The Kevin Sheehan Show - Cooley & Kevin On Sean T. & More

Episode Date: October 14, 2021

Kevin had Cooley on the show today. Cooley weighed in on the Washington-Saints game. He has a new favorite tight ends and talked a lot about Taylor Heinicke and the defense as well. The guys also discussed the news that Sean Taylor's jersey will be retired. Lots more including an early Kevin "Smell Test" pick on tonight's game. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You don't want it. You don't need it. But you're going to get it anyway. The Kevin Cheehan Show. Here's Kevin. The show today will include Chris Cooley in just a bit. He did watch the Saints Washington game and has a lot of thoughts on that game and several players in it. The show today is presented by MyBooky at mybooky.orgie.g.

Go to MyBooky.orgie.g. You can wager on the football game tonight. I may have a smell test pick later on. in the show on the Thursday night game between Philadelphia and Tampa. Or I just might have a lien. You'll have to wait and see. But go to my bookie.ag. Use my promo code, Kevin D.C., and they'll double your first deposit.

Just a reminder, subscribe. Doesn't cost you anything. It really helps us. If you could rate us and review us, especially on Apple, Spotify, and Google. That helps us as well. If you could rate us five stars and write a quick one-sentence review, it's really a big boost for us and helps us keep this thing going. All right, before Cooley comes on, and I'm going to get to him pretty quickly,

obviously there was more news after the show yesterday, and even more news this morning after the radio show, which is where I'm going to start. But I'm not going to give you everything about Sean Taylor right now and his jersey being retired. I'm going to save some of it for Cooley. But if you have not heard the news, Sean Taylor's jersey number 21. It was announced this morning by the team at 9 a.m.

That Sunday in the home game, at the home game against the Chiefs, apparently in the pregame, they're going to officially retire Sean Taylor's number. Well, it was really nice of them to give everybody a heads up. This is just another example of just how completely discombobulated and dumb these people are. I don't, you can't even help them on stuff like this. First of all, what a missed opportunity, right, to have people be able to prepare for Sunday, you know, October 17th at home, Sean Taylor Day, retiring his jersey, big video tribute,

the family in town, the whole thing. I mean, first of all, for a team that needs to sell tickets, my God, what a missed opportunity this was. I mean, with Bobby Mitchell, they had announced it months before. And so that's number one, the massive missed opportunity by not announcing it much sooner. Number two, it's really a slap in the face to all of the people, all of the fans that loved Sean Taylor, that they're not going to be able to plan accordingly. But thirdly, obviously, the timing of this is very suspicious. You know, with everything that's going on with the organization and the 650,000 emails and the investigation, the Beth Wilkinson investigation, everybody pressuring now for the results of that investigation to be made public.

And then the story, which I'll get to momentarily about the payments made to silence some of the women that were allegedly. harassed by the organization when they work there. I mean, you can't make this shit up. Like, even if they were really, really dumb and they had planned all along to announce the retiring of Sean's jersey a few days in advance of the Chiefs game, which makes no sense whatsoever. But it does make sense for them because they don't really plan. We haven't gotten any news about anything related to the 30-year anniversary of the Super Bowl team in 91.

Are they going to do anything for the 91 team this year? I would bet you that half the people in that organization don't even know about the 91 team. But the nature and the timing of this Sean Taylor announcement certainly reeks of, oh, don't look over here at all this other stuff. look here. We are going to retire your boys' jersey on Sunday. Number 21's never going to be worn again. Let's celebrate. Let's talk about Sean for the next few days. Let's talk about Sean leading up to it. Of course, it reeks of that. Now, I was told and read that Sean Taylor's family was scheduled to be here. but I don't know if that meant that they knew the jersey was going to be retired.

The whole thing is just so them, if you're going to do this and honor him properly and respectfully and do this the right way, this is an announcement that's made in June. By the way, I think that's when they, or somewhere around there, they probably announced the Bobby Mitchell thing. You announced that over the summer. You give everybody a chance to plan accordingly. And Sean Taylor, I mean memorable figure, great player ascending, probably would have been one of the great safeties in the history of the league and so important to this organization and to a fan base that's had nothing else,

especially a younger fan base, that doesn't remember and wasn't around for the glory days. How can you botch this so bad? badly if it was actually planned. Well, one of the reasons was it wasn't actually planned. But still, if his family was supposed to be here for some tribute, anyway, I've got more thoughts on this, but I want to do it with Cooley when he's on. And my next series of thoughts on this, I know is going to piss some people off, but you'll have to wait for it. So anyway, um, There was obviously more that came out yesterday between the end of the podcast and today's show. And it was the story from the Post that said lawyers representing the Washington football team offered a financial settlement this year, which it actually happened in February, in exchange for the silence of female former team employees who alleged they endured sexual harassment while working there, according to two former employees.

No specific figure was discussed, but the offer was expected to be, quote, disrespectfully low, closed quotes, said Emily Applegate, a former marketing coordinator who was the first to publicly speak out about her experiences while working with the team last year in a Washington Post report. The offer was conveyed by attorneys representing the team at Reed Smith Law Firm through discussions with Lisa Banks, the lead attorney for female former team employees. banks who represents nearly 40 former team employees told Applegate and the others that in exchange for the money, they would have to sign non-disclosure agreements and agree to stop doing news interviews and posting on social media about their experiences while working for the team. So here we go again with more non-football related news. So a couple of things. and I've added one from my morning radio rant

because something came up in an interview that I did with Will Hobson who wrote this story from the Washington Post. I had him on the radio show this morning. You can listen to that at the team 980.com. So part of this story also includes that the offer to these women would not have prevented them from talking to Beth Wilkinson. In fact, they had already talked to Beth Wilkinson and her team. but it wouldn't have prevented them from talking to her again.

The intent, according to the post story, was they just wanted these women to stop talking to the media. Stop doing interviews, stop doing things on social media that were critical of the team. The offer, by the way, again, apparently wasn't enough. Now, I don't know if that means if it had been more, they would have accepted. Who knows? but here are two big takeaways for me. Number one, this is a Tommy, juice isn't worth the squeeze situation. Who thought this would be a good idea in the midst of an investigation into sexual harassment in a toxic workplace, especially for women as an investigation was going on to approach

these women to try to silence them? Who the hell thought that was a good idea? This would rank up there if this is true as one of the dumbest things they've ever done, and they've done a lot of dumb things. It's just not worth it. Like, first of all, if that's the intent, close the deal. Make sure it's enough money that they take it. Because if they don't, this is going to get out eventually, and you're going to look horrible for doing it.

Secondly, like, what was in February at that point? these women may have continued to do interviews, but who is at that point, and I don't mean this in a disparaging way, but it wasn't much of a story then, and who cares what they're doing on social media? But I'm going to tell you right now, I can totally see, or I've heard, that Snyder sees an interview, goes nuts and says, we got to pay these people off. They've got to stop doing these interviews. and no thoughts given to the ramifications, no thoughts given to whether or not it's really a juice that's worth the squeeze. It's just dumb, so dumb.

I also wanted to mention, because I had this guy, Will Hobson, who wrote the story, doing this just if you were curious, is not illegal. You can absolutely quid pro quo money for, for the signing of a non-disclosure or a confidentiality agreement. But let's also be clear that this offer, if it were made in this way, is not made by an organization that thinks that they've done nothing wrong. It's also, you know, to silence women who want to speak about this, it's totally in conflict with this push that we are so,

sensitive as an organization now. We care so much about these transgressions and we are going to do much better. We're incredibly diverse now as an organization. We are never, ever going to be an organization where women don't want and aren't treated well in our organization. And then they offer hush money to these women. Now, there's one other piece to this that I just wanted to mention real quickly. Because in my interview with Will Hobson from the Post, he did mention something that would change the harshness in which I would view this, but not the overriding theme, which is this has a chance to backfire, so why even risk it? But he did mention that it's possible that the team initiated these discussions with the attorney representing the women to, you know, to,

create some sort of settlement agreement. Like we're really sorry about the experience you had working here. We'd like to settle with you. We'd like to pay you. Now part of that would be for them to not talk anymore about it. So that part of it, you know, no, I'm not saying that a lot of settlements don't include non-disclosures or confidentiality agreements. I understand that. But if the intent by the team was to initiate some sort of settlement with the women versus just hush payments like, hey, don't talk about us anymore. We'll pay you not to talk about us anymore. That lends a different perspective to it. But still, ultimately, you know, they're in the midst of the Beth Wilkinson investigation at that point. They haven't gotten the results. It's like, why even create a situation that some debt

where down the road, they can say, you came to us to try to silence us. It's just so stupid. And if you're going to do that as an initiated settlement with a non-disclosure, make sure the settlement is a settlement that they're going to accept. And by the way, if it does come out like it did yesterday, speak to it. Say, look, this was not, these were not silence payments. These were an attempt to settle with the women for what happened to them when they worked for us. I wanted to get to one other thing, too. There was a story in the L.A. Times yesterday that I wanted to read from because it included some of the things that we've talked about

in the John Gruden's Bruce Allen emails that we didn't know before this story came out, which includes some of the responses from Bruce Allen. Sam Farmer wrote this story in the L.A. Times. It starts with the following paragraph. Several inflammatory emails by John Gruden were filed as exhibits in federal court by attorneys for Washington football team owner Daniel Snyder in mid-June, almost four months before they were leaked to two newspapers and led to Gruden's resignation as coach of the Las Vegas Raiders. So Snyder used some of these emails in a motion, a discovery motion, in a federal court. in Arizona as part of what he was doing to try to go after the culprits, including Bruce Allen,

that created the smear campaign through the India-based company that we now are very familiar with. In The Times, the story continues. The heavily redacted emails between Gruden and then Redskins President Bruce Allen filed in the U.S. District Court in Arizona included offensive language, chummy conversations with journalists, including an ESPN journalist, referring to Allen. as Mr. Editor. I'll get to that in a moment, and a barrage of complaints about the state of the NFL. The emails are identical to some of those reported this week by the New York Times. The story detailed homophobic and misogynistic comments by Gruden in emails with Alan.

A day earlier, the Wall Street Journal reported Gruden used a racist trope in another email exchange. Gruden's name is redacted in most of the emails filed in court, and they're replaced with the following moniker, ESPN personality. So in the emails that Snyder provided to the judge in this motion for this motion in this discovery case as he's going after Bruce Allen, they had to redact John Gruden's name. However, according to the story in the Times, Gruden's name and personal email address aren't redacted throughout the story, apparently by mistake. and in exchange with Allen in November of 2017

discussing a news story about the NFL potentially keeping teams in their locker rooms during the national anthem because of players kneeling on the field in protest of the anthem Alan wrote quote, these guys can't come up with a good idea

if their life depended on it, closed quote. So we were wondering what some of Bruce Allen's responses were to these emails with Gruden, well, that was one of them. These guys can't come up with a good idea if their life depended on it, referring to keeping players in their locker rooms. Gruden sends a one-word response, starting with the one-word response was the P-Word, P-U-S-S-I-E-S, says they are that. in another email, ESPN personality, John Gruden, okay, but it's redacted,

writes Allen in August 2014 and called a redacted football person, which was Roger Goodell, a clueless anti-football P-word, and that's in the August 2014 email to Bruce Allen. Bruce Allen's response was, quote, I think that summarized properly, closed quote. So he agrees with Gruden on Gidell being a clueless anti-football P-word. The ESPN personality, which would be John Gruden, also emailed Allen in June of 2015, saying that Goddell shouldn't call and then this name is also redacted.

Jeff Fisher, they refer to it as redacted football person, to tell him, and the commissioner should not call Jeff Fisher and tell him to draft, quote, queer's, closed quote, either. And that is, in reference to Michael Sam being drafted by then Jeff Fisher. The New York Times reported that Gruden sent the email and the redactions referred to Goodell and Rams coached Jeff. Fisher and queers referred to Michael Sam as the LA Times reporter writes. Alan responded that Fisher shouldn't have taken the call, closed quote.

So there are a couple of responses from Bruce Allen to the John Gruden emails. On the Jeff Fisher, Michael Sam, queer, Alan responded, Fisher shouldn't have taken the call. when Gruden wrote him and said that Goodell is a P word Alan responded I think that's summarized properly

and then in the 2017 email from Gruden to Alan about players being kept in the locker room during the anthem Alan responded quote these guys can't come up with a good idea if their life depended on it close quote

now I guess you know if you took that You could say that he's saying, that's not a good idea to have him in the locker room. Either they should be out there and they should be allowed to kneel. But I don't think that was Allen's feeling about it. I don't. Now, what isn't in this L.A. Times article is what Bruce Allen's response, if he had a response at all, was to the Demora Smith email in 2011 to him. You know, Demora Smith has, you know, lips the size of Michelin Tires.

That response from Bruce is not included in the LA Times story and maybe wasn't included as part of this filing by Dan Snyder. Now, there was one more thing that was of note. Several emails between Allen and journalists are part of the filing too. And one of them from July 2011, ESPN NFL insider Adam Schaefter sent Alan the draft of an unpublished story that was published later the same. day. Shefter said, quote, in the email to Bruce Allen, please let me know if you see anything that should be added, changed, or tweaked. Thanks, Mr. Editor, for that and the trust. I plan to file this to ESPN at about 6 a.m. closed quote. So Shefter wrote a story, by the way, it was about the lockout in 2011, and he obviously got quotes and or got, you know, anonymous,

information from Bruce Allen about what was going on, and he sent the story to Bruce for Bruce to look at it and tell him if it was okay. So a couple of things. Number one, that is kind of proof that something that we've all thought for a long time, that Bruce was one of the major leaks in the building during his tenure, especially to national writers. Number two was that ESPN put out a statement yesterday, quote, without sharing all of the specifics of the reporter's process for a story from 10 years ago during the NFL lockout, we believe that nothing is more important to Adam and ESPN than providing fans the most accurate, fair, and complete story, closed quote. Adam Schaefter put out a statement. It read as follows. Fair questions are being asked about my

reporting approach on an NFL lockout story from 10 years ago, just to clarify its common practice to verify facts of a story with sources before you publish an order to be as accurate as possible. In this case, I took the rare step of sending the full story in advance because of the complex nature of the collective bargaining talks. It was a step too far, and looking back, I shouldn't have done it. The criticism being levied is fair. With that said, I want to make this perfectly clear. In no way did I or would I seed editorial control or a handover final say about a story to anyone ever closed quote. That was Schefter's statement.

So the Schefter Bruce Allen thing, the big takeaway really is for me, just so you know, confirmed, not that I needed this, not that I needed this, and not that a lot of people in town needed this, Bruce Allen, a major source of leaks in the building over a long period of time.

Number two is this. I've been on the end of interviews for stories that I was involved in, not anonymously or not sourced, where reporters have sent me, you know, my quotes and said, just make sure that you're okay, that this is what I had from our conversation. So that is not an unusual practice to send, you know, a source or an interviewee the quotes. And I know that from talking to journalists. That is not an unusual practice at all to make sure that they got it right.

I don't think that it's totally, totally unheard of for a reporter to send an entire story either, to say, please look this over and let me know if I got anything wrong. Now, Adam says in his note that he took the rare step of sending the full story in advance. Well, he better hope that this was a rare one-off and that there aren't three or four more to come. Adam made the biggest mistake by saying to Bruce in the email, thanks Mr. Editor for that and the trust. Obviously, you know, you can't call the guy that you're sending that was your source. You can't, you know, make him believe or anybody believe that he's actually editing this story. Anyway, I think a lot of it isn't that big of a deal. I think checking with sources and sending them

stuff. You know, this would be more for Tommy, so we will certainly talk to Tommy about this tomorrow. But anyway, that was that particular story. And the Bruce Allen responses we had not heard yet. Lastly, before we get to Cooley, I read this story last night, and I'm just going to read it to you real quickly because I thought it was pretty funny. It was from Michael Phillips, Richmond Times Dispatch. He covers the team. has for years. He wrote, the Washington football team players don't want no smoke. This has nothing to do with what happens during games, though, but rather with the team

introductions they do at FedEx Field before games. Washington retooled its introductions this year, and as the team runs onto the field, multiple smoke machines create an entrance designed to hype up fans. Before Sunday's game, though, the smoke was so thick that some of the players got lost in it. From Terry McLaren, quote, last week it was the worst. been. It's nothing against the people who run it. But usually it's like, whoosh, whoosh. And when it pauses, I sprint out. But the last game, it was like, whoosh. And I was like, oh, shoot. By the way,

I love Terry McLaurin. He's not going to try to throw anybody under the bus, but he's just being honest. He said, I'm trying to walk and get through the smoke and not hit one of my teammates or one of the cheerleaders. By the way, I don't know that they're called cheerleaders anymore. Yeah, last game was a challenge. They definitely got me last week, he said. As the smoke show continued, several players started holding hands or guiding each other through the scene. It was so thick they were holding hands to get through it. John Allen, also one of my favorite players on the team, quote, it's ridiculous, he said as he was laughing. A couple of guys tripped. He said, as we were trying to make it through, quote, you pray to God, close quote. Oh my. They can't get anything right out

there. All right. Enough picking on them. Let's talk to Cooley about a lot of things, including his thoughts on the Washington Saints game on Sunday. And we will talk and get his thoughts on the Sean Taylor situation. That's next right after these words from a few of our sponsors. This segment presented by Window Nation. Window Nation's got a great sale going on right now. It is their fall is calling sale. Leaves are changing. Temps are changing. Is your home ready for these changes? The cold's coming, but Windonation's here to help with two free windows with every two you buy. There's no limit. Buy four, get four free plus zero percent interest for 24 months. That's no interest until 2023. You can trust Windonation. I did. Friends, relatives, listeners. It's

always worked out for everybody. 86690 Nation, windonation.com. Buy two, get two free, no limit, put no money down, make no payments, pay no interest. For 24 months, I promise you if you've been thinking about windows, give them a shot, they'll give you a free estimate, mention my name. Chris Cooley is with us on the podcast today. Cooley sent me some video the other day of practice with the Pal Panthers in a blinding snowstorm. See, that's a great thing. You know how much I love snow, and it's October like 11th,

and you guys didn't get as much as you were supposed to get. But I love the weather pattern that you live in, the changeability of one really warm day and one really cold and snowy day. It's kind of cool. Are you enjoying it? Oh, more on snow in October. It was a JV game, and it was the cold, about the coldest game I've ever been a part of. But they didn't cancel it, did they? No, they didn't cancel it. And it was amazing because we were up 28-0 in the fourth quarter, and we're going, run the clock.

The game's clearly over. It was hysterical, though. So, one, I was freezing, but I've made this decision, which is a stupid decision, that if the players are going to be cold, I'm going to be cold. so I wore a long-sleeved t-shirt and a cut-off hoodie like Belichick, but I've always wore a cut-off hoodie.

And I did bring gloves. And I was so cold by the third quarter. By the third quarter, I was freezing. And throughout the entire game, the wind was blowing. I would guess, like, 25-ish. I don't think that's an overestimation. So wind chills in this.

Wind chills in this. teams. If you were going north, there was no throwing. Right. At one point, we played a team. We played Wurland. They tried to punt. The punt went up in the air, turned around, and went back. High school punting. And in that year, so, I mean, it wasn't a great punt, but it would have traveled 20 yards. It landed seven yards from where the line of scrimmage was. But it's funny because you're then so worried about, hitting your guys.

Right. I don't know. It was wild. And it's a JV game. I mean, it's not dynamic as far as throwing the ball, but then when the wind's blowing it makes it really, really tough. Don't you think? We ran 34 lead like 17 times a row.

34 lead. Three back through the four-hole. Three back through the four-hole, full-back leading up. They never adjusted. Hey, what are you on do again, coach? Ah, 34-lead. Let's get this clock going. that's so funny.

Remember we've had this conversation in the past because I told you, I think I said to you several years ago, I said, you know, in youth football, if I were coaching a youth football team, I would never punt. There's no reason to punt. The punt's not going to turn out better more times than not than just running a play

because the punts either going to go backwards or it's going to go barely forwards or if it goes really forwards, it's going to be returned for a touchdown. pretty much. It's like three or four things can happen and like three and a half are bad. So just go for it unless you're on your like one yard line. It's kind of the same in high school football.

I'm not completely. But what kind of punting decisions are made at the high school level? Or let me rephrase. What kind of punting decisions do you think should be made at the high school level? I think it depends on your punter. Well, yeah, and your offense and defense. And your offense and defense. I think that the risk-taking should go in a fourth and medium situation,

it should go back another maybe 15 or 20 yards. Normally, they'll go for it on fourth and medium in between the 40 and the 50, or the 50 and the 40 going in. I think you could go at least another 10 yards back before you pop. Got it. And the other thing is if their offenses is a good offense, I would never punt. Because a good offense, as I've been watching, more likely to score from wherever they get the ball. It doesn't matter if they get it at midfield or if they get it at their own 15.

They find a way to score good high school offenses against an average high school defense. So you may as well try to keep possession. How is the PAL Varsity doing? The last time you were on was not last week but the week before, and you were heading to Star Valley off the loss to Cody, your first loss of the year. It was going to be a long trip. How did that game turn out?

It didn't turn out well. It did. We got beat pretty bad. No. Well, yeah, we lost. I think we ended up losing 29 to 13. or 33 to 13 something. We lost my three scores.

It was never that close. I don't think it was the trip. They were a good team. This is what I've decided as well. And I think we're a pretty good team. We're not deep. So we play most guys both ways. Like I would go no huddle against us the entire game and just wear us down.

But watching film, I'm getting better at in terms of a value. who is pretty good, but I'll tell you what I'm really good at. When that other team lines up on the other side of the field and starts stretching, I can tell you right now if it's going to be a game or not. You can't rotate that in there. You can see by their size, high athletic ability in the first 15 minutes of warm-up, if they're a good team or not. We played a team last week, and I think we want, we went like 48-0.

I get it told you when their tickers and punters came out. They had no size, no height, no, like, okay, I see why they're losing ball games. That's funny because I think coaching basketball for many, many years, that I would always watch the other team warm up, especially if we didn't know who the team was, to try to gauge something about the team. But I found that many times it could be very misleading, you know, size and, you know, athleticism, etc.

either one way or the other, it could be misleading. But there is one story. I'm going to tell you real quickly. I do remember one of my boys, I forget which one it was, which one it was, was playing an eighth grade school game at their school. And the other team came in, and I didn't know anything about the game or who they were playing. And I kind of showed up like 10 minutes before the game started. and their coach at the time was a really nice guy,

but he was a teacher, and I don't think basketball was necessarily his thing necessarily. And I'm watching the other team warm up, and there's a guy in track shoes, and he was probably like 5-10 as an eighth-grader. He was in track shoes with his laces undone. And I'm watching him go through lay-up lines, and he is dunking backwards and forwards in,

track shoes with the laces out at 510. And I'll never, I'll never forget this kid and his brother. In fact, they were Filipino. I remember this very distinctly. And they went on to have very good high school basketball careers at St. Albans in D.C. And I didn't know anything about either one of the, I didn't know anything about the team. But I walked over to the coach and I said, look at number six or whatever number he was. I said, this is going to be, he's going to be a major difference.

It wasn't just the fact that he had the hops. You could see the handle. You could see everything. You could see the way he was running back to the rebound line. Like there was just any, and he had track shoes that were untied, which kind of is disrespectful to begin with. So I don't think he was really concerned about anybody stopping him. Cooley, I swear to God, in an eighth grade game,

he had 38 points, 20 rebounds, like eight block shots, and like 10 steals in the game. And it was a one-sided beat down. But the best part was the next time they came back, or I'm sorry, not the next time they bet, when they went to play them in a road game, the girls were playing the game before. And his sister, and I didn't know it was his sister, was playing in the game before the boys' game. and she had 38 points at halftime and finished with 50. She went on to be the city's leading score for I think at least two years in high school at NCS. And I just remember watching, I'm watching the first half and I went over to the scores table to halftime.

I'm like, how many points does she have? And they're adding, she's got 38 and it's half time. By the way, she just kept shooting and, you know, that was a, that was an issue. She didn't have track shoes on, no. She did not have track shoes on. I can't remember the names of, if somebody told me and wants to tweet me the name of the family,

because the guy that I watched as an eighth grader, I then watched him play high school basketball several times because they played Georgetown prep. And his brother was also a really good high school player, different. He was more of a shooter. and taller, not as athletic. The other guy was just a superior athlete and really a competitor, too.

And they ended up winning the IAC, I think his senior year or junior year. But it was like one of those things. So that was one of those layup lines I watched. And I'm like, okay, you got a problem here today. And I remember the coach saying to me, what number? And I said, you haven't watched yet? And I said, no, look at him. The one with the track shoes with the laces undone.

you're going to have to I'm going to tell you right now you're going to have to play a lot of zone and let's see if he can shoot it it didn't matter because the ball was being turned over he was getting steals and he was going from one end to the other putting on a show

so you get the sense watching the high school team coming out for warmups. What does your team look like in warmups? We're not small we have a couple big linemen but we also have like we have three linemen that are under 200.

We have one a guard that weighs that's a freshman that weighs no more than 180 and that's liberal. We're all right. We're a talented team. We just, again,

we're not very deep. I guess my point would be we played two schools and you walk out and they have nine kids over six, three, six, four. And you're going, okay. And they're not, I mean, they're not huge because they're lean athletic kids. And when they have that, it's just there, it was like when Utah State went to play Iowa. Right.

We might be able to play with them for a little bit. But eventually they'll out, they'll out depth us. Nebraska was the place that you played a couple times, right? Well, I played in Iowa, and Iowa smoked us, and I played Nebraska, and they beat us pretty bad a couple times. You can just see there's just a difference with teams that have that second group that can rotate. We don't necessarily have a great second group, and it's not because our kids aren't, we're just young. Our second group that comes in are a lot of freshmen and sophomores that they come and rotate through. Right. So anyways, we've got two games left. We've played Jackson Hole on Friday, which is another five-hour drive.

Oh, my God. Is it, well, wait a minute. Hold on. You told me this the other day. You said it's a four-hour drive if Yellowstone Pass is open. If you can go through, yeah, if you can go through Yellowstone Park and it snowed this week, but it should be clear over today and tomorrow. So if they get a plowed Yellowstone would be open.

That would make it a four-hour drive for me. If it's not, it's a little over five hours. For me, the bus would be over six. Oh, my God. Around. That's so incredible. I know we've talked about this before, but people, that's what like high school sports are like in states like Wyoming.

I mean, your road games are hours away. Jackson Hole, are they good? They are good. Yeah, they're number two in the state. They're number two, I think, in the state right now. So they're a good team. Where are you ranked now? I think we're at four.

With the two losses, you're five and two. In three-A. Yeah, but our two losses are conference losses. And the playoffs are only your conference record. There's six conference teams, four go to the playoffs. So we've got to win for sure one of the next two games. Then we'd be in the playoffs. Is Jackson Hole, which is one of the most beautiful places on Earth,

and certainly in this country, it's also very, very affluent, right? So is this a school filled with a bunch of rich kids? I think there's probably some rich kids. I actually don't know. I mean, there's been like a huge movement, especially when the pandemic started. You've told me this,

I've read about this, of especially northern California, southern California people moving to Wyoming and Montana in places like Jackson Hole. There's going to be, like Jackson Hole would be expensive to have land in a house of any size, to have any property and a bigger house would be,

yeah, it would be a rich family. I would assume there's still a rural aspect of Jackson, some kids that are in town that wouldn't be so expensive. I don't know. You can go online and look up real estate and see what it costs and see how affluent some of Jackson is. But it's more affluent than Powell, for sure, or a lot of areas in Wyoming. All right.

Let's talk some football because Cooley did watch the Washington, New Orleans. game. We'll get to the Sean Taylor thing, which I talked a little bit about in the open, and I have further thoughts on it as well, which some of you aren't going to like, but that's okay, but we'll get Cooley's thoughts on that as well. But I know you had some thoughts on the New Orleans games, so have at it. My thoughts on the New Orleans game is that Washington is talented enough to win these football games, and they have the ability across the board to have beaten New Orleans, and they certainly should have been up on New Orleans at the half, at least a touchdown, where they were down seven points.

They gave up too many big, easy plays. It wasn't one or two plays on defense. It was more than that. And Heineke is too limited offensively, and he's too limited to make bad decisions. Healy and Spiro kept comparing him to Brett Favre as a gunslinger, and he's not Brett Farr. He's trying to be Brett Farr, but he's limited, Brett Farr. And he made a couple critical mistakes that they can't afford and they can't overcome. Did a good job driving the ball.

I think they did a good job on a lot of their drives where they were mixing run and mixing Gibson and some of the sweep stuff with D'Andre Carter, and they had them off back. balance a little bit. I thought Ricky Phil Jones played really well and gave him some opportunities. But he can't make those big mistakes. The first pick he throws is DeAndre Carter. He's jammed and dead at the line of scrimmiss. The route's dead. You can't just force that ball and hope your receiver makes an incredible play. And if you do force it, you've got to force it over the top where it's only him in the back of the end zone. The next pick that he had that killed him is a ridiculous interception where he does not see a dropping linebacker or safety,

who is already playing at 10 yards on 3rd and 10, and he throws it right to him. And as much as they possessed the ball and did some good things on drives, they also didn't finish some drives, and they made some stupid plays, and a couple of those were Heineke's part. Defensively, it's like, gosh, the big play plays, were all over the place.

And I look at it on defense, and I really think they're playing a lot of five-man front. And they're bringing all five of those guys. And so they're trying to get one-on-one matchups. And maybe it's that you don't trust your back-end if you were to go to four of them. You're trying to get Chase Young one-on-one. I'm not exactly sure. I don't know how much I would trust the back-end of that defense. They miscommunicate quite a bit.

They give up some play, some throws. your linebackers are really not very good other than Holcomb. But if you're not getting home with your five-man rush, and they weren't a lot, they had a couple sacks. Chase finally made a play. Duran had a sack. But they had a couple, but other than that, it just wasn't enough. And it's even to a point where some of it's weird.

Like, Dron had a sack towards the end of the first half that put them in a second and 18. And they went five-man front on second and 18. And I think the Saints had a drop or a closely contested. tested ball down the field into what looked like man-to-man coverage that would have been almost a first down. Like, why are you in second 18, why are you in a five-man front?

Can you not play a four-man front? Yeah, it was a shot to Callow. Yeah, the thing I think he did, Del Rio did a good job of last year, was intermixing blitz packages, and they got home on a lot of those blitzes, whereas now, you're really not seeing anything dynamic with the blitz stuff,

You're just seeing that straight five-man front, coverage is pretty easy to uncover or to understand what they're in. And as long as they block it up, they're in good shape. And the quarterback is pretty easy for him to understand what he's got on the back end. You know that James Winston had not thrown more than 23 balls in a game prior to Sunday. He had really had literally like a governor on him by the head coach. Bobby A Bear was on my show last week and he said there's no trust right now. He said there's no chance.

By the way, James Winston's going to get a big deal at the end of this year based on the first four games. And Peyton pretty much turned him loose. He threw it 30 times. The most by far he's thrown it in a game. It was the first game that they've really thrown it more than they've run it for the most part except for the game that they were way behind in against Carolina.

And so what was Sean Payton seeing that he felt like this was, the game to turn it loose with James Winston? Well, you're seeing six guys in coverage a lot of a time with a five-man front and a five-man front that's capable of stopping a run or creating negative plays in the run game if you continue to run it. I think that's really what he's seen is he's taking advantage of what Del Rio was giving him.

That's what most good head coaches do. You don't try to force running the football into a stacked front. And really, that's what Washington does. I mean, when they put those five guys up on the line of scrimmage, they're bringing them. You know, when they put your three big detackles, Alan, pain ionitis, and then young and sweat on the outside. None of those guys cover. They're not intended to cover. But they're all coming.

So you're dialing, and you can dial up play action shots knowing you're constantly getting a six-man back end, which is exactly what you'd hope for in the playoff. So they were just getting the looks that they wanted. I just think it's simplistic at times. And when you're going to be simplistic, you have to get to the quarterback. You just have to. And if you do, that allows that back in to jump routes, to play at six, to play at levels that they expect the ball to be thrown.

once you're displaced from that because it was a three and a half second drop or four second drop, you're in trouble. They got in trouble. The other thing, like, there were a couple of places. There was a, I think there was a third and 18

towards midfield in the third quarter. The James scrambled for 16. Yeah. And that, like Chase Young has bumped down three gaps. He ended up getting blocked by, probably touched by four dudes. But he's in the A gap.

You can't rush down to the A gap because you're trying to avoid double teams. At some point, you have to bowl the double team and take it on. So they are also getting displaced or not keeping that cup that you want to keep that quarterback in and pushing the pocket. And that's, you know, over the last couple years, that's something I think that front had been really good at with Payne and I, and Ida Allen, is just pushing those tackles or pushing those guards in the center just straight back in the quarterback's left, and they keep the edge, and then you give him nowhere to go. So either he's sacked or the ball's got to come out early.

They're giving him too many places to go. So I did notice and talked about earlier this week that there were a couple of times where Chase Young was actually almost as a linebacker lined up in the A gap. They've used them a couple of times in the last couple of weeks as an inside player next to sweat, interestingly, and pain. It's something that you suggested a few weeks ago to try to move them around to get them off. but beyond that, how did you think he played? I thought he played okay. He's high motor. He made the one big play.

But the difference I'm seeing from Chase, I don't see the moves in terms of the pass rush that I think he's capable of presenting. I don't think he's very good with his hands right now. Like he's upfield, but he's too easily blocked when he's getting up field. He doesn't turn the corner quick enough. You can't just put. present speed rush and not have that big-time bull up and under hands in the chest.

I think his hands need to be better for him to get more pressures and more sacks. You know, the other thing, aside from Chase Young, like, Lannon Collins is right now watching that game really struggling. You can't even put him in Man of Man on Adam Troutman. He was getting beat by everybody. He missed tackles in the flat. He was run by on the first. touchdown down the middle of the field.

To me, almost a liability at safety. We talked about this last year. If you have linebacker issues, you might want to just put him there. Well, they do line them up and the same with curl at linebacker. Like, they haven't had, you know, their base defense is a 4-3. Well, they're rarely, if ever, in a 4-3. And if they are, it's with Cole Holcomb and two safeties at linebacker. Yeah, their base defense this game was.

a really a 5-2. Or a 5-1-5. Yeah, or a 5-1-5, but playing two guys down. Yeah. Seneca play two in the box, but a five-man front. It's not a 3-4. It's a 5-down front. A 4-3, you mean, yeah.

Well, yeah, but like that 5-down front in the NFL normally exists as a 3-4 front. Right, with the two outside guys. Right, yeah, yeah. A lot of times they're dropping. Washington's playing a 5-down front. which makes it easier to expose the back end. Yeah. And they are taking advantage of that back end.

So you would agree, right, that you cannot line up landing Collins as a free safety, even for one snap. I'm not saying that you can't do it for one snap, but I'm also not saying that I think he's a playmaker in the middle of the field. And if he's getting beaten man-to-man coverage out on tight end, then you have big-time issues.

I got beat by Troutman on a little in-rout. Yeah. It's like Troutman's third catch. Yeah. You know who hasn't played defensive snaps as DeShazer Everett? He's out there on special teams. I thought he played well last year. I also thought he played well.

And I'd have no idea what's going on with Shazer. What about... You know, there was a couple other things. A couple other interesting things I thought throughout that game. They had an opportunity for a 53-yard field goal on a fourth and ten. There was a crosswind, he said afterwards. He said it was a tough kick going in that direction. We're at this point in the NFL where guys are making 66-yard field goal.

Yeah, I know. Like, if you can't make a 53-year-field goal with the crosswind, you got the wrong dude. And honestly, it could have worked. Terry should have a toe dragged there on the fourth and ten. And it should have been a catch. throws a little bit late and a little bit floated out there, didn't you think? Well, yes, I did think, but I also think that Terry, in any NFL receiver, especially in their second, third, fourth year, has been taught to toe drag.

Right. You get your first foot down your toe drags on your second step. I think He was late all day. I think he was late. I think he was behind. I think he made bad decisions. I don't think he quite has the arm strength. But in that particular situation, I do think that Terry should have come down with that ball and bound.

Yeah. Did you think the Ricky Seals-Jones catch should have been overturned, the one on the sideline? I was shocked that it stood. I was shocked that it stood as well. Watching it five or six times, it just didn't look. The call on the field was going to stand. I don't particularly like the call on the field rules overriding any critical evidence. but I just didn't see enough to show it moving as his first step was down.

Back to the fourth and ten. It looks like it was moving. It does look a little bit like it was, but you can still have possession in that ball. I mean, it can move as you're adjusting it, but you are possessing it. I don't know. I didn't mind that. It was close. I actually, this has been a two-year or a year-and-a-half,

running thing. If it's close, New York is saying the call on the field stands. Back to the fourth and ten for a moment. I do want to get back to Taylor Heineke here in a moment. You've sort of answered my question about him, but we'll do it again. I didn't have a problem with going for fourth and ten. You know, I actually think in these games, in New Orleans was the second good defensive team they faced, Buffalo being the first one. But, you know, whether, no matter what you think of Heineke's limitations, and they are obvious, I think, to those that are being realistic, they are moving the football. And one of the reasons they're moving the football is even without on Sunday, no Diommy Brown, no Cam Sims, no Logan Thomas, what's been

impressive-Sammu ended up being out. Curtis Samuel ended up being out. I still think their playmakers that they had on the field Sunday are pretty good. DeAndre Carter is very impressive to me so far. Obviously, you've got McClain out there. Humphreys had a good game. And Ricky Seals Jones, I mean, Rivera told me last week on the show, he's been their biggest pleasant surprise of the season. They love him. They love everything about him. But I think it's impressive. And then we're not even mentioning the backs, you know, Gibson, McKissick and even Jared Patterson got some carries. They actually have, and they haven't in recent. years, they've got some weapons offensively.

Do you agree or not? I think they have some dudes for sure. I know I like Carter. I think Carter is a playmaker. Yeah. Terry's awesome. Terry had a chance to make a couple other plays. He's covered by Lattimore a lot of the game. And Lattimore's as good as a get.

Yeah. And he did beat Lattimore early. Like there's a couple plays. There's a crosser in the middle of the game, third quarter maybe, on a third down that falls thrown behind, that I thought Terry could have flattened and really attacked the ball more. But still, if he throws the ball out in front, Terry had won initially on the crosser. I think Gibson's really running the ball well.

It looks like Gibson is comfortable running the ball. They're pretty solid. They're more solid at offensive line than I expected them to be, even with Cosme going out in that game. I like this toughness trying to come back in. Yeah, I like him. It's more solid than I expected them to be. They do have some playmakers.

You know, watching Phil Jones again, he's pretty fluid. He can run. And he's got some toughness to him. I really like watching Phil Jones. I like him better than Logan Thomas. And I know Logan's been making plays for them, but I like Phil Jones as a playmaker better than Logan. Well, that's interesting.

Back to McLaurne and Latimore. So I was watching a lot more of Heineke two days ago. And to me, by the way, I thought Latimore was the best player on the field on Sunday. But one of the things that I did notice when I started watching Heineke a little bit more is McLaurin was open more than I thought on Monday after the game. I thought Lattimore was fantastic in the game. But that was a hell of a matchup. And when I was going back and watching Heineke the other day on some of these plays, it was very noticeable that Terry actually won more than I even thought he did on Sunday. Yeah, throw the ball on time.

You got to throw the ball in time. Because Lattimore does, one thing he has is terrific closing and makeup speed. Yeah, so, I mean, it's one of those things like I was, as I was looking at Hineke, it's like, boy, Terry's open, but the one thing you do know, Latimore's closing speed is just exceptional and length, by the way. So I'm not so sure how many of those balls would have been completed, you know, when Terry sort of won early. And I don't even know that Lattimore's not baiting him in to throw him.

it to Terry to use that closing speed. I don't think so. So tell me about Heineke. You've talked a little bit about him, but you started off by saying, you know, limitations. We've talked about this in the past, but from Sunday's game, what are the obvious limitations? I think his process speed right now and his arm strength are two of the big limitations

that he has. I don't think he's exceptional in working the pocket, but I'd give a pass on that for how good he is off script. Right. He can make plays outside of the pocket. He made a throw outside of the pocket rolling right to, what is it, Milne? Yeah, Dax Millen. I like it.

Yeah. I think you'll like him too. Yeah, no, Dax Millen is, and he's a guy they certainly like because when they go heavy personnel or extra tight ends, they put Milne out there at their X. So they like Milne. But as far as limitations, I just don't see, here, if you're, Here's the difference with Hineke and Brett Farr. You can be a gunslinger, but you better have a gun.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, he's, he, he just doesn't have the firepower to be the gunslinger that he is trying to be. No. And that's, and I don't, I get that he grew up watching Brett Farr, I don't really believe that he's trying to be a gunslinger. I just think that he's late in a lot of situations, ends up running. And he's a guy that works pretty well off script.

But he just doesn't have a gun. Not a big enough gun. No, there are... We were joking about bears the other day. I was joking about what? You and I were joking on the phone about bears the other day, and I was talking about the size of gun you need for a bear. It's like, he didn't bring that.

Well, you know, we're going to get to see him for more games, but the thing that's starting to, to me, I mean, the arm strength, we saw that last year, that that was an issue. I think he is not consistent enough with his accuracy, too. The thing that you really see when you watch football, like a lot of us do, and obviously you've got a level of knowledge well beyond this, but it's when they throw the ball from the pocket to the sideline, to the far sideline. And how does that ball travel and how quickly you, how quickly you, you're going to be able to

does it get there. And those are the balls where you really see, like, they are floating out there, like a college quarterback and, you know, the AAC would throw it. It's not an NFL, you know, starting level out pattern throw. Yeah, I think you're exactly right on that. And I also think, like, climbing the pocket a little bit, trying to move forward, throwing outside towards a checkdown, and he's bouncing them to them. So, like, he just doesn't have that. true like pop on it to just get it straight to him. Yeah. He's got to have his feet that a little bit to make those drive-type throws.

He just doesn't make the drive-throws very well. I do think, though, I think he is a backup quarterback in the NFL. Like, I think he's proven that. And part of it is that he's such a confident guy and he's such a playmaker. He's able to make plays. And because of his confidence, he's never going to come in to a game and be overwhelmed, ever. Yeah, I don't. He certainly belongs on the roster.

And he's going to be a quarterback for a while in a week. We're talking about his limitations. I mean, there are a lot of positives from Heineke. Let's not get that wrong. And I really like Heaneyke. I think he does make a lot of throws and give him opportunities that maybe aren't there initially. So, yeah, I do think He can play. I just think as of right now, he's a little bit limited in,

making some big-time throws. And a lot of times you need those big-time throws. And then the last thing is if you are a little limited, you can't make the mistake. You can't make the mistake. I don't know why this popped in my mind. I thought this was funny watching the game again today. There was a point with nine minutes left in the third quarter that they popped up time of possession.

It said Washington 3859 and the Saints. 11 something. And the comment was, man, you just never see that big of a difference. Well, there was no way because that's over 50 minutes and there was still 23 minutes left in the game. Right, right, right. Yeah, so they messed it up. I was like, wait a minute. How did they not notice that they still?

But here's the thing, like time of possession is a number that is always interesting to me. but the times that they are misleading or it's misleading is when the other team is scoring quickly. You know, like on a 72-yard touchdown pass behind landing Collins or on a Hail Mary at the end of the half. You know, one of their other drives was super quick. You know, it was like a two-minute drive. After the second. The drive. It was at the start of the fourth quarter, right?

That one, but yeah. It was after the second. But that was a shortened field, but that also plays into time of possession because he threw the interception out of the end zone. But I was talking about the, before the Washington was up 13-7, and I don't know if it was the drive, I'm forgetting right now, whether after the drive that they scored to make a 13-7 or if it was two drives later. But that was, you know, sort of a big drive, like 11 yards, 10 yards, 12 yards, 15 yards. There was a penalty. And then Camara scored on the run.

And then Camara scores on a 25-yard run. Boom. Like that was, you know, I don't know. Here it is. Hold on. Six plays 75 yards, three minutes, 18 seconds. You know, and there was a roughing the quarterback on. No, there was an unnecessary roughness on Jackson.

That was when he knocked Taysam Hill out of the game. They didn't have Taysam Hill, and then they lost Deontay Harris, too. So two of their key playmakers, they really never got a chance to unleash Taysam Hill like they have on other teams. And Deontay Harris, who puts, you know, the fright into everybody with his speed, was essentially off the field from the mid, you know, early second quarter on. It didn't matter then. They just got gashed by Calaway. And James Winston,

you know, he probably had the worst performance of any starting quarterback against them all year. He was 15 of 30. He made a lot of plays. I'm not suggesting he didn't. But that's what's a little bit frightening with Pat Mahomes coming to town this week and Tarek Hill and Travis Kelsey. It is a, I think it's more than a little bit frightening. The Saints put up 33 points on 50 plays. You know, then your biggest problem is big plays.

like we got some work to do this week because the chiefs live on big plays especially against the secondary that doesn't communicate well right and who are they playing over the top on a lot of that stuff and who they matching up St. Juice against and who they matching up Jackson oh man how about the dumb hit Jackson had on Tason Hill

when you talked about Hill out like you know you can't make that play. How about the, I mean, we didn't even talk about the hell Mary. There's eight seconds left. I get that you might think sideline play, but once three receivers go vertical, there's no sideline. Yeah, true. Yeah. Just all you have to do on that is have one dude on either side to sit on the sideline and play everyone else deep.

Yeah. It's not a tough call. They had everybody up. They were all up with eight seconds left. Yeah, but if the sideline gives us. them a field goal opportunity, that's bad, but worst case scenario is six. They had three guys trailing not in the end zone when the ball got into the end zone. Nobody jumped, not one player jumped to defend it.

I think Wandon tried to. He was the only one that would have had an attempt, but there's no need for Curl and Jackson and one other player to be four yards short of the end zone when that ball lands in the end zone wondering what's going on. They should have played with depth to begin. So a couple of things about this play. Number one, landing Collins said after the game, I think it was Collins. We were playing for field goal.

And so that blew up and everybody's like, well, you're playing for field goal. I mean, it's eight seconds to go. Well, hello, like my goal would be to not let them score defensively. I don't want a field goal or a touchdown. They're first in 10 at your 49. And they've got one play and a kick or two plays with no kick, or maybe one play with nothing. So I hate people that said all week, just give up the three. No, the goal is to give up nothing.

Now, if they had gone super Hail Mary prevent and James had thrown a 15 yard out to Callaway, untouched pitch and catch four seconds, and there are four seconds left, and they had sent the kicker out, and he made the field goal, people would have been just as pissed off. So there is this fine line of playing and understanding that eight seconds, which Jack Del Rio understood, is plenty of time to get a pitch and catch out of the sideline. You know what? It's not impossible that they, if you're playing a little bit deep, they might quickly throw a ball out to Camara out of the backfield and have him try to run for eight, nine, ten yards and get out of bounds. So all of that should have been played and thought of, which it was.

You can do all. You can do bulls. I understand. You can rush two. You can play two guys at about eight yards in the flag. I hate rushing two in that spot. I hate the quarterback having all day back there. I hear you.

But that's why you have Chase Young. You should be able to get home. Oh, really? You can certainly rush three. Yeah. Well, they did. They rushed three. And that gives you, that gives you, that gives you three way deep over the time. You play three at the goal line, dude. You do three deep over the top, at least.

Yeah. It gives you two to the sideline, which still gives you three more dudes that can play intermediate. Like, you got, it's eight seconds. And here's the thing, I know you hate rushing two. Like, if you got eight guys in the end zone, how many hellmeries are completely? Not very many. You're right, and it's also right that they didn't have a tied end, and James isn't going to run for 45.

Well, James got the Hail Mary off because Chase Young got washed, as he has consistently this year, that created the gap that he stepped up into to throw it. But whatever, I mean, it was a devastating play. You're 100% right. There's some sort of fine line, and maybe Jack Delft. Rio called the play, and once again it was miscommunicated and not executed well. Maybe his intent was to cover enough so that they couldn't get an easy pitch and catch, you know, 15-yarder. You know, you don't mind an eight-yarder in that spot and let him go out and try to kick a 59-60-yarder.

By the way, that was the same direction that Washington passed on, wasn't it, on the fourth and 10, on the field goal? Maybe it wasn't. No. No, it wasn't. It was a different direction. Right. Yeah, opposite direction. But anyway, uh, they gave up 33 points in essentially 50 plays because the last drive of the game after they picked up the first, first down, it was basically kneeling out plays. By the way, what did you think? We didn't talk about this. What did you think? Six minutes and 12 seconds to go. It's 27 to 22. New Orleans is down five, and they've got fourth and one from their own 30. up five with six minutes to go and Peyton left Winston out there and had him sneak it for a first down. That's a ballsy call. I really like that call because I just like trying to win

the game now when you have an opportunity to win the game now. I think it's also that he didn't think that it would be stopped. They hadn't stopped him all day. Well, there's a lot of things that you can do in those situations. Like you can go, like Tom's the best of that. You can have a a check with me where if you don't get the quarterback sneak look you want, you could possibly get a run look you want. If you don't get either of the looks you want, you can call timeout in front. Right. No, I like the call too. I like the call too. I like going out and at least seen. Even if you line him up and didn't get what he wanted and he calls time out, then good. The thing about it. Washington's not going to take a time out in that situation. So you

you hold the cards there and you get a chance to see how they're going to play. And if you like it go. It was just that they, you know, had gotten stopped on the third and one, too, on the sneak. So then they sent it back out there and did it again. Sean Payton's going to do that nine times out of ten.

A lot of coaches are going to do that now. That's kind of the trend. You've got a chance to go win the game right now. Let's keep it out. And again, it's not like Washington Washington was moving the ball. They were capable of scoring in that situation.

Agreed. They had just So let's keep it out of their hands and let's go ahead and win the game now. Yeah, I like the call. And after they made it, you know, and this was, you know, this has been the issue. They can't get off the field, especially when it matters. The next throw was that throw to Troutman or one of the throws to Troutman. And then Camara rips off an 11-yard run. And then Camer rips off, you know, takes the pass and goes untouched into the end zone ball game. That's been the story.

Right. Which is weird when you say there's two plays that we didn't like. No, Rivera said that. I mean, that's fine and dandy. That was a lot more than one. But 11-yard runs in critical situations have to count as plays you don't like. And honestly, I did the film breakdown for however long, and I'm watching our games. And even we had a shutout last week. There were 20 plays on defense that I could have picked apart that I didn't like, things that we could have done better.

That was always the case. you know, it's never, it's never two plays that you don't like. You can say that it's two big plays that kill this sometimes, but there's more than that. And again, I mean, it's like, if you're really good, you're turning them over more, you're making more plays, you're flipping the field more, you're getting sacks. I just don't see them as a scary defense. And that's the MO, and that's what they're supposed to be with that front. They should be scary.

Right. All right. I want to get your thoughts briefly on the Sean Taylor news from today. We'll do that right after these words from a few of our sponsors. Before this last segment with Cooley, I'm just inserting some new news that just came out after we recorded the segment. And before I posted the show, it came from Jason Wright, the team president who tweeted, quote, we wanted to do something long overdue by retiring players' numbers. Months ago, we planned for Bobby Mitchell and Sean Taylor to be the first. verse two, seeing the reaction, I'm very sorry that the short notice does not properly reflect the impact Sean had. President's brief to come, meaning he's the team president. He's going to brief, I guess, in further. Again, okay, well, then you blew it because you should have

announced this a long time ago and taken advantage of what would have been a huge opportunity to sell tickets. And as coolly mentions, upcoming, sell jerseys. So I'm very, very skeptical as to whether or not the actual Jersey retirement part of this was part of the plan. Anyway, here's this final segment with Cooley. I did send Cooley, the Sean Taylor announcement. He understands that they're retiring his jersey. Three days before the retirement of the jersey, they've announced that that's what they're going to do on Sunday. They announced, Cooley, I don't think I mentioned this to you before. show but when they announced that they were going to retire bobby mitchell's jersey um this year uh they

announced that in june um so there's a lot of skepticism about all this now i do know and have learned that they have been planning this why they would announce it three days before and of course the timing with all the other shit that's going on is super suspicious um but this was another incredibly botched and missed opportunity by the team. Your thoughts on that and then your thoughts on Sean Taylor's jersey being retired because I have additional thoughts on that as well. Well, I don't think it's fair to Sean that you do it with three days with the circumstance that's going on. I just, I don't think that's fair to Sean and his legacy.

I say, I didn't think, how long ago did they tell Sean's family? And how much time did they present them to have an opportunity to go to Washington? They knew they were coming. They knew they were coming. I don't know if they knew they were coming for a retirement ceremony, but they knew they were coming to watch Sean be honored at halftime, which, again, the fan base didn't even know that. This is how I see this playing out.

We have all this garbage going on surrounding everything with the team. We've had it. It's not an uncommon practice to try. try to do something to distract attention. If someone says, let's just, well, we got what was retire Sean's jersey, everyone will be excited about that.

And someone else says, no, but just know it's a media ploy. And then somebody else says, yeah, but even if they do, it'll give them something else to talk about. Now they're using Sean as a media ploy. They won't talk about the other stuff. Even if it is, at least everyone will be talking about that instead of. Everybody will be ripping us for that instead of the other stuff. They'll rip us for that and saying in the midst of what's going on instead of delving into what's going on.

I don't know. I don't. I don't. I mean, one way or another, I just don't see this as a plan. I see this as a countermeasure. And I don't think Sean deserves that. Yeah, again. That's what to me, what it looks like.

That's obviously what everybody sees it as, what everybody thinks on Twitter. And even if it wasn't, and even if it was, we have to do this. and somebody's got to step up and say in a three-day planning time, yeah, but how's it going to look? But could we not do this and say right now we would like to retire Sean's jersey at the last week of the season in December or in late November or next year we're going to do it and just make the announcement that we're going to have a huge celebration and ceremony and invite all of his teammates back and everybody to be a part of it,

everybody that knew him. It's not like I really expect anything from them, but shoot, if they were retiring a guy that I knew is Jersey that I respected, that would have been a consideration for me going back out of respect to Sean and his family. I haven't heard about that. Did Tim Hightower reach out to you? This is the homecoming weekend or the alumni weekend. He reached out to a lot of players, including Ryan Clark,

who tweeted about it, about showing up for this particular game. Did he reach out to you? He did reach out to me, but I was not told that Sean's jersey was retired. They're doing the breast cancer charity event that I started, and he asked if I wanted to be a part of that. But that was like three days ago, four days ago. And I didn't know about the Sean thing. I liked Tim.

I have no problem with Tim. But no, I didn't hear about the Sean thing. So when he called you to invite... Tim's dealing with a lot of stuff. Hold on. I want to make sure I'm clear on this. So he called you three days ago to ask you if you wanted to come to the game to be a part of the think pink thing for this weekend. And it was alumni weekend, you know, the homecoming thing. They don't call it homecoming anymore.

No, and he's asking multiple times. Okay, but he didn't mention anything about Sean. No. And I don't want to put. That's just nobody did. Right. So the statement the team put out after they were hammered for announcing that, Sean Hammered for announcing that Sean Taylor's jersey would be retired on Sunday with three days notice.

We've been planning this weekend's tribute to Sean Taylor since before the start of the season in partnership with Sean Taylor's family and is part of our alumni weekend activities. We are looking forward to the opportunity to rededicate Sean Taylor Road with Sean Taylor's friends, family, and team alumni and are excited to officially retire his jersey during the game with our fans. and alumni present as part of our alumni homecoming weekend activities. We apologize to fans who would have liked more notice and will continue to share with fans ways we will be celebrating Sean Taylor's legacy over the next month. So there's more ways that they're going to celebrate. They're going to hit us with that, what, two days before.

So this statement, Cooley, in reading this for the first time, is they added the retirement of the jersey. decided to add that with, this is my opinion, I don't know that. They were planning on doing something with Sean Taylor this weekend because his family, several people that were in the know out there, have said, including media members, they knew Sean's family was going to be at this particular game. And there was going to be some sort of Sean Taylor tribute. The retiring of the jersey may have been a reaction to everything that's been going on this week

and for a way to get people off of it. But I don't think, as you said, they thought, well, even if they hammer us for announcing it late, at least they'll be focused on something else and not everything else. I think they're dumb enough to think that people were going to be super excited and thrilled about getting three days notice about Sean Taylor's retired jersey. Or they just thought people would be super thrilled about Sean's retired jersey and wouldn't even consider the timeline in which they were being given. Cooley, nobody's going to games.

This was a missed opportunity for them. If they had been thinking about this, they would have announced it weeks ago to sell more tickets. They're drawing $40,000 a game. Well, more tickets than more jerseys. More jerseys. A couple years ago, it was over the last 10 years, it was almost every single year,

the number one jersey sale was Sean and the number two was Riggins. Yeah. They could, because they would have had that opportunity to do that as well. Look, I don't know. I like to think about it like there was a group and somebody probably would have brought this up. I mean,

there's also that that possibility that there was this whole celebration and starting to come together. And Dan or Tanya said, and let's do this too. And that's what we're doing. No one's asking. You know, people have to push back on that. Like, it's not going to, the retirement of the jersey is going to be well received, but they're going to be immediately suspicious of the timing.

And, oh, by the way, it's not enough time for people to prepare. So let me get to this second part of it, which I did not talk about in the open of the show. Well, here, here, before you get to that part, here's the other thing about it. How many jerseys are retired? Well, so forever. Just say, let's say seven? No, no. The jerseys, the only jersey that was retired until Bobby Mitchell's jersey was just retired with Sammy Baws.

Sammy Baws number 33 was the only officially retired jersey for the organization for years and years and years. Now, there were protected jerseys. Yeah, I know that. I understand all the protected jerseys. So it was Sammy Baw and now Mitchell. And now Mitchell, 33 and 49. So the third jersey in franchise history being retired is. is a massive deal.

Yeah, well, that's what I was going to say next, you know, because I tweeted this out. Not everybody's thrilled with me, sorry. But I tweeted out the following, which I'm just going to say now. So obviously, as I said in the open, they botched this major missed opportunity on, you know, ticket sales, et cetera.

And as you mentioned, jerseys as well, the whole timing of it's suspicious. But beyond that, you know, Sean's jersey being retarded. has been a debate on my show for several times. And I'll tell you when it most recently came up is when Haskins took Thysman's protected number seven. And Joe let him have it.

He had to ask him, Dan wanted Haskins to have seven and said, but you got to reach out to Joe, put Joe on the spot, which was just absurd. What's Joe supposed to say no? And then Joe looks like an asshole. So the owner who should have taken that over from the beginning and said, this is one of our protected jerseys, Dwayne. You're going to have to pick another jersey. But no, he wanted Dwayne to wear number seven. So that prompted a big conversation about, why don't they just start retiring jerseys? So we got into it. And I put together a list of the

jerseys that I think should be retired without any debate. Without any debate, the jerseys, and this was when Dwayne took number seven, this is a no debate list. 928, Sunny Jurgensen, Daryl Green, Sammy Ball Ready, Charlie Taylor at 42, John Riggins 44, 49 Bobby Mitchell, and 81 Art Monk. Those are without debate, in my opinion. I felt this way two years ago with the Dwayne conversation, and we did multiple segments on this, because then people called in and said, well, what about Sean? What about Thysman? What about Doug?

What about Larry Brown, Chris Hamburger, Joe Jacoby, Russ Grimm, et cetera. And I said, and then I created what I called the debatable. list. Seven, Joe Thysman, 21 Sean Taylor, 27 Ken Houston, 43 Larry Brown, 55 Chris Hamburger, 66 Joe Jacoby, 68 Russ Grimm, and 70, Sam Huff. Those are the, those that we should be debated, you know, but they're not locks. Now, Sean is a very unique case, and we took a lot of calls, and it was very split on Sean. This is, and I'm going to get to this in a moment. And what I said is, look, this is the owner's prerogative when it comes to Sean. This is such a unique case. He was killed tragically, therefore had a much shorter career, but the career had an arrow pointing straight up. And what it would have become, would have more likely than not, been a career very worthy of a Jersey retirement, maybe a Hall of Fame career, the way he was playing in 2007 before he got.

injured, went home, and was murdered. But what I want to say is that if you were just to base the jersey retirement on results only, Sean's jersey comes behind several players, several. The five that I said are no debaters, Sunny, Darrell Green, Charlie Taylor, John Riggins, art monk to be added to Sammy Baugh and Bobby Mitchell. Now, Sean can go in, but if we were just based. this off of performance and career. There are many players, those and probably more that you would put in it or you would retire

before Sean's jersey. Well, a lot of people got upset with me tweeting that and said, this is not the day to be deciding this or having this conversation. How inappropriate. What are you talking about? He didn't die today. He had his jersey retired today. We've had this conversation about Sean many times in recent years.

and other players as well. And by the way, many people said, yes, this is exactly how the franchise should look at it. This is an owner-parogative thing, and he had a relationship with Sean, certainly from his side anyway. And because of the tragic circumstances, I'm not against it. I'm for his jersey being retired. But make no mistake, if it's based on just results, there are five to seven, eight jerseys that should be retired before Sean's. Period.

Again, I'm not against it because of the special circumstances and it's the prerogative of the franchise and the owner to do this. But, you know, much more significant to this organization in terms of what happened on the field were Sonny Jurgensen, Daryl Green,

Charlie Taylor, John Riggins, and Art Monk. You know? And by the way, Joe Thysman, Ken Houston, Larry, Brown, Joe Jacoby, Russ Grimm. Sorry, but that's true. But again, make sure that I'm being clear on this. I'm not against it because of the special circumstances.

He was a memorable player. He was a special player. He was more likely than not going to be a player worthy of this. And he had a major impact on people. I mean, he is the one player. No offense to you, Christopher. He is the one player more than any other, including you, that has had just an incredible lasting impact on this fan base during the Snyder era.

Yeah, I don't want to debate who should or shouldn't be retired or what results that anybody that you listed should have had to have had. Sean had a huge impact on his teammates, on his coaching staff, on ownership, on our fan base, on the national football fan base. a lot of that Hall of Fame stuff is also you know can you remember football without so and so and I think

Washington football will always be remembered with Sean Taylor I don't think he would take him out right so yeah I think that he is deserving of that based on the impact

that his life and his death had on the Washington organization my personal belief on the jerseys is it's a number dude. Put him in the ring of honor and put him in the Hall of Fame for Washington.

But I don't think, even if I'd had six more years and we'd won a Super Bowl that 47 needs to be put on a shelf, I don't even care to retire a jersey. And if it is, it's got to be like Tom Brady. You have to have an impact on winning two or three Super Bowls for your team. Yeah, that's another debate altogether, the debate over whether Jersey, numbers should be retired or not? Well, they didn't for years. Well, I just don't feel that they do. And that's fine. My personal belief is that I don't even think they need to be protected. Nobody, there's no disrespect put on Joe Seisman's number because Dwayne Haskins wore it. We remember Joe Seisman as seven and will always remember Joe Thysman as seven.

And watching Dwayne Haskins put on number seven does not change my thoughts. on Joe Seism. I don't disagree with you. Watching Cooke Hudson wear 47 does not change how I feel about the fact that I wore 47. I like seeing 47 on the field. It makes me happy to see somebody wearing my number. I have no problem with that. And so the Jersey retirement thing, when you say results, I say that it's almost a standard of goat type excellence. and to say that Sean had achieved goat-type excellence, he probably would have,

but in three and a half years, you just don't do that. And to say that anybody did, I mean, like you mentioned, Sonny's incredible. Everyone will always know Sunny is nine. Is Sunny won Super Bowls? And maybe part of that's coaching and part of that team. But to me, it's this above anybody else in the NFL type of status to have your jersey retired.

And I think Sammy would probably that kind of guy in his era. Did everything. But other than that, I don't, for me, the debate is moot because it's like, everyone will know Sean is 21. Someone can still wear 21. I don't disagree with you.

I really, to be honest with you, I don't have a strong opinion on jerseys being retired or protected jerseys or any of that. But the system that, they have employed over the years was to have one retired and several protected. This does mean something to a lot of fans, though. Especially what you, I agree. I don't. When you create the precedent of, you know, you're not going to see anybody else where 7 or 44 or 42 or 28 or 81, you know,

then when you do, it irritates fans. But I think, I think I'm with you. Look, I'm a big Maryland basketball fan, right? There's really, there have been a lot of repeat jerseys over the years from great players, All-Americans. Nobody's worn 34. Len Bias has not only had a tragic death, but he was also the greatest player in the history of the school. Not the greatest winner, but the greatest player in the history of the school. But that's essentially it.

That's the only one. So if you kept it at 33 and you unprotected everybody else and said, we're not doing the protection thing anymore. The problem, though, with that is Bobby Mitchell integrated the team. So everybody feels like 49 should. And it now is. And then you probably go to, well, I mean, you know, Ken Houston's actually the greatest safety or the greatest position player to ever play for the franchise. I mean, you'd start making cases for everybody. Mitchell and Ball, though, are the two that sort of stand out.

But then you could say, well, Doug Williams was the first black quarterback to ever win the Super Bowl. You get into all of that. I'm with you. I'm unmoved on this topic as to whether or not jerseys should be retired or not or protected or not. But I did say back then, if you're going to protect jerseys, let's just not protect anymore. Just retire them instead. And then there will be no debate about the next time a Dwayne Haskins comes around. and the owner wants him to wear a protected jersey.

But I have no issue, you know, leaving it to only if the guy ends up being the greatest of all time. Like, we really can't have anybody else who wear 12 with the Patriots. No. All right. What else you got? I know you got to go. Who else? Montana.

You know, a couple of those guys. But that's my feeling on it. Well, the only last thing I would have is if you're going to retire, numbers and start doing it. I certainly would like to see Sonny's retired when he can still come out and be a part of the ceremony. You know, if they're going to do it, I think that there's a couple guys that maybe are deserving, and I do think Sonny would be if you wanted to play that.

In the standard they're in, I think Sonny would be. And for me, it's just goat status. It would have been nice if Bobby Mitchell, could have walked out there, yeah. No doubt. Yeah, when sending could be a part of it. That's all. I feel.

Okay. Thanks for doing this. Good luck in Jackson Hole tomorrow night. With the Panthers. What's the Jackson Hole team name? What is the Jazz? Mountain Neers. Bronco?

No. Mountain lions? But Cody's the Broncos. Yeah. I should know. Cody's the Bronx. I'm still catching up on. On nicknames.

Logos. Nicknames. All right. I don't care. I don't care with it. Real quickly, I'll wrap this up with Cooley. I've got a smell test pick. Cooley's actually very interested in point spreads.

He's been following a lot of that. He's been watching the league and watching college football. I like Philadelphia tonight as an early smell test pick plus the seven at home against Tampa Bay. There you go. All right. I'll talk to you over the weekend. See you. All right.

See you, Jeff. Back tomorrow with Tommy.