a little acrimoniously, they tend to come back. I don't know if I bet that's going to happen with Russell Wilson, but with a lot of these other guys, Richard Sherman, Michael Bennett, Bruce,ervant. Any number of these guys have come back into the fold, and here comes Bobby Wagner. On the surface, I just looked at their acute need at the position and thought, well, this is a reflection of really some failures,

that you would need to go back to Bobby Wagner. At the same time, as I thought about it more, I put on my Randy Mueller education. I got a certificate on the wall, Randy Miller Education. You do talk, though, sometimes about moves that send signals to your locker room. I don't think Bobby Wagner's a top end player anymore at this point. And they obviously didn't give them an amazing deal. But looking at the reaction of some of the players there,

Chondrey Diggs and these guys, is this a good move in the locker room? Is this a message to the locker room, even if it doesn't totally upgrade your team? does it give people a sense that might be needed? What do you think? I actually think, Mike, it's not a good move. It's a great move. I think it's outstanding. And I think we got a little inkling that this was going to happen at the combine when

John Snyder said, yeah, it'd be nice to, he kind of left or opened the door a little bit. So that told me they had already talked and it told me it was going to happen at some point. So it didn't come as a surprise to me. This is just my opinion. And it doesn't fall in the majority of most of the people out there. I thought his demise as a player was greatly exaggerated. I thought he was still a pretty good player. And I thought he played good with the Rams last year too.

So I think the money led them really to having to have some different options. I think he can still play. I think it is a great message for the locker room. But I think it's a good move on the football field as well. I think Bobby Wagner is, without a doubt, going to the Hall of Fame. So I think the fact that they welcome him back, that there was some, I wouldn't say an acrimonious departure, but there was some hard feelings, which you're going to get. Those obviously sent, having him back sends the right message to everybody, to the fans.

The fans love the guy. They're excited about him. The locker room, definitely, like you said, welcomes him. But I think he's going to be a good move on the football side as well. So all three places improve, in my opinion. So I think it is a great move and one that I think the Seahawks really needed. They've been disjointed to me, especially last year on defense, and we've talked about it.

They go through spurts where they were awful to start the season on defense. They couldn't stop anything for four or five weeks. I think Bobby Wagner helps kind of be the mediator there. He's the best communicator. He gets everybody on the same page. I think they missed that last year. They're bringing him back for all the right reasons, and I think it's a great move. It's interesting as they tweaked their scheme a little bit in Seattle.

Obviously, Pete Carroll is going to be the architect of any defense there, but in having Clint Hurt be the defensive coordinator, and they had Sean Desai in there, he since has left for Philadelphia, but those were a couple of Vic Fangio guys. The interesting thing is that Bobby Wagner went down to the Rams who were in that system, in that world, that Fangio world. So he actually comes back to Seattle,

having experience in the type of defense that Seattle maybe transitioned to a little bit. I didn't know that you, that was your eval on Wagner that he was, that you thought he was still playing well. What do you think he still does well? Because maybe we're, you know, sometimes with these guys, we measure him against what they were like when they were 25, you know. I just remember him as such a force. He was so fast.

And I just, what do you like? What do you think that he still brings? I think he brings, obviously, he brings the leadership and the communicative part. But I think he still brings instincts. He brings a nose for the ball. He brings a culture in how we're going to work every day. all these things. He's not as fast as he once was.

I'm not saying Bobby Wagner hasn't had a drop off slightly. But I saw a guy that's very productive. He finds the ball. He finds ways to get to the ball. He can help any young player on any kind, on either side of the ball, to be honest with you, on the professionalism of going to work. I just don't think you can have a team full of these guys,

but I sure would want one on either side of the ball to lean on. And I think all the stuff on the football field, nobody gave any particulars when they said, Oh, Bobby's not this, he's not that. I never heard any particulars. It was just in general his play has suffered a little bit. I sure didn't see all the drop off. I think he can run well enough.

I think his instincts make his first step quickness make up for not being as fast, long term as he used to be. So there's some things in there, almost like a safety when you evaluate him. I think of instincts, first step, quickness, anticipation, reading react, as the number one set of criteria as opposed to being able to run really fast. when you look at a middle linebacker. I think it'd be interesting to see if he's on the field every place still. Maybe he can be more effective if he's used first and second downs.

Not sparingly, but yeah, earlier downs and just kind of that. And then you get the full effect of the locker room and the team. But if there is anything that's dropped off, you know, maybe you're able to cover that. But we'll see. They don't have much of a linebacker right now. So he may be out there for all four down. Pretty good safety net. Dane good safety net.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, our last quick hitter before we dive into the GM notebook, The NFL did not make a bunch of huge changes here to their rules and league meetings. I had to laugh, Randy, the headliner was that they said players can wear the digit zero now. Does that solve a lot of the issues? Yeah, I'm glad you got that cleared up. I had lost sleep wondering if that was going to get through or not. Yeah, it's funny.

Did you ever run out of numbers at camp or anything like that? No, we're good. You could only, well, I took back in the day when we'd had 120, 130 guys we ran out, but we'd have one on each side of the ball. But they don't have that problem anymore. Yeah, yeah. So, okay, great. Zero is in there. But you flagged rules in general here because we can refresh everybody.

Randy is the general manager of the CLC Dragons of the XFL. So obviously some of those leagues actually do try good ideas and new things. And a lot of times those trickle up to the NFL. So what do you think? What do you see? of the league really didn't do too much to earth-shattering to its to its rules this year? Well, I think they're looking for a body of work from leagues like the XFL and a full body to look at in regards to especially player safety.

I think that's the big thing. And anybody that's watched the XFL knows that the special team's rules are a little different. There's some things that I think eventually will get adopted in the NFL. Our kickoffs have no run and collision. The kickoff team and the kickoff return team start five yards apart. So there's very little contact. They also have rules to ensure returns, which brings excitement to the game. I just think there are two or three rules that we use that I think will be taken to the next level.

Like you said, trickle up. Here's the other one that I think eventually might get there, Mike, and some of the old-time owners will probably roll over before they agree to this. But in the XFL, there is no extra points, kick extra points. It's you go for one from the two, you go for two from the five, or you go from three for the 10. Do you think gambling, the prominence that it is in our game now won't have a heyday with that eventually?

It makes games, everybody tunes in to every snap and at the end. And the presence that gambling has now in our league from a legal standpoint, I can't imagine that they won't go to those two and three extra points at some point. If you see this, the scores of XFL games, they're all over the place. right. You get 13s, you get 16s, you get 22s, numbers that you never see because the extra points are all different. You can go for one, you can go for two, or you can go for three. I think at some point that will be the norm, and I think the gamblers will be the impetus behind that. So there's a couple rules for player safety. There's a couple that I think would appease Vegas or the likes of.

I just think they need a body of work, and maybe it's a couple years, but if you have a full body of work where they can actually generate some statistics and come up with some things, I think the onside kick that is naturally an injury waiting to happen. In the XFL, it's a fourth and 15 from your own 25. And if you make it, you keep going. And so the odds on that having life after the XFL, I think are also good. It also makes no lead safe. So yes, these are major changes.

But I think excitement comes at the end of the XFL games that you never get at the end of an NFL game. based on the numbers and the amount of points you can score because there is a nine point play. It's a touchdown in three. So anything lower than 18, it's a two possession game. It's a different mindset. And like I say, old school traditionalists will struggle with it. But I think there'll be some discussion on it down the road. I love it.

You know, I think coaches sometimes resist this because they don't want to have more things they can be judged on. No doubt. They won't be a part of the vote. Trust me. That will be one that goes through without coaches involved. Yeah, so what you're saying is the Scott Van Pelt Show is not going to have to cancel the bad beats A segment that they have because there's going to be more ways gamblers can go, Oh, I can't believe it.

They went for three? The amount of money that's being dumped into these leagues now by gambling sites and gambling the legalization of it, I guarantee you these points are going to matter at some point. That was an exact conversation with my Uber driver yesterday. We were talking about the gambling of the league. Remember when it was like frowned on Paul Horning was suspended, a disgrace to, you know, humanity for having gambled and all of this. And now, you know, it's going to be just a bigger and bigger part of it.

You're right. That would be, I mean, think of the teams now more and more Randy. They have people that all they do is worry about the game management stuff and kind of look at the angles. Hey, when should we take the timeouts? Those guys are going to, those guys should be making about a million a year after this. I know. I'm going to sign up for one of those gigs. who was the coach in Denver that hired the time management guy,

they'd end up being the head coach. You'll have to hire three guys to manage all these different things. They're going to have to hire the MIT Blackjack team to come in there and be able to figure out what we're doing at the end of the game. I mean, shoot, yeah, rounders. I love rounders. Do you have movie rounders? Oh, yeah.

That was great. I loved it when they were around that table and then they sort of got found out and all of a sudden you were going to get the crap kicked out of you. That was great. maybe. Yeah. So I don't know if I could figure out. I mean, it's hard enough now to figure out what they should be doing half the time, you know.

Well, it will eliminate me because you have already told our listeners that things get complicated for me fairly quick and that we've got to go slow. And so we'll have to pump the brakes. That's right. I probably can't understand it. So I get it. No problem. No grudge help.

Randy, this is all part of Randy's ruse, by the way. This is what he does. This is Randy. I'm just some guy from my. And then he walks away with all of your money. I'm like, what the hell just happened? I thought this was some guy from Idaho. Yeah.

It's all part of the stick. Then he takes your money. I'm just smiling, just hanging out. Yeah, just smiling, just hanging out. What's in the GM notebook? Well, we had a few things, but I'm going to propose something on the fly here because there's one subject that I really want to get into, and I don't think we have time. Well, the evolution of the Chauncy Gardner-Johnson-

connections. In other words, I just think there's a lot for fans here. This guy was drafted by New Orleans, traded to Philly, and now signed a one-year deal with Detroit. But there's so many things that go into each of those teams' decisions along the way. I would love to break this down and do a full session in our next podcast because I think it'll still be relevant. Just because of, you know, he got traded for a couple picks. The Saints didn't have money, so there's reasoning. I'd like to give the listeners an inside view of how these teams make these decisions and why they do. And they probably already know this, but it's a convoluted way. And this will happen to one player who's on his third team in less than eight months.

Absolutely. That sounds like a great one. It kind of made me think of the Brandon Cooksling. He's been trading four times. Similar. You're like, what? I think they're worth a deep dive for sure. Yeah, that's good.

I like it. We'll put that in the GM notebook and we'll pencil it in for a broader examination next week. week. What else he got in there? Well, that was the only thing I had that we didn't talk about. We hit on the quick hitters. No, you got the Denver receivers in there, remember? Yeah, okay. That is a good one that made me red flag. We all know that they've kind of shopped Jerry Judy and Cortland Sutland when Sean Peyton took over. And the thing that came to my mind when I saw that was, I don't know if they're really going to trade those guys, but I do think we're sending a message. And the message is sometimes to the locker room that no matter how we are talked about

publicly or how the media talks about us, we're going to say that nobody is beyond reproach. So we're going to shop these receivers. Everybody thinks that Denver has great receivers. I don't happen to think that. I think on paper they might have a good group, but they've never really produced. And my guess is Sean probably said the same thing and said, wait a second, let's see what we can get for these guys. Let's send the message that there's no sacred cows here. I'm trying to change a whole culture and the guys who are talked about by the media and everybody else who they all think are good players, they haven't really produced. So I think Sean is on a different level intellectually and will do a lot of this stuff throughout his early tenure in trying to build a culture in

Denver that suits him. And I think these guys won't be traded. I think George Payton came out and said they weren't, but it's a fact they were shopped around. So there's messages with these leaks and sometimes it comes right from the people that are doing the trading or the exploring. Yeah, that's really interesting. Yep, he's coming in there and all these guys are on alert that, hey, whatever you think or in the past, whatever you were written about, don't care about it. Yeah, I'm not kissing anybody's butt. Here's the way it's going to be, and we'll trade anybody. So call us. Yeah. That's really what he was saying. Yeah, pretty interesting. So anyway. Good stuff, Randy. That's a couple in the GM notebook. I'm sure we'll have a bunch of new stuff because this is the NFL. I mean, who knows. I mean,

what's going to happen? Maybe we'll have a Rogers trade. maybe we'll have a little bit of movement or something. I'm sure, I think the odds are really good that Lamar Jackson will tweet before next week. Yeah, probably has since the show started. Probably has since the show started. Yep, absolutely. So anyway, folks, you can check out, as we wrap this edition of the GM, the football GM podcast, that you can check out Randy at meulerfootball.com and on Twitter at Randy Mueller underscore.

I'm Mike Sando from The Athletic. You can find me on Twitter at Sando NFL. Thanks everybody so much for. listening in. We love to have you. We love to go back and forth a little bit on Twitter with you too. So we will talk to you here next week. This was the Athletic Football Show.