The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Best of The Herd: 12/27/2018

Episode Date: December 27, 2018

Doug Gottlieb sits in for Colin Cowherd and explains how the Green Bay Packers are botching their search for Aaron Rodgers' new HC and gives you an analogy you're sure to relate to, tells you why the decision most people think is an easy one for Kyler Murray is actually wrong and tells which young Laker needs to show he can produce while LeBron James is sidelined with a groin injury. Plus, legendary broadcaster and Clippers play-by-play voice Ralph Lawler joins the show to talk about his upcoming retirement and this year's upstart Clippers team. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo, and every episode, we're cutting through the noise,

breaking down the biggest moments in sports and giving you the real story behind the headline. And we're going straight to the source, the athletes themselves, their locker room stories, their reactions in the moment, and the stuff nobody gets to hear. Listen to Sports Slice on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Sliced Life 12 in the TikTok podcast network on TikTok.

Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smigel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter.

Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, guys? This is Clivert Taylor the Fourth. And on my podcast, The Cliverts Show, I'm bringing you conversations about all kinds of stuff. Like being an internet famous referee. We're in the middle of a game. This linebacker, this linebacker walks up to me. He goes, hey, ref, my mom wants you to wave at her.

What? Time out. Quarterback on office blue with 42. Hey, Rhett, my mama want you to weigh better. What? Hey, Miss Parker. Listen to the Clifford show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano. It's our favorite time of the year on our podcast point game, the playoffs. We're digging into the biggest surprises of the season, and I'm looking back on some of my greatest playoff moments. If we didn't talk ever again, I was harmed. you just understood.

That's how personal it got. Wow. Then after that game seven, Mark keep coming to her. He's like, you know I love you, dog. You know, it's all love. This was just playoffs. This was just basketball.

So listen to Point Game on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening to The Heard podcast. Be sure to catch us live every weekday from 12 to 3 Eastern, 9 to noon Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and FS1. Find your local station for the Heard at Fox Sports Radio.com Or stream us live every day on the IHeartRadio app by searching heard.

We're listening to Fox Sports Radio. So the big question has been, who can be the guy who commands the respect of the locker room? More importantly, the respect of number 12, all while authoring the next chapter

in the Packers' legacy. Who could be that guy? And we're beginning to get a sense that the Packers believe that in order to do this job, you have to have done this job before. It's not crazy to think, right? That, hey, we want a guy with head coaching experience.

Because in order to walk in front of a room of 53 men who have families and contracts to worry about and get them on board, we don't want some guy who just came out of college. We don't want some coordinator who's never done it before. We're watching what's happened in Detroit. That's messy, right? We watched even guys that haven't called plays before call plays in Minnesota. That's messy.

Aaron Rogers threw out some modest support of Joe Philbin going back to Sunday. That's interesting. So look, Joe Philbin's been a head coach before in Miami. Then the news came out that Jim Caldwell, former head coach twice over. All right, look, he was head coached with Peyton Manning and the Colts, and that seemed to work out. It didn't work out as well with Detroit, but Detroit seemed better off with him than they did with Matt Patricia.

there's a guy who commands respect. There's a certain amount of elegance with how he carries himself, right? He's not a firing brimstone guy, but he's also not asleep at the wheel. Like, I don't think Jim Caldwell is the best candidate in the world, but you can do a whole lot worse than Jim Caldwell, considering, hey, man, he did in fact coach, did in fact coach the great Peyton Man. He managed that ego, that situation without stepping on landmines. All right. Well, who else did they call?

Wait, who? Excuse me? Chuck Pagano? I'm not sure if you guys are into viral videos. Some viral videos, I think, are fakes. Some are real. I feel like this one has to be real because it was shot from somebody else's car behind a Tesla, somewhere in what I believe to be Southern California. But I think it's an appropriate parallel or metaphor to what the Packers are caught up in doing. If you're listening to us on the IHeart radio app or on your Fox Sports Radio app at some point, search this online. There's a video that's gone viral of a woman in Southern California, blonde hair back in some sort of bun, wearing a skirt, some sort of fake leather jacket.

And she pulls up at a gas station with a Tesla. And for three minutes in change, she attempts to look for the gas tank for the Tesla. She walks around, she pops the trunk, she looks in, then finally she opens up the charging dock and attempts to put gas into the charging dock. At some point, a gentleman comes over and informs her that's an electric car. There is, in fact, no gas tank.

I'm sorry, it's a time sucker. You're going to send it to all your friends. You're going to tweet it and retweet it. It's become viral already. There are people in all sorts of Malaysian countries that are laughing at us because this is how they view all Americans. This is how I view the Green Bay Packers.

You got a Tesla. You got a really expensive, at times touchy, luxury automobile. You have Aaron Rogers, right? Aaron Rogers is a little bit quirky, a little bit touchy, a little bit sensitive, takes things personally, carries a chip on his shoulder, knows he can't ever seemingly fight the Fav thing, even though in many ways he's a much more, much more efficient, smarter, better quarterback than Brett Fav. That said, he's a Tesla.

He's a luxury item. And you're walking around trying to put Chuck Bagano in the gas tank, right? You're sitting there and you're like, hey, any head coaching experience, this is the thing about when you're hiring. If you're only looking for somebody with experience, what if it's really bad experience? what if it's really bad experience? What if you were really bad at the job?

Chuck Pagano's teams got worse, not better. Chuck Pagano teams at times seem to perform well in spite of not because of him. When Bruce Ariens coached the team, they were better, better offensively. They made better decisions. And so even though Chuck Pagano has that checkmark for experience, the signal you sent out to the rest of the league is, dude, you don't even care if you were a good coach as long as you've been a head coach before.

All of America is rolling their eyes and cackling at the idea of Pagano because he's buddies with Petten getting an interview. Hey, you got to give my guy an interview. No, no, we don't. Jim Caldwell, legit candidate. Joe Philbin, legit candidate because, look, he was with the Packers before his offensive coordinator.

He obviously has a relationship with Aaron Rogers. There's trust there. And though it didn't work out in Miami, all right, it didn't work out in Miami. It wasn't... Miami hasn't worked out for a million different coaches seemingly since Don Schuller retired. But that viral video looks a lot like the Green Bay Packers right now. Where does this thing go? Where does this thing go?

Why can't I find where the gas goes? Because Chuck Pagano doesn't go into a Tesla. He just doesn't. Be sure to catch live editions of The Herd weekdays in noon Eastern 9 a.m. Pacific. on Fox Sports Radio, FS1, and the IHeart Radio app. The Lakers, what's amazing about Christmas Day games is that it is a little bit of an elixir, and it covers up some of your warts.

As much as the Lakers were playing amazing basketball, coming into their game against the Warriors, a 127-101 win on the road against the Warriors with LeBron James in the training room in the fourth quarter. They had actually lost three or four coming in. They had lost four of six coming into that game. You're like, really? Like, yeah, they actually weren't playing good ball.

They lost at home to the Grizzlies. They lost to the nets and to the wizards. And, of course, they got stomped by the rockets. But what many people have said, and it is, on some level, accurate, is, this is a great continuing audition for many of the younger players. Brandon Ingram is back healthy. Now, they're not going to have Rondo tonight, and this is coming off of Rondo's 15.10 assist performance in,

in closing the game out against the Warriors. Not going to have Rondo, not going to have LeBron. So you've got all the young cats, right? And Lance and some of the others. I think tonight's game is huge for one Laker in particular. That Laker is the one who seems to be discussed the most last year and the least this year. That's Lanzo Ball. Lanzo is the de facto point guard when LeBron's in,

even though LeBron's really the point guard, right? Lonzo Ball is averaging nine points a game. He actually statistically is playing better when LeBron's on the floor. He plays off the basketball and he gets in some in transition. And now he has to run the team and try and create offense for himself and for others. And he's doing so against Deerrin Fox and the Kings. And Deerrin Fox, of course, looks across the court and sees the guy who was the number two overall pick in the same draft class. And thinks, it doesn't even matter that the king.

Kings, kind of like how the Lakers beating the Warriors made the other losses, the four of six losses, kind of meaningless. If the Kings who lost to the Clippers last night beat the Lakers, last night doesn't even matter. This is a huge game for Lonzo, who wasn't very good against the Grizzlies, didn't do much against the Warriors, so much so that Rondo actually led them to the win. And though he's had big games like 23 against Brooklyn, we played as good a basketball as you can play. He's had some stinkers, some clunkers as well. He's been kind of all over the map. All over the map. And last time they took on the Sacramento Kings, they won, but he was two of

ten from the floor. Ew. Whereas Deerrin Fox had 21, seven rebounds and two assists. He's going against one of his contemporaries. It's his team to run. There is really no backup. There is no LeBron. There's no safety net, but there's also no excuses. This is Lonzo time. Show us your growth in year two. And I'll fully admit, while he's more athletic, he didn't get the offseason to work on his game to refine his game. He's trying to do it on the fly. But he's had plenty of games to kind of work through it. And this becomes a massive game for Lonzo Ball's present and future, future with the LA Lakers. His ability to commit, every NBA player is like, look, man, If you pro-rate my numbers, if you give me 35 minutes, I'm going to give you 20 and 10.

Every guy. Well, now you've got a chance. There's no backup. There's no LeBron. There's no ball-dominant superstar. Show us in year two. You can be anywhere near what people thought you would be before year one. And you're going against a second-year player who the Lakers thought was better than Deerran Fox when drafted because he had a higher ceiling.

Be sure to catch live editions of The Herd, Weekdays at noon Eastern 9 a.m. Pacific. Be sure to catch live editions of the herd weekdays in noon Eastern 9 a.m. Pacific. If I were to ask you as a sports fan, you're watching the show, you're probably a sports fan, right? If I said, hey, you got a chance to sign a

pro baseball contract or an NFL contract, which would you sign? And I would say, and this is just a guest, 95 to 99% of you would say, baseball. Right? Baseball. You can play baseball forever.

You never get hurt. Guys make 100, 200, 200, we still don't know what Bryce Harper's going to make when he becomes a Dodger, which seems like a formality, short-term, long-term. John Carlos Stanton, he could be playing the NFL, but why? He's played with the New York Yankees.

Oh, if you're going to do it, do baseball, it's not close. And, you know, if you look at it as John Carlos Stanton's contract, Bryce Harper's contract, Clayton Kirshaw's contract, you're right. But that's not actually the question. Would you be a first-round draft pick as a quarterback or sign as a first-round draft pick as a baseball player? Here's the thing.

The common misperception, misconception is baseball players make a ton more money. And on some level they do with 100% guaranteed contracts, the Albert Pooleholds contract, you pick the famous Mike Trout's current contract where he makes 30 plus million, his next contract is going to blow all those out of the water. But all of those players were professional baseball players for five or six years before they ever made a big payday. I bring this up all the time. Aaron Judge, when he signs his next contract, is going to receive in the neighborhood of $200, $300 million for the life of his deal. Aaron Judge has been a professional baseball

player for five years out of Fresno State. Five. He made $600,000 contractually this year. It's positional based upon positional dependent. If you're going to be a running back, that's one thing. Alignment, that's another thing. If you're going to be a quarterback, hold on now.

The idea that, well, NFL players average careers or three years or less or four years or less, maybe if you're a special teams guy, if you're a return guy, If you're a dime a dozen slot-wide receiver, you're right. If you're a quarterback, it's different. Right?

Kirk Cousins signed an $80-plus million contract. Now, Cousins, like a Major League baseball player, didn't make much money. His first couple of years in D.C., then he made over $20 million guaranteed for two consecutive years as a franchise taggie, $45 million. Then with this deal, about $85 million guaranteed, right? So how's our math working now? $130 million in a five-year stretch. That, by the way, is baseball money. And he'll be back on the market again.

How do I know that? Because he's a pocket passer. And pocket passers, like baseball players, last forever. Don't believe me? Eli Manning's 38. Tom Brady's in his 40s. Philip Rivers could race a pregnant woman, and his wife's been pregnant plenty of times,

and come in third place. He's not a good athlete. And yet he started, what is it, 207 consecutive games. games because we can and do in fact protect quarterbacks in the pocket. There are football players. And if the decision is, would I be a football player or a star baseball player? I pick star baseball player. But we're not talking about one to find star baseball players.

And two, we're not talking about football players. We're talking about quarterbacks. And if that's the decision for Kyler Murray of Oklahoma, it's an easy call. And that call should be football. Think about it. Justin Herbert decides to stay in school. That makes Kyler Murray suddenly now in play to be the second quarterback taken. And while you could sit there and go, he's tiny. He is. He's five foot nine. He's got small hands. But he's been described to me by an NFL GM as Doug Flutie with Mike Vic athleticism. A great brain for playing the position. Son of a coach played at two big time schools. And of course, won the Heisman Trophy in the Air Raid System. which has produced Case Keenham, who, even though I think he's overpaid,

and I don't think the Broncos made the right decision. He's still a starting quarterback in the NFL and has produced Baker Mayfield. All these guys are going to be undersized, air raid guys. Maybe he's too small, but somebody's going to make that mistake. And he's going to get four years of guaranteed money, and here's the kicker. If you sign a contract to be a baseball player, which he has already signed, it's $5 million guaranteed. He is not a Major League Baseball player.

He's owned by the Oakland A's, who some would say are not a major league baseball team. But he's not guaranteed to be in the major leagues. And it's not until you're in the bigs for four years when you become arbitration eligible. And then and only then do you start to make real money and you'll only make that real money if you really produce? As opposed to playing in the NFL, all the first round draft picks play. And by the way, any of this nonsense that NFL contracts aren't fully guaranteed, That's not true. First round draft picks contracts are fully guaranteed through the first four years. How many times do we have to see a team say, hey, you know, we're not going to sit this guy, we're going to redshirt him, we're not going to play him, and then they play him.

He may fail. Like, look, the Browns didn't even give Baker Mayfield first team reps in training camp. Didn't let him play with the first team because they wanted to redshirt him. They wanted to pat Mahomes him. Let him learn. But at some point you're going to play him and he's going to be paid. And during the first four years, he'll get to see if he's an NFL quarterback. And if you can be a viable NFL, you don't have to be any good.

How many years is Blake Bortles held on for? And by the way, how much money does Blake Bortals make? $18 million. Fully guaranteed and guaranteed next year. Oh, listen, marginal baseball players make a killing. So do marginal quarterbacks. And the difference is when you're drafted in the NFL, you play in the NFL. When you're drafted in Major League Baseball, you go to the abyss of the minor league.

It's easier to be drafted in baseball than is in football, but once you're drafted in football, you're actually playing in the NFL. And while I would agree with you if you said, hey, man, you're a slot-wide receiver, you're going to be some gadget play guy, you could be Tavon Austin, you can be in the league, out of the league, you'd be useful, not useful, you get beat up on a kick return. You could, all that's true. But if he can learn to play from the pocket or roll out from the pocket like Russell Wilson, and you can play for 20 years.

If you don't believe me, we've got a bunch of marginal athletes that are lighting up the NFL throwing for 3,000 and 4,000 yards in their 15th through 20th season in the NFL. If you ask the average American, and they would say, baseball, easy call,

football, come on. But then when you look at it and you say, it's not football, it's a quarterback. And it's not Major League Baseball versus the NFL. It's the NFL versus minor leagues. and maybe at the end, Major League Baseball. It's not easy as a decision, as you might think.

And oh, yeah, by the way, here's the kicker. If he stinks at football, he can still go back and play baseball. One more Herd? The Herd streams 24 hours a day, seven days a week, within the IHeart Radio app. Search Herd to listen live or on demand whenever you'd like. Let's welcome in here to the Hurd Ralph Lawler joins us on Fox Sports Radio, Fox Sports One. the I Heart Radio app. Ralph, you've been around the Clippers a long time.

I grew up in Southern California. And I laughed when the Clippers would lose in the second round of the playoffs. People would say, well, that's a Clipper Curse. Like, they forget what the Clipper Curse actually was. You live through the actual Clipper Curse, whether it's Danny Manning or Danny Ferry or other draftics that didn't even make it that far.

How much has the franchise changed even in these last 10 years? Well, it really changed with the change of ownership. That was the big change. There was some good fortune before Steve Bomber took over for Donald Sterling. The drafting of Blake Griffin, for example, the trade for Chris Paul, bringing in of Doc Rivers, a top-level championship coach. But the real change, when we all just felt differently going to work every day,

was when Steve Baumer took over as the owner of the ball club. And he had the entire group into a big. big ballroom at Staples Center and addressed everybody. Let everybody know his name was Steve, gave out a private email addressed to everybody. You contact me, you got any problems, you got any suggestions. I want to hear them. And it was just a totally different feel.

And now they have bulked up the staff tenfold from what it was on the basketball staff. This is a major professional basketball team. I think that with a structure second to none in all of pro sports. Okay, so, but it feels like, look, they moved on from DJ. Chris Paul obviously, you know, wanted out, and they made that trade. And, of course, you know, Blake Griffin's now in Detroit. But it's really been crazy on how competitive they've been, considering this was still kind of, last year was rebuild.

This year is supposed to be rebuilt kind of year two. how have they been able to be more than just head above water? Like competitive for a playoff spot at one point in second place in the West. How has this happened so quickly in spite of the fact that, you know, I don't think most of America knows how good Tobias Harris is. Well, there's no question about that. I think it'll be an all-star this year, I think, and be well-deserved, is having a terrific year.

And you can say the same thing about the Nilo Galanari. They have two 6-9, 610-4s, both of whom shoot over 40 percent from three-point country. Gallow's around 47% for crying out loud. He's shooting like J.J. Reddick used to shoot the rock. I don't think that Steve Bomber ever wanted this to be a rebuilding situation for the club. He did not want to tear it down on the studs like Philadelphia did with their so-called process. He wanted to keep winning, keep being competitive, keep being an attractive location for prospective free agents and to have plenty of assets to handle the off in trades and I think they have done all that and this is a good basketball team.

He had that great ball game Sunday against the Golden State Warriors. Went right down to the wire. A team made like 18 to 23, three-pointers, which was crazy. But they lost the ball game. But after the game, the coaches typically meet at mid-court. And Steve Kerr said to Doc Rivers, he said, you guys are good. You guys are really good. And he's really right.

Yeah, Ralph Loller, joining us in the Doug. out leap show. This Ralph's 40th year with the Clippers. It's going to be your final year with the Clippers. But you've seen it from back sports arena days when you could walk up and, with exception of Billy Crystal's seats in the front row, right? You could get really, really good seats, really, you know, cheaply. Now it's, hey, the Clippers, they're trying to get Quai Leonard. They're trying to get Kevin Rand. They're trying to make themselves a viable home for one of these free agents because they're in L.A. They want to get their own arena and want to kind of have their own thing. Is it reasonable

to think that could actually happen? They're going to attract a free agent or two this summer. That's for sure. They're going to have the space. They're going to have an attractive team and setting. And of course, the city of Los Angeles pretty much sells itself. It seemed like half the star

players in the league have off-season homes here in Los Angeles. They all love the city. And what is not to love? If you're going to be a professional basketball player, a young millionaire in your 20s or 30s, what better place on Earth to live than L.A. Slydora will be wide open. They're not going to, they haven't got anybody targeted right now, but the target begins

the final day of June at midnight going July 1st. Then they've got all sorts of targets and they'll aim directly at the guys that they think would best fit, you know, with this ball club. You know, Joe Buck has famously asked Vin if he wants to come in during the World Series, the potential of calling the Dodgers World Series. Wish you would have. 40 years with the club, are you going to make the call?

You're sitting at home, and all of a sudden the Clippers, let's say they get a couple of these stars, they're playing late into the playoffs. Are you going to make the call and go, you know, I could still, I could pinch hit here. I wonder if you're going to,

I don't like you spend time with your wife and have a life and people don't understand just how much you travel covering the NBA. But is there going to be any regret if the Clippers do, in fact, take that jump in the coming years that you retire too soon. There won't be regret. There'll be joy for the organization, the ball club, the team, the city,

and especially for the fans who have been so darn patient waiting all these years. I don't think I'll have any regret at all. I'll have some feelings of, you know, longings of, you know, missing the travel, missing me around the young guys. It's really helped both my wife and I stay relatively young, despite our advanced years. I'm 80 years old and I can talk to young people, you know, and I can communicate with them. My parents, when they were 80, had difficult of anybody under 60 for crying out loud. So I'm going to have to find a way to try to stay contemporary

when I'm sitting up in Bend, Oregon, and I think we will. All right. Well, Ralph, listen, it's been a joy to listen to you call games all of these years. hopefully get to call games into the playoffs this year. Congrats on the retirement. And more than anything, congrats on getting a chance to cover this really amazing transformation of the Clippers Ball Club. We appreciate to join us.

A lot of fun. My pleasure, believe me. Ralph Lawler, join us here in The Herd. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind. And nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo. In every episode, we're cutting through the noise,

breaking down the biggest moments in sports and giving you the real story behind the headline. And we're going straight to the source, the athletes themselves. Their locker room stories, their reactions in the moment, and the stuff nobody gets to hear. Listen to SportsSlice on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Sliced Life 12

and the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, S&L's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel,

help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What's up, guys? This is Clivert Taylor the 4th. And on my podcast, The Cliverts show, I'm bringing you conversations about all kinds of stuff. Like being an internet famous referee. We're in the middle of a game. This linebacker, this linebacker walks up to me, he goes, Hey, ref, my mom wants you to wave at her.

What? Time out. Quarterback on office blue with 42. Hey, rep, my mama want you to wave at her. What? Where's she at? Hey, Miss Parker. Listen to the Clifford show on the Iheart radio app,

Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. What's up? What's up, fam. It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano. It's our favorite time of the year on our podcast, Point Game, the playoffs. We're digging into the biggest surprises of the season. And I'm looking back on some of my greatest playoff moments. If we didn't talk ever again, I was part of you. You just understood.

That's how personal it got. Wow. Then after that game seven, Marquis keep coming to him. He's like, you know, I love you, dog. You know, it's all love. This was just playoffs. This was just basketball. So listen to Point Game on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcast. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.