The Kevin Sheehan Show - Alex Smith, Redskins' Icon? Plus Mock Schedule!

Episode Date: May 5, 2020

Kevin and Thom today opened the show with a conversation about Redskins' fans attachment to Alex Smith's 9+ games in Washington. The boys talked about a few reveals from the Albert Breer/MMQB story on the Trent Williams trade to San Francisco. Kevin had his "2020 Redskins Mock Schedule" today. Dwayne Haskins' latest tweet, Don Shula's position on the all-time greatest NFL coaches list, and "The Last Dance" were discussed as well. <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. You're listening to The Sports Fix. Sports Fix Tuesday, Tommy's in, not in, but by phone. Aaron's at home. He'll edit this thing when it's done. I have my mock schedule, my Redskins mock schedule, an annual dumb tradition that I've been doing. I don't know how many years in a row, Tommy. I think it's 12 or 13 years. I've been doing this. on radio and on podcast last year only and now both this year. We're going to get to the latest tweet from D.H. Simba, 7. Oh, boy. Don Shula. I want to talk to you about Shula in his standing, and I know you have some thoughts on Alex Smith, The Last Dance, and a few other things. But I'm going to, real quickly, I'm going to start with some Alex Smith stuff,

because I got two tweets that I wanted to share with you. This tweet came from Yancey yesterday. Yancey said, I'm beginning to think that Alex Smith can return from this injury. What perseverance, what fortitude, what a story. I think he's going to play again at some point. That was from Yancey. And let me just read the second one real quickly from Kevin.

He writes, Sheehan, why don't you want to? Alex Smith to play. And then he goes on to accuse me of not being an Alex Smith fan, which, by the way, I've said this before, is just utterly untrue. You know, some of you are really, really, you just don't have the ability to sort of see things as potentially mutually exclusive of one another, just because I didn't think that Alex Smith had a good 2018 and didn't think he was playing very well and didn't think the offense was very good, doesn't mean that I dislike Alex Smith. I wanted the trade. I was in favor of the trade, not the extension, but the trade. I was a fan

of Alex Smith when he was at Kansas City. Tommy, you may or may not remember this. And the only reason I remember it, quite honestly, is because Dan Steinberg reminded me of this. He tweeted out something. When the Redskins traded for Alex Smith, Steinberg, I'm pretty sure, retweeted it tweet of mine from like three years previous to that where I said, I believe that Kirk Cousins can become an Alex Smith or Andy Dalton type of starter, which by the way was a compliment. So I always liked Alex Smith. Now, why don't I want Alex Smith to play? Because after watching that program the other night in particular, I don't want him to put himself at risk of playing. He's got a beautiful family.

He has all the money he'll ever need. I don't want to see him take the risk in play professional football. I'd love to see him get himself into position to play professional football. But by the way, to Yancey, who said he's beginning to think that Alex Smith can play, there's nothing that convinced me more that Alex Smith will never be able to play again than that documentary the other night. Tommy, the grotesque pictures in particular of the flesh-eating bacteria and the process of, you know, carving away, essentially most of his leg between his knee and ankle, I don't know how anybody could look at that picture and think that he's ever going to play football again. I'm just so happy he's able to walk around on two legs and play with his kids.

Anyway, that's how I wanted to start out the show. What do you say? Well, look, I mean, the way things are going, they're going to start showing pictures of Alice Smith's leg on the concourse at FedEx Field. What does that mean? Well, because this guy has become a Redskins icon. I mean, he's a legend already. He played nine games for this franchise. He was six and three, and he is arguably one of the most revered players.

that have put on that uniform in the past 10 years. Oh, come on. Oh, I'm telling you, Kevin. Kevin, there are people that want to see him go out there and take a ceremonial last snack. Like he's got some kind of legacy with the Redskins, you know? I mean, it's just unbelievable. Look, I'd love Alex that he's a terrific guy.

People swear by him. He was a good quarterback. He wasn't. And I agree with you. He didn't play very well in 2018, and that was all an illusion, that six and three records that they had then. But what this documentary has done

has almost put Alex Smith in the Sean Taylor class. Oh, it has not. You're exaggerating. You're trying to come up with a column idea. No, I'm not. What am I going to see that column tomorrow? I'm not writing that column because that's not what I'm doing. I said, almost.

I said, I didn't say in the Sean Taylor class, but Alice Smith is revered for a tragedy that happened to him. Look, it almost became a tragedy. No, it almost became a death tragedy as we found out the other night. Yes, it did. But he is revered. He's not revered for his play for the Redskins. he's revered and he celebrated for this horrible thing he went through.

I think that's true. In all-time Redskins icon of the last 10 years, I think that's hyperbole. I think what you saw is you saw an incredible sort of visceral reaction to that hour-long documentary by Redskin fans. By the way, by sports fans, not just Redskins, because it was so. It was really jarring in terms of the pictures that we saw. Now, we had sort of an anticipation of that because those pictures got sent out prior to the show airing on Friday night. But I mean, look, there's a lot of respect and admiration for what he went through. And by the way, respect for him in particular because I think most people realize Alex Smith is like a good,

guy. Like, you know, people have always liked Alex Smith. He mentored Patrick Mahomes. Even Simba. Even Askins always says nice things about Alex Smith and had a very nice tweet after the show the other night about him. Kevin, make a list the past 10 years, 2010 to now, of all the beloved Redskins, I mean, beloved, revered, celebrated. Well, Sean Taylor, obviously, and he died now, you know, 12 years ago, 13 years ago, 12 and a half years ago. I mean, that's always going to be. Yeah. From now on, he'll always be on.

Santana Moss is really well-liked and thought highly of. Cooley is obviously well-liked and thought highly of. You know, Portis is. I mean, by the way, we're now going back. When did Porter stop playing? Yeah, I mean, 2010, you know? Okay. He played that year, that first year with Shanahan.

but, you know, was injured. Yes, it's a short list, because Kirk Cousins is polarizing. Yeah, so Alex Smith is not. I mean, Alex Smith is, I mean, with every passing day, he will always live in Redskins' lore as some kind of icon. Ryan Carrigan, I guess. For having his leg broken. Look, Ryan Carragon doesn't generate anything.

he's a neutral guy well no I think everybody likes him but there's nothing exciting about him yes no there's nothing passionate about him right I agree with him about Ryan Carrigan

but people are passionate about Alex Smith I think you I think you just caught the reaction why don't actually play for his team Addie curiosity the tweet that I got from this dude

Yancy who said the other night made him believe that he's coming back more than ever. I thought the exact opposite after watching the other night. What did you think? I agree with you, but I understand why people would think would get caught up in the comeback. I understand why people would get caught up, and I agree with you. 100%. I don't think he's going to play again.

That only convinced me he wasn't going to play again. I hope he doesn't play again for him and his family's sake. but I think people got get caught up and how many feel good stories this is a feel good story only because of the horror that he went through and how he came

back okay there's not many feel good stories surrounding this franchise there's not many things that the rest of the NFL can look at and if you're a redskins fan you could say yeah that's right he wears out uniform

he's a redskins There's not many situations where Redskins fans can hold their head up and say, yeah, he's one of ours. Alex Smith is one. He's been here for five minutes, but he's a Redskins. And so I think that Redskins fans get caught up and feeling good about something for a change. There are a couple of things here. Let's just get through all the Alex Smith stuff right now. Did you have any other takeaways from the documentary on Friday night?

Because I'm curious, I thought you would have one definitely that you haven't mentioned yet. Well, you know, my mind doesn't work so well in isolation. So why don't you tell me what I was thinking? Well, I thought you would notice that the Redskins were essentially left out of it. You know, there was the Vernon Davis stuff, but that was basically about his time with the 49ers. there was a short clip from Adrian Peterson, but I thought, you know, guys like Dan Snyder and Bruce Allen and other than Dr. Robin West, who by the way, you know, essentially saved his life by keeping him in the hospital when he had a low-grade fever, that they were a bit conspicuous by their absence. And not just their absence in terms of interviews, but the mentions of anything having to do with the Redskins. I didn't really notice it, I guess.

Oh, boy. Surprising to me. I didn't know. Go ahead. No, I was going to say, look, a lot of that program was the setup for the season and the injury and what he was as a player and the perseverance that he had, you know, from those early days in San Francisco to becoming, you know, a real player and a real NFL quarterback with Harbaugh, you know, and then, you know, getting the break of being able to play for.

Andy Reed, but, you know, being benched and not getting the job back because of Kaepernick, and then, you know, being a mentor to Patrick Mahomes. And, you know, it was all, you know, his journey up until this November 18th, 2018. And then once we got the story of the injury and what went on in that first week after the injury, and then the rehab and recovery, look, we all know that he became a constant with Dan Snyder. during last season. In his box, you know, for many of those games, by his side, you know, in many moments. And I thought maybe, even though Stefania Bell, who came on the radio show with me last week, did make the comment that Alex had nothing but overwhelmingly positive things

to say about Snyder and about Allen and about the support that the organization had given him and his family through all of this. But in that hour-long documentary, you didn't get any of that. No. No, you didn't. I guess I wasn't paying that close attention. I was too busy looking at his leg the whole time. Oh, my God.

It's so true. You know, Tommy, I thought about this. You know, this organization and all of the, you know, self-inflicted damage and a lot of the just bad luck circumstances, you know, tragic bad luck. like with Sean Taylor. You know, quite honestly, think about that season alone. He breaks a leg. Two weeks later, the backup quarterback breaks his leg. You know, it's just, you know, Chris Thompson at the end of the 2017 season, remember,

essentially broke his leg in the New Orleans game, which knocked him out and basically effectively ended the season. You know, all of the talk of the medical. And by the way, you know, I wonder, I didn't bring this up yesterday. I don't think I brought it up yet. I wonder if the Redskins liked this documentary or didn't like it. Because on one hand, the infection, this flesh-eating bacteria, okay, which just threatened his life and more than threatened his leg. I mean, Dr. Robin West, who got really super emotional at times talking about, you know, the relationship that she had made with Alex and Alex's wife,

But she told Alex's wife, I'd cut it off. I'd amputate it. But I think the implication that the field and the grass or the mud or whatever got into the system and became a flesh-eating bacteria, you know, remember, we've had lots of criticism of that field. I mean, obviously, this could have happened on any field. By the way, a field turf. You know, it doesn't have... That's what I thought. I just thought that, I noticed, you know, that, but I thought, well, that's just something that could have happened anywhere.

Of course it could have. But, you know, there has been bad publicity about the stadium, about the field conditions. You know, and none of that had anything to do with this. But, you know, RG3's, you know, borderline career threatening. I think there was a lot of other things, you know, threatening his career at that point, but was on a terrible field in January against the Seahawks. But what I was going to say, what I was working towards was, imagine, thank God he's alive. Thank God he's got his leg. I think the most, for me, as a father, you're a father as well, to see him at the end of that documentary moving around pretty well with his very young kids. And all of us, you know, who have kids have been out on a field trying to dodge him and they're trying to. to chase you and he's juke in him a little bit.

And just to see that was just really, I mean, you know, it didn't make me think of Alex Smith as a Redskins icon, but it really was such a happy moment to see that he got back to that point, given that we had just seen the story and what he had to go through to get back to that point, which is why he should never play again. And Redskins fans want to embrace that happy moment. Yeah. Because they can count their happy moments. on one hand with three fingers.

We understand that. But that's the reason. That's the reason. I know that. Why they are so embracing it. Okay. But you know what? Kansas City fans are embracing this too.

49er fans and Utah football fans. I saw so many tweets from so many people in those markets, immediate people that knew him, that were also incredibly inspired. But they have more of a way to claim. to him. That's right. And the redskins have nine games. That's true. That is true. What I was going to say, though, is what if he had passed away? What if he had lost a leg? I mean, it would have been one of those situations where, you know, we know all of the self-inflicted damage, but that would have been just a

karma, you know, the aura of not just, it would have been, they've had, that would have been the second player that had a tragic circumstance in 12 years. Or at that point, it would have been 11 years. I mean, what would have been a horrible, horrible. Horrible. Oh, horrible. And to me, God, thank God. And, you know, I don't know if he's going to be a part of this organization.

I've talked to a lot of people, and JP was on with me yesterday. He thinks that if Alex wants a place in this organization, it's there for him. You know, that would be nice. I want Ron Rivera to make that decision, especially if it's a football position, which I would think it would be. But I don't know where he'll end up. Here's where he's not going to end up.

Contrary to popular opinion after our last podcast, when I speculated about this, he's not going to be Dan Snyder's imaginary friend or new drinking partner. That's not who Alex Smith is going to be. He doesn't have enough weasel in him in order to be Snyder's drinking buddy and imaginary friend. He's too good a human being.

I think, I hope you're right. I think you're right. I think you're right, Tommy. Like, it's so funny that you said that because I sort of rolled my eyes last year wondering what was up. Because, look, for those of you out there, I mean, think what you want to think. everybody's got their own perspective. We've heard a lot of the horror stories, and we've heard a lot of the relationship stories. I'm with you. Alex Smith doesn't need to hang out

and be Dan Snyder's running buddy. That's not who he is. He's better than that. He's much smarter than that, better than that. Now, could Alex Smith be a guy that wants Dan Snyder to get involved in businesses that he might be involved in from an investment standpoint, you know, whatever, fine, but not to be hanging out 24-7 going over to his house, eating popcorn, watching movies, going to every game with him.

Like, I agree with you. That just doesn't seem to be, you know, I mean, I think he did it this past year because he was glad to be able to go to the games, and he couldn't stand on the sideline during the games. Right. So I hope you're right about that. I think you're right about that. So do I. I want to get to... That job is still open.

Yeah. I mean, I know of at least three or four choices that he has. But I also, you know, this is actually, okay, I've got to be careful here. I've got to be a little bit careful here. I think for now, I really think Ron Rivera is in charge. I really do. And you believe, and I think justifiably so, that whomever that right-hand man running buddy would become,

should be a concern to Ron Rivera, you know, should be. And I think Ron Rivera knows that to a certain degree. So I don't know if we'll actually see that necessarily in the first year here. Unless it's Alex Smith, unless Alex Smith, because he's still on the roster, you know, we see him with Dan at every turn. But I don't know that you'll see that. I wanted to go back to something that involves Alex Smith because I talked about something on the podcast yesterday that several people said was the first. time I've talked about it, which I don't think is true. But, you know, I get confused now. I don't even know what day it is. But I talked about that Jay Gruden and Alex Smith, you know, Alex Smith and

J.P. Finley was on with me when we were talking about this. And J.P. said, I don't think that, you know, people, the fans really understand that some of these Bruce Allen deals were Bruce Allen deals. And we, you and I understand that. And a lot of people in the media do. And we've tried. And we've tried to communicate that, the Josh Norman thing, the Alex Smith trade, was a Bruce Allen trade. There was not a whole lot of consensus building. This was a trade that he made, and it was not a good fit for Jay Gruden. Jay Gruden would have moved forward happily with Colt McCoy as the quarterback. But what I talked about yesterday, and some of you, I had at least three people tweet me and say, I haven't heard you tell the stories about, first of all,

Kirk Cousins and Jay Gruden MFing each other. Well, that happened at the end of 2017. It was either that Denver, Arizona game late in the year at FedEx Field, and I had heard from a very good source, not Cooley, that they really, at the end of that year, sort of really had a problem with each other. And in a game in which Jay was trying to communicate during those 15 seconds on the headset,

that they ended up just M-Fing each other on the headset. And, you know, everybody knew internally at that point it was done. Now, my point, and I've made this before about Jay Gruden, Jay Gruden, I don't know that Aaron Rogers would please him, you know, because quarterbacks, he played the position, he has a great belief in the way he wants things done, and it's like nothing will ever satisfy him except for his boy, Colt, But I think he realizes Colts limitations too. But anyway, I talked about how in the 2018 season before the Alex Smith injury,

I knew this and a lot of other people knew this, I'm pretty sure I have talked about this before. But Jay was very frustrated with Alex Smith. Now, it's the early part of their relationship. You know, they've only played eight games together. You know, there's the possibility that it's going to be better. But I think Jay really didn't adapt to what Alex Smith did well necessarily. I mean, we saw some RPO, but we didn't see enough quick game. We didn't see enough West Coast.

We didn't see enough getting them on the move. And I talked about that during the season. The game that sticks out to me is the Colt game, week two, when the Colts are playing soft zones start to finish. And the Redskins can't pitch and catch like they would have the previous years. You know, they were great at when teams were in soft zone, Kirk just getting it out quickly to somebody on a six-yard hitch and boom, you know, it was eight yards, the next one was four yards, moved the chains.

Jay never adapted his offense to Alex Smith. I put that on Jay. But he was very frustrated, you know, in practices and in games because he didn't feel like Alex Smith was really getting it. I also think that he didn't adapt to Alex Smith's strengths. But yeah, that was going on. When Colt McCoy came in, and JP and I were talking about this Tommy yesterday, certainly no one was happy to see Alex Smith get hurt the way he got hurt.

Of course, nobody was rooting for that. But I remember saying at the time, Jay Gruden, if you injected truth serum into Jay Gruden right now, he would tell you with Colt McCoy, the offenses on the verge of taking off. And I think he really was confident in Colt. and Colt had a short work week to prepare for the Cowboys on Thanksgiving Day, which happened to have been the day that Alex Smith really started to get sick in the hospital. And then, if you recall, Jay was really, really bullish about the amount of time that Colt had to prepare for the Eagles Monday night game.

Yes. Yes, absolutely. You know, all this does is just one more illustration as to how, and I'm, I'm sure there's other franchises like this if we break them all down. But, like, just in the past five years or six years, how screwed up the quarterback position has been with this team? Yeah. I mean, to the point where the best quarterback they had, they hated. I mean, the front office hated them, you know, and Kirk Cousins.

The best quarterback that they had, they did everything to drive away. I mean, it started because he wasn't RG3. That's what started it. He was doomed because he wasn't RG3. But, I mean, you talk about that, you talk about, you know, the scenario you just went through. I mean, they traded for, they made this big trade, gave up, you know, some talent, paid a lot of money to Alex Smith. And the coach was probably happier when Cole McCoy was in there running the offense. I mean, that really shows you.

I mean, Ron Smith, in some ways, has got an easy road ahead of him because you would have to work pretty, Ron Rivera, you would have to work pretty hard to be as dysfunctional as the Redskins have been in the past, particularly in the last five years or so. Well, Jay Gruden. You'd have to make a real effort to be this bad of an organization. Jay Gruden told us at the end of 2018 that they had to get on the same page. They weren't on the same page.

And I think, you know, one of the things we've seen here in this offseason, it's encouraging to me that everybody seems to be on the same page. Why? Because there's no Bruce Allen in the organization. You know, there's no lone ranger that essentially is off doing his own thing. Go ahead. Were you going to say something? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So that leads me to this, and I talked a little bit about it, I'm pretty sure, yesterday.

But I want to get to it here in a moment. And that is some of the details that were revealed by Albert Breer on the Trent Williams trade. Let me first tell you, though, about mybooky.orgie.a,g. Whether you're down on your luck or just down because you're stuck, find relief with MyBooky where there's never a quarantine on fun. Life Without Sports is finally nearing an end this week with the UFC putting on its first show in nearly two months, and you can bet the house that everyone will be watching. Over under submissions, COD decisions, and every other type of bet that you can possibly ask for. Start off small or swing for the fences by taking advantage of this stacked card to win some quick cash at MyBooky. And if the return of a good old-fashioned blood sport doesn't get your attention alone, have some fun, the house with a wager that you simply can't lose, Tommy. You heard that right. A sports bet that you

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So you're basically getting free money to play with just for supporting the show. With my bookie, you bet you win. And most importantly, when you win, you get paid. And that's where I'll just say and add. I have looked at a lot of these offshore books, a lot of these internet books. This is one you can rely on if you've been looking for something like this. They also have a ton of futures bets. You're into the NFL.

You want to bet futures. You know, bet the Redskins over under total right now. You know, bet where Cam Newton ends up. Those kinds of things are available at My Booky. But this Saturday, you get a risk-free bet up to $49, right? So you can just roll $49 out on anything and you're not going to lose it through my bookie.orgie.orgie. So there were a couple of things from this Albert Breer story that if I didn't mention yesterday in more detail, I wanted to mention them with you today.

So here is essentially the key portions of that story. I'll read them. Two relationships became critical in trying to get a deal done between the 49ers and the Redskins for Trent Williams. One of those relationships for John Lynch, the general manager in San Francisco, was with Joe Staley. Joe Staley had informed the 49ers that he was going to retire. The other relationship that became critical for Lynch was Ron Rivera.

In the case of Staley, they wanted Staley to keep his plans quiet during the first and second days of the draft to help the Niners keep sort of chatter on their newly urgent need at left tackle down to a minimum. Breer writes that in the case of Rivera and the trust in Rivera in that relationship in Rivera, trust between Lynch and Rivera would prove integral. And that really started with Lynch calling Rivera, telling him he'd like to get a deal done for Trent Williams before the draft, but Rivera having to come back to John Lynch with bad news before round one. They had agreed on the parameters of a trade, but Ron got back to Lynch right before the draft started and said, there's too much interest, John. We're not going to get this done prior to the draft. So Lynch says, quote, that was tough. We were taking on a lot of risk not knowing if we had Trent

Williams because we liked some of the tackles in the draft too. Add to this, Breer writes, there were plenty of moving parts in the Williams deal, not the least of which were the fractured relationships between Washington owner Dan Snyder and both Williams and Kyle Shanahan. Long story short, everyone involved was acutely aware that the team doing a lot of a deal would, in essence, be Snyder giving both Shanahan and Williams what they wanted, which made things inherently fragile. That's where trust would play a role. It's very frustrating on day one of the draft, Lynch said.

We tried to finish the trade before the draft, and other teams entered the fray. And then it's, come on, Ron, we can't go into this draft not knowing whether we have them or not. But Ron said to me, Ron, I'm sorry, Ron. to me, meaning John Lynch, just has tremendous integrity. I've known them for a long time, so I knew that it was going to be for the right reasons if we didn't get them, sort of implying there a trust. So then they get to the end of the first round and prior to Friday. The Niners in that first round traded back a spot with Tampa so that they wanted Javon Kinlaw, but they passed on Tristan

Wirth's, the offensive lineman from Iowa, which now made the trade for Williams even more imperative. Day two was kind of a long day, Lynch said. They had offered the Redskins a fifth this year, a third next year. We didn't change the offer in part because we couldn't change it. The fifth was the highest 2020 pick we had. In the three, for next year, Lynch basically implied that they believed that that was the best deal offered to the Redskins. They thought, he said, he believed it nudged them above the field for Williams. All of that sounded good, but didn't make the waiting any easier, Breer writes, with the knowledge that they didn't have staley and might not get Williams. It was the best we could do, really, Lynch said, I think at that point, that's what delayed us. The other teams, I can't speak for

them, but some other teams said, hey, we might get some picks here, which would enable us to do something with Washington. And then the Redskins probably rightly so, exercised some patience to try to get the best thing they could for their organization. And ultimately, our offer was. And then he said, Rivera called them on Saturday morning, paying off the trust that Lynch and company had shown in him to keep his word to them and Williams would be a nineer. So there were two things in particular that came out of this to me that I thought were, one was sort of validation for what I thought and what I've talked about for a while. And the other one was confirmation about something.

The validation is Tommy that Snyder, Snyder doesn't like Trent Williams either. this was always more than just Trent Williams versus Bruce Allen. So for all those people out there that think that Trent Williams got Bruce Allen fired, it's not true. Okay, Bruce Allen got Bruce Allen fired. The empty seats, the hashtag fire Bruce Allen, all of it sort of caught up with him. Trent Williams don't give him credit for getting Bruce Allen fired because others in management were really, really mad, upset. they felt betrayed. And Dan Snyder was one of them.

And by the way, just the thought of Trent Williams and Kyle Shanahan reuniting Tommy and potentially having a great team in winning the Super Bowl probably makes him physically ill. The other thing to me, which is confirmation, is that what we got here is we got confirmation from Breer that it is Ron running the show. He's the one talking to Lynch. he's the general manager in the organization. He's the one that's making the trade and handling the communication between the teams. Now, I don't know that that's a major surprise to me, but it's just confirmation about something that some people have wondered, and that is, well, who's making the trades?

Is it Kyle? Is it Ron? Is it Rob Rogers? You know, who's doing it? Well, the reason this deal got done is because Lynch trusted Rivera and Rivera's integrity. and that's where the communication was. Ron right now is your general manager. I mean, Kyle Smith is the VP of player personnel, and they work together very closely, and maybe he'll get the GM title. I don't know. Although it sort of sounded to me like last week when I had Rivera on the show that it wouldn't necessarily happen, but I'm not going to predict that. But those were the two takeaways from that that I had. What did you have? Well, the confirmation part of it is really key here. You're right. I think people, you know, believed because it's only been for four months that Ron Rivera was in charge,

but we didn't really know for sure who was actually calling the shots on all the personnel deals. I mean, because there is this idea that Kyle Smith is their top personnel guy in the organization, and what does that mean in terms of, the ability to make deals. So you're right, there was confirmation in this. I mean, John Lynch took a big risk, knowing the volatility of this organization. Even if you would believe that, well, Revere has only been here four months. Nobody's going to do anything stupid.

It's still a risky proposition, given, I mean, the history of this organization. Look, it worked out. It worked out for both teams. I know the 49ers got the better end of the deal, but I felt like the Redskins needed to get out of the Trent Williams business. And you're right. The confirmation that Ron Williams is Ron Rivera is calling the shots certainly comes out of the storyline behind that trade.

Yeah, I think it does. All right. So three more things to get to. Actually, four things. Because we haven't read the Simba tweet yet. But somebody pointed me in the direction of the Simba tweet. D.H. underscore Simba 7. That's D.H. underscore Simba 7. That's Dwayne Haskins on Twitter.

And he tweeted out just about an hour or so ago. Once you cross me, you lost me. No more fake love. Hashtag. He's shushing people. I don't know what it means, man. I don't know who pissed him off. I don't know who crossed him. You know, I don't know if it's a personal thing in his life.

What's it you? If it's a media thing. No, I don't think it was me. Maybe it was me. It could have been you. It could have been somebody else. You know, it's funny because Grant Paulson tweeted out right after the documentary, which I think is kind of a ridiculous idea,

but other people have done it too, that it would be great to have Alex Smith take a, like a ceremonial snack. That's what I said in a preseason game. I said that last week. He said like, you know, during the victory formation at the end of a game. Yeah. And I retweet, I retweeted it with the comment that's saying, you know, he could do it while Dwayne's taking the television. Well, when did you do that?

Was it yesterday or last night? That minutes after the documentary. Oh, okay. All this happened within minutes after the E60 documentary ended. So maybe word got back to him. Maybe he's upset with me. Yeah, I mean, I'm reading some of the responses. By the way, it's funny that you automatically assumed that it was a media member.

And if that's true, man, if I'm Sean Springs or a mentor to him, I'm like, Dwayne, whatever you do, do not listen to any. anybody in the media. Don't listen to fans or you'll be sitting with them, all right, the old saying. But, you know, I saw this tweet right before we started today. Somebody sent it to me, and I wanted to see what the responses were to it. Again, I don't know. I don't even know what it means. It could be a personal thing towards somebody that just crossed him in his life. I don't know. It could be a business thing for all I know. But man, you know, the reactions are very mixed. You know, it's like, young fella, worry about becoming a great quarterback. Anything else should be trivial to me, to you. Hold on, I'll get to him. You're worse. You know, but it's obvious,

it's obvious that he doesn't, he doesn't believe that. You're worse than RG3 on this app. Somebody said, get, you know, GTFOH, you know, a lot of people supporting them. There's several of them. There was one that made me... Hold on, I'll find it. He gets a lot of responses to these things. But he's not taking that advice. No.

Because he keeps doing it. Oh, here's one. Just stop, man. I've seen this story before. Don't worry about the noise. People that criticize only envy who you are. Why give them the satisfaction of responding? Somebody else tweeted,

the more you tweet, the more I think the skins made the wrong decision. Thin-skinned franchise quarterback. Oh, the guy that tweeted out, the more you tweet, the more I think the skins made the wrong decision. I guess got blocked by Dwayne, and he said blocked. Thin-skinned franchise quarterback. Great.

You know, there's nothing you can tell somebody this age right now about social media and the way older people with a ton of life experience, read into sort of the psychology of somebody who's always on there and responding to, you know, sensitive criticism. You can't tell him anything. Bottom line is, and I'm stuck on this, and it may do me in on Dwayne Haskins. I think he's good. I think he's so much better than I thought he was going to be, and I want him to start 16 games, and I think he's going to prove himself. And Tommy, one of the things about him, you know, that I sort of dial in on this when it comes to sports guys.

He's a badass competitive guy. That's what's impressive to me about him, and that's why I think on the field he's going to rise above a lot of this other stuff. It doesn't mean that this stuff won't be limiting at some point, but I think he's going to be good, so I'm not going to get hung up on this, but I do recognize it as, you know, a concern. I mean, Urban Meyer, his. college coach said this is a concern him on social media.

Well, again, my issues with him are all off the field, all tied to his relationship with the owner and the dysfunction that that could create and the empowerment feeling that that could create for a young man whose good friends with one of the richest guys that he's probably ever met. But, you know, I mean, and, you know, this whole competitive thing that you keep talking about, how he's so competitive, why did he come off the field when he could, with the ankle then? In the Green Bay game or the Giant game? Whichever game where he had a devastating ankle injury. Yeah, I think the Giant game was the game that basically didn't he say that Dan, you know,

was there to tell me not to. go back in. No, no, no. It's not the giant game. It's not the giant game. The Green Bay game, yeah. Yeah. Where's this competitive? I didn't, I just, I've seen it in the clutch moments, the few that he's had. Okay. Okay. So he has moments. He's got moments. He does have moments. You have moments. I appreciate that.

I think that was a compliment. Circassum. All right, you ready for my mock draft before we talk a little bit about Don Chula? Your mock schedule. My mock schedule. Excuse me? My mock schedule? You realize, by the way, everything at this point is a mock schedule.

Yes, it is. Including the one that comes out for real on Thursday night. All right. So. Yes, everything is. So basically, and some of you know this and many of you don't, I've been basically mocking the schedule process with my own red-skinned. mock schedule for many years now. It's dumb. It's stupid, but it's, you know, I don't do mock drafts. I'm not

an expert on the draft. I do really get into the NFL schedule and I always have. For me, as a Redskins fan, you know, it's always been the time of year where you're like, all right, when are they going to play Dallas? Where are the two games with the Cowboys? How many times are they going to be on national television, et cetera, et cetera. But that was back when I really cared. Now I just like doing the mock schedule. The mock schedule, by the way, I did not take into consideration really any of the contingencies that the NFL may be considering. There are too many to try to figure out. So I just went with the basic, like the schedule is going to be a normal schedule where the season's going to start on Sunday, September 13th for them.

And on Sunday, January 3rd, they're going to play 16 games. Most of you understand this. The teams that they're playing have already been determined. The NFC East is playing the AFC North this year, the four teams from the North, the Ravens, the Bengals, the Browns, and the Steelers. They are also the NFC East teams playing the NFC West this year, San Francisco, Arizona, Seattle, and the Rams. For those of you that don't know this, NFL schedules, there are two games.

That's it that are different among the teams in each team. division. The NFC East teams, the Cowboys Eagles, Giants, and Redskins have 16 games, and 14 of them are the exact same. They play each other twice. They play in this particular season, the AFC North, and the NFC West. And then there are two games that are different, and those two games are determined by where you finished in the standings the previous year, and you play the same team that finished in the same spot in the other two NFC. divisions. And so the two games that are different for the Redskins this year from Dallas, Philly, and the Giants are they play the Panthers, who were the last place team in the NFC South,

and the team that was the last place team in the NFC North, the Detroit Lions. They play the Lions on the road, the Panthers at home. All right, so here it is. My 2020 Redskins mock schedule. I have a very sort of intriguing to the two markets anyway, not so much to the league. home opener against the Carolina Panthers on Sunday, September 13th at FedEx Field at 1 o'clock. The Redskins have played two straight road openers last year in Philly the year before that in Arizona. So I think it's sort of time for them to play a home opener at FedEx. And I've got the Panthers, Tommy, early in the year. Here is the one contingency I sort of built into the mock schedule,

and that is less travel early in the year when maybe we still have some issues. issues and, you know, basically, for the most part, overnight trips. You know, their trips to the West Coast are going to wait until November because they have two of them this year. All right. So, Caroline is the home opener, 1 o'clock FedEx September 13th. Week two at Cleveland, 1 o'clock on September 20th. Week three is their first of two national television games.

They only had two last year. They played Minnesota on a Thursday night. Every single team plays a Thursday game, all right, and every single team plays a Monday night game. You have to play, I believe the rules are, a minimum of two national television games. The Redskins only had two last year because they weren't going to be good, and I only think they're going to have two this year because they're not supposed to be very good. So week three, I've got them at the Giants on a Monday night in the Meadowlands. Week four, the Ravens at home.

week five, the Cowboys at Home on a Thursday night. So they're getting their two national television games the minimum out of the way in the first five weeks of this season. And then they have their... Okay, so let me just stop. Yeah, stop me whenever you want. This was five games you've done, right? Yep. Okay, so they're one and four as of this point.

Okay, well, we can do that afterwards if you want to. Okay. So then their buy week comes in week six. Last year it was right in the middle of the season. I think they played the Vikings, and then after that they had the buy after the Thursday night game. So actually, I forget if that's right or not. Was there buy week right after the Viking game last year?

I know you don't care. I don't recall. I have to look it up. It actually was. It looks like I had that right. And so this year, I mean, this completely coincident, I've got their bye week after their Thursday night game too. So I've got in week five, them playing Dallas at home on a Thursday night and then a bye week.

Then they're at Pittsburgh on October 25th, 1 o'clock game. At San Francisco on November 1st, 425 Eastern, Philadelphia at home on November 8th. That's the first half of the season. Carolina at home, at Cleveland, at the Giants on a Monday night, Baltimore, at home, Dallas at home on a Thursday night, buy week at Pittsburgh, at San Francisco, Philly at home. Here is the second half of the mock schedule. You know this, that every year I get people that are saying, damn, I can't go to the Dallas game, you know, in November. I've got a wedding that weekend, and I'm like, no, no, no, it's not real. Dopes. I get that every single

year when I put it out on Twitter or when we do it here. The second half of the schedule, November 15th at home against the Seahawks 1 o'clock, West Coast team coming east for a one o'clock kick. Maybe they got a chance against Russell Wilson and company. Then on November 22nd at Arizona, 405, the Rams at home on November 29th. I saw a lot of people thinking that the Redskins are going to be involved in a Thanksgiving Day game? Why? They played, remember, three straight years on Thanksgiving, if you recall. It was Dallas, the Giants at home on a Thanksgiving night game, and then it was Dallas again, right? It was 2016. Col McCoy played in the last one. Yeah, 2016 in Dallas on Thanksgiving, 2017 at home against the Giants, and 2018 was the four days after Alex Smith's injury, which, you know,

one of the things they didn't point out in that documentary is, you know, when he started to get really sick, it was Thanksgiving Day. And the Redskins were playing in Dallas. Anyway, so I don't think they're playing on Thanksgiving Day. Dallas, the Redskins play at Detroit, too, this year. So they could actually play at Detroit on Thanksgiving, but I don't see that happening. I've got them Thanksgiving weekend at home against the Rams.

And then December starts with a road game at Detroit, a road game on December 13th at Philadelphia, and then they're home against the Bengals on December 20. at Dallas on December 27th, and they closed the season against the Giants at home on January 3rd. They played the Cowboys last year, the Eagles, the two previous years. 2016 was the last time they had the Giants in a season finale, and I sort of like the possibility of the Giants being their closing game this year. So there you go. That's the Redskins mock schedule. Caroline at home at Cleveland, at Giants on a Monday night, Baltimore at home, Dallas at home and a Thursday night, buy week, at Pittsburgh, at San Francisco, Philly at home, Seattle at home, at Arizona, the Rams at home. We're into December now at Detroit, at Philly, Sincy at home at Dallas, and then the Giants. There you go. My 2020,

Redskins mock schedule. I tweeted it out earlier today at Kevin Sheen, D.C. You can see it in its entirety there if you forgot it or you weren't writing anything down. What's the most you've ever gotten right? Well, you know what? Last year, I think last year was the best. I think last year was the best I've ever done with it. And I can't remember exactly what I got right off of the schedule last year, but I think I had like two exactly right and two like the right weekend. But like the, I think I had Minnesota on the correct weekend, but it turned out to be a Thursday night game instead of a Sunday game. I think last year may have been my best year. Most years I don't get any right. Some years I get one right. I've had a couple of years where

I've gotten two right. The most impressive, I remember people, Cooley in particular, was blown away in 2018 when I predicted that they would play Tennessee on December 22nd on a Saturday. And I got that one. I nailed it. Like I had the start time of the game, the day of the week, the actual, you know, week 16, I had that exactly right. So I don't know. My expectation, as you know, with this thing is very low. If I get one right, I consider it to be very good, and if I get too right, I consider it to be a rousing success. So that is a sixth-win schedule. I don't know what it is. It's a tough schedule on paper.

They're going to have a strong December. I can tell you right now, based on last year's records, I think the Redskins have the second toughest schedule in the NFL. Somebody put that out actually last night or earlier today, and somebody sent it to me. Here it is. Mike, is it Mike Clay? Is that the dude? Mike Clay, who works for the NFL network, I think.

In ranking the schedule, the strength of schedule based on, you know, the 2019 results, the Redskins have the second toughest, third toughest schedule, excuse me. Third toughest schedule. And the reason for that is that the NFC East is playing the AFC North, which you could easily argue on paper is the best division in the AFC with the Ravens, the Steelers, the Browns, you know, a lot of people like that team, and then the Bengals are, you know, obviously bring up the rear. I guess you could say the AFC South might be a little bit more competitive,

but it's debatable. And then in the NFC, they get the NFC West, which is probably the best division in the NFC. You could say the South or the North that's close, but the 49er Seahawks Rampers, and the Cardinals are really on the rise here. Absolutely. Yeah. And the Cardinals are really going to be tough to deal with, I think. Yeah, and then the other two games, Carolina shouldn't be very, you know, they're not going to be good.

They're like the Redskins. They're not going to be a playoff contender this year more likely than not. But the other last place they team they played is the Lions, but they, the Lions were in last place because Matt Stafford got hurt, you know, and didn't play much of the year. He was actually in the midst of one of his best seasons when he got hurt. I wanted to mention real quickly before we move on, and I want to get your thoughts on Don Shula. You know, when the NFL schedule comes out on Thursday night, the teams that are marquee teams right now, the Chiefs, the Ravens, the Niners, and Tommy the Buccaneers, they have great schedules.

There are so many heavyweight matchups on paper that you will see on Thursday night with a lot of these games, you know, likely being fought over between the networks. But, you know, take the defending champion chiefs as an example. You know, they have games. They play at Baltimore. They play at Tampa. Okay, so you got a Brady Mahomes matchup. They play at New Orleans in the Superdome. They play at Buffalo. Buffalo is the favorite to win the AFC.

East. They also have home games against the Patriots, the Texans, and the Falcons. I didn't even mention their division. I think the Patriots are an intriguing team. I don't think they're going to be a good team, but I think they're an intriguing team. And then you get the Ravens. You know, the Ravens, because they're playing the NFC East, no matter what you think about the NFC East, their teams draw from a television standpoint. And Dallas and Philly, you know, the expectations are playoffs. And so the Ravens this year, they have, where is it here? They have, listen to some of the games they have. They play at Arrowhead. They play at Dallas. They play the Eagles at home. They play the Texans at home. And then, you know, the Titans at home, I'm sorry, they play the Redskins away.

They play the Eagles away and the Texans away. They play the Cowboys at home, my fault. The Cowboys chiefs and Titans at home, the team that beat them in the playoffs. That's a hell of a schedule. But then the one that you really got to see is Brady's first year in Tampa. Listen to the home games the Buccaneers have this year. Their own division, which includes the Saints and the Falcons. The Saints, two games against the Saints are huge games. They have the Packers at home. That's my prediction, by the way, for the Sunday night NBC opener on opening Sunday. is Buccaneers Packers, Brady against Rogers in the Sunday night game. They play the Chiefs at home. They play the Rams at home. They play the Vikings at home.

They play the Chargers who, you know, have a chance to be decent, although it's not a Philip Rivers matchup. But that's an unbelievable home schedule for the Buccaneers in Brady's first year. I think the Chiefs, by the way, are, you know, they're going to open the season that Thursday night, September 10, if a season starts then. At Arrowhead is the defending champs. Their home opponents are the Broncos, Raiders, Chargers, and the division. They also have the Patriots, Jets, Falcons, Panthers, and Texans. Their better games are on the road against the Ravens, Buccaneers, and Saints in particular. But I'm guessing the Patriots. I'm guessing the Patriots, because I think the Patriots are still very intriguing. People are going to want to see that first Patriot game with, you know, perhaps Jarrett St.

at starting quarterback. Oh, I agree. I mean, Belichick is still going to be a very intriguing person going into the season, and I think as the season goes on, he will be. The Belichick and Brady race as to who comes out on top will be one of the big storylines now that they're finally separated. There are some big, big, you know, TV matchups that I guarantee you is making this schedule a little bit difficult to put together, not to mention all of the uncertainty and the

contingency planning, but like the 49ers, the defending NFC champions, they play the Packers at home, so a rematch of the NFC championship game. They play the Cowboys on the road. Forty-Niners Cowboys is a big matchup, trust me, for TV execs. They play the Patriots. They play the Saints. That may have been the best regular season game of the year, the 48-46 game in the Superdome. They play the Eagles. They play Buffalo. Buffalo is going to get some attention this year. That could be a good football team this year. So there are a lot of really, when we see the schedule Thursday night, look, most people don't give a shit. That's fine. But right now, there's nothing to watch. So I will be watching that schedule show and then praying that we actually get to see every

game when it's scheduled as it appears on Thursday night. That's what I'm I'm hoping for. You better light a lot of candles. Yeah, probably. All right. Real quick mention to all of you that if you haven't reviewed or rated the podcast and you have an opportunity to do that on your

podcast platform, do it. It really helps us. Appreciate that. Also, 6 to 9am, Team 980. You can listen to the radio show in your home if you've got Google Home or Alexa. You can listen on the Team 980 app too. It's an easy app. it. You can listen to everybody's show, Zab's show, my show, Doc show with Galdi, Brian's show with

Scott Lynn, whenever you want any of the interviews. I had David Falk on the show today. He was actually, I mean, he's always a great storyteller. He actually revealed a couple of things that I hadn't heard before. He said Rinesdorf really did want fill back for the 1998-99 season after that last title, but couldn't convince him to do so as long as Jerry Kraus was there. And I well, why didn't he get rid of Kraus? And he said, Kraus was basically, you know, like, you know, family and a running buddy for him. It's almost the, like, it reminded me of what Bruce Allen's been to Dan Snyder here the last few years without all of the championships to go with it.

Shula passed. If he, Rinesdorf, though, I know Rinesdorf. Oh, you do? Yeah, he's loyal to a fault. Yes. He's very loyal. Falking, yeah, implied that. He takes care of a lot of old white socks players,

finds jobs for them in the organization, things like that. He's a very loyal guy. So I could see how he'd be, he would not just cut Jerry Krause. It goes against his nature. Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly what David Fawkes said this morning for all intents and purposes. All right, I wanted to talk about Don Short. Shula. I spent 15 minutes yesterday talking about them. When you and I have had these conversations

over the years, the conversations that, by the way, you and I both love to have, you know, about not today's players in coaches, but, you know, the coaches over a long period of time. And we've had this debate over coaches before. Where does Shula rank for you? Boy, this is so hard. I mean, this argument about greatest coaches is so hard. It's so hard because it seems insane sometimes. If you're making a list of the top three, the guys you would leave out seem insane. I know. Or if you're making a list of the top five.

I mean, you can't leave out Lombardi. You can't leave out Paul Brown. You can't leave out Belichick. I don't think you can leave out Gibbs. You can't leave out Wall. And then the winning is coach of all time. Don Shula? You can't leave him out.

George Hallis won six NFL championships. He founded the league. Landry, Noel. He's going to leave him out. Yeah, I mean, it's so hard because if you say top five and you look at who you leave out, I think sure it's got to be in the top five. But God help me through the coaches I'm leaving out. I mean, a guy who basically built the Miami Dolphins.

You know, the Miami Dolphins, he went to the Dolphins. still in the early days of the merger, 1970. You know, so that he was building the team almost from scratch there and built them to be the standard of winning for decades. I mean, the dolphins were always a winning franchise. You know, they may not have been the franchise that went far in a playoff at some point. But, I mean, they were always a winning organization. He's one of the greatest coaches in history.

And, you know, I'm writing a column for the Marr's Washington Times about how if he had, people forget, I mean, people think the world started when they were born. People forget he was the coach of the Baltimore Colts. You know, the coach who wound up losing to the jet in the Super Bowl, Super Bowl 3. He was a great coach in Baltimore. Yeah. You know, I had the pleasure of. doing the book with the late John Mackey's book, and he raved about Shula and what a great coach he was and how good he was dealing with players. And the possibility is if Shula didn't

leave Baltimore, the Colts might not have left Baltimore. Tom, why did he leave Baltimore for Miami? Well, he had, I mean, he had a falling out with Cowell Rosenblum. It was Super Bowl prey. It was the embarrassment of losing that. And the grief that Carol Rosenblum took from other NFL executives and other NFL people, I sure would tell you used to tell this joke that he said Rosenblum used to get calls about losing Super Bowl free and he'd hand the phone to me. You know? So it really was a falling out that Rosenblum couldn't stand.

He reminded him of what happened. I mean, it was the worst embarrassment. in the NFL losing that game to the Jets. And that's why he left. Well, it was an embarrassment to the NFL, not just to the Colts, right? Yes, yeah, but the Colts were the first ones to lose to the AFL upstart, even though the merger had already been taken place by that. Well, the merger had been voted on.

The merger didn't start until 70. It didn't start until 70. Yeah. But, so that was it. It was losing to the jet. The pain was too much to go on. But if they had gotten past that, Shua was a great enough coach to have built an organization

that could have been good in Baltimore for years. And it's conceivable that he could have stayed in Baltimore instead of moving. The wild car would have been if Rosenblum still, still sells to switch his teams with Ursay. It's still a weird thing. Don't you think for people in this day and age to understand that the Colts and Rams, the two owners, Carol Rosenblum and Bob Ursay, switched franchises.

Rosenblum took over the Rams and Erse took over the Colts. They were the owners of the other franchises. Ursay of the Rams and Rosenblum of the Colts, and they just switched. Why did they do that? You know, I'd have to go back and research it to refresh my memory. Ersei, I think, had just bought the Rams. He didn't own them for any stretch of time. Got it.

And, you know, so, I mean, I think that, I mean, there was books written about this whole thing. And, you know, Rosenblum died under mysterious circumstances. he drowned right outside of his house off the Florida coast, east coast. And people have always questioned why he drowned. He was a big time better. He was a gambler, Rosenblum was, big time. But, I mean, I sure was a great coach, one of the five greatest of all time. And he was a great coach as a young guy in Baltimore who just happened to lose the game that he couldn't afford

to lose. Yeah. By the way, Georgia Frontiery was married to Rosenblum, right? And that's how... Yes. Yeah, so she got the franchise from him upon his death. Yeah. And then she moved him to St. Louis.

Right. Exactly. So, yeah, I mean, first of all, you said something. I mean, Shula's... Maybe this is an exaggeration. You went to school there. You lived in South Florida for a while. South Florida, before the dolphins, there's no sports there, right?

I mean, other than Highline and dog racing. So, I mean, the dolphins of the 70s, this is my first era. Like, I just love the NFL in the 70s. And I mentioned yesterday, like, it was in the AFC, it was the Dolphins, Steelers, and Raiders. And in the NFC, it was the Cowboys, Vikings, and Rams with the Redskins mixed in there during the George Allen. years. But the dolphins were a juggernaut. They were, you know, they were a marquee brand in all of sports, certainly in the NFL. But there was nothing before them there, right? No. He's the godfather of professional sports in South Florida. There was nothing before Shula arrived.

And everything that came after that owes its foundation to what Shula built with the dolphins. I mean, because, you know, we're talking about the only undefeated team in the history of the NFL, but the dolphins were competitive for decades. You know, he went to the Super Bowl with David Woodley. I know. I told that story yesterday. And even the great teams of Marino didn't have a lot around them. By the way, Tommy, and I don't think I mentioned this yesterday. I mentioned it this morning because last night I was watching everything on Shula. He was always my number one, number one. I just always thought the dolphins were so well coached as a football fan. Belichick, you know, I've wavered and waffled a little bit here in recent years because Belichick is so good.

But Shula was always, you know, prior to this incredible last decade of Belichick was always my number one. But, you know, what Redskin fans, longtime Redskins fans may know, but for those that don't, Bobby Beatherd was the architect of those early Dolphins teams. He was the general manager, and I don't even know if he had the GM title, but he was the top personnel guy in those dolphin organizations. And last night after watching one of the NFL network shows on Shulen, it may have been his football life show, I went to YouTube because I've seen this before, but not in a long time.

And Super Bowl 7, as it was broadcast by NBC, the whole game is on YouTube. you know, Kurt Gowdy, Aldi Rigottis on the call in the NBC booth, you know, in the L.A. Coliseum. It's the undefeated dolphins of the AFC, which, by the way, Gowdy talks about, you know, there's still this rivalry, this AFL-NFL rivalry, and the AFL still has an inferiority complex about the NFL teams, even though at that point, remember not only the Jets, but the Chiefs had a Super Bowl over the Vikings as well in Super Bowl 4. And then ironically, the Colts who became an AFL team or an AFC team after the merger, they beat the Cowboys in Super Bowl 5. But anyway, Bobby Bethard is there right there on the sideline standing next to Shula during the game.

And in some of the other highlights last night that I was watching of Shula's teams in the 70s, You see Bethard on the sideline during these games. You know, you don't see GMs on the sidelines today. You know, they're watching, you know, that's not their responsibility. But Bethard was a big part of the Dolphins' success in the 70s. He was there. He got there in 71, I think, and left in 78 to come to Washington. And where he, you know, was the architect, obviously, of many more Super Bowl appearances

and Super Bowl level teams. Think about that. And then he went on to San Diego and got the Chargers to their first Super Bowl ever. But those Dolphins teams of the 70s were talented. You know, on offense, Hall of Famers, greasy, Little, Warfield, Zonka. Defensively, they were always so good, the no-name defense of 72. And they were a dominant team. You know, they went to three straight Super Bowls, lost that first one to the Cowboys, and then beat the Redskins, and then crush the Vikings in Super Bowl 8. And then the following year, you know, they were 12 and 2 again after going 14 and 0, and they lost that famous, you know, Sea of Hands game,

the Stabler throw to Clarence Davis to beat the Dolphins in Oakland in one of the most memorable NFL games of all time. And that stopped the Dolphins' three-year run of AFC championships. But, man, they were so good. But to your point, those teams in the 80s, they had no business, you know, winning as many games as they won? No. Other than Marino. Yeah, absolutely.

He was a great coach. Let me tell you. I'm going to tell you a Don Shua story. Not related to me. It's related to a guy I know who covered the dolphins. I'm not going to reveal his name. Shua was very straight-laced. When he was on a road, he kept the Bible by his bedside, not the one that was in the hotel room,

but one he brought with him. I mean, he wasn't, you know, he didn't proselytized his religion, but he was very straight-laced and do things the right way. He was a Catholic, right? Because I think I read he went to Mass every morning. Yeah. Well, this sports rider was out drunk one night, and there was outside on the street, there was somebody given away one of these three at the time, these free-gurly magazines, these like these newspaper-type magazines that had all kinds of ads and phone numbers of nude women and escort. Are you familiar with these? I've heard of them.

I've heard of them, but what year was this? This was predated all of that stuff, I would have thought. Oh, this was in the 80s, I think. 80s, or, yeah, I think this was in the 80s. And he was hawking along the street, so, you know, this writer gets one. And they're staying in the same hotel as the Dolphins. And, you know, he covered Shula and knew about Shula and the way he was. So he knows where Shula's room is.

So he goes up to Shula's room, I guess like about one in the morning, two in the morning, and it's tearing off pages from this newspaper magazine and sliding him under Shula's door. He's just hammered, and he's trying, he's just shenanigan time. Sliding him under Shula's door. Shula opens the door. Oh, boy. And the guys get caught. But Shua was such a good guy.

after we gave them talking to, that's as far as it went. Wow. That's pretty funny. What city were they in? I don't remember. I don't know. You know, you were going through the list. It really is, you know, like the Mount Rushmore conversation of all-time NFL coaches is like the coaches you have to leave off.

It's ridiculous. Yeah. And you can't leave off Vince Lombardi. Well, you can't. Prophy's named after him. And at this point, you really can't leave off Belichick. No, you can't. And then to me, Shula's on the list just because, you know,

you're the one that is convinced me to do more, you know, reading and watching about Paul Brown. In fact, I think I told you this, you know, early in this, you know, stay at home, quarantine, you know, pandemic period that we've been going through. I watched the football life of Paul Brown. I had not seen it before. God, I mean, what an innovative, what, I mean, the respected Belichick had, by the way, Belichick in that, you know, during that, that NFL 100 thing that he hosted with Rich Eisen and Chris Collinsworth, you know, they would reveal a couple of coaches or maybe one coach per show. he went on and on about two particular coaches,

Paul Brown and Don Shula. And he put out a statement, a personal statement. There was a team statement, but there was a statement from Belichick yesterday on Shula. Belichick grew up, as you know, in Annapolis with his father working there, you know, in that area, in the Baltimore, you know. And he worked as an intern for the Colt. And followed the Colts, excuse me, Shula, you know, when he was, you know, a young kid.

And anyway, a young teenager, I guess at that point. But anyway, I got the sense from that show that Paul Brown and Shula would be sort of one and two in some order on Belichick's list. But anyway, the point is, like, Lombardi, Belichick, Shula, Paul Brown, you know, obviously Walsh, Gibbs. because Gibbs is in the conversation. You know, I think in a national conversation about this, I don't know that Gibbs would make the cut of the, you know,

Mount Rushmore, the top four of all time. But man, he better be in consideration for it because Gibbs accomplished things that none of these other guys accomplished. The Gibbs Shula comparison is a good one for me because I think Gibbs was the consistent, doing more with less. I'm not saying the Redskins weren't talented because they were, but they were never the most talented team in the league. They never were. And nor did Shula ever have the most talented team in the league. I guess you could say that to a certain

degree about Walsh, you know, but you couldn't say that about Noel. You couldn't say that about Landry. You know, Nolan Landry, they had the most talented teams. To go along with great coaching, I'm sure. Lombardi, talented teams. Shula, Gibbs, you know, look, Shula had the quarterback, you know, he had two Hall of Fame quarterbacks in Marino and Greasy. And Walsh obviously had, you know, a Hall of Fame quarterback in Montana. Gibbs didn't have one Hall of Fame quarterback, not one. Listen, the whole, I mean, you're right about people on the national level are not generally going to put Joe Gibbs in that. category until you stop them and say he's the only one of the ones in that era when

Gibbs coach who have taken three different quarterbacks and won three different Super Bowl. That's the game changer. It is a big game changer. It's a massive game changer. I mean, because we just had this argument for years. Who's more responsible, Belichick or Brady? you know, I mean, the coach or the quarterback. We never had that argument with Gibbs.

Never. There was no doubt who was responsible in Washington. No doubt. Now you and I both know that Bobby Beatherd and Richie Pettibone get a lot of the credit as well. But, yeah, I mean, that's the point is, and we always fall on that with Gibbs, but it's because it's so incredibly unique. No one else has that on their resume of the great coach conversation. Nobody does.

Paul Brown had Otto Graham. Lombardi had Bart Starr. You know, Chuck Knoll had Terry Bradshaw. Walsh had Montana. Noll had just the flat-out most talented team year and in year after two. So there are very few, if any, coaches that have won multiple Super Bowls with different quarterbacks. The list of coaches that most people would consider for a Mount Rushmore,

of NFL coaches. Okay, I'm going to give you nine coaches here. You can add to the list if I'm missing somebody. Gibbs, Landry, Walsh, Noel, Paul Brown, Shula, Hallis, Belichick, Lombardi. Okay? Every single coach that was just mentioned, you can help me with Paul Brown, that was Autogram, right? George Hallis, I don't even know how you measure Hallis because of how long he coached for, you know, and being a player coach and all of that. I can't measure Hallis. I don't know anything about the teams that he won with. I know the 63 team, right, that won the NFL title also had, who was on that staff?

George Allen was on that staff, right? Wasn't Alan the defensive guru on that bear staff that won a championship in the 60s? Paul Brown had, Noel had, you know, of all these coaches, Noel Landry, as far as I know, maybe you can say Hallis, or Brown, Noel Landry and Lombardi had year and year out in addition to Hall of Fame quarterbacks, Hall of Fame rosters, you know, the Redskins didn't have Hall of Fame rosters year and year out, Shula didn't have Hall of Fame rosters year and in year out, even though he did have two Hall of Fame quarterbacks. Landry had Hall of Fame quarterbacks and Hall of Fame rosters.

Walsh clearly had a Hall of Fame quarterback. But, you know, Walsh's teams are sort of like the Redskins teams in that. You know, he had a great quarterback, which Gibbs, I think Gibbs had really good quarterbacks, Thysman, obviously, but not a Hall of Fame quarterback, but had really good teams with maybe more players on it that should have been Hall of Fame, but he did have Jerry Rice and Joe Montana. Gibbs didn't have that. Didn't. Gibbs is the one that, at least based on that conversation of a nine or ten coach list for the Mount Rushmore,

Gibbs did more with less than any of them. He had good players, had really good players, not the same level. And like I've written, what Joe Gibbs has turned around and done, in a whole other sport with NASCAR winning, I think, five or six NASCAR or cup titles, that I think he's the greatest coach in American sports history. He's certainly one of the greatest winners in the history of sports in this country. That is for sure. I think I'd have Shulen that top four.

I think to me it'd be tough for me to have, you know, Shula and Belichick in some order are one and two. And then, you know, it's Gibbs, I think you can make the, you know, the practical case that he deserves to be in there. And, you know, I'm not going to speak to Brown and Hallis, but I think Lombardi would have to be the fourth. How do you have, how do you not have Lombardi there? But, you know, so many people think Walsh was the genius. And Paul Brown was a genius, apparently. an innovator and a genius.

God, it's a list, man. It is tough to separate all of those guys. All right. What else you got? You want to talk about the last dance a little bit? Go ahead. I talked about it yesterday. I was surprised at how much time they spent about Michael Jordan's comments about Republicans by sneakers, too.

They spent a lot of time on that. Okay. I talked about, tell me why. Tell me why you were surprised. Well, I just didn't think that that would be a great documentary subject, the kind of thing that would generate so much, so much. I was surprised that there's just spent so much time on it. And I think, I think Michael still comes off not looking great in it. See, that's interesting. First of all, that, I think his answer was a great answer. Like, you know, again, it's just me. I don't care if the best athletes, you know, who sort of cross over into popular culture and are, you know, among the most famous faces on the planet, I don't care if they're activists or not. I don't

care that Jordan wasn't Ali and Jim Brown and Bill Russell. I don't care about that. I never did. I never will. And it seems like he didn't care either. He just didn't, you know, he didn't, that wasn't an area of interest necessarily, which Falk, you know, I asked Falk this morning if that was, you know, sort of a group decision to keep Michael away from being sort of political. If like there was ever discussion about how those things should be handled. And he always, Falk's answer was Michael told you the answer, but basically Michael had a hard time

telling people what to believe in. He said, he told this story. It was actually an interesting story. He said there was a player that was deciding between me and somebody else as an agent. I asked Michael to call the guy. And Michael looked at me and said, if this guy doesn't understand that I could have my choice of any agent on the planet being who I am, and I've chosen you, and that doesn't carry weight and I have to tell him and I have to make, you know, sort of a call to, you know,

a reference call for you, then you don't want that guy as a client anyway. But he said that Michael had a hard time telling people what to do and what to believe in. He didn't think it was his deal. Not to mention that he was singularly focused on being, you know, a great basketball player. But he didn't want to be in that. He didn't want. I get that. But here's the thing. One thing, you can't force a person to be what they're not. I understand that. And he wasn't that. Right.

But in one specific situation, in the place where he grew up, his influence could have changed, could have changed the future of that state. If he would have basically backed Harvey Gant over... Jesse Helms. Over Jesse Helms. I mean, you did not have to be a political. political whiz, if you're an African-American in North Carolina, to figure out the right side of that argument. Right, but he did donate money to Gant's campaign. We learned that.

But he could have, he could have had a significant influence on it. And I think that made him look bad. I don't think his, you can't force someone to be hoot or not. But I don't see, I mean, you didn't have to be a political scientist to figure out the right side of that if you're Michael Jordan. Um, yeah, you know, you know, it's really, really. And it's interesting, I forgot. He turned down the invitation to the White House in 91 with Bush. I forgot about that. He didn't go. I forgot about that, too.

By the way, last night real quickly, Jeopardy is running old Jeopardy shows, and it was the first show that, Ken Jennings won, you know, the winningest until that other guy that came along last year. But in terms of the number of shows, he won 74 straight Jeopardy shows. It was the first one that he won. And he was the challenger. And it was 2004. And there was a question about a North Carolina Senate race. And I immediately said,

that it was that, you know, I immediately answered Jesse Helms thinking that, you know, it was like a late 90s, you know, early 2000s question. The answer to the question, or the question ended up being who was Elizabeth Dole. Because Dole took Helms' Senate seat when he retired

in the mid or late 90s, whenever that was. I don't know, I forget when the election against Gant was. I think it was 1992 or something like that. But I had forgotten that Elizabeth Dole, Bob Dole's wife, had been a Republican senator in North Carolina. By the way, the other senator at the time, because I went and looked it up last night, was John Edwards. Oh, yeah. Yeah, during that period of time. All right. What else from the last days? I mean, I thought the gambling stuff is interesting. I mean, my take Tommy, and I think I mentioned this yesterday, it's not, I told Falk this this morning because he brought up the same thing.

As I asked David Falk, I said, were you, did you ever have a moment where you were concerned about Jordan's gambling? And he talked about how his father was a compulsive gambler, and he had some real experience with that. And, you know, sort of, you know, leaning towards, you know, maybe I was concerned at one point, but ultimately, ultimately, you know, what Michael said was true. He had a competition problem, not a gambling problem. Michael could stop gambling. That was not something that he said my father could do. And I understand the difference between sort of compulsive problem and somebody who does it, who can stop doing it. But my point that I made yesterday, it's not how much money he has. It's not that he can afford it millions of times over. We have seen many people with millions of dollars lose all of it.

to a gambling addiction. Would it be really hard for Michael Jordan to lose all of his money gambling? Probably. But that's not the point. You either have an addiction and a sickness or you don't. You know, it's not somebody that's wagering $5 a game can have a sickness. And it leads to a lot of things. It leads to physical.

It manifests itself in physical sicknesses. And not to mention the fact that it's also sometimes, the associations with, you know, not the cleanest of people, you know, that, and we saw, I thought, one of the interesting parts of that is the whole $57,000 check to Slim Buller. That's always the problem in this. The problem is how vulnerable do you make yourself to bad influences? That's right. That's right.

That's the issue. Well, there's a sickness part of it, too. Okay, the addiction is unhealthy, and it doesn't discriminate based on income level. So it doesn't. Now, the other part of it is, yeah, the associations that you can potentially, especially when you're an athlete, a professional athlete, get yourself involved in. I mean, somebody tweeted out yesterday, or I'm sorry, Sunday night, the next documentary I want to see is a 10-parter on Slim Buller. Yeah. Which would have been a good.

He's got some stories of it. Oh, I know what I wanted to tell you. One more thing. Did you see Wilbon's tweet this morning? No. Mike Wilbon tweeted out the following. I'm going to find it real quickly. This morning.

Or maybe it was late last night. I saw it early this morning. My apologies to Isaiah Thomas. Multiple sources reached out to tell me, I'm dead wrong to say that nine members of the dream team objected to Isaiah being on the 92 Olympic team. Nowhere near that number objected, my apologies to Isaiah for getting it wrong. Isaiah retweeted it, by the way, and said thanks when he retweeted it.

You don't have to search the earth to find people who don't like Isaiah Thomas. No, you don't. For a lot of reasons. Yeah. I mean, so it's just interesting. Wilbon clearly was told by somebody it's not nine. I wish it would have been funny had he said, my apologies to Isaiah Thomas,

multiple sources reached out to tell me I'm dead wrong to say nine members. It was nowhere near that number, but it was greater than three or less than five or something like that. Because here's what we learned from the show the other night, if you believe Jordan and Armstrong and a couple of other people that weighed in on this, Rod Thorne even. Jordan, Michael, and Magic were, it seemed, certainly all had the same opinion, which is, no Isaiah on this team, please.

And Jordan said, and I'm paraphrasing, that the vibe had Isaiah been on the team, would have been much different. And he had just talked about what a great team it was to be a part of and how everybody got along and the whole thing. No one, nobody loved Isaiah Times. I had Legler on the radio show yesterday, and that's Legler's era. And Legler said, yeah, essentially what you said. You didn't have to look hard to find somebody that didn't like Isaiah Thomas. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that, obviously.

There was one part in one of the sections where Michael's being interviewed about his gambling. finally he agrees to talk about it with Ahmad Rashad. Yeah. And he's doing, he looks so terrible because he's doing this interview while wearing sunglasses. Right. I know. I mean, it was a bad, bad look. Yeah. It had addicts written all over it. Yeah. It really did.

Yeah, it's weird, right? You know, he's going, driving to the game. Amad was obviously a really good friend of his. You know, many people probably don't know this. A lot of people know even back then that Ahmad Rashad was a phenomenal NFL wide receiver, you know, for those people that don't know that. And I sort of occasionally think that people didn't know that about him. They just thought he was, you know, the NBC guy that was Michael Jordan's friend. He was to standout for the Minnesota Vikings. For the Vikings. And I think he got drafted by the Cardinals, the St. Louis Cardinals, when he was Bobby Moore. That was his name before he changed his name for the moderate guy. Bobby Moore, exactly, Tommy. It was St. Louis. Actually, it was Buffalo.

I thought it was Buffalo. Maybe it could have been. I could be wrong about that. But I certainly remember him with the Vikings in the 70s into the 80s. You know, some of those Vikings teams were really good teams. Yeah. You know, all right. On the other hand, I'm enjoying the documentary tremendously. I'm glad because I wasn't... It's great to watch. It's really good. It's been very good.

All right. Thanks. I'll talk to you on Thursday. Okay, Boston. All right. Thanks for listening today. Have a great day. Stay well.

Stay safe.