The Press Box - This Week in Ringer Sports (Nov. 13-17, 2017) (Ep. 384)

Episode Date: November 18, 2017

Featuring 'Heat Check' on a potential new NBA award, 'The Ringer NFL show' on surprising NFC teams, 'Against All Odds With Cousin Sal' on NFL gambling myths, 'Ringer FC' on World Cup qualification ideas, 'Ringer University' on Tennessee's and Florida's coaching vacancies, and 'One Shining Podcast With Titus and Tate' on college basketball coaches.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to this week in Ringer Sports. I'm Liz Kelly bringing you the highlights from the Ringer Podcast Network. We also put up a lot of good stuff on the website this week. Bill wrote about the winners of the NBA season so far. Titus brought back the college basketball power rankings, and Danny Kelly talks about the five most essential players in the NFL. Those are just to name a few, so there's tons of other good stuff. Be sure to check it out on the Ringer.com.

All right, first up, while early MVP discussions bound, Juliet and Gonzo of NBA Heat Check introduced a new award, calling it the Draymond Green Award for the most essential player. They'll discuss a few candidates, including a favorite around here in the Ringer office, Chris Stapp's, Prazingis. I think we need like a new category in the NBA of not like the MVP, like the staffs, the LeBrons, maybe the Janus is, but like the most essential player. The most essential to their to what their team does. Like it's the Draymond Green Award basically because Draymond is not is not staff or KD. But as we saw in 2016 and in some earlier games this season, Draymond is the most essential to the world.

warrior's success. He makes them unbeatable. Yeah, and I think that's a fun idea. Do you have, because I have a couple that I would run through here. Okay. Not to be predictable and, like, mention the Portland Trailblazers, but I would throw Dame Lillard in that mix. But also, like, look at the San Antonio Spurs. Like, they're still the Spurs, right? But Kauai takes them from being the Spurs and they're going to be in the playoffs and they're going to be, you know, in the mix and they're fine, to being, hey,

yeah, this is a team that could potentially challenge in the West. Sure. I feel like the difference. between like a Kauai type player and a Dremond is like someone who is a paradigm shifter who won't necessarily be fully appreciated in their time, but they'll become like an archetype. And I just feel like Kauai's is more like yes, he's top five player. So we have to take, so it has to be like not a top five player. Yeah. Okay. Kind of. That's like sort of like that's like sort of what I'm getting at. Because like I think with the Celtics like is like Al Horford like their most essential player. I mean it's still probably Kyrie. But like without without him do they struggle more? Like like did they lose to the Raptors if they have. Irving but not at Horford. So this is an interesting thought experiment because then you would look at like a team like the Knicks and go, okay, well, Chris Staps is getting a lot of love. He could potentially one be, one day be a top five player. He's certainly the most essential right now.

Hands down, you take Christops off that team and the Knicks are really like, yeah, all else. and they have five already. I just feel like there needs to be a new tier to appreciate greatness that's not like being like the kill shot. Like, of course Kevin Durant is Kevin Durant. Like it's not fair to compare all the other players to him who are like also extremely important. It's sort of like a regular

season award. I know that all awards are regular season, but it's sort of like night in, night out, like who gets you to where you, to like the fifth seed on your team? I like this essential idea. We'll have to revisit this as a season goes. I just feel like we too quickly jump into the MVP race and then there's like no room to talk about all these other like

exciting players. This is one that maybe we'll throw into the mix because right now we had said previously like the Charlotte Hornets are like a I don't know kind of sort of interesting team and Campbell gets a lot of love on that team. They're about to get Nick Batoon back and I think Nick Batum is a hugely underrated player. I loved him in Portland. I loved him on that team. Yeah. Like I would like to see what the Hornets look like. Jeremy Lamb has gotten a lot of run for them.

They brought Malik Monk back in, but they're going to get Nick Baton back ostensibly on Wednesday. Uh-huh. And he does all of those little things as a wing that you'd want. He moves the ball really well. He rebounds. He pushes the floor. Like, I love Nick Batum for all those reasons. So maybe he's in that dream on this. Sure. Maybe. Okay. Switching gears, changing sports. We are a officially past the midpoint of the NFL season. And in a bizarre turn of events, Case Keenum is leading the 7-2 Vikings to a potential NFC North title. On the NFL show this week,

Kevin and Robert discussed the Vikings and a few other bizarrely good teams. We want to talk about a few NFC teams that are just good in some very bizarre ways. And that includes Jared Gough now being a very reasonable NFL quarterback. But it also includes the Saints and the Vikings, which I wrote about a little bit on Monday. So, Kevin, of these three kind of bizarre, NFC contenders, which is the weirdest version of the team for you? Which is that with one thing where if you could have predicted before the year,

this would have been the farthest from reality. Case Keenham leading a top 10 offense, Jared Golf leading league in yards per attempt, or the Saints defense being really good in running the ball all over people? Well, I saw a stat that I found interesting yesterday, Mike Rodak, BSPN. Saints ran the ball in 24 consecutive plays against Buffalo. That has not happened in an NFL game. since 1989.

I don't know... I don't know what to think about the Saints because right now I mean if you were to... And this Red Zone thing is a good example the story I wrote on Tuesday. So if you were informed before the season that the Saints were going to be 7 and 2 rolling

beating a pretty good Bills team by 40 points, you would say that's the most exciting team in the league. But that's it. The breeze is throwing the ball over the place. It's like 2009, 2010. 2012, all that. Breeze is throwing the ball over the place.

It looks like old times. That's not what this is. And it's almost, it's impressive that, and I'm not going to sit here and say that Breeze, you know, reinvented himself or anything. But he is averaging 40 yards a game less than he was last year. It's obviously passing the ball less. He's not the, he's not the entire focal point of the offense.

He still is. It's not like he's not Peyton Man in 2015 here. okay, but he is taking a reduced role in a way. I think that that's the most stunning thing to me. If you were to tell me the Vikings were good. I mean, after the first couple weeks of the season, we saw that Case Keenom was at least going to be able to get the ball to his targets.

His two receivers, Adam Theon and Stubon Diggs, lead the NFL in deep receptions. And that's a testament to A, Keenham, but B, just those guys are freaking good. And so all three of these, I didn't expect, but the one I just didn't expect, just analyzing it now is just the Saints as ground and pound. It's incredible.

So right now, where do you think Drew Breeze ranks in past attempts in the NFL? Not high enough. He's 10th. There we go. And that's just bizarre. If you look at the all-time passing attempts leaderboard, like for a single season, in the top 16, he's on there one, two, three, four, five, six, seven times. Like, that's what they did.

They threw it more than anyone else in the league and to have gone so far in the other direction. And it's not like this happens every week. I think we touched on this a little bit on Friday's show, just that Buffalo's run defense was the worst part of what they did. And the Saints are running the ball so well. Why not run it 30 times? And they did. But just to see them be willing to embrace that approach against anyone is impressive and the fact that it's working so well. I mean, they're really getting what they want done on the ground.

and it's one thing to try to reinvent yourself on the fly. It's another to do it so well, to do it just so thoroughly and effectively. And that's what's kind of blown me out of the water. I mean, they're third in rushing DVOA right now. And that is really impressive. As far as Drew Brees's passing attempts go, Drew Brees has five of the top eight

single season passing yard marks in NFL history. No one else appears twice. in that top eight. And he's there five times. He's like one of these old time lead singers of a band and everybody else just leaves the band and he just gets too much power

and he gets to do whatever he wants. Do you know what I'm saying? I absolutely know what you're saying. I'm trying to think of the best example of that. A guy just like that hung on at the front and no one else is the same. Yeah, they just replaced everybody. Yeah, that happens all the time.

I just can't think of a good example. You're totally right. And I think that there's a chance they only get better. And like on Sunday, so you had Tehran Armstead back at left tackle, Larry Warfair is back at guard. That hasn't happened for many games this season. Armstead's either been hurt or Warford's been hurt for a couple games. I mean, this offensive line, everyone I've talked to,

takes about a year to understand the guys you're playing with. And they have two new starters this year. So it just feels like this is going to coalesce even more over the rest of the season. I mean, like, there's a chance that the Saints only get better for the rest of the year. And the way they look right now, that's a terrifying prospect. And now here's my question. Is Sean Payton the best coach in this batch? That's a really good question.

The answer to that is probably yes over the course of like the body of their body of work. But I think that what Sean McVeigh has done this year is more impressive. Yeah. So do I think the Vikings are going to make it to the Super Bowl this year? You know, I'm not sure, but I'm holding out hope for anybody but the Patriots. and please don't tell my boss. So for most NFL fans are watching to cheer on their team, hopefully watch them win,

but for Cousin Sal, he's looking for an edge of sports gambling. He had on R.J. Bell this week on Against All Odds to debunk some gambling theories so you can get your money right. I feel like these theories over the years have panned out in the 60% range and they're just not hitting this year. One of them, teams flying east to west or teams flying west to east. Now, getting enough rest, and teams on a short week playing the Monday night. So, for instance, Detroit played Green Bay on Monday night.

You figure one of them is going to be tired or let down, especially Green Bay is then going on the road to Chicago. No, maybe Chicago was just that bad, but Green Bay covered, won the game outright. Detroit, a little bit slow start, then all over Cleveland on a double-digit spread. Does that trend hold up? Did it ever hold up, or is it in my imagination? A trend only met. So let me give an example.

Imagine if I, and I say, right, because everyone knows Brady's out. Right. So the accounts, right? Okay, the east. Body clock, that is a negative. Right. But it's historically, you're right, it's a factor, but since it's accounted for, you can't really benefit.

Now, in any given 10 or 12 games, it could go, you know, 10 and 2, 2 and 10. And next time you're in Vegas, sit and watch, I'll be shocked the number of times are seven reds out of nine. You know, it's just, that's just random numbers. Right. But it doesn't fully. Your body clocks, if you're an East Coast team, it's midnight. Do you think you're performing best as an athlete at midnight for you?

No. But time doesn't matter where you late. In history, West Coast teams playing East Coast teams, any venue, but if it's a night game. Interesting. All right, I'm writing that down. I'm going to stick with that. I know what you're saying. It's like if Dave Chappelle, like these comedians, that's why comedy clubs are open.

late, if they're doing their stand-up at noon, they're going to be a little rusty because they're just not used to that. So next up, the World Cup doesn't start until June 2018, but Ringer FC is getting an early start and Donnie, Ryan, and Mike a proposal change. Can I make a proposal? Let's hear it. I mentioned it in Slack yesterday, but everybody ignored it. Basically, when it gets to the playoff round for the World Cup qualifiers, rather than doing

these two-legged playoffs home and away, you just do one-off matches and you set up Wembley, like the first weekend of the NCAA tournament, and it's just a bunch of one-offs on like a Thursday and a Friday. What do you guys think? You buying it? I'm sorry, were you talking? I was just fucking silence, Jesus. Are you at least nodding?

My issue with that would be... I was looking at my phone, sorry. Yeah, my mom called me. You guys are watching Weston McKee highlights and I'm trying to sell you on his proposal. The field would get destroyed if they did that. The last game.

True. True. We'll have mutant turf. But basically the idea is over these two legs, a lot of those nil-nills were first legs, and it's because they're playing super cagey, don't want to concede, don't want to give an away goal. And it's boring as fuck.

So make it just like a one-neill. off like a final, you know? That would be kind of fun. I can't wait to see, like, what countries are going to be in the playoff once we expand the World Cup. Oh my God. It's going to be like Kazakhstan. Yeah, Kazakhstan and Canada.

I mean, I would probably watch if they did, like, a little side tournament next summer, but, like, it's probably not going to be that fun. and it's not, you're not going to have all of the, like, things that make the World Cup fun. Like, the World Cup is fun because you see all of these random countries, you know, melded together, and not because the soccer is actually, like, that awesome to watch, you know? Yeah, that's true. It definitely has the atmosphere multiplier. Yeah, and, you know, so a bunch of friendlies with the U.S. and the Netherlands, like, would be fine, but.

Also, don't forget the UAFA, what is it called, the Nations League is kicking off next year. So that's kind of a version of that. Yeah, and I mean, I guess we saw like the Copa Centenario was a made-up tournament, and people were kind of into it. Messy, briefly retired from this Argentinian national team because of what happened. I definitely would like to see Kobe Bryant in a suit walking across grass doing accurate pronunciations of Dutch names. Okay, moving on to first.

College Football. University in Florida and Tennessee of two of the most notable head coaching vacancies in college football right now. On Ringer University this week, Ben and Roger talk about each school and the big name coaches they've been linked to. So Tennessee is now joined Florida as two major programs that have coaching vacancies. They're always tied together. They're always tied together. Tennessee and Florida in the SEC East, in the bottom of the SEC East standings, apparently. And now both of them are looking for coaches. And like clockwork, two of them, two of the names that have been mentioned are John Gruden at Tennessee because no college football coaching search, especially in Knoxville, would be complete without John Gruden rumors and Chip Kelly at Florida.

Could you see either of these guys? Again, these have been sort of the white whales in college football coaching searches in each of the last couple of years. Could you see either of these guys coming to Tennessee or Florida come 2018? I am an enormous goddamn wet blanket about coaching rumors. I never think that the guy that you want for your school is going to choose your school. I always think that you're being way, you're way over estimating what your school is possible of and the interest of the other party. John Gruden, you know, he'll probably pick Tennessee after I say this, but John Gruden is not going to coach. We've been talking about this for 10 years. He makes $10 million to go on TV once a week.

he said before this year that he would be bad at coaching a college team that he would get them into NCAA probation instantly there's no reason to believe he would want to give up like the cushiest job any coach could ask for

being a commentator is a better job than being a coach if you had to pick between a job where you just talk about other people's decisions versus a job where you like spend all day trying to figure out how to win a football game, it's much easier to just talk about it than it is. I know. Look, we're talking about it right now.

We are. I don't disagree with you, Roger, but I want to tell you that as of the time that we're recording this podcast on Tuesday, according to Vegas, John Gruden is the odds on favorite. No. Plus 180. He's the favorite, followed by Mike Norvell, Chip Kelly, because of course you got to include Chip Kelly, Les Miles and Dan Mullen. Gruden, look, so here, I'm going to break this up into two things, okay?

Gruden, he's the favorite, according to Vegas. There have been reports that he's closer to taking this job than any of the positions he's been linked to in the past. So there's a lot of smoke here. I am still skeptical of Gruden for the reasons that you said. Chip Kelly, on the other hand, I was skeptical of until about 10 minutes before we started recording this podcast. When we started seeing flight tracking, Roger, it's flight tracking season. Love flight tracking season. They develop this technology so that people can, like, for the

good of the, like, American transportation system. And we use it for. We use it for coaches. We use it to look at which coaches are fly, which school planes are flying to which cities. For the record, they do this in Europe, too, with soccer players. But I like ours better because it's like state-owned planes like flying from like Lincoln, Nebraska to Florida. In this case, from Windsor Locks, Connecticut, which happens

to be near Bristol, which is where Chip Kelly works for ESPN in Gainesville, Florida. Which means this is inevitable, Roger. Chip Kelly is going to Florida. There's no other reason that someone would fly a plane from Connecticut to Florida unless they're, you know,

participating in the civil conflict trophy game. No other reason. I think that this is closer to happening than I would have believed even a little bit ago. I mean, so reports came out over the weekend. Pete Thammel of Yahoo Sports reported that Florida is, quote, thoroughly vetting Chip Kelly, which again, I sort of was like, okay, of course they're vetting Chip Kelly. What does that mean? They're going to go to.

They're being thorough, Roger. This is not just any vetting. This is thorough vetting. So they're looking into Chip Kelly's background. they're looking into his interest. If he's interested in the program, Chip Kelly in the past has sort of said he doesn't want to be in a program

that has a bunch of booster sort of glad-handed responsibilities. He wants to be able to just focus on coaching, not deal with all the bullshit. And SEC school is perfect for him. That being said, there's a lot of smoke here. There's a lot of sort of rumors floating around

to a level that I'm starting to get suspicious that this one might actually happen. I think Chip Kelly is going, TV. By the way, have you seen him on TV? He's really good at breaking down plays. He's also very good at coaching college football. He's very good at coaching college football. I just feel like the NFL, everything that happened to him there, he thought he could like sort of run teams the way he wanted to in college where, you know, he didn't have. He thought he could have control over the Eagles and 49ers in a way that you can't control a college team because there are so many. other things you have to do. You have to recruit. You have to deal with boosters. There are all those

things. He thought he could do that in the NFL. It turned out in both cases, that was not the case. It was not. So I imagine that right now Chip Kelly is having a fine time, not dealing with any of the things that he does not like about the job he's very good at. Okay, we're moving on from college football to college basketball. So on one shining podcast, Titus and Tate discuss coaches by playing a round of good guy, bad guy, and a bag guy with a G. This clip also features a pretty shockingly good Rick Petino impression from Tate. Take a lesson. This is called good guy, bad guy, bad guy.

Bad guy. So I don't know if you heard it. Good guy, bad guy, bag with a G guy. Bad guy. So we're going to do our good guy, which, by the way, we should mention this to you. We don't do hot seats here. We don't do hot seats. The way you do it is you say the coach is a good guy.

Yes. You don't say... Bruce Weber at Illinois when you left. Good guy. We made this point already, for those of you in the preview podcast, you already listened to it. But I don't know if you heard, we hit number one, so we got some new fans.

We're trying to explain it to them. So our good guy the week, Steve Prohm, Iowa State. Congrats. First time inaugural good guy. Loses to Missouri, 74-59. Michael Porter doesn't play. Missouri.

Is that Missouri? Two minutes. Yeah. Michael Porter, still probably not a great. kind of hoping for... We knew Iowa State was going to have a down year, so that's not that bad.

Turns around, loses to Milwaukee 7456. Loses by 18 to Milwaukee. Iowa State currently sitting at O. and 2. This is coming off a year where they had Deontay Burton in this nice run.

I mean, obviously they had the kneeing year. Right. They won the Big 12th Commerce Tournament last year. Yeah, Iowa State's been great. So you've expected great things for them. Right now, Steve Prohm is a very good guy. He's a very... We'll just say he's a good guy.

He's a good guy. Our bad guy. Who's your bad guy? the week. Bruce Pearl, boy, bad guy. Kind of a bad guy. Kind of a bad guy. And it's not for trying.

I think he does well. I think he gets out there and sets of things. Bruce Pearl, we got Auburn. We got this Chuck Person situation. He was one of the original ones in the FBI situation, FBI indictment. And they have two more guys, the video coordinator and his top assistant, like the guy that basically handles all of his stuff. Every coach has one guy where he just delegate everything to, basically.

So those two guys are now involved in the investigation. they've been pulled out. Auburn says, all right, we got a problem here, folks. Let's investigate. Bruce Pearl, we need you to be a part of the investigation.

We obviously need to investigate you. He's like, no, I'm all right. I'm okay. Interesting. You can't investigate me. You can't have any of my stuff. I don't need you to investigate me. I'm out.

So now Auburn's in this predicament of like, well, we're doing, you know, an investigation. He's not going to comply with it. Do we get rid of him? Yeah. Charles Barkley comes out and says,

if you get rid of Bruce, Pearl, that's going to set us back five years. Yep. Yep. What do you do with the bad guy? What do you do with the bad guy? This is a bad guy. Steve Proe, good guy.

He's a very good guy. Good guy. He's just not winning right now. Yeah. He's a good guy. Bruce Pearl, not so much. That's a bad guy. That's a bad, and we're also talking about a guy who ratted on Illinois.

What was like in 1989? I think that was what we got famous for. He's, yeah. This is like Bruce Pearl. He's been around the block of bad guys. This is going to live with Bruce. I mean, this is the Bruce Pearl story. He was a whistleblower on Illinois.

and was trying to throw them under the bus. And then now he has the Aircraft Barbecue at Tennessee. He has this at Auburn. I mean, this is going to... It's hard not to just laugh at any time Bruce Burl gets caught up in NCAA stuff based on what happened. And I am sorry to Rick Petino,

who I really wanted to be the first bad guy, but he's like too good for that. Rick Petino's listening like, damn, I thought I had it. I thought I had the bad guy of the week. I worship the floor that my players walk on. So our bad guy, B-A-G guy. B-A-G guy of the week. Who do you think?

Because you and I had different opinions. Do we settle on the same one? No, we did. Is Bryce Drew a good recruiter? Bryce Drew? Thank you. That's what I thought. I forgot.

I forgot. You were trying to, okay. Sorry. I was trying to pull you away, Teddh. I'm trying to lock you back in. Bryce Drew landed a five-star recruit, Darius Garland. Yes. I don't follow recruiting.

No. I do know this guy because I know this because Indiana was after him. First five-star recruit. Speaking of bad guys. First five-star recruit in Vanderbilt history, I think. Congratulations. to Bryce Drew, dropping the bag. Homer would be proud.

Jake Debler, John Debler's brother is on staff there. Nice. I like that. It might have been a Debler drop in the bag. Congratulations to Jake Debler. Great, great bag drop on this one.

Please don't do it for Romeo Lankford. The Hoosers need Romeo Lankford. They just got their shit pushed in by Indiana State. And they got another guy, Simi Shihitu, who is also... I'm sorry, what? Yeah, I didn't curse it you.

I don't curse. I'm trying to be the Dean Smith of podcasting. But yeah, he's another one that might be a five-star that jumps in there. So you got Langford, got Garland, you got shit to. Yeah. That's interesting. I don't know.

I will say Garland, there was a report that he went to Homer Drew's camp as a kid, and that's what really drove him over the years. I don't want to go play for. Yeah, I mean, this one actually makes sense. Garland grew up, then he grew up in, like, Northern Indiana. He grew up in Indiana, Gary, Indiana, I think. By Valpo, so he's got the whole Valpo thing. Yeah, but still, we're just like making fun of bad guys.

So, bad guys. Drop in the bag. Congratulations to Bryce Drew. Okay, that's it. That's the round up for this week. I hope you have a great weekend. And remember, you can find the full-length versions of all these podcasts and subscribe at the ringer.com slash podcasts.