The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Colin Cowherd Podcast - Warriors Beat Knicks, Warriors Are Dangerous, NFL Combine, What To Make Of J.J. McCarthy?

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

Colin reacts to the Warriors win over the Knicks (3:30), and explains why the Warriors may not be the best regular season team… but will be dangerous in the playoffs (8:30). He also talks about what REALLY happens at the NFL combine (14:00) and why Michigan quarterback J.J. McCarthy is the most interesting prospect in the NFL draft. (17:00) (Timestamps may vary based on advertisements.) Follow Colin and The Volume on Twitter for the latest content and updates! #Volume #Herd See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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West Virginia, visit 1-800 gambler.net. In New York, call 8778-8-8-Hope-N-Y or text Hope-N-Y 4667-369. In Connecticut, help is available for problem gambling. Call 888-78-9-777. Or visit ccpcpg. Please play responsibly. On behalf of Boot Hill Casino and Resort in Kansas, 21 and over, age varies by jurisdiction. Void in Ontario. One no-sweat per new customer. Issued as one bonus bet based on amount of initial losing bet. Bonus bets expire 168 hours after issuing. See dkng.com slash promos for deposit wagering in eligibility restrictions, terms, and responsible gaming resources. How about a little instant reaction on the dubs, the Golden State Warriors 11099 win over the New York Knicks? So when the football season ends, and during the late part, you know, the playoffs, I start watching some NBA stuff in December a little bit, and then in January.

But I'm really locked in on the NFL. and then NFL season ends. I go on vacation. I come back and I start watching a couple games a night. So tonight I sat down and said, you know, I'm watching Dobs Nix. We hit our Draft Kings parlay tonight, our three-teamer. We took the Warriors to beat the Knicks in New York. Without Andrew Wiggins, they win.

We took Draymond Green to have over five and a half assists and Steph Curry to have over 27 and a half points. Again, Julius Randall doesn't play for the Knicks. He's been out a while and Andrew Wiggins didn't play for the wits. Warriors, but they've won seven straight road games. And I, you know, I've talked about this. I really have reservations. And I, there are a lot of times you'll see a really good young team, like Oklahoma City is really good. They're not getting to the NBA finals. They're just too young. SGA, Hongren, are really good players. But this is a, this is a man's league.

In fact, that's what's interesting about the Warriors is right now they have three young players. They're going to have to count on in the playoffs to some degree to win. Now, Jonathan Cominga is a kid. I talked about two years ago. He came out of high school, went to the G League. I remember the first time I saw him. It was like a second or third game. I was like, oh, this kid's going to be special.

Really long, really twitchy, really dynamic. But he's only 21 years old now, and he's been in the league like two and a half years. You know, he wouldn't even be in the league yet as a college football player to the NFL. That's why you have to be so patient. I mean, in the NFL, if you come in and you're a quarterback, I'll give you until Thanksgiving of your second year. By that time, you know, Daniel Jones, it's not going to work. Sam Hal, it's just not going to work. Kaminga is like in year three now, and he's just now flourishing because he went high school right to the G League and to the Warriors, and the Warriors have a

pretty sophisticated system. James Wiseman couldn't catch on. DeAngelo Russell was there for a minute. They wanted him out of town. It can eat up young players. Jordan Poole, just too goofy for the system, I'm not reliable. So, Kaming is just a kid. He's a baby 21 years old. But that dude is tonight, 25 points, 8 rebounds, really, really good around the basket, excellent finisher. And they're going to have to – he'll start, and they're going to depend on him for 34 minutes

in the postseason. And it's okay because Drayman at the other forward gives you, like the grownup, the adult, the experience. And Draymond's very much a coach on the floor. They're also, Moses Moody now has been around a little longer, a very good on-ball defender. They're going to rely on him to play, start or not. Also, Trace Jackson Davis, now he's a second-round kid out of Indiana. He probably, you know, he'll get some bench play. He's young as well. He's 24 years old. Second round pick. Nice job by Mike Dunleby Jr. Find him in the draft. Interesting player. They have Sarich. They have Jackson, Davis. So they've got some length. They're not as, small as they were. But they're going to have to pivot from these veteran players, Clay Thompson

now coming off the bench, Steph Curry, Wiggins will be around, Draymond Green, Sarich has some days on his resume, but you're going to need Moody, Cominga, and the young kid out of Indiana to give you real minutes. And the Warriors, the small ball thing goes, cracked me up. You know, there's two things in the NBA, kind of roll my eyes at. Everybody talks about how mobility works. No, it doesn't. It worked for LeBron. It worked for LeBron when he went to Miami. He got two titles. It worked for Cleveland. He got a title. And it worked in L.A. He got a title. And it worked for Kevin Love, who joined LeBron and Chris Bosch, who joined LeBron in Miami. And Anthony Davis, who joined LeBron in Los Angeles. Mobility isn't how you build championships. That's not how it works. It worked for

LeBron in three places. Okay. Going to Miami, coming back to Cleveland, going to Los Angeles. It hasn't work for Kevin Durant, other than one time he goes to the Warriors. Since then, Brooklyn didn't work. Phoenix, bit disappointing. So the mobility thing, you know, that's not winning titles. San Antonio mostly had a core group. Golden State. They won before KD. They won a title after KD. You know, Boston gets Drew Holiday, but that team for years was built around Jalen Brown, Jason Tatum, and Marcus Smart. Now, I like the upgraded Drew Holiday, but there are two core guys or Jalen Brown and Jason Tatum. So I think mobility is something we talk about all the time in the NBA, and I just

sort of roll my eyes. The other thing I kind of, you know, people talk about small ball. It worked for the Warriors because they had the three best shooting players, the best shooting backcourt tandem ever. Jerry West, Gail Goodrich for most of my life was the best shooting back court ever, and then supplanted by Clay Thompson and Steph Curry. And then they had Kevin Durant. Yeah, they had the three best shooters of all time playing together.

And they went and got Bogot at one point. They got Kevin Durant. They weren't that small. There were small ball lineups that worked for them. But it doesn't work now. They're pivoting off it by getting, you know, Loonie. Trayvon Loney has size. Sarich has size.

Kaminga's long. Jackson Davis is long. long. He's kind of a forward center, six nine, six, nine and a half. So they're just, they're not, they just more formidable in the front court than before. So small ball worked because really the Warriors had unique players, a wing in Draymond who can defend Biggs. And Steph and Clay, the best shooting back court ever. That's your small ball. People try to duplicate it. It didn't equal titles. And mobility doesn't really work. It worked with LeBron several times. I think the Warriors are really dangerous.

I really do. I think they've won seven straight road games. They have a nice mix of young and old, and they have one of the highest IQ. They have probably the smartest team in the league right now between Chris Paul, Steph Curry, Clay Thompson, Steve Kerr, Draymond Green. You've got, I mean, you've got a lot of games. You've got a lot of games with those guys. And that's why I would take them head-to-head over an OKC,

even though OKC is built for the regular season. The regular season is, it is a complete marathon. And, you know, for older teams who are doing load management, you know, I mean, like LeBron James has a great fourth quarter, you know, against the Clippers, he would prefer not to play the following night. You know, and he took the Celtic game off with Anthony Davis. These old guys picked their spots.

Young guys get injured less and they heal faster. So I think the Warriors are going to be a real team. And it's a nice mix of old and new. And I really like watching them play. It is, you know, the other thing about the three-point shot, which I think is overstated, I think so much of analytics in baseball and in the NBA is based on regular season games. And, you know, these are long, you play the averages. Analytics are averages over the course of time.

But when you get into playoff basketball or playoff baseball, you just got to get outs. You go into a series. You're going to bring starters on three days rest. You're going to use them in late innings, a starter if you have to win a game six or a game seven. So the analytics go out the door. You manage differently. You use your bullpen differently. You use starters differently on fewer days rest.

And in basketball, playoff basketball becomes very situational. It becomes very much about get a basket. That's why Kauai Leonard has been, when he's healthy, a very good playoff performer. Get a stop, get a basket. It doesn't have to be a three. And so I think this warrior team is obviously going to lie a large part on Steph Curry hitting threes. But they've got a lot of guys that can get you two now. Caminga is a guy that's really good around the tin.

They've got size. They don't have to shoot the ball as well. Pods is a nice rookie. He's the next clay. But it can be a little bit of a slasher, which I like. I don't think you have to rely on threes, and I think small ball was overstated just due to unique,

generationally gifted players for the Warriors that other teams' rosters couldn't duplicate. 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 I-Hard 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, Cliver Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media.

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I think the NFL Combine this week, let's talk about that. The Combine really isn't about the measurables and the performance. What it really is is a chance for general managers and personnel people in the the NFL to get together. And a lot of late nights, a lot of beers, a lot of cocktails. And it's like they say a lot of business gets done on the golf course. A lot of stuff gets done at the combine. I thought my guess was that Justin Fields would be moved from the Bears to Atlanta around the combine, that you just, you know, you get a couple beers, guys sit down. And what I, what my guess the way Justin Fields would work is that, yeah, I don't know exactly.

exactly what you do. But like the bears have the ninth pick, Atlanta's got the eighth pick. Maybe you swap those in a third rounder. Something like that feels reasonable. So the bears move up one slot and get a third rounder. That feels like something you can do for Justin Fields. I don't think he's going to be a superstar in Atlanta. But I do think you can argue he'll be the most talented quarterback in the NFC South, where he's just not. He's not as good as Jared Gough, and I don't think he's, I don't think he at this point is trending to be nearly as good as Jordan Love. So if Kirk Cousins comes back for two years, Kirk Cousins right now is a more efficient

quarterback than Justin Fields. And so he would be the fourth most reliable quarterback in the division. That's not a good place for him. I think it's a much better place for him to go to Atlanta where, you know, Baker and Derek Carr are, you know, they can win a lot of games, especially Baker. He's won a playoff game. You know, he's a playoff quarterback in the AFC and the NFC, but in terms of overall size and talent, whip, arm, you know, Justin's pretty special

player. So the combine to me, and we sent John Middlough there for the volume, the combine's really a relationship. It's like a camp for football grownups where you get all the GMs and the personnel people and they screw around, they have steak dinners, and you get a lot of business done. I don't care much about the players testing. You know, it's like these personal workouts. testing. I do think, you know, there's a trend over the last several years that

quarterbacks don't throw at this thing. I think every draft has a really interesting player. I mean, I think without question, everybody knows it's good, wide receiver, good offensive tackle class, really good, three or four, really high-end receivers, three or four really good offensive tackles. You could have six offensive tackles taken in the first round. That's a huge number. The quarterbacks, there's a lot of talent. But I think the most interesting player in the draft is going to be J.J. McCarthy for Michigan, who had a great coach, a great old line, a great run game, and a great defense in a conference, frankly, that's kind of Ohio State and everybody else outside of Michigan. I mean, that's about the only team Michigan face that

has equal talent. In the SEC, even though Alabama can be great, there's Georgia, there's LSU, there's a lot of teams that can stack up athletically, three or four teams at the top. Ohio State and Michigan just look different than everybody else, and McCarthy benefited from that. Now, he won a lot of games. But they didn't really rely on him. He didn't throw many touchdown passes. His biggest games were often against, I mean, he had, I think it was half of his touchdown passes against three teams, all of them awful.

East Carolina, Michigan State, and Indiana. He had half of his touchdown totals. And he only had one game with three touchdown passes, I believe. Panics had 10. Bow Nicks had seven. I think he had one game with either, was it 300 yards passing? or three touchdown passes. My big concern is he's really slender. And let me give an example. So I've used this before, is that Aaron Rogers and I are the same height. And I've seen Aaron

a couple times up close. He doesn't look thick. He weighs 225 pounds. I'm the same height, and I weigh 195. I work out every day. I'm in pretty good shape. You would view me as slender. If you looked at Aaron, you would view him as sort of slender. He carries 30 pounds more than me at the same height. Chest, shoulders, butt. It's that thickness. Years ago, I asked somebody about Aaron. I said, he doesn't look that big.

And this person said, look at his caps. Look at his butt. Look at his shoulders. Look at his wrists. There's a difference. When Johnny Mansell came into the league, he just didn't have the size and the shoulders, the butt, the hips, the wrist.

He just wasn't big enough. And so I look at J.J. McCarthy, and he's 6.3. so he is taller than Aaron Rogers by an inch and a half, and he weighs 20 to 23 pounds less. That's noticeable to me. He comes across his slender. And, you know, it's somebody, an NFL executive said he looks like a stretched out Bryce Young. And I never thought of that. But in the context of body types, it kind of matches.

And so I think McCarthy is fascinating. I know two people who I really like in the NFL executives think he's a haminex. just don't really see it. I know somebody else, Randy Mueller, a former executive in the league, works for the athletic now, really likes J.J. McCarthy. Obviously, Jim Harbaugh loves him. He's rooting for his guys. I don't know quite what to make him. Now, I didn't like Zach Wilson of the Jets out of college. I like J.J. McCarthy more. I think he throws a better ball and a more consistent ball. You know, I didn't like Johnny Mansell out of college. I think J.J. McCarthy's a much, much better prospect. I didn't like T. Bowl.

all to college, obviously. I mean, Tebow couldn't throw a consistent NFL football. It's not like, I don't think he has talent. I do think JJ has talent. But the body type, it's just, it's a completely different sport. I mean, the NFL, I remember when Johnny Mansell came into the league, and he was a runaround guy, gave Alabama's great defenses, all sorts of fits. And I think it was a preseason game. He's playing for Cleveland. I think they played Washington. Is that the one where he gave somebody the finger? And he rolled out, and, you know, he thought I'm going to get around this defensive end. He could not outrun a defense event in the NFL. And in that moment, I'm like, yep, not going to work because his game is movement.

It's just not going to work. Lamar Jackson moves. You can't stop him. Michael Vic moves. Steve Young moved. They got around the corner. So a lot of times, you know, you play in college, high school and college and what works for you does not work, does not translate to the NFL.

So I'm just fascinated with Jay J.J. McCarthy to see if it does. I just don't quite see it. Now, you would say, Colin, you didn't see C.J. Stroud. No. I said, Lance Zerline, who works at NFL.com, a draft analyst, he said Jared Goff was his comp. And I said probably 10 times on the air, that's a good comp. Out of college, I didn't see a lot of juice with Jared Goff, but I thought he threw a beautiful ball from the pocket. I didn't see a lot of juice until the Georgia game on CJ Stroud, but he throws a beautiful ball out of the pocket.

Zerline was on the herd yesterday on FS1 and talked about that, that people give him crap for that. But if you go look at Jared Goff's second year numbers and CJ Stroud's first. first year numbers. CJ got a great first coach. Jared Goff didn't. They're very similar. So J.J. McCarthy is going to be really, really interesting to me. You know, like this was the best Michigan team, perhaps ever, and the best team in college

football, I thought significantly, with a great O line and a really powerful run game and a great coach, very Alabama-like. And if you start looking at all these Alabama quarterbacks, the Bryce Youngs and the Tua's, you know, they looked Mac Jones, boy, did we really like them out of college, and then you get to the NFL behind an average offensive line, and you don't really have a number one receiver. That's what J.J. McCarthy feels like to me. The great coach, the great O'line, the great run game,

the great defense support, playing with a lead, getting very good field position, just like Tua and Mac Jones, and Alabama quarterbacks time and time again. Then they get into the NFL and they trail, and they don't have a good option. offensive line. And they're moving, and J.J. McCarthy weighs 6, 3, 203 pounds, and he probably needs 22 pounds more with that size. So we'll see. He is, to me, the most interesting player in the first round. All right, little instant reaction. Dubs picked up their seven straight road win. Beat a Knicks team without Julius Randall, but Andrew Wiggins didn't play. I think it's a really

interesting Warriors team that's got a mix of old and young. They finally have some front court size, play sort of the same style, up-tempo. And if you don't understand Draymond Green tonight, Draymond Green is, you know, I wrote down some of the comments on Draymond Green. That dude, this team, since Draymond Green came back from his suspension, the Warriors lead the NBA in points and assists. Tonight he had six assists. It's like the line of demarcation. If you don't get the value of Draymond Green, if you watch the Warriors game with the next night in the garden, constantly coaching, constantly talking, communication. He's, Steve Kerr sees this. He's so valuable. He's not Steph Curry valuable, but beyond that,

he is so valuable to the Warriors and his age and communication skills with all these young players. They kept micing them on TNT throughout the game. Every time you hear Draymond Green, coaching, teaching, assignments, communication. You either get it or you don't. I just love it. All right, instant reaction. We'll see you tomorrow, FS1. The volume.

Thanks so much for listening. If you've enjoyed the podcast, take a moment, rate, and review. 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 headwriters, Street or 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 I-Hard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hardweight with your favorite therapist and host Kear Games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that's really not safe to have anywhere,

but you're having him with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit or armor. It signals to the world that you're not to be played with. And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to, listen to learn the hard way on the IHard radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHart podcast. Guaranteed human.