The Kevin Sheehan Show - Roger...Help Us Get Our Team Back!

Episode Date: October 13, 2021

Kevin today talking emails, investigations, and a big ask for Roger Goodell. Al Galdi joined Kevin to talk WFT drama, WFT season, 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 Cheehan Show. Here's Kevin. All right. Believe it or not, this is round two of the show today. We had some technical issues with round one.

So we are doing a repeat. Not that you care about any of that, as long as you get the podcast delivered. Al Galdi is going to be on the podcast today. We will talk Washington football team drama off. field, Washington football team on the field, and we'll talk Major League Baseball playoffs with Galdi. Galdi, I think it's true passion, is baseball. He was always everybody's go-to at the station to talk baseball with. So we'll do that. I watched Giants Dodgers last night. Can't wait for

game five tomorrow night. The baseball's been pretty good. By the way, Howie Rose, longtime Mets play-by-play voice tweeted out last night. The Astros White Sox game took four hours and 32 minutes. The Braves and Brewers are in the top of the seventh, three hours and nine minutes after the first pitch. He wrote, this is untenable, not sustainable. Major League Baseball and the MLBPA, the Players Association, have to find common ground for improvement. I'm a baseball lifer, he writes, but I am losing focus. Yeah, I don't know what they can do about it.

Baseball games and college football games are too long. They've tried everything in baseball. Can't shorten the games from nine to seven innings or something like that. It can't be that dramatic. I think these playoff games are so good. It's such a great product when you get a close, compelling game at the end, like last night with the Braves and the Brewers and Freeman hitting a home runoff Josh Hater in the bottom of the eighth.

It was awesome. But you don't have to invest in the entire four hours. You can do some other things, and then you can check in in the seventh inning to see if it's close and then pick it up from there. I do a lot of that. Tomorrow night, though, I think I'll watch start to finish, Giants Dodgers game five. Two best teams going head to head in the NLDS with the right for the right to play the Braves

in the NLCS. The rivals, the games in San Francisco, it'll be pretty dramatic, I think. It's a good sports night tomorrow night with Tampa, Philadelphia being the Thursday night football game. I think that's a good Thursday night football game. By the way, hockey starts tonight, if anybody noticed. I noticed because I had Joe Beninati on the show today on the radio show. He's one of my favorite guests.

Joe B is one of the absolute best dudes and one of the best guests. I'm not even a hockey guy, as most of you know. He's just phenomenal. He's a great storyteller. He's a great analyst. He's just a great communicator. He's a phenomenal play-by-play guy. But if you're a big hockey person, go listen to my interview with Joe B at the Team 980.com.

You can just pull up my show, the second hour of the show from today. Joe B was on with me. That was lots of fun. By the way, if you're going to watch the game tonight, why not bet it? I'm kidding, of course. I don't want to encourage people that shouldn't be betting to bet. But if you are betting, why not go to mybooky.orgie.ag, use my promo code, Kevin D.C. And lay a little bit of money on the opener tonight.

The caps are minus 115 on the money line. What does that mean, Sheehan? If you bet on the caps and you lose, you lose $115 if you bet $100. If you win, you win $100. You can also bet it with the goal point spread. They're laying one and a half, one and a half goals plus 195. What does that mean? That means if they win by two or more goals and you wagered on the caps laying a goal and a half

and you bet $100, you'd win $195. If you lose, meaning they win the game by one goal or lose the game outright, you would only lose $100. That's how that works. Have I ever bet hockey? Somebody's asking, yeah. I bet hockey before. Bet everything before.

But I don't bet hockey. I don't really do it. Quick story, actually. For many years, there was about a group of, I don't know, six to eight of us that would go to Vegas, two, three, four times a year. We'd go out there for a football weekend. We'd go out there for the NCAA tournament. We'd go out there for a fight, those kinds of things.

But whenever hockey season was going on, it became a tradition when we got into Vegas. And we walked down to the casino and to the sports book that we would bet the last hockey game on the board. And usually, you know, it was like Vancouver against, you know, the L.A. Kings. And we would bet the game and we would sit down and we'd start drinking cold adult beverages and bet hockey. That's what we would do. And start screaming for the ducks, the Anaheim ducks. MyBooky. MyBooky.org. Use my promo code Kevin D.C., they'll double your first deposit. Dollar for dollar. All right. You put in 500 bucks. You'll end up with $1,000 in your account. I wanted to just start with kind of a follow-up to yesterday's conversation.

Tommy and I spent a lot of time talking about John Gruden and the ties back to Washington. The story continued to blow up yesterday. The NFLPA wants the 650,000 emails to be released. The women represented by Lisa Banks and some of those attorneys, they want the emails to be released. They want also very much for the actual investigation. report to be released. None of that's going to be released according to the league. They're not going to do it. And the league is just saying no. They're pushing back and, you know, couching it and basically saying things like confidentiality, et cetera, et cetera. Here's what the league does in these things. And it almost always works. They wait it out.

You know, not everything you can wait out. But they've been here done that. Colin Kaepernick, concussions, all the gates, bounty, spy, deflate gate, right? rice, all of them. It's the best product on the planet. So they weighed it out, especially in season. They almost always waited out. They know attention spans are short. They know with a product like theirs, there's a game coming Sunday at one, Chargers, Ravens, and a whole list of games that start at one and end at midnight. And that's what people care about. They don't care about emails when the games start. I think, you know, PR crisis strategists have many times the strategy of do nothing, wait it out. No, if you speak to this or if you try to apologize or you try to make it better, you're just going to make it worse. Just wait it out. It'll be a non-new story by tomorrow or the next day.

I have a note to Commissioner Roger Goodell. This is a bit corny, but I was thinking about this last night and I talked about it this morning on the show. I have no idea whether or not those emails or the Beth Wilkinson investigation includes something that would be legitimate in trying to oust Dan Snyder. I don't know. I said to Tommy yesterday, part of me thinks that we would have seen it by now. It would have been leaked by now. Maybe he's just a bad manager and a bad owner. And he's not one of the big things like a racist or a homophobe or a transphobic or a misogynist.

You know, maybe he presided over a culture of that, but he wasn't, you know, the person perpetrating. It's still his responsibility. Don't get me wrong. He was not an innocent bystander, but they just don't, you can't just take somebody's team away from them if he's a bad guy or if he's a bad owner. But if there is something in there, note to Roger Goodell, help us get our team back. You know, Roger Goodell knows, all of the owners know what this used to be.

and what this can be. And what it is now, it's an embarrassment. It's been wrecked by Dan Snyder. 22 years of Dan Snyder has chased away most of the fan base. We are bordering on an extinct fan base. I know that's an exaggeration, but comparatively to what it used to be, it's a fraction of what it used to be.

Give us our team back. Help us get it back. You're the only ones that can do it. he's not selling the team and nobody here has enough money to buy it well jeff bezos does and others do do and some people would never want jeff bezos to be the owner anyway help us get our team back if there are legitimate reasons to take it from him don't cover for him anymore don't help him don't worry about the the the suing and the litigation and being in courts for years get your team back you know why you don't even have to do it for us. It's good business for you. This market is the sleeping giant in the NFL.

By the way, just consider that for a moment. This market, Washington, D.C. is a sleeping NFL giant. You know what that implies. It just implies that it isn't anything right now, but it could be something. How pathetic is that? It used to be the market in the NFL. fell, certainly one of the top two or three with one of the most passionate fan bases in the sport. And all of those guys know it. Giddell lived it here. A lot of these owners, God, if we could just be like Washington. And now it's not that.

If there are legitimate reasons, not made up reasons, legitimate reasons to oust him and you've been covering for him because, again, he's one of yours, even though you don't like him and even though you don't want him, but other owners fear what would happen. If you went after him, if there are legitimate reasons to oust him, it's good business to him. You know it. I mean, hell, if you saw fit to believe that John Gruden, spider Y2 banana, John Gruden, if you thought he had become bad for business, and by the way, I'm not disagreeing that he had become bad for business. I mean, it's an apples and oranges kind of thing, but why can't you see how bad for business Daniel Snyder is? Give us our team back.

please yesterday on my radio station Chris Russell and Pete Medhurst host afternoons they had Jay Gruden on the show listen to what Jay Gruden said to these guys related to the Beth Wilkinson investigation obviously this investigation went on were you were you questioned by Beth Wilkinson how did that go and what if so what was your experience

and you don't have to tell us what you asked but I mean or what you said I haven't been questioned all I don't I don't even know what the heck is really going on. Once I was let go out of there, I just was let go, and I just kind of back away. So they never approached you in any sort of way for your evaluation of the culture or that were the toxic workplace, as it was called? No. No. Oh, okay.

How is that possible that Jay Gruden wasn't interviewed? Isn't that a big miss? I understand that she didn't have subpoena power. He said he wasn't even approached or asked. That doesn't make any sense to me. He was the head football coach from 2014 through early 2019. Bruce Allen was largely responsible for hiring him because of the relationship that he had with his brother John and Jay. Jay was the head football coach, but the head football coach in this organization

typically was involved with the owner and the team president. Now, he claims he just focused on coaching the football team. But Jay, and I love Jay as a guest. You know, we've had him on the podcast a couple of times. He's excellent in analyzing football. He was really forthright in that first interview that we did, I don't know, seven, eight months ago. But Jay Gruden needed to be interviewed for this investigation, right? What am I missing?

You know, when that first story in the post came out, a lot of us that were somewhat familiar with the ongoings in Ashburn, we sort of predicted. We, you know, we predicted the names that were going to come out in that story. We got most of them right. All of them should have been interviewed, hopefully. Anyway, I thought that that was an interesting development. That interview with Chris and Pete was a good interview, and he said a lot about his brother, obviously. He makes a weekly visit with those guys and didn't back off his visit yesterday,

despite all of the issues with his brother, John. All right, when we come back, Al Galdi will be our guest. right after these words from a few of our sponsors. All right, let's bring on to the show, my good friend Al Galdi. Listen to Galdi's podcast wherever you get a podcast. It's called the Al Galdi podcast. Al is missed very much on the radio station that I am on. I miss him dearly.

I miss a lot of the guys that I worked with very closely very much at the station. But Al's killing it with his podcast. So tune in to that wherever you get a podcast, Apple, Spotify, Google, et cetera. I just, I thought we could have a conversation on this Wednesday about a lot of things. And one of the reasons I reached out to you is I'm assuming that you were paying attention to the baseball playoffs, which I am. I'm actually really into it.

I stayed up and watched the Dodgers Giants the last two nights, which is a killer for me, to stay up and watch these games. I can't wait for game five tomorrow night. So we'll get to that. But we've got to start with, you know, here we are again, right? It's never about the football. It's always about something else. So what have you been talking about the last couple of days

and what's been your take on the Gruden link to Bruce Allen and the Washington football team and the Beth Wilkinson investigation? Give me your thoughts. Yeah, I mean, it's incredible for so many different reasons. I find it really funny that this all comes out. in the month of October, you know, the traditional Think Pink month, which is the NFL's annual attempt to show everyone how much the league cares about women. And, you know, I know think Pink has done a lot of good things over the years, but it's a lot

of it's about marketing and public relations and trying to appeal the game to women and try to, you know, make up for a lot of issues the league has had with women over the years. And then, you know, you get this sexual harassment scandal reignited all over again. I mean, that's part of this is that we thought this scandal, this workplace misconduct scenario, was kind of in the past, and now the whole thing is back to the forefront because of these emails. So, like, I think you kind of start with that. Like, this is the thing again. I don't know that it's going to remain a thing for long.

I don't think the NFL is going to release the rest of these emails. I don't think the NFL is going to, in any way, bow down to the pressure of certainly the NFL players' association to release these emails. The NFLPA always kind of cracked me up. The NFLPA is very good about putting out statements, but the NFLPA, you could argue get worked more than any other major pro sports players association in this country. So I don't think the owners fear the PA, and especially as we're in the middle of an NFL season, the league doesn't want to put out more of these emails.

You know, the new cycle moves so quickly. If you just kind of hold on for a day or two, the outcry to release these emails will go away. But the overarching question to all of this, and I know everyone's talked about it, but it's hard to escape it, is where did the leaks of these Gruden emails come from? who put these out there? Why did they get leaked, but nothing specific to the Washington football team throughout this

Beth Wilkinson investigation ever get leaked? And then the other thing, and this was said on 980 on Tuesday, and I just find this fascinating, is Jay Gruden saying that he was never interviewed in the Beth Wilkinson investigation. And unless Jay is lying, that to me is unreal that he wasn't interviewed in the investigation. he also said that he was ever approached about being interviewed, because maybe you could say, well, he was approached about being interviewed, but he turned it down. Beth Wilkins did not have the Tina Palette. So, you know, it's possible she could have asked people to be interviewed, and they said,

no, according to Jay, he wasn't even asked. How in the world do you not ask to interview Jay Gruden, who was the head coach for five-plus seasons, and who at least according to Capri Bibbs, had a relationship with a Washington employee? So, like, there's that going on as well. as you well know there is so much to store through with all of this right now yeah um it's just so funny i um all and i in the past have occasionally you know had conversations briefly like you know should we do a show together should we tell them that we should be together and and you've mentioned this to me many times it's like but we would agree on everything i mean what you just said is like half

of what i just said in the open and i i um i totally agree with you i first of all all, the league has been here done that before. You know, Ray Rice, Colin Kaepernick, concussions, every gate you want to talk about. Bounty, spy gate, deflate gate. And they wait it out. And by the way, it's not a bad PR strategy in almost any crisis situation. You know, there are a lot of PR people depending on what the crisis is that will say we live in a world of a short news cycle with short attention spans. you don't address it.

You just wait it out and it'll be all fine and gone in a week. And, you know, when you're in season in particular, and you've got Chargers Ravens this Sunday at 1 and Cowboys Patriots at 425, when the games start, nobody gives a shit about any of this stuff. Because it's such a phenomenal product on Sundays and Sunday nights and Monday nights and Thursday nights. And it just gets lost.

So I do like, you know, I asked the question, well, what is next? Tommy was on with me yesterday. And you're right. What's really interesting is how did all this shit start? Like, you know, the original email, Al, to Andrew Beaton of the Wall Street Journal, that's the one that sent the whole thing. That started the whole thing. You know, the Michelin Tire Lips comment to Bruce Allen in an email when he was all pissed off

during the 2011 lockout with DeMora Smith, or as he referred to him, Dumas Smith. And that was the one. And Tommy was on here yesterday. He's like, we got to get to the bottom of this, you know, typical Tommy. And he's like, this is easy.

I'm like, what do you mean? He goes, Beaten was the one that wrote the puff piece on Snyder back in June. Remember that just embarrassing a puff piece where he suggested that Snyder really needed to get more involved because his absence, the franchise had essentially, you know, gone to hell in a handbucket because he wasn't, you know, active as if he was some sort of innocent bystander. And Tommy said, Beaten wrote the Puff piece. Beaten broke the news Friday night.

Snyder's got access to the emails. And he hates Bruce Allen. And I, you know, I said to Brendan, my producer, I go, look, anybody that hates Chucky, you know, John Gruden, is the favorite in this, somebody who's got an axe to grind. but Dan Snyder is like plus 250 plus 300. He's among those listed as the potential leak. The whole thing's nuts. Yeah, I mean, I think Tommy's theory makes a lot of sense.

The only thing is from Dan's perspective, why would you want to inject this back into the bloodstream? You know, and maybe he doesn't care about that. But now all of a sudden, everyone's back to talking about the workplace misconduct and the Wilkinson investigation and the culture and all that kind of a thing. I just don't know why if you're Dan, you would want to relight that fire. But from the perspective of the beaten puff piece, from the perspective of Dan hating Bruce's guts at this point, there is reason to buy into Tommy theory.

I don't think it's not. Charles Robinson from Yahoo just wrote a story, and he listed all of the people that would have had access. And he made it a point to say, well, Dan Snyder would have been one of those people. You know, you ask, and of course, you know, it's true. And I pushed back on Tommy yesterday, and I said, well, the odds are that it would be somebody who had an axe to grind with Gruden. That would be the odds on favorite. And then Snyder would have to think, you know, if I do this, we're just bringing the Beth Wilkinson investigation and these emails back into focus. And it could eventually backfire.

But that's never stopped him when he's been pissed. You know, he's clearly impulsive. He's pissed at Bruce Allen and Dwight Schar because he thinks they were in cahoots together in the smear campaign and it's potentially true. And just like when they went after Scott McLuhan with the leaks in the post when they fired him to try to make themselves look good

and make him look like the bad guy, which was one of the most reprehensible things the organization's ever done, in my opinion. It was the lowest rent most mean-spirited thing I think they've ever done. and they've done a lot of reprehensible, mean-spirited things. But it backfired on him because everybody saw it as totally transparent and knew where the leaks came from.

I don't think he always thinks these things through. I think there's an impulsiveness, you know, when he is pissed off. So it's possible that he just wanted Bruce to be some sort of collateral damage to all of this and to ensure that Bruce never worked in the league, which, by the way, is what the post reported. You know, Maskey and Will Dobson had sources, and Beth Reinhard or Reinshard or whatever her name is, had sources that say that Bruce Allen will never work in the league again. And we don't even know what his responses were to the emails, you know? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't know that there was a real yearning for him to work in the

league again anyway. Right. But yeah, I mean, it's funny. You have Dwight Schar who can never again be an owner of an NFL team. You have Bruce Allen who can never again work. in the NFL. John Gruden just lost his job. It's amazing, like, how many people are out and or have been banned from ever working in the NFL again, all because of everything that's gone on with this team. It really is remarkable. And yet the biggest casualty from the Washington football team, Beth Wilkinson investigation, was John Gruden. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's, so it sounds like, of course, we agree that they're not going to disclose these emails. Nobody's going to get access to them. We're not going to get a Beth Wilkinson report released. We're not going to get a Beth

Wilkinson, you know, executive summary release. The truth is, Galdi, the, I've said this since day one. I want to see the Beth Wilkinson investigation. I wanted at least an executive summary, but the league's statement summarizing, it was pretty damning of the organization. You know, the punishment wasn't, but the action. words used in that statement were pretty damning. I mean, they found a toxic culture for women that included sexual harassment and bullying. Like, you know, but I guess the other part of this is, like, what do we really feel we're missing out on by not seeing the Beth Wilkinson investigation, by not getting access to the emails? And by the way, nobody's going to read through 650,000

emails. Somebody's going to have to summarize it for everybody if they actually did disclose. what was in it. But are we missing the smoking gun that would lead to the result that we all want, which is Dan Snyder being forced to sell the team? I'm not so sure. What about you? Yeah, so there may be nothing with Dan. Like, we don't know. I mean, it's been reported that Dan does a new email. He said that to Chick Hernandez in a 2014 interview, and if we take Dan at his word and things haven't changed, there may be zero emails with Dan. And there may be minimal mentioning of in these emails. But the thing about the lack of the Beth Wilkinson report has always been, you lack specifics. Like the statement that the NFL put out did summarize things. True.

But in terms of like specific things that came up, like all of those Washington Post pieces and everything else that was out there, you know, the specific things that involved Dan Snyder, the cheerleader videos, the thing that happened on that flight from Vegas, et cetera, none of that got addressed. So like you could actually argue in some ways the Wilkinson report might help to, I don't know, vindicate is the right word, Dan, but at least say, okay, that stuff wasn't true about Dan. Maybe this other stuff was, but that's all you get what the report is, or all you get with the summary is, well, a lot of stuff happens, you know, and the summary speaks in a summary-like

way. You get these sort of generic statements, and, you know, there was an issue with bullying, and the statement, the summary actually at one point mentioned that the workplace needs to become more diverse, you know, so you like, you get a lot of stuff like that, but it's lacking in specifics. And so I think that's always been kind of the thing. Because there's no actual Wilkinson report, we're left to just sort of wonder, well, was this true? Was that true?

Because those post articles detailed a lot of specific things. And all we're kind of left to do is say, maybe that one is true. Maybe that one isn't true. And Dan can always come back and say, well, you know, none of that was validated by this Wilkinson investigation. I think that's the frustration with all this is that we don't know specifically what went down and what did not go down. Yeah, I mean, the post reports never specifically tied anything to Snyder with the exception of the fight night thing with fight night thing with his buddy, which was a he said, she said situation anyway. The flight back from the country music awards in Vegas is, you know, essentially bound by, I'm sure, a very strict confidentiality clause in a settlement that resulted in a $1.6 million payment. I think that was the number.

It might be a little bit less than that. I think that the statement from the league, I think you're right. Of course, it doesn't include specifics. I also remember noting at the time, and I don't have it in front of me, but I noted at the time that there was more or as much emphasis on bullying and intimidation as there was on toxic for women, sexual harassment, et cetera. And so that leads me to this, and you said it, like it's very possible that the report and even these emails could potentially vindicate him or at least clear him of any true like smoking gun.

You know, some racist, homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic, sexual harassment, sexual assault situation. But I think the problem is if all of this were revealed, it would probably reveal a lot of stuff that people in the organization were doing. And he was presiding over as the, you know, as the owner and the CEO. So in either case, even though, like, I've gotten this sense, even from Tanya's interview with Adam Schaefter, and I don't know if you listen to that a month ago now, they just, per usual, it's never their fault. But that there's this real feeling that all of the bad stuff, the sexual harassment stuff, the stuff that the stuff that could really cost him his team and has cost others like Jerry Richardson, his team, that's not them. He isn't that. You know, and so they're sort of, you know, standing their ground that this was more about what others in the organization were doing. But it really shouldn't matter. He was the owner and CEO and he allowed it to go on. And I do think this, Al, and I don't even know if I've said this before, maybe I've said it with Tommy, I do think because these are things that we heard, you heard, I heard, some of us even saw it. There was, this treatment of people from the jump that was just really poor. They were bad people in the way they treated people, especially lesser people,

in terms of employee's stature. And the bullying and intimidation stuff didn't surprise me at all. The problem with that is you can't take away a team from a guy for being a bad guy and a bad owner. You need one of the big category things. I think. Yeah. Yeah, no, I think you're right. I think, you know, there's a difference between, say,

a legal behavior and immoral behavior. So Dan maybe is guilty of the latter, but has he ever been guilty of the former or anything close to the former? The answer may well be no. It's interesting, too, with 650 plus thousand emails. Man, I mean, that's a jaw-dropping number. By the way, you've got an email. Our emails are probably in the mix.

I know. We had email accounts there. I talked about that on my podcast. Galdia at Redskins.com. Who knows? Was they going to find my account? A lot of Kirk Cousins' DVOA essays. But anyway.

Oh, that's funny. I said that this morning to Brendan. He said, what are they going to find on it? I said, well, probably some exchanges with listeners that I wasn't really pleased with. And then a lot of Mike Shanahan and Kirk Cousins' defenses. Yeah, right, exactly. But, you know, we all remember the lead-up to that first post article, now two summers ago. And of course, the lead-up and the build-up ended up being worse than the actual article, which we all know was bad enough. With these emails, it's almost kind of the same thing of your imagination runs wild. And so the speculation could well end up being worse than what's actually there. Maybe out of the 650,000 emails, 649,000 of them really aren't that bad. And the ones that are quote-unquote bad just have some offensive language from people other than Dan Snyder. But of course, without knowing this specific,

specifics were left to say, well, you know, maybe this is there about Dan. Maybe that's there about Dan. So it's almost like if you're Dan, you might actually be better off if the stuff comes out. But I don't think the stuff is going to come out. He probably doesn't want any of the stuff to come out. And I think this may be one of those things we're just left to wonder about for years. Yeah, and I think many of the characters in the organization that were mentioned in some of those post articles, and I'm not going to list them by name now. You can go back and find them. Those are some of the people that, you know, a lot of people in the know, suspected would be in those stories. You know, there's a lot of people that will say, oh, it's a shit show of an organization. And it is a, it's a culture that's just, you know, it's awful. And obviously there's an owner that allows this. But, you know, the owner isn't actually racist. The owner's not actually a homophob.

The owner's not actually a misogynist. He's just a bad manager and a bad owner, you know, and treats people poorly and set the culture for that, maybe. And you wouldn't want that to come out either. But you also wouldn't want some of the stuff that came out in the post article to be in the investigation to come out or emails times three, even if it didn't include Dan. I guess. I don't know. I don't know where this goes.

I think I totally agree with you. We're not going to get Beth Wilkinson's investigation. We're not going to get the emails. I just wish, and I said in the open of this show, and I've said before, that if they do have something on him, like a legitimate thing on him, then give us our team back. You know, Goodell should recognize, and I talked about this in the open now, Goodell should recognize this is now, it's so disgusting to say, it's a sleeping giant market.

Like this is, remember when, what's his face? Who was the president that they brought in that was here for less than a year? Lafamina. Lafamina. Remember when he referred to it as a sleeping giant? I mean, that had to piss everybody off out there. And I was like, oh, my God, that's exactly what it is now. A sleeping giant, by the way, basically infers that you're nothing now,

but you could be something as an NFL town and an NFL market. And they should recognize this cute little top 10 market to be a sleeping giant, but it's only a sleeping giant. It can only actually come to fruition if he doesn't own the team. So it's in their best interest. to get them out. So if there is something there, I wish they would go down the path, even if it puts some other owners at risk and even if it ends up in courts for the next three years. Yeah, and I think you just hit on the two things. A, we know how litigious Dan is. So this could get

tied up in the courts for years and B, if you're the other owners, do you want the NFL's deepest, darkest secrets exposed? Because we can talk about Roger Goodell, but the guys who truly govern the league are the owners. works for the owners. So do the Jerry Joneses and the John Maras and the Roonies, do they want these emails out there, the Bob Kraft, you know, knowing what we know now about Bob Kraft and how he likes to have his body treated like an amusement park. I mean, does he want emails out there? So I don't know. The owners might just be like, look, Dan is Dan. We don't love them, but we can obviously live with him. We've done so now for 20-plus years. So let's just

put this thing to bed and move on and keep printing money the way we do like no other sports enterprise in this country. It just isn't good business though. They are missing out right now on a big market, big opportunity with still, I think, some pent-up demand for a real football organization in this town. And they're noticing what the stadium looks like on Sundays. They're seeing the numbers. And they, and you know, they're all old enough to know what it used to be. And it can't make them very happy. All right. Exit question on this. Who was the leak on the first email? Yeah, I think it's someone with the Raiders who somehow knew of these emails.

And that's the thing. How did that person know of these emails? But it's someone with the Raiders who, for whatever reason, did not like John and wanted this exposed. And maybe it's not as simple as like the person didn't like John, but it's someone who felt like this is wrong and this needs to be exposed. And so that would be my guess. All right.

Let's talk about the football team. What's wrong with the defense? Well, I tweeted this out weeks ago, and I do believe this very much to be the case. I think there's more to this than we know. Just because the discrepancy between the talent or at least the perceived talent and the actual performance has been so drastic, this is not your run of the mill, oh, they're underachieving, or, oh, a play here, a play there. This reeks of what we've seen in the past, like say in 2016, when you're a little bit of,

had that dysfunctional secondary in which Bashad Breeland was upset that he was no longer the number one corner and you had this revolving door, nickel corner because nobody wanted to play nickel corner. This just feels like there's more to it. What that specifically is, I don't know. I don't know if it's players not liking the coaches. I don't know if it's coaches not liking other coaches. I don't know if it's players not liking other players.

I certainly hope that everyone's getting along because I want to see this team thrive and kill it. but the defense has been so bad, especially the secondary, especially the communication in the secondary, which is so reminiscent of that trash 2016 secondary. It just feels like there's more going on here than we know. And, you know, we're used to in these parts every December, that annual Washington Post-Expo's Day on what went wrong that season.

You know, we've had so many of those lengthy stories over the years. And I just wonder if we're not going to get one of those stories in a few months now. Here's what went wrong. Now we are. What is what went down this season with the defense? Because, man, it just feels like there's more to this than we know. You know, I know you've talked about this, but Ron Rivera continually bringing up guys not adhering to the team and maturity, you know, almost like this cryptic language. It just feels like there's more to it than we know. And, you know, what exactly it is we don't know. But I think people are being naive if they just think this is your run of the mill underachieving defense.

Yeah, there's something going on here beyond just the lack of production or, you know, an off start to the year. I still believe they have talent on defense, and there's not a lot of talent at linebacker right now on the secondary sketchy, but the front four was always perceived to be the strength of this football team, and it's not performing.

You know, by the way, I don't, you know, I know you're much more into this than I. Brendan, my producer from the radio show, just texted me literally two seconds ago. He said, Chase Young got an 85 PFF grade on Sunday, 94 specifically for pass rushing. Now, I went back yesterday, and I was going to do this in the last segment, but I'll do it with you right now. I went back and watched a lot of his plays. He's so, he impacted a lot of plays on Sunday, I think more than in any other game, excuse me.

He had the strip sack fumble. He had another really good rush. The first play of the game, he was. basically forces James to throw quickly and incomplete. But there are so many plays where he is not doubled, not chipped, he is singled, and he has no impact on the play. And I don't know how they would, how do they measure an effective pass rush? When they let him rush because they're screening at him, like that's not a good pass rush.

I'm sure they're more sophisticated than that. But that's a good grade. Is it not, 85? It is. I mean, I thought Chase actually played well on Sunday. I did not think that Chase was the biggest problem. Now, he obviously has not had a great season so far. But what I thought Sunday crystallized as much as anything is that the secondary is the thing.

And the linebackers are a thing to a point now to where you're not even playing any linebackers beyond Cole Holcomb. But, like, I think if you're really trying to break down, like, who's been. the culprit, who's been at fault. Like, nobody's blameless for sure. But the real issue is this secondary, you know? And then you get to the linebackers, who, again, they don't trust at all beyond one guy right now in Cole Holcomb, which is another conversation.

And they may have blown it with Damon Davis. We'll see. I mean, it's too early to declare that. But it's hard to ignore with Jeremiah Ousu Coromo is doing with Cleveland. You had two shots to take him. You didn't. You went with Damon Davis at least right now. Even with John Bostic out, he's not worthy of playing more than a handful of snaps in the game.

The secondary stands out. And, you know, the secondary, maybe the secondary isn't as good as we thought. But like you said with the defensive line, I do think that there is talent in a secondary. Not as much as with the defensive line, but like, I don't think William Jackson the third sucks. I don't think Kendall Fuller sucks. Bobby McCain last season played a lot for a Miami Dolphins defense that was number one in the NFL and third down defense. Like, is he really this bad? You know, maybe Landon Collins is a lost cause at this point.

And I think he's as good as gone this coming off season. and they can cut them. But, you know, Cameron Curl played well last year. Like, it doesn't make sense to me that the secondary has been as bad as it's been so far this year. Yeah, let me make one thing clear. By far and away, the strength of the defense has been a defensive front. I actually think Payne, Allen, and Ionitis have had not only moments, but probably a net positive year for them. I don't think Chase Young and Montez Sweat have had net positive years. And I did think that Chase Young and even watching it again had maybe more impact plays Sunday than he had in any other game. And I agree with that. Part of that, too, is because the quarterback was,

you know, a non-mobile quarterback and held the ball along on a couple of occasions. And they dropped this quarterback back. We didn't have nearly the quick game stuff that we had had in other games. But anyway, I guess, you know, as it relates to this team, what's next? I mean, the two and three feels much closer to 0 and 5 because it is much closer to 0 and 5 than it is anything better than 2 and 3. We know what the schedule is upcoming. Where does it go from here? I mean, how optimistic could you possibly be?

I mean, what I'm leading on right now are two things. Number one is that the defense isn't this bad. Even though with each passing trash performance, you're only left to say that the defense is this bad. I'm kind of like at some point, there's going to be some sort of progression to the mean where the defense starts to play up to the talent that's on the defense. The other thing is this, Ron Rivera, for whatever reason, traditionally, does much better in November and December than he does in September and October.

This was a big thing for him during his Carolina Panthers years. It was obviously a thing for him last season in his first season as Washington head coach. And maybe he's just one of these head coaches who has to just kind of figure it out. You know, our guy Gary Williams used to talk about that. You know, early in a season, you figure out what you have, and then as a season goes on, you get better. And maybe Ron is just one of those coaches, and he just got to figure it out the way he was able to figure it out

to at least a degree last year. And so as we get closer and closer to November and December, maybe just maybe things get better. But clearly, if the defense continues to play like this, you have no shot, you know, and this is going to be another one of these seasons that follows the playoff season in the Dan Snyder era, That's so disappointing.

It's amazing. It's not just that Washington hasn't made the playoffs in back-to-back years in the Snyder era. It's that some of Washington's worst seasons have been seasons following a playoff season of the Dan Snyder era. You think about 2006. You think about 2013. This season at times has felt like those seasons. Now, we're not there yet, and it is two and three. It's not O and five, even though, like you said, it feels like O and five sometimes.

But things are kind of teetering right now. And, you know, you got that sense from Ron. I mean, man, was he feisty at that day after? to the game Zoom press conference on Monday. He's trying to hold this thing together. And, you know, something like the Ryan Vermilion thing isn't helping things either. But trying to keep this thing together. This is a huge test right now for him.

And, you know, I mean, I hate to be dramatic and say like the season is on the brink. But it does kind of feel that way. Will you just tell me real quickly because I'm into the baseball playoffs. I'm into this Dodgers Giants series in particular. You know, you probably read this. There's massive exposure with a lot of sports. sports folks if the Giants win the World Series. They were 100 to 1 before the season started, and you could have gotten them as late as early August at like 12 to 1 to win the World Series.

So there were massive bets on that. The Dodgers stayed alive last night after losing Scherzer start the night before, and he was great. Who wins this series tomorrow night? It's Webb against Arias. Yeah, I mean, I am a huge believer in the Dodgers, so I would go with them just for that reason, but we have learned this so many times over the years. It's not about which team is better. It's just about which team plays the best. I mean, these best of five series

are such crapshoes. It's not like the Giants are a bad team. It's interesting you bring up the Vegas aspect of the Giants, because even though the Giants have had this great record throughout the season, had the great run differential throughout the season, the Giants have come off like this team, you know, whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

The Dodgers on paper are so much more imposing than the Giants are. But the Giants, you could argue, were actually the better team during the regular season. So I'm not stunned by what went down with what you talked about with the exposure. So maybe the Giants shock us all again. It's just you look at the Dodgers, and to me, they are probably the number one organization in the sport from a standpoint of combining analytics with big payroll. You know, like the raise, nobody does analytics better than the raise, but they don't have that payroll thing going on. The Dodgers have been able to match those two worlds.

and it's not coincidental that the guy who runs the Dodgers used to run the race at Andrew Friedman. So I think when in doubt go with the organization you trust the most, but it's a coin flip, man. And that's what's so awesome about the MLB playoffs. Like, just because the team is better, doesn't mean that a team does better. I mean, look, we saw when the Nationals won the World Series major underdogs to the Astros, and the Nat ended up winning that World Series. You know, speaking of when they won the World Series, they had the big hit in the beginning off Josh Hader in the bottom of the 8th when they were down 3-1 to win the wild card game.

And the Braves, Freeman went deep on Hayter last night to close them out, which was a dramatic moment. Red Sox Sarastros. I feel like the Red Sox have this sort of juju thing going on that the 2019 Nationals actually had going on it. So just for that dumb reason, I'll take Boston. I mean, again, these are coin flip series. I don't want to see the Astros do well because of what they did.

You know, I think everybody likes Dusty Baker, but I'm willing to sort of sacrifice that. I'm just sick of the Astros. I still think there's a price that they should pay for what they did. I'm no Boston lover for sure, and it's not like the Red Sox haven't had their share of World Series appearances slash championships over the last 15 years. But I don't know, the Red Sox kind of have this, this carmic thing going on right now. They seem to have the magic on their side, so whatever. extent that's a thing. So I would take them for that reason.

All right. Thanks for doing this. I know you've got to run. I appreciate it. I hope all as well. Listen to Galdi's podcast as well. Anywhere you get a podcast, I will talk to you soon. All right, I appreciate it. Thank you. All right. We're going to finish up today quickly with something that Ron Rivera said yesterday on the sports junkies. He joins the junkies Tuesday mornings and then he's on my radio show Friday mornings at 8. Listen to what he said about last year's season. And this is about teaching a bunch of young guys. Okay, teaching a second year and third year defensive end how it's done. Okay, trying to make sure that the rookies that we're trying to develop

get more opportunities. Give them a chance to grow and develop, guys. Again, if stuff like this happened overnight, then Rome would have been built overnight. But we are going through this. We're developing and growing, guys. Again, understand. We see what's happening. We're trying to get past these things. We're trying to focus in on what's truly the development of this football team for the long run. Not an overnight fix, okay? I mean, you almost want to say, man, I wish seven and nine last year wouldn't have been good enough to win the division. That way the expectations would have been much lower and have been a little bit easier. This is hard.

This is the way it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be hard because it's the only way you learn. So that was yesterday. He was on with me two weeks ago. Listen to this exchange. Everybody has to understand that what we did last year. we were seven and nine. Now, that's great because I really appreciate the way our guys fought,

especially down the stretch-winning five of our last seven. But now this is a whole new year. People have seen us. There's tape on us. So what we have to do is we've got to learn to cope and deal with how people have adjusted. You don't think in hindsight, by the way, that making the playoffs at seven and nine was a little bit too much in the way of expectation building for this group, do you?

No, not for us. As I said, I think the expectations, you know, around us may be a little unfair. But, again, my expectations are for us to play better than that. I'll tell you that right now. I don't think he really means that he'd give back the playoff season. I think what he really means is that he doesn't really enjoy the expectations. But really and truly, if you didn't want them to make the playoffs last year, if you didn't want them to play those meaningful games, we're just not on the same page.

problem admitting that I wanted them to lose to the Giants and the Eagles a couple of years ago when they were in the midst of a terrible season and I did not want them to miss out on the number two overall pick where they could pick Chase Young. Last year they were actually in a playoff race. They had the opportunity to experience huge games at the end of the year. Regardless of how subpar they were, it just worked out division-wise that they got to play big games at the end of the year in December, have a win-or-go-home game in early January against the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday night football and then play a playoff game against the Buccaneers. There's no way he would give that back. No way. As far as the expectations go, you've got to deal with them. You've got to dial it back.

You've got to explain to your players what you were last year. You've got to explain to your players that every year's a new year in the NFL. That's your job. The other part of this, too, I just thought about this morning as I was talking about this, maybe the best thing would have not to have been as perception-wise to have been as close in the playoff game against Tampa Bay. If they had lost that game 45 to 10, then I think the expectations would have been dialed back a little bit. By the way, the expectations as it relates to the defense were always high, always going to be high.

But even if they didn't make the playoffs last year. So he was not going to avoid the controversy and the criticism over the defense. defense's performance this year just because they made the playoffs last year. There was high expectations for the defense, you know, based on the way it played and based on the way it was trending, heading into this year. But if they had lost that game 45 to 10, then it would have been, yeah, they were 7 and 9, okay? They just got lucky. But what happened with the playoff game is a lot of people came out of there believing, whoa, they're close. They got really close to the team that eventually won the whole thing. The truth is they weren't that close.

I've said this a million times. I understand they had the ball, and they did have a chance in the game score-wise. I never felt watching that game for one moment that they would win that game. Never. They gave up 500 yards, 31 points. They had a receiver, Chris Godwin, dropped five balls, and Devin White wasn't playing in the game. But besides that, I just never watching that game, as much as I was rooting for it, had a sense that they could actually win that game.

so it would have been better had they just lost 45 to 10 and had the experience of the Philadelphia game and of the late season games and of gearing up for a playoff game. I think that is invaluable for a young team. So the next time they get there, it's not the first time. It will be the first time with a crowd the next time they are there. Ron's got to deal with this. I mentioned, and Galdi mentioned it too.

It sounds like he agrees with me. I think this is a real, a big, work in the road here. You know, this is really bumpy and we got to smooth it out and it's up to him to do it. If not, things could unravel like they always do in Ashburn when the seasons go south. By the way, Kansas City is a seven-point favorite now on Sunday. That's it for the day. Back tomorrow with Cooley and then Tommy will be with us on Friday.