The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Star player movement, the shifting WR market & a 2022 NFL offseason rewind with Mitchell Schwartz

Episode Date: May 6, 2022

How does star player movement impact the locker room? After an offseason and draft full of big trades, Mitchell Schwartz joins Robert Mays to explain how these deals are viewed among the team heading into a new season. They also dive deeper into the WR market as they break down the Eagles’ trade for A. J. Brown. Plus, what is the typical dynamic between a veteran and rookie in a position room? Mitchell discusses his experience in both roles on the offensive line. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the athletic football show. Welcome to the athletic football show. Today's Friday, May 6th. Joining me today. It's my good friend, Mitchell Schwartz. Mitch, how you doing, buddy? I'm doing well. It's been a long time.

It's good to see you again. It's great to see you, too. You were traveling a bunch. You guys are working on a house. I didn't want to have you tethered to a microphone during the off season when you're no longer playing anymore. It seems like a cruel thing to do to you. The microphone's easy to travel with.

The Wi-Fi situation in... Other countries is not quite as easy to tell. Yeah, you're in Switzerland. You're a bunch of different places. Yeah, we went to a wedding in Ireland, went to Switzerland, went to Paris. Before that, we had gone to the Bahamas. And then, yeah, moving, it turns out moving sucks. Everyone that says moving sucks, you're correct.

It sucks. So hopefully this is our last move. And, you know, it's going to take a while before we're fully unpacked. People use the term forever home, and it's just a house that you think you'll be there forever. it's taken you forever to build this house, so you better be there forever. It takes out a whole new meaning with you guys in this house that you just put together. Also true. Probably like my last two seasons worth of salary too at this point because what do they say,

like three times as long and three times as expensive. That's a good adage. So remember that if you're ever doing construction. I have not been traveling to as many exotic places as you have. Our international trip is later this month, but I have been traveling a lot recently. And we went to Coachella and then I went to Vegas for the draft. and I saw Travis Kelsey at Duke Dumont at Coachella, and then I saw him in the security line in Vegas.

And I was talking to him about it. I was like, we're on the same schedule right now. And I think that's either a very good thing that he and I are on the same travel schedule, a very bad thing for the choices that I'm making and how I'm spending my time. That's an excellent point. I don't know if you can hang with that. Maybe in your 20s you could hang with him. He's 30 now, though.

I'm impressed. The fact that he's still going like this, I literally thought that I was like, man, good for him. I'm so proud of him. Yeah, I mean, he's just like, you know, he's such a good guy that if he gets invited to stuff or there's cool opportunities, just like, yeah, I'll go. And he doesn't want to, like, not see his friends or not see people or let people down. So if you got Justin Timberlake saying, hey, come golf. And then the next weekend, you got Gronk saying, hey, come to this party.

Like, yeah, he'll be there for you. We were at Duke Dumont during like the last day of Coachella, and I looked to my left and I was like, it's definitely tried to call. So he had sunglasses. He had sunglasses up, but he's an unmistakable person. Like, no one in the world looks like him. So it was him, and then I saw him at the security line, and we just talked for a little while. It was very funny. But, yeah, my, my, my travails have not been nearly as exotic or as fun as yours, but soon, hopefully.

All right. That's all right. You don't have to go overseas to have fun. That's true. That's true. Because we have the time to, but our domestic trips are just as fun. We're looking forward to all of it. So we're going to go back through a lot of the stuff we've missed.

It's almost like a little recap of all the things that have happened over the last couple months, a crazy couple months in the NFL. And I wanted to kind of filter it through a player's perspective. Some of the things that we've talked about, we can't see it that way. And I really wanted to get your opinion on it. And I wanted to start just with the craziness of the wide receiver market. And there's a few different things within this weekend hit. But the first thing, and not beyond you being on the chiefs,

I want to talk about this in a more theoretical way, when you're on a team and they make a deal like the Chiefs and the Titans did, even the Packers, same sort of the situation, even though I think it's a tiny bit different because he won it out. but you're a team with the, like the Titans. You were the number one seat in the AFC. You're the Chiefs. You once again went to the AFC championship game. You are smack dab in the middle being a contender. And your team trades away, arguably the most important offensive weapon on your team outside of the quarterback

and definitely the best wide receiver on your team. How does a locker room respond to that? When you know your smack dab right there as a team that can win a championship or you're on the precipice of it, and you take even a small step back, how would you, respond in that moment if you were on that team? The first thing is you're surprised. I was really shocked. I think I was in Ireland maybe and I started to see the Twitter news about it.

About Tyreek? Yeah, about Tyreek. So I'm six hours ahead or whatever and I remember it's like three o'clock in the afternoon. I was like, man, it's been a slow football day. I thought I was going to be in the morning. I was just orienting. No, no. It's better because that's when like all the stuff was happening football wise.

And I was like, well, it's 3.15 right now. So that means it's like 9.15 back home. And it's been a pretty slow football day. Hopefully nothing happens. And then, you know, I'd turn Twitter off. Like eight minutes later, I go back on and 53 new tweets, which means probably something she's happened. I'm sure Brooke loved that you were just on Twitter the entire time you were in Ireland supposed to be hanging out.

You know, sometimes we need to nap because it's an overseas trip. So I get some time to peruse. But usually that means something chiefs happened because I follow a lot of cheese people. And of course, it was the Tyreek thing. And I was very shocked at first because you don't expect to see that happen. And, you know, you figure that he's a core part of the trio, essentially him, Pat, Kelsey. But as you kind of process that you think of through, it starts to make more sense. I mean, I don't think he's declined at all.

I don't see that in his game particularly. You know, you worry about third contract guys in general, let alone speed guys and the guy who's relied on probably the fastest NFL player ever. What happens when you take away half a step of that, you know, a full step of that? Part of why he's been so good is because he has the... the route running ability to not just be a pure burner, but to get to the original question, like I was very surprised, very shocked to see that. And that's, I think, your first instinct as a player. Now, Coach Reid came out later, said, you know, he was talking to Patty, he was talking to Kelsey,

keeping them apprised. You know, I would imagine if those guys pushed hard enough and said, like, no, he's got to be here. They'd probably acquies us a little bit. We've seen, you know, the power that some of these quarterbacks have and wanting to keep those guys happy. But that's kind of what's special about this group is they kind of trust each other they trust that coach reed has a plan brett beach has a plan the organization has a plan so i think you get over that initial shock especially when it's your teammate when it's the guy you've been around the whole time and wow he's not going to be here anymore we know how good he is we know how important he is and for me you know i'm always looking at things from the business side anyway so then you start to think like okay you got i don't know six picks

one being a late first rounder like that's a pretty good haul you don't have to pay a guy at top of the market salary you know i know you guys have talked about the salaries and how weird the wider market is in terms of figuring out specifically how much a guy is making these days, but still a top of the market salary for a wide receiver. You're going into your age 29 or 30, and it starts making sense when you look at it from that perspective. And I think from the chiefs in particular, you've got Pat kind of exiting the grace period of the gift he gave Kansas City in his contract, which he kept his cap hit low the first few years and took way less money than these other guys are getting. And so you're going to have a QB at 40, 50 plus million a year in terms of the

You've got Kelsey, Chris Jones, you know, Frank Clark this year, a few other Tune, Orlando Brown looming. There's a lot of guys to get paid. And having a quarterback that can overcome a lot of those things is definitely helpful. And it's not like it was Tyreek and nobody else. You know, you still have Kelsey, you still have McColl, you still have the scaling, you sign Juju, you have Clyde, you've got all these other guys. And so it's not that the cupboard is bare now. You said something really important. And just talking about Andy Reid is like a stabilizing force in all of this and how the trust implicit in somebody like that, it changes the dynamic in my opinion.

When you have a track record of success and when you've shown that you can put together a dangerous offense in so many different iterations and variations over the course of the years, you get the benefit of the doubt. As a player in that building, I'm sure there's an understanding, well, he's done it for 15 years. The proof is in the pudding here. There's no reason for us to be like, oh, that was it. You know, we're just never going to be the same again. That is such an important example to me of organizational stability and why good teams stay good, is that it really can't shock a building to its core when you have somebody like that at the top handling the messaging, handling what the next stage of all this is going to look like.

Right. And so that's why it's tricky because, so I feel like polls in Chicago is taking a ton of heat right now for not doing things to make the offensive line better, to make the receiver room better. He's not surrounding fields with enough talent and he's hanging him out to dry. That's like if this was year nine for him and they had won a Super Bowl and they had been playoff contenders a bunch, you would kind of trust the plan. He would have built some credibility. He would have built some, um, blanking on the word, but like the fans would trust him.

Capital. It's just like social cultural capital that you build up within, with the fan base. Yeah. And so he doesn't have that earn with the Bears fans right now. So everyone's freaking out thinking he doesn't. doesn't have a plan. They don't know how to protect the quarterback. They don't trust him. You know, all these other things where Coach Reid's got the 20-year track record. Brett Beach has the track record now as the GM. And the Packers organization has that track record.

So it's interesting in these trades because the Eagles trade is really the first time that this established organization went out and got the receiver or got the disgruntled guy. You know, even you could say Arizona trading for Hopkins. Arizona was in a better spot maybe than the bill of Ryan Houston Texans, but it's not like Arizona. was the model franchise for stability. They had the number one pick a year after having Josh Rosen. It was not going well there. Right.

So the Philly one was the one that surprised me because that's a team that you wouldn't have expected to give up draft capital to get a receiver like that and then pay them top of the market because they already had an older or more expensive roster. I know they do have the young quarterback to offset that, but it just didn't seem like the Jets or the dolphins or these other teams that are ready with CapS base. a young quarterback, not an aging defense or an aging roster that they've got guys to pay. And so that's the interesting one that made me think a little bit differently about this, because it was just, hey, we've got a young quarterback, we need to get better, we need talent, we've got a two or three year window where we can take a $25 to $28 million cap hit on one receiver as our quarterback's getting paid, not that much. And the Philly one made me think like, okay, maybe it does make sense for some of these other

franchises who are already a little bit more cash-strapped to do it. It's so fluid. And like you said, you've got in Kansas City in particular the coach Reed and Pat Mahom's stability to kind of elevate the roster. You would say that every team is searching for a quarterback that can elevate the roster around him as opposed to a quarterback that needs a roster to kind of elevate his best game. And Pat brings that. And so maybe you sacrifice a little bit at this one position. You still fill the receiver room with a lot of good players use that money towards the defense or towards the offensive line. And you'd like to think that net the team is better in the long run because of it. The Eagles are an interesting example just because I don't really know what stage they're. It's not a bad thing. I'm not saying this as a

criticism. I feel like they've kind of given themselves such a pivot point even in next year where if you have two first round picks, are you able to go out and get a first round quarterback next season? Are you able to move up and get one of those guys. I mean, every mock draft you've seen this week, there's been four or five of them in the top 12 because the way that they've built the rest of this thing, there aren't that many contracts just giving it a quick peruse right now that they can get out from under next year. A lot of these deals have dead money on them. You know, Brandon Brooks, I think $8 million comes off the books. They have like $20 million in cap space with a couple small moves.

But a lot of these other moves, they've kind of pushed the money into future years and don't really save anything. Brandon Graham, Jason Kelsey. And this is a team that has the benefit of we're willing to spend a ton of cash and they can do and that helps right i mean that's a real thing when you have a team that's willing to spend a ton of actual cash on this stuff you can move the money around when it's the saints or the bucks over the last couple years and the eagles are in that same conversation so if you look at it the the cap hits on the a jr brown deal are kind of interesting it's like

five million this year and eight million next year then it goes to 27 in 2024 so how that squares with the rest of their team building process i don't know exactly but they're one of those teams where even if there's not a ton of flexibility to the cap, if you just look at, give it a quick glance, I just assume they thought he's really good. We are going to have a very hard time finding a pass catcher in this draft, even when you factor the rookie contract into it. And especially when you look at their history of drafting guys in the first two rounds over the last five years, we might as well roll the dice here because now we've created a

situation for whoever our quarterback is over the next two to three seasons. if that guy's on a rookie deal where he is set up to succeed immediately, Jalen Hertz or somebody else. Right. It does seem like it's not a make or break year for Jalen Hertz, but this is the year, probably the best intersection of receiver play, offense-aligned talent, kind of that cap situation all coming together in a good way. It doesn't seem like Kelsey's going to play more than this year. We've been saying that for three or four years now, but it kind of does seem like, you know, last year for the center, of course they just drafted one, so they should be good at that. position but yeah it's it's we'll see what jalen can do and if not we've got two first rounders and

next year's draft and a quarterback heavy draft and we've got some flexibility to try to go find the guy they've also built the kind of offense that you can plug a guy into you know this year it's kind of baker and jimmy i'm not really sure who those guys are going to be next year it might still be those two to be honest but if you've got a stable enough offense where you can take a middle tier quarterback and again, this idea of the roster around the quarterback elevates the quarterback. You get one of these quarterbacks that independently maybe is a 15 to 18 to 20 quarterback, but on the right roster he becomes the top 10 guy. Well, you've now built the right offense to make that happen.

We talk a lot about offense being more predictable year to year, more stable year to year than defense. So I think investing on that side of the ball and having a little more knowledge that that side's going to be really strong is probably a smart thing to do as well. we've seen the Saints, you know, this year, last year, probably next year to Philly as well. Once the defense starts getting older and it's the same guys, you lose a little bit of that edge, a little bit of that fire, and you just don't want to have an old and expensive defense. You know, you want to have an old and cheap defense or a young and expensive defense, but the old and expensive defense is typically haven't really yielded what we wanted to see. So it makes a ton of sense from Philly's perspective.

You know, you can go through and kind of make the argument for, I mean, this is six or three trades, six teams. It makes sense for each individual team to deal Tyreek to Miami. It makes for Miami. It makes sense for Kansas City. It made sense for Tennessee. It made sense for Philly. So it's fun to do that. And this is kind of a different world we're living in now where these trades are happening. We're seeing more of them. The Instagram account thing is absolutely hilarious. I could go on for days about that. I want to talk about that. I want to talk about a couple of these other moves and the potential of a couple of these other moves more specifically. I want the Titans one to me feels different than the other ones for a lot of the reasons that

you said as it relates to Tyreek. He's 29 years old. He's going to be on a third contract. The quarterback is on a really expensive deal. Those things are not true for AJ Brown, a lot of them. He's 24 years old. The quarterback next year may not be on an expensive deal. They move on from Ryan Tanhill.

They drafted him link Wilson in the third round. Their quarterback becomes very cheap. AJ Brown would never be expensive at the same time Ryan Tannahill is expensive when you're looking at the Titans timeline. If you're on that team, especially as someone who was drafted by that team, is there something in the back of your mind when an all-pro level player that's a homegrown guy gets traded away for money reasons that makes you a little bit worried? You could say yes, and I'm sure for some guys it does a little bit. But the flip side is if it's for money reasons, it's not because they're going cheap. probably because they can't afford him, which means they're spending money elsewhere.

Sure. I'd imagine Jeffrey Simmons gets broke off here pretty soon. They've paid guys before. They pay their quarterback. They pay their running back. They pay their left back. They just paid Landry. Yeah.

Right. So they're paying their own guys. They brought in Bud Dupree. You know, they've paid Autry a little bit. Like, they're paying basically every position. It's just they put a valuation on the receiver. It seems like $16 million with incentives up to $20 is kind of what's been leaked. So I saw the reporting on it today in that, uh, Toronto Davenport from ESP.

Pienro today, and he reported that it sounds like they were trying to give him a deal in the range of the Godwin and Mike Williams deals, where it's three years, $60 million, $40 million guaranteed right in that same range. If I'm A.J. Brown, I'm not taking that. I'm a better play. I love Chris Godwin, but I still think I would want more than that if I were A.J. Brown, I would want a deal that's closer to the top of the market because I think that's the type of player that he is.

But I think even $20 million, if that's your cutoff point, that still is a cutoff point. That is a we're not paying more than this to this position. Right. And the thing that we just don't know is, is there a medical thing that they're afraid of? Is there something else behind the scenes? You know, you can have a $28 million valuation on them talent-wise and what he does for your offense, but you might have this medical thing that we're never going to know. They can't tell us, you know, it should come up in Philly's interview or maybe it doesn't.

You just kind of have to be around a guy to know. you just have the sneaking suspicion maybe hey his calves are tight he's had this imbalance he's had one or two small soft injury soft tissue injuries to this other spot, we think it's going to lead to injury down the road. It could honestly be that simple. I have no idea if that's the case, but a team has every right to just be skeptical. And if you're paying a guy at top of the market,

we saw this with the Rams, I think two years ago, maybe three when Donald got hurt, and I think it was a fractured rib or something. Like, you're paying four or five star guys, and if the most important star gets hurt, it kind of ruined the whole thing. You know, if you don't have that depth, especially at the receiver position

when you got one guy who can dictate what an entire defense does around him. You know, it's not really like Tanna Hill as the guy that they game plan for. It's Derek Henry and AJ Brown. So if you're worried about the injury history and you don't want to pay top of the market to a guy, like that does make sense. The Titans aren't going to tell us. They're not allowed to tell us. But it's just, it's interesting.

Like you said, every team has a certain cutoff point. It did seem like, you know, from what the chief said, they were trying to negotiate with Tyreek. it just got too expensive, especially after the Adams deal. The Packers seemed willing to play ball. Adams just wanted out. So, yeah, every team's got this thing. And Philly has always been eager, it seems like, to be early to the game and just pay guys what seems like a crazy market, overmarket deal. And then three years later, you're like, huh, that actually made sense.

You know, it made sense. Is this some Lane Johnson scar tissue that you're giving us from getting paid as much as he did? That's another different story. But no, in terms of Lane, in terms of Jason Peters, Fletcher Cox, we've got a long history of just being like, you know what? The cap's going to rise. We trust our evaluation process. We trust that A.J. Brown is worth this.

And, you know, in two or three years, the receiver market might be up to $30 million. And now A.J. Brown is underpaid based on what the Eagles paid him. And he's looking for more money. He's going to be 28 at the end of that deal. Right. So it's very real possibility given all the TV money coming in. So it just depends on the team what risk you're willing to take, you know, where you see the market going, what you're comfortable with. You know, we're at a point where almost every contract is going to seem ridiculous at the top of the market in terms of the money being made because no one's ever made that money.

The cap's growing at a crazy high rate. And it's nuts to think like, oh, this receiver is going to be worth $30 million, but he is going to be worth $30 million eventually. And, you know, percentage wise to the cap. I know Floreo talks about that a lot. but eventually, you know, percentage-wise to the cap, there's going to be $30 million receivers. And that's just the way it is. And it's going to sound weird the first couple of years and we're going to get used to it. So I think some of these numbers, they sound excessively high, but they're not quite as high because the cap is growing. So just looking at this very quickly, doing some pretty dirty math in 2012, so 10 years ago.

That was right when Calvin Johnson and Larry Fitzgerald were getting their new contracts. They were at like $16 million a year, pretty significant bump over the rest of them. the market. Vincent Jackson was third at 11 million. But in 2012, $16 million a year was $13.5% of the salary cap. That's not far off from what Devante Adams and Tyree Kill are getting based on where the salary cap is now. The number seems insane. Yeah, it's actually more. It's 30. They're at like 12%. So I think that's important to keep in mind here is that the numbers look crazy. But when you think about where the cap is going, is it really that crazy or is it the same amount we've essentially always paid the best receivers in the NFL.

Right. And I think the discussion to me is more, are you willing to pay a receiver top of the market money? That's the question. Right. What do you think about that? Do you think that the way, the pipeline as it exists now, because we've talked about this,

the Titans are the perfect example of this. It's not like they wanted to get different on offense. They picked a very similar kind of player to the one they traded away, but the one they're about to pay, instead of paying him $25 million a year, they're going to pay him $3 million a year, whatever the 18th pick makes. I'm not exactly sure.

So it's purely a financial decision betting on the talent pipeline at that position and being able to replicate that production or some percentage of it for a guy on a rookie contract. I think we're getting a little bit skewed by two outliers in terms of guys who have performed well on their rookie deal, Jefferson and Chase, and the general offensive trend of numbers

being through the roof of receivers and passing statistics in general. And so I don't necessarily think that these receivers are coming in and they're more skilled and they're more able to play in the NFL. You know, the flip side as people say offense alignment are coming in, they're not as ready to run block or do all these other things. But like if college is all about pass blocking, shouldn't college offense alignment come in ready to pass block? Like I know the arguments, RPAs and all this other stuff. But like I just don't think that that's as valid an argument as kind of the media narrative that's out there that, oh, the undermarket thing is to not sign these top guys and receivers are so deep and all this other stuff.

I don't see that quite as much. I think you just haven't have two exceptionally good players who make people think that it's pretty easy to come and be an elite receiver right away. And so it's more just are you willing to pay a top of the market receiver? I think in terms of A.J. Brown for sure, like, yeah, you're probably going to bet on the guy who's 24 who's big and strong and has a pretty good track record. you're less likely to bet on the 30-plus-year-olds. It just doesn't seem like it pans out quite as well. As much as DeAndre Hopkins has helped at Arizona, he was injured a bunch last year.

He's going to be suspended this upcoming year. It's looking like that wasn't necessarily the greatest trade in terms of how often that guy is going to be on the field for the team. A lot of the times when you're trading for a guy who's on the wrong side of 30, it just doesn't work out, especially if you have to pay him a top-of-the-market deal. So from that perspective, I probably say no, I agree more with the Chiefs and the Packers version of things. The Tennessee one, you know, again, it comes down to the finances and just kind of how the cap shakes out and whether you think you can build a room of three or four receivers, maybe deeper, maybe, you know, spread out a little bit more as opposed to one top guy and now you're spending less money on others. So it's a tough one.

It's kind of a combat to say it's, you know, context specific. but I would say if the receiver has shown two plus years of pretty high production and he's 26 or younger, I'd probably gamble on the side of giving that guy the money, especially if your offensive coordinator believes that he is a specific reason that defenses change things and makes things easier for the rest of the offense. I think that's a specific caveat. And I think that he is. I think AJ Brown is that type of player for the way that the Titans have played over the last few years. It's funny. I was talking to O'GM about it this week about the Brown. on trade. And I think he said something similar about not is he heard or whatever, but just alarm bells

went off. Like, why would you trade a 24 year old guy in his prime? Like, what's going on there? And that's, that was the reaction just because this is not like the Adams or the Hill trades. There's something else going on here, whatever it may be that is probably at the core of this, even if it's financial or something just beyond that. Yeah. I would say like, you know, they can say, oh, well, we were negotiating. It got to a point where we knew he wasn't going to be willing to sign and we had to move on from him. And that kind of puts the onus on the player like he's not willing to sign for it. But again, it's you guys to put the $20 million cap on it and you said we're not going to pay you top of the market money. You don't have to do that anything right now.

82% of top of the market, right? So it's, of course, the team's going to spin it to try to look as good as possible and like, well, we tried our best. And it was the player who said that he wasn't going to be willing to commit. So we had to move on. You know, that's just, that's not the case. that any team can pay any amount of money to any player as Cleveland has shown us. All right. So the last ride receiver specific thing I wanted to ask you, you're in a locker room with Debo Samuel and what's going on right now.

Somebody who's clearly unhappy. Have you ever been in that sort of situation before with a guy who has publicly kind of been at odds with the team? And what is that like in that moment? And if you have not, how do you think you'd respond if that was going on with the team that you were playing for? I have been in some locker rooms where you could tell guys are not very happy with their situation, the team situation, their role, kind of all those things. It does get contentious. I mean, I think most people have been in a work environment that they're not very happy with and it kind of bleeds into your everyday attitude. You know, attitude, you know, you like to talk about being able to control your attitude and be positive and all that stuff.

but if you're frustrated and you go to the place that makes you unhappy every single day and you don't really feel like you have a way out and it's just something you're forced to do, especially in football when it's physical and violent and difficult and you're putting your body on the line, those things tend to not be great situations. And so it has to get resolved somehow. Either the coaches have to sit that guy down and just say like, hey, this is the deal. We're in season. I'm using in season as an example because you don't see it quite as much in season and tends to resolve

out of season, which is easier anyway. But if it's happening in season, a guy's frustrated with his playing time, he wants to be traded or these other things. It's on the coaching staff on the front office to sit down with him and or his agent and just be like, look, we have to figure out a solution.

Like, we can't have you out here kind of being a disruptive force, not being happy. So in discord. Right. And especially if it's a bigger name guy. You know, you look at, I mean, the Jacksonville thing with Jalen Ramsey, that's one of the more high-profile

situations we've had in the NFL during the season and you kind of just are like all right we're ready to move on like a lot of the young guys look up to him he's a great player he's a leader when he's in the right mood to do so and this isn't what we need on our team so like maybe we do have to take 60 cents on the dollar just get him out of here and that will be you know addition by subtraction but there has to be some sort of sitting down talking to him you know i guess i had to bring up watson because that's just not the greatest topic but like last year they kind of came to like this is how we're going to handle the season and that's just how it's going to be and so you kind of have to do that but yeah it's not a fun situation when you've got a co-worker who wants out is

clearly wants out you know most guys start making this nine comments about everything and you know everything a coach says it's how this guy's an idiot he doesn't always talking about um just not a good workplace environment and so a lot of these things tend to manifest in the off season you know i'm sure debo's not at oTAs right now i would imagine something it's worked at but the time training camp rolls around, whether it's a trade or an extension or whatever it is. And if not, like, I guess the new CBA rules, he kind of has to show up regardless, but like, he'll show up, he'll just say his hamstring's hurt or his back's hurt and he'll just be there until things get resolved. And that's almost a worse situation for the team. Like, it got negotiated that

way, but I'd say the team probably doesn't want a guy showing up and just like purposely pretending to be hurt or disgruntled and having to work through that. And that guy just sits in all the meetings and sits in the back, you know, unhappy and not really part of things. So, It's an interesting situation. I'm just imagining like Bart Simpson, like in the back of a classroom, like throwing stuff at the teacher. Yeah. You know, the problem is you don't want to be fine for anything, conduct detrimental, because once you start giving them reason to find you, then that's when guarantees void.

Yeah. That's, you know, not the greatest situation. So it's a, yeah, it's not a good scenario. You definitely don't want it to happen during the season during training camp. You want these things to be taken care of out of the season. but, you know, guys understand what's going on. You know, if your teammates unhappy, you know, most of the guys talk to him and you just kind of understand what he's going through.

And you hope that there's a resolution that kind of works for both sides. But you basically almost never want to see that guy go unless you just hate him and he's not very fun to be around. You just, like, get him out of here. But, like, you don't want the scenario to be, all right, the teammates to trade him. You mentioned the J-Lam-Ramsey thing. And that brings us nicely to the next thing I wanted to talk about. Because I think it's easy to make big sweeping.

comments about where the league is and how things have changed in this regard. But do you think, based in some of the player movement that we've seen over the last year or so, and guys being like, I want to go here. And that happens. Even the Jalen Rams thing of, I'm out of here. Like, you cannot make me play. It's easier to trade me. Do you think we've reached a new place and a new era when it comes to player agency and movement?

Yeah, it does seem that way. And I would say it's probably a good thing. The players, you know, we are the ones putting everything on. on the line, we are the ones giving the entertainment. If you were to create the NFL from scratch, without any kind of preconceived notion of what this is supposed to look like,

I'm not sure that you'd say that the 32 richest people or the 32 people who had a rich parent that got to inherit a team would be the ones profiting the most off of this thing. You'd probably start with all right, what makes the product so good? You know, the guys who play the game,

how do we compensate them the highest and make sure that they're making the most money from it and go from there. And I think societally, that's kind of what we're realizing is, you know, in all sorts of different fields that the people who are kind of producing the things that are most valuable are starting to realize the power that they have for better, for worse, on different perspectives. I mean, that's obviously a very capitalistic way of viewing things. But it is America. I mean, that kind of is the situation we're in now. And it works really well in some things and really poorly in other scenarios. So there's good and bad. But in this particular,

particular one, I do think players are realizing the power they have, the agency they have, you know, five or ten years ago, I think these things were way more looked down upon and like, you don't want to be the one guy that's holding out or the one guy doing this thing. But now that it's happened a few times and guys are getting the way, they are getting the trades, they are navigating themselves to their hometown or the best situation for them. You're getting to play over with your college quarterback that you're best friends with. You start to realize like, huh, you know, I am pretty important. I am really good player. People will do. love me. I do have this power. Like, I don't want to necessarily keep playing for the city that I

just happen to get drafted to. And I think it's good on the players that are willing to do that. You know, that's something that yielding or wielding that power. It's kind of always scary to me. Like, I wasn't willing to hold out. I wasn't willing to, you know, do that. You and I are wired the same way when it comes to that. Yeah, it scares the crap out of me. So, you know, I always look at it as good on the player for doing that. And, yeah, I mean, I think it definitely is a different landscape and you're going to see a bit more player movement. And I don't think it's a bad thing. And, you know, you know, as good as anybody the last few months have been pretty exciting.

It's kind of fun. Yeah, it's, I think it's a balance because with the NBA, I can totally understand of, well, this is stupid. Like, all the good players are going to be on four teams. Like, fuck this. Which is not really true. Like, the suns are incredible to watch. And it's just, they're in a completely different space. And the bucks aren't like that.

And they're super fun to watch. and even the Celtics aren't built like that. So I do think it's a little bit overstated, but I do think some people's eyes glaze over. With basketball, there's only five guys on the court at the same time. One guy changes things in such a dramatic way that I can understand it being a little bit more problematic as it comes to balance of power in the league.

One receiver changing teams doesn't shift the balance of power in any sort of conference, any sort of division even. Even quarterbacks, it can move the needle a little bit, but it's still not to that degree. So I do think that the NFL has hit a nice little sweet spot where people aren't going to be like, oh, fuck this. I can't believe that these guys just choose wherever they want to go because it's not that impactful. But it also creates even more interest, drama, everything you want at what would be a down period of the league. I didn't sleep in March.

So that was one thing that I could take it or leave it. But I love the fact that there's more intrigue at times where it would typically be a little bit quieter. So I do think it lands in a nice little sweet spot where it creates interest in the league and it's not something where people like, oh, this is stupid. Like this is going to diminish how much I care about this. And you said the important point, which is that aside from a quarterback, none of these guys really make that much of a difference in terms of, yeah, this is the one thing that's going to put this one team over the top

and change the entire course of the franchise. It takes one of those eight quarterbacks that we all know to do that to make that happen. and it just seems like those top guys aren't going to be available. The team isn't going to be willing to trade him or move on from him or anything like that. So you're in a Russell-Wilson situation where you had 10 or 12 good years. You won a Super Bowl. The player starts to decline. You can blame that on a lot of different things, whether that's everything else around him.

He stayed the same. He got injured. He had these other things. It's hard to parse out. I think we're all interested to see what he looks like on Denver and whether he bounces back to his kind of peak Seattle form. But yeah, you don't tend to have a Mojoms or, you know, Josh Allen right now, or the guys who are truly franchise defining who carry the load and bring their team to the championship game every single year, you know, those guys don't tend to change teams very often.

And if they do, I mean, Peyton Manning got hurt. Tom Brady just was with a team for 20 years and wanted to change the scenery and to go somewhere more fun and warmer. So it just doesn't happen that often. And, yeah, that to me is the really good point. that all these trades can happen and they're not going to change the tenor that much, but they are going to create a lot of discussion, a lot of fan excitement, new things to see in the upcoming year. It just kind of creates all that buzz that we love to see and we like people talking and loving

the NFL. It's just fun that there are teams willing to be on each side of those deals. We haven't gotten to a place where every team, there's a homogeneity in the thinking, well, but why would I make this tree? Well, Christian McCaffrey wasn't traded, so not every team for every deal. A lot of these teams are there are teams with different motivations. There are different points in where they're trying to be.

They're trying to accomplish different things sometimes. I mean, with the Raiders, I don't think Devante Adams makes them a Super Bowl contender, but I do think that more people are going to be interested in Raiders football. If I were a Raiders fan, my years would peak up, perk up a lot more than they would have last year even when they surprisingly made the playoffs. Like, oh, this team is going for it.

Like, I'm excited to tune in to Raider games this year, even if the efficiency of the moves that they've made can probably be questioned in a vacuum. And I think sometimes that's okay. It depends on what you're trying to accomplish as a team. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, it's interesting because in terms of the fandom, there's kind of the two sides. Like, you've already got your diehards who are going to watch

and we're going to come to the games and buy all the merch and spend a lot of money. And you want to keep them that way, right? So bring it in Devante Adams, signing your quarterback to this big extension on paper in reality, not really. But it sounds like, you know, hey, we're committed a car for a while. Devante Adams is here.

Like, that's going to keep the stickiness of that fan. And now maybe the French fan who is in Vegas and maybe they're going to go to a casino on Sunday or maybe they spent too long their Saturday night and they're going to stumble home. Like, hey, the Packers. Stadium's right there, man. You could see it out by window when I was staying in the Cosmo last week. Yeah, but to your point, like maybe more casual fans are starting to tune in and like, hey, this team seems like it's going to be better. It's got a couple star guys that I've seen on Sunday night football before Monday night football. Maybe I should tune in for that.

And then, you know, they tune in with the first few games. Devante balls out. The team's 3 and 0, 2 and 1. And now you've got these casual fans becoming real fans. And it is, I think, good for the league to have that excitement and to have as many eyes on them and to make the diehard fan as happy as he's always been and also be able to bring in new fans. I wanted to, let's stick in the AFC West for a second because they want to ask you what you think of the reset. You alluded to it a little bit where you're now thinking as a team.

All right, if we trade a Tyree Kill, can we replicate that production in some way with three guys in draft pick, the money that we free up? What do you think of the complexion of the offense now with the guys that they, now it's a MVS, Juju, Sky Moore, that's what you see. It's no longer assets, it's players tangibly that we've seen that are going to have to replace him. What do you think of the moves they've made and the little pivot they made? I think it's been a good offseason for them. it's going to be interesting to see how that all comes together, as we discussed earlier with Coach Reed, you trust that he has kind of the best ability to know

where these guys are going to excel, whether or not. I think that's, when you look at McColl, you can say, oh, you've been disappointed because he hasn't had the production and stuff. But I think he got kind of compared to Tyreek a bunch and they are different players. As we said, Tyreek is kind of that full receiver runs every route and has world-class speed on top of it,

where McCull has been in a different role. He hasn't been asked to do all those things. You know, Tyreek plays Tyreek's position. You know, maybe this frees up that freedom for Mikul to jump into it. And I'm excited to see how he performs this year because he's probably going to have a little bit bigger role in the offense. And it's not just, you know, running these deep overs and running these other things. You know, he might become more of that, you know, kind of puzzle piece that gets shifted around and is asked to do more. You've got two guys who are now a lot bigger than what Pat has been used to.

His throw radius probably just increased by. like 80%. And also, I mean, if MVS is going to be that speed at three guy in some of those formations, what he can do as a blocker and what he can do in the run game, that just feels like a little tiny shift. Like they're making little tiny pivots all over the place. And when you sum all of those up, I think it's going to be really fun to watch. Yeah, it is.

And I think this goes back to Akash Anaham thing that when he thinks about the receiver room, he thinks of it like a starting five in basketball, that you want different guys for different roles. And it seems like the chiefs. had a lot of guys in a more similar role. It seemed like kind of Sammy Pringle, D-Robb were in one role, and Tyreek and McColl were in different roles. Yeah, and now you've got a couple bigger guys.

One of those guys is to take the top off. The other is really that, you know, kind of underneath intermediate body guys up. You've got a deep threat in McColl, who's now going to have an expanded role, and we get to see everything he's going to do. You've got Sky Moore, who, you know, draft Twitter has loved for a while and love the chiefs picking him. and you still have Kelsey and you've got, you know, hopefully Jody comes back healthy and you've got Noah Gray who you drafted last year

and a couple other receivers, you know, what if Justin Ross is healthy and he becomes the fifth receiver, you know? Like the possibility is really endless and I think the team is more versatile. You can do a few of those, you know, wide receiver screens that you run a bunch. And now, you know, you've got 6-3-210, 6-2-220 and 6-5-265 blocking for Mikul instead of, you know, 5-9-185. You know, that's a difference. That is a difference.

And now you're able to get a guy who's really explosive and McAul ball in his hands and he's got three more tight-endish bodies in front of him to block instead of two smaller guys in a tight-end. That's the secret sauce for the Packers' RPO game. Yeah. When people are talking about why they can do that, it's Rogers having his finger on the button the entire time. That helps.

And Devante's a really nice yak guy with some of just those little bubbles that they throw. But having two guys that are built like, modern-day tight ends in a lot of ways, that allows that version of the offense to function. And now the chiefs can do some version of that where you're tweaking even the RPO side of things a little bit. Right. And it's just, it's going to be really interesting. And, you know, I'm excited to see the offensive line is like continually kind of overhauled. You have last year, you know, best center and guard rookies in the NFL. Some people consider Korea to be the best, you know, PFF considered him to be the best center of football overall. those guys are back. You usually make a huge jump

your second year, especially if you had such a good first year. So now you've got two young studs who are going to be ascending even more than last year. You've got Tuni who's still great. You got Orlando Brown who made huge progress with the adjustment to that offense, and by the end of the year he was playing really good ball. We've got three or four guys now to play

that right tackle spot. A lot of guys who have played before and played for the Chiefs as well. So you combine the receiver, I don't know if upgrade is the right word, but kind of just like upgrade in terms of the entire package. Yeah, the reset. I was thinking more, you know, literal upgrade in height when I was saying that.

But, yeah, it just... It's a super-s-subsize. Yeah, it's a different offense. It's going to be fun to see. I really like what they've done. I would imagine that they went in and thinking, like, you know, if we could be more physical across the board and we can, you know, force teams, I'm not going to get into the whole too high thing,

but, like, if we can run the ball and get the yard, that we need to be efficient at any point in the game against any defense, that's going to be a net positive for us. The team has always seen RPO's and little wider receiver screens as an extension of the run game. And so even upgrading a couple blockers in that role, to your point, like, that could be a huge difference that people don't really know about. And that's part of why Sammy was so important because he was a huge dude. Sammy is much bigger wide receiver than people realize. Now in Greed by the way. Yeah. Everyone just thought like, oh, he ran whatever, 437. He must be a speed guy and we saw all the highlights of him duke and people in college he's a huge dude and he was

at the front of all those bunch formations he was the guy forcing press coverage out of the way he was the guy creating the space in the bunch and he might not have he might not have had the catches and the receiving yards that everyone wanted based on the salary but he's a big part of that offense and they've kind of been missing that specific role now they've got guys who can fill that all right i want to ask you and i don't want to have the same conversation everyone else to that over the last couple days because I don't really give a shit about what his answer was. I want to ask you about the Ryan Tannanhill comments during the press conference because I do think you've had an interesting experience with this and I wanted to hear just your

thoughts about it overall. For those of you who don't know, if you have consumed sports media all over the last 72 hours, Ryan Tannhill said it's not his job to mentor Malik Willis, which it's not, it's not his job. What would you say is the typical dynamic when you are brought in as a young player within a position group. I know it's context-dependent everywhere you go, but what is the typical dynamic between a veteran player and a rookie in a position room? The typical dynamic is as the young guy, you don't want to cause trouble. Like, you don't want to be the one that's, you know, not understanding things and asks a bunch of questions that screws up drills that makes the older guys

frustrated. You know, you want to be obviously liked and respected and kind of fit in with the rest of the group. And so you put an onus on yourself to learn everything as best you can, to understand what's going on to not have to be, you know, in training camp, it's 915 and you're getting the install for the next morning's practice. Like, you don't want to ask like, hey, coach, on this B block, like, what's the specific angle? Can you go over that again? Like, you don't want to be that guy. And a lot of guys won't ask the question because they don't want to be that and they don't know the answer. And then the next day they screw it up. And then it's just like this vicious cycle. But you just kind of want to fit in. You want to make friends. You want to perform well. You want to

make the team. So that's kind of where you are from the younger person. perspective, and it depends on where you're drafted, to be fair, right? If you're first, second, third round, really fourth round as well, you're kind of expecting to make the team. Like, it's not a given for sure, but it's a pretty well-known thing that you're going to make the team. You got to screw something up if you did, and if you didn't make the team. Yeah, something happened. If you're a quarterback, especially in a third round and above, like, you're going to make the team. So it's a different mindset for those guys to kind of have a little bit of that security, knowing, like yeah they brought me here for a reason like I still have to show them that I can play I can start

I can do whatever but like my roster spot isn't necessarily up for grabs once you start getting you know a little bit a fourth round imagine Baltimore this year all those fourth rounders but really like into the fifth round and beyond that's when you know guys getting cut in training camps a lot more prevalent so those guys are coming in and like goal number one is whatever I need to do to make this team like I know that it's not a guarantee there's going to be a lot of competition I'm probably going to be down on the dev chart a little bit. And it's a little bit different mindset. You know, you kind of have to do what you need to do to prioritize. I need to make sure I'm prepared. I need to make sure I'm doing things the right way. You know, if I do have to ask that annoying question and be that

annoying guy, like, I need to do that because I have to perform tomorrow. I have less reps than the other guys. I have to make this count. And so it's interesting because there are kind of those different, you know, roles and different things that guys think about. So it's tough. It's a lot tougher to be in a situation where you're not guaranteed a roster spot. You're fighting for a job. You're fighting for playing time. It's way more stressful than, you know, being a starter who just knows, like the next day, yeah, I'm going to get all the reps with the ones. Everything's cool. Like, I've been in this offense for a couple of years and it's going to be nice and easy. When you and Joe had a very good relationship, he taught you a lot. You were in a really good

group with a bunch of really good guys. When you were learning from him, just the ways that he operated, his habits, all of that stuff that you took a lot from. Is that something you were just observing? Did he reach out to you and kind of extend to hand and say, hey, I'll show you this kind of stuff. Did you ask him questions? Which direction was the communication? What was the dynamic like between you guys and that? Early on especially? Well, it's a little bit of everything. You know, as the young guy, you're probably asking more questions than that guy's really reaching out. But Joe's also a great guy. And so he, you know, if you see something like, hey, you should try this. I notice us in practice, you should try this. But like, you've got two and a half, three hour

practices. And so you're doing a lot of the drills. You know, after one-on-ones, you go over like, hey, did you see mine? What did you think there? You know, that's kind of what everybody does. You go up to the guy you trust the most and you say, hey, do you see that rep? What do you think? You know, when you're watching film, it depends if you're sitting next to the guy or not. But like, hey, you know, what did you think of that practice or what did you think of that rep? And so you're kind of always asking this questions, talking about things. You know, I'd say for the most part, veterans are willing to help. And I would imagine if, you know, Malik is doing something that's like totally off base,

Tannenhill is going to be like, hey, like, you should try it this way. Like, I think you have more success. He's not just going to be like, well, screw this guy. He's coming to take my job. I'm not going to give him any help. That's kind of my thought here is that there's a line between being an asshole and being a mentor. Right. And if you can fall somewhere within that sweet spot, you're probably doing what's appropriate.

And the quote on paper looks so much worse than listening to him saying it. Because if you listen to him, say it, it just, you could tell there's no asshole in it. There's no meanness at all. It's just like, you know, it's not my job to like specifically mentor him and to like help him through every single thing. But like I'm here. He's going to learn from me. We're going to be collaborative. Like he said all the right things in the right tone.

It's just on paper with no context. That quote just looks like shit. And that's obviously where we are in today. So, yeah, it's most veterans aren't assholes. you know, they're not going to like perfectly or purposely not coach you or not help you to spite you because they think you're after their job. That's just not really the way it works. It takes a special kind of person to, you know, do that.

And those guys just don't tend to exist that much. You know, if you're that big of a jerk, you've, you know, probably been weeded at at some point because, you know, it's not going to work out for you in some other regard. What did you do? Were you a text on the night of the draft guy? Did you wait for people to come to you? they were younger players. How did you handle that? That's a good question. Well, we never really drafted guys in Kansas City.

Yeah, that's true. That's true. I left. That's what sucked at the end of every year is we didn't really have any good draft pick money to spend on gifts for us. So in Cleveland we always did because I was a second rounder, Joel was a second rounder, Cam Irving was the first rounder. We always had a good amount of guys to pool from. in Kansas City, I think until, I don't know, Lucas was the third rounder, and then he opts out, so he's not even around that year.

And then I leave and then Creed the second rounder. So we didn't even have any good money in the offensive line room. But no, you get to meet with the guys. You know, usually as a couple weeks until they're around. Once they're around, you know, you're going to see them. You're able to help out, ask questions. Like, they get integrated into your schedule, kind of. They just have, like, a couple more hours in the morning or afterwards.

I kind of forget how that works, but they have a little bit of extra time with the coaches. And, you know, I always, I like the coaching side of things. That's something that's always appealed to me and that's been fun for me. And I hate seeing guys struggle and I kind of know that like mental anguish of trying to get things right and feeling like you don't know how to accomplish it and not being, you know, in a good headspace from that perspective. So I've always tried to help guys. But again, you're not necessarily like in the meeting room, like helping them on every single

rep or whatever. It's just like you watch a bunch of film, you know, especially for younger guys. They're probably in a different group of like ones or twos or threes. So you can watch them more than you're watching yourself when you're watching yourself as a starter. And so yeah, after practice or after meetings, you can go and be like, hey, you know, I saw you do these things. You know, maybe try this tomorrow. And it's usually not this like bucket list of things that you've got eight different things to hit the guy on. Just like, hey, you know, your stance is a little funky. Why don't you try this?

Or you're leaning a little too much. You know, I've done this in the past. I think it'll help. That's a lot different than I think what people think of mentoring, which is like you're there going over every single rep with the guy and sharing notes on installs. And like, it's just, it's a lot different, I think, than what the public perception is. Yeah, exactly. And so kind of to your point and to your question, some guys are more forthright with it.

Some younger guys are more willing to go up to a veteran and be like, hey, did you see my practice today what do you think or hey i'm trying this thing and pass pro it's not quite working do you mind helping me real quick and i every team i've been on it's it's been a good room and basically everyone's able to learn from everybody else you know i'm sure joe tuny was learning from tray smith last year you know Orlando brown probably learned a little bit from wiley or from creed or like you just you're always picking things up from other guys and it's just the cool part of football The last thing I wanted to ask you, it's something that came up a couple different times as we were having discussions this week or things in the news.

And two things really made me think about it. One was the Grady Jared extension in Atlanta. And you have this team, the Falcons, we talked about cash spending earlier on the show with regard to the Eagles. Falcons are now near the bottom of the league. They're rebuilding. They're tearing down. Everyone knows it. And they've been pretty open about it with the decisions that they've made outside of two things.

They re-signed Jake Matthews to an extension. And they re-signed Grady Jarrett to an extension. I don't think that's an accident. I think that they're trying to say, all right, here are two kind of pillars, one on either side of the ball as we rebuilt. And guys that can establish and instill a culture and having two kind of forces in that locker room to say, this is how we want to do things, even if we're going to lose a bunch of games. And the other thing arose when Lindsay and I were talking yesterday, if you're a veteran on the Seahawks, your quandary digs, for example, you come back on an extension and that team is going to roll out some combination of Drew Locke and Gino Smith at quarterback this year.

what does that do for organizational culture this idea of always compete that p carroll's going to sit up there and say do we believe that and how does that make you feel so to me the question is do you think there's something to balancing a rebuild with not letting your culture get away from you do you think that is a consideration that is important for teams as they're thinking about this stuff yeah absolutely and that's i would say a big reason why the lions went and got dan campbell because he can kind of be that centralizing force to provide the energy and the juice. And, you know, every single day he's the message. He's the fire.

He's the kneecaps and all that stuff. You know, in terms of the players, you know, you do want to have veteran players who are leading by example. I'm not sure that you need to pay 30-plus-year-olds premium contracts to make that happen. That's where maybe I'd push back probably more than the Grady Jarrett one than the Jake Matthews because I think Matthews's health history has been pretty flawless. Offensive line is a position that declines a little bit less obviously than the defense to tackle. And so I'm not sure that you need to spend, you know, $18 million or $17 million a year on a detackle who's going to be 30 on this deal to have a veteran presence on the defense side of the ball. The lines did it with Michael Brockers.

It was slightly different financial tier we're shopping in there. We've seen a lot of guys who get signed to different teams. and they're coming in to help out with the culture to help out with the message and keeping the young guys on track, if you can get that for two or three million at a position and doesn't necessarily have to be a pillar of the team who's been there for a while, you know, I think you could probably get most of that ability. You know, I guess I just, I'd like to think that you don't need a veteran who's been on the team for seven or eight years who's produced at a high level to be the guy that

shows everyone else how to practice right way. I like to think that you have guys who know how to practice and that you have other people on the team who can hold them accountable. So I'd push back on that a little bit because I don't know that that's something I'd particularly do as a GM, spend that kind of money on that age, those positions to just have that veteran to be a stabilizing force. To be fair, they create $11 million in cap space. by doing this as well.

It was a contract there would have to pay out anyway. Right. So I didn't really want to bring that up because I could go on about that as well. But like you've compounded years of cap mistakes by now potentially making another one just to reduce the cap hit this year.

I don't know. It's a weird thing. They're going to have $125 million in cap space next off season. And it's going to be $20 million. And it's the last year of his deal if they wanted to be. Yeah, I know. But I'm just saying. I can understand it.

Like what else are you going to spend the money on next year? I mean, I think it's one of those things. Yeah, but one, you don't know, like, you just don't know what the market's going to bear. Maybe they're a team that's probably going to want to get a quarterback at some point and upgrade. Maybe a guy becomes available, and you can front load a deal from that perspective. Two, the way the cap works, you can roll over money for the next year. So if you are hitting in the draft and you are having young guys that you want to pay, like you can keep rolling that over until you're able to sign two, three, four, five of those guys.

So I don't know. I just think you're in cap hell and you're having. to extend the guy to lower the cap who's at a premium position on a third contract on the wrong side of 30 to do that just to like keep one guy on defense who can be a leader to me that isn't totally worth it you know the Seattle thing's a little bit different you know you want to talk about guys getting disgruntled in their situations guys who have been part of awesome defenses and now their quarterback sucks and they're like all right this is not what I sign up for like if you're a veteran offensive lineman on that team and and you you're walking into the season

that. Do you just kind of understand like it's a waste? Like this is just a season that what are we trying to accomplish? How do you just kind of sift through that as a player? It's tough. That was something that was different of my experience in Cleveland than chose to kind of get back to that. Like Joe very much knew, hey, our quarterback sucks. We're probably not going to be good this year. And he's talked about some of the mental health stuff he went through that it's like it's really difficult to just know you're playing football and you're probably not going to win. And like the point of playing football is to win and to have fun. And like you just sign up for another season. You're under contract. And like you kind of know that realistically you don't have a chance to do that.

So that's that's a very difficult thing. Those guys are in, you know, pretty tough situations to go from Russell Wilson to, you know, downgrading a quarterback the way they have. And it's going to be, I mean, it's going to be obvious. Like the first couple of practices, like it's, like it's just going to be a lot different. The office is going to look a lot worse. It's going to be a lot less crisp. There's going to be, you know, that one guy who's the rallying force of the team. So it's going to be tough and those guys are going to be in a situation where, you know, your accountability to your teammates and to your position and to what you're actually doing is going to need to take over. You know, it's a lot easier as an offense alignment to do that.

You know, even if you kind of know that your team isn't going to win more than six games, and you still know you can't let the guy get hit. You can't let yourself play crappy. I think it's a little easier on the defensive side of the ball or at other positions to not fly in there a thousand miles an hour. Maybe you're a little bit more measured. Maybe you take a little bit different angle. Maybe, you know, you let up a little bit more. You can't really do that at offensive line and get away with it. So it's just, it's a difficult situation.

It's not something I envy that's, you know, tough to be part of a team, a really successful one. It gets rid of its quarterback. He's kind of a big reason why the teams have the success. and now you're in your 30s and you're probably not making as much money as you used to and you know that your team has a certain ceiling and it's a lot different than what it's been. Yeah, I think that's very real. I mean, I can't even imagine that where you have such a small shelf life as an NFL player. Even if you're somebody who played for a decade, that one year of those 10 years,

it's a pretty big percentage. And the idea that that one year, you're not even, there's no hope of accomplishing anything. Like you're really just like, all right, how do I put myself in a really good position here? That has to be the thought there when you know that the franchise isn't trying to win. I can't even imagine how difficult that is. No, I mean, I can't either. I got lucky that I had the bad years when I was young and I didn't know any better and I had fun with my friends every day. And it was a good working environment.

You know, I didn't go from that situation and leave and go to a worse situation. That's something that you don't really see. you just don't see guys over 30 who kind of hang on for no reason and just sign, you know, say guys used to make an $8 million a year, he's probably not going to sign with a bottom five team for $2 or $3 million. Like that just doesn't happen. Trust me. I'm thinking about the Bears wide receiver room right now.

And I'm painfully aware of that. Right. So it's just like those guys aren't signing on to play for bad teams. If anyone has the choice, like, usually just going to be like, all right, I'd rather sit the year out, not that that's a good option anyway, but I'd rather just like sit the year out instead of play for a lot less money on a team that doesn't really have a chance. It's different when you're making, you know, six plus a million a year and you feel like you're still being compensated pretty decently. But if you're not, if you're, you know, maybe a friend starter, a course special teamer, you know, high quality backup. And you were having a lot of fun.

You were making the playoffs. It was a good team. There's a great work environment. Now that gets drift from you. and you feel like you know you've kind of been underpaid always just the other things made up for it well now the other things aren't making up for it so what happens uh i don't envy like i said any of those positions it's it's a really tough thing and a 10 year career you're very lucky to get a 10 year career so to throw away you know 10% of that career on a season that you kind of know isn't going

anywhere um it's tough and i mean that's where maybe guys are realizing again getting back to their power maybe they can kind of ask for trades or they can ask to try to find somewhere else or like, hey, if this thing goes south, like by the trade deadline, you know, I'd really love to move to a situation where I still have a chance to compete and win a championship. Pete Carroll apparently on the radio today said, I don't see us making a trade for a veteran quarterback. So the Seahawks will be potentially rolling into the season. He also couldn't envision Russell Wilson being traded. Yeah, that's also smells of maintaining leverage in any sort of Baker-Mayfield conversation.

So yeah that's that's an interesting one. We'll see where that goes. Mr. Schwartz, this is great. I miss doing this. I really appreciate you doing it. And we will continue to do it here, hopefully over the course of the off season. You're settled now.

You're home. You're in a new house. Your life is like reached a nice little level here. That's one way to put it. We'll go with that. That sounds good for the podcast. I appreciate the time, buddy. It's great to chat with you.

Yeah, same. Thank you so much. All right, guys. That's all we got for today. It's really all we got for this version of the schedule. I think we said earlier on the show this week. I feel like that is now the end of the season. It is the week after the draft and recapping the draft and recapping the offseason like we just did.

We're going to move into our offseason cadence starting next week, which is going to be three days a week. We're going to be back on Tuesday with a mailback. I think we're going to have weekly mailback throughout the offseason. We'll answer your guys's question. So please submit those questions, athletic football show at gmail. Please get them in by, let's say 1 p.m. Eastern on Monday, if that works for you guys. You can also leave us a voicemail. I don't know the voicemail number off the top of my head. I will be tweeting it out. You can be on the lookout for that.

So we'll be three days a week over the course of the off season. We got some fun stuff coming your way. Really looking forward to that. In the meantime, please rate and review the podcast on your podcast platform of choice. It would mean a lot to us as we wrap up year two here. If you like the podcast, let us know. It would mean a lot to me. I'd really appreciate it. please subscribe to the athletic.com slash football show. It never stops, man. We're going to have stuff about the NFL all May, all June.

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Talk to you later. This was the athletic football show.