The Kevin Sheehan Show - Washington's D Has League Buzzing

Episode Date: September 15, 2020

Kevin and Thom opened with the news that the Caps had hired their new coach. They briefly discussed the two MNF games before getting to Thom's column on the Football Team which Kevin thought he read but actually had not. They debated whether or not the league buzz about Washington's dominant defensive win over the Eagles was typical Week 1 overreaction or not and also spent time on the latest Alex Smith story from John Keim. 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.

A sports fix Tuesday with Tommy coming up. Lots to get to. Before we start the show, DoorDash is something you should be using during this pandemic. We are in our house. We've used DoorDash, you know, a number of times since the pandemic started, probably three to four times a week, if I'm being honest, with the boys being home. It's a great way to handle your dining needs without worrying about cooking or going to restaurants. You've counted on restaurants in the past.

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of $15 or more when you download the DoorDash app and enter my code, Kevin, DC. That's $5 off your first order of $15 or more, zero delivery fees when you download the DoorDash app in the app store and enter code Kevin D.C. Don't forget. That's code K-E-V-I-N-D-C for $5 off your first order with DoorDash. You don't want it. You don't need it, but you're going to get it anyway. The Kevin Sheehan Show. Here's Kevin. It is a sports fix Tuesday, the first one of football season. Tommy hasn't weighed in on the Sunday game on the podcast yet. He wrote a column. We'll talk about that. there was breaking news capitals-wise this morning. We will get to that shortly.

Two Monday night games last night that were interesting for multiple reasons, and we'll go through that. And we've got a lot more. I mean, it's just, it is a menu of excellence today, Tommy. There's plenty on the menu of excellence. And we could start anywhere, and it would be great. But I think we should start with the breaking news from this morning that Peter La Violette was named the Capitol's new head coach.

He's got 18 years of experience. He's taken three different teams to the Stanley Cup finals. He won it with the Hurricanes, Carolina, in 2006. Ironically, the team that he's been coaching for the last six seasons he took to the Stanley Cup finals in 2017, lost to the penguins, and that is the Nashville Predators. He took over for Barry Trots in Nashville when Trots came here. He is the veteran coach that I think everybody expected McClellan. and Ted deterred to after they got rid of old Reards, Todd Reardon, after the 4-1 series lost to the

Islanders. I don't think this is a surprise to anybody. I think it's also, Tommy, an indication that they've got to go for this now. They've got a veteran team, the window's closing. They needed a veteran coach to take advantage of what, you know, Ovechkin and company have left. And I think it's an admission, although you'll never hear from transparent said, that they screwed up about hiring, about people not keeping Barry Trott. Because now they're back, here it is, three years later, and now they're going to pay a coach for the next, what, three years, what they were going to probably have to pay Barry Trott if they had agreed to keep them. Right. So basically, they're right back to where they started. except they wasted two years of the Ovescant error to get there.

But I think the admission that they screwed up by not retaining Barry Trots came when Reardon was fired. This is just a further emphasis of that point. No, no, this is this. They could have hired one of Ted's typical cheat minor league coaches, and that would not have been an admission. Okay, fair enough. Instead, they hired a veteran.

a guy who was going to cost them Barry Trots kind of money. Yeah. When they could have had Barry Trott. Smartest guys in the room, baby. The Business of Happiness. Just read it. I don't know where the chapter on firing Barry Trots comes in. I don't know how that made anybody happy.

But they have a new coach. Look, I'm not going to sit here and break down what Peter LaViolette is compared to Trots or compared to Reardon. what I've been told and what Joe Beninotti was on and that I was listening to other guys who have been on is that, you know, Barry Trots was probably a better coach and they should have kept him. I mean, this is obviously something that they should not have done in hindsight, but that LaViolette has done a really good job. Like, he's a turnaround guy. He goes in, he turns it around quickly, and he wins. I don't know that this is a turnaround job. In fact, I would certainly describe it as the opposite of a turnaround job.

You've got it teed up in terms of having the players and the talent to win right away and make a run at the cup. We'll see. Joe B. described him as very intense, very intense guy. But, you know, he's getting the money that Barry Trott should have gotten two years ago. I mean, the big question, though, is whoever the coach is, is who's going to be the goaltender. Doesn't appear it'll be Braden Holbe. He's going to be a free agent. And that could have a huge impact that's going to have a huge impact on this team moving forward.

So there's a lot of question marks. You know, Coozy, whether or not you resign him, you know, that's a big redire. risk. There's a lot of question marks besides the coach for this. I mean, but again, you know, I mean, the bottom line in some ways is they got their Stanley Cup. You know, they could have had more maybe, but they got their cups. So they're always protected by that. That is true. Once they won the cup, I mean, in this city, because it was the first championship in what turned out to be 26 years, right? Well, 2018, 91 to 20, so whatever, 27 years in terms of the four majors. You know, I love when I say that Tommy and I get stuff from, you know, the mystics people and the soccer team people.

I'm talking about the four major sports. I mean, we can be adults here, okay? The caps were the first major sports winner in this town in 27 years. That bought them. the ability to make a few mistakes or even lose for a while. It's just that they made such a stupid in a big mistake. And it was a penny-wise pound foolish mistake, which is typically the mistakes that they make. I mean, I say that. You know, I say that about Ted a lot, and yet he paid his basketball coach,

Scott Brooks, $7 million a year. You know. Well, that's a mistake in the other direction. True, but it's not a mistake in the cheap. So much money. It's not a mistake in the frugal category. No, it's not. Anyway, we'll see.

It's not hockey season. We don't know when hockey season will happen. I think I mentioned this to you. I had Tark El Bashir on the radio show a month or so ago. It was during the Caps' first round series with the Islanders. And he mentioned to me the economics of hockey, which I was not necessarily familiar with. And he essentially said, if fans aren't allowed into the aren't, there's not going to be a 2020,

2020, one hockey season. Yes, yes, yes. Like, they won't have it. They won't be able to afford that sport.

They don't get the TV revenue that the other state sports do. And even the NBA, listen, I've been told that the NBA by reliable sources is not going to start their season until March.

They're going to, until they can be sure they can get fans in the arena. They desperately want those fans, and the NBA has a far better TV contract than the NHL does, and they're still desperate to get fans in, desperate to basically, you know, bootkick Christmas and wait until March. Yeah, Christmas is a big NBA TV day, but no, you're right. I mean, hockey apparently needs live gate more than any of the four major sports.

And basketball is especially when you're talking about those franchises that haven't been very good. They absolutely have to have it because even their local TV deals aren't big enough. So, yeah, it's going to be interesting. I don't know that hockey can start. Look, hockey, right now we'd be gearing up for the start. of the hockey season. Obviously, we're just getting to the Stanley Cup finals now, but it'd be interesting to see what would happen to the capitals and the older players, you know, the Ovechkins and what that would do if his next season wasn't until 2021,

2022, you know, if that was the next year, if they postponed this season. Anyway. Oh, he'll go play in Russia then. Yeah, that's true. I'm sure they're playing in Russia. But I'm talking about, you know, his capital's career and the opportunity he has here. Before we get to your column and your thoughts on Sunday's game, and I've got a few additional thoughts as well that we didn't talk about on the podcast. And if you missed Cooley, Cooley is on Monday, Wednesdays, Fridays on the podcast.

And he had his breakdown and recap with me yesterday on the show. Go listen to that. Real quickly on the Monday night games, first of all, wow, what a pleasure it is to listen to Chris Fowler and Kirk Herb Street, call Monday Night Football's first game last night. They are just so good together. The terrible booths that Monday Night Football's had for a while now, now I liked Sean McDonough, and I like John Gruden. They didn't get along, but I thought it was a pretty good broadcast. But the recent Tessitore, Bougar, Witton, Tessitore, Bougar, McFarland last year, it was really second rate. Fowler and Herb Street are among the best. They have incredible.

chemistry. Herb Street's really good at not stepping over Fowler. They just have great chemistry, and it was a brilliant broadcast last night for two guys that do college football, but obviously they're football fans. That first game, so Washington was clearly the most impressive defensive team of the first 14 games of the weekend, you know, the Thursday night game and then the other 13 that were played on Sunday. Then you had two more that were played last night. Tommy, Pittsburgh's defense is so good. It was so good last year. But it was exceptional last night. And I'm going to give you a stat line from Saquan Barclay that you just never see. I mean, I could be wrong and somebody could provide me with a bunch of examples that look like Saquan Barclay stat line last night.

But this is how good Pittsburgh's run defense is. And by the way, their pass rush is amazing. Bud Dupree is one of the best pass rushers. And he's got the young and Edmonds and also T.J. Watt, they are really loaded on defense. And last year without Ben, I think I said this to you at one point. I thought Tomlin did one of the best jobs in the NFL because they won every game because they got to eight and eight because of their defense. But they held Saquan Barkley last night, who you could argue is a top two, three running back talent in the league, if not the most talented back in the league. Sequin Barclay had 15 carries in the

game for six yards, six. I don't know that I can ever remember seeing that, and I'll explain why. Typically, when you can't run, and it's obvious you can't run the football against the opposing defense, you'll get a back, a big time back like Barclay that'll get, you know, six, seven carries for four yards or seven carries for eight yards. And then because they're not doing much, they're going to have to resort to throwing the football and that'll be it. The Giants attempted to stick to the run in that game because the game was actually within reach for much of the night. But 15 carries for six yards. That's how dominant Pittsburgh was up front. The average 0.4 yards per carry. I've never seen a stat line from a great player like that. Again, you've seen seven,

eight carries for five yards or, you know, six carries for seven yards, not 15 for six. That is, that is really unique. Pittsburgh's defense was dominant. The second point from last night's game is, man, did Rathlisberger look good after the first quarter and a half? He was rusty, he was off, They got him into rhythm at the end of the first half, and then he was Big Ben. And he's got some weapons, you know, people want to say, well, without Antonio Brown, it's never going to be the same. And that may be true. The rookie from Notre Dame Chase Claypool had one of the best first catches of a career you'll ever see, tightroping sideline, catch, you know, pulled in, drag the foot. He's a big target. You know Juju Smith-Schuster. You know James

Washington. They added Eric Ebron at tight end. And then they're right. running back, Benny Snell Jr., who I loved coming out of Kentucky, looks like he's the guy and not James Connor. I'm spending time on Pittsburgh because I think a lot of people, you know, thought that with Rathesberger back, if it was Ben again, the real Ben Rathesberger, that their defense was good enough to contend for a Super Bowl. Even in an AFC with the Chiefs and the Ravens, what you saw last night if Ben stays healthy is a team certainly good enough to,

to win 10, 11, 12 games. That's how dominant their defense was. It was the best defense next to Washington's defense, which we'll get to in a moment. Did you watch any of that game, and did you have any thoughts on that game? I didn't watch any of the game because I had a social engagement last night. You did? Yes, I did. Dinner at my son's house in Baltimore for my wife's birthday. Oh, happy birthday, Liz. Okay. So I didn't watch any of the game. Let me ask, was this a situation where they just said, you know, we're going to let Daniel Jones try to beat us?

We don't care about Daniel Jones. You know, if that's the case, it worked because Daniel Jones had two, one soul-crushing interception. It came at the end, Tommy, of a 19-played nine-minute drive in the third quarter. quarter in a game that was 16 to 10. So they had a chance to take the lead on this incredible drive where they had converted four third downs and a fourth down. And then he threw the worst interception you'll see under pressure by Bud Dupree. Just threw it straight up into the air and it was picked off.

You know what, though, Tom? Daniel Jones made big mistakes last night as he did last year. He's also very talented. He can play the position. I don't know if they'll ever be able to coach the bad plays out of him. I mean, he's really young. Maybe they can. But he's got real talent.

He's not a – picking him in the first round with his level of talent, I don't think is much of a reach. I don't know what he's going to amount to be. But the turnovers are killers. But there's something to Daniel Jones. He can play. He can play. Okay. Do the Steelers have enough to challenge the Ravens?

I mean, I think so. I mean, defensively, they definitely, you know, are as good as the Ravens, if not better than the Ravens. You know, they were so good defensively last year, you know, and that was with a terrible offense with some guy named Duck playing quarterback. Remember him? They really have incredible defensive talent. And, you know, they're well-coached and they're disciplined. And so with Ben Back, yeah, they can.

I mean, I think they can. Definitely. Well, that's going to be interesting, a very interesting race in the AFC. Because the Ravens, I didn't watch their game on Sunday, but, I mean, they cleaned and they wiped the field with the Browns, 38 to 6. and Lamar Jackson looks even better, supposedly, than he ever had. I know. I know. I mean, people wondered what it takes to get, you know, I mean, his quarterback rating should have been maybe the highest of all time. So that's going to be interesting moving forward,

because I think the Ravens Steelers is still is the best rivalry in football. You know what? It is the most fun to watch when they're big games, and they really didn't have any big games to get. last year. You know, we've gotten used to over a decade plus of two and sometimes three Raven Steelers games a year that are all meaningful. Yeah, Lamar Jackson was ridiculous on Sunday. Cooley and I were talking about it yesterday. I mean, there were a couple of just outrageous performances on Sunday, one of which came from Jay Gruden's offense and Gardner Minchew, who went 19 of 20 and threw three touchdowns.

passes in a win over the Colts. But the best performance of the weekend was Russell Wilson's head quarterback. 31 and 35 for four touchdowns. I think that that team is, the NFC, man, has got some, it's going to be interesting to watch the NFC West. West is going to be through the roof. Yeah, the Cardinal, Seahawks, Rams, Niners. And then this, I think the Bucks actually, you could see some of the talent. And it's just going to take them some time. The North this pack. The East right now doesn't look very good, but it was only week one. We'll get to that. I wanted to just mention about the night game last night. So the night game was Denver and Tennessee. First of all, Tennessee did it last night in a way that they didn't do it during the pre-post season last

year. Remember, Ryan Tannahill basically barely threw the ball in the playoff wins against New England and Baltimore. I think in the two wins, he had 29 pass attempts combined. He was like 15 and 14 and the two playoff wins. Last night he threw the ball 43 times. And Derek Henry got it 31. I mean, that tells you just how dominant they were with time of possession in the game. They ended up, I think, with like a six, seven minute advantage in time of possession. But the story of the game, there were two stories of the game. One was Stephen Gistakowski, the kicker for Tennessee, who was the longtime kicker for the Patriots. He missed three field goals and an extra point and hadn't made a kick and was asked to go out with 17 seconds left and kick a 25-yard field goal to win the game down 14-13.

When you've missed three and an extra point, in what is Tommy right, Denver, a very kicker-friendly environment at a mile high. You could tell there's a shot of Rabel, the coach of Tennessee. They have a fourth and one. They tried to throw a touchdown on third and one instead of running the ball and forcing a time. out or more clock and then kicking it. He wanted to score the touchdown. He did not want his kicker to have to go back out there. But then on fourth and one, there's this shot of Rabel having somebody in his ear and him, I think, for a brief moment considering going for it, rather than sending Gustavsky back out there to kick the field goal. But he decided against that and he put

the kicker out there and he made the kick. And they won 16, 14. But my God, Vic Fangio, who I think is a great defensive mind and defensive coordinator and has been for a long time. A few clock management problems, sir? Oh, my God. I mean, this is just, it's amazing to me, Tommy. I mean, every year, every weekend in football season, you just get guys that are making millions of dollars a year with the responsibility of putting their team into the best position they can to win the game

and then doing the most boneheaded, dumb things of all time. This dude Fangio, as Tennessee got into field goal range, let me be clear, they got into field goal range with a minute 50 left in the game. Now, their kicker had been awful, but still, you always plan for the worst. You never want to be left with no time left if you fall behind in that situation. You've got to use your timeouts on defense to ensure that if this guy, finally makes a kick, you've got a chance to respond. Tennessee got into field goal range with a minute 50 left. Then with a minute 33 left, they ran Derek Henry for a big 13 yard play down to the

Denver 16 yard line. The play ended with about a minute 27 left, and the clock just continues to roll. Fangio's got all three timeouts left, all three of them. And they don't take the timeout. The clock goes down. Derek Henry runs again, and then he doesn't call a timeout after the first down play where the ball gets down to the 12-yard line, and then Tennessee actually calls a timeout with 31 seconds left. And the reason they call the timeout at that point is they were thinking maybe we should try to score a touchdown instead of settle for the field goal attempt. And I heard some people trying to explain Fangio's actions of not calling timeouts on defense to ensure that his team had enough time if they fell behind.

on a field goal as saying, well, he was expecting Gostkowski to miss again. Okay, well, that's great. If he does, that's fine. You have the ball and you're up a point and, yeah, there's a chance you might have to punt it back, but wouldn't you rather have punt it back to them with 20 seconds left and they got to go, you know, 50 yards to get into field goal range, or maybe you'll run the clock out versus not having any time left when the field goal goes through? Well, he didn't use any of his timeouts. They kicked the field goal, 17 seconds left on the fourth down after the field goal. And that was only because they threw the ball in third down,

and it was incomplete. They were trying to score. And, you know, he took two timeouts with him. He used one on the final drive, and he took two timeouts with him into the locker room. He should have had roughly a minute 10, right, no more, no less than a minute left had he managed it correctly. And that would have been time for Drew Locke to get his team into,

field goal range. You're in Denver, too. You don't need, you know, in Denver, the truth is you're talking about with that guy McManus, who's got a huge leg, you probably only have to get to about the 45-yard line, 40-yard line before you can attempt something. But they didn't even get it close. Just egregious clock management, you know, buffoonery. It's unbelievable that it happens every week. It's really, it's really, it's amazing to me. And I, you know, I think about Tommy, when Coach Thompson, it's one of my favorite stories with him. I was doing one of these, you know, clock management things with you on the show one day. And I walk out of there and he goes,

Mammapagga, you think you'd be able to deliver under pressure and he's just laughing out loud as he walks into the studio. And he gets on the air with Doc and he says, did you hear coach talking about how, you know, how they refer to me as coach. and coach Thompson said man it's so easy to do it on radio I'd like to see him on the sideline with the clock looking he'd be he'd be caught in like just gazing at the clock he'd choke under pressure it was funny um but you know these things of course you wouldn't no I wouldn't I'd be able to handle it um I'm the I'm the basketball coach I've told this story before

I'm the basketball coach that called the timeout that we didn't have, that put the opponent at the free throw line with two free throws to tie the game force overtime, which happened and we lost the game. That's one of my favorite youth basketball coaching stories. I turned to the scores table, Tommy, and I said, how many timeouts do we have? Because my assistant coach wasn't there. And I was coaching the team by myself, so there's my excuse. So I turned to the scores table and I said, how many timeouts do I have left? and she goes, you know, this young girl goes, you have one left. And so I said, time out.

And so I'll tell you what the situation was. We were basically up two with a half a second left. And my guy was at the free throw line. And up two with a half second left, I didn't want the other team to be able to get a shot off. And with an in-bounds pass, they would have been able to get a shot off. So I called time out and I said, hey, just miss it on purpose if you can. And there was like 0.5, you know, whatever left.

And so the referees come over, and then they come over to me. Coach, you didn't have a timeout left. That's a technical foul. I'm like, excuse me? They said, you didn't have a time out left. I said, and I looked at the girl, and I said, but she told me I had one. And she just, she turned, she looked away from me, Tommy. She wouldn't even look at me.

And I said, you've got to be kidding me. I said, I don't have an assistant coach. I'm not keeping a book for the game. and I asked the scores table if I had a time out left and they indicated that I did. So we need to, you know, sorry, coach, you know, the bottom line is you got to keep that. It's not the scores table's responsibility. And they made the two free throws and then my kid now needed to make the two free throws, or they needed to make the free throw.

He missed the game, went to overtime and we lost. So there you go. there's your coach she and clock management score management timeout management expertise i probably would have choked you know here's here's the part of that that i find hilarious and maybe it's because i don't do youth basketball anymore yeah that you have an assistant coach to coach a youth basketball team well we we had um it's funny uh malcolm my man malcolm Hollensteiner, who by the way, is a seven-footer and played at Harvard, was my assistant for this one particular team that I coached for many years,

and he was such a good guy, and we had such a good time doing it together. But it was, yeah, most teams that take it seriously, Tommy, and when I say seriously, I mean, it's not rec league, but it's travel playing AAU tournaments, playing higher level tournaments. Most of those teams have an assistant, if not more than one. Oh, my God. Yeah, but there were many games where I couldn't show up or he couldn't show up, and that's really why we got along so well, and he did such a great job anyway,

and it was so much fun to do it with him, but we had to have two of us because we weren't both always there. But anyway, I digress. Well, when Coach Leverro, coach his only season of youth basketball, he did it without an assistant, and he won the league championship. Good for you. Good for you. I'll never forget that, though, Tommy. And what was really funny is I got upset.

Like, I told the referee, I said, this is wrong. I'm like, you, you know, I can't, I didn't have my assistant today. I understand the rules. But everybody here, including the other. referee who had then had his back turn because he was at the scores table. The other referee was when I asked, he knows that she said, yes, coach, you have one left. And I wouldn't have quite, I didn't need to call the time out. It wasn't like it gave me any extra significant benefit. And then so I, uh, anyway, it was, it was actually like a big game too. It cost us like some

seating in that tournament, I think, or I forget, I forget exactly what happened. Now, it's a long time. Okay, what would you have done if you were to coach on the other team, and the referee said, was listening to this argument and said, okay, I understand. You made a mistake. We'll let it go. What would you have done if you were to coach? I would have pretended like I didn't hear any of it, and I would have set my best free throw shooter to the free throw line to shoot the technical free throws to try to tie the game. That's what I would have done.

I would have sent my youngest son, who was a pretty damn good free throw shooter, to the free throw line. to knock down two free throws and send us to overtime. That's what I would have done. Of course, I mean, but, you know, I'll tell you what, if it were like a summer league game or wasn't that, you know, something like that, I would have said, I heard him. You guys do what you want to do, but she, you know. But I also, it was one of those situations I remember specifically.

The woman, she was a younger girl, and I didn't want to make a scene because I could tell how badly she felt. And I actually, I think when the game was over that week, I sent the league head a note to make sure that that girl knew that, you know, I said, make sure that she's not upset about what happened. It's only a game. Everybody makes mistakes. It's not a big deal. And I think I saw her like two weeks later and I said, you know, whatever.

She didn't want to look at me when I walked in. And I said, you can look at me. You can look at me. It's not the end of the world. We're all breathing. We're all alive. It's, you know, people make mistakes. Anyway.

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Visit earnest.com slash licenses for a full list of licensed states. I forget what your prediction for the game was on Friday, on Thursday. What did you predict about the opener? I didn't make a prediction on the game. Oh. But I think it was obvious that I didn't think that the Washington football team would have a chance. No, because your season prediction had changed from somewhat optimistic to less. Yes.

Right. Yes, it did. But I didn't make an exact prediction of the game, but it wasn't too hard to figure out. that I thought they had no chance. I would certainly proven wrong on that. But did you read my column? I did. I did read your column. And is there anything you want to say to me about anything in the column?

I don't necessarily agree with it. Is that what you're looking for? No. It sounds like you're specific. wanting me to respond to a specific part? Well, when I said that this was a win, this was an example of the difference in the coaching staff between Ron Rivera and Jay Gruden,

whose tenure always smelled like a one loud and hangover. Yes, that was very good. Okay. Yeah. All right? Yeah. You're not going to give me props for that? No, that's an excellent line.

I also got a little bit hung up on the Joe Banner thing and saw that you retweeted that, which we can get to. Keep in mind, Tommy, I just want you to know this because I've never told you this before. I'm reading the columns, your columns, on that just incredible website that the Washington Times.com has, it's just not the easiest thing to do all the time. I know you understand this. And so sometimes when you're reading, you're reading along, and then you get, you know, basically you click accidentally into an ad and then you got to restart it. And I try to get through it as quickly as I can.

I love your columns, but it's just, it's not a, it's a very, why haven't they fixed that yet? Can you explain that to me? No, I can't. I can't explain that to you. The only thing I can say is the juice is usually worth to squeeze. Well, that's debatable. I feel that way most of the time. I do, but it can be a pain in the ass.

But yes, old, old, old Jay, he liked to hang out late nights at one Loudoun, didn't he? Yes. Yes, he did. He wasn't the only one either. No. So that's all. I mean, that's, listen, I don't care if you like or don't like anything else in the column. That was, that was my, that was my golden moment right there.

I just wanted to make sure that you caught it. Yeah, like I'm looking through it again, and I'm just trying to find where you wrote it again. Oh, I see what's going on now. I see what's going on now. Oh, my God. This is so frustrating. Do you know what happened? I thought I read your column,

but your link takes me to the Matt Paris column. It does not. Yes. No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't. Yes, it does. I read the Matt Paris column. Okay, let me see.

Oh, and now I've gone, Pass the number of free articles for the month. No, no, no, no, no, no. You're so full, but I've got the link in front of me. I'm reading it right now. The link that I sent you. Well, I just took it from your Twitter page. The link from your Twitter page.

And now, now I... By the way, now I have to subscribe to this. Now it's subscription-based? Listen, you only get so many articles. It's not free, Kevin. It's always been free to me. Well, you get so many articles a month. I, okay, so let me be very clear now.

Why didn't you click on the link I sent you in the email? I clicked because I just went to your Twitter account and clicked on that. And it took me to the Matt Paris column. And now I tried to click on it again. I retweeted what Matt had written. So you obviously, like some blind drunk, you didn't even look at what you were clicking on. I'm a disaster. But I can't read it now. It won't. Hold on. Now you can't. Now you don't deserve to. Now you don't deserve to read it. You know, it doesn't take that long to read your columns,

which is great. Um, read the, did you email me? Did you email me? Did you email it to me? Yes. When did you email it? Are I speaking Chinese here? What's the problem? Okay, here it is. I got it. But it's, Oh, God, you're... This is... You were just as bad as I am. You send me an email, all right? Read my column.

And then you don't have a link to your column. No, I sent... You sent me the URL, and I've got to copy and paste it. Can't you just send the URL already highlighted to link to it for crying out loud? Oh, my God. I said to you last night. It was a simple thing. No, I can't read it because I've got to pay.

I've reached my limit. It's the one that you screwed up to time out. I've reached my limit on the Washington Times.com. I'm about reached my limit. You know what? I'm going to have to read your columns. You're going to have to cut and paste and send them to me. I read to you the only part worth reading.

I read to you the only part that's the most worth reading is to Jay Gruden one loud and read. Well, the reason I remembered that line is because you included it in a tweet because I read it in a tweet that you had. You know, I read it in a tweet that I had to promote my column. I understand that. If you read that tweet, my column was on that tweet. I understand that now. When you brought up the quote, I knew that I had read it because I saw that you had

tweeted it. And then I was going back to look at the column again, which I read before the show this morning. and that's when I just discovered that the column that I actually read was Matt Paris's column from the Washington Times, not yours. You know, it's amazing you find your way home every day. It really is. My wife probably feels the same way. All right, tell me about your column now that I'd have to pay to read it.

Well, basically, I said this was a coaching. This was the difference in coaching. This was a coaching way. And I gave Dwayne Askins a lot of credit. for his composure when the team was down 17 to nothing, and there seemed to be every reason to fold up. He didn't, and I think that was a big part of the win, in that, you know, he didn't have any, he didn't have any interception.

He didn't, you know, he didn't hurt his team in that way. So I gave Dwayne Haskins a lot of credit for his performance on the field on Sunday. and basically Carson Went, you know, just basically folded like a lawn chair with the Reds, the football, the Washington football team was clearly in his head at one point, a totally different quarterback in the second half. And I said, you know, that the defense was great, Wayne Haskins was great, but I reminded everybody who still owns the team. and if they needed any reminding, all they had to do was read the Wall Street Journal that morning

and seeing his email interview with them that this is a guy now, this owner is so out of it right now. He doesn't even care what the team is named. She could care less. I didn't see that story. I will read that. Tell me about the journal story. I saw it. I just didn't read it.

Was that from, when was that from? Monday? I think it came out Sunday. Okay. Came out Sunday morning. And he did, he answered some emails from the journal, reporter. And one of them was, hey, you know, if the fans like Washington's football team, we may keep that as the name. Well, I told you that I talked to somebody in the organization that indicated the same thing,

that this was something where if it worked out, they may keep it. that, you know, again, my response was, well, you should have done FC Washington or Washington FC. That's an easier brand than three words, you know, Washington football team. And you can see the joke that people are making it. I mean, just to see people refer to them as football team, it's just the dumbest thing. And people know it's dumb. Like, people have tried to tell me, she and you're getting too worked up over this. It's the second part of their name. And when they list Raiders, you know, cowboys, Eagles, giants,

Packers, it just pops up his football team. We'll change it to Washington because it's stupid. Why should they accommodate your team? Because it, when their system works for all the other teams. Because it sounds stupid, and it looks stupid. Well, it sounds stupid because your team has a stupid name.

And the owner wants to keep that stupid name. The owner says, hey, I don't know. If they, all of a sudden the fans like this, it's fine with me. You know, if the fans, got to pick the team, the name of the team, it would be Snyder, sell the team. That would be the name of the team. That would be the name of the team.

That would be hard to brand, but hashtag Fire Snyder would be the name of the team. Yeah. So I just pointed out that, you know, it may be a great win. And I just reminded everybody my third in general for me. You know, as long as this guy owns the team, down the road, nothing is going to change. what's happening with the owner will seep into the product on the football field at some point. It always does. You know, it's hard for some that are listening to hear this conversation today, two days after the win.

So I understand that and I understand how many of you will react to Tommy or both of us when we go off on the owner. but if you don't think that Tom's right, you're just really delusional. I'm not saying that he has the right to say that and that it's justifiable to say that. I don't know if it'll turn out to be that way, but you'd be so stupid to assume that it won't. With that said, I prefer since we're actually playing games now, and we can talk about games to focus in on the team. games that they're playing because Sunday was really very interesting. Now, you know, your credit to Haskins, I'm glad you gave him credit because not everybody gave him credit for Sunday.

His pro football focus rating was pretty poor. Oh, but his composure was through the roof, I thought. I thought so too. I think it helped save the team. One turnover, one interception could have changed the outcome of that team of that game. there is there's no doubt it could have and not scoring after they got the two turnovers could have completely you know disrupted the game as well or their opportunity to win the game so um you know coolly was on here yesterday cool cool he basically said look there were a lot of things that he didn't do well and it wasn't perfect it was far from perfect

but he also came through when it mattered the most on big third downs on drives where they had to have it. And Tommy, those are the things that I, you know, I was talking about, not to, you know, break my arm patting myself on the back, but those are the things that I saw last year. I saw a guy that just wasn't, never, never got rattled. He didn't get rattled down 17, nothing. You know, always believes in himself is fearless, will throw it into traffic, will take chances, and, you know, is a bit of a gamer, you know, and I'll never forget how many of you just mocked me for saying that he played a winning game and a winning performance when he won his first game over the lions. And, you know, people were fixated. And I'm not saying that it was unjustified to be, you know,

to be concerned about the selfie of when there was still a need to take. But he, he was clutch. He delivered on big plays. And he did that on Sunday, too, even though it wasn't a perfect performance. Now, the Matt Paris column that I thought you wrote, that I did read from the Washington Times before the show that you retweeted. It's a bad comparison comparing this team to the 2018 team. And I was going to be a little bit kinder to you. I was going to say it's not a good comp yet. It could turn out to be.

But really, my sense of it is, and by the way, Matt wasn't the only person that wrote this or said this. I heard a lot of people saying, that was an Alex. Smith game. That was a 2018 win. No, it wasn't. It wasn't because, first of all. No, because here's another reason why. One reason is I think we both agreed on that. If the team got down, yeah, they couldn't come back. Hello. They couldn't come back. Exactly. Exactly. So you start with that. The 2018 team couldn't come back from a deficit. And the one Sunday came back from a 17-0 deficit. it. You know, nearing half time down 17-0. The second part of it was, look, 2018, I have no idea what this team's going to do right now. I am very optimistic about the defense and the future of the

defense, like over the next couple of years. And I'm going to give you a comparison I gave on radio. It wasn't really meant to be a comparison, but I'll give it to you in a moment. But what I was going to say is this defense is really good. The 2018 defense really wasn't that good. just feasted on some bad offensive teams. When they played good offensive teams like Atlanta, they got blown the blank out, New Orleans, and then late in the year, it completely fell apart. The Giants scored 40 points and a half on that defense. I will guarantee you, and I will bet a large sum of money that this defense doesn't give up 40 and a half to anybody this year. So look, the defense could be fools gold, and the Eagles were banged up, and I get that.

But the 2018 defense just wasn't this defense. First of all, it didn't have Chase Young, and it didn't have the coaching staff. Secondly, the 2018 team wasn't, you know, they were a run-first team with Adrian Peterson. This team's not a run-first team, I don't think. They got two backs. They're going shotgun. They're trying to toss it around a little bit. Thirdly, and this is where you'll probably disagree with me,

Haskins just has a much bigger upside than Alex Smith has or had. Now, he's got a bigger downside, too. So I'll concede that, but I just think he's got a much bigger upside. He's not a game manager. He can manage a game. I think we saw that with Callahan, old man Bill last year. But I don't think that's the plan with him. You know, off that first turnover, three straight throws,

and then the fourth for a touchdown in hurry-up mode to boot, you know, when they didn't have to be. So, you know, I'm answering the column that I think you wrote or thought you wrote that I now know you didn't write, but I'm really answering not only Matt's column, but I heard a lot of that, you know, somebody, it may have been JP or maybe it was Ben, said that Haskins numbers were Alex Smith numbers from 2018. Okay, they were. They looked exactly like an Alex Smith game, but that was not an Alex Smith game. Alex Smith and that team in 2018 had about a 2% chance of coming back from 17, nothing down. They just didn't.

They didn't do that. And by the way, I'm not saying because Haskins is going to be a great come from behind quarterback, but that team in 2018 wasn't good enough defensively to help them get back in the game. So anyway, whatever. Let me just, Matt Parris wrote a story. He didn't write a column. Right. Well, but I thought I was reading a column. So there you go. You're right. He's a reporter and he was writing a story. And the story was injected some opinion into the story. Analysis. Okay, analysis. Okay, fine. I just thought I was reading your column. That's all.

Hey, I wanted to ask you, I've got a couple things related to the game Sunday that I want to get to. to here in a moment. But did you like watching football over the weekend? Yes, very much so. I'll be honest with you Thursday night, watching the Thursday night game, which I did. It felt like such a sense of normalcy. Yes, I did. I enjoyed it. Are you surprised because look at the, you know, if we think back to the conversations that we've had together over the last five, you know, four, five, six months, I, you know, you'd have to acknowledge that you're surprised that we got here? Yes.

Yes, I am. I'm surprised that we got. I didn't think we get here. I still think they're in for a very rough time, like the medical expert predict for October and November. But I have to concede. I'm surprised that they got this far with very few, you know, bumps along the road. Now, you know, do I feel like I have to watch?

Watch football? No, but I enjoyed watching it much more than I thought I would. So I enjoyed watching football. I think there is inconsistency, which, by the way, there would be in a real, you know, live environment with a lot of, you know, with people at the game in terms of the sound. Like the broadcast on Fox of the New Orleans Tampa game, if you were in a room and you were just watching the normal, you know, 50-yard line shot of Brady under center in the Superdome. You know, it's 530 or it's 6.30 at night on Sunday night. It's starting to get dark now. And, you know, you see everything. And it would look like the real thing.

But, and it would sound like the real thing. It really sounded good, too. Whoever was handling the sound was good. There were other games during the course of the weekend that just seemed incredibly different. and very sterile, very almost like practice. Now, I'm not saying that the players were playing that way, because I thought the players and actually the quality of play I felt was pretty high on the games that I watched, including last night with energy and intensity and the whole thing even without the fans.

But it was hit and miss. I can tell you this, if I didn't say this yesterday on the podcast, the college games were dreadful. Saturday was really bad. Now, a lot of that was because they didn't have a really good slate of games. You know, I mean, you had Notre Dame Duke. You had at night, Clemson and Wake Forest was the ABC Saturday night game. You know, and, you know, you had fans, by the way, Tommy.

In some of those stadiums, you know, they were 20 to 25 percent full. Hell, at Florida State, no one was wearing a mask in the student section. there seemed to have been a student section. But Saturday really seemed abnormal. It was September 12th. You know, it should have been Ohio State at Oregon, Texas at LSU, you know, a bunch of big games, and there was just nothing. And this Saturday, there's not much more to get excited about.

Now, this Saturday, and you don't care about this, but we'll have the U.S. Open, at least, going on from Wingfoot. But week four in college football is when you get more of the Big 12 head-to-head and you get the SEC back. The SEC's back on September 26th at the end of the month. And that'll be, I think, the first Saturday that'll seem real. And, you know, in a lot of those SEC stadiums, Tommy, they're going to be some fans. They're going to be some fans. It may not be full, but they're going to be there.

You know, quick aside, what is the Big Ten doing? Have you ever seen anything so effed up in your life? Well, they're trying to, they're trying to, they made a decision, and they're trying to fight off the political pressure for them to change it. It's more than, coming from the White House in particular. No, it's coming from their coaches. It's coming from their athletic departments. That's really where it's coming from.

I mean, it's the chancellors and the team presidents that made this decision based on what they call the science. Okay, then stick with it. You know, if this myocarditis, which apparently is a condition that can develop off of COVID, and it's a life-threatening condition, if that's the reason that you've canceled football season, stick with it. But this, oh, we're considering it again, no or not. We're considering it again, no or not.

And then on Saturday, weren't we supposed to have a decision on Sunday? and I don't think there's been a decision made yet. Well, people reported there would be a decision made. True. That doesn't necessarily mean there was. Good point. You know, that anyone in authority said there would be. Right. There were a lot of reports on Saturday and Sunday that said the Big Ten was about to vote to play football starting in early to mid-October.

And we haven't gotten any result of that vote yet. I did read something. Marijuana does not play no matter what it sounds like. That's really interesting, you know. look Maryland Michigan and Michigan State are not going to play it sounds like no matter what

Michigan State and in Michigan are different I hate to say this because you know how much I love my alma mater and I love locks and I love everybody out there but Maryland has the least amount to lose

because they're not a big football revenue generating program to begin with and if there's TV dollars to share. They'll share in them whether they play games or not, I would assume I could be wrong about that. And if I'm wrong about that, then they should play. But in terms of LiveGate, et cetera, not to mention that Locke's has a super young team. He's putting together one good recruiting class after another. They're probably not ready to be good yet, but next year they

might be. I don't know. The college football Saturday was so off. Everything about it just, It did not seem like football. Sunday was much better, and I did enjoy it. But there were a couple of those games. Like I'll tell you, the game last night, Herb Street and Fowler were great, but the Steelers Giants game was intense, but you could really, there was no sound to it. I think they need to create that sound and maybe a little bit more consistency to it. I actually know the person who's handling it for FedEx Field. I know him very well. I'm not supposed to say who it is. and he's not allowed to do any media appearances. But I did send him a quick note to say that I thought he could do better for the next home game, that I thought that there wasn't enough timely booing and or cheering. It just seemed to be a little bit off Sunday. So I'm going to try to coach him up a little bit. I'm sure you're happy about that.

Well, that's good because this is what you would pay attention to. All right. More on football team here in a moment, but I want to tell you about my Bucky. First of all, the smell test this weekend, 2, 4, and 1. I got Denver last night plus the three. I had the Giants last night plus the six. And a couple of games that looked like wins. Detroit and Cincinnati really hurt the weekend.

2, 4 and 1, 2.5 and 1 on the season. Not very good, but maybe it'll be the reverse of last year, which was last year we start quickly and end poorly. Maybe it'll start slowly and end very well this year. We'll see. If you don't have a place to wager, please consider MyBooky. My bookie's going to double your first deposit on your sign-up. If you use my promo code, Kevin D.C.

New players will get up to $1,000 in free play. And that's designed just to add more excitement to the sports you love and the games you bet. My bookie's so reliable, guys. They have great point spreads and money lines and pricing and they pay when you win. You don't have to worry about whether or not you're with a shop that does it and handles it well. They have plenty of futures bets opportunities. I mean, you may want to get in right now on Washington to win the NFC East while the odds are still a long shot because after next weekend those odds may drop.

But you can bet anything. You can bet in-game. You can bet before the game. You can bet straight bets, parlays, teasers, futures, in-game. The whole works. MyBooky.ag. Use my promo code, Kevin, D.C. So Tommy, this morning on the show, I did a call segment, basically asking everybody

whether or not they have rethought their position on this team after one game. Have they recalibrated their expectations? And as I was doing this, the ESPN updated their power rankings for this week. And Washington was the biggest mover. They moved up seven spots from 31 out of 32 teams to 24. That's a big move to move up seven spots in one week. I think Green Bay moved up a lot too. Maybe not Green Bay.

Maybe it was somebody else I'm thinking about. But somebody else moved up a lot. Tennessee moved up a lot, I think. Anyway, they moved up seven spots. Good for them, from 31 to 24. And I think people were really talking about this team. They were talking about them on the pregame shows leading into Monday night football last night,

about a defensive performance that was really one in which it was noticeable to anybody. It's hard. It's hard to ignore eight sacks. It's hard to ignore eight sacks. And it's hard to ignore a 17-nothing comeback against a team that was considered, you know, a team that was a defending conference NFC East Champion, division champion. It's also hard to ignore the second pick in the draft, who was the highest-rated rookie in the league

and one of the highest rated players in the league on Sunday in Chase Young. So all of that is true. And so there is, after one game, some buzz about the team. And I was thinking about this, you know, when the season starts, there's week one, there's always, you know, an overreaction. And so they may very well fit into the week one overreaction category. It's very possible. But what usually happens with teams that have a performance like that is they get even more attention.

Like if you have a quarterback that lights it up in his first game for 380 and five touchdowns and they win 42 to 17, that's going to get a lot of attention. And then if you have a defense that has eight sacks forces three turnovers and leads a 17, nothing come from behind victory. That's going to get a lot of attention because dominant defense gets a lot of attention as well, which is more, you know, Others can, you know, you can pull a big upset off. Like Tampa Bay beat New Orleans two years ago in the Superdome, 48 to 40 in week one. Well, Tampa went six and ten that year. That same year in week one, Cincinnati beat the Colts, who were a playoff team that year in week one. They went two and 14.

But there was nothing remarkable about those wins. I mean, it is an indication that you can overreact to things that happen in week one, but there wasn't a buzz like there was with this dominant defensive performance or with Patrick Mahomes in his first game, you know, two years ago for the Chiefs. I pick seven and nine on Friday's show. That was my predicted record for the season, Tommy. You picked four and 12. I'm not going to go nuts here and start talking about this team as a playoff team or a division, you know, winner potentially. But I do. think that defense travels is sustainable when what we saw Sunday exists. Like there was an elite player on the field. That wasn't a joke. He has a chance to be the best player of this team or this franchise has had in a long, long time, the most talented player since Sean Taylor, and maybe even better. And he elevated that defense in so many ways.

and the defense already had some talent on it. I think this is a team that we're going to have a competitive season. I think offensively they're thin. Cooley mentioned that yesterday. It's true. They can't really afford many injuries. But defensively, you're going to be in a lot of games. You can have a chance to win some games this year.

I'd say I'll change it to 8 and 8 after one game. I know that is such a big mistake to overreact to week one. But the division isn't very good, maybe. Cowboys had a bunch of injuries. The Eagles have are really banged up. Maybe it's the other team's turn to be decimated by injuries. I'll tell you what, to watch Chase Young the other day and to think about that defense against Daniel Jones and the number of turnovers in two games against him, the kind of havoc they could wreak against some of the other quarterbacks they face that are stationary.

I think we saw something that was real, not playoff real this year, but real. And remind me to give you the comparison that people thought I made this morning. But what do you think? Do you think differently after one game about them? Well, I should, but I won't. I still think they're going to wind up four and twelve. I still think everything they've got working against them off the field from a coach who's undergoing cancer treatment

to an owner who is hiring private detectives to track down people who are trying to go after him. I think this is all going to come into play at some point. I just don't think the talent will be overridden by the chaos. I still think four and 12. You know, this is your prediction every year. I mean, it's always that the chaos will override anything that they may have going for them. And, you know, 2018, when they were six and three, and they were playing smart football,

I kind of sense that it was a house of cards, but it wasn't the chaos that got in the middle of it. It was a big injury. Last year, there was a whole hell of a lot of chaos, but we saw that coming. This year, there was so much chaos, but they do have. have stability other than the fact that he's got cancer and head coach. That's a big other than. God, I hope he's well. I hope because he's such a likable guy.

You know what comes into play here with a win like this is my theory that his ability to fight off the chaos, to fight off Snyder, when, if he's still, if Snyder is still the owner, when they have confrontations, is strong. strengthened by a quick start by his football team. You know, this was my thing. I know. I know. The Joe Torrey thing.

Yeah. He will become such a revered figure, and you combine that with how revile Snyder is, that Ron Rivera just could have ultimate public power to basically overcome the aura of self-destruction. It's a possibility. especially because he's a sympathetic figure. He's a likable figure because he's seemingly a very likable guy.

He's a sympathetic figure because what he's going through with his help. And through that, if they manage to succeed and get people fired up, he's going to get all the credit, all the credit. As he should. Yes. He is, gosh, gosh, I mean, this is the part where I just want to hesitate and I want to stop myself, but I believed in him when they hired him. I know what can happen, okay, because the team hasn't been sold yet.

Has it been? I don't believe. So I know what can happen, but I do believe in him. I just loved his team. I always loved watching his teams at Carolina. I did. And again, you can't, you can't dismiss this. he's very likable.

I mean, people feel after they hear him talk, they feel good. I agree. I mean, as great a coach as Mike Sanahan was, he wasn't a likable guy, you know. I like Mike. I like Mike. He wasn't media friendly. He wasn't media friendly. Although, you know, people in Denver liked him a lot.

I just think, whatever. I'm talking about likable guy as opposed to, I mean, I'm not. I don't mean he was unlikable. It's just that if you saw Mike in it publicly, if you were a fan and you saw Mike publicly, you didn't walk away saying, boy, I really like to have a beer with that guy. That didn't happen. I've enjoyed my conversations with him over the years. Stop it.

You know what I'm talking about. You know I'm right. I know. No, I mean. This guy, he is engaging. He doesn't. He never has yet to appear in anything public that I've seen, you know, flustered or angry at a question. He's handled every question.

He's just, he's just been, and he also comes across as a serious guy, as opposed to slap happy Jay, who seemed like a bit of a clown, not a Jim Thorne clown, but of a bit of a clown. You know, I mean, Ron Rivera doesn't come across like that at all. Look, he comes across like a guy who played nine years in the NFL at linebacker. That's how he comes across. You know, in his presser yesterday, he talked about a couple of things, but he kept coming back to the culture thing. I mean, he kept hammering home, sustained culture. This is about, this is a process.

It may not happen this year. It may be next year. but we've started a process of changing the culture and trying to create something that can be sustained. You know, I love to hear that because I've said for years, you know, any NFL team can have a good season, but that doesn't make them a good franchise. Those that are good franchises have figured out a way to have sustained success, and it's a culture that you create. It's a winning culture with good people, with smart people, doing smart things, which is the opposite of what this organization has been like for so long, because you can,

You can luck your way into a five-game winning streak and a nine-and-seven-six seed as they've done a couple of times over the last two decades. But to have a chance year-in-year-in-year-out to win 9, 10, 11, 12 games, and then once out of every three or four years have a legitimate chance to go deep, you've got to have some real quality people and smart people in the organization. And I think one of the things I think it's been made very clear, Tommy, is this. This guy did not take this job naively. He knew what he was in for.

He knew that this was a big job and that the owner was a major, major problem. And he had a culture to change. I also think the owner, through the conversations with Ron, and probably Joe to a certain degree as well, blamed a lot of it on Bruce. You know, that's what happened there at the end is it all got blamed on Bruce. But he talked about culture again during that. during that presser yesterday. Anyway, real quickly.

Okay, one other, go ahead. Yeah, I was just going to tell you that I was talking about this defense, and I was comparing it to the 85 Bears this morning on radio. Not that it was going to become the 85 Bears defense, which is the greatest defense I've ever seen in my lifetime of watching NFL football. I'm sure you can give me some of those chiefs teams and some of the purpose. people eater teams and some of the fearsome foursome teams that were great too from your early era of watching football. But for me, it's the 85 Bears. But my point this morning was, you know, the Bears,

it didn't all happen for them in the first couple of years, but they were drafting really good players and they were getting better and better on defense. They didn't have the offense yet until 85. But they had, you know, with Hampton and McMichael and Singletary and Wilbur Marshall and eventually a refrigerator, who, by the way, was a good player, not just a side show. And, you know, Fensick was their one veteran player, you know, that they didn't draft. Dorson, it was all those guys were drafted by them and they were young. And you saw it year by year how you were like, wow, that's a good defensive team. In 84, they got to the NFC title game. They came to RFK and sack Thysman like seven, eight, nine times. And one at RFK, it was the only playoff

game at home that Joe Gibbs lost. And they went to the NFC championship game, lost to the 49ers a candlestick. But those couple of years leading up to 85, you could see it coming. I'm not suggesting that this defense is going to become the 85 Bears defense, but it's basically all drafted, it's very young, and it's really talented, and it's well-coached, like the Bears' defense of 85 was. I'm not saying that we'll get there, but it's a process. It won't be at its best.

this year, even though it could be pretty good. And it might not be at its best next year, even though it could be a lot better. But when you get these guys into their mid to late 20s, if they're all still here and they were as advertised, you know, two, three years from now, you could have a dominant defense. Eighty-five bears. That's a good one. I like that. Yeah, well, I didn't exactly. Now, let's get back to the most important part of this podcast, my column. Okay. There's something else that you missed by not simply reading an email I sent you last night that included a link to my column. I pointed this out, a quote from Ron Rivera on Sunday.

There are some good football players in that locker room who have not had the opportunity to express themselves as football players. Now, that's a bit of an indictment on its predecessor. No doubt. I mean, it absolutely is. And it's also a sign, I point out, a coach who understands what it takes to play the game in the NFL at the top level. He was a player in the league for nine years, played on that Super Bowl team that you talked about. Yes, he was on the 85 Bears. Yeah, when he uses the term express themselves as football players, he understands what players feel.

This is what Davy, the only time I ever heard anyone say this was Davy Johnson when he was, you know, managing the Orioles, managing the Nationals, managing the Nationals. He was a four-time All-Star Second Basement, played with two World Series champions with the Orioles. He always used to use the phrase, let the players express their talent. See, that's a connection to players. That's in the mind of what players think. coaches have that. Rivera has that. He understands what it's like to be, you know, to want to be on the field to show what you can do. And I think that's a real important connection that's going to help him along the way. But that's not an accidental phrase. And it's a bit of a slap on the people who came before him, whether he meant it to be or not. It definitely is. And he also had another one yesterday. And I'm going to paraphrase it. But he was talking, he was asked about Chase Young.

He was talking about Chase Young and how when they drafted Chase Young, one of the things he said is he said, it's going to do as much for the offense as it will do for the defense. And he pointed out that Sunday, the field position because of the turnovers and the sacks and everything. But then he pointed to the rest of the players. He said, you know, those guys were on this team last year. They just had to be put into the right position to succeed. you know, so that was another shot at them. But, you know, he's not giving us news here.

We all knew that there was some talent here that was not coached well. And like, I feel badly because Greg Minnowski was a great guy. And by the way, has been a coach in the league many times, including a D coordinator. But they tried to fire him before last year. And he ended up coaching here anyway. Like the whole thing was so dysfunctional going into the season. season last year. I want to share with you this John Kime Alex Smith stuff, and I'll do that right after this spot from Indochino. Hi, this is Paul Tenorio from the Athletic. When I buy dress shirts

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The best part, Indochino's suits start at just $299 with all customizations included, and it's super easy to order and get it shipped fast no matter where you live. So go visit one of the Indochino showrooms across North America, or do what I did, book a virtual appointment and shop online at Indochino.com. And right now, you'll get $30 off any purchase of $39 or more when you, enter code athletic at checkout. That's Indochino.com promo code athletic. So Tommy, I was reading this story from Kime from over the weekend, Sunday morning before the game, actually. And I made a note to talk about it on the show, radio show and podcast. And I wanted to save it for you because we've

had so many of these conversations about Alex Smith and, you know, whether or not he really wants to play or he just, you know, and I, my whole thing. My whole thing. all along right has been, I don't think that he really wants to play again. I think he just wants to be able to say that physically he got back to a place where he could play again. That's always been my gut feel as to what all of this was about, that the team was supportive of his comeback, that he had made an incredible comeback, that he was an inspiration to his kids, to the military people that he met in San Antonio, but that ultimately he just wanted to get back to the point where he could say, hey, I've been cleared completely to play football.

I'm physically ready to play football again, but does he really want to go back out there? So, Kime did a really good job and had some, I think, some new pieces of information on this story, especially at the end when it got down to the decision to keep him on the roster. And he took you through the whole thing chronologically. I'm going to focus on a couple of quotes here from various people. Dr. Robin West, who we know is the team orthopedic surgeon, was a big part of that Project 11. She was the one that essentially said to Elizabeth, his wife, it should be amputated. That's really what needs to happen here to save his life.

I mean, still, to think about that is crazy what he went through. She said that in talking to Alex recently, it was right after they cleared him for football activity, Tommy. Remember that was the first step in August at some point that they cleared him for football activity. And she said to him, quote, Alex, no one wants you to get injured again. They saw the pictures and don't want you to go through that again. When someone like Max Scher asks me, why does he want to play? And I said to Max, well, you've got the same drive he does. But he says back to me, yeah, but that's crazy.

It's football. And then she says, but Smith's drive is something I've never seen. I've been in the NFL 18 years and MLB for five years. I've never seen someone with that kind of drive, closed quote. So Max Scherzer said to Dr. Robin West, why does Alex Smith want to play again? And she said, well, he's got that same competitive drive that you have. And he said, yeah, but he plays football. I'm a pitcher, which I think has been kind of the point here all along

for everybody that watch that documentary, right? Like, you're not playing, this isn't golf, this isn't, you know, you're not going to be pitching or you're not going to be an analogy. This is football. Fletcher Cox and Aaron Donald this year are coming for you if you're out there. So then the next thing that I carved out of this story that Kime wrote was on August 29th, he had progressed to 11-on-11 work. He had gone from some seven-on-seven stuff to nine-on-nine-nine to 11-on-11.

And this was, you know, as we're approaching, you know, that period of time where the team's going to have to make a decision on his roster status. And Kime writes, with practice moved indoors because of the weather, Smith participated in 11-on-11 work for the first time in camp. It wasn't a full pads practice, but he took three snaps and attempted one pass. It was a five-yard checkdown throw to running back J.D. McKissick. Now, those of you that know that the pro football focus checkdown stat was named after Alex Smith, stop laughing. Washington was still on the fence on August 29th about whether to keep him on the active roster or perhaps place him on injured reserve.

And then came the next thing that I carved out from the story. On September 1st or 2nd, there was a passionate meeting, Kheim described. With final roster cuts looming, Rivera met with Smith privately for 30 minutes. Smith didn't want to go on injured reserve for one big reason. He wasn't hurt. It was either cut him or keep him. Rivera gauged Smith's passion for wanting to return. Smith likely secured his spot right then and there in that meeting,

though nothing was official after that day. And Rivera, there is the quote from Rivera after. he said he met with Smith. He was very passionate about wanting the opportunity to play again, very passionate about making this football team. That really stood out to me because it really just showed mentally, I think he's passed the hurdle, close quote. So Smith said to Rivera, cut him or keep him.

Now, there's one last piece, and then I'll get your reaction, and then I'll give you mine. It became clear, Kime writes, that on September 4th, the night of September 4th, which I guess was the night before the Saturday, September 5th, yeah, it would have been, yes, that would have been right, September 5th, that Smith was going to make the final roster. One source told John that if he wrote that, it wouldn't be wrong. But it was Smith's wife, Elizabeth, who shared the news with those closest to them.

She texted West, Robin West, Dr. Robin West, though the doctor apparently had known the news for a few days based on her conversation with the coaches. But apparently it was a changing situation all week long, and West was glad to get the message from Elizabeth that he was going to make the team. His father, Doug Smith, said, told John Kahn, quote, certainly there were some dark, dark moments. It's been getting brighter, and this is a bright spot for him. He's really excited to see how far he can get.

He keeps talking about how he believes there's more progress in him, more he can gain in terms of his movement and mobility. And then Dr. West, Robin West said, his wife played a big role to have someone like that if you asked us a year ago we were all like I hope he never plays but Elizabeth said the other day she really wants him to play now she knows what drive he has and that'll never be fulfilled until he tries to break all the barriers closed quote what did you what do you make all this well sometimes people have to save someone from themselves. That's what I think of it.

Somebody needs to save Alex Smith from himself and not play. And tell him, no, you're not going to play. You know, look what you've been through. I mean, you have nothing to prove. You've got a family that loves you that doesn't need to go through this again. Someone needs to save him from himself. The fact that you believe that someone has to save him, from himself is, I agree with, but I would have said to you prior to reading this, they're not going to have to. He's not going to play. But Tommy, this convinces me that he

really wants to go for it. I also think that he's really, he wants to go back out onto the field. I didn't think that before this story. And again, I've said this before. It shouldn't be here. First of all, it shouldn't be here because they've got Dwayne Haskins. Secondly, it shouldn't be here because this organization cannot afford. Alex Smith laid out on FedEx's turf with, by the way, nobody in the crowd and an ambulance driving out onto the field took cart him out of there to save his life. Nobody needs that. He doesn't need that anywhere. It can't happen anywhere. But here it would be devastating. They'd never be able to recover from being the rag-tag low-rent outfit that put Alex back out onto the field after they knew what he went through more than anybody else.

But I think he wants to do this. I think he wants to do this. And I also think there's this other, you know, part of this, which is, you know, why did the team take up a roster spot for him? You know? Yes. I think that's a, okay. Yes, I mean, really.

I mean, I raised that, you know, when we talked about this before. I mean, well, with this coach really? sacrifice a roster spot for some kind of feel-good story? It's, yes, this organization has done that kind of shit before. Now, this is different. This is different because we really haven't had a story like this one. And they probably would have felt, Tommy, don't you think, that there would have been some bad, that bad publicity with cutting him too, or even putting him on injured reserve. And I do think they want him around. Dwayne probably wants him around. I mean, nobody compliments Smith and Smith's mentorship

more than Dwayne has. You're right. Anyway, I thought the whole thing is interesting because, you know, he, when you say cut me or keep me, he wants a chance. I also wonder whether or not if he's legitimately thinking about playing, which I'm considering for the first time in this. If he's like, keep me here because I know what Dwayne's got and you're going to need me before the few years over. I don't know. Because I believe in Haskins. I just don't see it with Smith. I hope he never plays. I hope you're right. I hope somebody steps in and saves him from himself. God, there would be nothing worse than him being out on the field laid out again. Just because he has this drive in him doesn't mean it's a good idea.

Right. Well, the drive in him leading him to the point where he recovered at a much better and more significant rate than the normal person would. That's great that that drive drove him to the point where he is healthy again. And it's healthier than it would have been with you or with me. but somebody should stop him from stepping out on the field and having Fletcher Cox chase him down in the pocket. We don't need to see that. No.

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No, he writes for the Post. He covers the NBA for the Post. Yeah. And I've gotten to know him a little bit. I've had him on the podcast before. Really good guy, you know, really good NBA guy. And I was talking to him yesterday for a while about a couple of things. I think he's going to come on the radio show before the end of the week.

And he said that, you know, these games, because I said to him, I go, you're there. You've been in the Orlando bubble for, you know, two months or whatever it's been. Are these games as intense as they seem watching them on TV? He's like, it's been even better. He said, because you don't have these nights in these playoff games where teams have traveled and, you know, they're a little bit off and it's going to be a down night in a series. Every game's been so super intense and energetic and the building's been energetic, even with the few people in it, but with the teams. And tonight you get another seventh game. We've had a couple of them already, and this is going to be the second seventh game.

for Denver, and they could become Tommy the first team in NBA history to come from 3-1 behind twice in the same postseason to win a series. I bet the Clippers at plus 250 to win the title before the NBA playoffs started. So obviously I'm all in on Kauai Leonard and the Clippers. And they blew a 19-point lead the other day in game six and a game to put them away. So that may come back to haun them. I've enjoyed watching these two teams. They have so many high IQ players on the team. You know, you've got obviously Kauai Leonard for the Clippers, and I've been telling you about Yokic. He had 34 points, 14 rebounds, and seven assists on Sunday. But the pressure, Tommy, is on the L.A. Clippers. Think about this organization. They've never once, never once been to the conference

finals. This is an organization that has had some recent success, you know, in the postseason, you know, with Paul and Griffin and those teams. But in the history of the four professional sports, has there ever been a team or a franchise more downtrodden than the clippers were for about a two, three, four decade period? I don't even know how long it was. And this is the year that people are absolutely convinced that they can win a title. If they, go out before the conference finals, I'll tell you who it's a major indictment on is Doc Rivers, who a lot of people really like as a coach and have always liked and love personally. But if he does not get this team to the conference finals to face the Lakers, Tommy, it's a big blow to him.

Big blow. Yes, it is. I mean, it really shouldn't, in a way, because of what he's accomplished already. But, yeah, it is. It'd be a big disappointment and a big blow. Like, I'm looking through the years. Do you know what this franchise was originally? Oh, they were the Buffalo Braves.

Yeah, exactly. The Buffalo Braves. Which was a fun team to watch. Oh, of course it was. With Bob McAdoo and Ernie D. Regorio. Randy Smith. People have no idea how much fun Ernie D. He was to watch play, and how great McAdu was there.

then. I mean, so, yeah, I loved watching the Buffalo Braves play. Yeah, Randy. And then they became, then they moved to San Diego. That's right. We moved to San Diego. Real quickly, when they were the Buffalo Braves, I think I've mentioned this, or maybe we've talked about it before, it reminds, I think something's reminding me that we've talked about it before. But they played the bullets in the playoffs in 1975. The year the bullets went to the finals and lost to Rick Berry and the Golden State Warriors in four straight. And it was, It was just a seven-game series, and it was a showdown between McAdu and the Big E.

And McA-Doo had a 50-point game, and the Big E had like a 46-point game in the series, but it was just, it was a great NBA playoff series. But when they moved to L.A., they were terrible for so long. I mean, they had a stretch of many years with barely making the postseason, never winning. they never, I think they didn't win their first playoff series until 2006 as the LA Clippers. But they've been a decent team, you know, in recent years, depending on the mix of players. But this is the team that Doc Rivers and the Clippers expected to contend for a title. Now, go back to the end of the regular season, go back to pre-pandemic, and they were coasting,

and they were sitting players, and Kauai Leonard was on a minutes management schedule, and they were biding their time until they got to the postseason. And I really felt watching the NBA before the pandemic, because who knew what was going to happen in the Orlando bubble, that it was the Clippers and the Lakers, and that was the de facto NBA championship. I even felt that way with Milwaukee cruising. And as it turns out, I was right about Milwaukee. I just want to see this series.

I want to see Clippers Lakers, I hope the Clippers win tonight. There are seven and a half point favorite. That's a lot of points, you know, considering they've lost the last two games. I think I like them to win the game. I don't like them minus the seven and a half. I'm not going to play it, but I hope they get through this. I'd love to see them play the Lakers.

With that said, the nuggets are fun to watch. They really are. But anyway, most of you really don't care about that. Do you have anything else or are we done for the day? I think we're done for today, boss, except I've got to figure out a way for you to read what I, to pay attention to me. Cut and paste it. So listen to me when I tell you something, when I send you something. You know what I need to be better at?

I need to be much better at allowing you to express yourself. I really have to coach up much better. and just give you the chance to be able to express yourself because you haven't had that ability in the past. Express this, buddy. Cut and paste it and email it to me. Now I've got to pay for it the rest of the month. You know, we're only on September 15th.

That tells you how many times I've clicked on your columns. Did you find the original email I sent you last night? Yes, I did. Yes, I did, but it makes me pay. It makes me pay. When you click on that link, it still makes you pay. It does. I just did it while we were on the show. All right.

I find that difficult to believe. Okay. What do you mean you find it difficult to believe? You think I'm making it up? Yeah, I do. I swear to God, I'm making it up. I swear to God, hold on for a second. I'll go do it again.

It's right here. You know, first of all, what you sent me, you didn't send me a link. You just sent me the URL, and I've got to cut and paste the URL into it. You don't know how to send a link to anything. Jesus, God. So I paste it, and here we go, and it pops up with the subscription fees. A dollar a month for digital. I can get $6.67 for the paper and, oh, a dollar for monthly digital, 667 for annual,

and I can get the print and digital. Is there a print version of the Washington Times? Of course there is. Probably at your local 7-Eleven. Really? I haven't seen... You know, you are so clueled. I haven't seen a print edition of the Washington Times in a couple of years.

$16.25 per month for print and digital of the Times. Which is a hell of a deal, by the way. But listen to me. What? You need to find an email that I sent to you yesterday at 304 p.m. That says Laverro game column. 304 yesterday. Yes.

With the header that says Laverro game column. Yeah, that's the one. That's the one I just told you. I just, that's the one I'm... And what's it say? The Washington football went over the Eagles was a reflection of the difference in the coaching staff under Ron Rivera

compared to the J. Gruden tenure, which always had the smell of a one Loudoun hangover. My column, NFL, and then you've got the URL. Click on that. You can't click. You didn't allow it to be clickable. Yes, I did. No, you didn't.

I'm not able to click on it. I have to cut and paste and put it in. You didn't do... What are you talking about? What do you mean? What am I talking about? I'm explaining it to you. It's not...

It's not lit up in... It's not blue where I can just click. It's in black print. I have to cut and... I have to copy it and paste it. and paste it. That's not how I sent it. You know, you're really, you're hoping. I'm going to send it again. Go ahead. Send it again to you. Send it again to you. Send it again right now. And let's see what happens. They're genius. Okay. This is so much fun for people listening. I'm sure it is. I don't. Send it quickly, though, because... I just sent it. Yes, you did. Okay. Same thing. Not a blue link. Well, on this, on my, and my sent file, it's a blue link. Okay, it's not where I have it in front of me.

So you're doing it incorrectly. All right, we're done for the day. You're doing it incorrectly. You're the one who calls time out when you don't have it. This is true. I'm back tomorrow. Cooley will do his film breakdown of the football team's win over the Eagles on Sunday, right here on the podcast tomorrow.

See you, Tommy. All right, boss.