The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - The wildest 48 hours on the 2025 NFL coaching carousel

Episode Date: January 28, 2025

One of the signature NFL franchises announced its head coach on a Friday night at 10 pm, and that was the second craziest development of the weekend in the coach hiring cycle. So, yeah, it was a wild weekend on the coaching carousel. Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen discuss Pete Carroll to the Raiders, Brian Schottenheimer's ascension in Dallas, Liam Coen's on-again/off-again/on-again partnership with the Jaguars and more on this episode of The Athletic Football Show.RundownPete Carroll to the RaidersBrian Schottenheimer takes over in DallasLiam Coen goes to the JaguarsThe Saints are getting shut outCoordinator moves, headlined by Bobby Slowik and Dennis AllenHost: Robert MaysCo-Host: Derrik KlassenExecutive Producer: Michael BellerProducer: Michael BellerSubscribe to The Athletic Football Show...AppleSpotifyYouTubeFollow Robert on Bluesky: @robertmays.bsky.socialFollow Derrik on Bluesky: @qbklass.bsky.socialFollow Robert on X: @robertmaysFollow Derrik on X: @QBKlassTheme 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.

Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. I'm Robert Mays. Fun show for you guys today. So much stuff came out over the weekend in the head coaching news cycle. And we just didn't really have a place to talk about that. It came out after the preview was done. And we didn't want to talk about it in the Championship Sunday recap because that didn't really make a lot of sense.

But we had three head coaches hired over the last four or five days. And we wanted to talk about it somewhere somehow. So that's what the show was for. Me and Derek broke down the Liam Cohen to the Jaguars news, Brian Schottonheimer heading to the Cowboys. Pete Carroll, heading to the Las Vegas Raiders, which, I don't know, that one just makes me feel good. I'm just happy to have Pete Carroll back in the league.

And I think Pete Carroll with the Raiders is a very fun fit. I think Derek agreed. And we dug into some of the coordinator news that has kind of dripped out over the last few days. Bobby Sloak out with the Texans, the Bears hiring a couple of coordinators, Clint Kubiak landing in the Seahawks, and a few more hires and firings that came down over the last few days. So without further ado, let's get to that conversation. with Derek right now. All right, Derek.

Let's get into the coaching news that has rolled out over the last week or so. There was no non-awkward timing to do this. A lot of it happened like Friday into Saturday, and we didn't want to do a show then because the preview show had already been out, and I didn't want to talk about this last night because we wanted to talk about the conference championship games, but there are three head coaching hires that have happened since the last time we had a conversation like this. So this stuff is very important, and I felt like we should discuss it in some

way before we got into the meat of our Super Bowl coverage here over the next week and a half or so. I had no idea when we were going to do this either because you don't want to tack it onto a game, either the previews or the reviews, honestly, you don't want to tack it onto either. And then you kind of just hit me up one day in the middle of like it was either Saturday evening or it might have been Sunday morning. You were like, you want to do this show? I was like, well, we're not going to talk about it in any other time. So we might as well.

It's three of them. If there were one stray head coach and hire, it's like, yeah, we just didn't get to it. it was the schedule, but we're talking about like a tenth of the league hired head coaches in the last 72 hours. And I feel like that's stuff that we should dig into. Let's start with one that's fresh on my mind because I just watched a good chunk of his press conference in Las Vegas. And that is Pete Carroll heading to the Las Vegas Raiders, 73 year old Pete Carroll as their new head coach. Initial thoughts, first impressions of the Pete Carroll marriage with the Raiders. I dig it, man. I'm actually, I really do like to Pete Carroll higher. And I know because of the age, it's going to push people away a little bit. But this to me is a guy where you don't really see or feel him being older. Like this is, this is among the guys who were of this age. Like, he could probably do this for five, six more years if you really wanted to. So I'm not really worried about the timeline here at all. And then every time Pete Carroll has been at a spot, especially recently, like in, you know, since the year 2000, he's been able to rebuild. And

all of these programs and really lift them up to a place that they had not been, at least in a long time, or in some cases like Seattle, really never before. So I am very excited for what he can bring to the Raiders who I'm not positive on what the ceiling is going to be here. But as far as a guy who very much feels like adult in the building, the energy is going to be right, the way that we do things is going to be right, the coaching hires around him, I'm pretty bought in on what this thing is going to look like. I agree with that. And I'm trying to think of similar situations. And I look back to something that actually does make a lot of sense when you're trying to connect some of the dots. So John Spytech comes over as his team's general manager. He was the assistant GM in Tampa for the last

couple years. And you look at what happened with the Bucks and Bruce Arians when they brought in Bruce Ariens in 2019. This is somebody who was in his 60s, had been at multiple different spots. And like the Raiders, I think that the Bucks were kind of searching for their ideas. identity in that moment. Jason Light had been in place, so there was some continuity in the front office. But if you remember, that team had the Greg Shiano era, and then they go to Levy Smith, and the Levy Smith there is kind of weird, and they're really bad on defense. But James showed some flashes, so they promote Dirk Cutter and fire Levy Smith to kind of maintain some continuity on offense, which kind of made sense at the time. But then you look back on it, and it's like,

was that actually the best process here? And it feels a little bit similar to where the Raiders are, where you fire Josh McDaniels, Antonio Pierce does a good job as the interim. You can kind of talk yourself into what that is, but it doesn't feel like the right move as you actually take a step back from it. There's a lot of just misalignment and a lack of vision for where the organization wanted to go. And so the Bucks just said, let's bring in Bruce Ariens, who has done a darn good job when he was the head coach of the Cardinals, even though that had kind of run its course,

and really raised the floor of this thing and try to just get us back on track. that's obviously accelerated by adding Tom Brady to the equation. I'm not sure Tom Brady is walking through that door, but the first initial step, Hey, we might get to a place by the 2026 season where they're just like, I don't know, 48 year old Tom might be our best answer here. This might be the best way to get this thing over the top. But the initial thought behind it and all of a lot of those component parts being involved in this with SpyTech and Brady, I actually do think that there's merit in thinking about it this way.

Is Pete Carroll the best way to optimize your offense with a young quarterback in 2025? Maybe not, but we don't even know who the quarterback of this team is going to be based on where they're drafting. So I understand the thought process behind it. And I'm with you when I think it raises the floor. It gives you a certain energy in the building. It gives you a level of competency, even if there are questions about what the ceiling can ultimately be. It's a really good point about the quarterback stuff. And I think there are a few points to it.

One, like you said, I think if you want to optimize the roster, probably the best way to do that is to what can we get the most out of a young quarterback. Like you said, we have no idea who the quarterback is going to be. We don't know if they're going to draft one, whatever it is. It might be Russell Wilson. Oh, Jesus. This cannot happen. There's a world because it's Las Vegas specifically, but I just, I would be shocked to see

it happen. But I was about to bring up Russell Wilson. We've seen Pete do this with a young quarterback before, who was not billed as like a top flight super draft pick and stuff like that. So I do have some degree of fate that he can put it. together there. I think the other interesting part of about the hire is you bring up Antonio Pierce. I think the idea behind Antonio Pierce was, you know, locker room guy, people are going to be able to rally behind him. He'll hire the right guys around him. He'll just kind of like get everybody

to rally together. I understand what the idea was there, but there was no proof of concept of that other than like six games at the end of last season. He had like five years as a coach. I mean, his resume is like it's on a post-it note. He'd barely done this. And half of the that was in college. He had spent a lot of time in college, not even in the NFL. Whereas with Pete Carroll, sure, he spent a lot of time at USC, but we have very good proof of concept that he can do this in the NFL, this exact type of build they wanted. Makes sense to go after a guy who, again, he's done it before and clearly shown he can do it. As far as the coordinators go, and that's obviously going to be a big question here, it sounds like based on the reporting that Deshaun Reed, who covers

the Raiders for us at the athletic, that Darrell Bevel might be the favorite to be the potential OC. I don't really mind that. The last time that Darrell Bevel called an NFL offense, I actually really enjoyed watching those 19 and 20 Detroit Lions teams. It unlocked a version of Matthew Stafford that I was actually very into. And so Bevel's been an assistant in Miami for the last couple years on their staff, I believe, as the quarterback's coach and maybe passing game coordinator. And then I know he was in the mix for a couple OC jobs this cycle where he would not necessarily have been the play caller, but he was on. some of these short lists. I think he is well respected in the NFL coaching community. And I do think

the bones of what he's bringing on offense combined with his experience in Miami over the last couple years, that's a name where even if he's a mainstay and will be billed as a retread, I can kind of get on board with what a Darryl Bevel offense might look like in 2025. I'm kind of on board with it too, especially when again, you don't know what the quarterback is going to be and you need something more on offense than you got last year. And I do think Bevel brings that. You mentioned the Stafford years, but I thought he did a decent job in Seattle, even though there was that stretch there where everybody hated every Seattle offensive coordinator for, it's funny. We'll get to our guys on that list by the end of the show. Yeah, that's a whole

another conversation. But I actually do think Beville on that side of the ball is like a good, and I think what's important to remember with these head coaching hires, the coordinators they hire right now don't necessarily need to be the guys that are there in year three when they're really trying to push the ceiling and see how far they can go. But as far as both Darryo Beville and Carl Scott, potentially as a defensive coordinator, these would be good like starting point, cornerstone, how do we get this thing off the ground type of hires? Carl Scott, for people who don't know, his background is interesting. He was at Alabama for a couple years. And then his entry into the league was with the Vikings, I believe, a few years ago as a member of their defensive staff,

like DB's coach, passing game coordinator type. He went to Seattle in Pete's, last year there and was retained by Mike McDonald heading into last year. And I don't think you're going to get a lot of like that guy's good enough on my defensive staff with Mike McDonald. The fact that they actively did try to retain him, I think probably says a lot. So there's a touch point with Pete there. But I also think that Carl Scott, he's 39 years old. He's been in a league now for four or five years. He's definitely somebody that I've thought about in what his future might look like, so not surprised to see him on the short list for some of these defensive coordinator jobs. That's a great point about Mike McDonald. He would not retain

somebody just for no reason. This is certainly a guy where you have to prove it to him. So the fact that he did retain him is actually, I hadn't thought about that, but that's an incredible point to bring up. I want to ask you just about the timeline and the potential sequence of events here over the next three to four years. In your opinion, what is the best case scenario for how this good turnout for the Rares. That's a great question. I mean, you're never going to be like what you're never going to actually be contending with the Chiefs.

I think like that is such a pipe dream that you're never going to fight with them. I think like the Chargers want to be this, the Broncos want to be this. You're probably never going to actually be that. I think the defense right now is actually fairly close to being pretty good. And I think if obviously you have a guy like Pete Carroll, you have Carl Scott potentially, I think they could get this thing to being closer to like a top eight unit with a couple of, with a couple of pieces. So I think if you can give yourself some ground there and maintain that,

which I have some degree of faith that they can do. And then offensively, I think it's just so hard until you know what the quarterback even looks like. Like it's hard enough when you bring in young quarterback and try to project how good do I think this guy can be. We don't even know who the guy is right now. But I think with what we've seen from Pete Carroll, I think for a majority of his time in Seattle, he hired all the right guys on both sides of the ball, really, until maybe the past

couple of years. I think there's a good chance that they can get to 10 plus win pretty consistently. It's just that it would be really, really hard to ever have the firepower to win this division, which is always going to be the problem. The defense, the concern there, and they have the resources to maintain these guys. They have $92 million in cap space per over the cap as we get into the offseason here. A lot of guys on defense are pending free agents for this team. Nate Hobbs is a pending free agent. Marcus Epps is a pending free agent. Sheldon Merrick is a pending for agent, Robert Spillane, Malcolm Coons,

guys that really did contribute to that side of the ball for them. So they have a ton of cap space to potentially bring some of those pieces back. But this roster, for the most part, is a pretty blank slate out of a few guys that you've definitively committed to. Like Christian Wilkins, Max Crosby, Colton Miller. That's kind of it. I mean, when you talk about like big money guys that are going to be a part of this core moving forward definitively. I like some of the young pieces on the offensive line that

they've drafted, but again, those are cost-controlled cheap pieces. So SpyTech and Carol here, I do think are going to have the flexibility to kind of remake this thing in whatever way they see fit. And I think that's probably a good thing. The fact that you're not necessarily attached to or tied to a version of this team and a path moving forward when this thing really does have to be reimagined from the ground up, this is probably. a decent place to start, even if the quarterback question is a little bit more daunting than you want it to be. That's honestly why I think Pete Carroll is the right guy with the job, a guy who's, he has proven track record that he can build you up from a clean slate, whereas I think if you were

wanted to go for the hot shot offensive coordinator, young guy who's never done it before, might be a scarier spot for a team to do it like this. I honestly think the worst part of taking this job is just, I already mentioned it, you're going to have Mahomes and the chiefs to deal with every year. But the Broncos and the Chargers both seem on the up and up. Like this is just going to be an incredibly competitive division, kind of regardless of how well Pete Carroll can bring this thing up. The other bit of Pete Carroll's history that I find interesting here, and you alluded to this just is building up of programs. And he said that in his press conference today. He's like, I'm used to doing this exact thing. But if you look at what happened with the Seahawks, they have Mike Holmgren

for all those years as kind of like a very empowered head coach figure that had control over the roster in part. And then in 2009, Jim Mora takes that job as kind of the successor to Mike Holmgren. That goes south. And so you kind of bring Pete in to get things back on the rails after a one-year experiment that didn't really work out, which is also where this thing is. It was off the rails before Antonio Pierce got his hands on it. But it's similar in the sense that we tried one thing for a year.

It didn't work out. Let's go get something that we feel like is a little bit more of a program building choice. And I think Pete Carroll probably still is that even at age 73. My question about this and just my lingering hesitation about it if there is one is what the ceiling is going to be. And I think the ceiling is determined by so many different things, the quarterback being part of it, that it's almost inconsequential. Like, it almost doesn't matter what the ceiling is right now. Just get yourself back to a place where you are a well-run functioning football organization that is getting, if not the most, out of your individual pieces, then trying to execute a vision that actually, make sense and then you can figure the rest out later. I think that's an acceptable way to view this

if you're a Raiders fan. I 100% agree. You are so far from even trying to piece together what your ceiling might look like and how do we beat Mahomes and how do we deal with these other ASC teams in the playoffs. Who care? You are four steps away from that. You need to get to the point where you can even see over the fence to look at what might be on the other side there. So yeah, I couldn't agree more on that. And I think there are going to be some people who are like, well, this is hypocritical. when you were talking about the bears, you were like, you shouldn't make a choice like that. Well, the bears aren't at that point in the timeline. The bears are three years into a rebuild with the quarterback that they drafted number one

overall. Like some choices for one franchise are going to be a little bit better and more appropriate than they're going to be for another franchise that's at a different point on its timeline. And I think that's how I would conceive of the bears and the Raiders in this head coaching cycle specifically. Yeah, having Caleb Williams dropped into your lap versus the decision making you have when you don't have a quarterback and it doesn't seem like a great quarterback class, two entirely different timelines that those teams need to be working on. I'll be curious to see what they do a quarterback and just what the team building process looks like overall with SpyTech there in his first

year. Him specifically, we've alluded to this a little bit over the last year or so. The Bucks are like a very well-run organization. Like the Bucks do a lot of things where you're like, that makes sense. I get that. I understand the vision behind that. I think Jason Light has done a good job. I think their ability to maintain relevance in the post-Tom Brady world where you're having to figure out the quarterback position after he moves away, but also having to kind of piece together your financial picture after going all in for a couple years. We've seen very different eras and build models in the Jason Light tenure with the Bucks. There was a time where they kept a very clean cap. They one of the more conservative teams in the league.

There was a stretch where they were one of the more aggressive teams in the league. Now they've kind of had to unwind that a little bit. And the fact that they've been able to do all of that for the most part while maintaining, while maintaining a relative level of competitiveness, I think that's actually a very impressive feat as a front office and as an organization period. And to me, it's not just the quarterback stuff. To me, it's the offensive line. When they had Brady and the offense really operating at his peak,

that was a really good offensive line. And it was a completely different offensive line. Like, you had Ryan Jensen playing center. It was just a very different looking unit than it is now. You have that dip the last couple of years. And then by the time you get to it this year, Gadecki takes a step. Cody Malk takes a step. You go draft Graham Barton to play center. Ben Bredesen is now signed to play left guard. Tristan Wurst is still doing what he's doing at left tackle. Like you completely rebuilt the most important and really hardest to build unit in the entire league in Like a couple of years, you only had this dip. And so I think kind of the ability for them to reform what they are in that sense, I think,

has been a pretty good market for what they've done as a front office overall. And I think the pieces that they have already in house are intriguing at the very least. Jackson Powers, Johnson, in year two, DJ Glaze got a lot of experience at right tackle this year. Colton Miller is a solid option at left tackle. They've got some interior pieces that they've drafted pretty high over the last couple of years. So I'll be interested to see what that position group looks like and just how, it informs what they're trying to do on offense overall. And again, I don't mind watching a Darrell Bevel coach team. It helped that Matthew Stafford was a part of that equation in

Detroit. But that was a more entertaining offense than I think a lot of people probably remember if you were not watching the 2020 Lions up close and personal. I'm just going to say I'm very excited for this as a Brock Bowers fan. He already had a historic rookie tight end season and now we're getting a little bit better on the offensive side of the ball. Who knows what the numbers are going to look like? I'm very excited. All right. We're going to take a quick break and then we're going to get back with another former Seahawks offensive coordinator playing into this new cycle. Let's get to our next one here. I'm just going to just say a factual sentence, and then we could just go from there. Brian Schottenheimer is the new head coach of the Dallas Cowboys.

What do you make of that? All right, I'm going to go back to my retelling of how I even found all of this out. This was Friday evening for people that don't realize. I was just playing games with some friends. We were chilling in Discord talking maybe an hour before the hiring happens. We were all joking about some of the other hires talking about the Cohen stuff, all this, all that jazz. And we were joking like, man, it's crazy the Cowboys were interviewing Brian Schottenheimer. And we just kind of get deep into gaming two hours later. Nobody's looking at their phones. All of a sudden, we look up and we're like, holy shit, the Cowboys actually hired Brian Schottenheimer. And then for the rest of the night, every 20 minutes, somebody said, wow, they really did that.

So that was my experience with the whole saga of Brian Schottenheimer actually getting hired. Yeah, I had just gotten home from hanging out with some friends and I was just on the couch with my wife. In fact, they dropped it at 10 p.m. on a Friday is just one of the more beautiful things about this period. I've worked through my thoughts about this. And let me see if I can properly articulate them here. The first thing I want to say is I am open to the idea of Brian Schottenheimer being a success. NFL head coach. I actually think in a lot of ways, and this is based on, I think I've had one or two conversations with him in my life, but what you hear about him from other people, he's very well-liked.

He is somebody that I think personality-wise, people can really get along with. People like him. He's charming. If he's at the center of what you are as an organization and he can be more of a CEO type and that personality becomes more important, like the X's and O's aspect of this, I can kind of get on board with that potentially working if the coordinator hires are correct. Jerry's already come out and said he's going to be the offensive play caller in addition to being the head coach, which I have some questions about because I don't think any of the offenses we've ever seen for Brian Schottonheimer have been like even top tenish offenses for him to get a job like this. My problem is not with the idea Brian Schottenheimer succeeding or failing. I almost think that's

beside the point as part of this process because it's beside the point to the cowboys. whether or not he's going to be a successful NFL head coach feels accidental to this process if you're Dallas. My issue with this is not about his validity as a coach. It's that if you looked at every other coach hired in this cycle, if you went to George McCasky or Robert Kraft or Woody Johnson, and you hooked them up to a polygraph and you said, did you go through this process and on the other end come out with a guy that you think is the best candidate that will give you the best chance to win as many football games as possible.

Whether or not those guys succeed, I think all of those guys could credibly say yes at the end of the process that they went through this offseason. I don't think the Cowboys can do that because how could they possibly have done that? They looked at like three or four guys and then they ended up with the guy down the hall that wasn't even a real candidate for any of these other jobs. And that's where I land on this. maybe it works out. We often don't know why guys succeed and which head coaches end up becoming the best guys

as we go through these individual cycles. But I don't think that Jerry Jones could look at you with a straight face and say, I did everything I could to put my team in the best position to win football games. And this is another example of him doing that constantly. That's the biggest problem is that it just does not feel like they tried in the way that other teams tried. And look, Brian Schottenheimer might not even, like you said, that we have no way of necessarily knowing if he's going to be a good coach. There have been plenty of play callers

who were fantastic play callers and terrible head coaches. And there are plenty of good head coaches right now who like weren't serious play callers. Like Dan Campbell was never really like a serious play caller that we thought of in that way. John Harbaugh was never that way. Like it's just not necessarily. Antibre didn't call place. Yeah. That's it. I actually didn't know that. Before he was hired by the Eagles. I actually did not know that. And so there's another one. And look at him now. He's one of the greatest offensive minds the league has seen in decades. So like we don't he doesn't necessarily need that prerequisite to be a good head coach. But it's like you said, it just doesn't feel like they exhausted every avenue, turned over every stone to find their best head coach. They went with a guy

that was familiar to them. And I think that familiarity is kind of encapsulates what the cowboys have been for so long. It just feels like they are locked into this mode where they just want to win through the draft. They want to get all their right guys in the building. They want to build a team in a particular way. And they want to have this head coach that is not necessarily going to buck any of that. And I think when you go and get a guy like Brian Schottenheimer, who is very familiar with how the building works, that's kind of where you're ending up where I just feel like for the Cowboys to get over the hump, whether it's next year or five years from now, we need to take a little bit of a swing at the head coaching position, which in my lifetime, they've never really done.

And then Jerry came out today and was talking about how, yeah, this is a huge risk because he's never been a head coach before. So I am taking a risk here. And I'm sitting there. That's not what that means, Jerry. I'm like, what? Every aspect of the messaging with this, even the quote that came out with the Adam Schaefter tweet about how everyone knows him as an assistant. Well, not anymore. He's just Brian or whatever it was.

It's like this gobbledygook nonsense that makes absolutely no sense. And what really frustrates me when I look at this process is I think about Cowboys fans. And if you were a fan of this team and you look at everything they continue to do and everything they continue to show you with their actions and how they are not prioritizing winning as many football games as possible. Stephen Jones at that press conference today did drought in air quotes when people were talking when he was talking about their lack of championship games or Super Bowl appearances in the last 30 years. it's not theoretical, man. It's been 30 years since you were in a conference championship game. This is a reality that currently exists. And if I were a fan of this team and I saw how unsurious this process was and how

unserious every aspect of this organization has become when you have the owner slash general manager last spring being like, we're going all in. And then you do absolutely nothing to add talent to the team while your rival in your division, two of them won this offseason, showed again. They are willing to do everything in their power to try to get over the top and win Super Bowls. That's what happens in Philadelphia every single year. And now you have a team in Washington that was willing to say, all right, it's time. We have new ownership.

We're going to do things differently. And in one year, they now become a team that has been to the conference championship game more recently than you. If I were a fan of this team and I had to watch both of the situations in Philly and Washington unfolding, and I looked at what was happening in Dallas, apathy is the only answer. It is the only proper response to what that organization is giving you right now. I don't know how you land somewhere else. They are kind of shielded by the logo, like the Cowboys logo. It's all that matters. Right, because how many times have we said something like this to the effect of,

are they really pushing the cap, are they really making all the moves that they can make to go win football games about the Bengals, where like that was historically a big issue for them and about how their owner operates, all that stuff? Okay, well, we could all get away with saying that about the Bengals. they've never won anything. And so it was just, it felt like they're the Bengals. Yeah, and they're the Bengals here in Cincinnati. This is the most valuable sports franchise in the world. Exactly. And so they're just getting away with that based off reputation from 30 years ago and just being the Dallas Cowboys. Whereas

if you slapped any other logo onto the way that they operate this thing, I think we would all treat it like a completely unsurious organization. If you are Mike Brown and you have actual concerns about the money that you have to spend, you don't have a practice facility, you didn't have a practice bubble until a while ago. It has taken you the injection of energy from Joe Burrow and some recent winning to get to some of those things. Jerry Jones owns a yacht that costs as much as he will pay his players against the NFL salary cap this year. I just don't want to hear it. Like, there's absolutely no excuse. Every single person that talked about this pursuit and this cycle for the Cowboys

that understands the thinking and the inner workings of the organization was very quick to say, well, Jerry won't overpay for a coach. Jerry won't overpay for a coach. I want somebody to ask him why. Like, why? What is the difference between paying a coach $5 million a year and paying a coach $15 million a year if you have a $250 million a yacht? Also, that's the one spot that doesn't count against your cap.

You can do whatever. You can pay them however much you want. Go get the best guy. And I don't think that's necessarily the best path forward. Like, you don't have, the most expensive coach isn't necessarily the best coach. But the idea of going into this and one of your priorities being, we don't really want to spend a lot on a guy is insane to me. It's just there's no way you could outwardly say that or through back channels say that. And then out of the other side of your mouth say that winning is the biggest priority that we have here.

The two things are completely incongruous and you can't explain it away. Like, there's no way you can try to square them in my mind. No, and they've been trying to sell us on this for years and years. And because they did actually have some success there, they kind of got away with it. But it still just doesn't feel like they're ever chasing it the way that they like to tell you they're chasing it. A couple more personnel moves for this team so far over the last. last week or so. It sounds like Matt Iberfluse will be the defensive coordinator for the Dallas Cowboys. Matt Iberfluse, again, known quantity. Was in Dallas before he got the Colts defensive coordinator

job? A fine defensive coordinator. Was he really? I did not remember that. Oh, yeah. He was the linebackers coach in Dallas before he got the Colts DC job. I'm so sick of this. Like, I already thought that this was like the vanilla. We don't want to screw this up higher. But the fact that he's already been in the building before, which I did not remember is it just, that's the chair. on top. And Mattie Riffliss is a solid defensive coordinator. I think that the scheme is probably a little bit static given where the league is right now. And if you just look at the coverage menu and some of the things that they were doing, just the fronts they're going to play, it's just not that dynamic of a defense, but it's sound and solid. And I think that that's what

you're getting here, whether that's exciting or not, whether that's enough for you to get excited as a Cowboys fan, considering everything else that's happened over the last week is a different conversation. And then the other name that I saw is that Kevin Koger has been requested as an offensive coordinator candidate. He is the tight ends coach in Atlanta right now. So that's really all the current information that we have about where the Cowboys are. And I'm not really sure there's anything else that we need to add. Kevin Koger got Charlie Werner to be pretty productive this year as a blocker. So that's all I got for that one. The last head coaching news to hit here is Liam Cohen going to the Jaguars. The fact that Brian Schottonheimer are getting hired

by the Dallas Cowboys without garnering any sort of interest from any other team and them announcing it at 10 p.m. on a Friday was the second biggest bit of NFL coaching news that happened over the last week tells you all you need to know about the Liam Cohen to Jacksonville saga. So I don't know if we need to rehash the whole timeline. I'm sure most people by now understand what happened. But based on the reporting that we know to this point, Cohen had agreed in principle to an extension with the bucks on Monday of last week that would make him the highest paid coordinator in NFL history. Understandable. You have head coaching interests from the Jags.

The Bucks were very desperate to keep him. They just lost an offensive coordinator last year. I can understand them prioritizing that. And by all counts, Jason Light went to ownership. They approved it, and he was about to make a huge chunk of change. Then, before he can sign that contract, the Bucks fired Trent Balkie on Wednesday. Clearly, they reached back out to Cohen about a second interview for the job. My understanding is that the co-based on things I've read, not reporting I've done, is that the bulky part was part of the reservation, him not taking the gig, but wasn't the entire reason that he didn't take it.

But in the Bucks contract, it was contingent on him not taking a second interview with the Jaguars. So now you have a 24-hour period where the Bucks are trying to get in touch with him for signing the deal, which he pushed back a multiple days. and they eventually realize because he's in the Jags facility on Thursday that one of the reasons he was not answering their calls is because he was in Jacksonville again interviewing for a second time to get that head coaching job. And then at the end of this entire process, he is now the head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars. This is the most like Florida messy relationship type thing that I could possibly think of. And the fact that it involves Trent Balke in the Jacksonville Jaguars is absolutely perfect. And so I think regardless of like whatever you think of Cohen, whatever you think about how he left, I think this is the funniest way that all of this could have happened for every single party involved.

I understand why the bucks feel like they got burned as part of this process. When you're going to go out of your way to give a guy a historic amount of money to do his job and then he spurns you in the end, that's not fun. I can understand why they're pissed off. I also want to give Liam Cohen a little bit of grace in this because this is a really difficult situation to be in. You pull out of the Jags job for whatever reason. You come back with the leverage that you now have after the job that you did and getting interest for that head coaching job and you task your agent with getting you a raise. He does great job. But then the situation materially changes.

With them moving on from bulky, that's one part of it. But then the reports that they offered him the chance to pick the general manager essentially, while I assume, I don't know what the exact number is, I assume at least doubling what he was going to make as the Bucs offensive coordinator. What are you going to do in that situation? Because you want to do right by the Bucks for giving you that job, but you also have a real obligation to yourself and your family to potentially take this opportunity that, again, is materially different 24 hours later than it was when you would agree. read to that contract with the bucks. All of this went down in a way that is obviously messy. And if some people want to say wrong, that's completely fine.

There's 32 of these jobs, man. And if you think that one just got better over the course of 48 hours between the GM getting fired, yeah, man, you have to start reconsidering all of your situation. And to me, the other part of this is like, it seems like Tampa and like everybody, you know, whether it's reporting or just like fans talking from Tampa, they're very clearly upset at the way this all went down. and I get it, but between how much money they wanted to give Cohen and how much, how upset everyone seems to be that he left while Cohen is now going to get a head coaching job, it feels a little

bit like the Bucks needed Cohen a little bit more than Cohen needed the Bucks. And I think that is why this relationship and this, the way this all ended up unfolding feels a little bit sour here at the end. I think that's right. And I also think, again, you want to do right by the people who have given you an opportunity. If this had gone south in Tampa next year and they were a bottom five offense, they'd fire you in a heartbeat. Right? This is for us, you want to do the right thing, but the people you work with aren't your friends? And at the end of the day, you have to do what's right for you and your family. And so I completely understand him landing in this place, even if it was a little bit messy on the way to getting there. Because you can say whatever you want. The difference

between $10 million a year and $5 million a year is a life-changing amount of money. And And it's really difficult to walk away from that when someone puts that offer on the table for you. And listen, I think a lot of this is going to get pushed on to Cohen and him being in the wrong. If the Jacksonville Jaguars had fired their GM two weeks earlier, none of this would have been a problem because Cohen would have been able to do this on a normal timeline. And we wouldn't have all this weird stuff about when he's balking and if he's taking the deal, he's pushing it off all this stuff. If the Jacksonville Jaguars had operated like a normal organization, this would have been a ho-hum coaching hire. Nobody would have thought anything of it. The one thing that I will say that I do think is wrong on every single level here.

And it brings me to another conversation I think is worth having is the Jags having Patrick Graham in for an in-person interview just to check the Rooney Rule Box as part of this entire process. That's not okay. And that brings me to a place that I think a lot of people have reached now. And this coaching cycle in particular, I think is pointed people there. The Rudy rule needs to be reimagined. Like, I feel like it is worthwhile in some other areas. And we can get to what those are in a second. But having to do two in-person interviews for your head coaching job when you probably have someone else in mind,

I get the motivation behind the rule. But now you're putting people in a tough spot. Like, you're making people get on a. airplanes to take these fake job interviews that aren't actually, they're not actual candidates for the job. And I get that making people a part of these conversations and exposing them to ownership and giving them the experience is a good thing. But this is too far.

Like making Patrick Graham fly to Jacksonville for a job he's never going to get, I think that's wrong. On the coordinator side of it, I actually think there's a lot of merit to the way that the Rooney rule is currently set up. I think having to interview a minority for your quarterback's coach job in order to put more people of color into the offensive coordinator pipeline, that is a good idea. And I think that having to do two virtual interviews with minority candidates for coordinator jobs, that is a good idea because you're only putting so much of a burden on those candidates. And I think with coordinator specifically, there's enough wiggle room for who you'd pick where you can be surprised by someone. And I know that has happened over the last couple years.

I know of a couple of coordinators in the NFL right now that were hired because of the interviews they got because of the Rooney Rule. But the head coach situation is so different than that that I just feel like it's almost doing more harm than good in a lot of these situations right now. Like you said, it just kind of feels like people are doing a show with a lot of these interviews. I mean, who was it the Patriots that put two guys who it was Byron Lefwich and Pep Hamilton who have not been in the league for years on the same graphic for their interviews. Eddie George. Eddie George interviewed for the Bears. coach a job in person because they needed two in-person interviews. That was a completely ridiculous one.

And then, um, this is, and like on the flip side of it, this is why I really respected Aaron Glenn not taking some of the interviews because he was like, I think it was the Patriots that he denied because he was like, you, they're going to hire Mike Frable. And he knows what this is all about. And he actually is a distinguished like genuine candidate. So, um, maybe he actually could have been in the running. But I respected him being like, this is a little bit ridiculous. I'm going to take interviews where I think I have a serious shot to take a job and really treat this as what it is.

So I really don't know how you fix it, but I think it certainly has gotten to the point where a majority of teams in a majority of years are not really treating these interviews with the seriousness that they deserve. I think the in person aspect of it is where you run into some issues here. The fact that it's two in person interviews. Again, I understand the reasoning behind that. I think the intentions of it are in the right place. but I think it's putting in guys in an unnecessarily difficult position. So much of this stuff is virtual now. I think that if you want to still have a number of minority candidates that you have to interview for these jobs,

I think doing it virtually is probably enough to satisfy the spirit of what you're trying to accomplish here and not make guys get on planes for sham interviews for jobs that they're never going to get anyway. There's no easy solve for this. I just think that as I've listened to instinctually what I think is probably the best outcome where the league is actually achieving something with the rule, but still doing right by the people they're trying to help with the rule, there's probably a middle ground to be found. And I think the way they're handling the coordinator side of it feels like the right resolution to me. I agree with that, because if you fix the pipeline, you start to fix who is even getting these head coaching

interviews in seriousness, whereas if you're kind of just approaching it directly from the head coaching spot, like you said, a lot of these teams probably mostly already have their mind up, their mind made up going into the process. Let's get to the football side of this for the Jacksonville Jaguars. I've liked this as a pairing in broad strokes. And I think that's an important way to frame this. The idea of Trevor Lawrence and Brian Thomas Jr. In the offense we saw from Liam Cohen last year and how fast they rebuilt the run game in Tampa,

so many aspects of who they were, that is very exciting to me. Like from the moment I had a solid understanding of who the Bucks were going to be offensively in like the beginning of October and we saw what was happening with the Jags, I was making that pairing in my mind because I actually think it made a lot of sense from a football perspective. As a known Trevor Lawrence believer, how do you feel about the Liam Cohen Trevor Lawrence fit here moving forward offensively? From all the schematic side and stuff like that, I feel pretty good about it to be. honest. And to me, they're definitely going to have to fix the offensive line personnel-wise, but I really do like Cohen's run game. And I think a big reason that I really like this pairing is you very obviously saw in Jacksonville over the last handful of years, they need to take some degree of the load off of Trevor Lawrence. And this is not to say that he's not a good enough quarterback or

whatever. I think you've even seen this with the best quarterbacks. The bills had to go through this process with Josh Allen, where they had to learn how to take the load off of him. And I think we've even seen with some of these other guys, just being able to take the load off of a quarterback does so much. I mean, look at what Baker Mayfield was allowed to do in Tampa because he was not the driving force for that offense. It was the run game. It was the screen game. It was being able to chuck it to Mike Evans. And so I think the way that Cohen wants to construct the offense where we're going to run the ball a little bit more.

We're going to get under center. We're going to take some of these shot plays. I think, one, it takes the load off of Trevor. But I think if they can unlock the deep passing game a little bit more conceptually with some of these design shots, That's where you can start to unlock what Trevor can do. He's a really talented thrower. It's just sometimes when they're asking him to drop back 40 times a game behind a bad offensive line in 10 and 11 personnel, you get some of the results that you've seen over the

past handful of years where it can be up and down. I think the way that Cohen wants to construct it, you're probably not going to get as much to that volatility. Yeah, I think that allowing a quarterback to take place off and insulating him a little bit just by what the structure of the offense looks like. That's interesting to me. And I've always thought that about. out where I wanted to see Trevor.

And it was in an offense similar in construction to this one. The question becomes whether or not it's going to be as simple as dropping Trevor Lawrence into the buck's offense from last year. We don't know what the staff is going to look like. We don't know who's going to hire. We don't know how he's going to take to this job. These are all questions. And this is the problem with projecting offensive coordinators to head coaching roles is

sometimes stuff gets lost in translation. It's not as simple as dropping Trevor into whatever the box were doing last year. So what the staff looks like and how they build it. And I think there are questions about that because Jonathan Jones from CBS said they're not going to let a lot of guys from Tampa go with him based on what happened over the last week or so, which I totally understand. So what they ultimately land on in terms of who's around him and what that offense looks like. I think that's going to be the next big question that has to be answered. I almost think it should look less like dropping him into the Bucks offense and more kind of trying to reconfigure or remake what the Rams have done with Stafford. I think like stylistically, I think Lawrence is a lot closer to the way that Stafford wants to play

where he'll hang in the pocket. He'll be really aggressive. He'll take some of these shots, whether it's under center or from gun. And truthfully, I think he's a better right now drop back gun passer than Baker Mayfield. So I think you can probably access a little bit more of that if you want to. So I think they can put more on the quarterback than they ever had to in Tampa in Cohen's offense last year, but still take off a little bit of what Lawrence was having to deal with over the past few years where it felt like for the most part he was the only driving force in the offense.

We're going to take one more quick break and then get back with a conversation about the Saints lack of a head coach. So these three vacancies were filled over the last week or so. The one that remains is the New Orleans and the New Orleans Saints head coaching job. The most relevant news about that over the last few days is that Joe Brady has decided that he is going to stay in Buffalo. rather than take a second interview with the Saints for this gig. That's a tough one if you are a Saints fan and if you're someone that is invested in how this organization is perceived around the league. Joe Brady is not somebody who's foreign to this organization.

This is where he got his start in the NFL. The fact that somebody who knows how this place operates to an extent has spent time there in theory would have some familiarity with this team, doesn't want to pursue this job. That's a tough place to land. And I think it says a lot about what people on the outside are thinking of this gig and how it kind of stacks up in the hierarchy with the other jobs that were available in this cycle. The fact that he's been there and really got his start there and doesn't seem like he's very interested in the job, that is certainly the scariest part of this to me. because like, and there is a part of it that maybe if Joe Brady was in a different spot, this would be a little bit more appealing.

Now with Joe Brady, he gets to go back and have another year with Josh Allen, where you are pretty certain it's going to go well again. So I think he does kind of have the comfort of being able to rely on that a little bit. But I do think him not wanting to take the Saints job is pretty concerning because I think if he had gone there, knowing how they operate and him being familiar with them, he probably would have gotten a fairly long leash, especially with like looking at the financial situation and all that. I just wonder if he looked at the financial situation and said, man, this might take us

three years before we're even like trying to get above 500. I just, he doesn't seem like he's so young that he doesn't need to jump into a head coaching spot like this. I'm curious what the line of questioning has been from some of the candidates and what the answers have been from the Saints because I think this idea of, you know, we're going to have to tear it down a little bit and it's going to be a couple years before we can actually compete, that's an acceptable answer to me because I think in a lot of ways it's their best road out of whatever rut they've fallen into here. If the response from Mickey Loomis and from the front

office as part of some of these conversations is, well, we actually think we're pretty close. And we actually think with the right couple tweaks, we can be competitive right now. That's what would scare me off if I was one of these candidates. If you go, in and there's an honest conversation about what needs to happen in year one into year two to set up for success, you can live with some terrible results. There are two very recent examples of that in what Ryan Poles did in year one with the Bears and what Terry Fontno did in year one with Atlanta. We can quibble about what the results have been since those tear downs happen, but I think both

of those GMs went into these jobs and their new head coaches went into these jobs understanding. We're going to have to take our medicine for a year. and then we can start to build this thing back up. And to their credit, I think the ownership in both of those places have given grace to those front offices and those coaching staffs to an extent. Those guys were fired after years where they were trying to turn things up again and it didn't exactly work. But if this is a situation where you're going to be expected to win quickly with the current state of the roster, my response to that if I was a head coach would be how. Like describe to me how I'm supposed to win 10 or 11 games, even with a couple tweaks on the guys that you have in the building right now.

They're not close. The reason they were even close the past five years, really, is because the defense was awesome. But the defense didn't look good at all last year. And a lot of the pieces that you had been relying on for that time are older gone. It's Cam Jordan. It's Marshawn Latimore. Like DiMario Davis was still playing at a good level. Marshall, Latimer's not in there anymore.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like, he's gone. Yeah. Like, and like DeMario Davis, he played well, but he's getting older. Like, you're just, I don't understand how you are supposed to be close. And because they've tried to push this for so long, there is part of me that does believe that maybe they still do think they're close somehow. I have to believe that an organization that has won the Super Bowl and gotten close and knows that they've been pushing this down for so long and pushing this out for so long,

they have to know, right? they have to know that it's time to take their medicine. You would hope so, but I just don't know. I don't know how they view themselves. And I think that ultimately is the biggest question with this. And a lot of people are going to talk about the cap, the cap, the cap, and how they've treated the cap and how they've pushed things out financially. That's a big part of this.

But you can get away with some of that if you're off-setting that aggressiveness with prudent decisions in the draft and good drafting. thing. If you look at the Saints drafts after 2017, which is arguably the greatest draft we've seen in the modern era, it's a disaster. And it's a disaster for two reasons. You've missed out on a lot of your high-end draft picks and you've also given away an unconscionable amount of them. If you look at some of these drafts, they're like four or five-person draft classes. That's not how you succeed. That's just not a viable path to constructive and productive team building. when you're also charging the credit card on the free agent side of it. If you're going to do that and you can supplement that with a lot of dice rolls at free labor, then there is a way on the other side those things can live in harmony and you can end up in a good spot. They can't when you're doing it the way that the Saints have. And that's another question I'd ask if I was one of these guys interviewing for a head coaching job.

How are we going to look at this? Are we a team that's going to consistently trade up in the draft? Is this like your guys just modus operandi? or are we going to actually have some hard conversations about what's best for this organization moving forward? And based on what's happened over the last like four or five years, I wouldn't be shocked if there was some unsatisfactory answers on the other side of those questions. That's a really good point. Again, just because they've done it for so long, maybe they really do believe that they are three pieces away from fixing this thing again.

I just... We're one 2017 draft away from all of this getting fixed. So are the Raiders. Any team could get a draft that good at the Omb. But I mean, maybe they are like so bought into their own delusion that like they really believe they can just hit on a class like that again. Maybe that's why they keep trading up and being like, oh, we'll hit on these guys. And it's funny because you would think they would actually come off of that in the sense that they traded up to go get Chris Olavé. And that pick in terms of like the quality of the player worked out fantastically. He's a great player.

But you still gave up all these other assets for one guy. And he hasn't quite been enough. Like he's not Jamar Chase. So it's just, I don't know, man. I would be very worried about some of the conversations they're having about how serious they think this thing is. But I have to imagine that again, after doing this for six years, they realize at some point, we've got to give up the game. What's nice, though, is that looking at the 2025 draft, they have most of their picks. Okay.

That seems great. They have a first round pick. They have a second round pick. They have their third round pick. So this is potentially a good opportunity to get things going back on the right foot. They have an extra fourth round pick because of the Marshall-Ladamor trade. This seems like a potential year where you could make eight to ten picks and actually try to restock your roster with some real pieces. We'll see if that actually ends up happening.

Is there a name on the short list of guys they've talked to? and have requested second interviews with, including Anthony Weaver, Mike Kafka, Kalamore is on that list, that despite of all of this, you find yourself intrigued by. All of the offensive guys, I'm kind of out. Kellamore is not that interesting to me. Mike McCarthy is not that interesting to me. He might be fine, but he's not, it's just hard for me to imagine whatever the ceiling there would be.

And Mike McCarthy and Derek Carr is the most, like, boring quarterback coach combo that I can possibly think of. Mike Kafka, I feel like he got a lot of shine like three years ago, and I'm not sure the offenses that he's been a part of since then have been all that good, which isn't necessarily his fault, but it's just hard for me to pinpoint why he would be a high candidate. Anthony Weaver is the one that I do find interesting. I think his unit did a really, really good job this year, but I almost wonder if they don't want to go the defensive route again after firing Dennis Allen, which would be a genuine

concern, especially when the entire Sean Payton area, you were built up from having a fantastic offense. So I don't know. Weaver probably is the best candidate to me, but I'm not, I'm not sure I would take this job if I were here. And I'm not sure they want to really be going for a defensive candidate right now. I would not be surprised if we landed out of Mike McCarthy because it's a higher that you can potentially sell because he's won a lot of games.

And he might not have a lot of other opportunities here over the next couple of cycles. He's somebody that's also familiar with the organization. and he's been there. So we'll see how this lands. But the fact that the Saints are here after everyone else has filled their jobs and it looks as unappealing potentially from the outside as these candidates are making it out to be. Not a fun place to land if you're a Saints fan. And the last thing I'll say, all these other younger guys, they might really want to be involved

in what the vision is and they might really have a push and pull of, are we closed? Do we need to take our medicine, all that stuff? He might get Mike McCarthy in the building. And it's just whatever happens around him, happens around him. And he just has to go put the best team out there. And so for that reason, that actually might be the higher they go with. You mean like what was happening the last place? What was already happening?

Yes. I've had some coordinator news before we get out of here. The big one that came down over the weekend. Bobby Sloick out as the Texans offensive coordinator. They've also moved on from offensive line coach Chris Strasser. I don't think anyone who's listened to this show over the last three or four months would be surprised to hear our thoughts on this and the fact that it's always felt like this was a possibility given the state of the Texans offense for pretty much this

entire season. Am I wrong to think that you were not surprised by this? No, I have honestly nothing more to say that I haven't already said probably twice a month throughout the entire course of the season. I just, it was not one of the most well put together units. And this was a team that we thought was supposed to take a leap on that side of the ball. And if anything, despite adding talent, ended up getting worse in kind of every facet. So it's pretty hard to be surprised by this. we got to a point by the end of the season, and it was happening all year. Teams were just running circles around them when it came to the protection plan specifically. Like, that's at the core of this.

It's like the construction of the run game and the protection plan. And the fact that the run game was a problem for the last two years, the protection plan was a problem all season. And they gave up the most unblocked pressures that they surrendered in a single game in the last game of the year. Like there were no steps towards solving this. and you've invested so much in the offensive line. Whether or not those investments are correct or they were the right bets, we can argue about that. I think there's probably something to be said about the guys they picked and them not really

getting where they wanted to go. Like the fact that you drafted Ju Scroggs in the second round, and Jared Patterson displaced him as your starting center is probably not a good thing from a talent acquisition perspective. But I don't think anybody who watched the Texans this entire year could look at what the plan was and think this is the right way. to go about this. Like, you were consistently maximizing the talent that you have on the roster.

At no point did I think that this entire year. Right. And I think the best comparison point to that, at least for me, is looking at what the Bears were. The Bears' offensive line and their protection plans in the early part of the year were terrible. And they end up firing their offensive coordinator. Then they promote, what was Thomas Brown before?

Yeah, but what was he before? He was the passing game coordinator. Okay, so he was the passing game coordinator. He becomes the OC. Then they end up firing the head coach. And Thomas Brown then gets promoted. it again to be the interim head coach. Despite all of that, Chicago's past protection plans and what they were doing on offense actually got more put together over the course of the year,

whereas even despite no shuffling on Houston side, they still weren't able to show any of that. And they had a lot of their guys playing for most of the years. So it's just a very frustrating situation that for a staff that had been together that long for multiple years to not have any sort of answer by the end of the second year. We'll talk about some of the names probably or just react to that higher. when it happens. Chip Kelly has been thrown around as a name for that job and a couple others. So, you know, we'll pay attention to what those coordinator hires are as they roll in. Let's keep running through this year. Dennis Allen and Declan Doyle are the coordinators on defense and offense for the Chicago Bears.

Dennis Allen, we kind of already knew. I don't think you can really do a better job in the cycle of hiring a defensive coordinator than hiring Dennis Allen. Like the job that he did with the Saints as their defensive coordinator specifically is kind of unimpeachable. They were so, so good on that side of the ball. So not surprising there. And I think that gets two thumbs up. You can't really argue against it. The Declan Doyle thing is fascinating. This is a 28-year-old tight ends coach from the Broncos, who is now the offensive coordinator for the Bears.

And it's funny because I've said this a few times over the last year. I was wondering, when are people going to start picking off the Sean Payton tree? because I think that when you look at that offense in Denver and just his history with the Saints, what the Lions were doing in Detroit, they had a lot of Saints DNA with Dan Campbell being there. Johnny Morton, who we'll get to in a second, was a part of that early Lion staff.

He was just in Denver. So I'm wondering, it's like, the Broncos seem very buttoned up on offense. Like, when are people going to start looking to this team as a potential incubator for ideas and coaching talent? I assumed it would happen at some point. I didn't know it was going to happen in the form of a 28-year-old assistant who is now an NFL offensive coordinator.

I don't think I would have guessed it for it to have gone that way either. And it is kind of funny, like you mentioned, you said this all year. What the lions were doing on offense had shades of what we had seen from Sean Payton for a long time. And so for that to be the guy that wants to go out and get a Sean Payton guy, it felt a little bit like Ben Johnson being like, okay, I appreciate what this other head coach does. Let me go see if I can steal some of that and really start to perfect it and hone it a little bit in this new spot. I think that that really makes a ton of sense. And then on the other side, Dennis Allen. This was, I think, probably the best defensive play calling guy that was on the market. You know, I think there were some

other decent ones like Robert Sala was obviously on the market. But in terms of guys who you were going to hire to be your coordinator, Dennis Allen to me was pretty good. clearly the number one guy. What he did in New Orleans for a number of years was awesome. And I also just love watching the way that he built his defenses. They got 270, 280 pound defensive ends. They said, we're going to defend the run with these four-man fronts. We're going to play too high. We're going to play a ton of match quarters behind it. You're just going to have to beat us, man. And for the most part, teams really, really struggled to do that. So I think if he can replicate that to any degree in Chicago with some of the talent that they have, I think it'll be really exciting.

I think there's a fit personnel-wise, too. I mean, like, I think Jalen Johnson can play this way if you ask him to. The Bears have four-down personnel. Sweat is perfect for it. Sweat's really good for what they want to be. Even, like, the build of the defensive ends in New Orleans and what he looks like physically, I think there's a lot of carryover. And I feel like if you were going to try to stay in this world,

you kind of had to, based on the commitments you'd already made to this sort of personnel, this is a very good place to land. The last thing I'll say about the Declan Doyle part of this, we're really starting to see this. And I think it really started to creep up. I think McVeigh is probably the first guy I would point to where we have this pipeline of tight ends coaches that lead to offensive coordinator jobs and eventually even to head coaching jobs. And it makes sense, right? And so the best example of this to me is what the Browns have done with that role specifically.

So the Browns had Drew Petting and eventually he got promoted to quarterback's coach. But he was their tight ends coach for a little while. And as a tight ends coach, you have a holistic. view of the offense because you have to be part of the run game and you have to also be part of the passing game. So it's a very good place to plop a lot of guys that you just want there for ideas where they're just contributing to what the offense is from a creativity standpoint. The Browns last year, they hired Tommy Reese to be their tight ends coach. Tommy Reese didn't know anything about coaching tight ends. They brought him in because they thought he was smart

and they wanted those ideas in the building. Ben Johnson was a tight end. ends coach. Deco Doyle was the tight ends coach for the Broncos. Nick Cayley, who I think is probably going to be the Jets offensive coordinator at all of this. We talked about that a little bit last week with Zach Rosenblatt. He is the tight ends coach for the Rams. So this head, this tight ends coach to offensive coordinator pipeline, I think there's a reason for it. And I think that there's a reason we've seen it really get accelerated here over the last four or five years. And I think this is in some way is kind of emblematic of where the game is moving, where being diverse in the run game specifically is becoming more important. And so I think if you can tap into more of the

the tight end coaches, some of your offensive line coaches, as opposed to, whereas I think maybe like the late 20 teens, like 2010s are in that era, there's a lot of quarterback coaches and wide receiver coaches because everything was about the passing game. Now that it's a little bit more balanced, makes sense to maybe throw a guy that you want to be a sponge and you want to be a guy who can throw ideas in both run and pass, put them into that position. Another one that you mentioned Sean McVeigh was one of the earliest ones. Arthur Smith was also a tight-end coach before he got promoted to calling offensive plays. And you could see how well that he was able to pair run and pass at multiple stops for him.

So I do think it is a theory that makes a lot of sense because I think especially too, if we're going to have, be more willing to hire these young coaches, it makes sense to put them in a coaching position where you are just exposed to more things. Like just try to get them on the fast track here and make sure that they're ready. So it's a pretty fascinating development, but I think it does make a lot of sense. I also think that people are going to look at me. He's 28 years old. It's a huge job.

I think it's really, really important to remember that being an offensive coordinator for a play calling head coach is a fundamentally different job than being an offensive coordinator who calls plays. the ideas and the organization are king when you are this sort of offensive coordinator for a head coach like Ben Johnson. So if you think this guy is the best path to ideas and organization, then it's okay that he's a little bit inexperienced. So I'm at least intrigued the fact that they tap this guy who is 10 years younger than

me and thought he was the best person for this job. We'll see how it goes. Sticking with OC interviews and hires, Clint Kubiak is the, new offensive coordinator of the Seattle Seahawks. As a Gino appreciator, what are your feelings on this? I appreciate that we're going to try to run an NFL offense this time around instead of a college offense. I will say that I appreciate that aspect of it.

I'm just not sure I was like super sold on a lot of what Kubiak was doing last year. Not that he was bad. It's just I didn't necessarily see him as a guy who is moving, you know, moving things forward. He's a needle mover. He's going to be one of those guys. but I do think if they can at least tap into the run game a little bit more, and the Saints kind of did at times this year, but this was obviously a huge issue with the Seahawks where they just haven't been able to tie the run game to the past game whatsoever, both formationally or

just in terms of getting into good down and distances. So if he can make them 15% better in that alone, that might be enough to justify the hiring. I honestly think that's where this begins and ends, is you have to. an issue in Seattle of being able to tie the run in the past together from the beginning. It was probably a lingering doubt even coming into the season based on who Ryan Grubb was at Washington. Well, now you have taken the fastest track possible to get on the entirely other side of that. Like, there is no, there is no way of thinking about football that has tied the run in the

past together in a more cohesive way than the way the Kubiaks have thought about offensive football for the last 30 years. So we joked a little bit that the Hank Fraily hire would have been a hilarious overcorrection for the Seahawks, them going out and getting an offensive line coach to be their offensive coordinator. This is the same thing. It's the exact same type of mindset in how you land here in that this is the biggest problem that we had.

I am going to over-solve that problem maybe at the expense of some other things, like the drop-back passing game, et cetera. So I honestly think I'm okay with over correcting a little bit in order to make sure you're not going to run into the same issues that you ran into last year. And by doing this, I think you almost guarantee that you will not. Yeah, it is funny. I didn't even think about it in those terms of in terms of going completely the other way. Like if this goes wrong and I'm not saying it will, it'll look a little bit more like Bobby Sloick in Houston where the run game and the passing game are almost too tied together where you can't do anything when they're not working together. and so maybe that ends up being the issue here.

But I actually kind of like to hire just in terms of I don't even think the Seattle offense needs to be great. The offensive line doesn't need to be great. It needs to be good enough where Gino can have them fighting to be a top 10, 12 offense. And if we assume that Mike McDonald is going to continue to do his job on that side of the ball and they're going to be good over there, this thing can get back into the playoffs pretty quickly, even if Kubiak isn't some home run insane higher that's going to get head coaching jobs. two years. I agree with that. And I also think that I don't know if he's necessarily going to be the hottest head coaching candidate when it comes to that, just personality-wise. So I think there's some safety in that part of it as well. And I think that this offense in general does a very good job when run correctly of hiding offensive line talent. I mean, the Saints over the first

few weeks of the season when they still had like a couple healthy players on offense, their offensive line has a lot of issues. You wouldn't have known it. They're stealing back bodies and protection. It's all this play action. It takes a lot. off of the line and the quarterback in a way that the Seattle offense just never did this year. And again, I feel like it's almost an overcorrection in that way. But I do think that it's going to solve some of the issues that we saw for the Seahawks team for most of the 2024 season. A couple more coordinator hires to get to before we get out of here. The Lions have a defensive coordinator.

Kelvin Shepard, their linebacker's coach, has been promoted to D.C. Not surprised to see them hire from within and try to maintain a little bit of continuity on that side. the one that is interesting, reportedly Johnny Morton, who we mentioned before, who was on the Bronco staff as the passing game coordinator, he is going to be the offensive coordinator for the Lions. His background is very, very interesting. Like, he's a guy that was in New Orleans for a while. He was the wide receivers coach when Dan Campbell was the tight ends coach in like 2016, 2017. He then went, I believe, to the Raiders for a couple years to work with John Gruden. some like advisory capacity and then was in Detroit as an offensive assistant in 2022 and then

went to the Broncos last year. I think that's the right time. And I'm not looking at it, but I'm pretty sure that's right. When you talk to people about this guy, he's the way people talk about him, it's like he has a football encyclopedia in his brain. Like the amount of the volume of dropback concepts that this man just lives with at all times, people know, like people talk about it. And so he's been this kind of like secondary figure for the most part throughout his career outside of one year as the Jets offensive coordinator in a season

where it was Josh McCallin throwing to Robbie Anderson and Jermaine Curse. That was the only time we've seen him as an offensive coordinator. So I'm not surprised that they landed here. Listen, I was going to bring that season up. That is one of my favorite just like obviously not good, but just random quarterback seasons that I loved. Watching Josh McCown and that Morton offense that year was awesome. They were just like so many of these aggressive deep dropback concepts, no play action. They were just letting him chuck it down the field. And Morton was calling up some good stuff. Like he did a really good job of running these picks or these scissors concepts that would get a safety to run out of the coverage. Like he really did put together a good, aggressive deep passing game. It's been a while since we've seen it. So I have no idea how it would actually get put

together in the year 2025, but I at least have some degree of appreciation for what he's done in the past. So I am mildly optimistic for it. And I think this actually makes a lot of sense when you're pairing him with Hank Fraley, who is coming back as the run game coordinator. So now, even if they're not conceiving it that way, I assume Hank Fraley got a promotion, or he got a raise with the promotion that he got. So you almost can think of it as like a dual OC sort of thing, where you have fraily handling the run game and you have this guy who is known as somebody who lives with 10 million passing concepts in his head to be your passing game coordinator slash OC. So we'll see what happens. You know, it's always going to be a challenge moving on from somebody like Ben Johnson, but it's an

intriguing place to land nonetheless. Last one here. This is what I think we all kind of saw coming. Robert Sal is back as the defensive coordinator of the San Francisco 49ers. Cool. Like it. Yeah, it's fun. We've seen no do good there before. He wasn't the problem in New York. Perfectly fun. Good place to land if you're the Niners. You know, you want to get back to a familiar place. They've obviously cycled between options over the last couple years. Steve Wilkes for a year, Nick Sorensen for a year. Now you get back to a spot that you have to feel pretty good about.

We'll see what a Robert Solid defense looks like in San Francisco, maybe without the level of defensive line talent he's had for a majority of his coaching jobs over the last five or so years. I assume the Niners will do what they can to alleviate that problem this offseason. but I think that's kind of the one specific thought I have is like we haven't seen Sala have to work around subpar defensive line play before. And there is a chance if they don't make the right moves this off season that that's where the Niners land again heading into next year. That is the scariest part. I do think there's also at least a decent percent chance that he gets some of these guys to play better than they have been over the past couple of years and really kind of simplify their jobs and get them to lock in a little bit better.

But yeah, regardless of that, I still think pretty solid higher. All right. That is all we've got for today. As I mentioned on the Sunday live stream, we will be back with another midweek show tomorrow. It's with Nate. I'll just tell you that it's with Nate. I tease them as a special guest on Sunday night. But Nate is going to come on. We're going to do a show that we've done each of the last couple years. It's a mainstay of the feed this time of year. We're going to talk about the lessons that we've learned from the final four teams in the NFL. So if you look at the chiefs, the Eagles, the Bills, Washington, what can we learn from

how they spent their resources, how they built their rosters, just some lessons that potentially other teams can take forward based on the final four teams that were playing on championship Sunday. So very excited about that. Hope you guys are as well. For now, that is all we've got. Appreciate you guys listening. We'll talk to you very soon.