The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Patriots, Jaguars and Raiders join the Bears, Jets and Saints on the head coaching search

Episode Date: January 8, 2025

The 2024-25 edition of Black Monday brought with it three coach firings—Jerod Mayo in New England, Doug Pederson in Jacksonville and Antonio Pierce in Las Vegas. Those three teams, along with the Bears, Jets and Saints will be spending the next few weeks finding their new head coaches. How do we expect those searches to unfold, and what does what we already know about them say about each of the teams? Mike Sando joins Robert Mays to break it all down on this episode of The Athletic Football Show.RundownPatriots fire Jerod MayoJaguars fire Doug Pederson...but keep Trent BaalkeBears coaching searchJets coaching searchSaints coaching searchColts retain Shane Steichen, Chris BallardDolphins retain Mike McDaniel, Chris GrierGiants retain Brian Daboll, Joe SchoenBREAKING NEWS: Raiders fire Antonio PierceTitans fire Ran CarthonLou Anarumo headlines coordinator firingsHost: Robert MaysWith: Mike SandoExecutive Producer: Michael BellerProducer: Michael BellerSubscribe to The Athletic Football Show...AppleSpotifyYouTubeFollow Robert on Bluesky: @robertmays.bsky.socialFollow Mike on Bluesky: @sandonfl.bsky.socialFollow Robert on X: @robertmaysFollow Mike on X: @SandoNFLTheme song: HauntedWritten by Dylan Slocum, Trevor Dietrich, Ruben Duarte, Kyle McAulay, and Meredith VanWoert / Performed by Spanish Love SongsCourtesy of Pure Noise / By arrangement with Bank Robber Music, LLC Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Black Monday is upon us. The set of firings in the NFL have happened. We have six head coaching openings in the league right now after Antonio Pierce was fired. We got to that news mid-show. Thankfully, we were not done recording before that happened. So I got to hit that and the rest of the current openings with the Athletics Zone, Mike Sando. We chatted about every open job, the candidates that are being interviewed for those jobs, what it says about the type of coach that these teams are seeking out.

We dug into the Rancarthon being fired in Tennessee news, some of the coordinator changes that have happened down the league, essentially tried to scoop up every bit of coaching and personnel related staffing news that we could from the last couple of days. So we're going to dig into all of that with Mike Sando right now. Welcome to the athletic football show. I'm Robert Mays. Joining me today is one of our senior writers here at the athletic. It's Mike Sando. Mike, how are you doing, man? I am doing great, Robert.

Really am. How was your season? It was great. It was great. I am excited for the playoffs. Very much looking forward to our monster wild card preview show, which we're actually planning to split into two shows. So that's a little bit of housekeeping as we kick things off here because I just knew it was going to be like a two-hour podcast and didn't want to do that to people. So we've got a monster one with me and Derek coming later this week. But we've got plenty to scoop up before we get there. Obviously, the last couple of pretty seismic NFL news for several different organizations. And, That's what we're here to do today. We are here to break down all of the firings, the potential hirings, and just the state of the coaching and GM carousel in the wake of Black Monday here. There's really no good way to organize this. Like, this is a fire hose of information that's happened over the last two days. So I'm going to go in like sort of chronological order and just, we're going to, we already know the jobs that have been open for weeks.

We'll talk about those in a second. But I'm going to start this with the post week 18 firings. at the head coaching spots that have rolled out over the last couple of days. Obviously, Rand Carth on fired in Tennessee today. We're going to get that a little bit later. There's no rhyme or reason to how this is laid out. But our goal by the end of this is to hit all of the relevant news and information that has happened in the last 48 hours. So let's start with the first bit of coaching news that came down after week 18.

That is Gerard Mayo out in New England. I got to chat about this with Derek on the Sunday night recap show just because it happens so quickly. but I would love to get your just initial thoughts on this. When you first saw that New England was moving on from Gerard Mayo after only one season, what was your initial reaction? My initial reaction was I kind of suspected this. This reminded me, they basically just wanted to get rid of Belichick before and get their franchise back in their eyes. Okay. And they had made a promise to Mayo.

That's really what it was. And so this reminded me, I was covering kind of had been covering the Seahawks when and they had Mike Holmgren all those years, power coach. They put it in Jim Morrow's contract that he'd be the next coach. And he did it for a year, and then the owner decided he wanted Pete Carroll. And so I think that this was all, this was potential. The parallels of that are insane. Yeah, I saw this as a potential placeholder job because their number one thing that they were trying to change was they wanted, they basically wanted to break down the walls that Bill Belichick put up in there.

They were tired of it. And they wanted to have a say in what was going on. and they liked Gerard Mayo and they hoped he would be a good coach. But I feel like they had kind of committed to him. It might have even been in writing his contract, but they had committed to him. And so they didn't do a full search, which is hard to do and takes a lot of work. They just did the comfortable thing. And to me, that was only going to last if Mayo proved right away that, wow, we got it right.

otherwise I thought it was going to be reassessed because he wasn't going to get an interview with, he might have got an interview with somebody, but he wasn't like an obvious candidate to be the head coach, right? You'd be taking a big risk in naming him as your head coach. So it's not good. He'd been a coach for like five years and he had only been a position coach. I mean, I can't remember something like this happening on. Antonio Pierce. Yeah.

Antonio Pierce would have been the other one. And listen, I'm not sure that's been a raging success out there either. Yeah. So it does not reflect well on Robert Kraft or the Patriots that this is their process, but it's also not surprising to me. I think a lot of people, and Chad Grafford does a very good job covering the Patriots for us laid out a reasonable argument for why this is an attractive job because you have Drake May who performs pretty darn well given the circumstances. And you can talk yourself into Drake May's upside after this season. They have an ocean of cap space. They have a top five pick.

They have an extra third round pick because of the Mad Judon trade. there are elements of this job that are attractive. What do you think the entire handling of this by the Kraft family, though, and what the last couple years of the Belichick regime and what this year says about the current state of the Patriots and how comfortable a landing space this would be for the person who gets this job? Well, Tom Brady makes a lot of things work there for a long time. And, you know, you don't have that. So not only are we seeing maybe the lesser side of Robert Kraft, but remember Jonathan Craft. is going to be the owner of the team and is a Robert's 84 and Jonathan Kraft's going to have a bigger role and we don't know what that's going to look like.

So, and there's expectations. That's why I think they're definitely going to go the experienced route. And if it's not Mike Rable, it's going to be somebody else who's probably been a head coach before. It would be a sure bet type thing. I think it can be a good job for that person. I don't think that the crafts are actively bad owners who, if you're and screwed up. That's like a Woody Johnson, right? He's impulsive. He's going to do

dumb stuff tomorrow and the next day and you don't really know what's coming. I don't feel like the crafts are that. They've shown some, you know, they've shown some things that are less than ideal, but I think you could win there. You know, I think you could go there and win there and probably do well. I don't see like any huge pause, something that would give me huge pause to go there. All of these places have things that make it challenging. I don't think there are insurmountable hurdles in New England just because the crafts have been, you know, a little off here in the last couple of years. What's interesting to me is, like you said, I think they really just wanted to get away from

the Belichick structure of things. But when you remove Belichick because of how central he was to everything, you no longer have any structure. And so I think that's kind of what they were left with is that they have Elliott Wolf, who's now a de facto GM. Alonzo Highsmith's also in their personnel department. They hire Drodmeo from within. And I think you realized how central.

Bill Belichick was to the entire operation in ways both good and bad, right? Like we've acknowledged that over the last couple years. But what that leaves to me, in my opinion, is I'm thinking about this job as a head coach. There is a power void in New England in a way that there really isn't anywhere else across the NFL. The Jets obviously don't have a GM. There's a lot of space to be filled in that building. But we've seen how Woody Johnson has operated over the last 10 years. If you want to go there, you're kind of welcoming impatience and dysfunction.

in a way that you might not be in New England. And all of these other gigs will talk about them. Trent Balky's still in Jacksonville. Mickey Loomis, New Orleans operates to the beat of its own drum, in ways both good and bad. There's a lot of entrenched infrastructure there, and the Bears have a general manager who is in place. So if you take this New England job, if you're Mike Vrable,

you have a pathway pretty quickly to, if not unchecked, then pretty solid levels of power within that entire building. Yep. And I would want to have that conversation if I were him, too. Now, maybe you think they've done a great job. But their roster's bad. Yeah, they have no players. It's not like someone's going to go in there and they're going to be like, hey,

I think Wolf's really got this thing humming. I mean, in that one year, they really, you can see the foundations. You know, I think somebody who has skins on the wall as a head coach is probably going to go in there. And then they're going to have a lot of, they should have a lot of say on what's going to happen with the roster. So if you like Drake May, you know, why would this be a, a bad job. Do you think that the Mike Frable thing, obviously everyone has connected to the dots? Do you feel like that's probably the direction this is headed if you're trying to read the

tea leaves a little bit? Yes, probably now, I would say this, though. Vrable has options. So he, and Vrable's also going to know the inner workings of that organization for good and bad. He's going to go the warts too. So don't just assume because he had a nice visit back there for the Ring of Honor ceremony a couple years ago, that he just loves everything.

about it. He may, but he may not. And I think he's in position to take his time. The other thing is, the last two, three years, Robert, the processes have all slowed down. These hires are being made in the January 20s, right? They're not, so Mike Rabel doesn't have to hurry and do the job, right? Take the job. He can look around, see what's out there, play them off each other, because I think he is going to be super attractive to some of these teams, including New England. And there's pressure on New England now to get that type of a candidate, right, to really, they've got to get somebody good. I think obviously New England's background with having a coach-centric organization is potentially attractive to somebody like Mike Grable.

Here are the set of questions I have about Vrable. And we touched on this a little bit on Sunday night and just talking about his candidacy. If you look at Mike Brable's time in Tennessee, he did a very good job early on at identifying offensive coordinator and offensive staff candidates. Matt LaFleur was his first coordinator in Tennessee, which I think people probably forget because it lasted one year before he went to Greenback. He was replaced by Arthur Smith, who had been the tight ends coach. This was one of the most efficient offenses in football for two years under Arthur Smith.

Smith gets hired, and now the well starts to get a little bit dry. And they really struggled offensively after they lost both of those guys. So I would want to know if I were the crafts, if I were anybody looking at Mike Frable, what does your offensive staff look like? What is your plan for how to develop Drake May, Caleb Williams, whatever young quarterback we're going to be bringing into the building? On a bigger picture level, and we might as well have this conversation now, I think a lot of the drumbeat, based on how the 2024 season has unfolded,

is that there are going to be a lot of people lobbying for the CEO-type culture setter coaches, what Mike Tomlin did in Pittsburgh, what Jim Harbaugh did with the Chargers, what Dan Campbell has done in Detroit. I want to caution, even arguably what Mike Vrable was in Tennessee and how he's going to be painted. I want to caution people on how we talk about this sort of stuff, because as I think about this, while I root for a team that is in the market for a new head coach, I think that there are benefits and downsides to the offensive architect path and the CEO culture type path.

What we've seen this year from the Chargers, from the Steelers, I think those guys are floor raisers. That is, I think, the number one benefit of coaches like that. And you could say that's exactly what Mike Vrable did in Tennessee. But I also think we have plenty of evidence that you limit your ceiling at times with coaches like that if you do not get the offensive side of the ball right. in a screaming way in the way that the lions have. We do not know what the lions are going to look like without Ben Johnson,

but we do have, and we don't know what the Chargers offense is going to look like two years from now. When Greg Roman is the offensive coordinator, we have a team in Baltimore that had to move on to somebody else to lift their ceiling to the place that they wanted it to be. So as we think about these guys, I just think that's an important set of considerations to take into account when we're considering the upsides and the downsides of these archetypes of coaches.

Well, yes, but don't assume that raising your floor limits your ceiling because you can look at Zach Taylor in Cincinnati, right? I mean, he's got this great offense and they're not really making the deep pushes anymore, right? So there's no reason why you can't have the higher floor and then go for the ceiling. I think our criticism of Mike Tomlin have been what he tolerated on the office. the side of the ball for so long. Yes. That's the criticism. But Dan Campbell didn't do that.

Dan Campbell had the exact same thing when he had Anthony Lynn. It was just like having Matt Canada or something, right, where it just wasn't working. And he said, we're not doing this. And he had a guy he really liked and he hit on him. That's the job of the coach. So if you can get the vision, if you solve so much by getting that vision of your team and how you want to play. So much. and then you just have to make sure that person can, like you said, identify the right people to go with that.

And I think a lot of these culture-setting coaches have done that. Not all of them do it all the time, but, you know, if you look over the years that we meant, you know, Pete Carroll had three different coordinators or whatever, they all had top ten offenses. Sometimes you wanted more or you wanted them to do different things or thought maybe he ran the ball too much. but so many of these guys where it's John Harbaugh you mentioned Mike Tomlin I think Battlesech certainly for years

you know have been able to do this and still have some really good offenses or still be able to play a certain way now we'll see what happened with Jim Harbaugh because he's so you know he's so extreme in what he wants

but and shoot Greg Roman's offenses were top five in Baltimore too. You know, so I think if you, I'm for the culture person. I think without that, I think you really don't have much. I think that's a really good point that you bring up. I think if you're going to be that type and you don't get it right on the offensive

side of the ball, you need to be somebody who is constantly searching for the answers and being proactive on that side. Another good example to that is Sean McDermott, year one. Rick Denison is the offensive coordinator there. After one year, they move on. they go to Brian Dable and things change in a big way for the bills. So if you're going to be that and you don't get the offense right, at least initially, I think making sure, all right, we're going to move on and try something else.

We're going to try to seek out answers and not just sit with mediocrity on that side. That feels like a necessary component with that type of build. I'm much more nervous about betting on the hot coordinator to be able to be the good head coach versus betting on the good head coach and whether he can find a coordinator. Does that make sense? I don't know if I necessarily agree with that. I think that you can get a solid answer and you can get an acceptable choice if you go that route. If a team hired Mike McCarthy, I don't think Mike McCarthy is an incompetent buffoon in the way that he's made out to be.

Mike McCarthy's career winning percentage is lodged between Bill Walsh and Tom Landry. Multiple places, too. Yes. And I think those guys, the floor can be raised. You can have competency on that side. But you're having to compete with like what Shanahan has done, what Sean McVeigh has done, what Kevin O'Connell is doing right now. I think that guy who can be both a culture setter and that offensive coach for you, that to

me still feels like the quickest route to this thing. I think sometimes we get overshadowed by the how many, which teams have won Super Bowls, which builds have won Super Bowls. If you look at it like that, the Belichick part of this overshadows so much of it that I feel like it kind of muddies the waters in terms of what set of bets is probably the best set of bets to make when you're trying to figure out the archetype for what you should be chasing. Yes. So we agree that you should try to get somebody who can move the needle on game day with his scheme

and be the great coach of the whole thing. Now, we'll see. I mean, Kyle Shannon has done that, but he's had a losing records half the time and fires his defensive coordinators all the time. and has gotten to the championship, gotten to the Super Bowl, so you could aspire to that, but I think we agree.

You want both. You want both. What's the best way to get both? To me, there's not magic schemes, put it that way, right? A year ago, everyone's, oh my gosh, Bobby Sloick. Wow, what he can do? Right. Or even Mike McDaniel.

Oh, wow. And this is what we want. Okay. When his players weren't available to him, they didn't move the ball at all, right? There are upsides and downsides to all of it. There's upsides or downside. I think you, but if you got to, you have to be a great leader of the team.

Yeah, that to me is not negotiable. And I think that that's, as we talk about Ben Johnson with these jobs, it's going to be a real conversation. I think that as you're acknowledging the ceiling that can come with an offensive coach like that, because I think the highest ceiling for NFL teams is having one of the best five offenses in the league. I think that we have a lot of evidence of that. But I think the floor of somebody like Ben Johnson is going to be significantly

lower than the floor of somebody like Mike Frable or some of these other guys who have shown an ability to just have a steady hand on the wheel. Speaking of that, retread head coaches, Doug Peterson is out in Jacksonville, which I don't think should be surprising to anybody based on the way that this jag season went. I think what should be surprising is that along with firing Doug Peterson, the Jags have elected to keep Trent Balke again. It's not like this is the first time this has happened. This is like the third time that this has happened. And the comments coming out afterward to me from Shot Khan about why they did this were fascinating. He said, I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We have a lot of things that are working that

can always be improved and will improve. There are other things that are not working need to be fixed. The coaching, this is an area that we need to fix now. And he said something else about, well, there are 85 people on the personnel side. Why would we cut bait with those people as we enter the off season. I guess I sort of understand that. 85? Probably too many, right? There's 85. They get 85 people. That's fine. If you want to rationalize it that way, which I'm sure Trent Balky said

none of those things to him about why it would be worth sticking on that path. But how many examples do we have of teams just using this as a chance to reset and reaping the benefits of it? Like what the Lions have done, what Washington has done, you have a free pass to just start over with your franchise if you want to. And I just don't really understand talking yourself into why any aspect of this is worth keeping around. Well, think of it this way. So you and I, when we evaluate these teams, we're thinking at all times, how do we just get 5% better or 20% better? It's all about getting better, right? That's how we look at it. These owners sometimes want the easier path. So think of this,

And this could be with the Giants staying the course at GM as well. If you fire the coach, you create work for the GM. If you fire the GM, you create work for the owner. So those 85 people, the owner suddenly got to do a lot of work when you've got to replace the GM. I think that's one of the reasons sometimes the GMs get extra. Sometimes they get extra. Now, some of them don't. That's right.

That's right. And I honestly think it's okay to do that every once in a while. But this to me is like three steps over the line. But think of where, think where Shod Khan's been. Before last season, he said this is the, they did two things. They paid Trevor Lawrence like he's Patrick Mahomes. And then they declared that they have the best roster in the history of the franchise, right? So for Bulkke, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, right, for con to fire bulky,

con has to unbelieve that he has to, he has to now admit that basically Trevor Lawrence is really a tier two and a half quarterback that, They're paying like a Hall of Famer. And he has to admit that what he said about the roster is wrong. And so he's not willing to come off of those two things. He's not willing to change his religion, basically, on those two things. Those are two major beliefs he's made, two big bets he's made publicly, right? He has to admit he's wrong, basically, to do that, and he's not doing that. I do see it that way.

I think that what Trent Balke has probably told Shot Khan is that. that we have picked the right players and the coaching staff is unable to maximize them. Even if you think that's true, which I don't, I'm sure that that is the dialogue that's happening between those two. Here's my issue with this. What I don't understand was last year, why did they fire the defensive staff? Because somebody needed to go. Somebody needed to fall on the sword.

They went from a top 10 or 12 defense to the bottom 10. That made no sense. Like everyone who was reading the tea leaves there felt like it was a member of a big mystery. Is Doug Peterson going to call the plays? Is he going to, what are they doing with Press Taylor? It just felt this whole weird drama of not being squared away on offense when you get an offensive head coach. So I get the coaching part of the, the coaching part of this hasn't made sense at all either. Now, I would have thought that they would reset everything.

I would think they would, but I think you can see the owner saying that, he doesn't want to do it. The owner doesn't want to hit the whole reset. So you can do a partial, and we all know how that goes. Now you get everybody off schedule and different things and that gets to be hard too. What happened in Jacksonville, what is currently happening and what is bound to happen again because they've already said that the head coach is going to report directly to the owner. You have power struggles immediately because now you have complete disconnect between the personnel staff and the coaching staff. So you're going to be looking at this where Trent Bralky once again is going to be the guy picking the players. And there's going to be, I assume again, no dialogue with the coaching staff the same way there wasn't the first.

first time around. And so if there's a disconnect between the players you're picking and why you're picking those players based on the coaching staff that you have, I don't understand why any of this gets better. And I don't understand that if you're an in-demand coach, why you would want to step into a situation like this. This team has resources and it has at least competency at quarterback. That is much, much better than a lot of jobs that typically come open.

But the entire organizational structure, the incentives for the two sides, cursing and personnel and the competing incentives at times, this to me very much diminishes how attractive this job would be to the best candidates. And does it look like a half measure by Shad Khan to say, hey, you get to report to me. You get to report to me. It's kind of like, does he think that's enough now to get Ben Johnson to go there? You know, is that what he thinks? If you have to say that the first day you're looking for a head coaching candidate,

it's probably an indication that you should have fired the general manager. We'll see how long that goes on. The interview list they currently have in Jacksonville right now based on reports. Aaron Glenn, which shouldn't surprise anybody. He should be on every single list based on what that defense has played like this year and based on the success that the Lions have had. Ben Johnson. Liam Cohen, I believe that it might be the first interview request for Liam Cohen. And that's a little bit surprising just based on what he has done with that Bucks offense this year.

I figured even if you have reservations about him only being a first year play call or etc., which I could get, I am still a little bit surprised that he hasn't been a little bit more in demand on these early lists. Kellen Moore, who is the Eagles offensive coordinator, Todd Monkin, the Ravens Offense Coordinator, Joe Brady, Patrick Graham, whose contract has expired in Las Vegas and is actually also being interviewed for the Bengals defensive coordinator job. And the last name on this list so far is Robert Sala, who was an assistant in Jacksonville under Gus Bradley before he became the 49ers defensive coordinator.

So that is the list as it currently exists. What do you make of this list and what do you think it says? It looks like a lot of offensive guys that they want to pair with their quarterback to me. That's what it looks like to me. And then, you know, Glenn certainly for, I think Glenn is interesting. Glenn is interesting. You know, but I bet you they want to go offense with that quarterback. Would you do that?

Or do you think that that leaves you open to the same pitfalls we were kind of talking about before? Oh, I wouldn't just, I would never just say I wanted an offensive guy. I think that's going the wrong way. I did a study a couple of years ago, Robert, looking at all of the 10-year relationships between quarterbacks and organizations. And it really got at the point of, you know, there's a lot of great quarterbacks, you know, from Hall of Fame quarterbacks who didn't win a lot of Super Bowls, weren't in the mix. lot because they never could get the defense squared away the whole time they were there. And when you looked at the ones that had really worked, it was, you know, Haribaw with Flacco,

and they were always good on defense. Obviously, Flacco. Flacco could be comparable to Trevor Lawrence, for all we know. They were all, they won a Super Bowl. They were in the mix every year. You know, it was, it was Andy Reed with McNabb when they had Jim Johnson, you know. It was Pete Carroll with Russell Wilson. they had the good defense, knew how to play a certain way.

So I think they could really fall into a bad trap saying, you know what, this quarterback's so amazing, we just need a good play color for them. They kind of had that with Doug Peterson, was a version of that. And it didn't work. So I would never close that door. I think that's a place where somebody like a Vrabel could go and do well. I think they've needed a kind of a toughness to them. And you could see when bulky was trying, when bulky a couple years ago, I thought a couple of years ago, they had some pieces on defense.

They looked like they were tough, like a tough type of a team. They certainly haven't played that way lately. So I think they could use a toughness component, a leadership component in that organization as much or more than they need the next great play caller. Yeah, there's nothing really surprising about the list to me. But you're right. I mean, they tried to go that route a little bit, I think, when they brought in Urban Meyer as kind of the program builder. And I think we all know how that went. And for the most part, they have gone offense, even though Doug Marone was,

Doug Maron was an offensive line. Coach was that an offensive coordinator. Like a lot of the things about this organization period over the last 15 to 20 years have been curious to say the least. So which direction they end up going and how it kind of carves out their future here, I'll be very curious how it takes them into the next era of what the Jags are trying to be. Yep. The other thing about the GM side and the football side is the owner's son is they're

there too, Tony Con. Yes. In some sort of capacity. So always think of that when, hey, why are they not doing this or why are they doing that? Like, there's people that are there that have turf in any organization who are affected by different hires. And so that can sometimes, you know, maybe the owner would love to have his son be the

jam, but he knows he can't really do that. And the son sort of has a seat at the table. And it's working right now from that. You know, they get along well enough. And so they're not going to upset that. those types of things can happen. It doesn't make any sense from our side, but that's stuff going on behind the scenes in all of these organizations. You talk about the Jets with Brick Johnson, you know, and that's that great quote in the Diana Rusini, Zach Rosenblatt story, I think,

where it was like, I report to a 17-year-old was what Joe Douglas was telling people. These are the dynamics. These are the things in there that are going on that, you know, we don't get to see, we don't always know, but they're factors. It's really a factor in what kind changes happen. All right. Those are the jobs that just came open. Let's talk about the jobs that have already been open. Before we do that, we're going to take a quick break. Let's talk about these three jobs. There's only five now. We'll talk about kind of the other shoes that are left to drop here in a bit, but there are only five open jobs, and three of them have been open for a little while here. One is the Chicago Bears head coaching opportunity. The interview list for the Bears is long.

And as Ryan Poles told the media today, there might be some names on here that surprise you. I think that some people are like laughing at this. Like why do you have this long of a list? I don't. I've always been somebody that thinks I would want to talk to any single person I could when it comes to a job interview. Not only because I would want to figure out who's the best candidate, but I also think that you get insight on who you are and how your organization operates and how other people think. I don't, I mean, Beller, we hired 30. I interviewed 35 people before I hired an executive producer for this show.

Like, it's just how I've typically seen this. So I have no issue with the way that the bears have gone about this, but the list is long. I'll read the names off to you. Several of the ones we already have on the Jags list. Brian Flores, Aaron Glenn, Ben Johnson, Mike Kafka, who, you know, is some experience in the Chicago area as a Chicago guy and a former Northwestern quarterback. I believe he went to St. Rita high school. Mike McCarthy, which we can talk about again. Todd Munkin, Drew Petzing, the Cardinals offensive coordinator.

David Shaw, the former Stanford head coach, who is currently a personnel executive with the Broncos, Arthur Smith, Anthony Weaver, who I think we will see on some of these lists, who is the defensive coordinator for the Dolphins, Mike Frable, and Bill's offensive coordinator, Joe Brady. As you look at this list, what is this telling you about the Chicago Bears head coaching search? They've got a lot of people probably with opinions who they want to talk to. And, you know, they're in another place. where if we look at this list, there's not a lot of like huge heavy hitters

who are going to demand a lot, right? There's not a lot of guys that are going to come in and remake, have a big role in personnel, right? There's not a lot of guys that are going to come in and affect Kevin Warren in any way, right? No, I don't think. I think Vrable is probably the only one that you could say that about. Vrabel's on that list, I guess,

as somebody who could be like that. So is that a great job? I truly don't know the answer to that. I think that part of me says no, because again, there's established infrastructure and we've seen just a certain level of incompetence with the layers of leadership that exist in that building. I don't have a ton of innate confidence in what Kevin Warren has done since he arrived in Chicago. And I don't think this organization over the last, I don't know, my lifetime, 37 years, has given you a lot of reason to think that they deserve the benefit of the doubt. I also think there is some talent here. I think that there are holes on the roster, undeniably, but there is some talent here.

There are still resources here in terms of financial wiggler in this off season. And there is talent at quarterback. There is potential at quarterback. I've said this a million times. If you are not at least a little bit worried about how this season went, then I think you're probably lying to yourself. That's kind of where I land about what the Caleb Williams experience has been. But there are undeniable flashes that I think some offensive coach could talk

yourself into, and at least there is like a short-term answer at quarterback. The concern might be that if you don't fix the quarterback and you don't fix the quarterback quickly, that you might not be long for this job. So like any of these jobs that come open, I think there are negatives, but I also think there are arguably some more positives here than there are when it's an absolute dumpster fire of an organization that you're taking over, roster-wise. Yeah. When you have a really long list of people, it's hard to find some pattern or something that

There really isn't one. Yeah. So I don't know if that's good or bad. Maybe they're just in the fact-finding thing. But you're going to go in there with a GM who's kind of, you know, taking his own lumps recently and hasn't really inspired a lot of confidence with the way he's, you know, handled some of the questions, frankly. I mean, there was one recently about, you know, Caleb's rookie season.

I thought the answer was terrible. And, you know, so. What do you say? What was referring to? something about a season of disruption and discombobulation or something and he's like, well, what are you talking about? And the reporter was like, well, you know how you kept firing the coaches during the year? And all that.

It was, it was, and then it was a weird. It's just, I don't know. It just doesn't feel right to me. The setup there doesn't feel right to me. It's just, you're going to go in there. Like I said, with a GM who, what's his long-term future there? And there might not be one. I think that's part of the problem is this is another example of just potential misalignment

within the organization. And I get wanting to have some sort of stability for the reasons that we talked about with Jacksonville. And this to me is not the same as Jacksonville. We're not on like head coach number five. And I actually do think that there have been some decent personnel decision. It's been a mixed bag in the Ryan Poles era. Like there's no denying that.

But I do think that there is a decent amount of talents to potentially work with if you are a head coach. But having a clean break and having alignment between the personnel department and the coaching staff. We have plenty of examples of why that can be a good idea, and we have plenty of recent examples of it. Yeah. And ownership's just kind of, you know, ownership's not really providing some great vision

for how this thing's going to go. They've provided zero vision. That's been the case for 30 years. Forever. They're just sort of, they're just sort of there. And then you bring in Kevin Warren because he's going to help you get the stadium. I don't know. Is the stadium thing going great?

Doesn't seem like it. And then he's involved. And then they fire the coach in the middle of the year, which I don't think the GM really wanted to do, but, you know, they had the awkward press conference and now it's just, it just feels muddled to me. It just feels muddled. I would be a little wary going in there of the different competing agendas and just where they're at, you know? Whether you believe they should or not, I think it's kind of undeniable that they're going to hire an offensive-minded head coach to pair with the quarterback. I couldn't imagine them going any other way. And I understand the argument for that.

Because if you're Ryan Poles and you're the person making this decision, he's the one leading the search. If you're thinking about your own personal motivations here, a guy fixing the quarterback that you moved heaven and earth to get, that is the number one priority on your list. So that by default becomes the number one priority for the organization. But they've talked about the leader of men thing a lot. I would be shocked if they did that. I really would. Really, of the people on this list, of the people on this list, like, I would not be shocked if they hired Brian Flores, even though he had a bad situation with two, it wouldn't shock me at all. I would be surprised that that ended up happening based on, because we see teams do this all the time, where you overreact to what happened previously.

And I think this idea of having to cycle between offensive coordinators and having to get, if you, the defense is important. Like, I don't want to say the defense is important. But if you're going to hire a defensive-minded head coach, the same thing is true with the Iberflous thing. If you hire that guy, then you also need him to hire the right offensive coordinator in order to get the quarterback right. If the quarterback, and especially here, based on the organizational history and based on the current state and job security of the general manager, getting the quarterback right is so far in a way the most important thing for the Bears specifically. If you hire the right offensive-minded head coach, that might be the only thing you need to get right. to salvage the quarterback.

If you hire a CEO or a defensive-minded head coach, you also need to get the offensive coordinator higher right in order to get where you want to go with the quarterback. And so I think cutting out the middleman there and trying to just get one decision correct to salvage Caleb Williams, to me, if I were Ryan Poles, that would probably be the direction that I would go. Having a vision for how you want to play on offense is super critical.

And the good head coaches provide that. I mentioned Pete Carroll. no one saying that Darryl Bevel and he had Shane Waldron there and he had Brian Chott and Hiverr, those weren't like the sexy hires, but they all got really good play from their quarterback, right? Either it was Gino Smith or Russell Wilson all played better than they were expected to play, right? Yes. I think to an extent that's true. And I think that's true in a lot of different places. I don't, I think we fall for the idea that there's going to be some. a magic, innovative guy who's going to make your quarterback look great. I don't believe that that's necessarily how that it works.

And I think you fall into getting bad coaches when you over-prioritize that, the coordinator thing. The coordinators, most of the coordinators that are doing really well have good players. Yes. And then when they go somewhere where they don't have good players, they fall off these lists, right? I think yes and no. So what does Caleb Williams need? Caleb, because he's generational talent, right? I mean, he's an all-time generational talent, right?

So he's going to be a good player. I'm winking a little bit. But that's what we were told. You got this guy's amazing. I think that the most important factor in offensive success is the relationship between the coordinator and the play caller. I think that having a constructive dialogue with the play caller, understanding. You mean the quarterback in the play caller?

Yes. The quarterback and the play call. And so having that sort of dialogue between the quarterback and the play caller, having a play caller who understands the quarterback, who asks the quarterback the right things, who consistently sets the quarterback up for success, I think that is what was missing in Chicago this year. And I think that is what is necessary with whatever the next coaching staff looks like. The dialogue that Kevin O'Connell has with Sam Darnold, the dialogue that even Cliff Kingsbury has with Jaden Daniels, the one that Todd Monkin now has with Lamar Jackson. Like getting that pairing right and finding the right person to get the most out of the quarterback, that is not happened. And I think that is what I would be chasing if I were the Bears in some capacity. Yes, after I had a good offensive line, I would do that.

After I built like a good team around them, that stuff really matters too. And I think that they've missed this the whole way through. Before the year, Ryan Poles, this is the best offensive line group we've had. Didn't look like it. If they had a good offensive line this year, I bet you they would have had a decent season. So they've got to build some of those other things, too. You definitely want a good differentiating offensive coordinator. You want the good relationship between him and the coach.

But you just have to make sure that you're not sacrificing somebody who can actually lead the team in that market. Because do you think the breakdown in Chicago was because Matt and Aggie didn't have a good rapport with Trubisky? I think the breakdown in Chicago is that Matt Nagy really didn't have a vision for what he wanted his version of the offense to be. Or he didn't have a vision for an offense period. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. These guys who come in, whether they're on the offensive defense side of the ball and do have a vision for how they want to play, have a chance. I think that some of these, I think it's about differentiating between what type of candidates you're choosing between offensively, though. Like Matt Nagy, who worked for Andy Reid, who was the entire.

architect of what Kansas City was doing on offense is different to me than Ben Johnson. If we're talking strictly from an offensive coaching perspective, that's Ben Johnson's offense. Ben Johnson is the one who built that offense. And it's not like he's done it for a year. He's done it for three years. He's done it with exceptional offensive line talent. And I don't think we understand what the lions would look like without that offensive line talent.

And that's worth acknowledging. But I think that there are different types of coaches within the buckets that we're creating. You need a super credible leader of your team, and especially in that market. So picture every one of these guys sitting in Matt Nagy's chair and Iberflus's chair when it was really uncomfortable. They weren't great at conveying their message to the team, right, through the media, which is a big part of that job and just sitting there and looking like, looking presidential,

right? So as you look at all of these guys in that chair, who can do that? That's what you've got to find out who's actually going to lead your team. And then I think you can look for those other things, the connection with the quarterback and all of that. I think it's the same conversation we were having a minute ago about, you know, what it does raising your floor or lower your ceiling. And I don't think it necessarily does. I think that there are examples on both sides of the fence when it comes to offensive coaches. Because if we're talking about guys who could run for office right now, Kevin O'Connell and

Sean McVeigh could run for office right now. Both of them could, like easily. They're excellent communicators. They have a certain charisma to them. I mean, just you listen to them talk or you have a conversation with them. I honestly think that you can make an argument that Kyle Shanahan and Matt LaFleur are kind of on the other side of that fence where I think that they're not necessarily as dynamic of personalities. So I do think that there are slightly different variations of this that can

ultimately work. Oh, no doubt. Yeah. Yep. I agree with that. I just think, you know, some of the great coaches, a lot of the great coaches weren't necessarily play callers, right? And so Just keep that in mind. As we get to the Jets here, their list looks very similar to what the Bears list has looked like. I think with a couple notable exceptions, if you look at the makeup of the Jets list, and I'll just read it off right now as it currently exists as we understand it. Joe Brady, Brian Flores, Aaron Gwynne, Vance Joseph, Matt Nagy, Ron Rivera, Rex Ryan, Bobby Sloick, Arthur Smith, Mike Vrable. My first thought when I look at this list, and you can tell me if I'm wrong. this list is mostly made up of guys who have been head coaches in the NFL before.

So there are how many names on this list? 1, 2, 3, 45, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. How many former head coaches are among that list? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 8. So there would be 2. Is that right? 7. So 7 of the 10 have been head coaches in the NFL before.

And if I'm the Jets and I'm just wanting some level of stability and raising the floor is what this is mostly about, I'm not necessarily surprised that this is the type of coach that they're seeking out. Yeah, two things. I think one, they're going to talk to a lot of people. I think that their search is being led by Mike Tannenbaum and Rick Spielman, and they're going to, they're big, especially Tannenbaum's a big information gatherer, right? He wants to talk to as many people as he can and pull this from this guy, that from the other guy, and almost like you were saying, you interview 35 producers or whatever, right?

He's very much in that realm. The other thing is that's an impossible market. That really does take a, that's the hardest job because you have the most impulsive owner. Remember, if Woody Johnson's the ambassador and he's not around, it's a different organization than if he's around. So that's a huge difference. He's not in the Trump administration now like he was before. So he's going to be there day to day. His son, he was 18 years old.

His role is only going to grow over time, right? the person who comes in there has to be super skilled in being able to manage those forces and maybe bring the sun into your inner circle a little bit, right? Or have a way of communicating and talking down the owner when he wants to do things, right? So that's totally not the young play caller probably who's going to handle that well. And they've gone that route, Adam Gays or different guys, right. It's probably going to be somebody who really is more of a finished product to handle that market. I think it's a very tough job. I think that's probably right. And I'm curious who they view as the season product because there are a lot of these guys who, you know, there's a reason they're not

head coaches now. I think Vance Joseph probably got a little bit of a raw deal and it was pretty impatient with what happened in Denver. And obviously what happened with Brian Flores in that offense in Miami, we famously understand that. So I guess that's kind of going to be the question for the Jets. If you want somebody who's had experience in this role, whose first tenure are you most comfortable with and who are you most confident in improving on that first go around and the lessons they've learned from that job? I think those are probably the most important set of questions you're going to answer if this is the type of coach that you're seeking out for one of these gigs. If we're doing that, that's what we're doing. If they're doing it, they're thinking,

okay, who can we get who's good but doesn't threaten, doesn't want to kick the son out of the building and he's going to tell me where to go, right? That's got to be, that's going to be part of what the owner's got at the side, different from what we're doing. So do you think Mike Vrable's going to work well with the 18-year-old son? That one probably is off the table to me. I'm kind of writing off Mike Ravel for these jobs just because I think he's going to get the Patriots job. Well, and he'd have to be crazy to go there, wouldn't he?

Especially if you have other options, yes. So that doesn't make a ton of sense to me now. Flores was another one. Who was the other former head coach? Vance Joseph, Matt Nagy? I mean, they've all been head coaches. Arthur Smith? Yeah.

So, yeah, so you just had Robert Salas. So you just had the defensive coordinator as the head coach. Are they going to do that again? So the only former, the two former offensive head coaches on this list, if they want somebody who's done this job before are Matt Nagy, which if you want to I have a different viewpoint on that that I think most people do because I'm probably a very close to it. Yes. And the other one is Arthur Smith.

Here's what I would say about this. I have a lot of respect for Arthur Smith. I like Arthur Smith. Arthur Smith had a contentious relationship with the Atlanta media. Surly. Okay. Like really doesn't like it. None of the coaches like it when the, you know, when the reporter gives the false premise

question. Yes. Hey, coach, I noticed you were running a lot of. quarters, quarter half in the second half. What were you think, where you try to act like you're smart, you know, the reporter tries to act like their smart thing. Archer Smith doesn't, didn't seem to like that. So you think he'd do good in the Jets media? Well, so here's the thing about this. And this is not to, this is not a value statement. And I'm not saying one is better or worse than the other. The Atlanta Falcons press corps consists of like six people. Like it is a very, very

small market media-wise. And then you compare that to the number of people who cover the New York Jets and what that is going to look like and what that media market is. And I think it's a little bit more of a fishbowl than what was happening in Atlanta. Just just a little bit. Yeah. You take your 10 most sensitive button pushing questions he got in Atlanta and you're going to have 20 of those per day. Yes.

So that would be my only, my only consideration. from like non-football-wise, just personality-wise, as we talk about this job. But again, it looks like they are looking for that sort of coach they try to fill this. Aaron Glenn having a great history with the Jets. It intrigues me, even though he would fit into that, not having been a head coach before. You know, if you think he's a great leader and are really impressed with what he's doing, that history with the team is a little bit interesting. So let me transition here.

because the team I had been pairing him with in my mind is the next team we're going to talk about because he arguably has more history with the New Orleans Saints than he does with the New York Jets because he was on that staff for a while. And if you look at the Saints interview list so far, we have Aaron Glenn, Mike Kafka, Kevin Moore, David Shaw, Anthony Weaver, all names that we've talked about. By the way, the politician thing, the who could you see sitting in that chair, Anthony Weaver is probably the best answer to that question. Among all of these guys that we're talking about, winning the press conference, being a good communicator, just having real presence, I think that he is going to be somebody that impresses people in these interviews because of that.

But the Aaron Glenn point here, like I mentioned before, think about what the Saints have done for the last 20 years, okay, since Sean Peyton got there essentially. They've had the same GM for the entire time that I have covered the NFL. They are very insular in how the organization operates and who's in charge there. When it was time to move on from Sean Payton, they hired Sean Payton's defensive coordinator to maintain continuity from what they were doing before. And it sure seems like the front office is going to maintain and stay the way that it was. And so having somebody who knows that building has familiarity with that building, I don't think it would necessarily be out of character for the Saints to go a direction with somebody they know and who knows them when it comes to filling this job.

Do you think that's fair? Yes, it does. It looks like it's not a big overhaul, which, you know, you're right of the structure. Mickey Loomis is still there. I think this job is bad for the reasons that are less important and potentially good for the reasons that are more important from a coaching standpoint. I think it's bad for those reasons that we get into like, you know, the state of the roster currently, the salary cap situation. Those are all things that can be worked out over time, but look really bad right now. I think I

deprioritize those types of things because those things change, right? I would 100% agree with that, by the way. I think that stuff is overstated as it currently exists. That's overstated. So the good things about that going in are you're probably going to get time. It doesn't seem like a place where they just,

you know, they gave Dennis Allen what, five or six years, you know, you're going to get time. And then Mickey Loomis, while he is the GM, he's not going to tell you who to draft on draft it. He's not like, He's involved with the Pelicans. He's involved in ownership. He's like a classic executive.

And he has a salary cap background. He doesn't pretend to be the guy who's picking all the players all the time. So I think you could go in there and have enough time and not have a ton of interference in the wrong ways. And be in a market that's, I think, a pretty good market. Like, you know, it's not as it's closer to it. Atlanta than the Jets, you know, right? In terms of just going in their day-to-day, I think you can have a good rapport.

You're not just totally in the spotlight all the time. I think you have a good fan base. I think you've got a, you know, rabid fans there. It's a great stadium for, you know, home games and stuff. I just, I think for those reasons, like, I don't see a huge red flag there. Even if you think they should have changed their structure or they could use a breath of fresh air, I don't feel like it's, I don't see landmines there. where you're going to go in and just have it completely fail because of something out of your control.

Does that make sense? I tend to agree with that. My only hesitation in framing it that way is I want to know how much they're going to continue kicking the can down the road financially with some of these players and how much they're going to continue borrowing from future years for 2025 specifically. And if you look at the way they operated this offseason, for the most part, they weren't really doing the same sorts of restructures that they have done in the past. And there is a clean path right now, at least, for this to be a team that has a lot of financial flexibility heading into

2026 if they make a certain set of decisions. You know what job this kind of reminds me of in terms of what the timeline is probably going to look like for like the two years that you get in there? It's not the same as this just because the GM is going to stay the same. But it kind of reminds me of where Atlanta was when Terry Fontno took that job, where under Thomas de Mitrov, they had really pushed it into the red those last couple years. And that's not even a criticism. It's just the way they were just trying to keep it together. It was like, can we do it one more year? Can we do it one more year? Aging quarterback, aging stars. That's what they were trying to do. And so what the Falcons had to do is they took their medicine. I mean, if you look at what Atlanta did in year one under Fontano,

they spent like $110 million in cash or whatever it was. It was dead last in the NFL. because they were trying to clear the books for the following season. So if I'm the coach, I guess this would be my question if I was interviewing for this job, what do you want the two to five year outlook to be for this team? Like, are you going to try to clear things up in 2026 where we can just have kind of a blank slate of a roster and we can build it the way that we want to? And if the answer to that is yes, then I don't really see a ton of impediments to this job. for a lot of the reasons that you said, I think it's a great market. I mean, I think the Saints are one of the best fan bases in football.

There is stability in the front office. There is an ownership group that has been willing to spend an astronomical amount of money to be competitive. So I actually, I think you're right. And I think that we probably overstated how important the financial drawbacks are in the short term if they're willing to eat their vegetables a little bit. They have to be honest about the roster and where they're at. Yes. So that's critical going in. And that if you have to have. at that understanding you have a runway now. I don't want to go in there and then have them say, hey, Dennis Allen just wasn't getting enough out of this roster. And we were a couple tweaks away and we can get right back and win the south. Like I would want to be more like, hey, we want you to be competitive now. But you're going to make a decision on what we're doing

a quarterback. And we agree that we're not as close as we thought we were. And so this is going to take some time. And we need to be prudent with what we're doing. They've done a couple things I wouldn't have done. You know, the, you know, and Alvin Kamara played great after they paid him. But, you know, that, that was one they didn't need to do on a running back. They did his deal. They did a couple things. I was like, you know, it was almost like the same old a couple times. But I think you're right that they've probably come off of that a little bit. And frankly, there's not much left for them to do along those lines. There's, there's not many more ways they can buy time with this roster. So they may just sort of have to bite the bullet.

Yeah. I mean, they're obviously, they're going to have to do some restructuring. to borrow from whatever 2026 looks like, even just to get under the cap next year. To me, my question would be if I were a coaching candidate would be, are you going to limit those to what is necessary rather than what is in line with what you've done for most of the last four or five years? If this is just about truly only getting cap compliance for 2025 and then trying to clear things up as much as we can moving forward, that would be my preferred route if I was the person taking this job.

Yep. I think we agree that it is a low-key underrated sort of place. Yes. That we sort of think of as being a dumpster. Not attractive for these reasons, but remember what reasons are most important if you're going to get time. All right. We're going to take one more quick break here, and they're going to get back with a couple teams that are keeping their head coaches and then a few more little bits of news that have come out over the last couple days.

We can run through this pretty quickly. I just feel like it's worth acknowledging. And I'm curious about your take on these. but these are the teams that have put out statements saying their coaching staff and general manager are coming back, which that's always good when you have to do that. When you have to remind people or just let them, yeah, you know, I know you think we probably could have fired these guys. We're not going to. So let's start with the Indianapolis Colts.

What did you make of Jim Ursay and that group bringing back Chris Ballard and Shane Steichen for another go? It sure felt like something needed to change there. And some of that was just the media crescendo and Pat McAfee and just the way this season went. The fact that Indianapolis has now become a national media market because of back fees actually pretty funny. I thought something, I thought it had reached sort of the end of them being able to sort of sell the same thing again, you know, is what it felt like. Now, the inner visual I had, though, was at the end of the game, they showed Jim Ursay making his way out of the suite and he is hurting. I mean, you know, he's walking, was he hunched over, you know, and he's in a tough spot physically. And I just part of me thought, you know, about the work involved like we're talking about of hitting the reset button on everything is a lot of work.

And he what's his energy level right now for doing that for just starting the whole thing over? I just thought of that. Just seeing him and the terrible pain he's been in and his bodies ravaged. I just thought of that. Like there's just on my mind with some of these owners and whether they do things or not. So did he just not want to do the whole thing? Or did he also feel, I gave Stuyken a six-year deal. It's not fair to Shane to do this after two years.

I don't want to put him on a different path of the new GM who might not like the quarterback. And because of these circumstances of Shane's only two years, the quarterback's really only gotten maybe really one year of even an eval. I'm not willing to blow the whole thing up. And everybody gets along. It's not like Ballard and Stuyken are at odds or anything. Yes. Let's just give this a little.

little more time. Whether it's for the right or the wrong reasons, whether or not we probably should do something, I'm willing to just let it go another year and see. And then we'll make a decision. So that's kind of what it felt like to me. I think that's all fair. And I think that your point about how when you fire the GM, you get more work for the general, you get more work for the owner, I think is very reasonable in this case. Considering there are no like silent structures in Indianapolis, like Chris Bauer is the GM and they don't have a president of football operations. There's not really a bunch of layers of leadership with this organization. So you're creating a lot of work for yourself if you move on from the GM. I think that's probably

right. And the point about how there isn't a lot of animosity there, I think that's probably more of the issue than anything else. You know, reading that story that Zach Kiefer and James Boyd wrote, I think the biggest issue with Indianapolis is that everyone probably gets along a little bit too well. And there's probably a lack of accountability in that building more than anything else. So that to me is at least a set of problems than everybody is at each other's throats every single day, even if it is a set of problems. It's amazing to me how we go from what Ersay was doing with Jeff Saturday and just all over the place and just swerving all over the road, you know, to now when it looks like you actually maybe

should be doing something and you don't hear a peep. There was no rumblings coming out of that organization building about what Ersay was thinking at all. He wasn't tweeting or anything. Very weird. I've said this on Sunday night, and I kind of believe this. You can move on from a good majority of the big time investments in this roster after 2025. All of the big contracts that they've signed, and including the quarterback, I think you can make a reasonable case after one more year.

Listen, this just did not work. It was a big swing. We missed. It's time to move on and do something different. I don't think you necessarily have to do that with a different head coach and different GM in 2025. when you'll be able to pretty cleanly break from this version of the Colts after 2025 and start over. Yeah. Yep.

So I think those moves that they made deep into, they made huge moves deep into Ballard's tenure with the head coach and the quarterback. And that probably is why Ballard gets a little more, gets more time than people thought he would here. The Dolphins, it's kind of a similar set of arguments to me. Like if you look at what the dolphins have built there and you look at the set of bets that they have made, They chose to go in and build this roster in a very fragile, in a very fragile way, in my opinion, and in a way that you have to thread a very thin needle. Think about the guys they went out and got and spent a ton of money on and a ton of resources on. J.1 Ramsey on team number three. Tyree Kill on contract number three.

Taran Armstead on contract number three. So now you have all these guys who are in their late 20s, early 30s. You have a quarterback who, again, needs kind of a hyper-specific way that you have built things for him to succeed. And you have an offense that is more hyper-specific than pretty much any other in the NFL. Giving them one more year to see if it can all come together with this group before they have what amounts to a pretty clean break after 2025 with a lot of these decisions. I'm not necessarily surprised to see this as the set of decisions they made. What's interesting to me is, you know how we talked before about paying these quarterbacks early when you don't have to, right? And remember, Tua and Trevor Lawrence were two guys who got big deals near the top of the market before they had to do it.

And you think from a football standpoint, why would you do that as a GM? Well, guess what? It probably helps the GM. Yeah. Because if Tua didn't have a deal right now and Trevor Lawrence didn't have a deal right now, there'd be a lot more optionality in the building. right with the concussion that toa had and all of that but now you did two and some million dollars for for tua well that kind of anchors you to tua which sort of anchors you to macdial right yes and and really chris greer's well liked in that building you know he gets along gets along

with folks he's been there forever you see how those things happened where you and i look at it and go what are you doing paying the quarterback it arguably helps the gms more than it hurts them even if the Eval was wrong. And I think, again, if you're Steve Rosson, if you're looking at this, you can move on from Tua after this year. It's not going to be great, but you can eat your vegetables in the way that we have seen teams do it with quarterbacks. It's not going to be like a catastrophic thing if you were to move on from him after this

year. So similar to the Colts, and I think in an even in a more pronounced way, the set of bets that you have made are bets that you can essentially extinguish after 2025. So you might as well just see. if they can do something with this as currently constructed before you move on. The Giants are not this way. The Giants is a very different sort of argument. And it was funny to see John Mara essentially lay out the set of arguments that I would probably make if I were Joe Shane and Brian Dable for why I should keep my job.

Merritt comes out in front of the media yesterday. And he says, Brian was the coach of the year two years ago. That didn't go away, which you could talk about the specifics of that. quibble with some of it, but it is objectively true, okay? He did a very good job two years ago, and I think that I would acknowledge that. I think you have to acknowledge that. In the Joe Shane part of this, the draft class they just had seems to have netted a decent amount of pieces. I think that the offseason the Giants had in a vacuum was actually pretty good. And so those to me are the two arguments for why you would keep these guys. And those are the exact arguments that John Merrill laid out

when he described why he was keeping them yesterday. But he almost seemed like he was lamenting it. He didn't seem excited. It was just kind of like, you know, yeah, we're going to stay married. You know, we're going to stay married. We're not going to do a divorce right now. You know, wife hasn't done a great job, but, you know, I think we're going to just stick it out here. I here's why I think that based on everything I, I think if you look at the two organizations, right?

If you look at the Jets and the Jets, there has been a. similar amount of failure in both places. Like the wreckers are very similar. But it's easier for me to dump all over what the Jets have done just because I think that there's like there's a there's an impetuousness there and there's almost like, I don't know what the impulsiveness too. Yeah. There's like an impulsiveness and like a and just like a cruelness to it.

Right. Like Woody Johnson talking about how Mike White like, like shitting on Mike White in the locker room or letting like a billionaire's kids like run like run amok in the locker room. They don't seem as nice of people. Whereas like the Maras like you can criticize. The mirrors are kind of like the McCaskies. They're not doing a great job with their program. But shoot, you, you would like them.

Like you'd be nice to them. That's where I land with this is that even if. even if the actual results have been similar, I find myself having a lot more empathy for John Mara because I think he's trying to operate in like a compassionate, rational way in the same way that I would, but I think I'd be a bad owner of an NFL team. Like even down to John Mara saying, look, we will never tank a game. Like you feel like there's some sort of an ethical code with him. Like George McCasky, there's an ethical code. Like if George McCasky was caught in something seedy, I would. be shocked. I would be genuinely surprised. A man with that mustache, I would never imagine. And the same with Mara. Like, I think these guys are, I think they're trustworthy, you know, I would 100% agree with that. And I think that's how I land with this is you can see him like, I understand why this is probably a bad

idea, but I'm just trying to do the right thing. And that, that's why I, I empathize with it. But again, that's not why I'm not like a titan of industry. There's a reason that I will never be like a hyper successful person. And it's because I don't have the correct wiring to get there. So the fact that I'm seeing eye to eye with John Mara and why he's making this set of choices, I think that's probably a bad thing. Yeah. It's funny. Yeah.

So did you think one of them would change? Did you think? I was going to be surprised that they had fired Shane because I think, because of the office. season that they had, that would have been a little bit surprising to me. I think the argument to me for firing Daible, independent of wins and losses, is the level of volatility that seems to have existed within that building over the last couple years. And it was really, it was really two years ago, not this year. I felt like. Yes. Yes. I think that's true. But I think the going, I always think like going back and forth on the play caller and stuff gives me, I don't, that's always to me a bad

sign of things where it's just like, I'm going to call plays and then I'm not going to call plays and then I'm going to be over this guy's shoulder and then I'm not going to be. And the defensive coordinator wants to leave and we're not going to fire him. It just seems like, and this is not necessarily surprising. I wrote a story three years ago about how Brian Dable, when he was on the sideline as an offensive coordinator, would struggle every once in a while because he's somebody that has a lot of emotions. Like he's somebody that he lets that stuff get to him. So the fact that that's what it felt like in the building wasn't necessarily surprising. And so those are some of the behind the scenes things that I feel like an owner having a sense of what's going on there might not

want that to continue. That's not really, that's a coaching staff specific thing, though. So that was the outcome I thought might happen. I felt like if the turmoil that was there when wink was there and all of that, and it felt like a staff mutiny, everyone wanted out of there, no one was happy. If that continued this year, I think they needed to do something. It felt like for whatever reason that didn't happen. Like they got clarity on the play caller thing, Dayball called it. So they basically phased out Kafka pretty much. And so that, which Daibald admitted was hard for him. It was hard for him to have someone else do that. So I feel like that some of that staff stuff seemed a little bit more rectified. And it just wasn't as big of a problem this year.

So I didn't see the alarm bells as much. The other thing that was a tip to me was a tip off to me that they were going to stay was when they made the organizational decision to not only bench but released Daniel Jones. Whatever you think of Daniel Jones, he was the best quarterback option they had on the team. So you were basically chopping off the coach that year. You were telling the coach in mid-season that you got no chance now, right? We're not even trying anymore. And so to me, when you do that and the coach kind of even went along with it, it felt like it felt like they were all sort of in on it, that we're turning our eyes next year and we're going to play DeVito, we're going to play Locke, whatever. how do you do that with a coach coaching for his job?

That's hard to do. So maybe he wasn't coaching for his job. It's a great point. I think the only thing I would say about that is eventually the results matter. Like eventually you don't just get do-overs all the time. And that's kind of how I feel with the Daniel Jones thing. It's like some of the rationalization and some of the gymnastics that have had to happen with this giant situation, it's like, well, they had Daniel Jones. Like, what did you expect?

They chose to have Daniel Jones. Somebody did, though. Yes. But the current guys did not draft him. Yes, but they chose to commit to him. When they re-signed, I always wondered when they re-signed him, I always wondered who was the driving force behind that. Was Mara, I could see Mara seeing him as the next Eli. We love this kid.

And let's pay him. If that happened, if they weren't the drivers, this is where I get into with Cleveland, too. If Stefansky and Barry were the driving forces on getting Deshaun Watson, they don't deserve to be there. But don't you feel like they weren't? I feel like the owner was. I think that's probably fair. What wasn't it with Daniel Jones? I always wondered that.

Merrick came out yesterday and said those guys were the ones who decided that they wanted Daniel Jones. Whether that's true or not, I do not know. But that's, I would have a similar question. Yeah. That is what his answer was. So we'll see what happens. I take that at face value. I don't think he would say that.

I don't think he would lie about that. So, again, those guys should be accountable for that. Upstanding man, John Merron, the way that we've tried to make him out to be over here over the last 10 minutes or so. He couldn't do. It wouldn't do that publicly. It would get out. So that's on those guys, you know, for not making that work and for committing to him. I've said this before.

I, to me, it kind of reminds me of this idea of, well, you know, they had Daniel Jones and, you know, their left tackle was hurt. Dexter Lawrence got hurt. Like, what can you expect? I think to a certain extent, it kind of feels like the conversation we're having with the Jets last year. It was like, well, Aaron Rogers got hurt. Like, what would you expect? Well, there's a lot of other stuff going on here. Like, I don't know if, like, one thing just gives you a do-over for an entire NFL season.

And that's kind of what this feels like. It's unbelievable to survive the whole hard noxling. The way that blew up, you couldn't have had it blow up worse for what you were doing. It really, yeah, it gets a little bit back to what I was saying. Does does Mara want to do it? If Mara does a whole search, now we've got the tishes involved. Now we got this thing. It's like, you know, he can sort of make a case in his mind.

He's almost saying he sound resigned to it. Like he didn't like any of his options. We have some news that just came down about two minutes ago, according to Tashon Reid, who covers the Raiders for us, Antonio Pierce fired as the coach of the Las Vegas Raiders. Okay. Well, it felt ominous when they wouldn't, you know, when they didn't say anything for a while. Everyone else is putting out their statements if there was some doubt. This is a situation where I would have loved to have heard the argument for why he should be back.

What would that case have looked like? The case would have looked like, hey, the quarterback, they've gotten rid of the good players that were there, including the quarterback, the running back, and the wide receiver. So you've really taken away your ability to win the game. You have a coach who the team has definitely played hard for. I think they've not been one of these teams that's out there losing. They've been competitive. So you could say if we get this guy just a halfway decent quarterback, you'd say he probably wasn't the reason they were getting Gardner Minshue or whatever.

Get him a halfway decent quarterback and some better players, and then you still have the team playing hard for you, you've got a chance. That would be the case for him. I'm not saying it's a compelling case, but they've only gotten worse in terms of some of their personnel, especially on the offensive foot of the ball, in my opinion. I think that is fair. I also think that if you're going to be one of these CEO-type coaches,

one of the most important things that you have to do is build the correct staff. You have to be an identifier of coaching talent if you're a head coach, period. But if you are this type of coach, you need to be one of the best identifiers of coaching talent. And if you're going to be this type of coach, you can't fire your entire offensive staff halfway through the year and expect to keep your job. I just don't think you can't. And so now you're a team that needs a quarterback,

and this is an experience in a set of sequence of events I'm very familiar with. Allowing a lame duck coach to go into an offseason where you have desperation at quarterback is a recipe for disaster. So I think there are plenty of reasons why this probably was in the Raiders' best long-term interest, and I am not necessarily surprised to see it happen. No, I'm not surprised at all. You know, they won what, two or last three games after losing a ton in a row. And like you said, what's really the case for them?

What's he moving the needle on, right? What's he, how's he giving you a competitive edge? I think in very, very few places. So now it's going to be about what the Raiders search looks like. And we're going to do a lot of these conversations over the next couple weeks. And we will have a lot of time to address that as we look at their pool of candidates and what their process ends up looking like. The other firing today, one that I think was a little bit more surprising, the Tennessee Titans have fired general manager Ran Carthon one year after giving him a contract extension and him seemingly winning a little jostling for position in that organization with Mike Vrable. Ran Carthon, by far the best move he ever made was getting that deal for himself.

Four more year deal. Four more year. Good for you, Ran Carthon, because this is a bad organization. a long time. If you just watched the way they've behaved, you wouldn't know if Bud Adams was still around or not. It's the same sort of thing. But Adams impulsive would get rid of people. That's what's going on here. Now, they were, their president of their team stated very clearly what they're thinking. And I think this is interesting. Basically, his idea was it was it makes it even worse that they extended him. But he said the requirements for the job changed. That was interesting to me. So

if you go back to when Rand Cartham was hired, they had fired John Robinson in season, which is a weird thing to do. Weird. But then the idea was Vrable, was the head coach, he was going to have more juice. So they wanted to get a,

sort of probably a get-along GM, right? Somebody who's going to come in and really work with Vrable, but not be above them necessarily, right? And so you get somebody like Rancarthon who wasn't a big name or didn't have. I wasn't going to get a GM job from somebody else probably. And then you fire Vrabel. And now you hire a first-time coach.

And now you want more of a GM who's experienced in drafts and has done this sort of a thing, which they laid out. We want someone who set draft boards for years, preferably in a winning organization. Well, then why five minutes ago you gave them a four-year extension? Because you're bad organization. I think all of that is totally fair. And to me, one of the more baffling things is that the off-season, they allowed the front. office to have if they were going to be on this sort of timeline. The Titans this offseason handed out $187 million in practical guarantees to outside players.

That was $40 million more than any other team in the NFL. And the team that was second signed a quarterback in free agency. That's right. They did it without spending a dollar on a quarterback. They didn't spend it without a dollar on a quarterback. And I said it in the moment, and I'll say it again now. I still don't understand anything about the way that they operated this offseason. And this isn't to say free agency is some boogeyman that you should shy away from.

I just would have loved to have heard the vision behind why they went out and got the players that they did. Because I think that there are ways to use free agency. I think sometimes I've been guilty of this, and I will fully admit this, where you look at certain levels of financial aggression in an off season and a seeming mismatch with the time. timeline of the organization. And you think, wow, you spent all this money this offseason, but you're not really ready to win. Why would you do something like that?

I think the Broncos are a very good example, like what the Broncos did last off season. Well, if you look at it on like a two or three year window, the Broncos signed a ton of, spent a ton of money on offensive linemen last off season. The Broncos probably knew they were going to try to draft a quarterback within the next two years. By doing that and building an infrastructure for the quarterback, you have set up a soft landing spot for whoever you're going to draft. The Broncos have had some of the best pass protection in the NFL. Some of that, you knew the guy who's in charge of that organization, you knew he was going

to be there. You signed him to a very, very large contract. So I think there's something things consider there. To me, the Panthers are a very good example of this. The Panthers spent a ton of money this offseason, even though they weren't willing to win. And it's because they wanted to make sure we're building a hospitable environment for the quarterback. So if you look at some of the moves Tennessee made this offseason.

And your rationalization here is we had an endless pool of money and we had a young quarterback we wanted to get answers on. Fine. If you want to sideline Lloyd Cushenberry to that contract, if you want to go out and overspend on Calvin Ridley, that's fine. What they did for Legerius Sneed and Chidobiae Ousier, you can't even begin to justify that to me. They're going to give the 66th pick in the draft to the Kansas City Chiefs because of the Legerius Sneed trade. What was all of this for? And if the answer was we want to win in the short term, why would you fire a guy who just did all this stuff? Like, none of it aligns in any way that is even almost understandable to me.

It's like the owner's so pissed that they lost as much as they did that something has to change. I just can't imagine. So I have to make a major move. Yeah. It's just not a good. Giving somebody with nine months of job security to someone that you allowed to spend $190 million is, inconceivable to me. Smartest signing.

Ran Carthon's own contract. That's the signing of the year. Good for him. He's going to get their money for four years. A little bit further down the list here, but wanted to address these before we got out of here. Four coordinator firings that have happened over the last couple of days. Luana Rumo out as the Cincinnati Bengals defensive coordinator.

It's not surprising because if they were going to keep Zach Taylor, which I'm not surprised that they did, something had to change. something had to change based on the Bengals season. Lou Anarumo did an excellent job for multiple years as the Bengals defensive coordinator. This was a defense that was built mostly through free agency. They had almost zero in-house stars. The in-house products they did have that were stars, they let walk and then failed to replace them. And then when the defense faltered, now it's Lu Anerumo's fault.

So I'm not surprised this happened, but this idea that Lu Anerumo was, was the problem in Cincinnati to me would be crazy. Like what is this fix? This is just, yeah, this is them saying, it's a scapegoat. Hey, we actually did get some good young players and you didn't use them right. I don't think you could almost tell yourself that story. Yeah, no, I agree. We'll see what happens with them.

That's an interesting place. I did an item in my column lining up the timeline between Burrow and Carson Palmer. You know, Burroughs 76 starts into this thing. Palmer made it 99 starts and he was done out of there. Joe's 76 starts in counting the playoffs. I'm just kind of watching that place. When he's coming out talking about we got to resign guys earlier, you can't let guys out of the building,

that gets my attention. Lou Enramo out. They have planned to interview Patrick Graham, which Patrick Graham, I think, has done a really good job with the Raiders defense over the last couple years, given the talent that they have on that roster. And so I'm not surprised that he's going to be in demand. And his contract had already expired even before the firing happened with Antonio Pierce. So he was already free to take these interviews.

Ken Dorsey out as the – excuse me, as the Cleveland Browns offensive coordinator, this whole thing to me is just so ridiculous. You fire Alex Van Pelt after last season, and you go with Ken Dorsey in part to reshape your offense in such a way that fits what Deshaun Watson wants to do. So you move outside of whatever your previous offensive structure was the world that Kevin Stefansky comes from. You come to a more spread out gun-based place that Ken Dorsey wants to live in. The quarterback is actively very bad, so none of this was going to work no matter what. And then after one year, you decide to fire Ken Dorsey.

And now I completely expect the Browns to have a set of hires at both the offensive line coach and the offensive coordinator that get Kevin Stifansky's offense back to a place that it was at before, a more comfortable place the way that they actually want to operate. So this entire ridiculous theater that happened with the Browns this year around trying to maximize the Sean Watson was all for naught and it's kind of ridiculous. If there's one organization where I could have 10 questions answered in complete honesty and get the absolute ground zero truth on, it would be the Browns. Nothing they do seems to be like what I think they would actually, what they're

what Stefansky and even Barry sometimes, I think they would want to do some of them. These staff changes that happen every year, I never feel like that's what Stefanski would do. It's just weird to me. Like they brought in Ken Dorsey. Who brings in a, what offensive play calling head coach decides to bring in just a different guy? Like a different offense. I think that's fair. And especially one where you have to change your entire DNA as an offense.

We just don't see this very often. And it's not as though what the Browns were doing on offense was a disaster. I think that the previous structure of their offense had relatively set them up for success pretty well over the last couple years when Stefanski was running it. They feel like a place where there's a lot of people with puppet strings behind the scenes making decisions. And those people aren't really accountable for them. I will say this, at least they haven't made Barry and Stafansky accountable for all of those things either because they get to keep coming back and doing extensions. I don't know how to feel about that place. This just all feels like they were trying to do everything they could to maximize the quarterback

because they needed to after what they paid for the quarterback. And to me, and this is just reading the writing that seems to be on the wall. I think that moving on from Dorsey and potentially going back to a world that you're a little bit more comfortable with is a signal that we are no longer hell bent on making sure the quarterback succeeds. He may not even play another down there. I'd be surprised if he did. And so I Now, even this injury seems weird to me. Like, are they going to get some insurance policy cap relief? It's just crazy.

Yeah, everything about this, I agree, is kind of wild, but it's not necessarily surprising based on how this season went. Two more. Ryan Grubb out as the Seahawks offensive coordinator. What do you think about this? Obviously, this is a team that you're very close to. You're there in Seattle. What's your initial read on this? Yeah, that was just a bad fit for McDonald.

I think it was a little bit of an arranged marriage, you know, because he was hired late. McDonald was hired late because of the playoffs. And then he's young, and his coach in the league. I think that, you know, front office helped with the hiring of some of the staff. And Ryan Greb was somebody there locally in University of Washington. They liked his offense. But as a season went along, he wanted to pass the ball from shotgun all the time more than the head coach wanted to. And couldn't really adapt off of that.

So then you also have the component of, you know, they don't have a good offensive line. but are they being honest with that internally? Is the coordinator getting blamed for some of that? I think that's an interesting sort of secondary part of this. You know, do that how much do they address their offensive line or are they going to blame it all on the coordinator? Yeah. I think that based on John Schneider's previous public comments over time, he doesn't feel

like the offensive line is something that you need to invest in the way that other teams have done it, especially on the interior. He said that explicitly. Yeah. And they waited till they waited late. They got their center, Connor Williams, from in August. You know, then they, he retired during the season. But yeah, they're not going to be 20 million-dollar guards, but they got to do something.

They got to do something. But I do think that there was a disconnect between, and Mike McDonald said this yesterday. He said, the vision I had for the offense is different than where we were going. And I think arranged marriage is the right way to frame it. You know, this is somebody that I think that there were, you know, connections behind the scenes between, you know, agencies and things like that. And that's how some of these decisions to get made. And I honestly think a lot of the rate or a lot of the Seahawks staff period is made up of guys that Mike McDonald didn't necessarily have previous relationships with. I don't think that's necessarily the worst thing in the world.

But when the results don't go the way that you want to, there's no built in history and no built in loyalty for you to stick with those things under tough times. So I'm not surprised that this happened at all. And I also think you're sometimes your first staff isn't the staff you wanted, you know. Exactly. So that just happens. I don't see like huge alarm bells here. I actually think if it's not a good fit, then move on from it, you know? That's exactly how I feel about this.

I don't think it's some sign up dysfunction. I think it's, listen, Ryan Grubb did a fantastic job at Washington. The ideas that fuel that offense in college were dynamic. They were very fun to watch. There was a disconnect between how those ideas translated to a cohesive offense in the NFL. Let me go to a place that maybe is a little bit more traditional and something that I understand. and the bones are a little bit more solid. And I think that's probably what this yawks are going to do.

Yep. Last one here, Gus Bradley fired as the Colts defensive coordinator. The Colts were a middling defense for most of the last several years. But again, I think this is one of those not dissimilar to what happened with Luana Ruma, where something needed to change. Like, you couldn't roll into next season with the same staff that you had with this season based on how disappointing things were. And the abject failure of the end of the season was some just horrific play on defense,

probably. And you're not going to change, if you're not changing the head coach, you're not changing the offense, right? So this was their sort of move. And I have felt like they probably wanted a little bit more, a little bit less static of a defense, you know, there for a while. And, and so, you know, this may be something that they would have considered doing anyway, even if, even if it didn't end as bad as it was. We see this all the time. Offensive minded, especially first, time offensive-minded head coaches come in and you keep the defensive coordinator who has at least done a competent job under the previous staff. There are plenty of examples of this. I'll just go to the NFC North. When Matt LaFleur went to Green Bay, they kept Mike Petton and they eventually moved on from Mike Petton because this is an arranged marriage. They were like, yeah, there's no, there's no more justifications for why we're hanging on to this. So I think that's probably what happen with Gruss Bradley in Indianapolis where he's a holdover from a previous staff. The defense was good enough. Why do we need to move on from it? But when things don't go right organizationally,

you typically see things like this happen. Plus, he's a great guy to get along with, personality-wise. So when you come in, you feel good about, hey, this guy's team player, this guy's messaging I'm going to be comfortable with. There's no, he's not a threatening figure in any way that way. So he's a great guy to have, you know, when you're coming in and trying to establish something and you don't have somebody in mind. that definitely would make sense. Yeah. And I also think that, again, getting back to that maybe there are too many nice guys in Indianapolis,

Gus Bradley famously a nice guy. So if things need to change there from a messaging standpoint, this is not necessarily surprising. That is all we've got for today. There are going to be plenty of opportunities to revisit a lot of this over the next couple weeks because there's going to be an endless stream of news as these jobs get filled as these interviews happen and as we get a little bit more context and information about all of them. Mike sincerely appreciate the time. It's always fun to do this with you.

This was fun. All right, guys, that's all we got for today. Me and Derek will be back later in the week with our two-part wild card preview show. Until then, appreciate you guys listening. We'll talk to you soon.