The Kevin Sheehan Show - Heinicke Upon Further Review

Episode Date: October 5, 2021

Kevin and Thom today on everything involving the Washington Football Team including the DEA raid, the defense still missing in action, Taylor Heinicke upon further review and more. They talked Urban Meyer's troubles and MLB playoffs too.  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 Cheyenne Show. Here's Kevin. Tommy's here with me today. The podcast is presented by my good friends at My Booky. Winning season is rolling right now at My Booky.

And this week, entries are now open for their winner-take-all super contest. What is that? Well, week five through week eight, make five picks against the spread, Get them right, earn points, and rise up the standings to take home a potential $10,000 grand prize, and the entry fee is only $10. And if you needed another reason to head to MyBooky at MyBooky.orgie. Using my promo code, Kevin D.C., they've got a $20,000 blackjack tournament. Tommy, I'm thinking about entering this. It's absolutely free to enter.

Go to MyBooky at mybooky.agy.ag now. If there's something in the promo code already, erase it. Write Kevin D.C. And they'll double your first deposit. So you'll get twice as much money in your account based on your deposit size. Bet anything, anytime, anywhere with my bookie. So I am sitting in here talking about my bookie, okay? As I opened up because I'm starving, I haven't eaten anything since very early this morning.

and I'm chomping down some of my favorite magic spoon cereal. The cookies and cream flavor, it's very good. I had a bunch of new boxes sent. Everybody asks me, is it really good? It really is. The cookies and cream's really good. The cocoa is really good. The cinnamon's really good.

But there you go. You can hear me chomping on it. I also have my dog in studio, and you saw the tweet that I put out this morning about my dog. Yes, I did. and people were responded very positively. You know? I mean, my reaction was, boy, that doesn't look like lassie to me. I know.

It's so, I was telling Tommy before, those of you that are familiar with bulldogs, and she's an English bulldog, they're so ugly, they're cute. But it takes a while, and it takes personal experience to realize just how cute and loving they are. I mean, she's got a face only a father or mother could love. There's no doubt about that. But people who have bulldogs and or like them,

they get it. And you don't, which is fine. I totally get it. I think before we got a bulldog, my reaction would have been the exact same. Like, you know what? That face looks good on you. You can have it. But she's great. And, you know, I had her instant. studio during the radio show, which I consider to be very unprofessional.

And I don't know that I've ever, I've done things that have been unprofessional before, certainly. But, you know, to have a dog in studio with you when you're doing live radio is risky. I just didn't have a choice. I didn't have a choice this morning because of some stuff that's going on at the new house. And I had to take her. And she was great. She was absolutely perfect throughout. Just lie down right next to my feet. That's what Bulldogs are. Tommy. They're very loyal and loving. They just want to be around you. And, you know, that's nice when most of the people in your life don't want to be around you. You've been dealing with that for a long time. Oh, absolutely. Anyway, so what do you make of this Ryan Vermilion's story? Do you have any

big opinions on it? I have no big opinions about it. Do you know anything about it? I don't know anything about it. Okay. You know, here's the thing. For Washington football fans, you can take solace in this. You're not Jacksonville, you know? Because Jacksonville, I think, is about to fire their coach this week already. No, they're not.

Not this quickly. I'm telling you, you should read the quotes coming out of the locker room as we speak. What do the, give me some? I have to Okay, I'll have to find them All because of the video or because of everything else? No, everything else, everything else. He's a joke.

He has no credibility in the room that, you know, everyone makes fun of them on the team. I mean, you can't have that, you know, four weeks into the season. Well, I didn't know that part. Yeah. The video that's been circulating for people, that don't know. We shouldn't assume that everybody's seeing it. Urban Meyer was at some club. This would have been Friday night or Saturday night. Remember, they played the Thursday night game,

and they actually had a lead on Cincinnati and lost it and lost the game 24-21 to drop their record overall now to their 0-and-4, right? Jacksonville's O'N-4? Yeah, they are. And he was at some club, and he had some young honey grinding up against him. And somebody took video. It was not his wife. And he did apologize and said that he was at a line, and he put himself and the organization into a bad light and whatever. Now, I did not know that players consider him to be a joke.

I mean, Urban Meyer is hardly a joke as a head football coach. Oh, in the NFL. Well, this was inevitable. This is a self-destructive guy who needs to be in a place where he is immune from outside criticism and influences like Ohio State. Well, he had, whereas a college football coach in Florida, you're considered a king. Here's some of the stuff coming out from Michael Silver, who, you know, we know now works for Washington football team. writing about Urban Meyer as a Washington football team employee? I think he also does writing for s.I.com, too. I'm not sure.

You might be right about that. Okay. Yeah. So he tweeted the Urban Meyer situation in Jacksonville has reached a crisis point, especially in the locker room. One player told me he has zero credibility in that stadium. he had very little to begin with. Players were particularly put off by the fact that Meyer canceled Monday's team meeting as he dealt with the uproar over the videos. Quote, he even canceled the team meeting. He was too scared, one player said.

Wow. So, you know, said one player, we looked at him like WTS, you know, what the you know what, you know what, right when he left, everyone started dying laughing, and he knew it. Bottom line, said to player, it's bad. I don't know how he's going to function. Wow. Yeah. How long was Nick Sabin with the Dolphins?

How long did that last? It didn't last a full season, correct? I don't know if it did or not. I don't know if it did or not, but it wasn't as bad as this. Didn't Lou Holtz have a very brief? stay with the Jets? No, he was there for more than a year.

Lou Holtz was there for a while. Well, I mean, the Southern Cal job is open. And maybe, you know, maybe he's just, I mean, he's a good football coach. I mean, it may not work in the pros, and he may be too self-destructive or have self-destructive tendencies for it to work with, I mean, put it this way.

you are, you're under a much bigger magnifying glass in Columbus than you are in Jacksonville. I mean, that Ohio State fan base, yeah, they are protective. They're also vicious if you don't get it done. I would put the Ohio State football fan base right up there at the top of the list of the most rabid, crazed fan bases, sports fan bases in North America. they are way up there. They're in the top three to five. But that's interesting.

I mean, I don't know, that's weird that that's happened so quickly. He's going to have an option, though. He'll have an option, I would think, at Southern Cal, if he wanted to Boulder, if he got fired right away. Probably the best option for him. Nick Saving was with the dolphins for two years. It was two years, huh? Yeah.

It was a full two years. Yeah. Although in December of his second year, you know, Mike Shula had already been fired in Alabama. And Saban was already rumored to be going there. He just kept denying it until the end of the season. Well, the big thing about the Miami job when Saban was there is that Saban, So I think I'm going to get this right. I'm going to get the big picture part of it right, maybe not the details.

But he was a big fan of Drew Breeze. He thought Drew Breeze could be a great quarterback. And Drew Breeze had been in San Diego and was released by the Chargers. Remember, because there was an injury to Drew Breeze. Drew Breeze had an injury that people thought could be, you know, sort of career threatening. And the Dolphins ownership wouldn't let him sign Drew Brees. They instead signed somebody else,

and I'm forgetting who the quarterback was. And that was obviously a big blow to Sabin. Sabin thought it made sense to, you know, roll the dice on Drew Brees. They didn't, and the rest is history. The Saints ended up being great, getting a Hall of Fame, all-time quarterback, and the Dolphins struggled and then lost their coach.

By the way, who replaced Sabin in Miami? Because he went right from Miami to Bama after being at LSU, correct? He was at LSU where he won a national championship, then went to Miami, and then went to Bama. And you're saying it was after two seasons, but towards the end of that next season, Shula was out, and his mind was already made up. But I'm pretty sure I have that Drew Breeze thing, correct?

That may be. I'm not sure. I'm looking to see who was the coach after Sabin in Miami. And who was it, was it Huizenga that would have still been the owner? Or was he long? Cam Cameron. Cam Cameron became the coach, replaced Savin. Well, that didn't work out very well either.

No, it did. So anyway, back to, okay, good. Urban Meyer might be gone this week or soon. It's certainly a college program will hire him if he wants to work. But I would only imagine that he'd go to a big-time program like SC. He's not going to take a lesser job than the jobs he's recently had. Back to the Ryan Vermillion story for people that don't know it, but I'm assuming that most of you do. The news broke yesterday, broken by Grant Paulson and J.P. Finley, that the Washington football team had placed head athletic trainer Ryan Vermillion on administrative leave for what a spokesperson called an ongoing criminal investigation unrelated to the club. Vermillion was in his second year with Ron Rivera in D.C. after being in Carolina for 18 years.

the feds, okay, the DEA, that would be the drug enforcement administration, along with the Loudoun County Sheriff's Department, came into Ashburn, the Washington football team facility on Friday. In a raid, essentially, team officials didn't know about the investigation until the DEA agents showed up at the facility, that according to Kime. They talked to multiple former players about Vermillion earlier this year, a source with knowledge of the situation told Kime. One ex-player who spoke with the DEA said he did not have any useful information to share with them. Vermilion's attorney refused to comment,

and Ron Rivera pretty much didn't comment on anything yesterday. And I understand that on the radio show that he does this morning with the junkies, he comes on with me on radio on Fridays. he also didn't answer anything at all. The only thing I know, and I made a couple of calls, the only thing I know, and to me, I don't think it has anything to do with this, is I do know, and I was told,

that remember Dr. Robin West, the Alex Smith doctor? Yes. Yes. Yeah, who resigned. Yeah. She resigned, and remember Alex didn't have a lot of good things to say about anybody in the organization, except for Dr. Robin West. The only thing I was told is that Ryan Vermillion was on one side and Alex Smith and Dr. Robin West were on another, that there was a real disagreement on a lot of different things

and that they just did not get along and didn't trust each other. But that would have nothing to do with this, I don't think. I don't think it would either. Look, I knew about the whole thing with Dr. West, and I knew that she felt that the team had been dishonest in its dealings with Alex Smith. That's right. You told me that a while ago, I remember that, yeah. Yeah, and that's one of the reasons.

I mean, that was the main reason why she basically resigned from the position. I don't – I find a hard time connecting the dots to what just happened with the trainer. on this. Yeah, agreed. I mean, the things you think about when you hear something like this, you think about PEDs, you think about, you know, in this day, day and age, prescription drugs, you know, certainly like schedule two prescription drugs that, you know, you have to have a written script for. And, you know, things like, you know, I don't know, I don't even know what the, the, the, the, the laws are in Virginia with respect to weed or edibles or anything like that. But those are the first things that come to my mind. Does anything else come to yours? No, except that this team doesn't have a good history of medical personnel issues in the past 20 years, does it? No, it doesn't. It does not. You had a trainer before who had medical records for thousands of

of people stolen out of his car. Right. Right. But again, it could be worse. I mean, you could be, you could be Jacksonville. You know, the one thing that we should just mention, and I mentioned this on radio this morning, this is a very good friend and close confidant and close professional person to Ron Rivera. and he was one of the very first hires that Rivera made. He replaced Larry Hess, who was, you know, by all accounts, a disaster for all of those years, the Trent Williams situation and many others.

And Ron, you know, even made a comment, and I read this yesterday, and I'm paraphrasing at this point, that Vermillion was very important to him as he was battling cancer last year. But obviously, he was. Yeah. He was one of the first Ron Rivera hires. I had Brendan, my producer and radio, looked this up this morning. He was hired like literally a week after Rivera got hired. He was hired before a lot of the coaches were hired. And that was a big hire, remember, because of the issues that they had. Absolutely. It was a very big hire. I have no idea where this story is going. I have no idea if we're just going to end up getting something that says, well, of course. It's them. Of course this was going on there. And of course they knew something about it and hit it or whatever.

But I have no idea what to expect next. This could be something that he was doing personally out of his home that was in issue and had nothing to do with the team. But they just came to Ashburn to continue their investigation of him at his place of work. I mean, yeah. Under a normal functioning human personal personal relationship, when Vermilion was hired, the team put out a statement with the owner quoting him as one of the most respected and seasoned head athletic trainers in the NFL. Now, I know on the level of embarrassment for the owner, this Franks low. Really low. You know, I mean, really, like being embarrassed by vouching for a guy who turns out to be under DEA investigation.

I mean, for this guy, that's slow. But there is a level of embarrassment here for the owner to go on record vouching for the guy based on what the coach that he just hired told him, I'm sure. You know? So I'd be a little bit pissed at my coach right now if I was the, If I was a normal owner, pissed enough to do anything about it? No, I'd just be a little bit pissed off. Well, they talk every week.

Ron told me that last week on the radio show. I asked him, you know, if he's been talking to Dan, and he said yes, and Dan's been supportive. I said, how often do you talk to him? He said usually, you know, once a week, sometimes twice, you know, when I see him in the building. So, you know, he is in the building. But it's funny when you said, you know, this on the last. list of things for Snyder. Remember, you know, we were going through that whole, you know, one of the very many episodes of as the, you know, as Ashburn turns with the Indian Media Company and the

salacious rumors that they were putting out that may have, by the way, been funded by people like Dwight Schar and Bruce Allen, who knows. And by the way, Something with Dwight Schar was definitely not thought of as appropriate by the league, because I have heard that Dwight Schar will never be able to own one share of an NFL team again. No, he won't be able to do that. So there was definitely something going on there, but I remember, I think it was you who said, I mean, come on. I mean, these rumors about Snyder, at this point, can you really ruin his reputation?

even with Jeffrey Epstein, it's pretty hard to prove that these things are somehow impacting his reputation. Yes. Like it's been damaged somehow. Like he has a reputation left the damage. Yeah. Although I felt this way at the time and I feel this way as much now after the fact. You know, if his enemies, his professional enemies at the time, Bruce Allen, Dwight Schar, whomever else, If they really were setting, you know, creating these false rumors about him,

using some, you know, Indian-based media company to put him out there, I'd be pissed to. No matter how bad of a reputation I may have already, I would be pissed. Because that was some serious stuff that was coming out those few days before. I mean, we were all not only reading it, we were getting calls from various people that we talked to saying, have you heard this one? I remember specifically, Tommy, that week, we all knew the post was coming out with a story. We all knew that there was a big story that the post had been working on and it was going to be damaging to the organization.

But nobody really knew the gist of it. Certainly a lot of fans were hoping that Snyder was tied to it directly. but I remember I got a call from somebody mentioning looking to Jeffrey Epstein with your sources and ties he has to Snyder. That's what the post story is about. Fortunately, and I'm always very careful with this stuff, I called a couple of people and they said, no, not at all. Not true.

But a lot of that stuff was flying around that week. That was a crazy couple of days for a story that hadn't come out, for people in the media, you know, especially here locally, to know that this big bomb was being dropped and the rumor, you know, mill was just spinning. You know what it also speaks to it away is the level. Look, Dwight Schar was one of the most respected businessman in the state of Virginia. Huge friend of Joe Gibbs is. Yes.

And a great philanthropist in the whole Northern Virginia area. You know, this is the guy who had it. And V. Holmes, right? N.V. Holmes, yeah. Yes. You know, had a very good reputation. And if he did the things that Snyder accused him of doing, it speaks to the level of despair that Snyder's rivals will go to

in order to try to get rid of him. Yeah. I mean, it really does. I mean, it's like, it's like, we got nothing left. Let's do this. Yeah. Which I'm not absolving them of.

I'm just saying that if your enemies will undertake that kind of campaign to try to damage you, then in this case, I don't think that speaks well of you. You know, I think Snyder met Schar through Gibbs, if I recall, because I think Gibbs and Schar were friends. But, you know, just to wrap this up.

Well, here's what happened. As I understand it, Snyder attended and donated money to a youth for tomorrow dinner early on, way before he owned the team even. you know Joe Gibbs the school for the school and home for children that Joe Gibbs runs somewhere in Virginia and that's how I think he met Dwight Schar well I mean Dan's been a huge donator to Youth for Tomorrow Joe Gibbs's youth for tomorrow for years which I think to be honest with you I think we've both been told this over the years is one of the reasons it's not the only reason. It's just it wouldn't be Joe Gibbs's style to come out and ever, you know,

tell tale on anybody. But that's a continued, you know, ongoing situation or it was, you know, in recent years. Back to though, uh, something that you said, you know, about, you know, the length to which his enemies would go, um, to, to try to, uh, to get them. The bottom line with all of that is it backfired. It backfired in a major way. Like if the goal for Sharr and anybody else that was involved, if those were the people involved, if the goal was to somehow create these rumors and have people believe them or have the league believe them and force them to sell, because ultimately the minority shareholders

wanted him to sell with them so that they could get the benefit of the full majority share price, sale price as well, which would have been a lot higher than what they ended up selling them back. But it backfired because, you know, not that the post story wasn't a significant story and really bad as a standalone, it seemed at the time, remember, benign compared to the rumors. So much so that the team, and I, you know, I shared this with everybody back then because I got a copy of it. The team was so. sending out letters, emails to their clients, their advertisers, attaching the post story to the letter saying all of those rumors about, you know,

drug trafficking and Jeffrey Epstein, they are not true. They were proven to not be true. Here's the only thing that was accurate, you know, during the entire week. We look forward to your business here. Come fall, you know, and it was like they attached the post story. that had the original 15 women claiming, you know, a culture of misogyny and sexual harassment. It really was. It backfired on Sharr and anybody else that was involved in that.

Because it made the ultimate story look pale in comparison to the rumors. Yeah, it did. It definitely did backfire on them. You know, the bottom line is this is not good news for the organization. What happened? No. Even if it's not connected in any way. shape or form to team business.

And since they searched the building, I would think they think there is some connection to team business, whether it's just related to him or other people as well. It's another bad chapter in a book of bad chapter. At the very least, if it turns out that Ryan Vermillion was involved in some sort of criminal activity, even if it had nothing to do with the team, he was Ron Rivera's first hire in a culture overhaul. So it doesn't speak that well to Ron Rivera's ability to size up the right kind of people for a culture change. At the very least, it would be that. Yes. So anyway, what did you think of the game Sunday?

Well, you know, I wrote a column in today's Washington Times about referring to the game and pointing out that, you know, Rivera spent the week and the week before that the past couple weeks, sort of downplaying expectations. You know? I mean, talking about the year before, he talked about how, you know, that was, that was an odd year, he said a couple of times. Well, he had done that over the summer, too. Yeah. And he's really putting the pedal to the medal now because the expectations were raised after winning a division title. Without all the context that went along with it, the 7 and 9 record, the week schedule, and all that. And, you know, I don't think he's going to have the time that he thinks he's going to have

to basically build this thing the way he wants it done. I think they need to get good quick. And they need to turn this around quick. Because if this year winds up being basically, if they're lucky, a carbon copy of last year, then I think the level of patience is going to wear thin by the owner. I just think, you know why I think this? Because that's what's in the past. You know, until we see this transformation take place,

I'm going to, like I said, I'm looking at the racing form, and I'm going by how this horse has performed in the past. Yeah, I understand that. I think that Ron did say before the season started, you know, we can't think that we've arrived. We went seven and nine and it was an odd year. And I think he did recognize. And I'm glad he recognized that last year was truly like, you know, the inside straits of all inside straits. And it set an expectation on the upcoming season that was probably unfair.

If they didn't make the playoffs last year, I don't think the expectations would have been anywhere near where they were. coming in from a lot of people. But I think that there was some realization of that on his part. I think that this season through four games, and I talked a little bit about it on the podcast yesterday, you know, it's not the actual quarter poll anymore with the 17 games. The end of the first quarter of the upcoming game will be the actual quarter pole. But what's really an issue for Ron, and Cooley pointed this out on Friday is that this defense, which took a major step forward last year, has taken an even

bigger step back in the other direction. Like, it's worse now than it was even in 2019 in these first four games. And he's a defensive head coach. And there seems to be some problems and issues with, you know, guys that he keeps saying aren't, you know, being disciplined and aren't doing their jobs. So I don't think that the overall season, look, if it completely cratered and it was three and 14 or four and 13, anything's possible with these people, the Snyders. And I say the Snyder's plural because it's, you know, whatever, it's both of them now, I guess. But I don't think Ron's going anywhere after this year, even if they have a major step back disappointing season.

And just like I think all of these hires here, look, Tommy, one of the things that they've done, we've talked about this, they have hired, they have made it a real priority, and I'm not saying, please don't take this the wrong way, people. I'm not saying that they're not hiring super qualified people. But ever since that, you know, the end of the 19 season, and then all of the stories that, were being worked on. They have been the franchise in the NFL more than any other to hire minority candidates for significant positions. You know, a minority head coach, first black team NFL president ever, the first female to ever be in a radio booth for a professional

football team. This has been an emphasis for them. I'm not critical of it at all. I applaud it. and I'm not suggesting that these weren't qualified people, but I do think, Tommy, on some level, there is an expectation and some pressure to make sure that these hires they've made work and that they're not bailed on early, which can be the Snyder way, even though it hasn't been in recent years, C.J. Gruden and Bruce Allen. Do you agree with me on that or not? Yeah, look, I'm not saying that Ron Rivera would be fired. I'm saying that the risk in not turning this around quickly

is courting the return of the owner to the football team business. If we are to believe that he is not involved in the football team business right now, I don't think you're going to be able to hold Dan Snyder off if you have a disappointing season in this second year. I just don't think you'll be able to. So it's not Ron Rivera leaving. It's the return of the meddlesome Dan Snyder. You will know that it's the return of the meddlesome Dan Snyder if you start to see significant people leaving the organization or distancing themselves from the organization. Because there are many more now in it than have ever been there before.

You know, Jason Wright, Martin Mayhew, Marty Herney, you know, you essentially have two former NFL general managers that have split up the job for all. intents and purposes. It's not, you know, him and Bruce. It's not him and Vinny. You know, who is he going, who's going to be his friend that conspires against the others? You know, is, is he going to make, is Taylor Heineke going to become his RG3? I don't think so. So it's, he still owns the team. He still can do it, but he's always done it with somebody right there by his side until this last time when, you know, he blamed everything on Bruce at the end. So I think, I don't think it'll happen with Rivera. I think if you start as a fan of the team, for those of you listening, listen carefully.

We've already seen in recent weeks people leave the organization, some key people on the business side, okay? Actually, one guy in Scott Shepard, who, you know, a decent person, like one of the few decent people that have been in the organization for a while. If you start to see decent people leave the organization, you know. You know he's back doing his thing again. That'll be the tell. Because Martin Mayhew and Martin Herney, okay, and Jason Wright aren't sticking around, just like Lafamina wasn't going to stick around, whether they wanted him out or he wanted

out. He realized very quickly, I can't work with these people. This is, this is even worse than I thought. And so if decent people start to bail, you'll know. You'll know that it's become impossible again in that organization. You know, you may be right. On the other hand, you know, there have been people that, you know, were not cut from the Dan Snyder mold who worked for him for a long time because there's not that many NFL front office jobs. Yeah, but Martin Mayhew and Marty Herney don't need these jobs. What makes you think Martin Mayhew is Bobby Beffert? I didn't say.

What does his track record make you think that he's going to be in demand? I'll tell you what. You're right about him. I would suggest that more about Marty Herney because for all intents and purposes, is Marty Herney was retired. Yes. You know, so, you know, retired or out and fine with being out at 68 years older, whatever he is. Right.

You're right about that. He's a guy who would say, I don't need this. Yeah. Yeah. Or, Tommy, if some people end up taking other jobs, you know, and leaving before this job's done. You know, those are the kinds of things that I think. you'd start to look for. So we got sidetracked.

What did you think of the game? It was a thrilling game, didn't you think? Yeah, look. I mean, Taylor Heineke's awfully fun to watch. No doubt. I mean, there's a good chance they'd be 0 and 4 without him. Although we don't know if Kyle Allen could have done the same thing. Well, we don't know that Ryan Fitzpatrick couldn't have done the same thing.

But the bottom line is they'd be 0 and 4. without the way he's played in their two wins? Yes, he has. Yes, he has. And he's basically saved their bacon, save that defense, you know, that has let them down tremendously. I'm still not changing my mind that he will be exposed as the season goes on, particularly when they start playing the varsity part of the schedule,

like they got coming up now. So I just think it was a lucky win. They're fortunate. They're two and two by five points. You know, so I think they're fortunate. I want to talk a little bit more about Taylor Heineke, because I watched a little bit more. I watched the game again.

I watched some of the All-22, specific to him. I also want to answer the fourth and one redi-off. option conversation that we had on the podcast yesterday and talk a little bit a little bit about Chase Young's snap count. That got some attention yesterday in the press conference. We'll do all of that right after these words from a few of our sponsors. Just a reminder to subscribe to the podcast if you're not subscribed. That always helps us. And your ratings and reviews, especially on Apple, Spotify, and Google are a huge help. Rate us five stars. If you're not subscribed, if you're not subscribed, that always helps us. if you don't mind. We'll take four. We'd prefer five and a one to two sentence review about how much

you like the show. That's even more important than the number of people that we've got listening to the podcast, which is a good number. It's an excellent number for, you know, a local sports podcast. It's always been that way. But a lot of the advertisers just want to see that those that are listening are truly engaged. And they get that when you take the extra. step of rating the podcast and reviewing it. It takes you all of a minute to do, but that's really what they're looking for. And we've had great reviews and thousands of them over the last three years. But it's important to continue to have those come in from those of you who haven't rated or reviewed the show. So thank you for that. I want to get to several things here, football team

related. But I wanted to mention, I saw this tweet yesterday from Steve Chenov, from Fox 5. Steve's been there for a long time. He's a good dude. God, years ago, I used to do a bunch of Sunday stuff on Channel 5 on like game days, and he was always a part of that, or maybe it was a weeknight. I forget what it was. Anyway, that was my first job, Tommy, out of college, was working at Fox 5 in D.C. My very first job with the two best bosses anybody could ever want, Ernie Bauer and Steve Buckeance. Steve, anyway, put out this tweet yesterday. Through week four of the NFL season,

Washington has the lowest average attendance, which is 51,435, and the lowest percentage of seats filled 62.7% in the NFL. Only one other team in the entirety of the NFL has a percentage of seats filled at less than 85. Washington's at 62.7. I believe that team is New Orleans, and that is because they played their first home game in Jacksonville because of the hurricane issues in New Orleans. Right. So I'm not going to take a lot of time, but this is just a continuing sort of, you know, data that comes in that's interesting to me. And I think Tommy as well, and many of you two who have

been longtime fans and aren't nearly at the same level you used to be. Ten years ago, Washington had the highest level of attendance in the league, you know, 10, 12 years ago, at 90,000 plus. And, you know, the supposed waiting list for season tickets meant every single game was 100% at capacity. And here we are just over a decade later, and it's half the attendance that, well, a little bit more than half the attendance. And by the way, the 51,435 is the listed paid. I've been told by people who really would know that there were less than 50,000 for the Chargers game and less than

50,000 in the stadium for the Giants game. And in the case of the Giants game, no less than 30 to 35% of the fans in there were wearing blue and rooting for the Giants. This is to me just another indication that these conversations that we're having with all of you on the podcast and, you know, all of you on social media when it comes to the football team and blogs and podcasts and radio shows and et cetera are just in a much smaller bubble than we really even know. We're consumed with the everyday thing, but their TV ratings have been awful or they started out, you know, poorly. I can't imagine they've improved that significantly. And the attendance, I guess you could blame some of it on pandemic,

but it doesn't matter in a comparative environment with the rest of their peers, the other 31 teams, they have the lowest attendance in the league and the lowest percentage of their seats filled. This is amazing. It just keeps reinforcing, Tommy, what I've said for two years. Harvard Business School or Wharton should do a case study on how to essentially chase one of the largest fan bases or customer bases of a product away in two decades or less.

It's amazing. No one 20 years ago, 15 years ago, would have ever thought this was possible. It's so hard to have pulled this off. incredible just incredible the value of the value of the franchise keeps going up

through the roof yeah not at the same rate but yeah but still and uh you know they make money before they ever sell a ticket a lot of money

yes he do before they ever sell a ticket so I'm not sure what the incentive is other than a good look and more money in your pocket to really force, and it's not forcing Snyder because half of the time he didn't think there was anything wrong

to force the NFL to do something about it. I just don't understand the logic of why the NFL has not only tolerated Snyder, but now recently embraced him. Well, you know the reason for that. There for the grace of God, go I. That's what it is. He has. He has. He has, hasn't done anything illegal as far as we know. He hasn't done anything like Jerry Richardson did, as far as we know. Right. But you can't, uh, look, they could have, they, they had an opportunity here to do something about it. And they chose to go in the other direction, I think. I want to just also mention, yeah, go ahead, finish your thought. And I just, I just don't understand, I, I know what you're saying, I'm the one who says it there, but for the grace of God God go I.

But do you have a group of these powerful, smart men that think they're incapable of basically, you know, behaving in a normal fashion? They're so scared of their own lives being exposed that they don't want to hold anyone else accountable. Well, the other part of that could be that they don't think they'd be successful. and taking his team away. It would be litigated. I mean, we know how litigious he is to begin with, but that, you know, it could end up being in the courts for years.

That's true. That's true. They're dealing with a situation in St. Louis right now that's got them up to their ears in litigation. Not something they like to do. You're right. You sent me a story. I'm just going to recommend it.

I'm not going to recap it quickly because I want to get to the football. stuff. You sent me a story last week that was written by this guy, Jason Knott, in Ad Week. It was a story about the Cowboys and about how despite the fact that they've been unsuccessful on the field, for the most part, by the way, that may change this year. They're really good. That they're the most valuable sports brand in the world. And they go into all of the different things that they do that aren't even football related, that that leverages the brand that they have. hotels and food and restaurant and all sorts of things. And I told you this, like, as we were getting ready for the season,

that we were having a conversation about Jason Wright one day, the new team president. And I just said, his job is to increase revenue and grow the Washington football team business, even if the team doesn't win. He has to build a business that is, quote, this was told to me, quote, losing resilient, closed quote. And that's essentially what this story is that you sent to me. It's a story about how the Cowboys have been so successful despite, you know, very minimal success in a long, long time on the field. Now, to me, you know, comparing the Cowboys to almost anybody else in the NFL is like apples and oranges. They have had the biggest brand in the NFL for decades.

They've got the largest fan base nationally, domestically, and internationally for a long period of time. So they've been able to leverage their brand in so many different ways inside this country and out. But I remember I told you that like the dolphins have an investment in Formula One. And these are the kinds of things when Jason Wright said that day three or four months ago, We have to build a brand where people, you know, essentially embrace the team, embrace the experience regardless of what's happening on the field. That's his job. He doesn't have any say or any input or any influence over the football product. And that's what's going on in sports everywhere.

It's not just the – it can't be about the results on the field. And so you have people trying to figure out how to grow businesses that used to be almost totally reliant on being successful on the field. And now they understand the younger fan, sometimes they're coming to these games, more interested in their fantasy team, more interested in being able to bet on other games, more interested in having a family area to have the kids play and to have a little picnic inside the stadium. and they're not that concern necessarily with who's winning or losing the game. That's hard for me and a lot of you listening, but that's what sports owners and business people think the next generation of sports fan is. They're much more interested in your investment in a Premier League soccer team and how you're growing your brand through their fan base

and other things that, you know, don't have to do with anything with the actual football product on the field. Anyway, really good story to read. This is what I said. This is what I said about the baseball team years ago, that even when they were losing before they wound up starting to win, that there were opportunities for them to grow a fan base that that would be bigger than what they had.

To grow their fan base, even in a losing situation, you can grow your fan base these days. Yeah, you can. You know? And it's important to do so because you need that. Because you, you know, I mean, you don't have a lot of control about the product on the field a lot of times. No.

So you know, so you need that. Just what you described. You need that ability for people like, you know, I mean, sometimes it just happens organically through years. Like the Chicago Cubs for years had a product that people embraced, even though they lost. That was part of the identity. Lovable losers. For the Cubs. Yeah.

Now, you don't necessarily want that. But you're spot on in that you've got to create more than results in an arena. or a diamond or a football field. And, you know, I mean, look, Jerry Jones owns a company that's going to be selling sponsorships and suites for Dan Snyder's new stadium. What's the name of that? Legends.

Legends hospitality. Yeah, right. Legends hospitality. You know, when the Cowboys played Tampa a couple weeks ago, on that, I guess it was the first Thursday night game, Jerry Jones's company sold, was in charge of concessions at Raymond James Stadium

in Tampa. Unbelievable. Yeah. He's done it better than anybody. Yeah. He has done it better than anybody else. Just one last thing, I promise. I will get to the football stuff for today. Because it sort of is it fits into the conversation that we're having.

So the Sunday night game between the Bucks and the Patriots, which was, you know, according to everybody, the most anticipated regular season game in NFL history, Brady's return to Foxborough in a Bucs uniform. 1917, they won the game. Nick Fulke missed a field goal from 56 yards out that would have pulled off a pretty sizable upset in that game. John Orand, our good friend from Sports Business,

Journal wrote and I don't have any updated numbers right now, although they should actually be out at this point. Yeah. Okay, so here it is. Officially, I guess, as of this morning. No, this isn't official. This is still the John Oran stuff. My fault. Just bear with me here. So John Oran put out that he, that the overnight numbers essentially indicated that the, the, the, the, the game on Sunday night would be the second most watched Sunday night game in NFL history. Do you know what the most watched Sunday night game in NFL history was? Only because I read this. Yeah. Okay.

It was the Sunday night Cowboys Washington game from 2012. Exactly. That's the most watched... Go ahead. Yeah, that's the most watched Sunday night game of all time. That was the game, the RG3 year, the game for the Divisendium. vision. You know, Washington was 9 and 6, and Dallas was 8 and 7, and the winner went to the postseason, and the loser did not. So that was, that's the most watched Sunday night game of all time. So this one was, you know, apparently as anticipated as it was, it couldn't beat Washington,

Dallas, RG3, you know, from that Sunday night. Well, again, viewing habits have changed since 2012. I understand that. I understand that. I mean, generally. And what's interesting, I remember we did our radio, did we do a radio show that day? We did from the stadium. Yes, we did.

No, no, no, it was a Sunday night game. We did a Monday, we did Monday radio shows when they played Monday or Thursday night. We didn't do a Sunday night game. I did my pre-game show. I remember Al Michaels came in. He was supposed to be on for one segment with me on the pre-game show.

And he ended up spending two full segments with me. He enjoyed it. He seemed to enjoy it. Were you at the stadium? Yeah, I was at the stadium. I did the pregame show from the booth. Okay, I was on the pregame show with you. Were you there?

Oh, and you came in live with me in the booth? Well, that's what you're remembering then. That's what you remember. Because I remember my bowl prediction was Alfred Morris would have 150 yards, would have 200 yards Russian or 100? How many did he have that? He had 200 on the dot. I predicted 150.

Well, you were 50 off. Yes. Yeah, I was there with you that day. Yeah, that's one of those. I remember that pregame show very well because Al Michaels, the TV booth back then, was right next to the radio booth. Right. And so during a break, you know, CJ or Chuck or whomever it was,

it would have been Chuck, I guess, in 2012, got up and I said, you've got to get Al Michaels. And he goes over and Michaels comes in, sits down. And he said to Chuck, I got five. minutes and he ended up spending two full segments with me during his we talked about so many of the events that he did and so many of the Redskin Cowboy games that he had done. In fact, I had figured out prior to him coming on that the game, the matchup that he had called more than any other was Washington Dallas. So I asked him, I remember specifically, I said, do you know what

matchup you have called more than any other? And he just thought about it. He said, well, I guess you're asking me this because the answer is Washington, Dallas, and he said, I would bet that's probably close. It wasn't just close. It was like, by like five different, five games over, I think it was maybe Denver, Oakland or, you know, Raiders Broncos or something like that was like second in terms of the games he called. But anyway, the Washington Dallas 2012 season finale was the most watched Sunday night game ever, and apparently the game Sunday night is the second most watched. But John Oran from Sports Business Journal also put out a tweet about the top five all-time, all-time, regular season games on television.

And I was wondering if a Washington Dallas game would be on that list anymore. But, you know, like you say, the numbers way back in the day are going to be bigger. but actually, and ironically, a game in 2016 is in the top five. And it was Washington, Dallas on Thanksgiving Day, 2016, which to me, other than that 2012 games, by far and away, the game between the Cowboys and the Skins in recent years that was the most built up. Because both teams were actually good. Washington had crushed Green Bay on that Sunday night that you like that game, right?

with the McLuhan, you know, on the sideline as Kirk was going off. They destroyed the Packers, 42 to 24. And then they were six, three and one, I think, at the time. And the Cowboys were 10 in one or nine in one or whatever. And that was Zeke Elliott's rookie year. And that game's the fourth most watched regular season game of all time. behind number one, Giants 49ers, 1990, 7 to 3 at Candlestick. It would precede what would eventually be one of the great NFC championship games of all time

when the Giants went to Candlestick and won 15 to 13 on five Matt Bar field goals in a great football game to end the 49er run. They were going for the three-peat that year. And then two weeks later, they beat the Bills in that Super Bowl in Tampa. With Jeff Hotsdettler at quarterback. Exactly. Miami, Dallas, Thanksgiving Day, 1993, the Leon Let Snow Ice Bowl game is number two. Kansas City, Dallas in 1995. And then Washington, Dallas is the only game, Tommy, of the 21st century in the all-time top five most viewed regular season games.

And that came recently in 2016 with a lot of viewing habits having changed. It tells you how powerful and how large the audience was for that 2016 Washington Dallas game. Anyway, okay, I'm going to get to the football right after these words from a few of our sponsors. This segment of the show brought to you by Window Nation. They've got their fall as calling sale going on right now with leaves changing, temperatures 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 no limit buy four get four free zero percent interest

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But it will work out for you, I promise. So call Windon Nation at 86690 Nation or go to windownation.com. Okay. There's several Washington football team football related issues that I want to talk about. And then I know you want to talk about the baseball playoffs. I want to start with this. Ron Rivera yesterday, and he doesn't speak today on Tuesdays. Yesterday was asked a lot of questions about Ryan Vermillion.

He didn't answer any of those. But then they got to the football stuff. and he was asked about Dustin Hopkins. Of course he was. He needs to be asked about Dustin Hopkins, who missed two PATs. And I said on the podcast yesterday, Tommy, I don't think anything's going to happen to Dustin Hopkins.

I think he's going to be the kicker. And maybe they'll bring in kickers today. It's very possible. But he was asked yesterday about the security of kicker Dustin Hopkins. His quote, he's our kicker and we'll leave it at that, closed quote. It's Dustin Hopkins under investigation too. I mean, that was the kind of answer that was.

They're not getting rid of this guy, I don't think. I don't think they're getting rid of him at all. I think he's going to be the kicker the rest of the year. I think they really believe in him, and I think they fear, you know, the FOMO thing, the fear of missing out, that if they were to let him go, he would kill it for somebody else. you know, Graham Ganoes had a hell of a career after leaving here. Yes, he has. And by the way, he was the kicker in Carolina.

I just, I think they think he's so talented and that eventually he's going to just get on a role. That's what I think, they think. By the way. That makes some level of sense. Talking about, as we did in the last segment, that 2016 Thanksgiving Day game, the 31-26 loss to the Cowboys, where the defense couldn't get off the. field, Dustin Hopkins missed two field goals in that game. Two.

They lost by five points. He, 2016, he single-handedly cost them a playoff berth with missed field goals. Whatever. I don't want to go back to the whole Kirk Cousins' Giants game. So the next thing I wanted to mention. So I talked a lot yesterday on the podcast, Tommy. If you remember, the second drive of the game, you probably don't remember. The second drive of the game, Washington had to be a lot.

a third and seven. Heineke scrambled. He slid early didn't get the first down and they faced a fourth and one. And I said yesterday on the podcast that while it was a read option style play, because they were using Ricky Seals Jones as a tight end to block down the outside linebacker, I think it wasn't technically a true read. I think he was supposed to keep the ball. So I did, and I think I suggested it to all of you that I would either have Cooley on to talk about it or call him and get the answer. So he looked at the play and he said to me, he goes, no, it was a read option. It was a read option because either the other backer or the safety, whoever that player was, was walking, stepping down to the line of scrimmage and he wasn't going to be blocked necessarily.

So Taylor was reading him and that's why he left the ball in the gut of Antonio Gibbs. So I did go back and watch it, and Dion Jones, who's a backer, actually, the, they play a 3-4, was stepping to the line of scrimmage as the other linebacker was getting blocked into the sort of other defensive lineman. Ricky Seals-Jones took that angle of blocking him inside, which was another reason I thought that Taylor was supposed to keep it on that. But anyway, Cooley said, nope, the guy that was stepping in essentially either as a safety or as an outside linebacker, had the quarterback responsibility,

and so the Reed was the quarterback. So Taylor did the right thing there. Next thing on Taylor Heineke. Tommy, what did you think of the touchdown pass to Terry McCorn, where he just threw it up, you know, sort of willy-nilly, sort of blind after being pressured and almost sacked, and Terry McClorn, you know, moved in front of the defender who had his back to it and made the catch for a touchdown.

What did you think of that play? I thought it was a dramatic, I thought it was a dramatic effort by the quarterback to make something happen. I think it's something that we don't see it. We haven't seen a whole lot of here in Washington. It's the exact opposite of what you would have seen from Alex. It was not a game manager. I can tell you that. You know, but it's, it's what coaches Jay Gruden used to talk about all the time.

put the ball up there and let your guy go for it. You know, and I mean, Terry, I mean, if you're banking on Terry McLaren, that's a pretty good investment. So yesterday, as part of the recap, I listed a lot of the plays that I liked and a lot of the plays that I did not like. And the plays that I liked,

I thought he was outstanding in the game. He was an A-minus. I gave him an A-minus in the game. He was the reason he was a co-MvP with Terry McLaren the game. He had many more good plays than bad plays, et cetera. I'm emphasizing that because so many of you are just so nitpicky with you hate Taylor Heineke. You just absolutely, no, I've now said for almost every game he's played except for the Buffalo game that he was an A graded player in my mind's eye. Now, am I convinced he's the long-term answer? No, I'm not. But I want to see more,

and I'm intrigued. Now, this play got a lot of run by all the all-20 tours. on the internet. Everybody now, Tommy, is a film expert. Cooley laughed about that last year. He was like, oh my God, the all 22 access has everybody doing film review. I mean, people that have no idea what they're looking at are doing film review. So anyway, this was one of the plays that was to me a terrible, terrible decision. It all has to do with score time, down in distance. It was first in 10. You just, you don't make that throw. That is a, 50-50, you know, half the time gets picked, or a third of the time gets picked, a third of the time might get caught, third of the time incomplete. It's way too high risk for what the game called for

there, which was 30 to 22, first and 10 at the 17, moving the ball, you don't give the game away on that kind of a throw. And nothing will change my mind on this. It was a bad decision by Taylor Heineke. Well, a lot of people are sending around the All-22 version, and this guy, Dino slash Dynamo on Twitter said, attach some video film breakdown from this guy, Mark Bullock, who essentially, and I had already seen it because I get the All-22 also. Terry McClureen beats his man badly, so much so that the defender falls down at the beginning of the play. and this guy, Dino says to me, well, looks like it wasn't as bad as a decision as you thought on your podcast. No, it's every bit the bad decision I thought on my podcast.

And actually, the all 22 should reflect it even more. You know, if you understood with the down and distance and the score and the time left in the game, which was about four minutes, you realize if he throws this in timing, it's a great throw and it's a touchdown. It's a touchdown to Terry McClorn. If he throws it in timing, the defender fell down. McClorn ran a great route and made the defender fall down. But that's not what happened. He couldn't throw it in timing because he was originally rushed, which made him flush right.

Then he came back left, and by that time, McLorn was covered, and then he's getting pressured again by another player and literally getting hit as he chucks the ball. It's not even a throw. It's a chuck. It's a heave into the end zone. This is a terrible, terrible decision by the quarterback. He had a couple of them. But for every bad decision, he had three or four that were really good and worked out. And by the way, some of his bad decisions worked out.

None of his bad decisions incredibly on Sunday ended badly. In fact, that one ended incredibly well. but it was a total fortunate play. You do not... Go ahead. Would Billy Kilmer have made that throw? Nobody that understood the game situation. There's no way Scott Turner, Billy Kilmer,

the throw would have looked like Kilmer's, if that's what you're saying. Scott Turner didn't sit down with him on Monday as they were watching the film and say, I want you on first and 10 down eight with four minutes to go to throw it up for grabs every single time. There's no way. No coach would tell you, oh, that's great. Now, somebody mentioned to me yesterday, well, they work on that scramble drill where Terry tries to get, you know, the defender behind.

Okay, but it's still a high risk play. If it's fourth and ten, or if it's the last play of the game, of course you chuck it in there and you hope for the best. It wasn't the, it's the down-distance score game situation that makes it a bad decision. That's the point here. It's not whether or not you would do it in other situations or if Terry was open and the timing of the play worked and he wasn't pressured and could step up into the pocket that that wouldn't have been a good play. All of those things are true. It's not what happened. And it wasn't the last play of the game and it wasn't fourth down.

It was a bad decision. And if you think I'm wrong, this one, you're never going to change my mind. You can bring every single person you want to the film breakdown, coaches, whatever. I will never agree with you that this was a good decision. Because game situation there, you cannot make a high, very high risk throw on first down. And there's nobody that we debate that that wasn't a high risk throw. You just don't do it. You've got three other downs to live.

And by the way, four minutes left in the game. Yes. You're right. Logically, it doesn't make sense. Is this something that anyone has asked Rivera, Ron Rivera, about? I don't, you know what? I don't think so. I don't know either.

Now, you know what they did ask him about? Ron was very complimentary, and I agree, was the throw to McKissick. that play was phenomenal. That was absolutely amazing. Amazing. But he was flushed, and yes, he was under pressure, but he didn't have a hand in his face. And he saw that McKissick was by himself.

It is not a throw you see very often, because usually the quarterbacks are taught, uh-uh, you can't turn around and throw it all the way across the field. But in that particular situation, he truly was by himself. And he made a great play and the rest is history. Anyway, so it just leads me to this about Taylor Heineke. I had a couple of thoughts after just watching a lot of his plays again. Pretty much everything I thought about the game yesterday applies.

But there's a couple things. Number one, he doesn't have great arm strength. That's really not debatable. His arm strength at best is average NFL arm strength. I'm not so concerned about that. And it's not like a criticism. It's just what it is. You saw it on many of the throws.

You saw it when he tried to lob one instead of fire one into Terry McLorne into that cover two hole late in the game. You see it on occasion, you know, that he's not, especially the throws to the sidelines. They're not Justin Herbert throws if you were watching. the game last night. So there's nothing wrong with that. Not every great quarterback has had well above average arm strength. His arm strength, though, is average at best. Secondly, he is inconsistent with his accuracy. Now, not every great quarterback is 100% accurate all the time. A caller really got on me this morning for saying that he throws high at times and he's inconsistent with his accuracy because he's eighth right now in the league in completion percentage, which is true. But there's a reason that he's eighth in the league in completion percentage.

The reasons are multifold. And I'll start with this. What he does better than what he does at a super high level, like an NFL high. level is he is an escape artist. He has a knack for avoiding and escaping pressure, escaping pressure, extending plays, and playing off schedule. And when you extend plays and you are off schedule, you are going to throw to receivers who can't be covered for four or five seconds and are going to be wide open. So he's certainly, and by the way, that's not a criticism that he's throwing to players wide open after playing off schedule or after extending the plays.

That's an incredible, you know, ability for the elite quarterbacks, Aaron Rogers, Patrick Mahomes. They're all Russell Wilson. They're all phenomenal at playing off schedule. And it's often why they, too, have super high completion percentages because they're throwing to wide open receivers when they play off schedule. So, you know, and by the way, when you're throwing to a wide open guy off schedule, schedule, it doesn't have to be pinpoint and it doesn't have to be with great velocity either much of the time. Not to mention, he makes plays with his legs as a runner off schedule. It's the best feature of him so far, the best, along with just his, you know, his compete, his resilience,

his gamer, ballerness, whatever you want to call it. But that's a big part of his game. So he's getting a lot of these plays off schedule, not against the Giants, but in the other games. He's also got skill position players, Tommy, that guess what, are as good as they've had since the Jackson Pierre Jordan team. You know, Terry McClure is being given so much respect and so much space. And when he isn't, he is winning all the time, all the time. They also have on their roster the return of Curtis Samuel, who, will win a lot. We know that from previous years and was a pretty impactful player on Sunday, as was both running backs, but as a receiver, J.D. McKissick. McKissick's not only a great checkdown guy.

He lines up in the slot or lines up as a wide receiver and a lot of their five wide sets. He is a really good route runner. He gets separation. You know, they lost Logan Thomas, but Logan Thomas is a big-ass target and gets open. That's good. going to be a big loss, by the way, just as a side note. So in addition to him being able to throw two wide open people playing off schedule, he's also thrown to people who have been wide open because they're winning a lot. They're winning a ton. Which leads me to this. What's really important as they play some of these tougher teams, you know, Buffalo people want to, you know, I understand what its completion percentage was and where it is right now. I also know that. I also know that

against the best defensive team that he faced, he had a 58.3% completion percentage and through two interceptions and it could have been four. So when they place, Atlanta's a bad defensive team. I don't think the Giants are bad defensively. He had a very good game against the Giants. And by the way, throwing from the pocket. But man, did they give a lot of cushion to the receivers? They didn't want him to run. They contained. And then they gave a lot of cushion to the receivers. But the key to Taylor Heineke's remainder of this season is for him to do the things he's been doing. But Scott Turner's play calling and scheming people open is going to be huge for him. You know, say whatever you want to say about Jay Gruden as a head coach.

Jay Gruden schemed people open regardless of who his quarterback's were. Now, sometimes if they didn't have anybody on the field healthy, it was tough. but we're going to see Scott Turner here either thrive or not because this quarterback needs to throw to open people. He's not going to be a tight window winning quarterback right now. He doesn't have the arm strength. He doesn't have the consistency from an accuracy standpoint. Now, I do think he throws very well with touch.

I think there are a couple throws Sunday that he threw with touch that actually weren't caught, won by Ricky Seals-Jones, that was a great throw. The throw to Seals Jones for the touchdown against the Giants is a touch throw into the corner of the end zone where he's got to put it right. That was the best throw he's made all year. But I think that it's going to be really important

against the Saints. The Saints are pretty good defensively, although Daniel Jones just went for 400. The Chiefs he could have a field day against, they stink defensively. The Packers are good defensively. The Broncos are good defensively. The Bucks and the Pets.

Panthers are good defensively. So of their next six games, five of them right now are against really good teams defensively on paper. The Chiefs would be the only team that they will be playing that isn't great defensively or isn't good defensively. The bills might be ultimately the best defense they face all year. I don't know. But those teams are good defensively.

And to me, it's going to come down to he's going to have to continue to create off-schedule extending plays, but Scott Turner's going to have to scheme some people open. He's got good receivers. He's got a guy that really, really wins almost all the time in Terry McLaren, and who, by the way, is getting a shitload of respect. But that's going to be a big part of the rest of this season. That was what I was working towards as far as my Taylor Heineke thought for the day. Some of what happened from Sunday, regurgitating, if you will, but really getting. to the point where he's going to continue to have success if he's successful off schedule and if Norv Turner's son, Scott, can scheme up some people open.

So if, and one other thing real quickly, the offensive line's been the surprise of the team so far through four games. The O line and watching them again yesterday, look, a lot of it was based on expectations and the expectations weren't super high, they have overperformed their expectations. Yeah, they've given him a lot of time back there. And like you said, he's helped himself by playing off schedule. But, you know, they've certainly, you don't see a lot of holding calls,

not an overly abundant amount of holding calls on this offense. line. And that sometimes happens a lot when you've got a quarterback like Heineke who goes off schedule. Yeah. I think Cosmy is going to be a really good player. By the way, they lose Sheriff. They lose Logan. So the injuries yesterday, they lose McTire and Bostick for apparently the year. A lot of you, you know, are not heartbroken over Bostick being lost. But I can tell you that they had a lot of faith in Bostick's IQ. But look, the linebackers have been poor. So we're going to get a lot more of Jamie Davis. And we're going to get some Kaleek Hudson, too, number 47, Kooley's old number. I like Hudson. I love him on special teams. And they liked him at the end of

last year. Logan Thomas looks like he's week to week with a hamstring. And sheriff maybe a few weeks with, I think, what was the sheriff injury now? I can't even remember what it was. Was that a heck too. Anyway, without Sheriff, they do have Schweitzer and they like Schweitzer a lot, and Schweitzer started a bunch of games for this team, but, you know, it's still better to have Brandon Sheriff out there. And I think Logan Thomas is going to be a big miss. I really, really do. It looks like this Samus Reyes, the basketball player, will get more of an opportunity. So I wanted one more thing on the Washington football team, and then you wanted to just have, I wanted to talk briefly about the MLB playoffs. So he was asked about Chase,

not being in the game on several third down situations, which we've mentioned now for a couple of weeks. And I think it's sort of the rotation, to be honest with you, and the timing of it. And that's what he said. He said, sometimes the rotation ends up that way. And if you can get them back out there, you try to get them back out there. Anyway, that opened up sort of a can of worms with a lot of you out there with respect to Chase Young's snap count dropping percentage-wise. and it's true that he played the least amount of snaps percentage-wise of any of the four games Sunday against Atlanta. Atlanta had 76 snaps, not counting penalty snaps. That's a lot of offensive snaps in a game.

So there was a lot of rotation at that D-line. I mean, a lot of it's on them because they can't get off the field and Atlanta keeps moving. And by the way, the other thing that was so noticeable again yesterday, just to reiterate, I don't care what anybody thinks about Matt Ryan. and I would take Matt Ryan on this team right now. That dude's IQ and his ability, yeah, go ahead. He would walk up to the line.

Look what Jack Del Rio had for him and say, step away and say, okay, we're going to do this. And was successful most of the time, except when his receivers dropped balls, which they did a lot. Yes. He was outstanding Sunday. And by the way, there's no doubt. teams are scheming to get the ball out of the hands of the quarterback quickly. We saw it with Herbert, you know, in the opener against the Chargers. We saw Daniel Jones turn into a runner, but definitely you saw it in the opener in particular with Justin Herbert and you saw it with the Atlanta game.

Anyway, back to Chase Young. So Chase Young was in on 80% of the snaps. The Charger game, it was 80% of the snaps. Charger game, it was 86%. The giant game was 91%. The Buffalo game was 89%. So it was lower, but it wasn't like it was so much lower. And he still, as he has in all four of their games, he led the defensive line in overall snaps. No one had more defensive snaps. It's not like they were pulling him for Casey Two Hill for half of the game. I actually thought that Chase Young played pretty well.

Well, let me rephrase. A lot better than the Buffalo game. A lot more urgency, a lot more high energy, a real active player, especially in the run game. They used him in ways in which he could win more easily inside against guys, against tight ends. I think that's smart by them. They should be scheming up his. confidence level. You know, you can listen to him all you want, but a dude like that with zero sacks

and four games, you're going to have to scheme up a couple, you know, if you can. You got another stationary quarterback in James Winston on Sunday. So put him in the best possible matchups. But I did not think that Chase Young was anywhere near the worst player on defense. All of those players reside behind the defensive line. You know, those players reside, you know, whether it was McKee's McCain giving up that big play. I thought McCain made a couple of other plays that weren't terrible in the game. Fuller, Collins missing and being late, although he did make a good play on that screen, that final third down stop. McTire, Jackson seems like he's, you know, committing a penalty on every other.

The thing about Jackson, I'll give you, he's always close. You know, Doc used to say this, I remember. He's like, you know, at least I forget who the corner was, he would say, most of our guys are 15 yards off. This guy got called for P.I. But at least he was close. And Jackson's close. But most of their issues reside behind the front four. I actually think Paine's having a good season so far. I think John is John Allen. But anyway, I didn't think Chase Young was that bad. I don't think the snap count is a massive story. With that said, and I do understand that sacks, several of you have said this to me, you know, sacks aren't the only way. I

I understand that. I understand that sacks aren't the only way to evaluate a pass rusher. But let me also emphasize this. When you are known to be the team's game-wrecking, havoc-reaking, pass-rush player, you better get more than zero sacks in four games. If you are Joey Bosa or Nick Bosa or Miles Garrett or any of these great pass-rushers in the league, you will be close enough, often enough, to end up with more than zero. So I hear you and I understand that sacks aren't the only way to evaluate a pass rusher or a defensive end.

But he needs to get some sacks. And if he's playing at a high level, he will get sacks. By the way, there's one other thing about this defense we haven't mentioned. We know how bad they are on third down. The other thing, too, is that this team right now has the second fewest takeaways in the NFL. You know, third down defense, third down offense, turnover margin. These are the traditional numbers and statistics that are significantly influential in the results of games. Well, Washington is not getting turnovers.

Right now, their takeaway total. total for four games is two. Only the 49ers, believe it or not, with one in Jacksonville, with one have fewer. I think one of Washington's takeaways was a special teams fumble. Wasn't there a special teams fumble in one of the first two games? I don't recall. Anyway, this defense is terrible right now. It's bad on third down specifically. It's not getting takeaways and teams, by the way, that they are competing with, specifically Dallas has the best turnover margin in the NFL with Buffalo, and they have the second most takeaways in the

NFL with 10. All of you people that were telling me all year, how, you know, why is Dallas being picked? Their defense is terrible. And I said, well, they had Mike Nolan, and now they have Dan Quinn. And if you watch them defensively last year before they had all the injuries, they actually have some pretty good players. And they drafted Micah Parsons. And they drafted Mike a And Micah Parsons is already making a significant impact on their defense. And by the way, their offense, they are running the shit out of the ball. And they're dominating things like, you know, well, they didn't in the last game. But with their run game, they have the potential to dominate time of possession like they did in that Monday night game against the Eagles a few weeks ago or week and a half ago.

All right. What about the MLB playoffs? I can't wait to watch tonight and tomorrow. night. Yeah, Yankees, Red Sox tonight, Cardinals and Dodgers tomorrow night. I mean, that's, I mean, it kicked off with marquee matchups, you know, for the legendary teams in baseball playing against each other. The only, the only problem is two of them are going to be out after tomorrow night. How will you feel if a team with 106 wins is eliminated after one night? I'm okay with the wild card the way it is.

You know, win the division. I mean, the Giants managed to win 107 games. Yeah. So I have, I like the way it's set up right now. We don't have, I mean, sure, it'd be nice if they had maybe like a three-game series, but you don't want teams playing to the middle of November. They're not going to cut the regular season, reduce the regular season, to have more playoffs because nobody does that.

So I think to include more teams in it, I think this is the best way to do it. And these one game, I mean, I wouldn't be surprised the ratings are pretty high for both of these one game wild card playoffs. How many Bucky Dent stories are we going to get tonight? Oh, we've already gotten a lot. Do you remember where you were?

I do. When, uh, do you? I do. I absolutely. I was at David Watson's house. He was a friend of mine in, uh, in like sixth grade, seventh grade. And we went, it was a, it was a school day. It was a Monday. And it was a Monday after school. And we would, a bunch of us went back to his house and watch the game. David Watson. I would that. That's it. I, that's a, I, I, David, he's done, he's not listening to his podcast, but I do have some friends that have stayed in touch with him over the years. His father was, I want to say his father was either the ambassador or the assistant ambassador

to Bolivia, I think. I think that's true for Carter, because 78 would have been Carter. So I do. I remember watching that game there. It was a school, it was a after school special. I was at Rudy's watching, we were in the afternoon drinking at Rudy's. It was an afternoon game. And I remember rooting for the Redshouse because I hated the Yankees so much and just being so pissed off. But I was like I was a Red Sox fan, you know, Blank and Bucky Dent. Yeah. You know, I felt the same way.

And then you have tomorrow night, you've got the senior citizen matchup beginning, the White Sox and the Astros. You got a 77-year-old manager. Tomorrow night, you get the Dodgers and the Cardinals in the wildcard game. Right, Thursday night, I mean, Thursday afternoon. Right. You get the white socks and the Astros. Tony Laruces, 77. Oh, God, you're rooting so hard for Dusty.

Oh, absolutely. Look, every baseball writer worth his salt is rooting for Dusty. Understood. Okay. I'm rooting for Dusty, but it's hard to root for the Astros. Yes, it is. That's the brilliance of Dusty. He made such a stink show, you know, tolerable. And that's what, did you see the video of him drinking champagne out of a shoe?

I didn't. Was there a young woman grinding up against him? No, no. This is in the locker, in a clubhouse when they were celebrating. That's hysterical. Out of a shoe during a pandemic. That's great. Yeah. Dusty. Nothing's going to kill him. But you skipped over Max Scherzer tomorrow night against really the team that ended up being the hottest team in baseball. The Cardinals winning like what, 17 of their last 19 games or whatever. I know. And Scher remember the last time he pitched in a wildcard game?

That's right. He didn't pitch that great. He doesn't have a great playoff track record. It does not match his regular season dominance. You know what, Zuckerman told me today, he said, you know, because I said to him, I go, the bottom line is, you know, Strauss was a better playoff pitcher than Scher. Scherzer's net was, has never, he said, he's always been almost, and he has said it, almost too keyed up for these playoff games. Too hyped up. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. I could see that. Uh, give me your World Series final and your World Series winner. Okay. My World Series Final is going to be the Dodgers for the National League. And, you know, I've been thinking about this.

I'm going to go with the race. Yeah, well, they're the favorites. They're really good. We don't know anything about them, you know, but they're a great organization. It's really... Remember, that's a team... That's an organization that passed over. Dave Martinez, who everyone thought was going to get the managing job in Tampa and hired Kevin Cash instead,

which you can't argue that turned out to be the right decision for Tampa, even though Dave Martinez came to Washington years later and wound up winning the World Series. And that's an organization that definitely knows what they're doing. And you know what? They're never playing half their games in Montreal, no matter how much they talk about it as a plan. to stay in Tampa. That's never happening. You know, I like to look at the odds, and I love playoff baseball, and I bet playoff baseball every year. You know, I bet teams to win series. I bet games. I just enjoy the Major League Baseball playoffs, and I was looking at the numbers for the American

League pennant and the National League pennant last night, and then the World Series overall. Obviously, when you're playing in a wild card game, your odds aren't. super high to begin with because you have to win this one game just to get into, you know, a series. But it's amazing to me that the Dodgers who have to play a wild card game are co-favorits in the National League to win the National League pennant. And they are among the two favorites to win the World Series with the Giants. Now, in the American League, I mean, that's typically not the case. typically a wild card, a team that's got to win a game, isn't going to, prior to playing that game, have those odds until they win that game.

Then the odds will change. The American League odds are interesting because they're very bunched up. Tampa is the favorite. They're like a plus 1.30 favorite. But Houston and Chicago, the White Sox, were super close. And then came like the Yankees and then the Red Sox. The Yankees are a slight favorite tonight. Rogers are a huge favorite tomorrow night with Scherzer on the Hill.

And remember the wild card game that I was talking about when I mentioned to Tommy, he pitched in that wild card game against Milwaukee. He didn't pitch great. Remember the debate, you know, Scherzer or Strasbourg to start that game. And they were down 3-1 facing, you know, facing one of the best relievers in the sport. And they rallied to win. What a fine line between, you know, being bounced in a wild card game and then ultimately winning the World Series.

But that's what you get in baseball. You get a lot of these games that are the drama of these close playoff games. It's right up there with the drama of any postseason, like postseason hockey, postseason, you know, obviously football is great. But the drama of pitch by pitch, late inning baseball postseason is one of my favorite things to watch in sports. Absolutely. All right. I don't really have a pick.

I think Tampa is a. really good play to win the whole thing. Other than that, I would, you know, I mean, Mark's really a big fan of the Brewers. I don't know enough about the Brewers. I know they lost a reliever heading into this postseason. And looking at the numbers last night, you know, on the World Series stuff, you know, I was tempted to like take the Yankees because before the wild card game, there's a pretty good number there on them. But I like Tampa. There's something about that team. And by the way, they almost knocked the Yankees out in that series. The Yankees needed that ninth inning rally just to be here or, you know,

avoid playing Toronto or Seattle or whomever it would have been to get into this game. You know, it was almost like a whole week-long affair in the American League to determine the wild card teams. You know that, right? Going into the weekend, there was a possibility there was going to be a playing game on Monday, a playing game today. Oh, I know. And then, you know, all sorts of things.

All right. By the way. Michael Silver, as I'm trying to make heads and tails of it, I think he's just working for himself. Okay. And I think one of his clients is the Washington football team. I thought, you know, I didn't think, okay, I think when I had him on, he said that he made, that he was like, he was definitely a part of the organization, but maybe like as an independent contractor as a 1099. Maybe that's it. I don't know.

It's kind of weird for him to be commenting about what's going on in Jacksonville. But, you know, there's no more rules. There's no more rules in this business. They're all done. They're all gone. I am seeing all this stuff breaking now. It's amazing about Urban Meyer. I mean, I didn't see any of it before we started this podcast, and now it is everywhere, all over the place.

I mean, it does look. I mean, there's just a story on ESPN that essentially says that, you know, the guy Kahn issued a public reprimand of Urban Meyer for his behavior and said that he has to regain the trust and respect of anybody, of everybody in that organization. This could, this might not end well for him. He should have stayed retired or just waited for the SC job. They'd love him in L.A.

Anything else? That's it, boss. All right, back tomorrow.