The Kevin Sheehan Show - 19 Free Agents & Counting

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

Kevin opened with some NCAA Tournament, Caps, and more before getting to the Commanders' and the now list of 19 Free Agent signings and counting. During the recording, the news that Chase Young had signed a deal with New Orleans broke so Kevin weighed in on that. Patrick Stevens/Washington Post jumped on to talk about nailing 68 out of 68 in his final "Bracketology". The guys talked about the snubs, the seeding surprises, and a few teams below the 4-seed line to keep an eye on.Download the PrizePicks app today and use code Sheehan for a first deposit match up to $100! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey guys, I'm really pleased to have a new sponsor to the podcast. Prize picks is the largest daily fantasy sports platform in North America. They're the easiest and the most exciting way to play DFS. It's just you against the numbers rather than you battling thousands of other players, including pros and sharks. Football season's over, but Hoops Action is heating up, whether it's tournament season right through the end of this month or the fight for playoff home court advantage heading. into the postseason, there's no shortage of high-stakes basketball moments this time of year. Get in on the excitement with prize picks, America's number one fantasy sports app where you can turn your hoops knowledge into serious cash. Download the app today and use code Sheehan, S-H-E-H-A-N for a first deposit match of up to $100. You don't want it. You don't need it, but you're going to get it anyway. The Kevin She and show. Here's Kevin. We'll hear that intro a lot over the next three weeks. The tournament field is set. The brackets are out.

Best part of the tournament for me is this first week, you know, especially Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. We get the first four games tomorrow night and Wednesday night. And then Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday when you're going from 64 down to the Sweet 16. and there are games all day and all night long, I think one of the best sports weekends of the year. Upsets, buzzer beaters, you know, we'll get it all over the next several days. Looking forward to that. The final 68 in the field wasn't easy to pick, according to most people, but Patrick Stevens from the Washington Post got all 68 correctly.

He'll be on the show with me. in the final segment today. We'll get his thoughts on how it came together and then look at some of the teams outside of the top 16 that he thinks can make a run. Because remember, last year's final four did not feature a team seeded three or higher. It was a four seed in Yukon,

two five seeds in Miami and San Diego State, and a nine seed in Florida. Atlantic. The show is presented. As always, by Window Nation. March is a great month if you've been thinking about new windows. Buy to get too free with no money down, no interest, and no payments for two full years. Wind donation is going to take care of you because you're a listener to this podcast and they like me a lot. And I like them a lot. I've been endorsing Wind Donation for nearly 15 years. 86690 Nation, windownation.com. I'm not as much into the tournament as I usually am because of a number of reasons. I mean, we are buried in NFL free agency. Most of you who are listening care about that more than anything else.

And for me, and I've mentioned this a few times over the last couple of weeks, but when Mary, Maryland isn't a tournament team. My interest is there when we get to Thursday or tomorrow night and Wednesday night, but it's not as much during the course of the college basketball season. Like I watched every Maryland game this year, and I did watch a lot of the conference tournament action last weekend. But in terms of watching college basketball, like I typically do, this was definitely a year in which I watched a lot.

lot less. But it won't stop me from giving out smell test picks on tournament games. I think I've been doing smell test picks for the NCAA tournament for I think it's three years. It might be two. I did go back and listen to the show from a year ago before the national championship game between Yukon and San Diego State just to confirm what my record was last year, because I know that I've had winning seasons doing this in at least two years, maybe three. 17 and 13 overall on the tournament last year, so 56.7%. That's good for a profit. So starting tomorrow for the first four games, I will have smell test picks.

I may not have a smell test pick tomorrow or Wednesday night, but I will look at all of the games closely and certainly employ the contrarian smell test handicapped. philosophy. Also, tomorrow on the show, do the thing that Tommy loves, which is narrow the championship field down to a few teams. I've done this for, I don't know, five or six years where I use some of the offensive numbers and a few other subjective measures, and I narrow the field from 68 down to like the four or five teams that the champion will come from, a list. Tommy loves this segment when I go adjusted offensive efficiency on him. He's mocked me in the past for this.

But four out of six years, this short list has produced the champion. I didn't get it right last year. Yukon was one of my final six teams, according to a lot of the things that I think are important in winning an NCAA championship, winning six games in a row, but I eliminated them from my last subjective criteria, which was, I just wasn't until recently a big Danny Hurley fan. But anyway, yeah, so I got Yukon wrong. They weren't on the final list. In Virginia, the year

they won it wasn't on the final list. Anyway, I think Yukon looks great right now. I mean, they are a number one seed. They have been a beast. They're looking to go back to back for the first time in college hoops since Florida did it back in the mid-2000s. Houston also an excellent basketball team. They lost the Big 12 title game, scored only 41 points, but I like their team a lot. And, you know, this is going to be a year where we'll see if Matt Painter and Purdue can break through and get him his first final four trip.

You know, that's a number one-seated team with a ton of experience. and then Carolina is the other number one seed. They lost the ACC tournament final. It was an ACC tournament that was epic because NC State won five games in five nights. And they beat Carolina in the tournament final at Capital One on Saturday night. And I talked about this guy a little bit at the end of last week.

DJ Burns State's big six-foot-nine-inch center. I have no idea what he weighs, but he looks like a noseguard. I mean, he is massive but so skilled. I mean, soft hands, great feet, great shooting touch. He won the ACC tournament MVP. You know, they shouldn't have beaten Virginia. For you UVA fans that listen to this show,

Tony Bennett really blew it in that semi-final game. I was watching that as it happened. They had a six-point lead with 40-something seconds left. And then they had a three-point lead with multiple fouls to give, and they didn't use any of them and let NC State put up a three-pointer. It was a bit of a prayer that went in, but still, bad job by Tony Bennett managing the end of that game. And it almost cost UVA a bid to the tournament. They're in, but it was a controversial at-large selection. We'll talk to Patrick Stevens about that.

Congratulations to Howard. Howard's really the only true local DMV team to make the men's tournament. JMU's in it, UVA's in it, somewhat local. You know, they'll play, by the way, UVA will a first four game tomorrow night. Congrats to Brenda Freeze and the Lady Terps. They are in the tournament again. 20 out of the last 21 seasons, Maryland women's basketball. has been in the NCAA tournament.

I'm counting the 2020 COVID year. They were 28 and 4 and due to be a one seat in that tournament. But what an amazing run for Brenda in College Park. One of the best programs in the country for years now. She's got a 582 and 159 mark, a 785 winning percentage. Multiple final fours, the national championship as well. So congrats to them. March Madness is here, and the next few weeks will be entertaining as hell.

They will be. But let's face it, too, when it comes to college basketball. It's a niche sport right now. It really is. I hate to say that because I've always loved it. But even I don't follow it nearly as closely as I used to. It's a one month out of the year sport, March. That's it.

It just gets completely, completely covered up. by the NFL and by football. I mean, their regular season starts in November. I mean, that's the middle of the NFL season. The NFL season goes 17 regular season weeks now. The playoffs go until the second week in February. At some point, it might go all the way through President's Day weekend. But the NFL, you know, just dominates everything in its path.

I mean, I guarantee you a lot more people watched the Combine a few weeks ago than watched any college basketball. game that was on that weekend. And then, you know, there's the portal and there's NIL, and that's a big recent hit to the sport. Now, I put college basketball into a different category than college football. Why? Well, because college football is football. And football in the fall on Saturdays and Sundays is habit. I mean, we have all formed that habit, and it is too hard to break. So all of the conference reshuffling, all of the craziness of Oregon and Washington and USC and USC to the Big Ten and Cal and Stanford to the ACC, all of that madness, NIL and Portal, it doesn't impact football as much as it does basketball. Basketball is not habitual.

Football is. And with the portal and NIL man, unrestricted free agency on an annual basis for college. players. No pro athlete has that. And so the rosters change so much year to year. It's hard to follow it. It's hard to embrace and grow with a team. Coaches hate it because they have to not only recruit high school players, they now have to re-recruit their own players every year. The only thing most of those players want to know is, how much money do you have for me? And I'll think about stang. Re-recruiting is just making what was a seven-day-a-week, 12-month out-of-the-year job, even more oppressive. It really is tough for them. Some of you will say, well, I mean,

they get paid real well, and the players didn't make any money. No, no, no, no. The coaches have built up, by the way, a much bigger brand over a long period of professional lives. But players have also gotten something in return. And by the way, I'm not against name image and likeness. I'm not. More on that in a moment. But I do think that this has really hurt college sports, college basketball in particular. I've talked about this before.

I just don't, from a business standpoint, financial standpoint, I don't know that it's sustainable. You know, the hit rate on paying these college basketball, players if we take college basketball is like one out of three. You know, it's like an NFL draft hit rate. That means schools are asking individual investors to pony up once a year into these NIL collectives for on average one hit out of three. That means two of the players they pay, they don't get any production from, and then they leave. Again, I believe players should get paid for name, image, and lightness, but this relationship right now, one-sided. And I don't see most places that aren't named Texas, Ohio State, Alabama, et cetera,

being able to sustain this. You know, what's happening in this, you know, portal and NIL is players aren't getting paid necessarily for name, image, and likeness. The relationship is a financial relationship between the player and the school's, you know, investment fund or collective, they call it. You know, it's not in most cases a relationship between the player and a local restaurant or a local car dealership. You know, if that were the relationship, fine. If that was what the relationship was. But it's between the player and the school, and it's a system right now that's benefiting primarily the player. And that is affecting the overall product and I think consumer interest in the product.

This has to be a relationship that is more of a quid pro quo. If they're going to continue to pay players through these collectives, they're going to have to get some level of commitment back. See, the sport is becoming less popular, and the less popular it becomes, the less money is going to be involved for the players that feel their time has come. Everybody involved loses if the sport doesn't at least tread water in terms of popularity, if not increase.

Because at the end of the day, there's no appetite for name, image, and likeness, if nobody knows your name or what you look like. Anyway, how about the caps? God, I haven't done any football here yet on the show. How about the caps? Alex Ovechkin had a game-winning goal on Saturday night against the best team in the West Vancouver,

and the caps are now one point out of the playoffs. They're one point behind Detroit for the final wild card spot with two games in hand. They're also just three points behind Philadelphia for the third spot in their division, which would put them in the postseason. We were talking about how bad D.C. sports were in terms of this being one of the worst it's ever been. Four and 13 for the football team, terrible baseball team, NBA worst record. The caps a month and a half ago weren't going anywhere. They have battled back. Kudos to them. If they make the postseason, who knows? I mean, it's hockey. anything can happen. That sport is wide open in the postseason.

Anyway, let's get to some football talk. Commanders talk, the Justin Fields trade from the other day, which happened after the recording of the podcast. We will do that and more right after these words from a few of our sponsors. Really appreciate the ratings and reviews that many of you have spent some time and put out there for us. It's a big. help for us if you haven't done it and you want to take a quick 60 second pause and give us five stars if you see fit with a quick one to two sentence review on Apple it's I'm really helpful following us subscribing to the podcast big help as well I got this from one of our ad sale partners you guys were ranked 12th in the US football category over the

weekend not your highest ranking but still excellent keep up the good work This is what kind of helps them sell the advertising for us, and it makes it a lot easier to do the podcast when you're generating sales. But, yeah, if you get a moment, you can do it. That would be great. This from 112 Oaks, Best Washington Football Podcast, and he gives us five stars, long-time listener all the way from Cincinnati now, originally DMV. Love the insight, the guests, and the common sense.

It's the best commanders coverage, bar none, especially grateful for the recent JMU love. Go Dukes. Yeah. Look, JMU is not local. To me, Harrisonburg being two hours away down, you know, Interstate 81, does not make it part of the DMVs teams, but lots of alum in the area.

And one of those schools that, my God, the seasons they have had this year in football and basketball. I mean, JMU went 31 and 3 in hoops, and they are being considered as a potential big-time 12-5 upset, you know, team this week. They play Wisconsin on Friday in the South Regional is at 12 versus a 5. They've won 13 games in a row. They can really score.

Madison's one of those places. I had friends that went to Madison. Steve Buckhantz went to Madison, and that's the person that has talked James Madison to me more during my adult life than anybody else. I mean, he loves Madison, but God, every one of you that went to JMU, you guys love that school. And it's a really cool school. I've been there multiple times.

I think I took two of my three boys to visit Madison when they were in high school. It's a great place. All right, let's talk some football, talk some Washington football. Two tweets to kind of kick off this segment. This from Julius on Twitter. Kevin, Cooley had that chip system, red, blue, white. This team has not added a legit Cooley blue chip in free agency. I'm benefit of the doubt too, but it seems like a bunch of jags to me.

Just a guy, J.A.G, plural from Julius. This from Terrence on Twitter, just how bad was this roster, that they have 15 new players with still many more to come in the draft. I was with you last year that other than QB and O line, the players were decent. How wrong were we? Good job changing the entire roster by AP. That would be absolutely. Peter's. So I went back and just looked at the last week, you know, and just to put some,

put further thought. I know we spent a lot of time talking about what they were doing last week. So they have 19 new players in a week. 19, 16 from other teams. Remember, Reeves and Crowder and Obata were their own. They've been re-signed. They added two players, by the way, since we last talked on Friday. They added Noah Igman Ogani, a cornerback from Dallas. He was drafted in the first round back in 2020 by the Dolphins, primarily a special teams player in Dallas, but familiar to Dan Quinn, of course.

And then today they signed Michael Davis, a corner from the Chargers. He's been with the Chargers for seven years. A taller corner at 6-2-6-2-5 has had a number of starts in the NFL, and certainly Davis you can look at as a potential rotational piece at the very least on defense. But that makes 16 players that weren't their own that they've signed, three of their own. 19 total. All right, you want the list? Zach Ertz, Dorrance Armstrong, Tyler Beaudish, Frankie Louvre, Austin Eckler, Brandon McManus,

Nick Allegretti, Cleland Farrell, Marcus Marietta, Jr., Dante Fowler Jr. Not Marcus Marietta Jr. Dante Fowler Jr. Tyler Ott, Jeremy Chin, Bobby Wagner, Anthony Pittman, Noah Igben Ogani, and Michael Davis. And then Reeves, Crowder, and Obada. Of the 19 players signed two free agent deals over the last week,

11 of them, one-year deals. We talked last week about the measured, cautious approach, the short-term nature of everything, but 11 of them are one-year deals. Two of them are two-year deals, and six of them are three-year deals. I mean, they didn't give a robust contract to anybody. You know, 19 new players with 11 on one-year deals.

This class that some of you are really excited about, Terrence in particular, who is giving Adam Peters a ton of credit for overhauling the whole roster. What he's really done so far is he's essentially overhauled the back third of the roster. Not everybody. And half of these signings here probably won't be on the team next year, let alone in two years. So now there's a culture change going on.

They want people that will preach their word, their message. message. Their gospel, Dan Quinn, a lot of players he's familiar with. He's going to have people in there preaching. Dan Quinn is the guy. We do it this way. We do it this way because they've been part of we with Dan Quinn and Bobby Wagner will certainly lead that for sure. But yeah, no, this is a cautious, measured, very low risk, free agency. They've been able to do this because they had all the cap space. And by the way, they still have a lot of cap space, still have somewhere around 64 or 65 million effective cap space, maybe 10 million less than that, number one in the league. But you're right. Now, let me just say, Frankie Louvo to me may not be a blue chip player

ultimately, but he's probably going to be a red chip player. And he was more, he was probably closer to a blue chip signing in terms of what was available at linebacker. Bobby Wagner was an all pro last year. So he's got a chance to be a blue chip certainly in his one year, if it's just one year here. I like Tyler Beaudish and Dorrance Armstrong. They're starters. And I think Jeremy Chin might be as well. Look, the two special teamers are definitely, I say definitely. It's certainly possible that they get an undrafted kicker and an undrafted kicker and an drafted free agent to beat out Ott and McManus because on one-year deals primarily base salary. Actually, Ott's a three-year deal, my fault.

McManus, though, specifically on a one-year deal, somebody could come in and beat him out. But I think, you know, so far, the biggest benefit of what they've done is not that they've changed the type of team they are with the players they've added. Now, it may change the locker room and the culture of the locker room and having people do it the way they want to do it. But in terms of like new starters on defense, you know, Wagner, Louvo, for sure, Armstrong for sure. That's three guys that are definite new starters on defense. It's not unusual in a given off season to come up with three or four new starters on each side of the ball. You know, it's possible that Chin will be a starter.

It's certainly possible that either Fowler or Cleland Farrell will end up in the starting lineup as well. Michael Davis may end up being one of the starting corners depending on how they feel about Forbes and St. Juice. Offensively, you're going to have more likely than not, well, you will have a new quarterback because there's not one from last year's team on the roster anymore. And you're certainly going to have a new center. And then it's possible that, you know, Nick Allegrety is a starting guard and Zacharts could be a starting tight end. So another four players, you know, on offense. But others, you know, in the rotation, Echler is certainly a part of the rotation.

But I think the biggest thing that they've been able to do here is even though it's been low risk, maybe, you know, medium-sized reward with the exception of a couple of players, what they've done is they've looked at addressing all of the needs they felt they could address in free agency that they needed to address, right? Defensive end, center, guard, backup quarterback, another running back in the mix to replace Antonio Gibson, linebacker, obviously, and it will allow them when they get to the NFL draft to draft the way I think you should draft, which is,

best player available. You don't have to by at least adding these players, some of whom have been rotational or backups, most of whom have been rotational or backups previous to coming here. But you could potentially start them if you have to start Allegretti, if you've got to start either Fowler Jr. or Cleland Farrell. You don't have to reach for players in the draft. You don't have to draft by position need. Now, the first pick's going to be by position need, but hopefully it will also be the best player on the board. But I think that there's a lot that's strategic about what they've done. They have certainly not risked the future with any sort of long-term deal for, you know, a red chip kind of a player, a blue chip deal for a red chip player. They've

addressed linebacker exceptionally well, in my opinion, certainly for next year. They have addressed a big need, which was for a veteran center. You needed a long snapper. But you put yourself into a position whereby when you get to the draft, you're not still filled with lots of holes. You can draft based on best player available. Because the draft is going to produce the blue chips, Julius. You know, the blue chip players, when they're ready to actually be a competitive playoff contending team,

let's just say in 25 or 26, they're going to be the players that are drafted in this very crucial draft. Six in the top 100, nine picks overall with number two in the mix and a quarterback need. So I, like I said last week, I like the approach. I'm not sitting here. You know, I'm not obsessing over how bad the roster was and how much they fixed it. The roster may have been bad, but the fix comes in April. The fix comes in April of 2025. These are stop gaps primarily, rotational's, primarily backups, special teamers,

with the exception of Frankie Louvre, who I'm really excited about. And I'm excited about seeing Bobby Wagner too. Really excited about Wagner. And, you know, Beaudish, let's hope that he can play at the level. He played it at Dallas because I don't know that they're going to enter next year with another option at center other than Stromberg, who they, drafted last year. They may draft somebody else. That's certainly possible. What do they need that they haven't addressed? They need a left tackle. That's what they really need. You know, a quarterback

and left tackle, a quarterback a given, but they need a left tackle. And they can probably get one in this draft with 36 or 40. You know, we don't know how they feel about some of the players. I had Nikki Javala from the post on the show Friday, and we were talking about, you know, whether or not any of the beat reporters in particular have a sense of what they think about some of the players. Like I'm interested to know what they think of Jamon Davis and how they'll use them, what they think of Jahan Dotson, what they think of Emmanuel Forbes. You know, these are three first round picks. They could chalk up the performances recently to, yeah, not the right scheme, not the right coaching.

Because I think John Dotson and Jamie Davis and Emmanuel Forbes have talent. I don't know what they think of guys like K.J. Henry and Andre Jones Jr. I think K.J. Henry flashed a little bit last year. I wonder what they think of St. Juice. I wonder what they think of Derek Forrest and Kwan Martin. Wiley looks like they like them enough. Cosmi, you would think Cosmy and McClorn and Duran and John, they like. All right. The trade. from last week, last Friday, after the podcast ended.

So the trade of Justin Fields to Pittsburgh. It's funny because we had mentioned on Thursday's podcast with Tommy, I had said, I wonder if Philly's a possibility for Justin Fields. Apparently, Philly reached out to Chicago about Justin Fields. So there are a couple of things on Justin Fields being dealt to Pittsburgh for a conditional sixth rounder in 2025. For those of you that got obsessed with the news that it was a 2025 pick, not even a this year pick, well, it's conditional based on how much he plays.

So he couldn't be a 2024 pick. If he plays more than 50% of the snaps, it's a fourth rounder. If he doesn't, it's a sixth rounder. So it had to be a next year pick. Look, the bottom line is this. He was not valued in the way a lot of people, including. me, thought he would be valued. I thought he was worth a second or a third round pick. I definitely thought that he still had a high ceiling. And the league has spoken. Now, part of this is contractual.

I think most of you understand. Like those of you that were tweeting me saying, oh, my God, Washington got a better deal for Sam Howell than Chicago did for Justin Fields. That's about the contract. I think you understand that, right? He's got $3.2 million for next year, which is, you know, three times what Sam is going to earn next year. But more importantly, he has to either be picked up fifth year option-wise by May or it's one year left at $3.2 million. Sam's on a fifth year deal at a million bucks for two more years. You know, contracts can either increase trade compensation or decrease trade compensation. In the case of Sam Howell, it increased trade compensation. because it was a very favorable, you know, contract that he had.

In Justin Fields' case, it definitely decreased the compensation. Here's the part that I don't understand about this deal. If you're Pittsburgh, first of all, I think he's going to end up starting more than 50% of the plays next year in Pittsburgh. They said Russell Wilson would be the guy that would end up, you know, starting. They had to kind of massage his ego. and say that right now because they just, you know, they had just traded for him the week before, or just signed him the week before. I think Justin Fields will eventually be the starter there. And I thought Russell Wilson played fairly well last year, but I think Fields will end up being

the starter there. But the thing that I don't get is why other teams didn't consider a conditional sixth round pick for Justin Fields at basically $3.2 million for one year. Why not just ignore the fifth year option? Like Minnesota signed Sam Darnold to a one-year $10 million deal. Now, maybe Chicago doesn't trade Justin Fields in the division, so maybe that excluded Minnesota. The Giants signed Drew Locke to a one-year $5 million deal. Brissette got $8 million. Mariotta got $6 million.

And Pittsburgh, if you take the fifth-year option out of it and say they're not going to pick it up, and I bet you they don't. They got Justin Fields one year, $3.2 million. I would have much rather had Justin Fields at $3.2 million for one year if I were the Giants. If I were Minnesota, again, maybe Minnesota wasn't a part of that. New England. Now, New England and Washington are a little bit different, I guess, because they are going to take quarterbacks in the draft high.

And, you know, you don't want Justin Fields sitting around your building with everybody saying, well, who's the starter going to be? I wouldn't worry about that personally for one year. Not to mention, he's a great teammate, a great guy. It's the best situation, I think, for him. And so good for him. And Chicago getting him out of the division, out of the conference. But, you know, the contract had something to do with it for sure.

I still think most of it has to do with. Because if you're viewing it as a one-year deal, it's like, who wouldn't have taken him for $3.2 million for one year for a $6,000? the round pick that's conditional. So it's much more about the evaluation of Justin Fields. They see major flaws in his game and probably not the ceiling that the Bears thought, Ryan Poles thought, that a lot of the reporters thought. I mean, Adam Schepter a month ago said the Bears might get a first round pick for him.

I thought Justin Fields would bring back no worse than a second or a third. And it might be that they end up getting a fourth rounder back for him. All right, some breaking news. The Saints, according to ESPN's Adam Schaefter and Jeremy Fowler, are signing Chase Young to a one-year $13 million all-guaranteed deal. Wow. Fully guaranteed $13 million one year. Good for Chase Young.

That Super Bowl game really helped. I thought his deal would be less than that with a lot of incentives in there to get to something like $13 million. thought it would be a one-year deal. Man, one year, $13 million fully guaranteed would indicate to me that there was some competition for Chase Young. Look, that $13 million as an A-A-V, let me look this up. I bet it puts them in the top half of the NFL in defensive ends. $13 million.

Put some tied for 18th with Carl Granderson in New Orleans. just below Josh Sweat and DeMarcus Lawrence as an AAV, average annual. Chase Young to New Orleans, third round pick, the 49ers gave up, late third round for him. They got some games from him, got a decent Super Bowl from him. Ultimately, he had two and a half sacks, ten tackles, 16 pressures in nine regular season games with the Niners, a sack in the Super Bowl game against the Chiefs. Good luck to Chase Young.

I hope he finds a home and finds health and that motor that he used to have. All right. We'll finish up the show with Patrick Stevens talking tournament and brackets next. Hey, guys, if you're into DFS Daily Fantasy Sports, listen closely. Prize picks is a new sponsor, and I recommend them. They're the largest daily platform for DFS in North America. They're the easiest and the most exciting way to play DFS because it's just you against the numbers instead of battling thousands of other players, including pros and sharks. You can now win up to a hundred times your money on prize picks with as little as four correct picks.

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to $100. Prize picks. Pick more. Pick less. It's that easy. This segment of the show is brought to my bookie. Go to my bookie.orgie. Use my promo code. Kevin D.S. and my bookie will give you a cash bonus on your initial deposit. It is that time of year. Brackets, March, lots of NCAA tournament action, and my bookie has it all. Contests for the two tournaments, men's and women's, every single game point spread money line and total, along with a ton of prop bets as well. you've got to use my promo code, Kevin D.C. to get that cash bonus on your initial deposit. But use my bookie the rest of this month, and then you'll be on your way towards NBA playoff time. I think the NBA playoffs this coming spring will be even better than the tournament. But if you're looking for a place to wager on the tournament, if you're looking for a second spot

so that you make sure you get the right point spreads, the right pricing, Go to mybooky.ag and use my promo code, Kevin, D.C. All right. Jumping on with us right now is Patrick Stevens. Patrick has been covering college sports in the area for a long time. For the post for many years now, he has been their bracketologist for every bit of a decade plus. And he got it right yesterday, 68 out of 68. and it wasn't an easy year to get 68 out of 68, but Patrick nailed it this year, and he joins us right now. I've heard a lot of people say it was a very difficult year.

How'd you nail it without missing one team? Well, I do think that there was, when I looked at it yesterday, and I think I was looking at the last nine teams for three spots or something along those lines. certainly thought that there were a lot of different directions the committee could go. I mean, I didn't think that we were going to see too many of the teams, a realistic shot for too many of the teams that didn't make it. But I saw a path forward for Oklahoma. I saw a path forward for Providence, which did not get mentioned in the first four-out. Saw a path forward for Indiana State just as kind of a wild card.

but for the most part, like the teams that were in that, you know, last few discussion or so, like it didn't seem like there were that many too far off the board. And so I thought selection-wise, it wasn't necessarily as difficult trying to parse those last few spots. Like, I was a little surprised and pleasantly surprised, I should say, on this point, that a team like Texas A&M, which had seven quad-one wins and four quad-three-old. losses was ultimately more rewarded for the good on its resume than punished for the bad. I thought it would be a little bit closer to the edge of the field for them, but I actually feel good about that because that's the sort of thing that should be rewarded.

You go out, you beat good teams, you get into the tournament. I thought Virginia is a classic sort of team that usually there's like four or five of these teams every year that you look at and they haven't done much wrong. There's not all that much that's great about them, and they get in. and they all get in, basically. And this year there were a couple of those like Oklahoma that didn't get in. Providence of a team like that that didn't get in. And so I thought parsing the last spot, I thought it was really important that Virginia had won at Clemson,

had beaten Florida on a neutral court, and you're comparing that to an Oklahoma team, for example, that went two and 11 against the tournament field with both of the victories at home. I thought that was a pretty significant differentiator. And before we even bring it up, you know, St. John's, I know, has a lot of defenders at this point. St. John has exactly the same number of victories against the tournament field as it does, Hall of Fame coaches on its sideline. A victory against Creighton at home last month. They just didn't do a whole lot. You can sit there and point to this metric or that metric or they've done this.

you know, people trying to act like a late run, like they won six out of the last seven, and three of them were against DePaul and George. Well, scheduling serendipity doesn't make you a hot team. It just means that you got your layups in Biggie's play later than other people did. You know, I was not surprised, and I don't have very much sympathy for the Red Storm. I thought they were rightfully kept out of the field. So I want to make sure I have this right. You essentially had nine teams for the final three at large.

spots? That was basically it. And you know, the thing is, is that like these couple days are just, especially with the ACC tournament in town, making the nights even later, just extremely exhausting. So I would tell you that the teams that I was looking at for those last three spots in the field, it was getting in with Michigan State, Texas, A&M, and Virginia, and obviously I undersold the Spartans as well. And then, Oklahoma, Providence, Pitt, St. John's, Indiana State, and St. St. John's, Indiana State, and St. Paul, as the teams on the outside of that. So do you think you just guessed correctly, or did you have Virginia, A&M, and Michigan State as just a slight advantage over the other six?

Well, I think we kind of went through a little bit of this, right? Yeah. With St. John's and the lack of the victories against the field, St. Hall didn't have many either. Pitt had a terrible non-conference strength of schedule and historically teams that have that problem tend to get punished a great deal and left to the NIT

and I don't even think they're doing that. So, you know, I thought Indiana State was a team that if there hadn't been as much chaos that the committee would have found the way to give them clemency and they just didn't have room to do it. And so, you know, I thought Michigan State was a lot like Virginia team that really hadn't messed up,

hadn't done anything bad. And Texas A&M, you know, I had actually only gotten about halfway through a research project yesterday trying to figure out, well, how many teams have had sept and quad one wins have been left at? It can't be many. Did not get to the last three seasons, so to look those up, but felt like A&M was going to get the benefit of a doubt because historically the committee does love that quantity of high-end victories. And I obviously undersold that a little bit for A&M. And like I said, I'm actually happy that the committee did that.

And so it kind of came down to like Virginia and Oklahoma and Providence for one last spot and felt like Virginia's work away from home outweighed Oklahoma not really having anything away from home in Providence. You know, you look at them and they've got some really, they got better victories in aggregate than St. John's or Stephen Hall. But they did some of that work without Bryce Hopkins, their best player, who got. hurt in early January. And so I felt like that was probably a slight strike against the priors. It's interesting, you know, kind of hearing the reaction from the northeastern quadrant of the country about those big East teams. You know, Seton Hall finished higher in the league standings than the other two did. And St. Johns obviously has the Hall of Fame coach.

But I feel like Providence has the greatest great out of the three. for everybody that just starts paying attention this time of the year, just explain the net rankings, the significance of the net rankings and whether or not you think it's a good measuring stick to be used? So what the net is, we'll do a little bit of a quick background. The NCAA had decided that the RPI, which is a simplistic, formula. Sort of like if we're talking about mathematical complexity, it's meatloaf. And so it's 25%, your winning percentage, 50%, your opponents' winning percentage, 25%. Your opponent's opponent's winning percentage in the NCAA uses it for many sports, including some where

they play half as many games as they do in basketball, which makes even worse metric in those sports than it was for basketball. But I digress. So you look at, you look at, you look at, they basically say, okay, well, we need to come up with a new metric. And so they have this proprietary metric called the net. And the net takes into account several factors. They've never actually published the formula for this. And I think part of the reason, from what I understand, is that because it's a proprietary formula, they don't have to, you know, make it public, that means you can actually

adjust it based on various results that come in year over, year over year. You're not changing it in the middle of a season, but you're getting another year's worth of data that you can go ahead and throw into this and say, well, what sort of tweaks can make to this, minor alterations that would make this a little bit better. Anyway, what both of those things are supposed to be are not simply a, well, your RPI is this high and so you're going to get into the field. Your net ranking is this low so you have no change. It's supposed to be a sorting mechanism. so that the net rankings of who you play matters. So ultimately what you're looking for there as you're trying to figure out all this stuff, is your opponent's rankings are what matter. And then that's what sort of divvies up,

well, what's a quadrant one win, what's a quadrant two win. When you look at the team sheets that the NCAA has, they're sorted in order of the net. but you also have a bunch of other things on there. You have four other metrics, two of which are result-based, two of which are predictive metrics. You have all of the records home-away neutral non-conference from each of the four quadrants, you know, the quadrant one being your best games based on its, you know, top 30 in quadrant one for home games, top 50 opponents on a neutral site, top 75 away.

So there's a little bit more weight given to road games there. general. And so you have all these numbers, and obviously the net is playing part of a factor there, but it's doing more sorting than it is what your own actual net number is. So a lot of people have made a big deal out of, you know, what is this metric, this, that, and the other, I would tell you that one of the things that's been there is you have, you know, initially there was supposed to be, I believe, a margin of victory element. Right. I was going to ask you about that. eliminated, which was eventually eliminated, but they've kept in the efficiency metric. Like, essentially, like, your offensive and defensive efficiency are part of it.

Right. Which means essentially margin of victory is still included. Because essentially, if you go out and you outscore somebody by, you know, half a point of possession each game, well, you're winning by 35. in a 70 possession game. Yeah. So is this the Ken Palm part of the net, the adjusted offensive efficiency, the adjusted defensive efficiency? See, what Ken Palm is is a predictive metric.

Essentially what you're, and this is why, you know, I am not a gambler, but when you look at the various lines that come out on a random mid-major game on a Tuesday or Wednesday night or whatever, they almost always match up with the Ken Palm Ridge, along with the home court advantage, right. So essentially, the Kenpom's up is trying to predict how these teams would do against each other on a neutral court. That's essentially what it is.

The result-based metrics are strength of record and the Kevin Paga index the KPI. Those, I think, are actually a little more influential to the committee. The committee isn't trying to predict things. The committee is trying to to take the results that have been produced over the last four months and select the best feel that it can in a way that it can justify. How much, you know, sometimes it does a better job of justifying it to know. How much coaches, committee members, subjective opinions on the team, how much of that matters, do you know? Well, I've not, I've never been in the committee room.

So I can't sit here and definitively tell you that, but I do know that. And this is not just a basketball thing. The NCAA committees tend to largely be made up of administrators. Some of them are former coaches. Some of them have a fundraising background. Some of them have all sorts of different backgrounds. The way that these committee processes are set up are essentially trying to funnel people towards judging things by the numbers. Because if you judge things by the numbers, you can say,

well, this is why we did it. Now, the numbers don't necessarily, it doesn't necessarily have to be consistent year over, year over year that you're going to prioritize the same thing, but you're looking for differentiating factors. And so I don't know that there's a lot of subjectivity in play. That said, I think one of the interesting things that, as I watched the same, selection show last night. The teams that surprised me in terms of seating, the teams that I thought were a little too high were Gonzaga and San Diego State and Florida Atlantic. And all three of those teams are teams outside of power conferences that have had long

runs in the postseason in recent years at least once. And the teams that I thought were shafted by multiple. seed lines, aside from Florida, which had an injury issue at the last second, I thought that was a little, their placement was odd, but maybe that's the explanation, were Boise State and Nevada, and New Mexico, and Colorado State, to a lesser extent, and Utah State. And that's basically the rest of the Mountain West except for San Diego State. And, you know, those are teams that have not made massive impressions on the public conscience. And so I thought that that was interesting. It was curious. I will say this much upon review that Gonzaga was actually on their seed list, a six

seed, but because Brigham Young is, they were a five-seats. If Brigham Young can only play at Thursday-Saturday sites in the first two rounds, because it's school policy not to play on Sunday. And so you had on the four-line three Friday-sunday site, and then a possible match-up with Kansas in the second round, a conference opponent. I know it feels weird to think of those two as conference opponents, but they're both in the Big 12 now. So basically they bumped BYU down the line, bumped Gonzaga up a line to account for that. So Gonzaga is probably about a line too high. I think San Diego State's probably a line too high. Florida Atlantic's probably two lines too high, but the teams that really surprised me were Boise State and Nevada in particular felt

like both of those teams had decent cases for being as high as the seven line. Well, you answer the next question about seating. All right. So let's finish up with this. As it relates to the tournament, first of all, give me some teams below the top 16 seeds, the top four in each region, that you think can really do some damage in the tournament,

meaning, you know, they can make it to, you know, an elite eight or further. A five-seater lower. All right. Five-seed or lower that can make that kind of a run. Region by region, I'll start with BYU. They shoot a lot of threes, don't they? They do. They shoot a lot of threes.

They get a Duquesne team that's probably overseeded by a line. The Duquesne team that's probably a little worn out from having to play. play four games in five days. And I'm a big believer. Everybody loves the cliche defense wins championship. I believe you have to score to win. And I think BYU can do that. I have very, very little faith in just about anybody from the Big Ten.

I don't have very much faith in Illinois at all, even though they played really well this weekend. So I could see BYU getting into a sweet 16 game against an Iowa state bunch that it's already played. So from the east, that would be the, that would be the team I would tell you. All right. BYU and East.

Okay. In the South, the team I will offer two teams up to you. One is Boise State, which I think is massively underseated and has a chance to be able to make a push out of that play-in game. And the other is James Madison playing another Big Ten team. You know, Duke is, they would probably play Duke next. Duke playing pretty well. But James Madison's 31 and 3.

They're older. you know, this is kind of what they've been building toward. So I definitely think that the Dukes have at least one win in them. In the Midwest, I don't know if they have a Sweet 16 run in them, Elite 8 run in them, but I'll tell you what, like, Stanford is one of the deepest and fastest-paced teams in the country, and Kansas is short-handed and has a bunch of injuries. Right.

That feels like just an upset and possible, a surprisingly lopsided upset waiting to happen right there. Another thing I'll tell you is that the 11 seed in that bracket, Oregon, it's the third time that Dana Altman has had a surprise Pac-12 tournament title run in his time at Eugene. In 2013 and 2019, they did that, earned 12 seeds, made the Sweet 16 both seasons. And I look at that bracket, you've got South Carolina, Creighton, and Akron. I think there's a path for the ducks that they're going to play as well as they did over the weekend, although I really do like Creighton a lot.

And then in the West bracket, you know, as tempting as it might be to go ahead and tick New Mexico with that slot, I'm going to go ahead and say that the team to look out for there is actually, if they can win their first game, Michigan State, I don't really like Michigan State that much, but they have such a good history of winning second games at a site. Even having to deal with Carolina and Charlotte, and that would be an absolute bear for them. I don't think Michigan State's that great, but it's hard to discount the possibility that maybe something could happen there.

The other team in that bracket that I think is pretty darn good is Grand Canyon. It's the best team that they've had from moving to Division I, and they're really good at both ends of the floor. I think I think Mary's matchup is a bit tough for them out in Spokane in the first round. But if they could get out of that, I certainly think that they have a chance to knock off. of Alibald.

Those are good ones. BYU out of the east, Boise and JMU out of the south, Samford and Oregon out of the Midwest and Michigan State and Grand Canyon out of the West region as teams to identify in your bracket is perhaps going further

than you would think based on seed. All right. Is there separation between Yukon, Houston, and I'll throw Purdue in there, but I have kind of felt that Yukon and Houston have kind of separated themselves. Do you see any separation from some of the top teams and the rest of the field? I mean, honestly, like, I don't know if it's not just Yukon and everybody else. I mean, like, Yukon, when it's doing what it's supposed to be doing,

and frankly, that feels like about five games out of six type of deal for them right now, where they just come out and truck people. that is a team that is very well positioned with the way that it's playing to make a deep run. I'll point this out, though. I thought that with 11 of the 32 conference tournament champions landing in the east bracket, they are running into a – they're going to run into some teams that are playing well, which I thought was really remarkable. I felt like, by contrast, that North Carolina, the last of the number one seat might have caught the best break in the entire bracket.

They get Arizona as a two-seed, don't have to deal with like Tennessee or Iowa State. They've got a vulnerable four-seat in Alabama. It's St. Mary's never made in elite aid, I don't believe. I feel like there's a little bit of bracket luck that might be working for the tariff. Hill this season, assuming they get past that Michigan State game. Last one. You're not a believer in the Big Ten again. You think the conference falls flat on it, you know what, in this tournament again? Yeah, I mean, it would not shock me if we saw a couple of Big Ten teams make the Sweet

16. But, you know, like, I think any skepticism of Purdue is warranted at this point. It's definitely at the stage where you're like, okay, you've got to prove it. And the good news for Purdue is if they can beat a playing game winner, which they couldn't do last year, at least they won't lose to a double-digit siege in the second round because they can't play one. It's going to be an eight or a nine. But, you know, beyond that, like, Illinois has certainly had some great moments. Wisconsin has been a little erratic. How trustworthy is Nebraska?

In Northwesterns, got some good guard play. but Michigan State frankly hasn't been as good as it should have. Yeah. I look at the guard play in the league, and it's very similar. It's not, I don't think it's as bad as it was last year. It's, I don't think it is. Yeah, I think actually when you consider Bowie, who can really do it, Braden Smith a year older, Tyson Walker, you know, Illinois, you know,

if you want to consider Domosk and Terrence Shannon as sort of, you know, swing players, back court players. I think it's a little bit different in the back court this year than it's been. But still stylistically, I mean, if you got a score, it would be Illinois that would be the team you trust going into this thing. Yeah, and the other element of this, too, and we're going to start seeing this maybe be even worse. Hepburn, HEPByrn, too, in Wisconsin. Chuckie Hepburn, he's really played well. The other thing I will point out that I feel about all of these Big Ten teams that I think has really been a factor over the last decade or so,

and I think it's about to get worse, not just for them, but for other leagues, is the amount of in-season travel, the number of times that you're crossing time zones, it's actually a good idea for an off-season research project. is to figure out how many times each team cross the time zone over the course of the... I don't wait until next year in the Big Ten. Correct. You know, it's obviously going to get worse, not just for the Big Ten, but the ACC is going to have that problem. Well, the Big 12 is going to be, what, and is it all four time zones starting next year?

Yeah, I mean, they've had... So, like, at least... Yeah, Arizona's right. You look at... Yeah, I mean, it's a weird Arizona thing. They're on standard time... entire you. So, you know, I feel like you're, it's one thing if you're going from Purdue to Wisconsin and you're going from the east to the central, but it's really not that far.

But if you're doing, if you're doing some of the stuff, like, you know, you think about, like, I don't know, maybe, what, what is Nebraska done this year? I'm just bringing their schedule up right now. So they've gone, they, they had a stretch where they went to Rutgers came home for two, went to Maryland, came home for one, did two in Illinois, came home for two, went to Indiana. You know, there's like, there's an Ohio state in there. It just feels like that is a tougher schedule regimen than what teams are accustomed to doing historically. Well, it'll also- I'm sorry, if you have to, yeah, it'll also dictate moving forward, especially more so next year with, you know, the changes to the Big Ten changes to the ACC. It

may be very influential on the non-conference scheduling. You know, like Maryland had a home-and-home with UCLA. Like non-conference may be, hey, let's take this first, you know, November and December timeframe minus the two conference games we play in December, and let's try to keep everything close to home. Yeah, and the other thing, you want to remember now that the Big Ten has clawed back a couple non-conference games. There's no more ACC Big Ten.

challenge. The Gabbit games, that deal expired this year. So you're looking at a scenario where you're going to have 11 non-conference games. Most teams are probably going to go play three in an exempt event slash MTE is the correct nomenclature now. And so you have eight games left after that, and what are you going to do with them? I mean, chances are you're probably going to play at least six at home. I mean, maybe not if you're Tom is, though, but most teams are probably going to play at least six of those remaining games at home, maybe as many as eight. So I think that you also have to look at, you know, as much as people have talked about this, to swing it back to the net a little bit.

You know, a lot of Big 12 teams went out and scheduled soft for a variety of reasons. I think some of them scheduled soft because they didn't know how good their team was going to be. I think some of them scheduled soft unwittingly. some of them did it intentionally. There's one coach in particular who's had a great deal of success the last few years, just making it as soft as possible. Who's that? In any case, Jamie Dixon. Yeah, at TCU. TCU's non-conference training the schedules have been pretty poor over the last several years.

And they've been, you know, they've set themselves up for empty tournament first. Right. You know, here's the thing with coaches. Like, when they do things and it works, they find they, there's no reason to change it, right? Yeah. So in any case, like, it would not surprise me if people try to replicate that. The problem is, like, the way you make it work is you have to go out and beat people by 30 or 40. And it sounds easy to say, well, we'll just invite these chumps in and we'll beat by 30 or 40.

It's not easy to beat anybody by 30 or 40. So you still got to go out and do it. They only beat Georgetown by a point. I'm just looking at this. Oh, my God. I was there. And, in fact, there was an officiating era. Georgetown. Oh, yes, right.

PCU hit a buzzer beat. The guy had stepped out of bounds. And the officials, the officials just plum out, plain out missed it. Yeah. And that would have been a devastating loss because that would have been a quad four loss, right? It would have been a, no, quad three. Okay. Because Georgetown was high enough in the net ranking. And I would actually argue, having watched a lot of Georgetown, if they could have won that game and gotten some juice

from that game, I bet they would have won two or three more somewhere along the way this season. Like that was a team that really could have used some sort of proof of concept early on this year before they went down another rabbit hole of terrible basketball for two months, two and a half months in the big east. But we'll never know whether that was really the case or not. By the way, I know that Kevin...