The Kevin Sheehan Show - A Haskins Hunch

Episode Date: August 26, 2019

Kevin opened with the Andrew Luck retirement and then got to the Jay Gruden announcement that Case Keenum will start the opener in Philadelphia. As part of the Keenum discussion, Kevin reveals a hunch he has about Haskins and the opener against the Eagles. Kevin and Aaron talked some college football and Kevin weighed in on Josh Norman's declaration about the Skins' defense. <p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices">podcastchoices.com/adchoices</a></p> Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You want it. You need it. It's what everyone's talking about. The Kevin Sheehan Show. Now here's Kevin. I'm here. Aaron's here. It's a Monday. A lot of things to get to. Some of it will be repetitive from the radio show if you listen to the radio show. I am cautiously optimistic that we'll have a guest on this show today. And that guest would be one Christopher Cooley, who did tell me on Friday. I can't do Friday, but I can do Monday. The problem is that I haven't been able to reach him. And the phone is going right to voicemail, which tells me that the phone is either out of battery or lost. He loses his phone. He loses credit cards. He loses wallets. He loses keys. He is absent-minded.

That's a lot of brilliant people. And Chris is incredibly smart and innately intelligent. but he just loses things and he's not always so organized. I would say that he's probably misplaced or lost his phone no less than a half dozen times over the last half dozen years. You know, there's probably an average of one lost phone per year. Imagine losing your phone once a year. That's hard to do if you're like beyond seven years old.

Or to seven year olds, nobody gives a seven year old a phone. I'm trying to think of when my kids first got their first phone. You say no one gives seven-year-olds more and more. They're getting phones at young age. Are they getting them that early? Yeah. My boys, I think we got them their first phone when they were 13, 12, 13. Like, they were in middle school.

They weren't much younger. I could be wrong. I can't remember. I don't remember anything anymore. It's different, though, now, especially with the smartphones to give it to them so they can play games and stuff when they're on the road and then eventually they have the phone plans or whatever. Well, a lot

of it too is just you know you're able to track where they are and you know there's some security and safety in your kids having a phone with the location tracker and the whole thing on there. All right. So I am hopeful that we will have

Cooley on the show today. If not, we'll try to do it tomorrow or Wednesday. Tommy will be on tomorrow. But I really did want to get into the Atlantic game and what he saw and what he didn't see, what he liked what he didn't like, and also the news over the weekend, which was hardly surprising that Jay Gruden has selected Case Keenham to be the starter for the opener against Philadelphia. However, if you were listening to the radio show this morning and you probably laughed at this, as many of you did, but I have a hunch about that Philadelphia

game in Dwayne Haskins, and I'll share that with you in a little bit. But I want to start with actually college football, because that's what Aaron and I, like more than anything else. And the fact that I placed my first wager of the football season, I didn't like the game. You know I didn't like the game. You played, did you play the underdogs? You played Miami? No, I just played the under in the game. You played the under in the game, which hit. Yes, it did. So a winner for you. I was watching this game. If you, if you miss the game, it was really intense. For an opening game, I, you know, I don't know how I felt about week zero, Aaron, that's what they called this this past weekend, week zero, one game.

Actually, there were two games. Hawaii played Arizona later on that night in Hawaii won, beat Arizona as a double-digit underdog. But the Miami, the Florida Miami game was, I don't know if this is going to be a new trend of having a game or two in week zero before next weekend or this coming weekend, which is the first full-fledged weekend of the year. But man, they picked a good one to start. was not well played. There were mistakes galore. I think there were combined 24 penalties. There were combined five turnovers. It was sloppy, as early season football and college football tends to be,

because they don't play preseason games. But the intensity of that game in front of a packed house in Orlando in a rivalry game, I thought it was a great watch start to finish. And it was a crazy game because at one point in the first half, I thought Florida was going to blow them out. And then the second half, and then Miami comes back and actually has the lead because of two turnovers that Florida committed. And then Florida's got the game basically iced with three and a half to go after Miami gets stopped or actually, it may have been a turnover in that spot up 2420. And for whatever reason, they got Felipe Franks on first down back there throwing the

football and he throws a pick. And then you got into this situation where Miami had a fourth and 37 and got a PI. Terrible pass interference. And then it was like a third and 18. and they got another one. Yeah. It was nuts. It was, I mean, that game between the penalties and just the mistackles,

there was that one touchdown where the guy just bounces off of him when they're trying to tackle a guy. That running back from Miami. Yeah. Dallas is his last name. Yeah. He looks like a pro. He looks like a pro, but that was also just terrible, terrible tackling. That was, you know, it was the game I really enjoyed watching, but as you said, it was not a good game.

It was not a well-played game. Yes. It was a good watch in my view. There was intensity. There was a lot of john. Felipe Franks, you know, every time he made him great play. I mean, he's over on the sideline, you know, riling up the Miami fans. It was strange, the whole Franks behavior on Saturday night.

And by the way, I like Florida this year. I like them less after watching Franks. I was hopeful that he'd take the next step. And it's really hard to judge off of one game early. That first game of the college football season tends to be like the preseason game. And the second game teams come back and they're much better. good for Florida for surviving it. It keeps some of their hopes alive.

Crazy game. But anyway, to get to why I brought it up initially, I didn't play the game. I didn't like the game one way or the other. I didn't like the over-under. I didn't like Florida laying, what was it, seven and a half eight at game time? And so I didn't play the game,

but at halftime, Florida is down 13-7 at the break errand. They've turned it over twice. They've made every mistake in the book. You could see that the line of scrimmage difference between Florida's defensive front and Miami's offensive line with a young quarterback, Jaron Williams, who I actually thought started off pretty well. I didn't think they did enough to protect him, though. Like, there should have been more screens and draws and whatever. But at halftime, I went to check to see what the second half line was. And it was Florida minus six,

and they were down six. And I'm like, this line of scrimmage difference, more than anything else, I'm like, there is no way Miami's going to hold up against this defense. defensive front. I mean, I mentioned this is one of the reasons I liked Florida going into this season. It's one of the reasons I liked them to have a really good year last year is the speed that they have on defense. And I'm talking about the interior speed, the defensive line. It's unbelievable how fast they are and how athletic they are. They sacked Jaron Williams 11 times in the game. How many games do you see where a quarterback gets sacked 11 times? then there were holding penalties galore that would have ended up in sacks. But I just looked at that. I'm like, there is no way Florida is not winning this game. And they're down six and they're

laying six on the second half line, which means all they got to do is win the game. So I played Florida. My first wager is Florida minus six on the second half line winner. You were under the total winner. We get off to a good football season start because I do not bet preseason football. So a little bit of a bank roll going into the week one of the college football season. We will have a smell test here on Friday, maybe even one on Thursday before the Thursday night games. Maybe. I haven't even looked at the board yet. Have you?

Very little bit. Because most of those games are, I know, you got clumps in favor by 35 and a half. What's Alabama favored by over Duke? I don't remember exactly that line. It's got to be four touchdowns, right? I assume it's around there. I can pull it up here in second. Clemson, you know, plays Thursday night. Have you watched, is the ACCC network available on Comcast here locally?

I have not checked. Okay, I haven't either. Because it debuted last week. Yes, did. The interest level now that I don't have an alma mater in the ACC anymore is zero. But I would imagine that there would be some really good programming on the ACC network, dealing with basketball tradition. which Maryland may be a big part of that programming. Absolutely. Alabama, 34 and a half. 34 and a half.

I'll get through the board before Thursday and have all the major smell test contrarian picks. Yeah, there's some huge lines. I mean, Clemson's a 36-point favorite in their opener against Georgia Tech. That's a lot. That's a lot of points. The competitive games, the weekend,

Oregon and Auburn are the Saturday night game from Jerr World. And that's got to be a pretty close line. Those teams are relatively even matched. I'm looking for it right now. There it is. Auburn's three and a half. Auburn's a three and a half point favorite against Justin Herbert.

That'll be a good game to watch because you could be watching the number one pick in the draft next year. Justin Herbert actually, and a lot of NFL mock drafts for 2020, has passed to it. Have you noticed that? Yeah. Like he is the guy. I don't know where Fromm is necessarily, but a lot of these mock drafts have, you know, the guy Chase Young in particular is a really super high pick,

but the defensive end from Ohio State. But hold on here. I want to pull up a mock draft. You know what's one really interesting game that's somewhat local for some people? West Virginia James Madison. James Madison's a power at that level. I think the spread's only seven. in that game. I think that's a, I might play that game.

Here's a mock draft where Herbert is ahead of Tua and Fromm's ahead of Tua. I haven't seen a lot of that. But the guy Chase Young from Ohio State's a potential number one pick. The offensive tackle from Georgia, Andrew Thomas, is a top five type of pick. And then Jerry Judy, who just looks like he's the next Jerry Rice, is a top five pick. So that'll be good. Catch out Justin Herbert. in his game Saturday night. Not a great college football card for the opening weekend. But Saturday night was fun to watch.

All right, let's get to the story of the weekend, which for Redskin fans might be Case Keenham, but for sports fans, and I'm going to start with that as Andrew Luck and his retirement. It was a shocker. You know, it was one of those things where, you know, I'm watching the football game. I'm watching Miami and Florida play,

and then you get the big crawl in big red you know, like breaking news, Adam Schaefter reporting that Andrew Luck's going to retire at the age of 29 years old. Schefter broke the news. Schaefter gets everything, and by the way, almost always gets it right. I'm going to talk about him in a moment because some of the reaction to him breaking this news was very negative. So I'll get to that part of it in a moment. But it was a stunner. Like when you saw that, whether it was on social media or you were watching the game and saw it, you're like, whoa.

Andrew Lux's doing what? He's retiring? Like if the breaking news had been Andrew Luck's season is over due to this, you know, whatever injury he's dealing with, it's the ankle specifically that he talked about in his press conference following the game. But that would have been one thing,

but retiring, it's a stunner. You know, over the weekend, there were a lot of, like, historical comps in terms of retirements. Barry Sanders has won. Michael Jordan's first retirement in 1990, was a true stunner. And I think, you know, there are a lot of stories as to what happened now, you know,

did he actually violate some sort of gambling thing? And was he sort of forced to sit out a year or two? Or was it the baseball or whatever it was. His father had, you know, recently been murdered, as we know, and that was a traumatic event. And was he really hanging it up? That was shocking. I know for a lot of old-time football fans, The career that ended after nine years

that was shocking to everybody, was Jim Brown retiring after nine years of football at the age of 30 years old. He is, by most accounts, and I didn't have a chance to watch Jim Brown play, but anybody that you talk to, football historians will say pound for pound. Jim Brown's the greatest football player

in the history of the National Football League. And he retired to really pursue a Hollywood career. And you probably missed out on, you know, another two to three years of prime Jim Brown. You know, he was that great. Gail Sares' career ended in brief fashion because of injury. That is one of those careers. And we may say this about Andrew Luck, you know, what could have been with his career. Could he have become one of the all-time greats?

You know, he had an incredibly prolific start to his career. And obviously last year, the comeback player of the year thing, following 2017, where he missed. But Gail Sayers essentially had a six to seven year career, and he was one of the greatest running backs in the history of the game. And when he retired, which I think was in 1970 or 71, he was just, at that point, he was, I think, 28 years old, 29 years old, something like that when he had to retire because of of all those knee injuries, that's one of those careers that people really wish they could have seen completed. Because if you want to watch one of the most electrifying offensive players in the

history of the game, especially at the running back position, go watch the Gail Sayers stuff. He was like Barry Sanders before Barry Sanders. But that's one of those careers that people wanted to see, you know, actually see through, you know, a career. into his 30s, but couldn't because of the injuries. But we've seen other, you know, retirements recently. Calvin Johnson's recent retirement was sort of a surprise to a lot of people. But anyway, this is a shocker. I mean, this one caught everyone by surprise.

And even though we did spend 2017, Aaron, when he was out that year, wondering whether he would ever play football again. I mean, that was a big part of the conversation just two years ago with the shoulder injury. It was sort of a Peyton Manning discussion, like, will he ever be right enough to ever play the game again? He sat out the entire season. But Andrew Luck, you know, he cited exhaustion, you know, rehabbing one injury after another, the pain that he's constantly been in. Right now, the ankle is the injury that he's specifically dealing with in the current. But he basically stood up there on the podium Saturday night for 25 minutes and told everyone, told everyone that his quality of life.

life is awful. And he doesn't want to go through it anymore. He wants to change the cycle of injury, pain, rehab, only to be injured again, more likely than not. And this is what he said. My life quality is so poor that I need to move on from this that's causing me to have, you know, a bad quality of life. It's his right to do it. There's nothing that requires him to play football. There's nothing in his contract that prohibits him from retiring. The reaction was really quite amazing on Saturday night on social media. We'll get to the booing from the Indianapolis fans in a moment, but in social media, you know, there was plenty of compassion.

There was plenty of speculation. And then there were people like Doug Gottlieb and Dan Dockich, who didn't have much of either compassion or speculation. Dan Dockich, who covers college basketball as an analyst on ESPN doing college basketball games, and it's pretty good, actually, and pretty entertaining. He tweeted out right after the retirement. I have family working in steel mills, cops, teachers making far less, and this guy is tired? My ass. He said, my backside, meaning my ass. Doug Gottlieb, CBS Sports Radio, is that what he is right now?

What is he? I don't even know what he is anymore. I know he's got a radio show. it's Fox Sports Radio. Is it Fox Sports Radio? Gotlebe's been a college basketball analyst, but been doing talk radio for a long period of time. Do you know I did, this is like 12, 13 years ago.

There was a fantasy football draft with ESPN radio guys going market to market and Gottlieb and I hosted an event together doing that. It was fine. But he, I think he's one of those guys it rubs a lot of people the wrong way. You know, I actually think his basketball analysis is very good. But he tweeted out, quote, retiring because rehabbing is too hard is the most millennial thing ever.

Hashtag Andrew Luck. Did you see Tori Smith's response to that? Tori Smith's, I didn't. Oh, he said, you stole credit cards because working was, quote, too hard. Yeah, well, that's the, see, that's the problem with. Gottlieb. Whenever he takes a shot at anybody on social media, he's going to hear about him stealing credit cards when he was a freshman at Notre Dame. He got busted for stealing credit cards using them and got kicked out of Notre Dame, ended up at Oklahoma State, where he had a pretty decent

career as a college basketball player. But anyway, the reaction was, you know, all over the place. You know, and everybody's entitled to their own opinion. Here's mine. And it's, you know, it's not that deep. I will preface it with, I don't know, a lot of times I don't get worked up over a lot of these things when they're not, you know, it's shocking, it's stunning, but it's his right. It's his life. All right. My take is essentially this. A, it's his life. He doesn't want to spend it in pain. He doesn't want to spend it rehabbing from pain. Some players love football so much that they will absorb anything and do anything to get back out there and play. Some, have to do it. Some must do it because they can't afford not to do it. He didn't want to do it anymore,

and it's also true that he could afford to not want to do it anymore. Why? Well, because he's earned $97.1 million over the course of his career. There are many players and many people in various lines of work that don't have that option of saying, my quality of life sucks. I am in pain. They don't have that option because they can't afford to quit. He did. I believe personally that for a competitive person and this, my view of Andrew Luck is this, that he is not self-absorbed, he's very self-aware, that he's interesting, that he's smart, that he's curious, he's also clearly, you know, very wealthy from this football career, but that this was a very difficult decision for him. By the way, it wasn't made overnight. I do think there was some

impulse to the decision. And the press conference, I think, revealed some of that, that right now he's caught up in this cycle of pain, rehabbing, pain, rehabbing, and he sees this right now as the only way out. But more than that, I think that this was a decision by a guy who recognizes that he's making a decision that, first of all, is going to take something that he enjoys very much away from him football and competing in something that it's hard to replicate anywhere else. It's hard to replicate that kind of competition unless you're really involved in the success or failure of a competitive business.

I think some people get that same rush and that same satisfaction from competing in business and maybe other lines of work as well. But I think the other part of this that was hard for luck, and I'm completely, you know, projecting here and guessing, but he strikes me. as the kind of person that understands the ramifications of him not being involved in the organization anymore. There are a lot of you that are probably listening right now that understand that, you know, if you were to leave your company right now, either as the head of it or the head of sales or as the number one salesperson or whatever. But more, in more cases than not, it would be as a significant owner of the business where you're employing people and people's income and people's lifestyles are contingent upon you showing us.

up and performing and you continuing to work. You know, a lot of people that get to that position, get to that position because they understand that responsibility and they embrace it. You know, and then that makes it really hard when they're not happy anymore or even worse, not healthy anymore to leave it. Like this isn't easy for Andrew Luck. Like he knows that he's letting a lot of people down. And to me, he's the kind of person that that bothers, that he typically isn't one that

picks self-over team, self-over everybody else, which makes that decision so much harder. You know, for people who aren't self-absorbed, to make that kind of move, to change their situation, to yes, put self-first, that's what he did here, but for somebody like him, my sense of it is, this is the most gut-wrenching part of it, that he doesn't, he gets to do it. He gets to do he's able to do it contractually. He's able to do it. It's his own life, the whole thing, and he can afford to do it,

which is not a small part of this, right? Like there are a lot of people in lots of lines of work that don't like their quality of life, don't like their professional situation. They don't have a choice. They have a family. They have people that rely on them. There's no choice.

But for him, he knows there are people in that organization that are counting on him that are employed in some cases, perhaps because of him. There are teammates that probably, will have future income impacted by this retirement. That kind of thing I think he understands, which makes the decision so hard. And you could see the anguish during this press conference,

which by the way was called prematurely because it was scheduled to be the next day at 3 o'clock, but because the news broke, he had to address it right then and there. But look, he appears to be a well-rounded, you know, eclectic type of person who will keep himself, busy. You know, he's very curious. He's got a lot of life curiosities. He's kind of nerdy. He's smart.

I think the competitive part of his personality makes it more likely than not that he will return at some point. I think he'll be back in football within two years after he breaks this cycle of pain, rehab, pain, rehab, injury, rehab. You know, as much as he talked about this decision coming from great clarity, I watched a guy that just right now in the moment is so, frustrated with his situation that, you know, on some level, I do think there was some impulse involved in the decision. I think he'll be back in a year or two. That's my guess. Anyway, a couple of other things on this. First of all, the lecturing by so many people on social media, in particular about the cult fans who booed luck as he was walking off the field

Saturday night. Remember when we went through this conversation, Aaron in June, about the Toronto fans, their immediate reaction to the Durant injury was to cheer. Remember we had this whole conversation about, you know, and my position was, I mean, God, please, the lecturing of people about how shameful the Toronto fans and now the Indianapolis fans. First of all, understand this, all right? It's my view anyway, that this is a stunning piece of news that is running. That is running like, you know, rampant throughout that stadium, whoever is there for a freaking preseason game. Like, you know, first of all, understand the crowd that is there for the preseason game probably isn't the crowd that's there for regular season games. But anyway,

that's beside the point. They're getting this news, you know, on their phones, Andrew Lux down on the sideline, it's in the midst of a home preseason game. All of a sudden, the cameras start, you know, coming towards him as he's walking off the field. It's a piece of news that is shocking that created this emotional reaction. You know, I mean, my point of view on things like this is that when you're completely caught off guard with stunning news and you emotionally react to that news, as long as the reaction isn't physically violent, then that reaction has to be open to being forgiven. You know, most of those people had they learned the news before the game,

and they heard the explanation from luck, had time to digest it, those same fans more likely than not would have cheered. I don't see this as some sort of an indictment of a fan base or of fans in general of this day and age. Like, this has been going on for years, you know, immediate reactions to an injury. I mean, it's been obviously, you know, East Coast. crowds, Philadelphia in particular. This is Indianapolis.

This is the sweet Midwest. These are hearty people who have good spirits and are, you know, air on the side of overly nice. Like this wasn't, this was just an emotional reaction in the moment. Just like the Toronto thing was. They want to win the championship. Kevin Durant goes down. No one really, I don't think many people are truly rooting

for Kevin Durant to be seriously injured in that moment. But it's a shock. thing. It's a stunning thing. The other night, a stunning piece of news, surprising as hell. And then they see him and all the cameras and they boo. I forgive them. I don't get the

lecturing about it. I really don't. And someone might say, and someone said to me on the radio show today when we took calls on this, keep in mind the people that reacted and with sort of this, you know, Indianapolis fans, shame on them. It's terrible. You don't behave that way. They were

reacting emotionally to the booing, which was sort of an emotional reaction. That's true, but a lot of of these people have been doing this for a while, and a lot of these people thought about it and felt the same way the next day and wrote columns about it the next day. A lot of reaction from players, athletes, Aaron, all over the place about the booing. I don't know. This kind of reaction isn't new. It generates far too much outrage for me. But you know what? The culture now demands that the majority react with outrage to just about anything. And then by the way, there's a subsequent lecture that goes with it. I just, in this age of hypersensitivity to almost everything, I'm not. Maybe it's my age. Maybe it's that I'll save it for the really important stuff. And booing an athlete walking off the field after he announced an early retirement just doesn't rise to that level for me.

So anyway, there's one other thing about the Andrew Luck retirement the other night. Adam Schaefter broke this story. For those of you that have listened to me for many years, you know that Adam and I have a relationship, a professional relationship. We actually actually have mutual friends as well. But anyway, I've liked Adam. I think he's really good at what he does. He's an information guy. That's the way he's made his business.

by getting information, having information, and breaking news. That's why he has more Twitter followers than any NFL, you know, reporter. Nobody's even close, right, Aaron? Oh, I doubt it. Yeah. That's why he's been employed by the same outfit for a long period of time, ESPN. Adam is really good at what he does, you know. He doesn't, you know, miss on these things.

There are a lot of guys, you know, like Ian Rappaport. who criticized JP and my report from last week about Trent Williams. I mean, Ian Rappaport's wrong all the time, all the time. He's right a lot too. Gets a lot of them right, but gets a lot of them wrong too. Remember, he was the guy that essentially had the Redskins trading for Tony Romo when Romo could barely even walk anymore. But anyway, I digress.

Adam's the best in the business. He's rarely, if ever wrong on the big stuff. And he had this story. And people criticized him for having this story. People criticized him to say, why couldn't Adam have held that story and allowed Andrew Luck to have his moment where he got to announce his retirement? And I saw this. And actually a friend of mine, direct messaged me on the same thing.

And I was like, what? That's Adam's business. That's literally his job. It's literally his job. Like, do you think his employer would think highly of Adam if he said, hey, you know what, I had it? Because by the way, it would have been broken by somebody more likely than not. I actually had it, but I really felt badly sort of breaking the news. I wanted Andrew to be able to break it on his own.

No. ESPN is, employs Adam to do what he did, to report, to have information. and every once in a while and for him, I don't know, it's probably 30 times a year, break big news to have it before anybody else. It's probably more than 30 times a year. This one, by the way, is a big one for him. This was big. It came out of nowhere. But I don't get that reaction in part two because this wasn't a story about luck announcing

some sort of career-ending sickness, like he's retiring early because he had. brain cancer, you know, and has three months to live, or there's some, you know, tragic, you know, family situation. Like, that stuff probably involves a conversation between Adam and his, you know, higher ups at ESPN about the appropriateness of breaking that story. But it was an early retirement. I mean, that doesn't rise to the level of a conversation about whether or not to break it. It's not even close to it, in my view, anyway. Um, no, Adam did what he's supposed to do and he's done very well over a long period of time. And that is get a story and break it before any of his competitors do.

I didn't get that reaction at all. Again, if this were something really serious, like he's really sick and he has to quit football because he's going to die in six months or less, then that's a conversation about do we want to break this story or do we want it to come from, you know, from Andrew. It's probably a conversation that, you know, you go straight to Andrew and you say, hey, Andrew, you know, when are you doing, you know, I have this story. I bet it's happened before. Oh, it's absolutely happened before.

You know, you know, maybe you work out an interview after to hold, you know, something along those lines. That's right. So, anyway, that's how I feel about that. Overall, look, we're going to miss out potentially. Again, I'm predicting that he's back within two years. but if he isn't, this is one of those careers that ended, that we will talk

about as sports fans for the rest of our lives, that we didn't get a chance to see Andrew Luck continuous career. You know, last year was odd in that early on in the season, remember they came here and played. You know, he didn't look like Andrew Luck at times. Like there was some of those balls that he threw early in the year where he was almost pushing him.

And remember there was that, wasn't there that one play at the end of? of a half where he came out and maybe Berset went in to throw the Hail Mary. Yeah. Right? That was, that was luck. I believe so. So there was some concern about him last year, but he ended up having a hell of a year, you know, last year, 39 touchdowns last year after missing all of 2017, 15 picks, 4,500 plus yards, won a playoff game on the road, and then they lost to the Chiefs. You know, 10 and 6 overall record, you know, but his first three years, by the way, are Marino-like. You know, by the way, record-wise, the first three years, rookie year, 11 and 5, second year, 11 and 5, third year, 11 and 5, three straight playoffs, got to the AFC title game.

His third season was 40 touchdown, 16 picks, 4,761 yards. It was a prolific career that he was in the midst of, you know, halted here and there the last couple of years because of the, you know, why he's retiring, these injuries and the rehabbing and all of it. Yeah, I mean, when you consider that essentially he played six seasons as a starting quarterback, we missed out in most great quarterback, you know, Hall of Fame type of quarterback careers, we missed out on two times that minimum, you know, two times that, a 12-year career. So we had another six seasons minimum to enjoy one of the best quarterbacks in the game and perhaps to see him get even better. But maybe that's the point is that he wasn't going to get any better if he were always going

to be hurt. The conversation about Hall of Fame, I don't think so at six years. Not at six years. Six years, no MVP's, right? No, no MVP's. Yeah, so it's, what are, you're basically saying that if you're putting him in the Hall of Fame, it's because you think he would have if he hadn't retired. And in this case, when it's not a sickness, when it's not a, you know, some tragic accident

or something, I don't think you can extrapolate. that career for the Hall of Fame? The only, I don't know if this is the only comp. Gail Sairs would be sort of the comp. I mean, Gail Sairs, you know, retired and at 29 years old and was inducted into the Hall of Fame at 34 years old, you know, after a career of essentially six seasons because he missed one complete season with an injury. Here are Gail Sairs' numbers, actually, because I wanted to compare him.

Gail Sayers in 1960, this is a Hall of Fame career. He's in the Hall of Fame. Gail Sayers is. His rookie season, there was a 14 game schedule back then. He played in all 14 games, started in 11 of them. Second year, played 13 of the 14 games. Third year, 13 of the 14 games. And the fourth year, nine games and the fifth year, 14 games.

And then the injuries came back in 1969, one comeback player of the year. the reason he played nine games in 68 was the knee injury. If you've seen, you know, the famous movie with, you know, the Brian Piccolo movie. Brian Song. Brian Song. You know that whole rehab with Brian Piccolo, you know, helping him get through that rehab in 1968, 69. He came back, one comeback player of the year.

And then 1970 and 71 were injury riddled and he barely even played in 70 and 71. So literally, Gail Sayers had essentially four and a half years of an NFL. career. Four and a half years, and he's in the Hall of Fame. Andrew Lux, years and production and number of games started are much more significant than Gail Sares. Now you get into the quality of the career. Gail Sares was a five-time, you know, all-pro, five-time pro bowler, five-time, first team, all-pro, four-time pro bowler, NFL comeback player of the year, NFL rookie of the year. Andrew Luck, a four-time pro bowler, NFL comeback player of the year, et cetera. So he, I don't know, that would be the comp.

Like when we get to the point five years from now, if luck is still retired, the conversation will start to have, you know, which it's always better to have a few years after the fact, is they will compare. That's going to be the comp for him. It's going to be the Gail Sayers career. It's going to be the Gail Sayers' Hall of Fame career that, that essentially was four and a half years in terms of his playing time.

I think what's going to, in my opinion, keep him out is, you know, Gail Sayers was the best. He was the five-time all-pro. He's the absolute best. Andrew Luck was not. Never in a first-team all-pro. Yep, not once. That's true.

That's true. But he was a great. He was a great. He was a great, but he wasn't the best in his era. And with that short of a career, I think that keeps him out. Now, I forget if I mention this on the podcast, on Friday. I did it on the radio show. Did I talk about Jacoby Bressett on the podcast Friday? You did. We did. Yes.

Because Lewis Riddick from ESPN had put out this statement that he thought Berset is a starting caliber winning quarterback. And he said, and I had the quote here, I hope he gets the chance to show it for reasons other than because of an Andrew Luck injury. And, well, it's not an injury. Well, it's an injury slash retirement now. And Berset's going to get that opportunity. And Brissette, and I mentioned to you that the point spread stayed at three, even though there was the possibility of Brissette starting week one. Well, guess where it is now? Now that we know that Brissette's starting, it's seven. It went up to seven.

I like Brissette. I think he's going to be good. I mean, I might actually make a season futures bet on the over, which is seven and a half now. So anyway, the gambling industry, real quickly, Aaron and I will talk about this, This was a jolt to a lot of the futures bets on the Colts. And apparently a lot of different sites and a lot of different live sports books missed on the information early. And they had like with Andrew Luck numbers posted for like 30, 45 minutes and some people got some big wagers in on under 9 and a half, under 10, which was their season. A win total.

It's now down to 7.5. But a lot of the other stuff, the Indianapolis Super Bowl Lodge. went from 12 to 1 to 30 to 1. On average, that's essentially what it is. I mentioned the over under wind total, went from 9.5, 10, somewhere in that range to 7.5. Surprised at 7.5. I know at 1 point that in the immediacy,

some books put it up at 6, but it's probably... On my side, it's 7.5. I did read where somebody, there was one or two places that dropped it to as low as 6, but it bounced off that. Yeah. Anyway, I mean, they have a good team around, but it's going to come down to whether or not Bresset is what, you know,

Lewis Riddick and I think he is, which is a starting winning caliber quarterback. They open up with the Chargers this year on the road. What is the rest of their schedule? I was looking at this earlier. Then two road games to start at Chargers, at Titans, before they get the Falcons at home. So there you go.

All right, that's enough on Andrew Luck. think probably enough for the day. This podcast today is brought to you by stamps.com. Go to stamps.com and use my code, Kevin D.C, that's K-E-V-I-N-D-C, to get savings, a four-week trial, free postage, a digital scale without any long-term commitment. If you're a small business and you're not using stamps.com, you should. It's easy to use. It saves time, provides savings, significant savings over the course of time, especially if you're a small business. but you can use your computer to print the postage for any letter, any package, any class of mail, anywhere you want to send it. Once your mail is ready, you just hand it to the mail carrier

or drop it off in a mailbox. It's that simple. Stamps.com, my code, Kevin, D.C. All right, the news broke yesterday, Jay Gruden announcing that Case Keenham would be the starter. Hardly a shocker. I think we knew that after the Atlanta game on Thursday night when Case got all the activity with the ones and Haskins came in in the start. second half with the non-starters. No news, by the way, on Jordan Reed. Fabian Morose still hurt. No Brandon Sheriff extension talks, nothing on Trent Williams over the weekend. So all of that, we clear to the side to talk about Case Keenham. All right, I have a couple of thoughts. And this is going to be repetitive from the radio show. Sorry, if you've already heard it, but I don't have

much more on this. And I'm hopeful that Cooley will be available, but we may not know that for another 10 or 15 minutes. All right, so, okay, you know, Case Keenham. Woo! Let's go have ourselves some Case Keenum. I'm not a big fan of Keenham. I'm not against him. Like, I don't think he stinks.

I just don't think you're going anywhere with Case Keenum. I don't think you're going anywhere with Colt McCoy. And my preference from the jump would be, especially after I saw him in the preseason game against Cleveland and Cincinnati, is, you know, I've said it all along. If Dwayne is, you know, close enough to Case, just get them in there. I mean, let's just start the process. You know, that's the business plan.

That's the Redskins long-term business plan. It doesn't include Case Keenum. It doesn't include Case Keenum under contract on the roster. It includes someone else down the road that is backing up Dwayne Haskins. Dwayne Haskins is the quarterback of the future, and the quicker you get to the future, the quicker you're going to be able to turn a profit. if you're right about him.

Because you're not turning a profit with Case Keenham or Colt McCoy. Now, some of you will say, well, you can't have him take the business over and lead it until he's ready to turn a profit. And if that's the case, I've said all along, if Dwayne Haskins is so far off that they fear that he can't protect himself, they fear that the whole offense won't be able to be productive and it'll affect everybody else and you've got to have somebody that can run the offense, fine. then let case play. I didn't get a sense from anything in the preseason or anything that I've heard that Dwayne's like so far away. But anyway, this is what they've decided to do.

I do think, and this is going to piss some of you off, some of you that are absolutely convinced that I'm anti-Alex Smith. It's not true. It is not true. I don't think Alex Smith had a very good year for the Redskins last year. I don't think it was a very good offense. If you can't take that criticism, that's your problem, not mine. I was for the trade.

I absolutely liked the trade, even though it meant losing Kendall Fuller and a third. I was not a huge fan of the extension, the contract extension for somebody at his age. But I was excited about Alex Smith. Anybody that has listened to me for a long period of time knows that I actually loved Alex Smith in Kansas City. And one of the early comps I made of Kirk Cousins was to, Dilton and Alex Smith. I said at one point in 2015, you know what? I think Kirk Cousins can become Alex Smith or Andy Dalton.

And everybody's like, no, he can't be that good. Turns out, you know, he was at least that good. Of course, not record wise. Not against good teams. I'm not going to get into that. There was a really good story, sI.com, on the Shanahan coaching situation here in Washington in 2012 with all the coaches that they produced. Of course, the genius of all of that completely escaped the owner

and the team president. They wouldn't know it if it's, you know, slapped him in the face. There's also an insecurity there that doesn't allow for that to thrive in Ashburn. I digress. Back to Case Keenham. I think Case Keenom's going to be better than Alex Smith. I do. I think he's a better fit for Jay Gruden's system. I think Jay Gruden made that very clear in this offseason. Jay Gruden evaluated Case Keenum much more than he evaluated Alex Smith. Alex Smith was more of a one-person, unilateral trade decision made by Bruce Allen. And everybody else was told about it. I mean, we know the story about Doug Williams, not even knowing that it, you know,

the whole thing had happened. Jay was go along, get along, yeah, I'll make Alex Smith, you know, work. There's no doubt in my mind that in early 2018, that if Jay had been consulted on this thing and given the final decision, he would have said, nope, we do not need Alex Smith. I can make it work with Colt McCoy. Now, I don't know that he would have been right about that either. I don't think he would have been. But that's what I think he would have said and believed,

but I don't think he had final say in the decision. This particular offseason, after it was very clear that Alex Smith and Jay Gruden weren't the best of fits, and they weren't. Part of that's on Gruden. I haven't always put that on Alex Smith. I just didn't think Alex Smith played very well. The offense was not very good.

It wasn't. And it was going to, it was a house of cards at 5 and 2. That's what I saw, felt that way. I was excited. I was excited that he wasn't turning it over. I was excited that they were able to run the football and win the turnover battle and win the old-fashioned way. I was, and I was hopeful. But the realistic part of me, and I said this all along, is they're not very good offensively.

And they weren't. I think they will be better with Case Keenum as the quarterback than they were with Alex Smith. Now, you know, they don't have Trump Williams, and they still don't have a lot of answers at wide receiver, and who the hell knows about Jordan Reed and his concussion and whether or not he's going to be back. I just think Case Keenham's a better fit. I think that Jay Gruden will be able to do a lot of the stuff that he's more comfortable doing, a lot of play action, you know, some boot. I think the quick stuff, the quick game will be back and better than ever.

I don't know why they didn't run more quick game last year. It was frustrating for me to watch because I think Alex Smith would have been good at it. You know, one of the games that really told me that this is not working was early against Indy last year when they were playing super soft zone and Alex just couldn't get the ball quickly to the people that were wide open underneath that zone for, you know, chunks of five to 10 to 12 yards. Redskins should have moved that ball up and down the field against that defense that Indy played that particular day and they couldn't. And it was a little bit of a red flag as to what would come. He had some moments, don't get me wrong, but for the most part, it wasn't a good

fit. I think Case Keenom is perfect in the quick game. So you want to sit back and you want to play zone coverage. You want to play soft against the Redskins receivers. You don't have to. I don't think you have to. But if you do, I think Case Keenham can take advantage of that. In the same way, the Cousins took advantage of it. And maybe he'll be better in the red zone than Cousins was consistently, because I think Case can make some plays with his legs. I think he's creative. I also think he will turn the ball over more than Alex Smith did. And that could cause problems for a team that might be pretty good defensively. But I think ultimately the offense will be better with C. Keenham than it was with Alex Smith. With all of that said, I don't want him to start for very long. I want Dwayne Haskins in when he's ready to be in. And this leads me to this. I have a hunch about the opener against Philadelphia. And it's sort of because, I don't know, I've had this hunch all along that they're going to try to play Dwayne Haskins and they might give him a series or two against Philadelphia. And I think he's going to surprise us with that. But it's the way he announced, the Keenham thing.

He said both of them did some good things, some things we need to clean up, but I think as it stands right now, we'll start with Case. And Dwayne will get himself ready to play and we'll go from there. He said, anytime you come in as a one or two or a three-quarterback,

you've got to get yourself ready to play at all times. You know, when he announced that Kirk Cousins was going to be the starter in 2015, he said, Kirk Cousins is going to start the season and then he said, for 2015. Like he was definitive. Like he's our starter for the next 16 games, period. It's not really the way he did it with Case.

I just have this weird feeling that Haskins is going to be, he's going to dip his toes here and there early in the season in the first few weeks. They might give him a series. I know it sounds college-like, you know, but it's happened before. I mean, hell, if you want to really know when it happened almost for the... I mean, Tom Landry alternated plays. he sent Roger Stawback and Craig Morton in play by play with the play. Like here's Morton playing one play and then here comes Stawback in with the play for second down.

I think that Haskins is going to play. I don't know why I think that. Maybe it was based on the way Jay delivered the news. Maybe it's because Haskins is the future and they're going to want to get him some work in meaningful moments. And maybe they don't think he's ready to start a full game, but they're ready to give him something that he can ease his way into. That's my hunch. Have at it. Make fun of me. I don't care.

All right. Last thing on this show today, because I don't think we're going to have a cool league today. Sorry about that. He's not responding to me, trying to get in touch with him as I've been sitting here doing the show. And we'll get him on, I promise, this week. The last thing is something that Josh Norman said over the weekend. I don't know if you saw this, Aaron.

I don't know if it was, I think it might have been after the Atlanta game. But basically, he essentially, in talking about the defense, said, we'll get to the point where it could be all time, like all time great. You know, an all time, Bears 85. He didn't say Bears 85. But once again, you have a Redskins player. And I like Josh Norman. I think Josh Norman's interesting.

I think he's smart. I think he's, there's something about him. I've mentioned this many times since he got here. because I've had a chance to interview him in person. There's something about him that just is likable and is interesting, and it's beyond, you know, football. And we've seen, like, he's got, you know, he's got some interesting, you know, life stories,

like the most recent one, you know, the running with the Bulls in Pamplona. But this is what happens here. And this is the part of, like, the culture that is so irritating to longtime fans like me, who actually remember when, you know, before this owner took the organization over and ran it into the ground, it was a proud franchise that won.

And it not only won, it won in a way in which it was, it made you proud to be a fan. Like the style of Joe Gibbs and Bobby Bethard and Charlie Casserly was not to run their mouths. It was actually to be incredibly self-effacing, incredibly insistent on lowering expectations. I mean, Joe Gibbs, you can remember, I mean, we're playing the Cardinals, and the Cardinals are great, and the Redskins would be like 17-point favorites. We need all 55,000 fans there. We don't have a chance against this team. They're so good. Neil Lomax is playing at a high level. Roy Green's great, Stump Mitchell. How are we going to stop him? And then the Redskins would destroy them, you know, 42 to 7. That was that style of, in culture, that really was surrounded the

these championship teams. Like they weren't brash, you know, the Bears of 85, the Bears of the 80s, the Mike Ditka Bears, Buddy Ryan defensive coached Bears. They were brash teams. They won too. They promised big and delivered big.

The Redskins underpressed and just constantly over-delivered. Every year. Really? I mean, listening to Joe, it sounds like they're going to be terrible. You know, listen, I mean, one of the famous episodes, famous interviews with Steve Buckhanson, Joe Gibbs before the 91 season.

Buck said, you know, a lot of people are picking you, coach, and Gibbs hated to hear that anybody was picking him. Who's picking us, Steve? Well, Playboy Magazine's picked you to win the Super Bowl, and with that, Gibbs lost it. Playboy Magazine! What do they know about football? Gibbs hated for anybody to pick them,

and immediately, immediately tried to silence the talk that they would be good for a season or for a Sunday. He wanted his team to be dialed in on that opponent. Nobody was better at putting up the opponent's quotes. Buddy Ryan, when he got to Philadelphia and the way the Eagles would run their mouths without delivering. It's what the Redskins have been for 20 years under this terrible owner. That's what they've been. The culture allows for them to constant. boast to constantly prop themselves up with words and back it up with nothing but losing.

Josh Norman should know better. I mean, he was in a winning organization. He knows what one really looks like. And if he actually believes that the defense could be all time, let it sneak up on everybody this year. Don't put it out there. And some of you always say to me, hey, if you believe it, you should say it. What do you want them to say?

You want them to say that we stink, that we're not going to be any, no, I don't want them to say anything. I want them to keep their mouth shut and show me, not tell me anymore. It won't happen, though, in this organization. That's a culture that's established by ownership, by management. You know, that's why in the good organizations you don't see a lot of this. You don't hear a lot of this. Now, there are some organizations that'll let it fly, and they have outspoken personalities that you can't keep, you know,

you can't shut up. But in the good organizations, those players have produced before they start running their mouth. In this organization, people show up, Landon Collins, you know, predicting Super Bowl's plural, talking about the revenge he's going to get on the Giants. You know, Ryan Clark a few years back talking about this is the best secondary I've ever seen. What are you talking about? You played with Troy Palomalu in Pittsburgh. Are you serious?

You know, Trent Williams, the year he predicted that they would have the Hogs 2.0 and they'd have a top five rushing attack. A culture allows that to happen. You know, you've got to have ownership and management that says, we don't talk here. We let our actions speak for us. because what happens in a business is when you overpromise and under deliver as much as the Redskins have over the years. You piss customers off, you make them angry, and then eventually when you continue to do it and you continue to not back it up, you get apathy. And apathy crushes a business, especially in entertainment business, a business like professional football. Anger is at least in emotion, you know, and you're still hanging in there.

You're angry. You're upset that they promise these big things and deliver to six and ten season again. But the apathy is what really impacts the business. And these are the kinds of things that lead to it. It's not just the results. It's the off-putting nature of the organization and the way the organization behaves and what they allow and the culture. You know, Tommy's in here all the time and a lot of you get upset with how he rips the dysfunction in the culture, but he's right. It's a terrible culture.

It's a culture that's not conducive. to success, you know, and so many of you know exactly what I'm talking about. You've been in winning organizations or winning companies, and you would love to just have one meeting with the entire franchise in front of you in an auditorium to say, look, this is who we are. We don't run our mouths. We deliver on the field. We are not going to tell people how great we are. We are going to show them. And if you do tell people in advance, you're going to be fined. There's going to be a punishment for those of you that can't keep your mouth shut. We have a business here that's teetering on the brink of being nothing.

We've seen revenues drop significantly. We've seen fans erode. We've seen a fan-based erosion that's accelerated in recent years to the level that no other franchises had. And it's not just the losing. It's the way we behave. We've got to change that. I like Josh Norman. I do.

This is the part of the organization, those of you that have listened to me over the years that you know I hate more than anything. Because I lived through classy winning. I lived through, nobody told you, they just showed you, and they showed you over and over and over again. Four Super Bowl visits, three Super Bowl wins, in the hunt every single year,

sustained success from 19, 1881 through 1992, a 12-year run of winning and a 12-year run of behaving like winners. And this has been a loser for 20 years, and when you hear these players on the team, continuing to promise you of great things, you know now you're not a fool. You've been fooled too many times. I mean, I would say to Josh Norman, why are you saying this? Do you realize that your customer base is laughing at you for saying this? That it's been promised so many times and not delivered that they'd just rather you be quiet and not say anything.

Just go out there and actually have a big year. You got paid a lot of money and you've produced not one playoff game. You haven't played in one playoff game here. How about play a playoff game before you start talking about an all-time defense or the greatest secondary you've ever been a part of here. That's it. Sorry about Cooley. We'll get him sometime this week.

Tommy, you'll be in tomorrow. Have a great day.