The Kevin Sheehan Show - Rivera Hasn't Talked To Trent Yet?

Episode Date: February 4, 2020

Kevin and Thom opened with a few more SB thoughts including why Patrick Mahomes can already be considered Hall-of-Fame worthy. Ron Rivera said that he and the organization haven't talked to Trent Williams yet....why not? They theorized on why the Vegas odds-makers have installed the Redskins as the longest shot on the 2020 NFL board. Thom talked about his latest column featuring a depressing "All-Time Super Bowl" team. Todd McShay's thoughts on why Chase Young is a no-brainer for the Skins at 2 is discussed as well. <p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices">podcastchoices.com/adchoices</a></p> Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You want it. You need it. It's what everyone's talking about. The Kevin Sheehan Show. Now here's Kevin. You're listening to The Sports Fix. All right, I'm here, Aaron's here. Tommy joining us by phone.

You don't feel well today. You okay? Well, yeah, I got a cold and a cough, but I'm fighting it off to keep, you know, it's manageable. Did you get your, you got your flu shot? Yeah, but you didn't. I didn't, and I feel great. That's good.

I feel great. Knock on wood. I wish I came in now so I could get you sick. Yeah, I'm sure. Real quickly for everybody listening, we will not be doing a podcast tomorrow, Thursday, and Friday. And then Monday, I am actually taking some time off. I've got a niece getting married out in Park City, Utah, and we are heading out there tomorrow night, and we won't be doing a show tomorrow, Thursday.

Friday or Monday. So I'm just giving everybody a heads up on that. All right, no show for a few days. We're through the Super Bowl, take a deep breath. We got a while to go before free agency and the draft. And, you know, I'm sure we'll be in here breaking down the Indy Combine numbers in a few weeks, which I don't want to do, actually. But anyway, just to tell everybody that up front. Tommy was not on the show yesterday because it was Monday. I did want to get your thoughts on the Super Bowl to start. Well, I thought it was a good game. I thought it was, you know, fun to watch.

I never thought that the Chiefs were really out of it and were going to lose. I mean, because I've always operated under the assumption that if there's any time on a clock, the Chiefs can just score so quickly, no matter how good the 49ers defense is. So it was almost like, you know, when you're watching a boxing match, and you know a guy in the later rounds is going to win them. The championship rounds, they call them. The chiefs are very good at that. I mean, all three-eater playoff wins, we're comeback wins over Houston, over Tennessee.

Tennessee. And then in the Super Bowl. So I just have ultimate faith in Pat Mahomes like Andy Reid does and like his receivers do, his teammates do, that he's going to find a way to bring them back. Sort of like Russell Wilson, you know, in the early years of Russell Wilson and still to this day to some extent. It wasn't Kyle Chattahan's finest moment. I don't think he was public enemy number one when it came to bad coaching decisions. I think he made some mistakes, but, I mean, you know, people just love to vilify, Kyle. Wow.

And, you know, they just could wait to say what a lousy coach he was. You know, I mean, this guy's one of the best coaches in the NFL, and it's not even close. Yeah. And, you know, he made some strategic mistakes in terms of strategy. at the end of the first half, in particular, maybe not pushing it. But it wasn't like he didn't know what he was doing. He had a strategy. It just turned out to be the wrong one.

Yes, so Gilbrand, the longtime Dallas Cowboys general manager, the architect of those cowboy teams of the 70s and 80s in particular, early 80s, early to mid-80s. He tweeted out, I think it was late Sunday night or early yesterday. Quote, seriously, we're going to blame that loss on Kyle Shanahan. Come on, man, if you pulled the general managers of all 32 NFL teams and asked them who they'd rather have, their current coach or Kyle Shanahan, my guess is that no less than 75% would swap without batting an eye. It wasn't the play calling. was from Gil Brand. And you're, you know, I think that Kyle, I don't know, I think part of what we, the Kyle

bashing that we hear is part, in part because of what happened in Super Bowl 51. And then we hear it a little bit more around here, because there are some people that still blame Kyle and Mike for RG3's demise, which is hysterical. But, you know, one of the things I found interesting yesterday in listening and watching a lot of things is people kept referring. referring to Kyle Shanahan losing two Super Bowls as a head coach. And they actually put up Kyle Shanahan now and two Super Bowls has allowed 25 and 21 points, 46 to nothing. His teams have been outscored in the fourth quarter.

And I was screaming like, hello, he was not the head coach of the Atlanta Falcons. For Super Bowl 51, he was the offensive coordinator. Dan Quinn was the head coach. Dan Quinn was the... Like Dan Quinn had nothing to do with that law. Exactly. Now, I mentioned this yesterday over and over again. The error that was committed in Super Bowl 51 is not comparable to the perceived errors of Sunday.

That was a massive game clock score management error. They were in chip shot field goal range for an 11-point lead with three minutes to go in the Super Bowl, and they dropped Matt Ryan back and he got sacked for 12 yards and then they dropped him back again and there was a holding penalty and they couldn't kick a field goal. You have to understand in that spot, we kick a field goal. It's pretty much game over. Let's run the ball twice.

Now part of that, everybody blames Kyle. Well, he was not the head coach. Dan Quinn was the head coach. Dan Quinn should have said when he heard that he was going to call a pass play, no, you're not. You're not throwing the football. I'm the head coach. We're running it twice and we're kicking a field.

goal to take an 11 point lead. That's how we're doing this thing here. So, you know, part of that should have been on Quinn. Sunday's errors, you know, I think he wasn't aggressive enough in the first half. I think he was not, I think up 20 to 17 after a five and a half yard first down run. They should have done what they did really well, which is run the football, but none of those things are comparable to what happened in Super Bowl 51. And I agree with Gil Brandt. I don't know if it's 75% or 85% or 65%, but the average is probably around 75%. I do think three-fourths of NFL teams would probably swap out their head coach for Kyle in a New York second.

Look, and Charlie Cassidy said the same thing. He said the same thing. To pin this on Kyle Shanahan, it's ridiculous. But, you know, people just, he's, People just don't, particularly here in Washington, obviously. They really don't like him. There's national media. There's a perception that he's the coach's son and, you know, was born on third base as a result. I mean, and there's no recognition of his brilliance as a head coach.

You know, I've heard, I've heard he, not only is he obviously a smart play caller, he has a great relationship, I've been told, with his players. His players really like him. You know, and I mean, he didn't hear a lot of grousing after the game about what went wrong on the sidelines from the coaching staff from the players on that 49ers team. Right. And so, I mean, he could coach my football team any day of the week. Yeah, mine is well. mine as well. I mean, it's such a joke, you know, because how many, you know, there are 30 other teams that would love to have been in the Super Bowl in the fourth quarter with a 20 to 10 lead with nine minutes to go in the game on Sunday. And the reason that they were there are a lot, there are lots of reasons, but number one is they're very well coached and they have been. And, but at the same time, I, you know, I can say simultaneously, people, I always struggle with.

why people struggle with this. I can say, I think Kyle Shanahan's a really good coach, and I would take him tomorrow, and then also say, I think he made a mistake or two in the game on Sunday. You know what? Yeah. Bill Belichick makes mistakes. That's happened before, too. I'm not comparing to Belichick, not yet anyway.

And what's interesting is people really, I mean, the second person people ragged on was Jimmy Garoppolo. and how he's an average quarterback at best. I think that's true. Well, if that's the case, that Kyle Saneh really is a hell of a coach. Yeah, right. You know, because he got them to the Super Bowl with basically, you know, an average quarterback.

I think he is, look, I think that Jimmy Garapolo, there are things about his game that I like, there are things that I don't like, but I think he's, you know, somewhere in the middle. You know, best case somewhere in the middle. But they had an exceptional defense and an exceptional running game. And really, I think Jimmy Garapolo performed at the level that he performed at this year, which at times was exceptional because of their scheme, you know, and their ability to run the ball, because really every Shanahan scheme has always been

successful only if they ran the ball successfully, which they always seem to do well. But, But Garoppolo, you know, Garoppolo had a decent year. He threw 27 touchdown passes, 13 picks, threw for nearly 4,000 yards. You know, he didn't have a terrible year, but a lot of it was off the play action, off the zone run scheme, which is what they were succeeding at on Sunday, too. So, you know, I mentioned this. As far as the end of the first half goes, I think if Kyle had said, look, they're punting from midfield. We are going to get the ball to start the second half.

I don't want to give it back to Mahomes. our offense is predicated on being balanced. It's hard to go 95 yards or 90 yards just throwing the football. It's hard to be balanced in a minute and a half. You've got to really throw the football. And I thought they were going to punish inside the 10. And he didn't say that necessarily. He said some of that.

And then on the second and five throw, if he had said, look, we had gotten to where we had gotten to by running the ball and running early down play action. And Jimmy had been, he was 10 for 20. I think before that particular throw on play action throws. So whatever. Again, not nearly what happened in Super Bowl 51, but you can nitpick and not be wrong on some of this stuff either.

So I was going to add to the Super Bowl conversation with this. And this is something I probably should have prepared you for, but you'll be good off the cuff anyway in thinking of other examples. So Patrick Mahomes just completed basically his first two years of being a starting quarterback Tommy. He's only 24 years old. He has started 36, I'm sorry, combined regular season and playoff games now. And you can make the case that he is already an all-time great. He's gone from sort of future star to all-time great quickly. He's got a regular season MVP in his first two years of starting.

He's got a Super Bowl MVP in his first two years of starting. You could argue that he would have had two MVPs this year had he not missed games for an injury this year. He has played in five playoff games. They've scored 30 or more points in all five of the playoff games. He's already got, to his credit, one of the all-time great comebacks in postseason history. You start comparing him to other guys that are in the Hall of Fame or even a guy like Eli, who people expect to be in the Hall of Fame. This guy has already accomplished a ridiculous amount in the first two years,

76 touchdowns, over 9,100 yards passing in the first two years. He could autopilot the rest of his career have decent results, but not win another big-time award and be considered Hall of Fame-worthy already. My question to you, and I pose this to callers on the radio show, is think of other starts to an NFL career in particular that match this one. They're very hard to find. We found a couple of them, but they're pretty hard to find. What do you think of when you think of Mahomes' first two years?

Well, I think of Namich, I think a Joe Namich, who basically won the Super Bowl, I think it's third year, third or fourth year in the NFL, the most important Super Bowl, probably in history, through for 4,000 yards in a 14-game season, I think in his second or third year of the NFL. And that record stood for like 14 or 15 years until somebody matched it. I think it was Dan Fauci did. So names come to mind.

Gail Sayers, maybe comes to mind, you know, somebody like that. I agree with you. I mean, you know, usually guys quarterbacks who have an NFL MVP on their resume and a Super Bowl MVP on their resume, they wind up in the Hall of Fame. Yeah, I mean, I agree with you. Basically, Eli's a 500 career quarterback, but he's got two Super Bowl rings and one Super Bowl MVP. And he's only a two-time pro bowler, and people think he's going to be in the Hall of Fame. So you came up with a couple of them. You know, the name of thing is really interesting because the 4,000-yard season was such an outlier for the time.

Now, that was an AFL season as an AFL quarterback in 1967. playing an AFL schedule pre-merger, Super Bowl era, yes, the beginning of the Super Bowl era. But it's such an outlier in terms of that thing. I mean, Dan Fouts, Dan Fouts was really the first before Marino to start throwing for 4,000 yards. It was just rarely done. When Marino, Marino to me is the comp, and Kurt Warner is the other one. And I'll tell you why in a moment on Kurt Warner. Marino's 1984 season was basically a 5,000-yard season, 48 touchdown, 17 interceptions,

when no one or very few were throwing for 4,000 yards. And he just went out and threw for 5,000 yards. A season, which by the way, you know, 26 years later is still, I'm sorry, 36 years later, is still a top 10 season all time. The other nine 5,000 yard plus, the other 11, excuse me, 5,000 yard plus seasons have all been done since 2011. He did it in 1984. Now, Fouts and those charger teams of the early 80s, Fouts was the first guy to start going over 4,000 yards on a regular basis. No one else was doing it, though, back then.

Nobody. You know, nobody was. You really didn't get guys to go over 4,000 on a regular basis until the 90s, let alone the 80s, and Marino went over 5,000 yards. Marino's start to his career is comparable because his first three seasons as a full-time starter, he threw for 14,000 yards, and he threw for 122 touchdowns. You're right, Marino's the obvious one, yeah. Marino is the obvious one. The other one is Kurt Warner, if we're talking about quarterbacks. Kurt Warner's first three years were off the charts.

You know, first of all, we know the story. He's bagging groceries at a high V supermarket in Iowa and Des Moines. And Trent Green goes down in the preseason. And this is a guy that's played arena football league. And he comes in and in his first year starting in 1999, he throws for 4,300 yards, 41 touchdowns, 13 interceptions, and wins the NFL MVP. I mean, that's an unbelievable, obviously an unbelievable start to his career. And Kurt Warner, in two of his first three years, was the NFL MVP.

You know, in two of his, he won two regular season MVP, he's a Super Bowl MVP and was a three-time Pro Bowler in his first three years of starting and was putting up, God, ridiculous, I mean, numbers. It was unbelievable. the numbers he was putting up. Marino and Warner, and then I'm going to give you one more, Tommy. Eric Dickerson's first two seasons in the NFL were all time. He rushed for 1,808 yards and 18 touchdowns in his rookie year, and then broke O.J. Simpson's record in his second year in the NFL rushing for 2,105 yards and 14 touchdowns. Like Dickerson's first two years were off the charts.

Off the charts. Incredible. I don't know. I think we're watching a guy in Mahomes that you can already say at this point, barring like a catastrophic career-ending injury, he's basically a Hall of Famer based on what he's done in his first two years. Yeah, you're right. I mean, you're absolutely, like I said, I mean, with those kind of awards on your resume, and if you have an average NFL career the rest of the time, I mean, it doesn't matter if you win them in the 10th year. or the second or third year. You know, they still count. So you're right. His ticket to Canton is probably already punched unless he gets hurt.

Jim Brown was the NFL MVP his first two seasons. Like, I almost feel like Jim Brown gets discused, gets eliminated from every conversation because everybody already knows he's the greatest football player in the history of the sport. Talk about an outlier. Oh, what an outlier he was.

Couple things to get to. Ron Rivera. I got something to get to, too, whenever you get to. Okay. Whenever you can squeeze it. I want to play this soundbite from Ron Rivera from Larry Michael's Redskin Nation show yesterday. Our left tackle. What's the health of Trent?

You know, we're getting ready. We're going to go through our process on the 10th. We'll talk about it. We've got to get Trent in. We've got to sit down, see where he is, see how he is. Healthwise, too. And we have not really had the contact we need to have to know. So until we know, but he's still our guy.

Okay. So until we go through this process, we're not going to know where everybody fits. These are pieces to the puzzle that we've got to put together. Do you find it strange that he and the organization that they haven't talked to Trent Williams? He's been the head coach now for, I think, a month. Yes, very strange. I would have thought that would have been one of the first phone calls. And you know what, unless Ron Rivera is doing the right thing,

and they don't really want Trent to come back, and they want to trade him. But even if they do want to do that, they need to know how healthy he is. They need to know what they've got to trade. Or maybe it's better that they don't know how healthy he is. But anybody's going to make passing a physical condition of the trade, I would think. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, look, that's what I think should happen. It was the smart thing to do before he went off on the organization.

it was a smart thing to do when he went off on the organization. It's a smart thing to do now. You need to move on, get what you can from him. Don't be paying a 32-year-old tackle who can't stay healthy during a regular season, a ridiculous amount of money. They need to move on from him. Well, I agree with that. I do.

I just find it a little bit odd that Ron Rivera hasn't talked to Trent Williams. Williams at, that they haven't reached out to find out, you know, if there's any interest in coming back. They have, they don't have Donald Penn even under contract. And the other guy, Christian, you know, based on what we've seen here in the first couple of years, doesn't look like an elite left tackle by any stretch of the imagination. They need, you know, Ron Rivera thinks this is a quick turnaround. And part of that is going to be, you know, I would think contingent on a young quarterback playing well, it'd be nice to have an actual left tackle. Donald Penn played well at times. last year, but you don't even know if you can bring them back. I just think it's strange.

And I just, the one fear I have with Rivera, who I am, I'm a fan of and was a fan of, and I'm glad that the Redskins hired him. Just too many of the Mr. Snyders, too much potential, as we've seen in the past, of becoming enamored with the owner and with the size of the yacht, spending time on the boat and getting caught up in all of that stuff. And no, call Trent Williams. Call him. I mean, how hard can it be? Let's find out if we got a left tackle.

What are we waiting for? I'm not, trust me, I'm not turning into a negative position. I'm still bullish, very bullish, and I'm going to continue to be until games are played in probably a season or two. are played. I just know that that place, there's a shitload of arrogance, as we know, and there's already some puffing out of the chest over the hiring of Ron Rivera. And now on top of that, is Ron going to become one of the guys as well? Is he going to be hanging out with the owner? He's going to be on the – I wanted Ron to come in and slap the arrogance out of everybody in there and get rid of all of the people that, you know, that a lot of us, and not –

fans have had to deal with over the years with a losing organization. You know, I've told the story many times. You know, Super Bowl several years ago, and key executives to the Redskins are following Scott Van Pelt around some, you know, event, Super Bowl night event, like with their tongues hanging out, trying to talk them into how great of a franchise. And at one point, he just turned around and say, can you stop following me? And they're telling him how great he is and how he should come back to a game and he can sit with the owner and the whole thing and how they're going to be.

They're going to have a great free agency. Shut up. I don't want Rivera caught up into all this bullshit. And others have, you know, over time. Others have gotten caught up into all of it. And, you know, if you don't get caught up into it, you're usually on the outs pretty quickly. You know, this is what I came up with, the phrase, the aura of self-destruction. When you walk in that building,

You get consumed by this spirit, this atmosphere that turns smart men into dummies. That turns strong men in the weakling. I mean, that's what it does. I mean, I've called the Redskins the elephant graveyard of the NFL. This is where careers go to die. Smart people have walked in that building and left with their careers and tatters. Have we seen anything on Ron Rivera's contract with the Redskins in terms of, have we seen any dollar amount yet?

I don't think we have, right? No, I don't think we have. We saw that it was a five-year deal. We never saw any financial terms. I believe I'm right about that. I could be wrong. Maybe we've had that since. I just chill out those of you that are listening that are getting upset here okay i'm a ron

Rivera fan i am all in on ron Rivera i just when i heard that and i coupled that with all of the mr schneider stuff and everything else i'm like get to work brother get to work don't get caught up so many of you listening have no idea no idea how bad it's been out there over the years. You've heard us talk about it, and there are some things that we haven't really been able to talk about at times. And some things it didn't make sense to talk about because we didn't know it for fact. We just heard it from multiple people. It is, there's been a level of arrogance out there in the last 10 years. You wouldn't believe. Now, I'm hopeful that some of that is gone with Bruce Allen and that Ron Rivera's truly in this coach-centric culture in this, in this

format is going to be able to slap all of it out of them and be humble. And we're not going to talk about how great we are. And we're not going to treat, you know, partners and vendors and different people in the same. This is going to be a different level of class of organization. Win or lose. But I don't know. Call Trent Williams.

How about that? You're right. I mean, about how bad it's been and that people don't realize it. That speaks to one of Leverro's rules. that if things look bad from the outside, they're worse inside. They're far worse. They're far worse inside.

And that has been the case over there in that building. It has been. Quick word about my bookie.orgie.ag, the Super Bowl's over. Doesn't mean you don't still bet if you're a better. Be careful. All right. Tread lightly. Don't get yourself in too deep.

But if you want to wager on sports and you got the March Madness coming up around the corner, and you don't have a place to wager, my bookie.ag. Use my promo code Kevin D.C. when you make your deposit, and they'll match your deposit halfway. That's Kevin D.C. at mybooky.orgie. So a couple of things real quickly. The Redskins' odds for, I talked about this on the show yesterday, and I wanted to get your thoughts on it.

The Redskins have been installed as 150 to one underdogs to make the Super Bowl. That's the 32nd position out of 32 teams. They are the longest odds on the board. They also have, according to Sportsbook.com, the lowest win loss over-under number at five and a half for the 2020 season. So I got a lot of feedback to mentioning this yesterday, and people are like, wow, that's a huge opportunity. I mean, you know, people outside of this market don't get it. They've got to be. better roster. They got a good coaching staff. Haskins is going to be pretty decent. And so I would ask you the question, and then I'll answer it afterwards. What are we missing that Vegas isn't? All I know is that I heard the same speech from people, particularly people

who covered a team last year, where throughout the national media and odds makers and people like that, that people were talking about four and twelve seasons for the Redskins this year. And everyone in Washington scoffed at that. Everyone in D.C. thought, well, not everyone, but most people thought, what a level of disrespect. This team is going to be good. There's no way that. I didn't think they were going to be good. I don't. You didn't think they were going to be good. I know. But we heard that. We heard that from people who covered the team, who thought how ridiculous it was that people were. figuring that the Redskins would be so bad. And here we are again. The same story. I mean,

I don't know, you know, based on results instead of this imagined potential of talent, I don't know how you could pick the Redskins for anything but at the bottom of the barrel. I just don't. Well, I do. I disagree with you. Let me just say this. I think the number one reason, It's not, you know, aura of dysfunction. It's not the owner. It is that Vegas doesn't believe in Haskins. I think that's the number one reason that the Redskins' odds are so long and that, you know, virtually every look ahead to 2020, the 2020 NFL season is predicting that the Redskins won't be any good. I think it's that most people outside of this market are not believers in Dwayne Haskins. And that's fine. I am a bit of a believer in him. being able to do it, you know, maybe not at an elite level, but I think he's going to be more than than functional at the position. But I think that that's the number one reason why the odds are,

why they are. This time around, I didn't feel this way last year, this time around, I will look at that over-under number. I do think this is a roster capable of eight and eight, capable of seven and nine, you know, and eight and eight means you could be six and six, you know, in late November with a chance to compete for something in December. I think they're good enough with good coaching, and I think they'll be much better coached this year to be a much better team, to make a big jump. I don't think they're going to win the Super Bowl. I don't think they're going to be a playoff team. I don't think they're going to win the division or be a wildcard team. But I think there's a big jump ahead, and I think there is this time around, I would actually agree with a lot

of people. I think that they're being undervalued by the odds makers. significantly undervalued actually. Listen, you can have your position and still recognize that the view of the redskins from outside is a legitimate, reasonable view that they've earned. In other words, both things can be right. You can say, I think they're undervalued, but I certainly understand why everyone's picking them at the bottom. Yeah, I know, but that's not why they're at the bottom. They're not at the bottom because people think that this is just an organization that is a total mess.

Because if that were true, then, you know, teams in recent years like the Browns, you would have thought the same way about them. And they're coming off a very disappointing season after there were expectations. And they're at 30 to 1. They're like in the top 10, top 12 of Super Bowl odds. So I think it's just, I really believe that it's about Dwayne Haskins. I think that they look at it and say, you've got to have the quarterback to make a legitimate run and they don't have the quarterback. I think they're going to be wrong.

I don't know if they're going to be, they might not be wrong about whether or not he turns into a Super Bowl quarterback. But I think he's going to be better than some people think. But anyway, that's that. I have a couple of other things real quickly, but you said you had something. Well, let me ask you a question, buddy. Yeah, buddy. Did you read my column? I haven't read you, I did not read your column, I'm sorry.

I emailed it to you twice. Okay. Two times. You know, I'm going to have to have my agent redo my contract here. Your big contract with the podcast? Yes, that requires you to read my comments. You know I read it a lot and I'm a fan of it. I didn't read it.

I did not see you, I saw one email from you. I don't see two. I said two. I sent two. It's only the best thing that was written in this town in the past three days. And it's not even close. Here it is. Brain injuries take shine off NFL's Week of Glitz.

This is the column you're talking about. This is the best column written in D.C. in the last three days. Okay. Tell us about it. Okay. What I, you know, this is the celebration of football, the Super Bowl. Everyone comes up with the list of the top Super Bowl teams, you know, the best. best quarterbacks, everyone's compiling their own list.

I came up with my list. The all-time brain damage Super Bowl. Oh, my God. Are you seeing, this is what you wrote about? The all-time brain-damaged Super Bowl list or NFL list? No, brain-damaged Super Bowl list. I went position by position to pick a team of a players who have played in the Super Bowl, who have suffered brain damage.

Oh, my God. Look at this, Tommy. Wow. Hold on. Before you tell everybody who's on this list, have you gotten a reaction to this? Yeah, I've gotten some. Not as much as I would have thought,

but I've gotten some. Your all-time brain-damaged Super Bowl team. All right, let's start it off offensively. Okay, well, I don't want to go through the whole list. Well, give us some highlights. Okay, well, Kenny Stapler, I've got a quarterback. Did Stabler have CTE? When he died of colon cancer, the family asked if they could, you know, do a study of his brain,

and he was found to have significant CTE damage. God, he's one of my all-time favorite players. All right. It was either him or Jim McMahon. McMahon has talked about how he has memory laws and things like that. I put Kenny Sabre on the list because he was a. better quarterback. Running back, Tony Dorset. Tony Dorset has spoken often about, he has shortened long-term memory loss.

Jamal Anderson, who played for the Atlanta Falcons in the Falcons Super Bowl, has also been diagnosed with brain damage. This is so depressing. This is as depressing as the Google ad during the Super Bowl about memory loss and dementia. You know, John Mackey. Obviously, John Mackey, you know, the Mackey plan is all based on his dementia, the money that the NFL and the NFLPA comes up with to take care of players.

I've got a tackle on there, a former chief tackle named Jim Tire. I remember Jim Tire. Okay. Jim Tire, I think nine years after he was done playing. shot his wife and then shot himself. Boy, this is upbeat. Now, he was never diagnosed with brain damage. So I took a leap of faith and said that I'm betting that he was suffering from some brain damage.

And then, you know, the list goes on. This is cheery. This is a cheery conversation we're having right now. Well, it's just a dose of reality. Right. And amidst all the Super Bowl, you know, basically. Right, here's Tommy. Super Bowl orgy.

Right. You know, I'm the spoils sport at the Orgy. Yes, you are. You are the spoils sport. So, you know, it goes through on the defensive line, the linebackers. I mean, it's amazing how many people on this list have either shot themselves or committed suicide on this list. Junior Seale is on the list. Dave Dewars.

Willie Wood just passed away yesterday. the former Packers, Hall of Fame, Stacey, who lived in D.C., was a D.C. native. He had dementia the last 10 or 12 years of his life. So, yeah, I came up with the all-brain-damage Super Bowl team. That's great. I mean, what made you think of it? I mean, was it Shakira and J-Lo at halftime? Was it some of the commercials?

was it the excitement of the game, the Mahomes performance, the Nick Bosa? What was it that made you sit there during the Super Bowl and say, I'm going to create the all-time brain damage Super Bowl roster? Well, look, I used my Super Bowl column to basically take you behind inside baseball. I'm not at the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl is going to end at 1030, you know, quarter to 11, too late for our print edition.

but they want to have a Super Bowl column in the paper the next day that would stand up no matter what happened in the game. Right, well, this one does because they're all done. Yeah. Right. So I usually come up with something, and it's usually basically pissing on everyone's cornsling. That's what you did.

I wrote one year, one year I wrote about, I interviewed Art Sleicester's wife, Mitzi Sleaster, who had devoted her life to, rehabilitating gamblers. That was a Super Bowl column. I'd like to read that one. That's interesting. She had a front row seat for some real degenerate activity. Yes, she did.

And so I did a column once with, I forget the guy's name, was it Ron Mix or whoever, a former Chargers offensive lineman who played for the Redskins, who basically suffered brain damage and couldn't get. any attention from the NFL player unit when it came to disability help. So my Super Bowl column is usually this column. Right. I mean, I don't want a couple years ago when I wrote how Radio Row had basically

become, you know, this parade of damaged football bodies being paraded through Radio Roe. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Well, thanks for brightening up today. Okay, but listen, it's a pretty creative column. You have to admit. Yeah, no, I, right when you, I mean, I didn't, I opened it as you were starting to talk about it,

and I just saw that the title, the title didn't really describe what it was. It's a, you know what, it's a really good column idea. It's an attention getter, that's for sure. It's a bit depressing. There's no doubt. It's a bit grim. But you know what? It's a good segue, actually. into my next topic, sort of. I spent some time yesterday talking about Alex Smith's comments to Jeremy Schapp on outside the lines.

Did you see that? And did you hear or read what Alex Smith said? Yes, I did. And what were your thoughts? My thoughts are, I'm the one who wrote he had 17 surgeries, so I knew how bad off his leg was. Did I know it was about, you know, it was on the verge of being amputated? I didn't know specifically that, but I knew that they had to do everything they could to save it.

So I knew how bad off he was, and which is why I just can't, I can't believe that he's going to be able to play, no matter what he thinks. I just can't, I can't wrap my arms around that thought. Yeah, that's, I mean, in sitting there and watching it and listening to him, and listening to him talk about sepsis and near death, and then after surviving and living, to talk about the decision that he was faced with, either amputation or limb salvage surgery, and choosing limb salvage surgery, which is quite a drastic surgery to essentially save the leg. I just, he's not playing next year. He's never playing football again, nor should he. Nor should he. You know, I don't, I guess, look, unless I was there, unless I went through what he went through, I guess I can't understand it.

And I was not, I've never been a high-level competitive athlete like Alex Smith is, so I don't understand the competitiveness of it, per se. but if it were me and I went through what he did, I would just be happy to put one foot in front of the other for the rest of my life. I mean, I think it's also in his situation with young kids and a wife, it's sort of a family ordeal too. And look, the competitive athlete part, God, I hope he gets into a position to be able to play, to actually have a decision,

because that's what he's driving towards, you know, health, like supreme health. and sort of the ability to say, look what I just accomplished in my comeback. But he's not playing, and I just don't see that ever happening. I can't see it as an organization, them wanting him to play. And then, you know, brass tack sort of, you know, putting the compassion part aside and putting the business up front, he wasn't very good as a healthy 34-year-old here. Like, you know, if you're talking about football and what's best for the organization moving forward as they try to make, you know, turn around this franchise, a 36-year-old, you know,

hampered version, compromised version of what we saw two years ago isn't the way to go. Lastly, I just wanted to read. But, yeah, go ahead. Lon Rivera, Lon Rivera mentions his name every chance he gets. I know, and I think that's part of his strategy to make sure Dwayne knows that this isn't being handed to him. But then again, Dwayne knows what Alex went through. And if Alex is on the roster, $21 million next year, as a third-string quarterback and as a mentor to Dwayne Haskins, I mean, everybody will cheer that and be happy for it. I don't think he'll ever step foot on the field.

Last thing, and we're going to run for the day, so a bit of a shortened podcast, but we've covered a number of topics. Todd McShay's 2.0 version mock draft is out. I just want to read to you what he wrote about Chase Young, who he's got going second to the Redskins after Joe Burrow goes to Cincinnati won overall. He writes the following. This could be the easiest pick on the board. And considering the Redskins were 10th in the league with 46 sacks, it doesn't have much to do with a particular need. No, this instead has everything to do with the special talent of Young, who has one of the highest grades I've ever given a player in two decades of scouting. Last year's number two pick and former Buckeyes teammate Nick Bosa was a difference maker in year one.

But the scary truth is that Young is an even better prospect. He can line up opposite Montez's sweat at defensive end or drop back into a three-four outside linebacker role. It doesn't matter. Young will be in the face of opposing quarterbacks every Sunday. He led the nation with 16 and a half sacks in 2019 and he missed two games. By the way, I just picked up on something. He actually had Matt Ionitis in this. breakdown before not Montez-Swet, and I just realized why he changed it. He was thinking that Matt

Ionitis was a defensive end. I was thinking when he said he can line up opposite, I was thinking he was saying line up next to, but whatever. This is, to me, after watching Nick Bosa, who I believe was the best player on the field on Sunday, bar none, not that he's the best player in general. Mahomes is that, but in terms of his performance, I thought Nick Bosa stood out 11 pressures, quarterback pressures. If it had been a normal quarterback on Sunday, he probably would have had five or six sacks in the game. But the quarterback wasn't normal, but it didn't take away from Bosa's performance, which I thought was dominant and spectacular in every way, shape, and form. If Chase Young is better than Bosa, if he's as equal, you don't even think about it. It's a no-brainer. You take Chase Young if he's there at number two. I would be concerned that Cincinnati says he's the number one player on our board by a lot. even though we need the quarterback, we're going to take Chase Young. But I think it's a no-brainer in watching Bosa and Young as a college player. What if Miami comes to you and says we'll make an RG3 type trade, including our high two number one pick from this year,

and the number one pick for next year as well, and two number two. The answer would be no if I've evaluated Chase Young as sort of the highest evaluation. I've had on a player in two decades. The answer would be, without even blinking, no. I'm going to take the best player I've seen on the board in two decades. I'm going to take the player that I think is better than Nick Bosa, who's already proved during his rookie season, that he's an elite, an elite game-wrecking pass rusher. So, yeah, I would take, I would take Young. I can't say you're wrong, but I wouldn't tell anyone they're wrong to make that trade either. I don't think you can go wrong.

I would only tell them that they're wrong if they evaluated him in the same way that McShea's evaluating him. If they have him evaluated differently, then they would be right. Now, who knows if they'll be right long term, but in the moment, if they think Chase Young is a really good player, but not an elite prospect, then you make the trade. But it'll depend on how they evaluate him. If they evaluate him in the same way Todd McShay's evaluated him, you take him. unless somebody's going to offer you five first rounders,

and then make you an offer that you really can't refuse. But it would take that. All right, we got to run. Terps tonight, Aaron, are you going? I will not be going. No, I think I am going. I think I am going, even though I hate the 7 o'clock games. I think I will be there tonight.

Tommy, are you going to the Maryland game tonight or not? No, I was at the Iowa game, which is a pretty good game, and they look good. Yeah, they looked really good. They're ranked ninth in the country, and Rutgers fell out of the top 25, but this should be a tough game, although they are seven and a half point favorites, which is encouraging. All right, Tommy, go, feel better. Thanks for calling in.

Aaron the same. Have a great day, everybody. Again, off tomorrow, Thursday, Friday, and Monday. I'll talk to you with Tommy next Tuesday.