The Josh Innes Show - Mike McCarthy Out In Dallas

Episode Date: January 13, 2025

This podcast starts with me discussing the news that Mike McCarthy is no longer the coach in Dallas. Somehow, it becomes a rant about topic selection on Jason Kelce's crappy talk show. That leads to a full on discussion about the brilliance of the Nickelodeon NFL Broadcast. I think Dora the Explorer and Patrick do a good job of exposing how useless NFL analysts are. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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The breaking news in the NFL today is that Mike McCarthy is no longer the coach of the Cowboys. It's a really interesting thing considering that Jerry denied McCarthy and the Bears the opportunity to talk. I guess that was last week. And now says that he's out. So the coach of the Dallas Cowboys is no longer the coach of the Dallas Cowboys. And who knows who the coach of the Cowboys is going to be? I would just love it to be Coach Prime and they somehow get his kids in there and it becomes a shit show.

That would be fun to me. Speaking of Coach Prime, so there was a story i guess it was in the over the weekend that coach prime is really interested in the raiders job and of course prime wants the opportunity to go with his kids not just one of his kids he wants to go to the nfl and coach multiple children of his right and he wants an nfl job and that's the only way he would take an NFL job. Now, that is the report. But what's funny is that another report comes out yesterday that says the Raiders have no interest in Coach Prime.

Now, I don't think Coach Prime would translate as an NFL coach at all. I wouldn't hire him. I watched the last season of his show here. I think he is an extremely compelling person. And I think he knows how to carry himself around impressionable people. And impressionable people love him. I'm not saying he's a fraud.

I'm not saying he's a snake oil salesman. I am saying, though, that his gimmick and his act really works with 18, 19, 20-year-old dudes. And I'm not saying that NFL players wouldn't respect him because he's obviously one of the greatest players to ever do it. But I do think that the gimmick works better with college dudes than it does with pro dudes. There are just some guys that are meant to coach impressionable youth versus dudes making a billion dollars in the NFL.

Nick Saban, fresh out of LSU, goes to Miami. By the way, Miami wasn't a train wreck, but he even acknowledged that his personality, his type of in-your-face style would not translate to the NFL, and he knew it wouldn't as he was doing it. He knew that his lot in life was more so to be an NFL, like a guy that tried the NFL, but then goes to college. That's what Saban was. Some guys, Pete Carroll was great at both levels.

He had the kind of demeanor that just sort of worked. But Pete Carroll also coached what was basically a pro football team and a pro football program at USC. Then he does very well with the Seahawks. There are some guys that are just meant to be college coaches Lane Kiffin is meant to be a college coach he is not an NFL coach he has to live in this kind of world where you talk shit on Twitter yeah yeah you lure in recruits and guys in the portal with kind of flash and bravado that's what you do some guys are meant to do that Dion

is fine I actually really enjoy him. I find myself captivated by Dion when I watch it. Like there's some people I see and they're frauds and they're frauds in such a way that I hate them. Like I hate the Kelseys, although I don't really hate Travis. I think Travis is fairly authentic. I hate Jason.

I hate his wife. I hate the mom. Sue me. I don't like them. I'm sick of seeing him. I don't know why anybody in the world wants to hear from Jason Kelsey's wife. No one's watching his TV show, which by the way, I saw that on the latest episode of the Jason Kelsey late night program on ESPN, that Jason Kelsey was interviewing Joe Buck and they talked about why Philadelphia hates Joe Buck. Wow. Welcome to WIP in 2014. That's the compelling entertainment that a national audience

is tuned in for. We want to know why a group of people in one city dislike a play-by-play announcer who I don't even know that they dislike him anymore. I don't know that they care that much about Joe Buck. I know that when I was there and I had the job there, that was one of like the five go-to topics. There was even imaging on the station that ran talking about how people hate Joe Buck. They hated Joe Buck in 2014, 15, 16 when I was there. I don't think anybody gives a fuck

about Joe Buck in Philadelphia anymore. Yet when you put Jason Kelsey in a national television setting, he just does a WIP talk show on ESPN. Like, the people that are in charge of this need to be just punched in the dick. Like, how do you allow this to happen? How do you allow some guy

who has some national recognition, obviously a lot of podcast listeners, mostly due to Taylor Swift, fine. This guy is everywhere. He's in every commercial. You see him everywhere to taylor swift fine this guy is everywhere he's in every commercial you see him everywhere how do you put this guy on television and give him money however much you're paying him to do a re uh to do this talk show how do you do that and then say all right here's what we need from you pal go on out knock them dead with a show that Joe DiCamera could do. A show that John Ritchie or whomever can do. The little guy that does the show with Hugh Douglas, right? Those guys can do the show

that Jason Kelsey is doing on a national television network. They are doing low-hanging fruit Philly topics. What is next? We're going to bring in Anthony Gargano to discuss why calling Tony Romo Tony Homo is peak comedy. That's up after this word from Delisandro's. Like, what the fuck, man? Like, how do you give these dopes these jobs? Like, I'm not even going to blame Kelsey for this one. Someone above him hired him, put him on TV, and basically told him to go be a McDougal on television for a very niche McDougal audience. What national person, what person in Des Moines is like,

boy, I do want to know why Philadelphia people hate Joe Buck so much. No one gives a fuck. What are we doing here? But I digress. Speaking of announcers, and I know this started with a discussion about Mike McCarthy, but fuck it. Like, look, Mike McCarthy is a very accomplished head coach, yet I'm a Saints fan. I wouldn't want Mike McCarthy coaching the Saints. Mike McCarthy is a fascinating story too, because if you really look at him him the dude virtually every year goes to the playoffs the guy virtually every year is in a playoff game he's got 11 playoff wins which I think has him like in the top 15 all time and part of that is longevity right now part of that is that for your career

in Green Bay you had two elite quarterbacks you had Brett Favre on the tail end and then boom Aaron Rodgers comes in, and he's a fucking soldier. So that's easy. And then you have Dak when you're in Dallas, and you can question whether or not you think Dak is elite or not. That's a fair discussion. But Dak is a top half of the league, if not top 10, probably very close to the back end of the top 10, eight or nine level quarterback in the NFL. Thus, you go to the playoffs every year, and you bottom out in the playoffs every year. And I can make an argument that if you hired Mike McCarthy to work for a ready-made team, he may do something for you. My question would be, how many of the job

openings do you see right now that are ready-made teams for somebody? Are the Saints a ready-made team? No, they have Derek Carr and they don't even know if they're going to have Derek Carr. So why would you hire Mike McCarthy for a rebuild situation? Now, you could also argue that the Denver hired Sean Payton, which good L coach, but they hired Sean Payton, and Sean Payton takes a rookie quarterback and goes to the playoffs, which, again, last year was kind of a weird situation, but he's weathered that and got him to multiple big wins and took him to the playoffs. So I don't think Mike McCarthy is a Sean Payton in that way, but who knows? So what is a situation

that makes sense? Mike McCarthy is just not going to coach again. A guy that has as many regular season wins as he does, a guy that has as many playoff wins as he does, and a guy that is still young enough and hungry enough to keep coaching, presumably, someone's going to have to hire the guy. Maybe not this offseason, but maybe next. I don't know. I guess the Bears job would have been a pretty good job for McCarthy because he inherits a guy that I actually think is better than a lot of people give him credit for, and that's Caleb Williams. I think that franchise is a mess, but he's got good weapons, and I do think there's a lot of upside with Caleb Williams. I don't watch him play and think, my God, this guy is a disaster. I think there are a lot of issues with that team, and Caleb Williams, if he finds the right

stability, I think Caleb Williams can still be a stud. I think he's got that ability to do that, so maybe Chicago would have been a good job for Mike McCarthy. But the Saints job doesn't make sense. The Saints are not in a position to hire a guy who's top 15 in playoff wins all time and a guy who's ready to go in and win now, which is all Mike McCarthy has ever done. That's not the scenario you're in. So a team like the Saints would be out. A team like the Giants would probably be out. A team like the Jets would probably be out. Well, I guess there is the argument to be made that maybe Mike McCarthy has a reunion with Aaron Rodgers. Maybe, okay?

There's that little argument. But outside of that, there's not a job you look at in the NFL and go, okay, that makes the most sense for Mike McCarthy. But he's not arguably, he is the most accomplished coach that's on the market, I guess outside of Pete Carroll, who still wants to coach as well, it seems. And so you can see that. But as a Saints fan, I wouldn't have any interest in Mike McCarthy because I think the Saints truly need to tear it all down and figure things out,

but they're not going to do that. Thus, we're going to continue to be mediocre and terrible, and I'm going to continue to hate everything because that's my lot in life right now. All right, let's do this. Let's play a couple of commercials and get into some other stuff. All right, if you're ready to win some real cash during the basketball playoffs, you got to check out Pick 6 from DraftKings. When it comes to basketball payouts, DraftKings Pick 6 posterizes the competition, including prize picks. It's a very simple concept. Hit all your picks and score higher minimum payouts on Pick 6, plus even more cash if you outscore the competition. Pick 6 is available in most states, including Missouri, California, Texas, Georgia, and more, and I absolutely love it.

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discussing why Philadelphia hates Joe Buck, which is one of the five worst topics in the history of Philly radio. It's awful. I despise it. It's everything that's bad about Philadelphia radio. Why do you hate blank? Or why do you think this guy hates Philadelphia? It's awful. Like I was watching the intro

to the Eagles Packers game yesterday. And there was, you know, some little goofy setup where some guy allegedly from Wisconsin is talking about how they have real cheese and Philly has cheese whiz. Like that's the kind of shit that would fill four hours on the Cuz's show. Right after the Cuz went into a full-on breakdown of how he saw Jason Tatum on a bag of chips

and now he's never going to eat those chips, right? Like, that's the kind of shit you're going to get. Like, it's that low-hanging fruit bullshit, and the fact that that's on television is shocking. I also like how I read a story that said Jason Kelsey was able to convince his wife to join him for an episode of this Jason Kelsey TV show. Yes, you were able to convince this person that no one gives a shit about to join you on your show that no one gives a shit about. Okie dokie, chief. But as far as announcers go, I think Tom Brady is terrible. And it's not so much what he says, even though Tom Brady says nothing of real substance.

It's a lot of generic bullshit. For whatever reason, Brady's accent bothers me. And I never really noticed it when he was a player. But now that you listen to him talk all the time, I really, really hate the sound of his voice. Like, it's just, it's not even obnoxious. It's just an his voice. Like it's just, it's not even obnoxious. It's just an annoying voice. The other problem I have is when you got, and I get that this is kind of part of the job, but you listen to Brady's annoying voice and then you listen to his analysis, which like

nine out of 10 times is inane. And then he'll say something and you'll go, Oh, that was kind of profound. You're the greatest quarterback to ever live. Can you give me any better insight than, you know, that's the kind of way you want to start a playoff game, which he said like five times in the first quarter of the Packers-Eagles game yesterday. They fumbled the opening snap, man, or the kickoff. Man, if you're the Eagles, that's the way you want to start a playoff game. Cool. Then next time around, and the other side, that's not the way you want to start a game if you're the Packers like it's just lame inane shit right and and everything was about the juice I don't know if you were I mean many of you that were in Philly I mean everybody was watching the

playoff game it's a fucking NFL playoff game but he'd like to talk about the juice like oh boy they got the juice now like it's the playoffs you got have that juice. And the guy said this like 10 fucking times. Most of these analysts give you nothing. And let me give you an example of how I know that these analysts are worthless. That's why I know that when I watch a game, there's not an analyst you can put on TV that I'd go, God, I have to watch this game because this analyst. I don't know why they pay play-by-play announcers or analysts. There's no reason to. And that's why ESPN, for a lot of what they do now,

they just go out and use dudes that host SportsCenter and different shows to do play-by-play because it doesn't matter because people aren't tuning into the game for great play-by-player, great analysis. They're tuning in because it's the game. You aren't going to not watch the college football playoff because of who was calling the game

or because of who was calling the game, right? Of course. But I watched the Nickelodeon game for the Texans game. For virtually the entire game, I watched the Nickelodeon broadcast, which one was Nate Burleson. And by the way, this guy deserves an Emmy, a sports Emmy, any kind of Emmy for the way he handled like the whole broadcast. Cause he's the only human on the broadcast. It used to be Noah Eagle and Noah Eagles like, fuck you guys. I'm very busy. Uh, I do real things now. I don't fuck around with the Nickelodeon broadcast. So it's Nate Burleson and he's calling the entire game with SpongeBob square pants and Patrick starfish or whatever the fuck his name is.

I don't watch. I don't know anything about SpongeBob. So I couldn't tell you who is who and what was what. But I guess that's who they are. And they're calling the game from like under the sea. So there's like this wacky glare of sunshine coming in. It took me an hour to realize it wasn't my TV that was fucking up. It was that they were blasting in like a fake ray of sun

through the water to indicate that they were underwater. But you'd listen to Patrick, particularly Patrick, I guess he's a starfish. Patrick would say things, and I guess he's actually voiced by Dauber, what's his name, Fagerbaker, whatever his name is, the dude that was Dauber on Coach, one of the greatest television shows of all time, where Dauber was the special teams coach on Coach.

What I enjoyed about Coach is that there were only three coaches on the team. There was the defensive coordinator, there was the head coach, and the special teams coach. They had three coaches, Hayden Fox, Dauber, Michael Dauber-Dubinsky, and Luther Van Dam. Those were the three coaches on coach, right? They only had three coaches, but I digress. So Patrick Starfish, he says shit during this game. And I'm like, that's basically no different than the shit that Tom Brady says. And Tom Brady is getting paid $20 million a year to be an analyst on these games. Dora, they would bring up Dora the Explorer at times

and she would say shit and I'd go, that's better than Greg fucking Olsen. Like you listen to these guys who are just there and paid millions of dollars to say obvious shit that honest to God, most of us already know. Like even if we didn't play football at a high level, some of the shit's very obvious, but there was a point like the highlight of my Nickelodeon game watching experience was when Dora popped up at one point and like she wasn't in the booth just to be clear she was kind of like I guess not even a sideline reporter because that's Schefter's daughter that is a sideline reporter but Dora would pop up like her face would pop up over the score graphic and then she would add some sort of insights so like Dora would pop up like her face would pop up over the score graphic and then she would add some sort of

insights so like dora would pop up and just say something wacky like she'd explain like what a safety is or what an unnecessary roughness is but at one point dora i don't know what point this was in the game what was happening in the game but dora her face and like her torso emerges from behind the score widget on the front of the screen and she says, and I quote, wow, this wild card game is really wild. And I'm like, she's doing Romo shit. Like that is Romo analysis. The reason why people liked Romo so much early on is he'd predict what was going to happen, which in reality he wasn't predicting shit. He was just saying, hey, they might run and they might pass here.

Like, that was Romo's analysis. But now you watch Romo and a lot of it's just, oh, Jim, what's going to happen, Jimmy? Oh, I can't wait. That was Dora. Like, I don't think this is why they do the Nickelodeon broadcast, but in some weird universe, I choose to believe it is. I believe they do this to just show you how ridiculous and how absurd analysis of sporting events actually is. Like, Troy Aikman makes like $20 million a year, if not more.

I don't know how much he makes, but I'm guessing a shitload of money Troy Aikman makes to be the analyst for Monday Night Football. What do you really get from Troy Aikman when you watch these games? Not a ton. About the same as you get from Patrick and SpongeBob and Dora. I think that deep down, this is just some sort of subliminal way of saying that football analysis is so fucking stupid on television that even Dora and Spongebob

could do it. Although Spongebob wasn't great. Spongebob was kind of snarky. Like he was doing a little bit more snarky stuff. Whereas I think Patrick was a little bit more inquisitive about things. Right. So I think that's why I kind of gravitated more towards the kind of curiosity that you saw from Patrick. I thought I really kind of related to his curiosity and I enjoyed it. But Nate Burleson, give this guy an Emmy. Like, I don't know how they set that up in there. I would assume he's sitting there. I don't know if he's in the booth with the two people and then they just superimpose the cartoon over him or if he just has to look at like a stick of these two people because he's clearly looking like he's got to have the right eye level when looking at

these characters because if not, you don't buy buy it you don't buy that he's down there with the fellas in Krabby Patty land or whatever the fuck it's called like you don't know that you have no clue so like he has to have the eye level that works and I think the eye level worked like give Nate Burleson every award like we keep giving these Emmys to you know all these Troy Aikmans and shit give a sports Emmy to Nate Burleson and to at least Patrick maybe Dora because again Dora is like the Tony Romo of the broadcast she's just there to like say obvious obvious shit then you got some actual analysis from Patrick and fortunately we started getting touchdowns in that game, so we finally got some slime.

It took for fucking ever to get the slime. They started just shooting off the slime cannons just because they hadn't shot them off and they don't want to lose the audience. I found we did not turn off the Nickelodeon broadcast. That is a playoff game for a team that we were rooting for, the Texans, and I could not take my eyes off of Nickelodeon it was the shit I enjoyed it thoroughly anyway all right so that all started with a discussion about Mike McCarthy being out as

the coach of the Cowboys how did we get there I don't know