The Kevin Sheehan Show - Did Irsay Create Snyder Tipping Point?

Episode Date: October 19, 2022

Cooley and Kevin today with plenty on Colts' owner Jim Irsay's remarks regarding the removal of Dan Snyder as Washington's owner. Cooley did some "film analysis" of the Bears' game which included thoughts on Washington's 3rd-down offense, the D-line play, and a Gibson vs Robinson Jr. comparison.  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 Cheon Show. Here's Kevin. I said there's consideration that he should be removed. You know, we have to complete the investigation. But to me, it's something that I think serious consideration has to be given to the removal.

And we have complete authority to do that. With those words yesterday, Indianapolis, Colts, owner Jim Mersey set off what turned out to be in late afternoon into the early evening, into the late evening, you know, discussion about whether or not yesterday was a tipping point in the effort to get Dan out of Washington as the owner of the football team. Coolie's with me today. He does have some Bears film breakdown and maybe we can talk about Taylor Heineke as well who will get the start on Saturday, on Sunday. games not on Saturday, it's on Sunday against the Green Bay Packers.

Today's show is presented by My Booky. Your favorite athletes always strive to put themselves in a winning position, and it's time that you did too with MyBooky. My bookie's got the biggest online selection of odds and contests to fill out your sports betting needs anytime anywhere, bet on the NFL, the MLB playoffs, which were awesome. Yesterday, the Yankees advancing, Bryce Harper hitting another home run, Kyle Schwerber having, Cooley, if you haven't seen the Kyle Schwerber home run from the National

League Championship Series game one last night in San Diego, look it up right now as I'm doing the rest of this spot. It's an all-time home run. But they've got lots of contests, too, including lots of blackjack tournaments at MyBooky. If you've been waiting for the right time to get in on the action, the time is now make your winning move today. Sign up at MyBooky, use my promo code Kevin D.C. claim your deposit match of any amount up to $1,000. Again, that's promo code Kevin DC at mybooky.ag to claim your bonus, experience sports in a whole new light, and make this season a winning one. As we will talk about football, which is my preference more than even talking about Dan Snyder, even though sometimes it doesn't seem like it, there is coolly one line that

two of them that absolutely reek for the weekend. And I'm looking at the My Booky Point spreads right now. The Giants are 5 and 1, and Jacksonville is 2 and 4. The game is in Jacksonville. What do you think that line should be? Five and one team against a 2 and 4 team. I guess the Giants are a 5 and 1 team that are not just destroying teams, so you're going to have a pretty tight line on that thing.

You'd think the line would be, you know, six-ish, but I'm assuming that you're going to say it's like two. The Jags are three-point favorites. Really? Yeah. I think they might be in the smell test. That one might fit the smell test to perfection. Yeah. Jacksonville minus three.

The Washington Green Bay line. I have seen in some spots it's come down to four and a half five at my bookie right now. If you want to play Washington, you can get them at five and a half at my bookie. The other line, by the way, that I was going to mention that really reeks to me is that Ole Miss is the seventh ranked team in the country. They're undefeated, and they are a one and a half point underdog at LSU. And LSU played better last week. They beat Florida, but the week before that, they got blown out by Tennessee.

It's not your father's LSU team, even though I think they're starting to play better, but they're favored over Ole Miss. I mean, a team with two losses is favored over one of the few remaining undefeated teams in the country. And the team that isn't undefeated is favored. So I kind of like LSU as well. I like talking about football and sports rather than what we're going to talk about. But we have to talk about it. I like talking about football and sports too.

I think watching Tennessee beat Alabama was my favorite moment in sports this year. It was great, wasn't it? Oh, my gosh. The couple plays they make to end that game, especially after Alabama got the fumble six, scored, Tennessee battles back, and we go for two, and tearing down the goalposts and the just a elation. That's what sports are. you had so much of it on Saturday too statement of a program oh yeah Saturday was fun Saturday was great

and to see a program like that that has had basically 20 plus years of not being what they were for a long period of time but still having the passionate fan base that you know it's like one of those pent-up sleeping giant fan bases like if somebody could come in and figure it out and they could get good again that place is going to be as good as any place in America.

Nalen Stadium had, what was it, 111,000 or whatever it was on Saturday. There were probably, you know, a couple of 100,000 people just outside of the stadium, hanging out tailgating all day long. Specific to the game, though, you were watching the very end of it. You watched this game all the way to the end? I would have liked to have watched from start to finish. I was in Bozeman, Montana. in a swimming pool watching my kids swim while I was trying to watch it on the TV at the bar.

Okay. But it was an insane game. I've seen, I did watch a ton of it. Insane game. I was talking to Scott about this the other day, Scott Van Pelt, who was on the podcast the other day. The end of the, so Alabama, it's 49-49, and Alabama gets it into field goal range at the Tennessee 32 on a Bryce Young play. He's great, by the way. He's so good with 34 seconds to go.

And then on three straight plays, they throw the football. And it's three incomplete passes. And they end up at the Tennessee 32-yard line kicking a 50-yard field goal that was missed that left 15 seconds on the clock and also left Tennessee with two timeouts left. And that's why Tennessee was able to throw two. passes to get into field goal range for the game winner. My point would be, and I felt this way watching it, they should have run the football. Alabama should have run the football to, you know, get it closer for a closer field goal, to also force Tennessee potentially to use their final

timeouts in the hope that they would get the ball back again if there was a made field goal or even if there was a missed field goal. And instead, three incomplete passes leaving Tennessee with enough timeouts. And Nick Saban, while a legendary all-time Mount Rushmore-esque coach, last year against Texas A&M, he went to the locker room with all of his timeouts and didn't use him as Texas A&M kicked a walk-off field goal. And people were astounded that a Nick Saban coach team didn't use his timeouts as they were approaching field goal range to get the ball back if the field goal went through. And my contention at the time was this is a guy that, you know, over the course of his career, has played very few games in which he was trailing or tied and needed to use his timeouts on defense.

And I just don't, it's weird, and we're talking about Nick Sabin, but you, you know, we've all talked about for years how many of these coaches just don't know what they're doing. They really don't know what they're doing. last year Texas A&M walked off with no time left on a 28-yard field goal, and Alabama went to the locker room as a 41 to 38 loser with all three of their timeouts left. And by the way, when A&M got the ball down to the Alabama like 30-yard line, there was 50 seconds left in the game.

So they were already in field goal range. And then this year, he could have run the football, made Tennessee use their final time, out or if Tennessee chose not to use them, the clock would have rolled down to where it would have been a walk-off field goal and he either makes it and gets game over. He misses it. It's overtime. But instead, he left all that time on the clock in Tennessee hit two big passes with two timeouts left and got a field goal off, which, by the way, the field goal barely went through from 40 yards away. It was a knuckleball that went through. Oh, yeah, that was unbelievable. The kick

Actually, I made my wife and kids, we got back to the room, I made them watch the last 10 minutes of the game. Right. And we were sitting there talking. I said, how do you feel in this spot as the kicker? I mean, that dude has got to be. That's his pressure of a spot if you can get. I know. I don't know how that ball ever goes through.

The way he hit it nine times out of ten, that ball doesn't go through. But to your point of running the ball, the last drive that Alabama goes down the field on, Tennessee is covering nobody. I mean, there are open receivers everywhere. Well, they had to convert a third and ten to get into field goal range. So he had thrown... No, I understand that. No, I understand.

But Tennessee has got dudes just open. They're bringing pressure. Oh, you're saying Tennessee's. I thought you were talking about Alabama's father-druck. Yeah. Tennessee is covering nobody. Alabama is gashing them with that. Tennessee is bringing pressures.

They're trying to do anything they can to get to the quarterback. They're not getting there. Dudes are running six yards open. Yeah. So, you know, it's interesting. Do you run the ball or do you just go down and score? And they ended up getting stuck, and I think it was probably in that moment where the offense was operating on such a high level. But Sabin was just saying, you're good.

Call what you want to call. Yeah, okay. I mean. I don't know. But, yeah. I mean, you don't see a knuckleball like that go through. very many times. Not the way that dude hit that kid for Tennessee.

I was pretty happy for him. Yeah. I think moments like that are so good for college football. And it's, I mean, Alabama's amazing, but it's always fun. We see something like that. And you got to bet, what? 95% of America, not Alabama, is on Tennessee side there. Tennessee was not only the preferred team to win that game by just general sports fans and college football fans, football fans, but they were also the most bet on team on Saturday.

I had Bama. So I was actually hoping for overtime because I had actually played them minus seven. The game went to like eight and a half nine before kickoff. But anyway, yeah, no, no, no, it was a cool moment. My niece goes to Tennessee. She was, she was, she had a ticket and she did but her friends didn't get tickets so she decided to go to a bar with her friends and watch the game and give her ticket to somebody else I told my sister I said that was that's that's a nice friend thing to do um but uh and I went down there a couple of years ago uh not for a game um but uh we were down there and it really is it's I don't know I think sometimes I think all of these schools are really nice Tennessee and Knoxville is

awesome. It's a great school. I mean, it's a really cool school. I don't know what it is academically. I think it's much better than it may be at one point was. It's a good school academically. It seems like all of these big state football schools in particular have gotten really, really good academically.

I think I talked about this a couple of weeks ago with Tommy about the state of Virginia and I pissed a bunch of Maryland people off. So I won't talk about colleges anymore. But Knoxville's a cool place. And it was a great game and it was a great Saturday. And, yeah, college football's awesome right now. Really interesting, too.

October's fun. October's fun for sports. It's great. Did you check out the Kyle Schwabber home run that I told you to look for? Did he? I did. I did check it out. That's always nice and I'll leave you back like that. So that was in the stat cast era where they, you know, measure exit velocity and, measure the actual length of the home run. That was the hardest hit ball since 2015 in any playoff game. The exit velocity was 120 miles per hour, and the 488 feet was the longest home run in a postseason game in the Stadcast era. It was an absolute bomb. I mean, and that thing was upper deck, and players were even talking, you know, today I saw some quotes from players who said that played for San Diego

that they've never seen a ball hit to that part of the park because Petco is a tough part to hit home runs in to begin with. So that wasn't tough. He hit that one into the cornfield. Harper had another home run. He's got four in the postseason.

He's having... He's having an outrageous playoff run hitting 407 with four home runs and seven RBIs, home runs in three straight games. I was actually, I think I've told you before, I'm a big fan of Bryce Harper and I have been, and I kind of follow him from afar, and I'm rooting for the Phillies.

You know, I wish you were stolen the Nats. But I forget whether or not you ever got to know him or not. Did you or not? Never. Okay. Ryan Zimmerman was the one that you knew really well. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. You got some football to talk about from the Bears game and some other things, but I think, you know, let me. me go first on this Ursa thing because you're you know you're not following the day to day I know you have some thoughts and you you know you you followed the news yesterday or you certainly went through it today so there is this thought that yesterday Jim Ursay being the first owner to publicly say there's merit in removing him as an owner and to suggest that maybe they have the 24 votes to oust him was like this tipping point and I'm not saying that I didn't feel like when

I heard it, that it wasn't significant. It is significant. Rarely do owners turn on each other publicly. That's a rare thing for that to happen, especially in that sport. However, what bothered me most was the follow-up the rest of the day. And the follow-up included the press conference that Roger Goodell had after day one of these league meetings, which was primarily a press conference dominant. dominated by questions about Dan Snyder.

And what he said multiple times was we need to let speculation be speculation and not comment on speculation. We have to wait for the facts. He said multiple times during this press conference, basically we have to wait until this Mary Joe White investigation is completed. Here's one of the lines from the press conference. it's an ongoing investigation. That's what we talked about. There are no interim reports. We've gotten no interim reports.

We would provide any, but we don't have them. When Mary Jo White is done with her investigation, we will share that with membership and share it publicly as we committed to it before, as we committed to before. And I was very clear with them that there's no reason for there to be any speculation at this point in time or discussion. until we have the facts. And so that was my message to the ownership, and there was little or no discussion.

Now, no other owner, other than Jerry calling it a media-inspired thing on Dan, really ended up commenting. They all walked by every reporter, and they would not comment on any of this. Shad Khan, the owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars, did tell Albert Breer, who had a story on this, that he just thinks it's fair to let the investigation finish and the facts to come out. The team's statement bothered me. They had two of them yesterday. The first statement that they sent out was an immediate response to Ursa's public comment about Snyder. And they put out a statement that wrote,

it's highly inappropriate but not surprising that Mr. Ursay opted to make statements publicly, on falsehoods in the media. It is unfortunate that Mr. Ursaid decided to go public with his statement today while an investigation is in process, and the team has had no opportunity to formally respond to the allegations. The commanders have made remarkable progress over the past two years. We are confident that when he has an opportunity to see the actual evidence in this case, Mr. Ursay will conclude that there is no reason for the Snyders to consider selling the franchise.

and they won't. That was the statement from the team and the team's attorneys. Then the team put out a letter that Dan sent to the other 31 owners that read, I hope that you and your family are doing well, like, you know, dear Bob Kraft, the names were redacted. I would like to address a recent ESPN article that contains false and malicious statements about the Washington commanders, our management team and me and my family. It is particularly shameful for ESPN to diminish the very

real accomplishments of our president, Jason Wright, who ESPN alleges was placed at the commanders by the league and has no power to make real change. I know you know this to be false. Unfortunately, ESPN ignored our efforts to correct the many falsehoods in their article before its publication. There is one allegation in the ESPN article that I feel it's important to address address immediately. The article cited unnamed sources who said they've been told that Snyder instructed his law firms to hire private investigators to look into other owners and Commissioner Goodell. That is patently false and intended to erode the trust and goodwill between owners that I take quite seriously. I've never hired any private investigator to look into any owner or the commissioner.

I've never instructed or authorized my lawyers to hire any private investigator on my behalf for any such purpose, never will. While we are all fierce competitors on the field, we are part of this organization because we love football, our teams, and our fans. Having the privilege to own a franchise in America's sport is something I know none of us take for granted. Falsehoods and lies spread about any of our organizations hurts the league, our players, and our fans, and we simply cannot let them go unchallenged. Thank you for taking time to read this. If you have any questions, Tanya and I are always available to answer them, and we look forward to discussing these issues with you at an appropriate time. So let me tell you what I think right now after kind of setting it all up there.

What bothers me are a couple of things. Number one, the insistence of the investigation, the Mary Joe White investigation. Dan, the original statement back to Ursay. Mr. Ursa while in, Mr. Ersci decided to go public with his statement today, while an investigation is in process and the teams had no opportunity to formally respond to the allegations. Roger Goodell talking about speculation and speculation, we'll wait for the facts, we'll wait for the Mary Joe White investigation to end. You know, even in this letter that he sent to the other owners, they talk about like this ESPN story and the Jason Wright hiring and the accusations of private investigators,

By the way, I'll point out that the article never actually said that they had proof that Snyder hired private investigators to investigate six owners, including Roger Goodell. It said that Dan said that he was doing that. And in this letter, I'll point out that what he denies is everything other than whether or not he actually, you know, in a moment of bravado or, you know, Napoleonic complex or whatever. ever said, I'm investigating the hell out of everybody. They better watch out. Who knows what he said, you know, in one of those impulsive moments. But he doesn't, and nobody's asked him, and nobody's pointed out really enough that they never said that they had proof that this happened. They reported that Snyder said that that's what he had done. And in this particular letter, he said, I've never hired any private investigator. I've never instructed or authorized my lawyers to,

and I never would. What he doesn't say in that is I never said that I did it. But that's really immaterial as well. Here's my major overarching theme, a coolly and Kevin favorite overarching theme. This can't be about the Mary Joe White investigation. This is a missing the forest for the trees. They're pushing this discussion into this Mary Joe White investigation.

investigation and what comes out of that will be the driver in terms of what happens. Mary Joe White's investigating these Tiffany Johnston allegations of a pure he said she said, with the exception of the Jason Friedman saying that he saw Dan push her into the car, a guy that's actually lied under oath and has major credibility issues himself. Meantime, Friedman and his allegations of financial impropriety with not refunding season ticket holders on their initial down payment and deposit, and then all of this stuff about holding money back from the league that was due the league from ticket revenue.

There may be something there, but it's very possible that Mary Joe White will conclude nothing. In fact, the odds are probably in favor that she'll say, there's some stuff here, but I can't tell you definitively that Dan sexually harassed this woman, and I can't tell you definitively whether or not he ripped off the league or ripped off season ticket holders. And my problem with all of this coolly is that this isn't the issue. You know, the team constantly talking about the last two years, things are so much better.

Who gives a shit? None of this has been about the last two years. The fact that we're now just waiting and relying on Mary Jo White's investigation when there are another five to six investigations going on. And by the way, nothing that she finds is going to take away from the facts that this was a very toxic workplace culture as Beth Wilkinson concluded. And Roger Goodell stated when they fined the team $10 million and gave Dan a quasi suspension. Like I kind of feel like what are we doing here? What are we getting set up for?

Maybe I'm overly skeptical here and maybe yesterday was a tipping point. But the emphasis on the Mary Joe White results, relying on that is a total misplacement of the importance. The importance of all of this, the emphasis should be on why a once profitable, passionate, incredible NFL market of fans is now gone. And it's not coming back until he leaves whether her investigation produces something or not. The league, if it thinks that somehow the Mary Joe White investigation, or if the team thinks that if Mary Joe White doesn't find anything conclusive, that everybody's going to say, oh, well, Dan was right.

This is great. let him continue as the owner. It has nothing to do with any of this. The big picture is this market is gone as an NFL market. It doesn't exist anymore in terms of anything remotely resembling what it was. The league knows that. That's why they want them out. Every owner knows it.

That's why they all want them out. A lot of the owners don't like them personally. And there's a personal animus involved in all of this as well, which, by the way, You should separate. The bottom line is they can't get this market back until he leaves. A new stadium isn't going to do it. Mary Joe White's investigation isn't going to do it. Winning isn't going to do it.

It might do it to a certain degree, but it'll never come back until he's really gone. And even that at this point, and I've said this many times, and many of you pointed this out to me yesterday on Twitter. And I understand what you're saying. And I agree with you. The name change basically was the death knell for, a lot of people, whether Snyder's here or not. I do understand that a lot of people

are never, ever coming back. That that was the final nail in the coffin. But if the league wants any chance of resuscitating this market and turning it into a big revenue generator, a lifetime revenue generator,

and having it be a market that they can be proud of in the nation's capital, he has to go. It doesn't matter what these investigations produce. Last point. Two points. Number one, the Beth Wilkinson investigation, he has already been punished for that. The league considers that to be a matter that's been resolved. The $10 million fine and the quasi suspension. They've spoken to that. And they admonished him publicly with the statement from Goodell in June of 2020. All of the release the report people, I hear you. I'd like to see the report too. But there isn't a report. although we all know that Beth Wilkinson could recreate the oral presentation that she gave to Roger Goodell. And they could redact the names of all the people that did not want, that wanted anonymity for the, if they were to come forward and be interviewed by Beth Wilkinson.

There is a way to get all of those details out. But they consider that to be a matter that's been put to bed. But the last point is this. I understand that if these investigations don't turn up like silver bullets, like a true proof of sexual harassment or some sort of comment that he made that was insensitive racially, or some sort of financial impropriety where he really was stealing from the league, if it doesn't produce any of that, my big picture, it's not about all that. that. It's about a market that's gone and only one way to potentially get it back, which is his

exit. That owners don't get run for that. He's a bad owner, an incompetent owner, one of the worst in the history of professional sports. He's ruined what was once something very sacred and special to a city, a major city in this country, the nation's capital. It no longer is. There are a few people hanging on, but those people will never leave. It doesn't matter what happens. It's an embarrassment to the league. It is an underperformer, but so are the New York Knicks many years. So were the Cardinals for many years. So were the Colts for many years.

It's very hard to run somebody who wants to be here for just being incompetent. So I'm overall still skeptical that this is going to lead to his ouster, even though if they really understood big picture, and I think they do to a certain degree. They just need to convince him to sell. They need to pass the hat around and come up with an extra half billion dollars and get him out.

He can sell it for five and a half to six. The owners come up with another half billion to say, here, this is what we'll do if you'll leave. But I don't think he's going to. I think his heels are dug in, and I'm skeptical that the Mary Joe White investigation is going to provide the information that Jim Mersey can say, see, told you so, let's vote.

I hope I'm wrong, but that's where I am. That was long-winded, but I wanted to get that in because it was a major new thing since the show ended yesterday. What are your thoughts? There's so much to it. And it's so interesting to me that this is going to continue to be in the media every four days, every five days, which has been for over a year. And the Mary Joe White investigation is still not done. When is the Mary Joe 8 investigation going to be done tomorrow?

Goddell said that he has no idea. But it's really it's going to be done when Goddell wants it to be done. Yeah, I don't know. Goodell said that the NFL says, hey, this due day is next week or in two weeks, summarize and let's put it together and I want to see what you have and if there's anybody else that you need to talk to you need to go talk to them and if they're not going to talk now they're probably not going to talk so but the thing about it not being done and some of the investigations as long as they've taken really leads me to believe that there's another path that they're looking at

I don't know exactly what it is but I'm with you on the marriage of white stuff it's some of it's going to be hard to prove with any certainty that anything happened. So it just seems to be that they're letting that hang out there because there's something else. I'm not sure where they're going or where the House committee was going with it or where anybody's going with it, but it seems that there's something else. I've told you all along, and I've said this the entire time, I don't know if they find anything that really, definitively says he has got to be fired, like the Jerry Richards and stuff. I just don't think that's available, because I just don't think that's really there. There's an entire boatload of things that happened that are, like a million little nails in the coffin that could potentially

feel the deal, but I don't know if that also, I don't know if that gets it done. Where I'm really, on the same page as you is every aspect of the NFL below ownership is a production league. GMs get four to five years. Head coaches

get three to four years. Players a lot of times get two to three years. And if you don't produce and you don't perform, it's immediately that you're going to be moved on. You fire you for that. And I think it's really fascinating when you start looking at talking about or looking at and talking about an organization diminishing the way that Washington has diminished, especially over the last 15 years and the last 10 years, to where they're the bottom of the revenue stream for the NFL. And that is not what the residents to the owners want.

Now, there's still a major market team in terms of value. And you and I had this conversation a couple years ago, and you said the value will never go down in terms of buying a franchise in Washington. And maybe you're right because at $5.5 billion, it certainly hasn't. It only went up over the last 10 years. Right. And there are other organizations that would not sell for that because you know that Washington could and should eventually produce a top 15 income, if not a top 10 income. Well, it was number one at one point, 1A, 1B, Washington and Dallas. I understand, and it's number 32 right now.

And to your point, it's not going to get better. And we talked about the Tennessee game, and it's a sleeping giant of a fan base with over 100,000 fans rushing the field. And right now, Washington 6'0, and they beat Dallas, like 44,000 people are going to smile and walked out of the stadium calmly. winning would help and winning a Super Bowl would help but it's also it's impossible to win a Super Bowl when you can't produce and you haven't produced over a 25-year period and you continue to do things and be a part of this franchise like I think it's funny you know

in Gadell's press conference he says there's been no change in status with Dan since Tanya took over the day to day except there has because it was leaked a week ago that Dan was the one that got Carson wins. Yeah, they pushed back heavily on that, obviously, and Ron did as well. We talked about that the other day on the podcast.

I understand that they pushed back, but you understand that Dan believes that he got Carson win. I know. But Dan still believes that he's acquiring quarterback. Yeah, you told you. Yeah, right, you've said that. So, honestly, there's been no change in status. Ever. You know, what you just said, let me interrupt real quickly. See, I think, you know, some of this stems from, including like the private investigation thing, is that he's always trying to be, you know, the guy. You know, there have been many people, and I'm not going to put you on the spot, that, you know, he's a narcissist. He wants the credit. So the possibility that he was out there saying, I got Carson Wentz. You know, we got. We got.

got him. I told Ron, told him that we got to get wents and we got him. You know, it's like, okay, he wasn't watching the film, as Ron said, breaking down the analytics in Indianapolis. I'll tell you one thing, there's no doubt in my mind, based on the trade, there's no doubt in my mind if somebody said he was involved, I would have said, of course he did, because he way overpaid like he always does. But anyway. Continue. But without saying anything other than you're not producing, you're not generating revenue anywhere near what you should be.

In fact, you're the worst. I think it's fascinating that the owners could not just vote and say, you're costing us money, and we'll make it just about that. Period. I'm so with you. but they won't. It's fascinating. And maybe there's something that

because of this thing that they enact and say, look, if there's somebody that owns one of these franchises that really doesn't fit the bill and doesn't step up and doesn't make the right move over a 10 to 12 to fit, even a 15-year period, we have the right as a group of owners to simply vote.

And that is written it. It's amazing that they don't. Well, because, you know, there's just two. First of all, there are many organizations that are lovable losers and there's still a fan base for. This one is the opposite of that, clearly. But it's all, you know, in there. You have to, it's conduct detrimental at a level that far goes beyond wins and losses. And, you know, free agent acquisitions and trades and coaching hires.

And, you know, but to your point, he has, the running of this franchise, if we take all of the workplace stuff out of it, which, you know, the league admitted after the Wilkinson investigation that the place was toxic, you know, so, but the problem was none of the direct allegations of harassment or misconduct were levied towards Dan. He just oversaw it as the chairman of the board and the CEO, etc. But really, the most, let me put this delicately because I don't want anybody to think that I'm minimizing the importance of those that worked in that building that felt harassed and were victims, okay, because there clearly were. And there was at least one victim that the team felt strongly about that they paid her, you know, they had an insurance company pay her $1.6 million. And then tried to pay her again, according to reports, not to talk to Beth Wilkinson.

the $1.6 million plane ride back in 2009. But really, the conduct detrimental is the evaporation he has caused of the interest in the team in a market that used to be one of the, if not the, premier markets in the league. That's the conduct detrimental. But I'm with you. It's so bad it goes well beyond just a poor performing owner. because it's the poor performance of the owner and on the football side, and then it's the poor performance of the owner as an overseer of a culture.

You could combine it all and just say, dude, you're terrible for us. You're terrible for your city. There is so much, there's more contempt for you in your city than there's ever been for any owner in the history of our sport, with the exception, actually, ironically, of one. and that is Jim Ursa's father, Bob Ursay, who snuck out of town in Baltimore and moved the Colts to Indianapolis in 1984. You know, the Baltimore will never forgive the Ursa family for that, but that's a different thing altogether. There's no owner in the history of this league whose city has despised the owner more than this one.

And it's not, it's performance, it's one playoff win in this century. so far. It's a record that, you know, is like 60 games under 500. It's never having one more than 10 games. It's one PR embarrassment after another. It's one, you know, consumer insult and taking advantage of your customers in so many different ways over the years after another. And then also, you have all of these workplace issues, which, you know, have come to the forefront in the last two years, which may not hang him because he wasn't directly. involved, but you put it all together, why can't they just say to him, get out, just leave. Six billion maybe.

So here's the thing is I think they can't do that. They need the 24 votes, but they're concerned about a couple things. And I think initially the Wilkinson report was kept the way it was kept and potentially the Mary Joe White, because you don't want to lend your organization to potentially be looked into by the House committee or by any investigative reporters or anything that's happened in your organization since 2002. None of those guys want that. Of course.

They're for the grace of God go I. Yeah. They don't. So I think, again, I think it's what they're probably trying to do is look for something that is not coming up in an investigation over the course of 12. 25 years of toxicity. That's not what they're looking for because they don't want that to happen to them. The other thing that I think is, and we've talked about this, and who leaked the Gruden emails?

Look, there's still a couple of things out there. You're right. You want to show that you can leak something and it won't fall back on you, leak something big enough that's important that doesn't fall back on you. And then you can say, and I'm not, I don't know if you. did it. I have no idea. But if he did, he can't, I'll find a way to get it out there. I do know, I do know about you. I think most people believe he leaked. Most people believe he leaked it in the league, I think.

Okay, but he's not, this is not, like, leaking that, really, we talked about this a week ago. To put out confidential team and NFL material, the commissioner's got to be on the same page. It doesn't mean that he was, but supposedly there's like two buttons got to be pushed, one by the commissioner, one by the owner. So if he did, Goodell's slightly culpable in that situation. Goodell doesn't want that. Right. Yeah.

So there's a lot of, it'll also be you going down if I go down. And no other owner and the commissioner, and they don't want that. And I think that's what Dan's posturing towards is you all know who it will be, and potentially they know what it will be. So how do you want to handle it? Well, yeah. I mean, that's what the story was. The story last week was essentially, and Jim Mersey doesn't give a shit,

because he's, you know, been a painkiller-addicted guy, and he's had so many transgressions over the years. He was suspended by the league for six months, and he said yesterday, I'm not afraid of him. Come at me. Bring it. But, you know, there are other people out there, to your point, and this has been the theory all along,

which is pretty obvious, which is not only do they have, a lot of owners probably have a lot of things to hide, but the person they would be running would be the worst person to run because he's so petty, he's so vindictive, he's so litigious. and they understand that, you know, he's not the one you want to fuck with on something like this because he will go scorched earth. And so there's always been that. I wanted to just add, you know, you brought up the Gruden thing, you know, that's still out there

and that's going to get resolved. And if that thing goes to trial, there's going to be a lot of stuff that ends up being uncovered in those emails. Who knows? But there's also, you know, which I think the Wicker sham and the Don Van Nata Jr. your story really highlighted. Not that, you know, Tommy hasn't talked about this a lot, and we haven't talked about this, you know, over the years. But the stadium is, you know, and that's another thing that bothers me is there was a quote in that story from an owner

that said, if he can get the stadium done, you know, essentially we're all good. The stadium isn't going to do anything, okay, that's not bringing back this fan base if he still owns the team. He thinks it will because he's delusional as he's been throughout his ownership. you know, as he is about, you know, his role in all of this. But there is going to be... The problem is nobody wants to build a stadium with him. Exactly. So as long as the three jurisdictions continue to deny him one penny for the new stadium. And then the league refuses to waive the debt limit.

And the league refuses to give him what they give to almost everybody, which is $200 million from the league coffers, to help him. him with the new stadium. Then he is very much stuck. Now, I did explain yesterday with Tommy. He does have 49% of his franchise that he can sell to another new minority group of shareholders to raise, you know, a minority stake, let's just say the things valued at $3.5 to $4 billion.

You know, let's say he can raise a billion and a half to $2 billion. Well, he's first got to pay back the loan that he took from the league to buy out Fred Smith, Dwight, Schar, and Bob Rothman at. $875 million. That's not an ongoing forever loan. That's coming up. Yeah. So raising, but he's got to find people, and there are a lot of people that want,

with so much money and all they want is just to say that they're an NFL owner, no matter if they have control or not. But will he be able to find people that want to invest and be a minority shareholder in this organization, with him as the controller because it's not something that, you know, he's toxic with everybody. He's toxic with the league. He's toxic with his fan base. He's toxic with corporate sponsors. He's toxic with probably, you know, potential, you know, investors or, you know, want to be minority owners in an NFL team. So if he couldn't raise that money to help himself, then you're talking about what? $100,000 coat of paint and a few tweaks to FedEx Field, and he just stays there and plays in the

worst stadium in the NFL with the worst organization, and he basically middle fingers everybody and says, yeah, try to get me out. That's possible. We could end up getting there. Like no new stadium in 28 or 2029, no plans on a new stadium. They couldn't run them because of Mary Joe White or anything else. And he just says, to hell with all of you, I'm going to continue to own this thing, no how shitty it is. It would be nice if there were a group of owners that could go to them and say, it's time, because you cannot recover from what's happened here. And by the way, I think you made a good point. The true erosion of this really started 10 years ago. Right around 2008, 2009 was the beginning of what we ended up seeing accelerate, you know, post-2016, post-2017, and then become,

you know, I mean, it's, it's, it's been racehorsing here for the last five years in terms of, you know, we went from 90,000 at the stadium and 30 plus, you know, local television ratings to then 78,000 and 25 plus something television ratings to now a capacity of 64,000 that rarely, that hasn't sold out yet. And when it does, it's with other fans primarily. and local TV ratings that are literally as low as any, you know, big-time market can get for a home team. You know, I think the Dallas game did well a couple of weeks ago, I was told him, but that's because it was the Calvians. What's really interesting if you really step back and think about it.

It's almost like, you remember when Jim Zorn said he liked to call plays because calling plays is fun. It's fun to call plays. I want to keep calling plays. and it but you're terrible you think like is it even fun for Dan to own this team

I've asked you this and I think for 10 years I think the thing is is I think he's probably trying to survive it long enough to give it to his kids

yeah I think his goal is survive it long enough to give it to Jerry or give it to either of his daughters and and essentially then

let them run it but that's not now I think it's unrealistic, and I don't think the other owners will approve of that at this point. I think you're 10 more years down the road before that's a possibility to just give it to one of your kids. And by the way, it's an unacceptable. Why are we doing this? My question really would be, if I'm one of the other owners, I would sit down and want to say, dude, it's $5.5 billion.

And you can go spend a couple years traveling and on the yacht. And essentially, it'll be done. No one will talk about you anymore. You can spend time with your family. You can spend time completely out of the media. Do you not think that this would essentially go away if he sold the team? Go away. What do you mean?

All of these investigations? Any of the Dan Snyder's toxic organization conversation conversation. Yeah. So he is not going to be pressed. If he sells the team tomorrow, they're just going to drop these investigations and move on with the new ownership. Right. Of course.

Yes. It's over. Yeah, there's no criminal, you know, or civil cases to be, yeah. Right. But, I mean, okay, so we just got $5.5 billion. We're going to give all these civil cases $2 million and just quit. We're done. I'm done.

I'm done. I give up. I forfeit. You guys won. You got me out. It's over. I'm going to go enjoy my $5.5 billion. It's a great investment.

Great return on my money that I spent in 2000. You know what I mean? I just don't understand personally why I would continue to go through what he's going through. You're not the same person. You are self-aware. You're not a narcissist. You don't need validation when you're on your yacht. Self-aware of the Amalfi Coast.

I mean, there's some very big differences between the two, but I promise he feels it. I promise that he wakes up a lot of days and says, what the fuck am I doing here? Like, this is, like, it's never, it's not going to end. It's never ends. So why hasn't he moved on? The other thing that you struggle with is, and again,

I don't think there is a smoking gun. I don't know what they're going to find. Right. But what you can, maybe he, maybe everything he understands is not going to get him out. The hard part is, is when you look at the perception of what everybody around you is, and you say there's eight different groups of people telling everybody that you're lying and you're the one person saying, I'm not lying, what do you think America believes? If eight kids say, your daughter did this from all different groups of kids,

and my daughter says I didn't do it I'm going to say come on, like, I mean, actually you're going to believe your daughter but you're going to be practical about it

and you're going to try to, you know, you're going to make sure. Let's say my daughter's friend. It's my daughter's friend. All right. I get it. And eight other friends are,

like in any situation, when everyone else says that you're not telling the truth, who do you think people believe? And he's facing that right now. And Adele can say there's no reason for speculation until facts come out. And everyone can say facts can come out. And a lot of things have come out is the other thing.

And you haven't won and you haven't had success. It's like nobody's on your side. And that makes it really hard. But you know what? You know, the problem. So you're actually bringing up something that I think I haven't really thought of or haven't expressed. and that is that maybe without all of the different things that have happened in recent years, okay?

The, see, the problem is they do have a couple of legs to stand on when it comes to some of these accusations. There was a smear campaign, okay? An actual, you know, lying smear campaign, we think, funded by, initiated by one of his former minority shareholders through this India-based media company. And this was the thing that resulted in those internet rumors flying that he had ties to Jeffrey Epstein and sex operations and drug operations before the original post story came out in July of 2020. You know what? That's an awful thing to have happened to him.

And I'd want vengeance too. I'd want whoever initiated that to pay dearly. And by the way, Dwight Schar, just so everybody understands, will never, ever be allowed to own an equity stake in an NFL franchise again. They have not said why, but I think it has something to do with the smear campaign against Snyder. Some of the other things recently, you know, this yearning for credit for like a total turnaround in their HR department, again, irrelevant to what we're talking about here, but he wants some credit for that. he certainly, you know, if he didn't have anything to do with Wentz or if he didn't have anything to do with actually hiring private investigators, maybe he was mouthing off one night about it,

and that's where it came from in the story from one of the owners anonymously. You know, I've said all along, Cooley, be careful. You know, the truth will do. Don't reach into an area that's going to produce a win for him. And my concern about the Mary Joe White investigation is that it might produce a win for him. But it doesn't change the big picture. The big picture is they're all gone. Nobody's left here to support this team.

And I say that, of course that's an exaggeration. But the point is it's a tiny fraction of what it once was and there's only one chance to get it back. and that is for him to leave. It doesn't matter if he's right about certain things. Okay, great HR department. Great, this India company made up all this stuff about you. Great, you didn't have anything to do with the Wentz trade. Great, you didn't actually hire a private investigator,

even though maybe you told some people you were going to do it. All these exaggerations and potential lies, I get it. Like you don't want to be, you want to, and somebody like him probably wants to take him on one at a time. That's why he was so quick to take on the Mary Joe White investigation to begin with. We'll handle this one. We're going to get to the bottom of it and we're going to be transparent with the results. And the league said, no, you're not. You're not investigating yourselves.

But the point was, is they kind of had this sense that it wasn't going to produce anything. By the way, I still hope it does. Maybe she uncovered something else in the process of this. But to your question that you just asked five minutes ago, 10 minutes ago, why would he want to continue to own it? Maybe there was a moment before the last two years when everything really got sideways that he may have considered it, I don't know. But now he's in fighting mode. Now there are things out there that he feels wronged by and that he may be right about. But the big picture he's not right about.

He is overseen as the chairman of the board and the CEO and organizations total erosion and demise. He inherited a sacred trust, a unifier like nothing else this city had, and he's ruined it. Whether the Mary Joe White investigation produces something or not, whether or not Jason Friedman was lying or not, none of that shit matters. whether or not he's got a great HR department or not, it all doesn't matter, even if he's right on some of those things. It doesn't change the fact that nobody wants him to own the team. And if he leaves, you've got a chance. The name thing, again, was still a big deal.

And there are people that are never coming back because of the loss of Redskins. And I understand that. I've said this a million times. It feels like an expansion team to me. You said it on the day that they came out with the news. new name and the new uniforms. You said you couldn't believe how much it hit you. You didn't anticipate that. Think about if you've lived here and rooted for this team in your entire, you know, life. But the only chance the league does have is to get him out. And I don't know

how he could be having fun to answer your question. I just don't know unless he's completely oblivious to just how despised he is and just how much he's at fault for ruining it. There's only one constant people over 22 and a half years. Only one. He hired everybody. He fired everybody. They're trying to blame Bruce. Yeah, well, it's comical because the majority or close to the majority of incidents of allegations of things that investigations ongoing are looking into predate Bruce's arrival. Like that's, they're doing this slight of hand thing with Bruce. and with the last two years, that is, I kind of get it from their standpoint. There are enough people out there that aren't paying attention to the day-to-day in detail.

And, you know, it's easy to kind of fool some of those people. But it's like, seriously, the last two years? Congratulations on having an HR department for the first time. Congratulations on getting rid of all of those horrible people that were in the organization and hiring better people. You still had the DEA breaking your doors down. one year ago, basically to the day. You still completely

butchered the Sean Taylor Jersey retirement weekend. You butchered the 2-22 rollout. You butcher the Trent Williams added on. By the way, you know that you're one of the 10 additional. We haven't talked about that. I can't believe we haven't talked about that. You got named as one of the 10. I mean, that was a given.

And now are one of the 90 greatest Redskins of all time. Are you going to come for that celebration? I said we haven't talked about it because we haven't talked about it on the podcast. We've talked about it personally. So when they hold this ceremony to announce the next 10 for the 90 greatest, you're not going to be there for it? No.

Why? I don't want to. Okay. Should I not ask anymore? That's why. I know. All right. Are we done with this conversation?

I don't have to be interested. I'm very appreciative of being voted in. and I'm very appreciative of my time while I was there with the Washington Redskins. At this point, I don't have a lot of desire to be involved with the Washington commanders. It's not the team name that does it. And you're very appreciative of all of the fans that voted for you. Yeah, very appreciative. And I feel for all of the fans for where they're at,

and I still appreciate the people that are still fans that are still die-hard. Because you know very well as much as me even at times if maybe you almost find yourself rooting against them, it's still the only game you're rooting. I'm not going to go watch a Bills or Broncos game and say, like, I'm a brawl. Let's be a Broncos fan now.

That's out. You know, there's no other team. So my only interest is still Washington. I just don't know where my interest is if it's to win or lose. Have we talked about the Chicago game and the shot of the two fans with the bags over their heads, with sell the team written on the bags and the jerseys that they were wearing? Have you seen that? Have we talked about that?

We haven't. Did you see it? I did. They had Chris Cooley, Jersey. Both of them were wearing 47 jerseys. Where were you on Thursday night? I was wondering when we talked on Friday morning, you said that you were headed to, you were headed to the airport.

Yeah, I got a quick flight. You were headed to O'Hare. You said, I'm in an Uber headed to O'Hare on Friday morning. We can do it right now. Yeah, I did. I got about an hour and a half to the flight. I got a quick minute. Yeah, it was me and my buddy, Trevor.

Trevor. All right. Let's get to some football talk right after these words from a few of our sponsors. Don't forget to rate us and review us, especially on Apple and Spotify. A five-star rating would be nice on Apple and a one-to-two-sentence review really helps. Keep them coming. I know many of you are thrilled that Cooley is back. doing his film stuff.

I know before you get to some of what you looked at on film, you wanted to say something. So here is what's super-duper-fuzzy about these bags, other than that was, you know, I wore the white jersey. We had to get to the... I saw this. I literally didn't even place... They're both wearing 47 jerseys when I saw it live.

Really? No. When I saw this the first time, I just saw this good bags. That's sad of me. I appreciate the support. I guess that is support. I mean, they're wearing your jersey.

Of course, they're fans of yours. But they also have the bag on SingSall the team, which is also kind of in support of you. We used to go, this is so funny. Brian Kozlowski was such a good friend, still is. Played Tide End with me. Right. He played in Atlanta for eight or nine years before.

And any time we were driving to a game, going to a game, and he'd see someone walking on the street with the Cooley jersey, he'd stop and roll down the window. Hey, there you are. Then he'd yell, Coolly! What's up, man? He acted like me. I mean, he did this. You know how it's one of those deals where it's not really funny the first 13 times?

Right, but then it gets funny. It became the standing joke. That's funny. Did you know that he dated Rebecca Lobo, the college basketball player? He went to Yukon. He went to Yukon. I do. Yeah.

They were awarded the Husky Couple Award in 1990. Are you reading his Wikipedia page? I am. He didn't date Rebecca Lobo. He didn't? Oh, my God, you put that in there? No, there's been somebody did. One of three or four of us.

His Wikipedia never gets changed, so there's been a bunch of times that it got changed by us. Well, it's in there. It writes in college, Brian achieved notoriety by dating Rebecca Lobo. The couple were awarded the Husky Couple Award in 1991. No, my brother wrote that. That's untrue. Wikipedia. Awesome.

Let's see you. Well, I don't know. Somebody that I know wrote that. Okay. That he did not do it. When I said I know, I said I know that he went to Yukon. There's another, is that, why can't I find this? There's something else if it didn't get changed.

Yeah. Oh, I know what I wanted to ask you. How about the grizzly attack in Cody? Oh, and Cody? Yeah. Yeah. That has to be big news out there. It is big news.

Yeah, two college wrestlers here. Yeah. It's amazing. It happens almost every year here during hunting season. People go up there and get attacked by a bear. It's awesome. The kid got the bear off of him. Right.

He was attacking his friend, who's also a wrestler. They were in town playing a college, I guess, and they went for a hike. but apparently the injuries are very serious not life-threatening but very serious in nature that's the way they were described serious yeah very serious in nature and it happened in nature I mean bears are not

innately they should be scared of people even grizzly bears are normally scared of people but what happens is they start to associate food or anything left with the smell of the human scent smell and then they they lose their fear

of humans. Well, it's also possible that they came upon, you know, a cub, right? They're going to protect their young. Yep, mothers can be aggressive with cubs, and males will be aggressive with food, and I didn't even read, I

should have been reading the Pall Tribune a little bit more this week. I saw it at the gas station in Ralston, which we call Rallmart, because it's the only, you know, mart in the little town that we live in. Right. That's lovely. I've actually, I've really gotten most of Park County, I think, to call it Rawlmark. And they're building a new one.

They should change the name. It should be Rawmart. I'm not sure if they can do that. So there were four college, you know, wrestlers that went for a hike. They were in town for a match. And they were hiking. The bear attacked one of the pairs of boys that were kind of, I guess, up in front of the entire group. They did have bear spray with them, but they were unable to deploy

it because the bear was attacking them before they could get to the bear spray. And the first guy that was attacked, his friend did come and try to get the grizzly off of them. But both of them were, you know, they were, they were medevac to different hospitals. One in Billings and one the Cody, well, they went to the Cody Regional Health Facility and then they were airlifted the billings. Right. But they both live, they're both going to live, but apparently serious injuries, although they're not detailed in terms of what the injuries are.

Oof. Oh, there's an update to this story. Oh, God, there's some pictures of one of them. Oh, man. Yeah, the pictures of that. Yeah, I just saw them of him and his... Oh, this is the update to the story. I grabbed him, I grabbed and yanked him hard by the ear.

It got his attention. and then he reared up towards him and described the sensation of the bear's putrid breath filling his nostrils in himself with a sense of dread. I got, there's, this is, I'm going to have to read this. I'll be reading this story when we're done. But the pictures of the kid, well, I mean, you know, it could have been a lot worse.

Okay, let's get to some football. What do you got? Third downs, here we go. Yeah, the bear text of stuff's crazy, Sorry. I'm just sitting here looking at it. Speaking of the Bears. There's a lot more up here than there used to be, and it's kind of why I don't really want to go hunting too much in the mountains.

But, yeah, anyways. So I was asked by a friend to do third down from Washington offense. He really wanted to hear it on the podcast, the defensive line, and then the comparison between the two running backs. So, you know, where do you want to start, buddy? Well, because we did such a long opening segment, whatever we do is got to move a little bit. But I think – Yeah, let's just go through the third downs.

Yeah, I mean, you talked on Friday about the third downs, but I want to know why, you know, they have been really awful on third downs the last two weeks in particular. Look, there was a drop pass. I understand that. But they've been pretty bad on third down the last two weeks, including on Thursday night. So what's going on? Here's what, like, I'm going through this first half, and here's what's crazy as I'm watching this. Because, again, until I finally just went and printed the thing off, the GSIS, the game book.

Right. But third and seven, third and five, third and five, third and five, third and four, third and five, third and five, three, three, three. Really, there's seven. They convert two of them. One's on a penalty. The other one is on a slant to Terry McCorn. Third and five is a convertible down. third and seven is it I mean it's really third and four to seven or third and five to seven and then third and two to five are both situations that you can convert and you know it's amazing like the

the very first third down to the game the bears come all out pressure and this is all out pressure with almost zero regard for the back or the tight end coming out of the back field like the tight end who starts to block the defensive end, and then the tackle comes all the way out,

is essentially left uncovered if he just leaks out, which is a fun little, oh, shit, play that a lot of teams run when teams want to go all out. It's just let the tight end block for a second. It's not a screen. They're coming all out. You're tied in blocks for a second and a half and turns around, and there's nobody there.

And then they have a backside defensive end looping to try to cover a back. is almost looping into a zone situation, not even really staying with the back. Where it's crazy, and this happens again later in the game, is they are really struggling with line calls and where they want to slide to protect. So the Bears essentially have seven guys at the line of scrimmage,

and then they have a creeping DB over Terry McLaurin who ends up coming two. So they're bringing eight to three-man route combination. If you're going to have pressure when you're going, and by the way, the creeping guy over Terry McLaurin is clearly creeping, he's clearly going to blitz. He's clearly going to bring pressure. There's no doubt. He is inside shade and hawking downhill. You have number nine and number six off both ends.

Essentially, you can block one of them. One of them should be turned free because you cannot block eight or seven. It can't be number 53 dead up the gut. The problem is they're just not, I don't know what they're doing in terms of protection. And the problem I don't know why they're doing what they're doing is because nothing makes sense in what they're doing. So I'm assuming there's missed assignments on multiple protection, which means they're just confused with some of these looks. But if you give Carson Went one second there, like one and a half seconds, then really he's going to throw the ball to Samuel on a 10-yard out route. and it's going to be a huge game.

The three defenders covering are in such off coverage that there's no way that he doesn't have time to get the ball to Curtis Samuel. It's just he doesn't because you leave an immediate interior pressure. And when Carson's got a guy right in his face, there's not much he can do, have? Nothing on this play. And it's crazy because the tackle goes, there's a defensive end over the tight end who's going to block that. and the tackle then goes all the way out to the tight ends guy when it looks like you should stay down. The guard turns back the other way. So I'm not sure if they have a left side on or right side on what they have on.

But right now there's a massive problem in terms of picking up some of the pressures with communication on the offensive one. They do it on the next third down as well. I want to ask you about this third down. One of the reasons I wanted to ask you to do third downs is because I think there is this sense that on Sunday they're going to have an out. And the out is that Taylor won't get sacked this many times because he'll be able to escape it. And by the way, he's very good at that.

But in this first, first, third down, which is, you know, a jail break for all intents and purposes, simple question. Is Taylor Heineke able to avoid this pass rush? No. Okay. Of course he isn't. No, no.

I mean, can he step up, duck his shoulder to 53, turn him? The problem is they still have a free rusher off the backside. So when you are turning one free to all out, which you have to, and that's number nine coming off the quarterback's left side, when you're turning one free to that side, you can't leave the back alone on the blitzing linebacker in the B gap because he's going to get bold backwards. So the quarterback would have to turn essentially to his left to avoid this pressure,

which he's going to turn right into the free rush. The way you want to do this is you want to pick away your line's going to slide, turn the backside free completely, and then the quarterback can drift away from the backside to throw to the open receiver. If I had two receivers to the right side and knowing that Curtis Samuel is running an out to the right side, I would want to full slide my line all the way to the right, which means the tight end would be on the widest rusher, the edge coming off Terry, the tackle would be on the D-end, the guard would be on 53 who comes free,

the center would be on 58 who's mugging the A gap. And we just slide everyone right, and then Wynce can drift to his right where everything's blocked up like a semi-rollout, which gives him time to throw to Curtis Samuel, which should have been an easy completion. That's how it has to get picked up to allow pressure. Okay, forget the pickup for a moment. This is what, the part two of this first third down, and there's a theme to some of the third downs, but this one I want to talk about. doesn't Scott Turner have to have there's so much green grass after the ball is snapped and the receivers never turn their heads around before to give Wentz any kind of chance before he is buried.

Of course he could throw the ball obviously but he's got no time to throw the ball. Why can't they have something that is immediately as you describe. Hot Route, Hot Route. Let's, you know, Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn, let's figure it out and get the ball out real quickly. If you're going to somebody... If you're going to be on the same page of Wentz being able to look at Samuel knowing that he's running, essentially that 10-yard out to say, have some urgency in this. But if he abbreviates that route to six or seven yards, that's great.

The ball can be out in time. I don't know if I still think Wentz has to see it open too long. But essentially, the way I described it is if you're going to slide right, eight to ten-yard out route only takes a second and half to get the ball out. And if it's coming out of his break a little early, just put a little air on the ball and throw it. You should be able to get that ball out. It just seems to me Scott Turner has not figured out a way. Amazingly, if Wentz just drift straight backwards, he should be able to float one out to Samuel here, and they would have converted.

I mean, he could have thrown the ball that looked like the kick from the Tennessee kicker to Samuel. There's no way, the DBs are so far off. There's no way they're breaking up. That's true, but I don't even know if you really think that, do you really think he's? No, I understand. He doesn't even have a chance to do that. Well, he does if he drifts straight backwards, three more steps almost like a screen. It's not what you want.

Minus 8. You want to be able to drift to the right. You want to be able to drift to the right with everything picked up and knowing there's only one three up the backside. If I can just be able to slightly drift right, should have been easy to accomplish to this. The next third and five, they take a sack. Roquan Smith ends up getting him.

That was after the best throw he made in the game, didn't you think, to Cole Turner? And they got out from deep in their own turn. Tori? One of the best throws. I think the best story made in the game was dropped by

Curtis Samuel. Diami Brown down the middle of the field about the five-yard line. That was Curtis Samuel, I think. It was.

It was Curtis Samuel. Correct. I thought that was his best throw at the game, but it was a good throw to Cole Turner. Okay. So the next third and five

is a, really what becomes it's a zone blitz, four-man pressure. And so they they have five, at the line of scrimmage, and Rochuan Smith is essentially behind the nose tackle, who's covering the center. The nose tackle goes left.

The guard should be able to pick up that nose tackle. The center should be able to pick up Roquan Smith and the right tackle and the right guard fan out to the right and take the edge and the tackle over the... And this is... These are an easy, easy deal. Now the back's out on this because I think it's a scat protection or a straight five. man protection. I don't think the back has responsibility to pick anybody up.

And if he does, it's the backside defensive end who ends up dropping, so the back would see that he's dropping, and they should be a full slide to the right. The problem is, is the center. When the nose tackle goes to his left, doesn't trust that it's a full slide to the right, and turns back, and then Rokon Smith is free.

Then the guards coming off trying to help him the right guards. I mean, these are just simple, these are simple protection errors. that said, I don't know where he's going to go with this ball. I mean, I don't like this concept, which is a three-man to the right side where the farthest guy just basically hitches up. The inside guy runs a go-rout, or the middle guy runs a go-rout, and the inside guy runs a five-yard out. They ran this full five different times and third down to a trip side, the same exact concept. They varied the concept on the backside, which this time was Cole Turner running a go-rout,

one-on-one against number nine, which I'd have just thrown right now. You've got to figure out this protection issue, and both of these two are center-guard issues. So they come back, they throw a slant to Terry McLaren. It's complete the next third and five. That's pretty sweet. Like, never again did they go slant to Terry McLaren on third down. Never again. Yeah.

They take their fourth third down as a third and five again. they take a go ball. The concept I just described, they flip it. They throw a go ball to Diami Brown. It's a good chance to have a back shoulder throw because he's covered, but it's one-on-one. Wentz just lets it go a little over its head. Dehami Brown's kind of jammed up.

He can't get there. The third and four on the next one, I would say by alignment when they split McKissick out by receiver alignments, they're giving away too much. They take Terry McLaurin and McKissick to the right, and they tighten them both down, condense them towards the line of scrimmage. When you watch the next third and four, which is somewhere mid-second quarter, both D.Bs are now playing outside leverage to outside or to tight receivers,

and both D.Bs are driving on two out routes to what is almost interceptions. So really, I think by alignment you're giving away a lot when you put the back out of the back. also horrific ball by wins to mickistic on that right oh terrible and finally i thought he could have just back-bodied terry mccloren to an outside db where terry essentially would have turned around he'd have thrown it to him and it's conversion they get a dpi on a third and five in the next one it's to a corner of the ball so late anyways he is actually is looking to a slant to a receiver which an end drops to on his right he cannot come off of that easy one-throw slant to his right D.N. dropped into it to just immediately shift, hitch, throw. He shifts, he turns, he scoots

about five steps to the left, and he lobs one out there to the corner, and it's just low and late by when it ends up getting a DPI. Then you throw a go ball that's underthrown to Terry McClureen. It's at the 17-yard line later in the second quarter on the third and six. I don't hate taking a shot. It's just a poorly thrown ball. I mean, the thing is, Kevin, like you get into the third quarter of the second half of this. and it just doesn't get much better. I mean, you have a boot out of gun. It's top, everyone's covered,

but if he keeps his eyes up, he could hit the back. Once he's moving, he's not keeping his eyes up. Robinson did run for a third and two and get one. You had one of a third down at the six-yard line where you end up getting a false start, and then you have no chance. And then really the last third and six before they did that little draw, try to draw them off play.

He throws short two. Antonio Gibson who runs his route short and a third and six. That's one of those ones where you're like, it's third down. Do you know where you need to get? Plus, I throws it to Gibson when really McClorns would run in a whip outside of him

and probably is an easy conversion. He's getting stuck on the first reading. So, I mean, essentially when you look at it, like I said it was a lot of just basic cross-concept. It's not just basic crossing concepts, like I said initially because you watch the game and you see things and then you watch the film and you see other things. But really, I don't, like they're trying to create one side. If you get the perfect matchup, you're going to work the one side.

And if you don't, then we're going to throw. But I don't like creating mismatches and I like creating different variations for things. And I like different styles of formations. And I didn't love any of the game plan on offense. the pass protection struggled immensely, especially early in this game. And then really, Wenz was wildly inaccurate. And maybe it's a broken finger. He's been inaccurate a lot, but wildly inaccurate through most of this ballgame.

Right. So you convert what? Two third downs. Was that what they were? Yeah, two for 11. Two for 11. Not acting good. So here's the question.

It just kills me. You never maintain drives, and you never maintain drives, and you never maintained the ball in the first half of that game when you had seven convertible third down. Right. Down and distance-wise, true. 100%. Favorable down-in-distance.

So here's the key question with Taylor Heineke getting ready to start. And people excited about the possibility of the offense being jump-started on Sunday against Green Bay. How much better of a game would the offense have had Thursday night if Taylor Heineke had been the quarterback. And Cooley will answer that right after these words from a few of our sponsors. So Cooley, on Thursday night against Chicago, if Taylor Heineke had been the quarterback in that game Thursday night, would it have been a lot better? I don't know. Maybe two more conversions. Okay.

And maybe some of this line slides. So here's the other thing. Right. There's been these conversations of can when to make changes at the line of scrimmage? Well, when you go to the line of scrimmage on the first third and seven, you don't know the bears are going to all out you. So you don't always just go into a third and seven. Sometimes you do. Sometimes by down a distance, you can, you know,

a team will bring pressure and all-out pressure at a much higher percentage here. So we'll max protect in a third and seven. sometimes you know that. I haven't watched enough of the bears, but they would have. And so maybe they went in knowing we're going to max retect with a full slide and run a three-man combination. But other times, you get surprised by what the defense brings to the line of scrimmage. That's where a quarterback has to say like Ringo Ringo or whatever you want to say. Or he's got to give a max call and keep the tight end.

and there are things that a quarterback can help with that as well. Yeah, I mean, so what you're saying is it's very possible that some of these protection issues are things that Wentz has the ability to read the defense and fix before the snap. On both of the first two sacks, there was missed assignments by the center or guard. Right. Or tackle, I'm not sure exactly what, you know, you can see that it's not a cohesive protection. They are unsure of where they're moving to protect. We had a new center in there.

Tyler Larson started the game the other night, and he's the third center, the fourth center now, right? I don't know, at this point I've lost count. But do you think that that was more on the center or more on Wentz? Or you don't know? I think it's more on the center in guard, in my opinion. Okay. It's my best guess.

All right. Tell me on the defensive line who the best player was. Before that, here are my thoughts. really quickly offensively. The one thing I liked that they did, and the reason they were in third and five and third and four, was because they got Terry McLaren involved in first down situation. I really didn't pay too much attention to that in the game, but there's a swing screen early that they mix in where motions deep in the backfield and swings out.

There's a fly sweep on a first down for a four or five-yard game. There's a reverse for a four- or five-yard gain. there are four or five different plays where Terry's involved and they are positive first down plays against the Bears defense. That's also where you get frustrated. On four of these, it was second and five. Right. It doesn't have to get the third down.

Right. Well, before that first sack, one of those sacks, maybe before the Roquan Smith sack. I mean, he threw a ball to J.D. McKissick on second five that literally was like a fast ball at his feet. Yeah. He threw another one to McKissick on the first and ten.

It was a fastball at his feet that's incomplete, where McLaurin screaming open across like five yards across the middle. Yeah. Again, we know that he was hurt. He had the bicep going in, he hurt the finger in the second quarter, it was broken, and then he hurt his ankle. So, but the funny thing is, and I talked about this on Monday or Friday, we did together, actually, is that he hurt his finger and yet we're not sure whether or not it was his finger or just normal inaccuracy from him

because he's been inaccurate a lot of the year. By the way, that's part of Taylor Heineke's problem. He's not, he's very inconsistent with his accuracy. So we'll see. I wanted to ask you. The last thing I had to offensively. The Wint block on Roquan Smith may have won them in the game. Right.

If Robinson, if he turns that block down or isn't in a position to get to Roquon Smith, Robinson takes a two-yard loss, and I don't think they overcome that to score. Yeah. Now, they would have been able to kick a field goal for a 9-to-7 lead. 9-to-7, but the way it played out, the Bears would have kicked a field goal for a 10-9 win. Right. That's true. if it had played out exactly that way.

I wanted to know, we'll just finish up with this. I thought it was an outstanding game from the defensive line. We talked a little bit about on Friday, but after watching the film, like who stood out to you the most? Well, Payton and Allen continued to stand out and were awesome throughout the game. I thought both were disruptive. Both played exceptionally well in the run game. the entire defensive line, really, I thought, did a very good job maintaining the pocket

and keeping the quarterback in the pocket where there weren't real run lanes. You know that Fields is going to beat you for a couple scrambles, and he's going to get a couple different first downs, but you're not going to get killed by him. And he did end up having a lot of rushing yards, but one's late in the fourth quarter, and, yeah, he gets out. But two of the scrambles early are both Jamon Davis and Cole Holcomb missing plays where they had a chance to get the quarterback on the ground.

Exactly. It's not necessarily D-line. It's blitzers. So I know the D-line was really good. Sweat was consistent in just beating the crap out of their left tackle number 70. Yeah, he's a rookie. He's great with his hands in the run game. He was great with his bull rush.

He was great with his speed rush. All the guys were great with their hands and their bull rush and their speed rush. They were also really good at keeping him, you know, under control and maintained on boot stuff on the edge. and I actually wrote as a joke. Funny that they're so good over the last two weeks in the boot game with Ryan Carrigan as the coach, because Ryan Carrigan was the guy that got beat on the boot.

True. But essentially, they bullied Chicago up front. There was not a lot of movement. Some of the bigger plays were running backs off script or making things happen or the quarterback really doing a good job to make things happen. It was a really good game. I thought throughout with the D-Line.

And then even, you know, there's... Like Allen had another sack that got called back because there was no legal contact, illegal hands to the face, by St. Juice, which would have helped them again. That was the drive. They ended up going for fourth and 16, which is insanity. Right. But ultimately, I thought, I think the D-Lines disruptive.

Who's not, 96 is not a bad player. He's a good player. Abollah made some really good plays. Did a good job shedding and getting off at the run game. I thought essentially D-Line was the only thing you'd be excited about coming out of that game. James Smith-Williams is 96. And by the way, on the play before the fourth down, I'm sorry, the second down and the first and goal,

he's the one that deflects the pass. And I think that might be a touchdown to Mooney. and so Smith Williams has actually played well. And then 91 Ridgeway, I agree with you on Obato. Obata's flashed a lot this year when he's been in there. But when they went with the nose tackle in their five defensive line, or if you want to call it a 3-4, 91 was the nose tackle Ridgeway,

and I thought he did a decent job when he was in there. Yeah, I thought Ridgeway did a decent job. Here's the other thing I really do want to me. mention because I said you'd only say a lot of it, you'd say D-Line. That's not fair. I will say that coverage was good throughout the game. Coverage was good throughout the game. There were some opportunities for him to make throws, and he did have some open receivers. But more times than not, he didn't, and if he was going to throw the ball, it was going to be contested.

Because we talked about the play early in the game where Herb Street said this is an open receiver in the NFL. It is an open receiver in the NFL, but he isn't open by, he's a and a half a yard. You could throw it out in front and he might be able to go get that, but it's not a given. So I thought coverage was good through a lot of this game. Well, remember, they're not very good. They're not a very good team with very good players on offense. So that's part of it. But I agree with you, including the St. Juice play on the final play of the game. I looked at that on the All-22 multiple times. I think he makes a really good play. I understand that Mooney, if he grabs it out of the air, reaching over St. Juice, and has possession,

it crosses the plane, but I thought St. Juice played it well. If you put the other team in situations where more times they have to make the hero play, then you're doing good. I mean, Mooney would have had to make the hero play. St. Jus was right there. He made a great defensive play. I think the play before on Forrest was clear P.I. On Forrest. But they didn't call it.

No. So. And then maybe they would have thought about running the ball because it's still amazing that they didn't run the ball with 52 seconds left first and goal. I really am sort of blown away by that. All right. Last one. We talked a little bit about this on Friday,

but I think Gibson looks really good this year, and I thought he looked really good the other night. And yet Robinson's getting most of the touches. Hopefully that'll change. Maybe it'll even up. What did you see with Robinson and Gibson? Well, the hard thing with Gibson is that he had zero touches in the first half. So even if Robinson's the guy, Gibson's one of your best five in terms of guys that need to get touches.

So he's got to get involved. And if that's finding a different style back-field, I know that you think you have three receivers and dynamic weapons, but it might be more of a two-back offense. And there's a lot of things you can do out of a pistol or out of gun or even with two backs from under center like some process stuff where it's going to take some creativity, but you can get it done. And I think both of them are physical enough that if you ask the other one to block, that they'll block for the other one.

The thing is, is Gibson can't not be involved in the first half of ball game. When you see that both, when I'm watching them both play, you know, positives from Robinson is he's the guy that can get downhill. He's powerful. He does not get tackled by the first guy. He doesn't get leg tackled. and I think he's going to continue to get you positive yards.

He also had a couple plays early in the game that were really not well blocked. There's a couple zone plays early, early in the game where, like Andrew Norwell is doing the Mike Shanahan faux pot. If it's zoned to the left, we're never turning back to the right. Like you're never, you're just going to continue on your track the left. And let the back. So there's some inconsistencies in how some of the zone plays were blocked up front. So it's not just on him. It's not like, I wouldn't say, what do you average, like 1.7,

I wouldn't say that Robinson left out boatload of yards. Right. In the first half of that game, I wouldn't. And, you know, I think that he's a guy that will get better at getting downhill with his cuts more. You know, when you look at some of the, maybe some of the things you want to work on is his cutbacks. He's too slow to get to the cutoff. back. It's not put your foot in the ground and get the cut back. And then when he's pushing front side and making his first cut, his cut is not just a hard, sharp downhill cut. And that's what

I like with Gibson is when he is outrunning to his left and he sees a lane, and then he's going to push it hard upfield. Robinson's drifting on his cut just a little bit. So that was something I would say. Look, I think when you see Gibson, though, he is quicker. He's a little bit more decisive with his cut. I'd like to see him get the ball more. He's at laterally or outside-wise. He's getting to the edge quicker. No doubt. No doubt. To the outside. I don't think that's really a question. Like Robinson's drifting is a little bit more than you'd want him to drift. I would say with Gibson, we talked about the screenplay that was a poorly thrown screen, you still have to make one miss there. He's got to find a way to avoid one. I know, but the ball was

so low if he... I understand the ball was low, but he had two steps before DB. He would want that one back, for sure. And I'm not going to hold him... I would hold the quarterback accountable more than the running back, but I would say, if you're an elite

ball carry, you're going to make one miss right there. Just one. Touch him. All right. You got anything else in your notebook? Oh, yeah. McKissick might be the best. I love McKissick. Love him. McKiss has got a knack. He's a good ball carrier inside. But really the way they're, I think they're going to have success is with those,

with Robinson and Gibson, each splitting 15 touches. They're not that different. Okay, let's put it that way. You're not, one's not dynamically better than the other to say, this is the guy that's got to get to touches. I don't believe that. I think it's too early for me to say that because we haven't seen enough of Robinson Jr. I just feel strongly that Gibson is an excellent back.

And that when featured as he was last year during that four-game winning streak, he can really impact their ability to move the football and offense. I would agree. And I would say that it's hard to say that he lost the job. Well, the fumbling, you know, last year, and he hasn't fumbled this year yet. But the fumbling last year, obviously, you know, he got benched in the Carolina game before coming back and having a phenomenal second half. All right. Friday.

Friday will review the Packers. Shall we will? All right. I'll talk to you that. All right. Thank you. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me.

Tommy's with me tomorrow.