The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Colin Cowherd Podcast - Mike Silver on Dan Snyder Sale, Trey Lance Future, Rodgers/Jets Saga

Episode Date: April 14, 2023

First, (3:00) Colin looks back at the damage done from the disastrous Dan Snyder era in Washington, and what separates Draymond Green and Charles Barkley from other NBA media. Then, longtime NFL writer - and host of the Open Mike podcast - Mike Silver joins Colin to discuss what changed to make Dan Snyder sell the Commanders, which owner could be forced out next, if the Niners could deal Trey Lance before the start of the season, how long Aaron Rodgers will play for the Jets, if Texans GM Nick Caserio could be on his way out in Houston, and how he’s approaching his gig covering the Warriors and the longtime friend Steve Kerr. Follow Colin and The Volume on Twitter for the latest content and updates, and check out FanDuel for the best wagering and daily fantasy action! #Herd #VolumeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. 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, 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. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal, but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential.

Either way, the podcast's Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Volume. Hi, everybody. Welcome in to the Friday morning podcast. My buddy Mike Silver in about 10 minutes will stop by.

Some thoughts on the Niners, some thoughts on Aaron Rogers, some thoughts on OBJ and Lamar, thoughts on Dan Snyder, mercifully finally selling the Washington football team, the commanders. He's been a bad owner. It's hard to explain to somebody. in their 20s or early 30s, how popular Washington was back in the 70s and 80s. It was the Washington at the time Redskins, not the Green Bay Packers that were on TV every weekend. The biggest rivalry in the NFL at that time was Washington head coach George Allen and the Cowboys and head coach Tom Landry. Second was probably Steelers, Chuck Knoll and the Raiders.

Some of that was John Madden, I believe, was the coach or the dolphins, Don Shula. like Dan Snyder has done an egregious job. I mean, Donald Sterling was a bad guy and a bad owner, but the Clippers were never a huge brand. Mard Schott took the Cincinnati Reds, arguably the most popular franchise in the 70s, early 80s, and ruined them. And Dan Snyder did as good a job as you possibly could do

to ruin and tarnish a great name. It didn't matter who was quarterback. Billy Kilmer in the 70s. It could be Joe Thurray. Thysman, Mark Rippin, Doug Williams, Washington was really good for a long time, but Snyder was greedy, treated people poorly, about the money, about himself, and hopefully the new owners, I mean, it can't be difficult, we'll just embrace the community. When I was a kid growing up, the first game I ever remember watching was 1972.

It was January or February. it was the Super Bowl between Washington and the Miami Dolphins on a small black and white TV in my bedroom downstairs. We had a Frank Lloyd flat roof house in Grayland, Washington, and downstairs I had a little black and white TV. And I can remember on a Sunday watching a Super Bowl in my little black and white TV, it wasn't nearly as big back then. And Garlya Premium was a kicker for the Miami Dolphins. He screwed up 14 to 7 Dolphins beat Washington in the Super Bowl. Bowl. He screwed up, tried to pass a ball. Washington grabbed it. That was our only touchdown of the game. But those Washington teams were my favorite. Diron Talbert, Charlie Taylor, the wide receiver,

Larry Brown, the running back, Billy Kilmer, the quarterback, Mike Bass, the cornerback, Pat Fisher, Chris Hamburger. That was literally, you know, 50 years ago. And I can remember half the roster. And it just remained. Joe Gibbs took over. What a proud franchise. And Dan Snyder, basically killed a great brand. Killed it. Hard to do. I mean, it just, it would be the equivalent of ruining the Braves or the Dodgers or the Yankees brand. The equivalent of that.

It would be the equivalent of ruining Michigan football or Oklahoma football, just ruining the bank. How bad would you have to be for how long to completely ruin the brand? People now don't even think of Washington as a top 10 franchise. Forget winning, just merchandise. There used to be a 25-year waiting list, waiting list for season tickets for Washington. Look it up back in the 70s and 80s. It's hard to explain to people that are 25 years old or 35 years old how big Washington was. They were part of the biggest rivalry in the National Football League with the Dallas Cowboys.

So Snyder has been an utter disaster. Robert Sarver with a Phoenix Suns, Mard shot, Donald Sterling. It is, it's not like owning any other business. It's front facing. It's public. Your employees are vital rock stars in a community, part of the charitable part of the community, the entertainment portion of your community. They're in schools with kids.

They're filling stadiums. They're starting businesses. You know, pro sports can mean so much to a community. And so you have to get the right owners. It's funny. I go skiing in Utah. And the area I ski has some really beautiful homes on the mountain. And one of them is Dan Snyders.

Every time I ski by it, I'm like, God, worst owner in pro sports. The sport I love, worst owner right there. Good riddins. One of the things I love about having Draymond Green as part of the volume is that I think there are two athletes or former athletes in America stand above the rest in terms of being analysts. The best former athlete currently a TV analyst for any network and any sport is Charles Barkley. He literally gets in the news cycle.

He is in the news cycle. He creates stories. And the reason he does is because he's brutally honest. I'm watching him the other night and Charles Barkley comes out and says, don't waste your time. Some of these games aren't worth watching. Why he would get criticism from the blogs shows you how out of touch the blogs are. that's why he's popular because the blogs play it safe

and Barclay doesn't let's face it, Celtics, Sixers, bucks, easily the best teams in the East. Miami's good enough to make somebody uncomfortable. Cleveland's good enough to make somebody uncomfortable. Those are the three best teams. Now the West is wide open. The East isn't.

And the second person, a current athlete that is also a podcaster or broadcaster is Draymond Green. Draymond and Charles to me are the best current or former players in any sport, baseball, football, basketball, hockey, MLS. Why? Because they're fearless. Doesn't mean they're reckless. They're fearless. And it's a great example of, you know, the internet Twitter is constantly rewarding people who play it safe and say the right things. And

Barclay's not on Twitter and Draymond doesn't give a shit. And for all you, young broadcasters out there, 22% of the country is on Twitter. 78% aren't. It's not real life. I mean, there's nobody in the NFL. And I work at a network with a lot of good analysts. There's nobody in the NFL that says relevant or creates news like Barclay. And I think mostly because people are a little timid, a little fearful of saying something

that rocks the boat, contrarian, getting beat up on social media. But I love the fact that Draymond Green came out and said, I couldn't believe LeBron was gas the other night. Draymond is friends with LeBron James. He doesn't care. I have no problem with most analysts have relationships. I mean, Troy Aikman obviously knows Jerry Jones, but I never felt Troy Akeman had a problem ripping Jerry Jones and criticizing Jerry Jones.

But I think that shows the fortitude and the fearlessness of Draymond Green. He doesn't care about his relationships. The bottom line here is LeBron did look gassed. Jason McIntyre was at the game. Game was over. LeBron was done. Hands on hips. It should be 20th year in the NBA.

But I think Barclay and Dremont have really separated. Not to say others don't have talent. They have separated from everybody else in the analyst game. One a former star, one a current star. The NBA playoffs are upon us. 20 teams get in all trying to get that one crown. For last minute, amazing deals to watch your favorite NBA team. It can be the Warriors, it could be the Kings, it could be the Sixers, it could be the bucks.

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Here we go. NBA playoffs, baseball season just starting here in April, NHL as well, no matter where you live, get out, have some fun this week and this year. Download the GameTime app last minute ticket deals. Lowest prices guaranteed. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential.

Either way, the podcast Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, my buddy Mike Silver, part of the volume. Longtime NFL reporter writes for ballet sports on the San Francisco Chronicle, actually going to be doing some warrior games since he knows Steve Kerr and knows who. which is great. We'll get into that in a second.

So Daniel Snyder, it's hard to ruin a great brand, right? Like Donald Sterling was a bad human, but that was never a great brand, right? Robert Sarver did all he could to ruin the Sons, but it wasn't a huge national brand. 70s, 80s, 90s, Washington was the Packers. I mean, they were, when I was a kid growing up, they were the franchise after Dallas and the Steelers. And it's such a great fan base. Exactly. Exactly.

So a lot of people felt, despite the harassment charges, that the owners would support Dan Snyder. And he would just figure out a way, despite bad PR, to hang around. Any insight to what possibly happened? Well, I think one thing that happened is that one of his own publicly started talking about maybe kicking him out. And I know Jim Ursay really, really well. I admire his conviction. He goes against the grain at times. It's possible Jim Ursay just spoke honestly and from his heart.

It's also possible that Jim Ursay had had some conversations with other owners who said, you know what? We agree with you. And if you say that, you know, you'd have our at least quiet support. But that was not insignificant. Jim Ursay started public, you know, came out publicly and said, yeah, I don't know. Maybe we should get rid of this guy. Jim Ursey has three daughters.

He's very close to him. He didn't like the way that the allocations against Stan Snyder were selling NFL owners and the league. You know, prior to that, it had been thought, well, a lot of owners have skeletons. Right. Trust me. I worked for them for eight years. Trust me, they do. whole other podcast topic.

But, you know, a lot of owners have skeletons and a lot of owners more charitably could have people come out of the woodwork to accuse them of things that maybe aren't totally accurate. But they didn't want to open that can of worms where, you know, okay, if accusations happen, it sets the stage for these franchises they want to be generational that while we've been on this podcast that, you know, each one is a appreciated another $100,000 or something. You know, they didn't want to open that can of worms. And remember, Jerry Richardson faced some pretty serious allegations, just passed away recently. That problem got solved because he was older and he was just done. He was like, you know what?

Fine. I'm out. And they didn't have to, the NFL owners didn't have to deal with it. The NBA solved the problem twice by throwing money at the problem. Essentially, A, having the balls. Adam Silver on his like first day on the job to say, you're out, Donald Sterling, whether it's constitutional or not. And then a giant offer from Steve Ballmer and, and again, with the sons that happened with Sarver. So, you know, this is a little bit of all of that.

Daniel Snyder wasn't going to make it easy and walk away. But I think once he heard Jim Mersey say that, he realized, man, something has turned. Now, the next least podcast, owner is Jimmy Haslam, who infuriated owners for another reason, an egregiously bad, fully guaranteed contract to Deshawn Watson. So if we had a ranking of least popular owners among other billionaire owners, Haslam now is number one, right? Well, that's so cool that you broached that because I used to do odor rankings, as far as I know, I'm the only one who's ever done. I did the, I did them annually for SI.com and then Yahoo. And, of course, they were my rankings about who I thought were doing the best jobs of owning teams.

But that actually has my wheels spinning. Like, what about an incitey odor rankings of which owners are the most hated among the other owners? And, you know, you bring up a good point. But I think in the end, you know, yeah, that frustrated other owners that Jimmy Haslop did that because now we got to deal with this guaranteed contract stuff. And other owners didn't like it when David Tepper came in and gave Matt Rule, sounds weird in retrospect, but gave Matt Rule all that money because it messed up the coaching contract market.

But I feel like owners get over that stuff, you know, eventually. But the, you know what, owners can't get over? Allegations, if proven, and maybe we'll never know, that one owner, Daniel Snyder, allegedly, cooked the books and screwed them out of their share of the gate. That's less forgivable, you know, for the billionaire set. So, yeah, they tend to stick together. They tend to not want to set precedents like, oh, a couple of accusations could knock ex-owner out of the league and make them lose this incredible investment. But, you know, Daniel Snyder put them through the rigor in a lot of ways.

And Ursae possibly knowing that he spoke for a larger contingent was kind of like, okay, this is a nightmare. Look, if the Colts play the commanders, if they're still called that at FedEx Field or a new stadium, and Jim Ursay takes the field pregame to go schmuse, he should get. like an adoring celebration and a prolonged ovation from those Washington fans for a huge, huge assist on getting Daniel Snyder the F out because heaven knows it's been long coming and it's tough to shed any tears. By the way, there's usually about at any given time about seven or eight great quarterbacks

in the NFL, seven or eight great coaches in the NFL, and seven and eight great GMs in the league. I'd argue they're not seven or eight great owners. I'm dead serious. Like, yeah, I mean, that's, again, like doing the rankings all those years, I really had to think about it. You would, here, I'll say it a different way. You would think that the people who own NFL teams because they've succeeded or been born into success, but the ones who succeeded, you'd think they're competitive people and now they're in the public eye. You'd think 32 people would be, going after it. I'll do anything to win. Nah, it's a much, much, much smaller number. There's a large segment of ownership that's like, you know what? Franchise is appreciating.

We're guaranteed a profit simply from the TV deals alone. And if we win, cool. If we win once a while, great. If we win more than once in a while, right on. Let's ride that wave. But they're not living and breathing in it. So when I did the rankings, the people who lived and breathed it, a great aggressively tried to generate revenue and then aggressively tried to look for ways to spend that revenue, either through salary cap manipulation or non-cap expenditures like coaches. I put very high, which paradoxically, weirdly, in my very first owner rankings, I had Daniel Snyder crazy high because my thought was, yeah, he's got terrible people skills. He does things to undermine his coach and GM by budding up to players.

but at least he's trying really hard to get money and use that money to win. And he really wanted to win. He fell more and more as the rankings went on. And unfortunately, the rankings didn't go on long enough for him to really, really, you know, go to his rightful place. But yeah, and I just want to give a very brief history lesson for you non-old people. And you'll remember some of this column. and you probably weren't paying as close of attention.

But the old NFL, I called the Politburo bosses. You had all these families that kind of had teams. And they were like, we're going to share everything. We're just going to share the revenue from the TV deals. We're going to share revenue from the gate. We're going to split it up. And we're all going to do things equally. And, you know, as lefty as I can get sometimes, when it comes to NFL economics,

I'm very like invisible hand free market. And I sided with the Eddie de Bartolos and the Jerry Joneses who shook things up and said, wait a minute. Why are we sitting around, you know, taking our guaranteed money and not trying to aggressively generate revenue? We're these incredibly valuable franchises. Let's get after it. And in turn, they tried to turn that into ways to get ahead.

on the field and to the point where, oh, we got to create a salary cap to control. So the NFL has a lot of communist socialist properties. They share money. They have a worst Shelby first scheduling formula. They have a worst Shelby first draft formula. And I could go on and on and on about, you know, central control and all that. But, you know, there are, there's still some old guard owner. who subscribed to that model. And I will give it to Daniel Snyder that he was not one of those. So I want to talk about the Niners

because you have such in-depth, you have tentacles all over that organization. And by the way, increasingly, when I follow your Twitter feed, all your critics are lightening up because you've been right so many times and broken so many stories. They're like, Silver, I hate.

Yeah, whatever. What's the latest news? So the trail ant stuff is interesting. I was talking to Jordan Palmer the other day. And he's like, you know, if you look at the offense, San Francisco runs, a lot of these plays are scheme to succeed. Sam Darnold's going to have the best protection, the best weapons, the best coach he's ever had. And we know he's a big, strong athletic kid and coachable and hardworking. He's just not accurate enough.

But this system makes you more accurate. Don't be shocked if Jimmy Garoppolo is not nearly as good with the Raiders as he was with the Niners. So Brock Purdy, I think the franchise likes a lot and Sam Darnold are in-house. We all know at some point, and I think the Niners are, and even some of the sound bites and some of the quotes from your articles, they're going to move off something if they missed. They're not going to try to double down on wrong. Let's just be honest. Could Tray Lance be moved before the season? He could, but I believe that Brock Purdy's injury and the uncertainty that still surrounds his recovery made that much, much less likely.

Before the playoffs, I wrote and reported, it's over. Brock Purdy's the guy because they want to go with this model where they pay everybody and have the quarterback on the rookie deal. That's what trading for that pick was about. That's what drafting Lance was supposed to be about. And with Purdy, the model's even better. You're not even allowed to reopen his contract for two more years. It's even cheaper than Trey Lance's deal. and he showed Kyle Shanahan, you know, people are like, well, how can you say Purdy?

I'm like, I'm not saying it. Kyle believes it based on what he saw from Purdy. He's the guy. So going into that Philly game for the conference championship, the only thing that could have derailed that plan was what happened. If Brock Purdy had broken his leg, it would have been brutal and it would have hurt and it would have sucked, but they would have been like fine. He'll come back. Because of what happened, it was throwing Elkins. elbow, you're not totally sure. A, you're not sure when and B, you're still not positive that it's

going to be like it was before. And I have PTSD because a lot of my Twitter critics probably weren't born when I was right about the Joe Montana Steve Young stuff. But Joe Montana missed basically two seasons after elbow surgeries. And he did come back after that and have two really, really good years with the Chiefs, but nothing is promised. And so I think because of that, it gives them an opening to say, look, we knew Lance was going to take a while to develop because he was raw. It's taken longer. It didn't work when we just handed it to him last year. We ended up having to bring Garapolo back as a hedge and ultimately turn to purdy. But maybe we can develop him and use this offseason to get him some more reps. And I don't know if this off-season,

offense makes you more accurate because you're going to have to be more accurate than or consistently accurate than Trey Lance was before he got hurt last year. But, you know, there's still a lot of things to potentially like about him. So I believe what they'll do is they'll say, look, Purdy's not going to be here until at least the start of the season, maybe longer. We're going to split reps between Lance and Darnold, see how they react, see what we have. basically if one of them has to start the opener, it's the guy we think gives us the best chance to win. And I think one thing that people are missing here

is that when they say, well, they're going to trade Tray Lance and admit their mistake. Yeah, eventually they're going to admit their mistake if it was a mistake. But they're not fielding offers to like get back in the first round for Tray Lance. And I know it only takes one team. But if they trade Tray Lance now, I think it's for a three or something.

And so I just don't think you have urgency to. You don't know about Purdy. You'd like another option. You'd like to see if you can develop them more because you do have a lot invested in them. You're not paying them a lot. And you can always move them, you know, a year from now if it goes the way you want it to with Purdy. And possibly if it does with Donald. So I think if someone called him and said, we will give you a two, like something they thought was more than me.

Oh, a two, they take in a second. Yeah. Yeah, I think if someone calls and says, we'll give you a three for Tray Lance, they go a three. Well, let's see. We currently have 96 picks in the third round. Not all these guys are going to make our team. I mean, I just don't think, I think I'd rather have a chance to, you know, develop him this offseason. Maybe they will.

I don't even think they'll necessarily get offered a three right now. But listen, if he goes out and looks good in the preseason, and possibly early of the season, they could get a lot more for them a year from now. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal, but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential.

Either way, the podcast's Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the iHeart radio, app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what you're saying. Yep, that's me, Clivert Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey

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stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger. So, if you've ever supported me or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right where you need to be. Listen to the Clifford show on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and a TikTok podcast network on TikTok. So you went to Cal, Aaron Rogers did, but Aaron Rogers has gotten a little bit more indifferent and critical of the media over the last several years. And I said this on the show today. There's a lot of reports now that this thing won't get done, Jets and Packers until after the draft.

So Green Bay does have a need at Tide-in that's fairly urgent. They'll probably draft the Tide-in in the first round. They need another receiver, pretty thin and young at receiver. They'll go that in the second round. But the roster is good. Not great, but it's good. It's not San Francisco. It's not Philadelphia.

I don't think it's as good. Maybe as, you know, a Buffalo or, you know, the top teams in the AFC. But it's a good roster. I believe that Aaron, if he just came out and just said, guys, I'm in for two years minimum. It would be over. Then the Jets would be like, okay, we know it, you know it. But I said this today, and I've been critical of Aaron,

but Aaron's too smart to not know that once you take the most money, you won't have the best roster. He took the money. He's too smart to think, yeah, two rookie receivers. I'm not going to work with them in the offseason. That'll work great. I honestly think that we all make. make choices on what matters to us. You have a great family, great friends in your career.

You have prioritized those and they're all strong. Some people care about their career. Some people care about social life. Some want less stress. Aaron's made a decision in my opinion and winning second. What he wants is control over the media, over situations, over the Packers, that he could end all this bullshit. He can end the drama, Mike. If he just said two years I'm in, I'll think about a third. Why doesn't he do that? Well, first of all, I've also made some bad decisions in terms of priorities, specifically continuing to root for Cal, which is, you know, no, and I joke. But, you know, charitably for Aaron, I would say this.

He said he was thinking about retiring, you know, very seriously recently. That's what he, you know, we'll take him in his word. I think it's better not to say I'm in for two years if you're not sure that you are. And sure, he could say I'm in for two years and by December be like, oh, my, you know, this is terrible. I'm out of here. But maybe it's to his credit that he's not sure he's in for two years. And listen, I know from talking to my sources that the Jets understand that there's a scenario where he only plays one. And they are not telling the Packers, sorry, man.

You know, we take it or leave it. What they're saying to the Packers is, look, man, you know, if he comes and he plays one year and we give up all this, that seems kind of skewed. Is there a mechanism in this trade where if that happens, we get something back after he retires? And I think that's, you know, they consider that a reasonable request. So yeah, Aaron can end that if he just said I'm in for two. But maybe it's to Aaron's credit that he's not saying that because he's just not sure.

Your guess how long you would play with the Jets. I think it's too. You know, Aaron's career, first year as a starter in Green Bay, first year with Hackett, it has taken him usually because I've been told he's not a big grinder in the offseason, like a Brady, a Peyton or Russell Wilson, that Aaron's second year is usually the year he pops. Well, I don't think he wants to do a one walk off and be average. I think he wants to end. It's good for his legacy.

It's good for money. It's good. I think he wants to have a viable year. And I don't think his first year, frankly, is going to be great. But he doesn't consider this year one. First of all, year one with Hackett and the floor was a whole new scheme. And I believe that was a legitimate adjustment. By the way, they got to the NFC championship game.

He did not have a great statistic. year, but they went 13 and 3, got to the FC championship game. But I think the way that he and the Jets are thinking of this is this is essentially year four after a gap because it's Hackett and because it's that offense. And it's not like Hackett plus LaFleur, by the way. It's Hackett plus Sala, who's like, you run the offense. I'm, you know, I'll keep an eye on my specialty, which is defense. So if you believe that Aaron and Hackett are now.

Now resuming a very fruitful partnership that won consecutive MVP's their next two years together. And it's the Jets receivers and other players who are going to have to adjust to that. Aaron may not think it's – he – Aaron probably thinks I'm going to just be rolling for the get-go. But going back to what you said earlier, just as he made a decision not to work with the new receivers a year ago, when clearly, as Patrick Mahomes could tell you, That was an important thing to do for winning. I think that's what you need to look at.

If this trade doesn't get done draft weekend, you will probably hear, I suspect, hey, it turns out Aaron Rogers and Garrett Wilson and Alan Lazzard and, you know, all those Jets targets are working out in L.A. or somewhere. and they're how, because there's nothing to stop him. You can't say he's tampering. Right. And you can't say Garrett Wilson's tampering.

So I think it is important to hit the ground running in year one and that that'll be the way we know. If there's no trade right away or in the next couple weeks, I would, I would expect we'll see him and those guys for the Jets start to work together. As Mike Silver is prone to do, either strong opinions or breaking stories, there was a report about Nick Sezario, former Patriot, now running the Texans, that he may be going back to New England, which would not shock me because Cal McNair, and I've got pretty good intel on this, is one of the stranger owners to work within the NFL. I'll just leave it at that. It's interesting. Tell me your thoughts on that rumor, because I think Demico Ryan's is going to now, mostly run the show. Is it a power struggle? What is it? So I piled on to this rumor today, and I'll walk you through. You know, we live in this little insular gossipy world.

Yeah. It is so quaint on social media or otherwise when people say, they don't leak. The 49ers don't leak. They don't talk. And fans think they know things. And that journalists would never know things because they don't leak. Like, if you fans understood how much talking is going on at all times in our little world,

you would be, you know, your mind would be more than I'm not good. I won't reveal too many secrets, but you know what I mean. Oh, yeah. And so at the owner's meetings recently, there are a lot of people there, including me and a lot of drinking, a lot of talking.

and I heard a lot of talking about Nick Casario, and I wasn't hearing, hey, he might want to go back to New England. I was hearing, hey, he's out. He's going to be out. Now, I didn't hear it from a source or source says good enough to report this is happening. So I want to be clear. I heard that rumor along with other people that Nick Casario is going to be out after the draft, and that would presumably be a, hey, we're hiring Tomico Ryan.

D'emiko, don't worry, we're going to let you get your own GM. Just let's wait, let's do it after the draft. Not necessarily D'Bico Ryans put a hit on him, but it was just part of the process of bringing in D'Bico Ryans as I heard it. Now, I didn't report this because this was basically other people in our world, GMs, coaches, the kind of people who go to owner meetings, telling me, hey, this is what I have been hearing, and they usually know things.

So I didn't report it. I just stood on it. Then some rumors, reports of rumors started coming out. So finally, I piled on to a tweet from Mike Florio, who said the rumor is at Nix Casario, blah, blah, blah, and I said to further flesh out that rumor, the talk is that the Texans would then target 49ers assistant general manager, Adam Peters. So I guess I'm now piling on to a report of a rumor. It's not reporting this is happening, but I am reporting that there's a lot of talk that

Nick Casario, not of his own volition, would be gone after the draft and that D'Amico Ryan's guy that they would want is Adam Peters. They've obviously worked together in San Francisco. Adam Peters is a very well-regarded personnel guy who took his name out of the hat when Tennessee and Arizona had their recent openings and basically said, hey, I like it in San Francisco. I like being John Lynch is number two. I'm good for now. Now, that could have been theoretically with knowledge that, hey, Houston is looking like it might happen.

That could have happened independently, or these could all be rumors. But I don't think, I think there was so much talk that at least this is being pondered. All right. Let's pivot to you're going to cover some games for the San Francisco Chronicle. your good friends with Steve Kerr, they're easily the most interesting team in the league. So first of all, tell the audience, most know, many don't,

your relationship with Kerr, who I covered in Portland and you've known for years. Well, so back when I was learning about journalism in high school, they would have told you you have, you can't cover, you know, a guy or a team that you love. And, you know, we, as you know, we don't root for teams the way fans do. That's not a thing. But I have to go full disclosure on Steve Kerr. And he knows how I was taught because he and I were high school journalists together.

We co-wrote a sports column for our high school paper in Los Angeles. The paper was called the Palisades Tide Line. Our column was called the Rip Tide. And it lived down to its name. Trust me. And, you know, he, He is, you know, he's a very good friend of mine and an awesome person. And as we do with friends, I stick up for him. I'm so proud of all the things about him, including his coaching. So I can't be an objective person when it comes to him. But there's another wrinkle to this.

I did grow up in Los Angeles, but I was like the only warrior fan at our school because I was born in San Francisco. So I got clowned by everyone, including Steve Kerr, for being the warrior guy. So the deliciousness of all of this and the run of the last nine years, a lifelong warrior fan, working for NFL network for most of it. So I didn't have to worry about journalism because I don't cover basketball. And Steve, it's been an incredible ride. Well, now I'm at the San Francisco Chronicle. I am a columnist.

And though columnists give their opinion, You know, we cover things. And so now I'm in this weird position where it's like, I'm not really a warrior fan anymore because I'm a columnist, but I grew up one. I've been one for all these cur years. And of course, I am rooting for my friend. So I am going to write the first of several warrior columns. I'm going to write it after this podcast and probably tomorrow morning. And I'm going to go full disclosure.

Steve Kerr's my boy. Here are some things I love about. him but you know of course when steve and i talk about this stuff and joke i've always like yeah dude i'm going to say the game has passed you by if the warrior you know anyone could coach the warriors but it's time for a change and i'm going to bring the hammer down mike silver is always money the volume make sure to check out the draymond green show i brought draymond green into the volume because one of the more entertaining voices in sports unique perspective understands behind the rope also chops up with guests like Gary Payton, Zach Levine, Tracy McGrady.

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