The Bill Simmons Podcast - Ep. 186: Friday Rollin' With Mike Lombardi, Kevin Clark, and JackO

Episode Date: March 10, 2017

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons brings on Mike Lombardi and Kevin Clark to discuss NFL free agency, Deshaun Watson's draft fit (7:00), Mike Glennon in Chicago (11:00), the Patriots signing Stephon Gilmore (19:00), Brandin Cooks rumors (26:00), the Romo-coaster (34:00), and which L.A. football team will be the worst (40:00). Then, JackO joins to give his thoughts on Trump's presidency (48:00), Mike Francesa's reunion with Mad Dog (1:04:00), 'SNL' so far this season (1:08:00), and building a women's basketball dynasty at Holy Cross (1:11:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Those are our two newest podcast feeds. Subscribe now. Masked Man Show, Wrestling, Achievement Oriented, Video Games. Both of them are great. You can subscribe to them now on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're brought to you by TheRinger.com. That's where I wrote a big piece about Russell Westbrook that went up Thursday about whether Russell Westbrook would be the biggest ball hog that ever won the NBA title or even competed for

the NBA title and whether he's the biggest ball hog we've ever had in the NBA. And actually, weirdly, I meant it as kind of a compliment, but you can check that out. I think he read it because yesterday he played like his best all around game in a while. He's trying to pass, get people involved. I think you might have read the piece, Russell Westbrook. Anyway, check that out on TheRinger.com. We're going to talk football with Mike Lombardi and Kevin Clark. And we're going to talk politics and a whole bunch of stuff with my old buddy, Jacko, that is coming up right now. But first, Eddie Vedder. All right, in studio, The Ringer's Kevin Clark. On the line, The Ringer's Mike Lombardi.

We have Jacko coming up later, who has somehow not been on this podcast in 2017, even though the world is ending. Speaking of the world ending, I can't remember a more action-packed free agency day. We're taping this. It is 9.30 Friday morning, West Coast time time so if anything else happens in the next hour i guess we'll talk about it as it's happening biggest thing kevin for you most exciting thing that happened yesterday just as a football fan i'm excited about the

cleveland browns bringing nba style salary dumps to the nfl because we've waited for it it took the perfect storm a lot of nfl teams can get out of contracts really easily. They don't need to package a second round pick to get rid of a contract. Brock Osweiler was so devastatingly bad to the franchise that they had to do it. We see it all the time in the NBA. Now it opens up all sorts of possibilities. You know, we're not just talking about, oh, like for like trades or just regular free agency.

Now it's like, like well wait what who's gonna pick up what in a salary dump like i think it opens up the door for a lot of different scenarios we need a trade machine bill i'm ready for an nfl trade machine and i would be working on it constantly right now trying to figure out pat's trades lombardi it's a second round pick which is one of the best values you can have in the league because the guy's making like a million bucks a year. So they're basically paying a $10 million price tag for that pick, but it's a one-time hit, and then it's $1 million a year after that. Why hasn't a team done this before?

Why did it take until 2017 to figure this out? Well, you know, there's a rule that you're not supposed to be trading. And I think the Browns did a good job of circumventing or kind of finding loopholes in the rules. But I know I talked to two head coaches yesterday or GMs in the league that are basically like, this is a cash for cap. This is a trading draft picks for money deal. And it is.

And if they let it go through, which is what the indications are, then I think we're going to see more of this. But I think the inclination has always been that you can't do this. And with the way the Browns did it in terms of adding those other draft picks in, it does. So when they get rid of the heist and the Browns still have to pay his $16 million, they essentially have paid $16 million for a second-round pick. Are you excited for some of the terrible signings yesterday

to now be traded for draft picks a year from now? What's the tomorrow candidate? I think I am. And I think really what, what it's the perfect storm, because this is the first time teams have had cap room. I mean, I was talking to a GM yesterday and they were talking about like some guys, they didn't think we're going to get tendered at the million seven. Cause some of these tenders are really high based on the player's performance. But teams have so much cap room that they feel like, well, we should just tender the player. And so I think now that there's so much cap room, if you can buy a draft pick for cap room, basically,

then I think you're going to see more of this. Look, you've got to take your hat off to the Browns for doing a trade. And I take my hat off to the Texans for at least admitting the heist was a humongous mistake. And to dump $16 million off your payroll is huge. Clark is excited because he's excited for Tony Romo and the Houston Texans, as I think all of us are. How do you make that deal if you don't have a guarantee from Romo that he's coming?

Well, look, I would have made that deal whether Romo's coming or not, because the one thing we know, going down the heist road is a traffic jam waiting to happen. I mean, it's an accident. So why go down that road? I mean, it's like Bill Walsh used to say all the time, if you have a pair of twos, you might as well discard them, because you're not going to win the hand.

Get rid of Brock Osweiler. I agree with you, Kevin. You'd think it goes A to B, but look, getting rid of Osweiler was the smartest thing. It was the cold reality Houston had to have before they could ever get good. And I applaud them for doing it. Because they were going nowhere with Osweiler. If it's not Romo, who are the other candidates?

Is there anyone left? They're going to draft a guy or Tommy Savage is going to come in and play. Or maybe it's Jake Hull. I don't know. But look, one thing we do know for sure, Savage is going to come in and play. Or maybe it's Jake. I don't know. But look, one thing we do know for sure, you were going nowhere with Osweiler. And you had to pay him 16 million bucks. You know, I know nothing about the draft and go out of my way not to go down that rabbit hole.

But I always have a spidey sense for the QBs. Usually. Watson's going to go like 20 spots higher than I think people think he's going to in this mock draft. Don't you think he goes in the 10-16 range now, or am I nuts? I think you're right. I think he could go higher. I'm with Kevin. I love Watson. I think you have to shift your

evaluation focus on Watson. And you can't view him as the Sam Bradford throwing 80% completions for 25 yards. You've got to view him as he's a playmaker. He's Allen Iverson. He'll shoot 9 of 30 from the field, but he'll win the game for you. Right. And I think Watson's got great character.

He's got leadership. You want to build a franchise around a guy like Watson. And I think teams will see that the more they get involved with him. Kevin, what would be your ideal Watson team? Oh, I don't know. I mean, I would just like to see him with tons of great skill position players. I mean, I wouldn't hate him in Chicago. I mean, you have Jordan Howard, you have an offense that showed flashes of life. They were terrible in the red zone last year, but everywhere else they were okay.

I think that could be kind of an exciting match. I worry a little bit about the coaching staff because they don't care in Chicago. But I mean, I just, I feel like if he gets to a place with position players, maybe he needs a better quarterback coach, but you know, I could see him working almost anywhere. He's a playmaker, as Mike says. There's no chance San Francisco would take him at two, but maybe they would trade down 10 spots and then take them in the eight to 12 range. That'd be great. That would be great just to have Shanahan with them. But on the other hand, there's not really talent around him. Right. I would just like to say if i was jacksonville i would take to sean watson what so what pick do they have they're in the tens or they're they're in

the they're i think they're what fifth something like that um and so why not you know bordles isn't the answer you have you have enough what do you need if you're Jacksonville? You've addressed everything else via free agency. You have decent running backs, good wide receivers. You have an okay defense that's ready to compete. Calais Campbell was a phenomenal signing. A.J. Buway back there was a phenomenal signing. Jalen Ramsey is going to be a star. You need a quarterback.

Blake Portals, you know, is not your quarterback. Yeah, I feel like they're in the same spot that Houston was with Osweiler. yeah where they just were like as mike said they just had the pair of twos and it's time to just throw them in why do you keep pushing chips in but you know mike you've been doing this little running paragraphs on each signing that's relatively major as it happens and for all the jacksonville stuff that happened you were talking about this Coughlin culture, that he's trying to reestablish the right kind of guys with the right kind of work ethic and character, which is why they signed the guys they did yesterday.

Bortles doesn't fit into that culture, so what are they doing? I think Kevin's right. I think they're going to look for a quarterback. They're going to go with Bortles for as long as they have to, but I think they're probably knowing Coughlin. They're going to address the offensive line in this draft. I mean, that's been a thorn in their side. They've tried in free agency to do it.

It really hasn't worked, whether it's Zane Beatles or Kevin Beachum. I mean, they've struggled with the offensive line. I think that's probably where they'll go in the draft, but I would think a smart play would be to draft a quarterback because they do have a lot of pieces in place. They're just really one dynamic playmaker away from taking that offense to another level, and it ain't Blake Bortles. Mike, I've never been more disappointed in you than I was yesterday

when it seemed like you kind of liked the Mike Glennon signing. I liked it because here's why. You liked it. You actually did like it. Yeah, I do. There's no no downside I've talked to Siano who drafted the kid I've talked to people down there and everybody everybody signs off on the kid and you know when you watch him play and you look

at him in his first couple starts when he started the first year as a rookie he actually didn't play poorly I mean there's a lot of hype about Carson Wentz and how he played his rookie season, but when you watch Glennon play that year, it was a little better than Carson Wentz. So I'm not like, look, and they can get out of it after one year. Most of the guarantee is in year one. So it's like, what are you going to do?

Are you going to keep watching Jay Cutler pout? Are you going to keep watching him move around? I mean, why not feel like if you can hit now? I like the Seattle model. I didn't like it when they did it, and I learned something from it. Seattle kept throwing darts at the quarterback position. They had Tavares Jackson. They signed a kid from Green Bay, Matt Flynn, right?

And then they draft Russell Wilson. So I think if the Bears take that approach, I like it. But I didn't hate it at all. So Lombardi, yeah, Kevin's shaking his head. Kevin, you're the tiebreaker. I feel like I was in the United States with DirecTV for the last six years and saw Mike go in and play football and never said to myself, ooh, that guy, file him away. First of all, if you lose your job to a McCown, you have to leave

the league. That's it. That's my rule. That's my rule. You're gone. You're out. Yeah, you're out. And so for me, just my general thought is I don't know why there's a rule that you have to have a quarterback on a second contract. I don't know why you wouldn't just, you know, obviously

not everyone's going to go full Cleveland and go full Sam Henke. But I know John Fox trying to save his job. I don't know why ownership isn't like, guys, the McCaskey sit down and say, guys, we don't need to panic. We don't need to give Mike Glennon $14 million for this year, $5 million guaranteed next year. Let's just take it slow. Draft two quarterbacks. Figure it out. Get a cheaper guy.

Bring back Brian Hoyer, whatever it is. I just don't understand. Mike Glennon's not going to get you the playoffs. There's no scenario in which he gets you the playoffs this year. They are so bad. I would have just taken things slower, not gotten a guy on a second contract, taken advantage of the rookie wage scale, and let it play out. See, my thing is there's only like seven or eight quarterbacks

that can win the Super Bowl every year anyway. Mike Glennon will never be one of those seven or eight. He might do the Derek Anderson on the Browns and get you to 10 and six and get you a wild card game that you lost by three points. That was fun. Remember that year we made the playoffs? But he's not winning four straight playoff games

and winning the Super Bowl. So I would, you know, this happens in basketball too. Everybody tries to make their roster in July. Yeah. And they don't really, you know, they don't factor in the part that, one, it's great to have cap space. And once you get to October, November, December, January, everybody's dying to dump some contract. And these guys become available. Teams become unhappy with certain people.

And if you have the cap space, you can just make the move then. Or you get the buyout guy at the deadline in basketball. You know, either way, you don't have to finish your roster in July. I kind of feel the same way about quarterbacks. There's going to be somebody available either in the draft or after the draft that will be 80% as good as Mike Lennon. And there's always going to be a situation where someone drafts a young quarterback and they have a veteran, happened with Sam Bradford last year,

and all of a sudden the veteran becomes available in August. We don't know what that's going to look like until the draft. Until after the draft and then even in training camp. And so I'm with you. I would wait as long as possible if I'm the Bears. If I get to August and I say, hey, this team has got a chance, then you say, well, what veteran is available? Is Chase Daniel going to be available in a trade?

I like Chase Daniel. Mike, how much pressure... So if you're running the team... You guys like Chase Daniel and hate, how much pressure? So if you're running the team. You guys like Chase Daniel and hate Mike Glennon. I love this. No, I don't hate Mike Glennon. I just don't want to pay him $15 million a year. That seems like a lot of money for Mike Glennon.

Well, they got to spend some money somewhere. I mean, you know, I mean, they got to do something. But that's the part, Mike, that's the part I don't understand. Like, why do they have to spend money in April? Look, they feel like that. And if you talk to enough people around the league that have coached Glenn, I mean, let me say this to you. Tampa refused to trade the guy.

Tampa was offered more draft. I mean, Tampa was offered picks for this guy. And they know they're going to spend in free agency. So it's like, oh, well, we'll get a compensatory for Mike Glenn. And I don't think that's the case. I mean, they signed Sean Jackson. They signed Chris Baker. I think they won't get us. So they should have taken a pick for him, and they refused to do it, because I think they felt like he had enough ability. They liked his talent level.

And I think that's what we don't see as fans. We don't get to watch the practice or the scouts. People say to me all the time, well, why are you so high on Jimmy Garoppolo? I watch him practice every single day. And so that's why I'm high on him. And I think maybe Glennon is one of those guys. Now, look, I don't like his body language. I don't like some of the things about him. But I think it's a move the Bears had to make. I don't think you could...

To me, quarterback is the last position you can manufacture around because you want to build your team around the quarterback strength. Your quarterback is your baseball stadium. You've got to build your team around the quarterback strength. Your quarterback is your baseball stadium. You've got to build a team to fit his strengths. And if you wait until August to do that, you just become a collection of players, not a team. And I think that's why they did it.

So you think, it sounds like you think the Bears actually really like Mike Lennon and think he's going to be good. I think they really do. My question is... I think they really do. I think they went all in. I think they went all in on Mike Lennon. I think they felt like, look, this is what we can...

We can build a team around him. We've got enough good players. We've got some offensive weapons. We'll rebuild this offensively. Try to sign Ricky Wagner. They couldn't get him. They're trying to rebuild their tackle position. Look, I think that whether John Fox is there two years from now or not,

I think the reality of it is the Bears organization, the way they run their team, it always has a longer lens to it than just the next year. The McCaskey-Hallis family is not looking on one year only. And I think that that's why they convinced themselves that this guy can become a good player. I'm not sure he's going to be great. I will know if I was a GM, I would have paid $15 million on a one year.

But at least the risk side is down to where if if it's bad it's not like Brock Osweiler where you're trying to sell the contract next year very quickly having been in a position where you're running a team if you don't have a quarterback by the end of April how much pressure do you start feeling from your owner from your COO from your fan base. Like it must be, that would be the one thing I think would be hard if you just went with the strategy. Guys, we're going to wait. There's no perfect QB out there.

Just trust me. And then you have your owner at dinner going, hey man, my wife's asking me why we don't have a quarterback yet. What's going on? Is that, how real is that? And then Dak Prescott shows up and then he comes down the hall and says, why don't we draft him right you know and so it's hard and I think the more than any of that but more than the fans more than the owner is those 60 guys in the locker room or 90 in April that you have to look in the eye and say you know we're a really good team we can win

with this quarterback when they go out to practice and they know they can't win it's like when the Ravens when the Eagles signed Torrey Smith. Everybody in San Francisco that was in San Francisco knows Torrey Smith wasn't a great receiver. They gave him all this money. It deflates the team. And not having a quarterback deflates your team. You don't have credibility when you stand in front of those players and say, we can win the game. You have credibility if you say, hey, look, we're going to manage the game this way.

We have a quarterback who can do these things. It's hard when you don't have one. Mike, just to play devil's advocate very briefly, if you pay Mike Glennon $19 million guaranteed over two years, isn't that the same sort of thing where players will look at Mike Glennon and say, this guy's getting that much guaranteed and I'm on a $1.5 million deal? Isn't there a a chance of locker room dysfunction when you pay sort of an unproven quarterback well I think there is and if the kid comes in and just but there's a separate entity here it's the quarterback quarterbacks are

kind of a kind of their own section of of the financial scale you get paid more just because you play that position so I think that that you get a slide there, but if he comes in and doesn't really... One of the problems with the heist down in Houston was he really wasn't a teammate. They couldn't really get along with him. He wouldn't really work hard. He wouldn't do the things. It wasn't so much that they overpaid him.

It was the fact that they got the guy, and they really didn't like the guy. They got the guy. They didn't like him. And I think that's Kevin would be more detrimental. I think that there's a chance that he'll rally the people around him. And Glennon's never been a guy that his teammates didn't like him. And I think that's Kevin would be more detrimental. I think that there's a chance that he'll rally the people around him. And Glennon's never been a guy that his teammates didn't like.

I mean, they've always liked him. I want to talk about the Patriots, but first, quick break to talk about Blue Apron. What if you stopped wasting money on expensive takeout? What if you signed up with Blue Apron? For less than $10 per meal,

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Love Blue Apron. No more overspending at restaurants. No more high-end grocery stores. With Blue Apron, you can prepare delicious, memorable meals yourself in under 40 minutes. Tate can't do this because he doesn't have a kitchen. Some of the meals available in March include salmon piccata with orzo and broccoli, pork chops with miso butter with bok choy and marinated apple, vegetable chili and baked sweet potatoes with crispy tortilla strips, spicy shrimp coconut curry with cabbage, and something

called RIC. I don't know what that is. Right now, you can get your first three Blue Apron meals for free with free shipping, unless you're Tate and you don't have a kitchen. Just go to blueapron.com slash BS Blue Apron. It's a better way to cook. Patriots splurged on a free agent. Stephon Gilmore.

I feel like Belichick is hitting his late 60s, and he's like the older guy who bought his first fancy car. He's like, oh, I got a Porsche. Oh, look at the old guys getting a little frisky. Bill Downs gets Gilmore. Are you at the stage now where your evaluation changes as soon as you know Belichick has interest in a guy? Like, Stefan Gilmore, two days ago, you were probably like,

yeah, and now you're just like, this guy, I'm booking my trip to Canton now for Stefan Gilmore. I knew he was good because we played him twice a year, but I didn't really have an opinion either way, but with Belichick at this point, Belichick could, like, release my dad, and I'd be like, alright, you know, my dad probably wasn't carrying

his weight. I'm okay with it. You know, my dad probably wasn't carrying his weight I'm okay with it you know my dad should have stepped up more I just completely trust him the Collins thing was incredible he waved the best defensive player that we had on our team from a talent standpoint and the team immediately got better and he just put like three random people that nobody even barely had heard of in August and just patched them together and they were better than Collins as a collection. So I just trust him. But Mike, Belichick never spends on free agents. Why Gilmore?

Well, I think this is, they've never been in a position where the team is A, so young and B, had so much cap room. I mean, this is a unique spot. I mean, they have, you know, they were one of, they were the only playoff team

in the top 10 cap room. Yeah room and won the Super Bowl. They had over $50 million. You're going to have to spend it on some players, and they have guys signed to long-term deals. And look, now that we see the guard markets going completely insane, Shaq Basin's probably sitting there thinking, when is my payday coming? Because he played pretty well for them for most of the season. So I think he looked at the landscape and said, who can I sign? Who can I get as a quality player? Who can fit the scheme and we can utilize? And all roads lead to Gilmore.

Look, they would like to sign Butler back to a contract. They've been trying to sign Butler back to a contract. That hasn't really worked out. And they've offered all those guys, whether it's Hightower, Butler, even Jamie Collins, there has been conversations about those guys to extend them, and they just have never been able to come up with the right deal. And so they went out and signed Gilmore, and he fits. He can play press.

He can play off. He can fit what they want to do. They want to play man-to-man, and it gives them the ability to have a legitimate corner on their team that they can build their defense around. So in your opinion, he's one of the best seven or eight cornerbacks in the league? Yeah, I think he's in the top ten corners in the league. And in their scheme, he fits well.

They've played against him, and I'm sure Chris Hogan gave him a lot of information on the kind of person he is. That's the one thing, when you take a guy from another team, you always want to sit down with him, especially if he kind of has a sense of what's going on, and you want to kind of go over it, and I think he's really good at that, and so I'm sure that that's what happened. I'm sure Hogan was like, yeah, this guy's really good,

and he probably gave a stamp of approval. You mean Chris Hogan, the world's greatest athlete? The world's greatest athlete from college, yeah. He can do anything, man. I think we should have him on Team USA in like 17 different Olympic events. World Baseball Classic. Whatever.

Just Chris Hogan's available to help us with sports. So, Kevin Clark, you're on the internet every once in a while. Sure. It sure seems like when you spend a lot of money on Gilmore and you have Malcolm Butler who wants to get paid and they're not going to pay him when they don't have to yet because Belichick doesn't do that unless he's getting something out of it. And then you have the Saints who are trying to trade Brandon Cooks for a defensive starter. They've been very clear.

What a coincidence. It sure seems like something lines up here with Cooks and Butler as the foundation of a trade. And right now it is 9.54 on the West Coast AM. One of the great things about how much cap room there is to go around is that we can sort of entertain these great player-for-player trades. Yes. There haven't been many of them. Jonathan Baldwin and A.J. Jenkins was the low point five years ago where that was like, wow, look at this trade, player-for-player.

Nowadays you can do whatever you need to do because anyone can make a fit under the cap. I think this would be an awesome trade for both teams. I think that I can't wait to see how bad Malcolm Butler looks when he gets into the Saints vortex, which means he just gives up 400 yards a game. That's what happens when he gets to New Orleans and he plays cornerbacks.

You're just running win sprints. Yeah, you're just running 70 win sprints a game. We have to slow it down a little bit. Butler's not under contract. Butler's a restricted free agent. The Patriots can't trade butler unless butler puts his john hancock on on that tender okay but then but he would butler butler controls the deal in a sense where if butler then has to go to the saints and work out a contract with the saints sign his, they'll trade that signed tender,

and then the Saints can extend his contract. But there's a lot of pieces that have to fall into place before that happens, and it might happen. I mean, there's no sense that it might happen. And the Saints have been asking for a defensive player and a draft pick for Cooks. And it might happen because the Saints are willing to spend money they don't really have.

They need corners on that team. But until that mechanism triggers, until Butler is able to negotiate a contract with the Saints are willing to spend money they don't really have. They need corners on that team. But until that mechanism triggers, until Butler is able to negotiate a contract with the Saints on a long-term deal, somebody like Butler or Gilmore. If I'm Tennessee, it costs me a first-round pick to sign Butler, right? Yes. But they have a good first-round pick. But don't they have a couple first-round picks? They have two, yeah. Yeah, but you have to give up your own pick. You can't give up somebody else's pick.

Oh, because I was thinking— You have to give up your own. You can't designate what pick you give up. But they have the high pick of, let's see, I think they have the Rams, and then they have their own. So their own would be a little lower. They have five from the Rams. Yeah, and then their own pick's got to be like 14 or 15. Right, so they could give up their own pick.

And to me, I would have rather paid Butler more and give up the first than 10 million. And I like Logan Ryan as a person, as a player, I think he's a role guy. And this is one of those classic cases when you step outside your role, it's not always going to be effective. So that was my question. Would you rather pay Logan Ryan three years, 30 million, or would you rather give up the 15th pick in the draft or whatever they have and pay Malcolm Butler $55 million? Right. The 15th pick in the draft, based on this draft, though, Bill, is pretty strong in the

secondary. So maybe they feel like they can get a corner. They have to address their receiver needs badly. They're going to be in the Brandon Cooks thing as well. So I don't know if they're going to want to give up any of those assets until they figure out where Brandon Cook lands. They're cooking three meals on the stove at the same time, and I don't know if they're going to want to give up any of those assets until they figure out where Brandon Cook lands. They're cooking three meals on the stove at the same time, and I don't think they can make that move until they know what happens with Cook

and go from there. So it's a little bit more – you're like a short-order cook. You've got a lot of things going. You can't get it all happening at the same time. So how good is Cook's? Because it always makes me nervous when a team is trying to trade somebody. Like if all of a sudden it came out I was just trying to trade Kevin Clark. Especially a receiver.

Well, let's say the Ringer's trying to trade Kevin Clark. That's not good. They need a copy editor. They need two copy editors and a couple younger bloggers. People's reaction would be, that's weird, why are they trying to trade Kevin Clark? Which is kind of how I feel like about Cooks, because I always thought Cooks was good,

but how good can he be if they're trying to trade him? Most of his yards came in three games last year. I think they know that, but on the other hand, if the Patriots want him, that indicates they're not going to get hoodwinked into taking some damaged goods.

Well, Belichick's, I mean, he raved, anytime, it's so funny, this would be a good piece for us. We should go through the last seven years. Anytime Belichick r, I mean, he raved. Anytime, it's so funny. This would be a good piece for us. We should go through the last seven years. Anytime Belichick raves about an opposing player, it's his way of like, it's almost like a dog peeing on territory. He just kind of sneaks it out there.

There's no way the guy doesn't know. Like Cooks and his agent, they'd be like, oh, did you see what Belichick said about you yesterday? Oh, my God. Wow, filed that one away. They'll use it in negotiation. Like, look, did you see what Belichick said about you yesterday? Oh, my God. Wow. File that one away. They'll use it in negotiation. They'll use it in negotiation. Like, look, did you see what Belichick said about us in negotiation?

You don't think we're good? Belichick likes us, you know? But some of that is also, you know, I mean, some of that is just to help his team out, motivate his team when he talks about the other players. Like, you know, the team's like, oh, he's always talking good about them. He never talks about us, you know? It's like one of those. But, look, I think Cooks is a good player.

I think the problem the Saints have is they feel like they can score 20 points a game with Cook or without Cook. They can't keep their opponent under 40 the way they are right now. So I think they're just trying to move assets from offense to defense, and they feel like he gives them the biggest asset they have. Maybe they should make Kobe Fleaner an inside linebacker since they paid all that money for him last year. Yeah. Wait, trade him in terms of the Browns.

Yeah. They have two number one picks, and naturally they use one on offense. I mean, they wonder why they're no good on defense. And then when they break down their defensive personnel, I mean, you know, they can't get Stephon Anthony on the field. They draft them in the first round. You know, it's one of those where they just don't... There's some teams that just can't seem to pick defensive players, and

part of the reason is they keep changing their scheme. They've been through Greg Williams, Rob Ryan, now they've got Dennis Allen. They don't really know what they want to be on offense. My hot take on this is that Sean Payton won a Super Bowl already. It's a great corner to be the guy

who's an offensive genius who just can't get it together on defense. You can always blame the defensive coordinators, these different guys you drafted that didn't work out. But then you keep putting the money into the offense because at the very least you have that. So maybe that's his plan. With Cooks though, all right, so the Pats,

you know, Brady's been there for 16 years now. And at this point, he's just had variations of the same guy that entire time. So he's Troy Brown in 2001, who was amazing, who made the Pro Bowl. Then you have like Deion Branches in that spot. Then Welker, Edelman, a little Amendola. From a talent standpoint, where would you put Cooks in the framework of those five guys? Is he as good as Troy Brown in 2001? Is he more like Branch?

How good is he? I think he's a better Branch. I mean, this is a guy that can do a lot of things. He's good with the ball in his hands. He's got quickness. He can play in the slot. He's tough to handle on the outside. I mean, what the Patriots always are looking for is multidimensional receivers,

guys that can line up anywhere, and Cooks is one of those guys. The advantage with this Cook deal for Belichick and the Patriots always are looking for is multidimensional receivers, guys that can line up anywhere, and Cooks is one of those guys. The advantage with this Cook deal for Belichick and the Patriots is if they're able to trade for him, they bring a player into their locker room that Edelman's not going to get mad about what they paid him because he stole his rookie contract. That's a huge value for the Patriots. Hogan's not going to get upset because this guy's still on his rookie contract the Patriots think about those things

I think the Patriots read Kevin's article in the ringer a few weeks ago about how they have more middle class salary guys than anybody they just added a couple more the guys from that 5-8 million range that's like the sweet spot for them

they're like none of those guys in the league except New England. It's really incredible. Kevin, that's right. Your article's absolutely correct because they go against the norm in that area. They're saying to themselves, we'd rather have five $5 million players than two big-time players because

they believe depth wins games. Harmon's a great example. Great contract. Chris Hogan. Yeah, Hogan's another one. And, you know, I got to say, as somebody who loves the Patriots and watches Super Bowls that we won over and over again on my DVR and on NFL Network or I'm flipping channels like, oh, it's the third quarter of the Seattle Patriots game.

Okay, I'll have to watch that. Hightower was unbelievable for us. He was just unbelievable. I mean, the stop that he made, the play before the Malcolm Butler interception, is one of the three greatest tackles in the history of the franchise. Like, Marshawn Lynch should have scored on that play.

And then he comes in, he does the strip sack on Matt Ryan in the Super Bowl, which was the official, like, the Russian has come! Like, that was the official, like, the Russian is coming! Like, that was one of those moments. But it's really hard for me to imagine him not being on this Patriots team. So, Mike, tell me it's going to work out. Well, I think it's hard.

I mean, look, Jamie Collins made Luke Kuechly money. And Luke Kuechly's a really good player. And Hightower's going to want that Luke Kuechly-Jamie Collins contract. And it's not going to happen in New England. I just don't think that, until the price comes down, I don't think that's going to want that Luke Kuechly, Jamie Collins contract. It's not going to happen in New England. I just don't think that until the price comes down, I don't think that's going to happen. And so, you know, look, Hightower, what makes that tackle in the Super Bowl so amazing is he's playing with a harness on his shoulder.

He had to get shoulder surgery after the game. Right. So it's really remarkable that he was able to even bring that beast down and tackle him with one shoulder. So, look, he's a really good player. The championship game in Denver, the one we lost, no one played as well as anybody. And in the Super Bowl, played as well as anybody. He plays great in big games.

He's hurt quite often, so durability is a concern when you sign him. And then he wants a contract that's comparable to Keekly and Jamie Collins, based on where he is, and he wants it over length and i think that that's something that hightower has always wanted and i think he'll sign to a team that gives him that deal and i don't i think he feels like that's the best thing for him to do and perhaps it is i'm sure he wasn't a huge fan of the gilmore signing right he couldn't have really thoroughly enjoyed oh i thought we weren't paying big money for defensive free agents. Well, at least the ones that aren't here. You know, like I wrote, I mean, Belichick's going to love the one that says yes.

Right. All right, it's time to talk about the Romo coaster. Oh, my gosh. Houston would be the most fun. Houston is also the one that scares me as a Pats fan the most, because if he's good in Houston, I really like the way that team played in the playoffs. I thought they beat the shit out of Brady in that game.

They're getting J.J. Watt back. If they can figure out how to sneak Romo in there, Kevin, do you believe? I believe among the obvious candidates. I think if you go back to the Peyton Manning recruitment of 2012, it was always, oh, it's going to be Miami, it's going to be Arizona, maybe Denver was in the mix a little bit,

but then there were these secret back-channel reach-outs. Remember Harbaugh? Arizona and San Francisco. San Francisco. Harbaugh worked him out at Duke. I think there's going to be teams that come out of the woodwork, secretly work him out, if he becomes available, that is, and maybe try to upgrade a little bit.

The Vikings are pretty much capped out. But, I mean, what the hell? Try to win a Super Bowl. You know, the Vikings are pretty much capped out. But, I mean, what the hell? I mean, try to win a Super Bowl. You already have an NFL or a Super Bowl-ready defense. If you're – and this is crazy, but what if you're Miami? And you're saying, like, we have some of the best skill position players in the NFL. We have Ryan freaking Tannehill. We could move him.

You know, everyone has the cap space. If you're a team who can upgrade a quarterback, I think you're going to at least give a look to romo so i agree of the obvious candidates the ready-made candidates houston is going to be the best option but i could see some teams coming out of the woodwork here if i was a chiefs fan yeah and romo sitting there and you're telling me i have to watch alex smith put together 15 play drives in january that lead a 22-yard field goal for another year, I'd be going crazy. Alex Smith is who led Harbaugh to secretly work out Peyton Manning. Yeah.

I just, where is Kansas City in this, Mike? Kansas City says no, but they could be like Kevin says. There's always a team that you're always thinking is saying no, but really saying yes, because they don't want to mess up the, you know, there's an aftershock that affects this, you know? So if you don't get the guy, then you have to go and it's damage control. You've got to go in there and try to tell your quarterback, no, we really weren't in love with Romo. We were just, we just wanted to call and see if he was available. And so you try to do it as convertly as you possibly can. And,

you know, look, I think Houston's the perfect place. Yesterday, midday, I heard Houston was not going after a quarterback, that they were tired of changing, and I was talking to a coach in the league, and he was saying that. And then all of a sudden, it shifted, and I talked to somebody else in Houston that felt like it was shifting. They weren't sure where it was coming from, and they were able to pull off the Osweiler deal. Now

it appears that Romo will go there, and I think Romo, if he's healthy and durable and can stay there, I think it's a good fit. Can I throw out one team that nobody has thought about yet? What about the Jaguars of Jacksonville? Oh, yeah. They have, Mike, as you would say, they have a lot of blue chippers.

They could make a really good sales pitch. I mean, they could make a really good sales pitch for them because they could say, hey, look, we're going to draft offensive linemen. We put you at quarterback. We know we want you to groom Blake Bortles and show him what it takes to be a really good player. Retire. I mean, we're talking a sales pitch here. Because, look, there's people in the Jaguars organization currently.

Their former general manager, who still has the title but doesn't have you know, and so because, look, there's people in the Jaguars organization currently, their former general manager who still has the title but doesn't have the authority, David Colwell, who thinks you can win a Super Bowl. He's been quoted as saying you can win a Super Bowl with Blake Bortles. I don't know what Super Bowl you can win with him, but he thinks that, and that's fine. And so there's still some people in that building, but I think Jacksonville

is a sneaky good team to do it. They have cap room, they could fit him in there, and it would, look, you add Tony Romo to that team and you could really, I mean, it could really infuse a lot of enthusiasm. And we wouldn't have to watch the Jaguars on a Thursday

night game in December as their only appearance on national television. If the GM with no authority says that Blake Bortles can win a Super Bowl, it's probably a good thing he has no authority. Hey, Mike. Yeah. If you're a GM,

you have to win this year or you're going to get fired basically. So I would say that could qualify for 10 different teams. You're basically betting your job on Tony Romo and the fact that he's saying no, actually I got in good shape this year. I think I have two to three years left.

I'm really, you know, I think I could be one of the top eight QBs in the league. Would you bet your job on Tony Romo? I think you got to go visit with Tony because I think two things in Tony's in play here. Look, Tony's going to go to some network, whether it's CBS, Fox, and he's going to be able to quickly move into the number one, number two roles, whatever one he wants to go into. And then, you know, maybe he'll do Golf Channel too because he loves golf and he can comment on the game. Jacksonville is a great place for golf, by the way.

Yeah, true. You know, exactly. So you're dealing with some unknown here. And how important is this to Tony? And I think Tony's going to look you in the eye and say, look, I can't rest as a human being until I've given everything I have in this body to try to win a Super Bowl. And if he believes that and you hear it and you can feel it,

then I think it's a good investment. All right, we've got to run, but very quickly, favorite free agent signing, Kevin, so far? Deshaun Jackson. Deshaun Jackson, Tampa. The rare player who I think can manufacture a deep game, even if the quarterback isn't that talented at throwing down the field. Mike?

I like Larry Warford of the Saints. Look, for Breeze to be effective, the pocket's got to be firm, and I think that's what Larry Warford, the guard from the Detroit Lions, I think he really, that's a good signing for New Orleans. They wanted Kevin Zeitler. He got too much money, went to Cleveland. They took the second guy, and I think the second guy will be a good player for them.

It makes me laugh between Warford and maybe Malcolm Butler. The Saints spent the last decade just hilariously capped out with no cap room. Then they get like $20 million, and then it's going to spend it in like a week. Yeah. They cannot have cap room. It's impossible. They make it rain. No, they can't.

They love to make rain. They're a drunken sailor. That's the truth. It's like Wall Street. Last question. This's the truth. It's like Wall Street. Last question. This is super important. Which L.A. team is doing... I mean, it's really...

It's a bloodbath to see who's going to suck more next year between those two teams. And they took the first day of free agency, and they just went mono on mono. Kevin, which team did worse? Which team did worse? The Robert Wood signing was terrible. I didn't even know he was going to get a second contract, let alone like $15 million in guaranteed money. By the way, the Rams should have loaded up and made a run at Romo.

Stop using logic, Kevin. Stop using logic. Look, I think Kevin's right. Hands down, one of the Rams, you talk about, first of all, you put a franchise tag on Tremaine Johnson. Then you leak it out there that teams are trying to trade for him. Okay, so just let me get this straight. You want me to trade for a guy who's making $16 million,

and you want me to give up a draft pick from a draft that is high in value in corners? Yeah, that's really going to happen, okay? That's really going to happen. So we know that. I think the Rams are just comical in what they do. They really are. I think the Chargers have a good team. Keeping Ingram was smart.

I don't love the Okun signing, but at least they acknowledge that King Dunlap's not a left tackle. And I think as long as you have Phillip Rivers, you have a chance to be decent, which is true. I think the Rams are hopeless. I think you guys both slept on the Chargers spending $53 million on yet another left tackle who's not going to protect Phillip Rivers. It's a bad draft.

I agree with you. I wrote about it, but I mean, at least I mean, but look, and he hasn't played good for two years. I mean, he hasn't been good when everybody thought he was good.

You know, that's the one thing you don't want to do is sign a player that everybody that hasn't been good when everybody thinks he's good. And that's Okun. I think the Rams have a chance to put together an offense of guys that will never start for anybody's fantasy team, which is the hardest thing to do. Like even the Browns couldn't do it last year.

Cause like Terrell prior, I started them a couple of times, but the Rams, you're not going to start girly doing three yards of carry. You're not starting their QB. You're not starting Tavon Austin or Robert Woods. You're not starting whoever the hell their tight end is. They're just going to be a complete fantasy zero.

It's going to be unbelievable. It's really hard to do. Wow. It is amazing. And like Kevin said, the Robert Woods signing is just remarkable, considering that they could you outdo signing a receiver who can't put the ball in the end zone when you have Tavon Austin? Oh, yes, you can.

Let's sign Robert Woods, who has one touchdown. I mean, people say, well, it's not fair. You know, who's getting the ball? Great receivers, guys you give all that money to, find the end zone. They find the end zone. Austin and Woods, they don't know where the end zone is. They need a roadmap. I mean, the only good thing about the Woods signing is he won't have to use ways to get to the Coliseum.

Here's what I don't get about overpaying a wide receiver. Who's not an impact guy. Those guys are, it's almost like overpaying a point guard in basketball. There's so many of them. There's always Yogi Ferrell. There's always the next Yogi Ferrell or whoever Demetrius Jackson. There's the next guy is going to come up. Like you have green Bay,

Geronimo Allison, like, Oh, seven guys got her. Here's Geronimo Allison. Like, oh, seven guys got it. Here's Geronimo Allison. He'll get some stats. I just don't get it. I would never pay for a receiver.

Look at the Chargers. They lose their starting receivers, and they have two guys that come in. They tendered one of them, aiming a first-round pick. I mean, you can find receivers. It's the old adage, you can find them if they're out there. The one thing you can't find, everybody says you can find guards. That's not true anymore because we're paying guards huge amounts of money. So clearly you can't find guards.

So, you know, but you can, but receivers, you can find receivers and running backs, there are running backs out there that you can find. But to me, this signing is just, to me, the Rams, just I don't get the Rams and we'll just, it'll be fun to watch. Mike, no one in LA gets the Rams. I don't get the Rams, and it'll be fun to watch. Mike, no one in L.A. gets the Rams.

Yeah, or knows that they're in L.A. Kevin Clark, Mike Lombardi, thank you. We will read you on The Ringer. Thanks for being on. Thanks, guys. We're going to call my buddy Jacko, who we have not talked to in a while, and is overdue.

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And now it's time to check out. As promised, the next GM of the Hartford Islanders, the one and only Jacko. How are you? I'm only going to be the GM. I was hoping to be the Steinbrenner-esque owner. Maybe, yeah, maybe it could be like a Green Bay Packers situation where the entire city of Hartford buys the Islanders. That could work. Well, you know, Steinbrenner bought the Yankees from CBS back in 1973, and I think it was like a million bucks or a couple million bucks. I think he put up about $27 of his own money and somehow became the majority owner over time.

So I'd like a similar plan put together for me to own the Hartford Islanders. Have you been scouting the Islanders? Are you watching them, trying to figure out which players you're going to keep? You know, I have to confess, I have not been as diligent as I should be in watching the game film of the Islanders, but I'm going to get on that now. Step it up. So a lot of the listeners have been worried about you because you haven't been on the podcast since President Trump took over. And my feeling on it was it was too raw. It was too crazy. Right.

I wanted to get to a calm place of being able to really kind of break stuff down from a place of wisdom and not anger and passion. And unfortunately, we're never going to get there. No. Plus, I was tired. I was tired from all the winning. From all the winning. Yeah, you're right. So we're about to hit mid-March here.

Yeah. We should mention, just for anybody who hasn't heard you on the pod, and God knows how they haven't because Cause we've been doing this since oh seven. Um, you're a diehard Republican and a diehard Yankees fan. True. And, and now, uh,

and, and the Republican party has, I would say never been in a stranger place. So your thoughts. Yeah, that's actually a good way to put it. A stranger place. I didn't know where you were going there.

Like if you're going to say it was the strongest position or the worst position, but I'll go with, yeah, we'll go with strangest. You know, it's funny. I mean, I still, and I've been saying this for about a year and a half since he started his presidential run. Like, I could never wrap my head around the notion of him running for president. So you can only imagine what it's like for me to see him deliver the State of the Union or get off of Air Force One and be saluted as the president. It's just so fucking crazy. Like, if you really sit back and think about Donald J. Trump as the president of the United States, like, just saying that is just so patently ridiculous that it's really hard to get beyond that threshold level.

I saw a thing on Twitter a couple months ago. I wish I could remember who said it because I would give them credit. But when Trump comes out and did a tweet about the Apprentice ratings with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and then Schwarzenegger responded, and so somebody on Twitter just put on there and said, President of the United States Donald Donald J. Trump, responds to former governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger's tweet. And then it said, explain that sentence to 1985. How about 2015? Right, exactly. You know, the former governor of California, Schwarzenegger, and Donald Trump is the president. So, yeah. Although, you know, I never thought Trump was going to win, as any listener of the podcast or reader of my Twitter feed will know. So, I mean, who knows?

We're through the looking glass here. I mean, you know, I'm a pretty frequent follower on Twitter and follower of the news to the extent that I can stomach it. And so if you are a frequent consumer of news, be it on Twitter or wherever else. And you sort of look at this Trump administration basically careening from, seemingly careening from one disaster to another, right? Like, you know, immigration bans that get overturned by the court, idiotic, you know, early morning tweets that make no sense that the whole administration has to try to respond to, and frankly can't. So it looks like it's a disaster in the making. But, you know, to his supporters out there in the great, you know, lands between the

two coasts of this country, you know, maybe they're happy with it. They're like, well, this is what I voted for. He's going to build a wall. He's forcing American companies to, you know, remain in America. He's keeping out immigrants that are threatening me and my family. I'm not saying me and my family. I'm saying if you and my family. I'm saying as a supporter. If you're not tuned in to the

news and not on Twitter and not following the daily machinations of what's going on, to you, it might look okay. I mean, his poll numbers are not horrific, really. Not as horrific as you would expect them to be if you really were paying attention or to the reactions of the news media, you know?

So our offices are in this Sunset Gower complex, and I have to walk by this TV on the way to my car to and from my office. Right. And the TV's always on CNN. And I walk by the TV, and I always look to see what's on. And it's always, like, I'm just prepared for anything every time I walk by it's you know it'll just have the CNN will have the big graphic on the bottom and it just has the craziest

shit on it and I was always like I wish I had just taken a picture of what was on this TV for the last four months and just ran it as a slideshow because it would be like Trump defends Russian spy you know just like there's no ceiling on what's going to be on that TV.

And I think that's been the strangest thing about this presidency so far is the day to day, not knowing what the hell is going to happen next and being a little afraid of what might happen next. It's almost like when your team is being run, one of your favorite teams is being run by just a crazy owner or crazy GM. That's exactly what it's almost like when your team is being run, one of your favorite teams is being run by just a crazy owner or crazy GM. That's exactly what it's like. And the trade deadline's coming, you're like, oh my God, I don't even want to go on the internet right now.

I don't want to find out that we traded so-and-so. And that's what it's like to just be an American every day. I think that's been the strangest thing about Trump for me. Well, you coined the term years ago about the Tyson zone, where you would believe any story about Mike Tyson because he was in such a zone, he was capable of doing anything. We didn't really want to have a president of the United States that was in the Tyson zone. And you have these wild rollercoaster swings where, I have to confess, I did not have the strength to bring myself to watch the State of the Union. But because I'm an idiot, I kind of followed along

on Twitter to see what reactions were and everything. And everybody's kind of like, boy, it's not awful. It's not a terrible speech. He's not delivering it with his normal bluster and pounding his chest. The moment with the widow of the Navy SEAL was very heartfelt and very touching. Even people like Van Jones, who was not a Trump supporter, said that was the moment he became president. He's very presidential. And everybody's like, well, maybe he's sort of grasping the gravity of this.

He's kind of getting it. And then three days later, four days later, he goes on Twitter at 6 in the morning and says, Obama wiretapped me at Trump Tower. It's like, what the hell? Everybody's like, oh, good, here we go. And then he just freaking blows the know, blows the whole thing up. It's ridiculous. It does seem like he loses it on the weekends.

I would love to know. I'd heard various reasons for this. One of that, one of which is that there's like one day a week where a son-in-law can't like, yeah, they're Jewish. And so they, the Sabbath is on Saturday.

So they're not working at the white house. They're observant, you know, in the Jewish religion. And so the Sabbath is Saturday. So they're not working at the White House. They're observant in the Jewish religion, and so the Sabbath is Saturday, so they're not at the White House. They're not restraining him from going after his phone or telling him, don't tweet that. So it's almost like my mom, after three glasses of wine were at table,

and I feel like she's going to go somewhere with somebody at the table. Slow down, mom. No, no, no. Don't bring that up. No, no, no. And I think that's what the family's like with Trump all the time. Like, oh, no, what's he doing? He's reaching for his phone.

Get it, get it, get it. Don't let him touch it. And then on Saturdays, he's just like, yeah, where's my phone? I have some tweets I want to do. And nobody stops him. The really interesting thing to me is that people document this on Twitter or on the Internet in general, where he will tweet something out about 10 minutes after it's appeared as a story on Fox and Friends. Yeah.

As like a documented fact. It's amazing how you could get influence on this White House by just having something broadcast on Fox and Friends. Yeah. Because he'll take it as gospel and then it becomes the official policy of the United States government because he's seen some passing story on Fox about it. It's crazy. They run some story with some fact about immigrants in Sweden or something and then he tweets it out like 10 minutes later. It's just crazy. It's so crazy. He's very smart at knowing.

I can't believe I'm calling him very smart, but I do think there are things that are very smart about him. He's very smart at throwing kind of a news story out there that nobody can validate. Nobody knows if it's true or not, but he knows that people are going to take it and run with it. And fake news stuff's been beaten to death, but it's almost like he throws a red herring out there.

And I think he did that with the Obama wiretap thing. Things weren't going well for a couple weeks. He just throws it out there, and then it starts its own news cycle. There's people that claim that he's this wonderful chess master, and he's got everybody going in the direction he wants. And it's all diversion, because he's keeping people hidden from the real story or his real, you know, strategies or whatever. I don't know. I'm not quite willing to give him credit as this wonderful genius, you know, like, if you go to the zoo, and the monkey like throws his feces against the wall, you're like, Oh, he distracted me while I got that banana.

Maybe he was just throwing a species at the wall. You know, I'm not quite ready to throw. That's like a paraphrase that dates to a monkey throwing species. But it kind of works. You know, I'm not sure his tweets are part of a grand overall strategy like this Machiavellian strategy that we're not smart enough to really comprehend. You know, can he be can he be a checkers master? Yeah, let's let him be a tic-tac-toe master before he graduates to chess. You and I both love Watergate.

Not that it happened and that it led to one of the worst scandals in the history of our country, if not number one. But we both were fascinated by just everything that happened. Yeah. I remember either after college or after our junior year, I remember just decided, read every Watergate book, got really into it, watched all the President's Men a bunch of times, and just became like a junkie.

And you were the only other person I knew who knew anything about it, and we would talk about it and be like, holy shit, man. Can you imagine being alive when that happened? He just kept firing the attorney general until somebody agreed. No, no, not firing. I can't even remember what happened anymore. Well, he wanted to fire the special prosecutor. The special prosecutor to fire the attorney general.

And then Archibald Cox was the attorney general, and he was like, I'm not going to do it, so he resigned. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He just kept firing the prosecutors until he found one. And it was Robert Bork. Yeah. He was a solicitor general. Oh yeah.

Who ended up in an SNL sketch way down the line. But, but, uh, but it was such a crazy scandal and the books were so good. And the whole time you're reading, you're going, wow, man, can you imagine just day-to-day being in this as the country is doing this? And now the Russia thing. Yeah. And the Russia thing to me is just so weird. You know, I grew up as a child of the 80s, you know, the 70s and 80s. Yeah.

But a conservative Republican family where, like, Ronald Reagan was and still is looked at as a deity. So the notion of now the Republican Party is like, eh, Russia, it's not so bad. It's like, what's the big deal? Like, we like Russia. Lunatics like Sean Hayden, they are on every night, like, quoting WikiLeaks. It's like, you know, basically like a Russian,

not basically, it's a, you know, Russia-controlled source to leak things about the U.S. government. Or, you know, so they could have this puppet, theoretically, in the White House and Trump., so they could have this puppet, theoretically, in the White House and Trump. I'm not saying that's what it is, but that's sort of the goal, that Trump is compromised and the Russians have stuff on him from doing God knows what in hotel rooms in Russia or whatever, so that they put him there. And the Republican Party, the party of Ronald Reagan, of cold warriors, of fighting Soviet aggression, now is like, Putin, he seems okay.

You know, it's just, and Bernie Sanders, who honeymooned in the Soviet Union, when that was like not the easiest thing in the world to do. And by doing so, you sort of were in line with a certain ideology, let's say. Now he's like, Russia, let's get to the bottom of this, Russian spies. It's just crazy how the roles are reversed and people will just, you know, if you support your guy, it's like it's like rooting for your favorite team. You know, you will defend your guy or your person that's on your team, no matter what, how much you have to betray your previous principles. It's really, really dispiriting. I should be surprised by it, but it's dispiriting nonetheless. I give Hillary Clinton a lot of credit because if I had lost the election and then it came out that Russia definitely tampered with it, which it seems like they definitely did, I would just be like, hey, man, it's an asterisk. I would have beaten that dude without the Russians.

He needed the Russians to beat me. I'd be on every talk show just bitching about it. Yeah, I mean, it's hard to say. I mean, you know, the Russians did look. They leaked Podesta's emails and not paint her in the best light, certainly, and leaked some things that they would rather were not leaked, sure. But, you know, I don't know to what degree that really influenced the election. I mean, they didn't hack in the election in the sense that they, like, switched votes through, you know,

the computers that she really won Wisconsin in the vote, but they switched it somehow, you know? I don't know how much your average person who was gung-ho for Trump or didn't like Hillary, how much they were influenced by the Russian thing. The scarier thing is if they have some dirt on him now that they, you know, to the extent they interfered, it seems that they were in the, you know, they wanted Trump to win. And that's what makes you nervous is why did they want Trump to win? You know, if they have something on him from God knows what, from his past, if they own him through financial dealings with his banks and they could bring down his whole empire, or if they have, you know, actual

surveillance footage of him doing untoward things. The notion that the U.S. president is owned by Putin is troubling, to say the least. Although, as I said at the time when they leaked this dossier leaked of Trump's alleged sexual antics in Russia or whatever, I'm like, short of him coming out in the gimp suit from Pulp Fiction, I'm not sure what is going to turn his hardcore supporters against him. Because he did 57 things during the campaign that would have killed any other candidate. And not only did it not kill him, he went up in the polls and then ultimately won. See, I think if I was walking by the TV that I CNN on and it was like, and the graphic

was, Trump denies it was him in the Pulp Fiction gimp suit, I wouldn't have been blinked. I'd be like, oh. That's it. Oh, that story hasn't gone away yet? Of course, nobody would. Yeah. I look at this Russian thing another way. You know, I'm trying to spin positive.

I'm a positive guy. I like to think that, you know, maybe there's good in everything. The Russians, if we're ever really throwing it down with the other countries in World War III, I want the Russians on my side. I think it's like having, you know, we want all the ammo and the power we can get. I'd rather have them on our team. Really? No stopping us.

Yeah. I, you know, Rocky Balboa said, you know, if Rocky Balboa said, if I can change and you can change, we all can change.

It's, it's very single-handedly won the cold war at the end of Rocky three. You didn't have the Rocky four. First of all, and you didn't have the translator going. Rocky IV, first of all. And you didn't have the translator going, That's right. Rocky IV. And you can change.

That used to be one of our best routines late night in Worcester. We would reenact the end of Rocky IV. You were the translator, or I was the translator. You were Rocky. I think it alternated. We could do it. Can we talk about Meg Francesa? Absolutely.

He's taken a lot of hits recently. Has he really? Yeah, he's been very pro-Trump. He was anti-everyone with the Oscars. He decided that Becky Hammond, the Spurs assistant coach, there was no way in hell she would ever coach men. It's ridiculous. Yeah, I heard that the other day.

That was a big controversy about could women coach men. I did hear that one. It's the last year of the show for the Pope, and I'm a little, I'm concerned. I don't want him to go out in, you know, like a Dick Enberg in his last year in the arts kind of way. Jimmy the Greek or something. Yeah, Jimmy the Greek or whatever. Well, did you hear his brief reunion, his hour-long reunion with the Mad Dog? I didn't hear that.

I forget how long ago that was. Yeah, no, you listened to it. You loved it, right? Oh, my God. It was so good. I mean, he really needs the Mad Dog. They need each other. That's the thing.

It's like you two need each other. That's the thing that it's like, you two need each other. Can't you just get back together? But it was so classic because it was like they hadn't spoken to each other on or off the air in months. And then they get on the air and it's basically like two old friends catching up. So he's asking him, like, about his, Princess is asking Bad Dog about his kid and his kid's basketball team. And he's like, I think it's like New Canaan High or something. So he's like, how's the basketball team, Doug? And Doug goes, eh, a little spotty, a little spotty.

And he goes, what's spotty? And he goes, we're like 3 and 14. He's like, I have a good coach. Good coach. And Princess goes, good coach, 3 and 14? And he starts talking about his kid's basketball team. And then Mad Dog goes, we don't have the athletes. He goes, ah.

And then so Francesco goes, where's Timmy playing or whatever the kid's name is. And he's like, ah, power forward. And he goes, how tall is he? And he goes, ah, 5'7". And then Francesco, completely deadpan, goes, that would be a problem. So classic. It was so classic. I was like, oh, for the love of God, Sirius or XM or whatever it is that Mad Dog's on,

throw Francesco whatever money he wants and just put them back together again. Would you please? Can you do that? You'd think if they were giving Howard Stern like $120 million a year or whatever, that it would make sense to just reunite Mike and the dog. Absolutely. Especially because when Mike leaves the fan, whoever replaces him is going to crater in the ratings.

Oh, God, yes. It's like the ultimate. It's like the guy that followed Vince Lombardi in Green Bay. There's no chance. Right. It's the ultimate no-win job. So you're also going to be getting some of those New York ratings, too. I would give those guys like $25 million a year combined and just be like.

And Mad Dog was trying to say, why don't you come on in Sirius and have a regular spot with me like once a week and he goes we'll do up the contract and francesa was like you can't afford me or something but mad dog was into it but then francesa and this thing basically said he's not he's believing the fan but he said he's not going away and he sort of alluded to some other platform so i don't know if they'll be like a francesa podcast or if he's doing something on his own, starting his own network or something. But he was basically saying, yeah, he's leaving the fan,

but it made it seem like he's not hanging up the microphone for good. I'm doing my own podcast. I'm going to do one of those podcast things that they have now. They're on the internets. I'm going to do that. It would be great. I would love to the uh do some of the sponsor reads i don't think he really has to do that on he doesn't do sponsor reads on the fan right uh no i think that's a big bone of contention let's you know i thought i thought there was a trailer there was a trailer that dropped for the uh they're doing a 30 for 30

about mike and the mad dog and i saw the trailer the other day and they talked about their first show and how you know mad dog was you can hear it like super frustrated because princess is talking over him and ignoring him and then they go to princess and he's like i'll be honest i didn't think he could talk sports with me i didn't think anybody could like nobody has a higher it's just sports like anybody could talk about sports but it's not like you're a doctor, you know? When I did that show with him, I did the whole show with him last May. And it took me like almost three hours to decondition him from just being a solo act so we could start having a conversation like two people would. It's tough.

I mean, I was just setting picks for him for three and a half hours. And then finally questions like, so what do you think? And those kind of things are being asked. But it was good. You're just setting him up. But once he kind of unthought, we had like a really good hour and a half. And it was great. It was so much fun. And, you know, that's a part.

That's one of the tragedies of the breakup of Mike and the dog. It's just those guys made each other so much better. And I really think they were better as a team than solo acts. But, you know, from a money standpoint, it makes much more sense for them to be on their own. Yeah. I forgot to ask you about Trump because you rooted for the Yankees during basically the entire Steinbrenner era. I did. And Steinbrenner hit a couple different points there that were very Trumpian, right?

Yes. So like late 80s, early 90s when the wheels had started to come off after the Reggie Jackson era when they couldn't get it back and they had Ricky Henderson and all those guys, but the Yankees were never really contending. And he kind of lost it and he basically framed Dave Winfield. Yeah, more than basically, yes. He got suspended for a year because he paid somebody for damaging information on Dave Winfield.

Right. That's what happened, right? Yeah, he went to Howie Spira, who was some nickel and dime gambler or something. Right. I don't quite know how he had some dirt, but he had some dirt about some personal information about Winfield, allegedly about an NPD or something, and Steinbrenner was kind of like somehow paid the guy 50 grand, I think,

to get this info on Winfield. I don't know what the plan was beyond that. He was going to go to Winfield and say, like, retire or leak this? I don't know. But that was the gist of it, and then he got suspended. So, and then he also, you know, he'd fire Billy Marr and he'd hire him, he'd fire him again, and all that, just completely out of his mind. And it was while he was suspended that the Yankees then were able to build their dynasty because Gene Michael was able to cultivate what became the core four, whereas Steinbrenner would have traded them for Bobby Bonilla or something if he was given the chance. Right. So that's where I was going with this.

So if Trump can just get suspended for a year, then somebody comes in Gene Michael style and really sets the tone for the country. Then Trump comes back, you know, a little chagrined, a little chastened. He's learned his lessons. He's a more mellow Trump. Maybe there's a version of mid-'90s Steinbrenner for Trump. I'm just going to pull out my copy of the Constitution here in my office to see if there's a suspension clause in there. There's not?

Can't the Constitution suspend Trump? No? I don't see one. I don't think Congress can be like, all right, we're going to have to suspend you. You're going to have to take a couple months off, take a year off, think about your actions, and then come back. What's that place that he goes to, Mar-a-Lago? Yeah. He just goes there all the time.

Can other people go there? Could we go there? Mar-a-Lago, I think it's like a golf club. Yeah, we could go there, right? It's like a golf or dinner club. You can join, but it costs a lot of money. But the beauty of it now is that apparently they basically hold cabinet meetings there, like out in the dinner area.

So you can watch, you know. I saw something on the internet last week, I think it was, or two weeks ago, where diners were coming into the country club to eat, and Jeff Sessions was greeting them like like like uh you know Joe Lewis in his late stages like being a casino greeter Jeff Sessions was only greeting the white the white people sorry I had to sit there yeah this is right on the team for you Jeff Sessions I you know SNL has had such a golden chance to make fun of these people and it's been hit or miss and they keep going to this thing now where they have women playing the men as as some sort of insulting

thing right you know i i think snl the the best parts of the year have been alec baldwin and melissa mccarthy who aren't on the cast yeah which is a sign that maybe maybe the uh the cast is missing a couple things when you have to keep going outside it. But I keep thinking, like, it's a shame we don't have, like, one of the all-time SNL casts right now. Well, I think what Saturday Night Live has become is it's just a show for, like, Washington, you know, the Washington bubble,

like the Acilla Corridor, as they call it. Yeah. You know, all these journalists. So all they're looking to do is do is like what The Daily Show did, I think, with Jon Stewart. I pray for my mentions on Twitter now that I've criticized Jon Stewart. But they just do jokes so that it gets retweeted by people. So people will just, you know, people in the know, like Mark Halperin will retweet it. And they'll be like, oh, we got 10,000 likes on that ret that retweet so it's really really getting into the consciousness or whatever you know i don't know that it's meant to be funny it's meant to be like oh look at this we got retweeted and look at

we're really you know affecting the conversation well melissa mccarthy was hilarious and that was the kind of stuff like that was out of the belushi, Aykroyd, Will Ferrell, Dana Carvey when just a cast member just so talented taking something that was already kind of funny and just blowing it to a whole other level, but she's not on the cast I guess is my point. They said like, there used to

be a thing, the Brooklyn Dodgers played and you could walk through Brooklyn and you would walk down the block and you would hear the game on a radio in every single window in Brooklyn, a baseball game that you would hear it. Well, that's like my Facebook feed, that Melissa McCarthy, Sean Spicer thing. I could have scrolled through Facebook for two days and it was like every person I knew was like, Oh, I've got to see this, like, you know, posting that on Facebook. So I guess that was a big winner for them. I have a newsflash for you.

I may or may not have muted a lot of the people on all my social media feeds who talk about politics. It's just so, I mean, there literally has never been a single time in the history of Facebook, in the 15 year history of Facebook where somebody is like, boy, that completely changed my position because of your Facebook posts. Yeah. Like you're not, you're just like culture you're just signaling that you're part of the right

thinking tribe or whatever, but you're not like, you're not changing anybody's opinion. Yeah. Oh, look at that. Oh, I was for abortion, but now I'm against it. Thanks. Thanks for clearing that up, Facebook. In the old days, I wanted all dogs to be murdered, but now they could be rescued. Right.

Exactly. It's just like, oh, look at, like oh look maybe we should rescue dogs yeah i've had it i've had it with everybody you know facebook should be like here's what i had for dinner or look i got together with the old gang or you know this is a good ipa to have or something not like oh god here's my thoughts on social security. Oh God, here's my thoughts on killing myself. Here's what I want from Facebook. I want pictures of my friend's kids. I want funny videos that aren't Sean Spicer being played by Melissa McCarthy, but actually funny stuff.

And I want to see like old stupid pictures of people in college or, you know, somebody's kid at a little league game who hit their first homer. I don't really want to use my brain for super-duper intellectual stuff. That's why we have newspapers and magazines and TV shows that are smart. I don't need Facebook for these things. Right. I will say Dan Rather's Facebook feed. Dan Rather is a guy that had to leave because he used fake documents on the air and he's now the paragon of journalistic truth telling. Give me a break. I enjoy it. I'm not going to be judged by it either. Tate has now checked out because Purdue

is playing Michigan and there's a minute left. If we could say anything we want, he's going to leave it in at this point. Who is he a fan of? He just said, Tate also hosts our college basketball podcast and there's a three-day frenzy of college basketball games. Hey, I forgot to ask you.

Is Holy Cross on the bubble at 14 and 16? I think we're on the bubble. We're on whatever the worst thing than the NIT is. I'm just happy that I didn't get money for the 12th straight year. We never talked about the Yukon women's show that's on HBO. Yes. So I need to catch up, but we should talk about that the next time because our hero,

Gino Auriemma is in it. You know, I actually was in I heard I don't remember if I heard it on the radio I think I heard it on the radio an advertisement for it and those like sort of gauzy sports documentaries always suck me in no matter subject matter and the fact that it was UConn sort of appealed to my the comedic side of me and I was like you know I actually might watch that show and I kind of forgot about it, but now you've reminded me

and I do have HBO, so I might have to start watching that. So I will do that. That will be my homework. I will binge watch the Yukon Women's documentary and we will discuss it next time. Just to watch Gina Auriemma in action

for no other reason. How about this? Let's take it to another level. You watch it with your older daughter. I will watch it with my older daughter. All right. And then we'll reconvene and we could try to compare

our least favorite Gino or Emma moments. Excellent. Hey, Gino. Excellent. Gino's the guy who goes to play pickup basketball and just picks the best five players in the court and tries to win for five straight hours and just annihilates everybody else and that feels good about it like i think they're up to 107 wins in a row and i think we've discussed this in the past like how can there not

be one other college women's basketball program that can get any recruits i mean like college football i'm sure most guys you know know, they want to go to Alabama, but you have, you know, you have USC, you have Michigan, you have other schools that can, that recruit Notre Dame, you know, and it's when it has good years. But like women's college basketball, he gets every freaking recruit. It's amazing. Well, think about it. They used to have a rival with Tennessee, but they've fallen by the wayside.

And now that he just gets, I mean, 107 wins in a row. I mean, even John Wooden at UCLA couldn't do that. Well, think about it. Let's say your daughter becomes an incredible high school basketball player. Yeah, of course. You're going to say, I want to go play for the best, right? Yeah. At some point she's going to be like, wow, UConn wants me?

And that's how it happens. It never ends. All these boosters at other schools, and I know it's women's college basketball, and it's not as popular as football or men's college basketball, but all these boosters at other schools where they're ponying up all this money for a football program or to bring in superstar coordinators to build a program for college football. Somebody ought to pony up some money and make a women's basketball program.

Steal some recruits away. Say, hey, get in on the ground floor. We're going to challenge UConn. Someday we're going to be UConn. Don't you want to be there? Start it. Nobody has done that in 20 years. It's crazy.

Are you saying you'd rather do that than be the GM of the Hartford Islanders? No, no, no. That's my main focus. I could actually do both. I think I'm going to use, once the Hartford Islanders have won numerous family cups, I'm going to use some of my billions of dollars that I earned from that to build a women's – how about Holy Cross, our alma mater? I'm going to build Holy Cross into the Yukon of the Patriot League.

The thing is you only need three kids a year. You might even need two kids a year. You need eight kids every four years and your dominant college basketball power. Right, right. Well, I think Holy Cross should be paying all of the kids under the table. I'll do whatever it takes.

If there's some cheating we have to do, tell me. Let's get a little consortium going. Let's do it. I wish I had an interest in March Madness beyond, you know, just filling out a bracket. Yeah, here's what it's like to be a Holy Cross fan now. I was flipping channels, and it was like, oh, the Patriot League semifinals are on. Oh, we're not playing.

Oh, I wonder if we're the next game. No, we couldn't make the Patriot League semifinals. No, they lost in the first round of their first game in the Navy. Yeah. Would you rather have Gino Auriemma or Donald Trump as the president? I think I'd rather have Gino, actually. I think I would, too. He's won 107 straight games. I think Gino's smarter.

Well, you sound like you're in good spirits. I was prepared for a much more deranged version, but maybe that'll happen once it heats up. I'm irrationally exuberant about the Yankees' future, so I just keep focused on that. Yeah, I'm not ready to talk about that. We'll talk about that the next time.

And thanks for not bringing up David. Hey, if there's any billionaires out there that'd like to own a hockey team and you'd like me to be the face of the group, hit me up on Twitter. Thanks for not bringing up David Price. Well, we'll save that for next time. All right. Thanks, Jeff. See how his MRI holds up. All right. Thanks, Jeff. See how his MRI holds up.

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