The Ringer NFL Show - Baker Mayfield Trade Reaction, Plus the Top 10 Coaches in the NFL

Episode Date: July 6, 2022

Kevin, Ben, and Steven begin by reacting to the news of Baker Mayfield being traded to the Carolina Panthers. Then, they list their top 10 coaches going into the 2022-23 NFL season. Host: Kevin Clark, Ben Solak, and Steven Ruiz Associate Producer: Stefan Anderson Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joanna, do you ever wish you could definitively prove that you have the right opinions about movies? Uh, yeah, Neil, because I do have the right opinions about movies and television, right, Dave? No, because I'm more right about those things, and I demand trial by content. Oh, boy, what is trial by content? Each week, we'll take on a huge question. Each of us will bring a choice and combine with listener submissions and your votes, we will come to a decision. It's trial by content every Tuesday on Spotify, the ringer.com, wherever you're listening right now. Don't let Neil win.

Don't let Dave win. It is the ringer NFL show. Part of the Ringar Podcast Network. I am Kevin Clark. We recorded a whole show, a whole hour-long show that you will get to hear at the end of this segment. But the moment that we logged off, the moment we said goodbye to each other for a couple of days. Baker Mayfield was traded to the Carolina Panthers for a conditional fifth round pick. $8 million in cap relief for the Cleveland Browns.

There's a lot to get through. We will start with a Panthers fan who, this seems like the feather on the cap of anyone who's prayed for Stephen Ruiz's downfall over the past couple of months. He did not want this. Eventually he gave in. He resigned himself to it. On Wednesday, July 6th, you were feeling how, Stephen Ruiz? The same way I was feeling on July 5th.

I knew this was going to happen. I have no faith in this organization. No faith in the leadership. No faith in ownership. No faith in the coaching staff. No faith in the front office. Now I have no faith in the quarterback. I haven't had faith since Cam Newton left.

It's just... The first time. The first time. The first time. It's just more of the same. It's just the team that isn't willing to completely rebuild and they're just trying to find basically the equivalent of get-rich-quick schemes. And they're looking in all the wrong places and places that other teams have tried

and it didn't work. Sam Darnold was just a disaster in New York. They tried to trade for him and salvage his career. It didn't work because he's a bad quarterback. The same thing is going to happen with Baker Mayfield. I think Baker Mayfield is a better quarterback than Sam Donald. I think he was the best option out of all of the options that they had, except for one, which is just play a young guy who's bad and just start over,

just tank. And I know the coaching staff is never going to do that, but that's the problem when you give a lame duck coach one more year. They should have moved on after year two when it's become abundantly clear that Matt Rule just doesn't have it. And you can just watch the press conferences and the things he says when he's saying, I think you can always tell when a coach is at the end of the line when they start. saying like you can't see it yet but I'm telling you we're in improving that's never actually happened so I'm not surprised at all I mean it's it's not a bad deal in a vacuum like

I think Baker Mayfield's a good value at the cost they paid for him it's just going to prevent something that this team badly needs he's almost too good of a quarterback to be starting this year for the which is a bit like he's not that good of a quarterback which tells you everything you need to know about the Panthers. Ben, take this anywhere you want to go, brother. All right. So the Carolina Panthers sent in the Matt Rule era have spent a third round pick on Will Greer. They have signed Teddy Bridgewater, which was a relatively large Teddy Bridgewater contract,

had $33 million guaranteed. They cut Cam? I remember that right, Stephen? Yes. Yeah, was that rule? Yeah, okay. Then they traded for Darnal, a second, a sixth, and a fourth. and then they traded Bridgewater away

and they traded a sixth for him and they paid 70% of his salary when they did that. And then they picked up Sam Donald's fifth year option. We can't forget that they had the ability to just choose not to pay Sam Donald $20 million and instead we're like, but what if maybe he's good? And then they signed camp back. I think, I don't know if the timeline of that is correct or not.

No, it's right, it is. The only thing you have wrong is Matt Rowe did not draft Will Greer. I will not. Right. Cut career for the list. So, okay, Matt Will then does draft his quarterback, which is Matt Corral.

A euphoria character. He trades up, trades a future third to move up in the third round to get Corral, which if you're asking yourself, does trading a third round pick to move up into the third round,

is that good business? No. And then to have Corral and then they trade for Baker. So the real, and it's important to note that last year for multiple games, they started PJ Walker.

Who's not even in this list? He was just, they just brought him in the NFL. He was just in the building. That, we, okay, this is bad.

There is a, there is a thought that kind of rolls around in football space that's like, if you don't have the quarterback, you should just acquire a bunch of quarterbacks and try out a bunch of quarterbacks and then just hopefully you'll hit on one eventually.

And this is just case and point argument against that. Where it's just, you're burning capital and you're creating instability and there's not an area for development and competition, like training camp competition, it's not going to help

the way you think it's going to help. There's always going to be a trap door after a guy plays like six bad quarters. It just isn't good. So the only question I have left is what did they trade for Jimmy? Because they've already spent all the other than capital. I don't know what's left.

They said Robbie Anderson for Jimmy? I think that's probably your best option. And then you'll definitely, between Jimmy, Darnold, Baker, Corral, and PJ Walker. they'll definitely have at least one quarterback somewhere. And there was still a grimm situation. Possibly bringing back Cam Moon.

So you can't totally. No, they can't do that. But should they? As coach. If Jimmy is on the list of possible future panthers quarterbacks, I'm just, I just, the only thing I can give them credit for is not trying to do this with Josh Rosen.

It feels like they're that guy on Twitter that thinks every first round quarterback that failed just needs a better chance. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're the NFL team equivalent. I would also, then, to piggyback on your point that there's this idea of just keep churning out the quarterback position, that strategy is less effective when the person doing the churning and in charge of the quarterback position, once you're there, is Matt Rule. It's not like we got a super staff here. Like, honestly, and it sounds crazy, but like, if this was Sean McVeigh's strategy, if you didn't have Matthew Stafford and you tried to replace. Jared Goff by taking a bunch of former first round picks and trying them out, I'd say, hey,

that might make sense. He'll maximize them. There's no evidence that rule can maximize anything. And I know that it's stupid to compare the two. I'm just saying that if you're going to do the bulk strategy, if you're going to do the quantity, not quality strategy, you might as well try to get a super coach in there and pay him a trillion dollars, maybe even like a Sean Payton and say, hey, fix this. That is the only way that kind of strategy works.

At this point, this is floundering. This is not having a strategy. This is overpaying. I mean, the other part of it is you overpay for every single, I mean, financially, you just end up overpaying for every single quarterback. Sam Darnel in the building and the same building as Baker Mayfield makes no sense. Having Matt Corral there makes no sense. I just, I don't, this is not a new revelation, Stephen, but there's no plan here.

Like, if you have two quarterbacks, you have none. What if you get nine? Yeah. And the thing is, like, if we just totally would 100% back. in this. And we say Baker Mayfield has had stretches of games in his career in which he has looked like an acceptable starter in the league, right? There was the

back half of 2020, I think, or whatever it was. Like, that was nice. And they traded a conditional fifth round pick for them two years in the future. That is in and of itself a good transaction. It is within the context of the team having

just no idea what to be offensively. Like, I just remembered when you were talking about Matt Ruhl running the ship, But they fired Joe Brady. They were like, this is the problem. Joe Brady. And was Brady the solution? Not maybe not, but he definitely was not the problem.

You know what I mean? Like this is totally aimless. It's completely rudderless. And so you add Baker, it's like, all right, good transactional value. Like fifth, future conditional fifth for Baker and they're only paying him what, like $8 million or something? That's good. It just doesn't feel good because nothing about the offensive direction, especially

the quarterback position in Carolina feels good. And what makes another layer. of this that just makes it even stranger is that I don't think stylistically, I think Baker's a better quarterback than darn him. Stylistically, the type of offense you have to run to get the most out of those two guys is exactly the same. They're going to be running the same offense they were running under Joe Brady, which was just a bunch of boot, get him outside of the pocket, call play action, and let him read between three routes, like half-field concepts, or spread things out and run option routes. That's what the Browns did to make Baker Mayfield as good as he was in 2020.

So you're running the same offense. You just fired your offensive coordinator for running less than a year ago. Like, why are we trading for the same stylistic quarterbacks? If you're going to attempt this, throw a bunch of darts at the dartboard thing, try it with different types of quarterbacks. They just haven't done that. It makes no sense. Nothing makes sense about this team.

Nothing. Is he, is Baker at least the best quarterback on the roster? Yes. Okay. Yes. Yes. Ben, you're okay? I was feeling like you were laboring through that.

No, I was doing me a thought. There's a lot of quarterbacks to remember on that roster as we've gone through. Stadium seating. Stadium seating in the quarterback room this year. Yes. It is astounding that this team traded for Stefan Gilmore at the deadline last year. That is amazing. That this team was so confident in their ability to compete that they traded for

Stefan Gilmore at the deadline. Holy Moses. Oh boy. Okay, let's unpack a couple things here. Let's go to the brown side of this. Was this just ending the Baker drama? I mean, there seems to be some. So the Sean Watson hearing happened last week.

Judge Robinson asked for written arguments by the 11th. So, I mean, listen, there could be some sort of crazy news drop at any point. But my guess is it doesn't happen until at least next week when Judge Robbins can sit down with everything. The NFL is asked for an indefinite suspension of at least a year. It's kind of a misnomer that Joe Robinson's doing anything, because as long as Joe Robinson gives a punishment, any punishment, then the NFL can appeal to itself and then just hand down a year long or indefinite suspension. So it just like the only, if the NFL wanted to push through an indefinite suspension, they can.

Like that's along and short of it. But having said that, there is no clarity. And this is, again, we go back to what, what already happened in March where there were all sorts of Browns fans were like, well, the Brown side inside info, what the punishment's going to be. No, they don't, because that'll be a massive scandal, A. But B, this is not some 4D chess thing. And we're past the point of saying this is Brown's 40 chess. This looked to me like this was just the Browns wanted to end the Baker Mayfield saga well before Camp then so lack. Yeah, no, I agree. I think that reading into the timing in this sort of a situation with this many moving parts, is, you know, trying to read something out of outfit soup. It's just, it's illegible.

They also made sure the Browns did that they had a quarterback who they would feel okay playing behind a just on Watson suspension, not named Baker Mayfield. And that's Jacobi Brissette, who is literally like 2022's version of like, do you need a guy to play a few games?

It's Jacobi or it's Teddy. He's been doing that for a while. Yeah, exactly. Remember that Texans Patriots game a couple years ago where he started because Jimmy Grapa got hurt while Brady was suspended? That was when he started his assent into being a guy who can play. No spoilers, but that game gets referenced in the coaching rankings in like an hour.

But yeah, like he did it. He did it for Tua recently. He did it for the Colts for that entire post-left year. Like it's, it is acceptable to play Jacobia Besefrenicend a period of time. So I don't think they needed Baker. And clearly this, I think, was a matter of, of financials, right? Like Baker gave up some base salary.

The Browns and the Panza decided to figure out who's going to pay what. It's a, I don't even know if we know the conditions on the, pick yet. Like, it's just a very, please get Baker-Madefield out of our building trade. And it was, I think, hammering out those details that led to the timing, more than any indication when the Sean Watson's suspension. And I don't think it's a bad tradeoff for the Browns necessarily, like the Baker

to Jacoby. I think Baker's a better quarterback, the margins are small enough. I agree. The locker room turmoil that would create, having Baker around outweighs the difference in talent. Okay. What does Baker have to do to establish himself this year, Stephen, as, like, the guy in Carolina.

Like, is there anything he can do? Or even in the, you know, he's not going to get the big mega contract. And maybe people thought he was two years ago. That's out. And even if he has a good year this year, that's out. But what are the expectations he needed to set for himself where he says, okay, I can be a starter in this week? I would say something that resembles his rookie season, like in terms of production,

like not overwhelming numbers, but competent numbers. If the Panthers win, if they have a winning record, which I don't think they're going to have, but if they have a winning record, I think that's enough too. So just getting to nine and eight, eight, eight, nine is enough for him because I do think he has talent. And it's easy to watch his tape and pick out plays where you say, there are only like 15 quarterbacks in the world that can do that. My problem with his game is everything surrounding the back. I agree. Ben, is Matt Correll good?

No. Well, that's tough. This has been the Ringer NFL show, part of the Ringer podcast. Matt Corral. It's always funny if you don't expand on it, but go ahead. Yes. Matt Corral, I'll say I sent his explanation. If Matt Crowell were to be good, he would require time, investment, development, a long runway.

And he doesn't get that in Carolina because the veteran quarterback's over there. And I don't think his physical traits are overwhelming to the point where you give him that benefit of the doubt. Like you would, like a Josh Allen who's college tape was underwhelming. Yeah. And again, the bills built a, in retrospect, we didn't know what at the time, but historically good infrastructure around Josh Allen with offensive coaches, offensive line weapons, building out from there, training for Stefan Diggs. But there's a lot of pieces to go to build around a project.

And I don't trust the current Pandans regime to do any of that, frankly. Right. How did the bills do that by taking all of the competent people out of Carolina and putting them in their front? That's right. That's right. The rest behind. That's right.

And like when Liam Cohen, when Liam Cohen is the coach of Carolina next year, he's going to get to bring in his own guys and it's going to be a total stop start. So like, I don't have faith that any of these guys are going to be in Carolina all that, all that long term. So that's it. Anything else, guys? Keep pounding. No, absolutely not.

Stop pounding. Keep pounding. When did you become at peace, Ruiz, that this was going to happen? After the draft. Would we define Stephen as at peace just generally? He said his mood has not changed from yesterday, which is astounding. I'm at peace with the Panthers. I expect nothing.

They can't let me down at this point. The thing that I'm upset most about is that now I have to write about this. I have to work. You do? Yeah. What a poor fella. Tough one. You guys can help me.

Can I, can I ask a little question though? Yeah. Where, where, where Jimmy? Where, where Jimmy go? There's not a lot of options. I, I, I, Cleveland has clearly been the team that is, most will trade anything for our quarterback. please take our quarterback, whatever trade you want to do,

we just need this guy out of the building. And because they've been there, I don't think there's enough recognition on the fact that San Francisco is also there. Where, like, it is a very awkward position if they have to bring Jimmy into the locker and into the team next year. So, like, they're at, like,

hoping for a Sam Bradford training camp injury place right now in terms of trading brothel, which is a really scary place to be. It is one of the scariest places to be. But like, I don't, when I said a couple of weeks ago that I felt like there was a scenario when Jim McGratholo starts a couple of games for the 49ers this year, 49ers fans got really mad at me. But I just don't, I, there's just not a lot of pathways for Jimmy G going forward.

They could cut them, but like, even then, where's he going to go? He'll be starting in Carolina by November. He's going to run for a touchdown and do the I'm back thing that can be. I'm going to go back to something someone in the league told me. I shared it on this podcast at the time. time. When they gave Cam Newton, what was it, $10 million to years ago? Is that it? Yeah. That was last year. That was last year? Yes, it was last. Jesus. Someone texted me in the league and said that they, that $10 million would be better served going to Matt Wool's buyout. I don't disagree.

That's it. All right. Guys, uh, here comes the coaches show. Matt Rule, not on there. Close. Just missed the cut. all right enjoy the coaches it is the ringer NFL show part of the ringer podcast network i am kevin carg joined on a wednesday afternoon by stephen rui stephen hello hello and ben solac who just talks about how much he cries at weddings and uh stephen said you don't have the dog in him and so like corrected him and said he has a very weepy dog yeah which is a great line out of so long. Listen, we're not,

we can't, we can't redox last year's wedding summer content. We need to have a different non-secular to open the pods.

Last, last summer was wedding summer. This summer we need something new. What is, I did, I did a radio hit

this morning, and they asked me what, like, my top natural disaster was. And I got into a debate with the guy over whether the volcanoes

are, like, I put volcanoes on fraud watch. I don't, I don't know, what's more shocking that Steve is doing a radio hit in the beginning of July

that he got asked about what the best natural disaster is or that he got an argument with a random radio host about what the best natural disaster is. Where in the episode, where in the hit was the natural disaster question

right at the end? At the end. Yeah. I said I've watched the tape on volcanoes. I'm questioning lava's three cone time. I couldn't run away from lava. My pick was tornado. Oh, man.

That's an early July talk radio question. I really like that. All right. They just springing on you. No preparation. Just like, oh, okay. All right, we're doing coaches. I'm excited for this one in part,

Stephen, because when we teased the coaches one last month, you demanded that you be on it. You called for the ball. You called for an ISO. Everybody's clearing out. Like, I'm not even sure if so like and I belong on this episode.

This is you. I agree. The Thanos, what is he cooking meme with Stephen Ruiz. But I'm excited about it. We all have. our lists and let's let's just get to it. Like I don't think

that there's a lot of explanation for what this is. This is top coaches in 2022. There's going to be some lifetime achievement awards in here just because of how this works. There's no frankly, there's no new coaches on really anybody's list. I don't think. I was looking at a list this morning from somebody

else and I thought, oh, it's an old list because I saw Loving Smith's name. And then I realized Levy Smith's head coach. There is. in the NFL in 2022. You know, it's July. You know, these things kind of cycle out of your brain every once in a while.

But yep, there he was. So let's get to it. Ben Solac. Let's do 10 through 8. Awesome. Yeah, that's the top of my tier 3. 10 for me is Kyle Shanahan. 9 for me is Brable.

Eight for me is Pete Carroll. I struggled a lot with placing these three guys. I knew so I wanted them, but I struggled a lot. I shuffled them around before we did the show. but I'm happy with them as my tier three. I don't know. I know we might have a Carroll debate. I know my Vrabel ranking was controversial

to some people that I bounced this off of before the show. But I feel happy with those three down there in two, three. Is the controversy with, I'm calling out Solac. Yeah, let's go, let's go. Let's go. Because he had Rable ahead of Carol this morning, as of this morning.

Oh, no. And he backed out of it. Coward. Yes, because the whole reason, okay, so I have a group of people to whom I send pretty much all the top 10 lists a couple hours before we do the show. And Stephen is in that group 10.

There's nothing to be done about it. And the reason I do that is to get feedback, right? Because like, I don't know, I'm one guy. I have one opinion on coaches and whatever. I had initially had Shanahan 8, Vrabel 9, and Carol at 10. And I realized that, especially my rankings at the top of the list,

which really, as Kevin alluded to, reward kind of lifetime achievement. It was unfair to me to be using a different logic there, the top tip. Well, obviously, these guys are the best coaches, because they've been doing this amazing forever. And then to discount Carol as far down as I did. What I'll say for Carol is this, like, I had him at 10. I now have him at 8. I've kind of been pushing him around this year three. I think Carol's a better coach, like, in a vacuum, like, who does Ben like? I think he's a better coach in some of the guys I have above him. But you have to get knocked

down in the offseason in which, in the year in which your star quarterback forced his way out of the building. And for as much drama as there is about, and for much consternation about how to build an offense around Russ and what's Russ can look like as the ages and yada yada or whatever. The fact of the matter is that it's the head coach's responsibility. I would argue in a changing NFL, the primary responsibility to keep the star players happy. Whoever are the straws that store the drink of the franchise on the football field, you got to keep them in the building, you got to keep him feeling good.

Carol was to some degree willingly, but some degree unwillingly, unable to keep Russ happy in the building in Seattle. and accordingly is now staring down the barrel of a Drew Locke Gino-Smith quarterback camp competition. And to me, that necessitates a bit of a falling down the ranks. Okay. Stephen has a lot to say. So I'm going to give them the floor.

I think that is fair for most situations. But do you know Russell Wilson? Like, he thinks he's Drew Briggs when he's nothing like Drew Brie's. And when you have a quarterback who I think Carol did the best job possible of placating for all these years, and putting him in a situation where he could succeed and grow this inflated confidence that he has in his game. I'm sorry. This is a Carol ranking, not a Russ ranking.

This just became a Russ. No, but you said that you knocked him down because he couldn't keep Russ happy. And I would argue that it wasn't in the team's best interest to make Russ happy. Right. And that's why I said like to some degree willingly, right, to some degree, like he really tried to keep Russ happy. But also certainly, I think to some degree, they were kind of like, okay, if you want to go,

like we've done enough for you. We've built around you. We've kind of done this, this kind of reached a natural conclusion point. We're going to trade you, right? I do think there is a degree to which it made sense for the Seahawks to step into the next era. But right now, if you could choose between having Russell Wilson or Drew Locke and Geno Smith, you would choose Russell Wilson, independent of any opinions that you have about right. And I think that for every year that Carol was able to buy of Russ staying around

and Russ continuing to hang in Seattle and try to win more playoff games and win more Super Bowls, is to his credit. And now that he officially is not able to do so anymore, to me that there's got to be a knock. There simply has to be. I have ranked above him, the guy in Green Bay, who's kept an extremely mercurial, extremely controversial quarterback, happy enough in a weird context to continue being Super Bowl contenders in 2022. To me, that matters. Because Rogers isn't delusional about who he is as a quarterback.

The offense fits him. He doesn't want this offense that doesn't exist. There's no offense where Russ is Drew Brees. And that's the offense Russ wants you to run with him. And you're going to get me in trouble because I might invoke the name Golden Tate if we're talking about ugly breaks up. Breakups and balladry. Whoa.

Let's pull ourselves out of this tailspin here. And I just want to ask, just as a coach, as a coach, not a someone, I think it's a very dangerous game you start playing, not only when you start mentoring, mentioning golden tape, but when you start just judging quarterbacks, excuse me, judging coaches based on keeping quarterback savvy.

I think that's hard. It's very situation dependent. It's also part of that just falls on the GM, like contractually and just what the talent they acquire around them. Like, it's not just the head coach's job. It's sometimes it's the OC's job. It's really hard to put all that at the feet of the head coach. just to clear something out

the Golden Tate thing was about his comments after leaving Seattle about the quarterbacks he's played with and the same with Doug Baldwin Quad receivers don't like playing with him for a reason and it's because the offense just doesn't work like a normal offense. Stop making this a Rust thing. It's a Carroll thing and it's fair. You said it was fair

at the top. I have Pete Carroll at 10. Only because I had a hard time there are not 10 great coaches in the NFL. Doesn't happen. Like I saw a couple lists. I saw Doug Peterson on a couple, which I, listen, I really like Doug Peterson. I think he's a heck of a coach. Frank Reich was on a couple. Kevin Sifansky was on a couple.

But given the track record of Feet Carroll, I'm just going to throw him in here. He knows how to build a team. He understands, I mean, in an era where passing yardage went up every single year, he built the most dominant defense of the era. There has to be something said for this. He wins consistently. And I think, again, going back to the Greg Rosenthal point made about the St. early in the off season that people tend to recirculate for good reason. Like somehow winning games has become underrated in football. And we just sit around talking about process and all that. And Pete Carroll wins more games than he loses. And if you want to get a coach who wins games,

Pete Carroll is a pretty good option. So I'm taking that. But what I want to ask you guys is even if Ruiz, even if you try to keep him happy and run that sort of, like I just think that Pete Carroll is going to run the offense he wants to run. Like we heard so much about layups last year and mid-range throws and all this stuff and it just did nothing ever seem to materialize. It doesn't matter who's there.

It barely matters who's the quarterback. They're going to play Carroll ball. We say that, but they've had a high pass rate on early downs over the last couple years. He gets, he gets criticism about his refusal to evolve, but you look at the numbers and they have evolved. They passed the ball more.

They let Russ Cook. It didn't work. He hired new defensive assistance because people said his scheme got old. Like, he's taking those steps that we usually criticize him for. I think it's just unfair. And like you said, he wins games. He went to the playoffs before Russ got there. He went to the playoffs with the Patriots before Belichick came and blew everything up.

He's made the playoffs without Russ. I will say I'm very last note on Carol, very excited to see what the defensive side of the ball looks like with those new hires that Stephen alluded to Sean decided called Scott coming into change the way they do things structurally in the back end. It's not so much like massive sweeping scheme change as much it is like a little bit of a philosophical change. And I think that, like, if Carol's higher on this list next year, I think it'll be because

of that. It won't be because of anything to do with Russ or Locke or whatever, offensive philosophy. It's going to be because defensively he read where the league was going and decided to make a change on his defensive coaching staff to get on that wave. And to me, that's impressive coaching, right? If you are willing to change how you think about playing ball on a certain side of the field because of directions the league is taking, that's fluidity and that's hard for a lot the coaches to do.

All right. It sounded Ruiz, like you wanted to argue about Kyle Shanahan on Solax number nine. Yeah, I think that's too low. I understand. Shane has 10. He's number 10. Yes. Channy 10, Brable 9, Farrell 8.

That's my question is how could you possibly put Brable ahead of him on what grounds? I mean, so we did the Titans thing a lot last year. And the, it's funny because like, throughout all of the like, well, they're doing this and they're doing that, and this is probably overrated, this and not everything. The thing I would always say is like,

but Brable's pretty good coach, right? And I, the Titans are a tricky team to parse. Analytics Twitter had a difficult time with it a little bit earlier this week, following some comments made by John Robinson. But the reality is that both Brable and Robinson. Wait,

wait, can I, can I give one nugget about that? I just, I just want to share this. I really like John Robinson. I really like John Robinson. And we've been effusive in his praise.

And a couple of years, years ago, I was writing a lot about analytics. And I had been, I guess geography-wise, I'd probably been in, um, in Atlanta before I was in, in Tennessee. And so I was in John's office. And he's got a great office, big old, big old wooden desk, got a lot of photos with him with country music singers. Great, great vibes in there. Um, but I'm in his office. And I guess I had just, I think the day before I'd been with Dimitrov, he's talking about process and analytics and all this stuff. And so I just throw a question in the middle. I was like, hey man, what do you think about analytics?

And John Robinson goes, hey, man, do you want to meet our whole analytics team? And I said, sure. And he goes, you're looking at it. That's a good bit. Here's the thing. It's not that John Robinson is any more anti-analytic than some other NFL GMs. It's just that he's a little bit better at Zingers than some other GM. Dude, how good is that?

I was just like, oh, man. This was like maybe four and a half years ago, something like that. Oh, brother. So, like Robinson to me was like a fringe top 10 GM. Frable's a fringe top 10 coach. They have like a fringe top 10 quarterback, top 14 quarterback, and they're just like fine, right? They're not spectacular.

And certainly, Shanahan has Brable beat in terms of the schematic influence he has on his offense. There's no two ways about that. But Brable has hired good assistance, brought in good free agents, and then has a track record of winning

games, right? Like, he has a career winning percentage of 0.631, 63%, which is above, above Harbaugh, it's above McDermy, it's above Carol, it's above Shanehan who's point 481, and obviously that's got some drama to it as well. Brable's also consistently going to the playoffs, right? So is it like home runs?

No, but it's doubles. And it's not sexy, but it's good, it's consistent, and it's kept the Titans as a very, very, very high floor team. When they were the number one seed in the AFC last season, that was a little too big for your britches. But in general, there are a very consistent, reliable, I think a double-digit win team under Raibel, who has done a good job enduring

coaching changes in terms of his and injuries and still turning out a pretty, pretty good team. Shanahan is the most difficult guy to rank. He is so hard to figure out where to go because he's the best of any of these guys on terms of like offensive coordinator, right? It's like him and Reid are the best offensive coordinator than Belgium's best defense coordinator in terms of their impact on the side of the ball. Shanahan is up there with the elite, elite, elite, elite, elite.

However, Shanahan has this kind of thing going on here where he just hates half of his players randomly. I think, again, in a changing NFL, I am increasingly caring about a coach's ability to manage their players, manage their assistance, and caring less about, like, how much do you call plays, schematically, whatever. I think that a growing important skill is bringing people into the building and wanting them to continue to be there. And Shanahan has a bad track record with that that is difficult to overlook. What team does Debo Samuel play for right now? It plays the 49ers. What team does AJ Brown play for right now?

He's trying to get out of that, John. Let's him Debo Samuel. Debo Samuel was just trying to leave, brother. What team does AJ Brown play for right now? Philadelphia Eagles, go birds. So he's not that good at keeping his best, literally his best player on the roster. And you brought up the assistant things.

I mean, just look at the around the league, at the head coaches, the guys that have worked under Shanahan. Matlow Flores higher on your list. He worked under Shanahan. Who is one of the best defensive coordinators in the league? What team does he coach for right now? So, oh, D'emika Ryan's, but I don't know how much. What about Robert Sala?

Listen, listen. What about Mike McDade? Like, the argument just totally falls apart when you make the same argument for Shane. Also, I don't know. Why are we ranking therapists who keep everybody happy? Yes, exactly. If Braebel went to another team, what is one thing you can guarantee that team will be good at? There is nothing.

With Shanehan, they're going to have a top 10 offense no matter what. All right. Number one, you're absolutely correct on Shanahan assistance. If I had said that Braeble was better at managing assistance than Shanehan, I was wrong to say so. I love, like, Shanehan's defense coaching, staff hiring, I think is tremendously to his credit. It's more so to me about the players, but the management, Shanahan obviously has a big impact on draft picks, and that doesn't go well. That gets into that GM head coaching line that gets a little bit blurred. We talked about that with Belichick when we're ranking GMs.

But Shanehan absolutely has more control of her personnel than a lot of head coaches and also is not good at doing that. And that, I think, matters who his head coaching ranking. That's, that's that side of the argument. the therapist thing, absolutely 100% unequivocally matters. Where's Tomlin for you? Where's Harbaugh for you? Because these, these, freaking, where's Andy Reid? Like obviously Andy Reid's an incredible offensive mind.

There's no two ways about that. But Andy Reid has also been ludicrously good. Over the course of his career, I'm managing changing assistance and changing personalities. Think about the big personalities he brought in Philadelphia. Think about the big personalities he's had there in Kansas City. This is a very extremely, critically real thing in being a head coach in 2022. is do people like you? And if you're,

if you either have Belichick, where you have such a proven track record of winning that people will just fall in line, or you have young, you know, charismatic, growing coaches, your Tom and your Harbaugh's, your proven leaders, who will get people into the building and figure out how to organize, muster, and orient towards Super Bowl wins.

This is the entire idea behind Doug Peterson and Jacksonville, by the way, a move that we all lauded, which, oh, Urban Myers, schematic, oh, winning history, whatever. He sucked. Nobody liked him. Let's bring in Doug who's an adult who gives people ice cream and people will enjoy being here. And once we have that as a reality, then we can go and build into the next things. But this is about workplace environment.

Head coach is very responsible. But I don't, I don't, I think there's a difference between managing 53. One of the reasons Bill Belichick is one of the best, literally like therapists of all time. Jimmy Johnson, best to ever do it. Best to ever do it. I heard a story. He was in Miami podcast a couple weeks ago. And he said that I was listening to it a couple of weeks ago.

He was probably years ago. But he was talking about how there was one guy on his staff who was a good coach, but he was a bad recruiter. And so he was screwing up with all the recruits. And so he decided to just put the guy in Key West. That was his recruiting territory where crucially there's like 10 high school football players. And the guy didn't realize he was demoted. It was like, this is great. But like, that was the psychological head game you have to play as a coach.

When you're managing a staff and you're managing a roster. I mean, like that, there's a whole NFL film thing called when Jimmy was on the Cowboys College. called Jimmy Johnson and psychologist, which is as good as anything I've ever seen. Okay. And one of the reasons Belichick is so good at that. It's he understands the locker room and, you know, okay,

we can't give this guy a contract here until we take care of this guy. Right. Financial stuff. There's so much that goes into that. I completely agree with that. I got a note from someone outside, um, outside the current NFL right now a couple weeks ago.

saying basically like, is Tyree Kill's media tour not proving the Kansas City is the best organization in sports? Right. That like that there was there, there was some, that he was there and he thought these things and he just never said them. Like, there's something to be said for that. I completely agree with you. But when you're talking about individual test cases, I don't think you can you can say, okay, well, he made AJ Brown upset. He made Russell Wilson upset. I don't think you can, some people are just wired to, like, we don't kill Greg Popovich for Kauai Leonard wanting to leave.

Like, I just don't think that that's, you can take. I think it's an aggregate. It's an aggregate. It's piece of the pie. It's 100% is. And that's the thing is like, you know, ranking coaches, we focus on the coach's piece of the pie. But absolutely. Like, there's no doubt that like, I think AJ Brown leaving, for example, is a lot more about, like, Robinson and the way he wants to deal with their cap space over the next two years as opposed to like liking Brable, right?

So there's always like, there are pieces of the pie. There's like a sum percentage that's like, as Kevin says, difficult to divine. For me, I got, I got like, like Kevin says, not 10 good coaches. I got like seven coaches here who all are just like incredible, like their teams win a lot. They win in the playoffs. They got great ranking. I got to parse them somehow. And to me, the things that I start parsing for is like longevity, right?

How long have you done this? But also like, are you able as a coach to bring people into the building and integrate them? And that is a lot less about X's and O is more about Jimis and Joe, more about people. That's one of the things that I used to discern just because how to freaking use something here, man. The way I viewed it, the way I viewed it, number one is the old Bear Bryant line, which is if you can take your guys and beat them and then take their guys and beat them,

like that's the whole thing, right? Like, just be able to take 53 guys and win with whoever it is. That was the old Bear Bryant line, and that's probably a good metric from a scheme standpoint. But I just think it's who takes 50, guys who are either given to them or assembled by them, if they have enough personnel power, and then makes them better than the sum of their parts.

That's just the way I viewed it. And that means psychology, but it also means scheme. It means roster management. It means understanding how to rest these guys. It means understanding, I mean, we'll get to McVeigh. Like, these guys don't even play in preseason anymore. Like, there's just certain edges. There are hundreds of thousands of reasons

why a team is successful on a given play over the given course of the season. And finding those edges is the most important thing a coach can be. do and then building a franchise around some of those edges and then eventually winning a Super Bowl. That's how you judge a coach in my book. I also think when you're invoking names like Mike Tomlin and John Harbaugh, those are guys that have long recorded track records of being locker room managers.

I don't think we have that same history on Brable. I don't think he's been a coach long enough to establish himself as one of those guys. I think we're giving them a lot of credit for things that we can't really say are happening. I would also say that that part is important to me. It almost, how does this guy manage the locker room thing is almost a cousin of the, like we scouted this guy for character thing

where you just hear a bunch of anecdotes and it's kind of a little bit of knowledge to be a dangerous thing situation where it's like, oh, this guy really handled this well, it's like, well, maybe he's also just a complete lunatic who alienated half the roster, but he managed three good,

he managed three good situations, you know, like that, unless you're there every single day. And I'd also argue that, you know, Ron Rivera and I've talked about this a lot going back to. Bronoevera was super spooked by the Joe Philbin Bulligate thing. And he was in, so he started going into the locker room a lot. And one of the things I think people on the outside don't know is that coaches are very rarely in the locker room. And locker rooms tend to be player driven.

And they tend to, the best teams tend to have ownership within the locker room. And so you have to actually have a good core veterans, which again goes to the GM. How do you manage the contracts? How do you get certain guys who were in year 12 to sign for $4 million and stay and be the heartbeat of the locker room? Like that stuff really, really matters. You can't always, now coaches can deputize players to do that, but you can't always lay that at the feet of individual coaches. And just one more thing on the Rayble thing. I was reading a quote from Kevin Byard yesterday where he was talking about the defensive problems in 2020.

And his diagnosis was that there was no coordination. They didn't have a defensive coordinator. Raibald didn't name one. there was kind of like a by-committee thing. And the defense was discombobulated because of that. I think it's hard to give him credit for organizing the team when you have your best player on defense saying stuff like that in public. That was the defense in 2020.

What happened in 2021? Shane Bowen is hired. Jim Swartz assistant, a senior defensive assistant. And then they're one of the coolest teams in the league by the back half of the year, setting pressure with four but also sim pressuring. Like the Titans were cool on defense. So I'm fine with third year head coach Brable making a mistake

after losing his veteran defensive coordinator being off for a year and then immediately correcting the ship in 2021. Maybe I'm calling my shot with Brable. But to me, Brable seems like a really, really solid manager of a team. Is he, again, it's like spectacular blow your mind? No, I think he's really good. Ruiz, what's your 10th to rate?

I have Frank Reich at 10, which I think I have to defend. I have the floor at 9 and then Carol at 8. I'm being yelled at by a man who was Frank Reich in his top 10 coach. Yeah, a man who has a coach who has made the playoffs every time he's gotten competent QV play. He got the... Brable just makes the playoffs. We don't have to put a qualifier at the end of it.

That's kind of how that works. That's fair. Anyway, going forward, Reich has gotten the best season out of Andrew Luck that I think we saw. He got a great season, a top 10 season out of a washed Philip Rivers who everyone left for dead

after his last season with the Chargers. He makes all the right decisions in terms of like fourth down and being aggressive and going for it. I think he sheltered Carson Wentz enough to fool people into thinking that he was like an average quarterback last year just by hiding him with his play calling. At the end of this year, now that he has Matt Ryan, a quarterback who doesn't limit anything he can do, I think this is going to be a consensus stake. And I think the Colts are going to be a top 10 offense because of Frank Wright. I agree the Colts are going to be better in offense.

I agree that Matt Ryan is going to be great for them. I agree that that Reich is a good coach. Reich I would have like just outside the top 10. I just think that by proof of the put-ins in the eating. Let's play and win a playoff game, brother. I, like, I... They won a playoff game.

Let's play and win two playoff games, brother. The Titans have like two or three playoff wins. They're consistently making it. They're consistently winning the division. They beat the Colts multiple times last year. Frank Reich's teams are blowing second half leads. You want to talk about Sunday coaching and how to evaluate that?

Kevin's talking about finding edges. To me, if a coach is of a team that, of a team is regularly losing out of the halftime locker room, to me, that's on the coach. And Frank Reich, They blew the 19 point lead against the Ravens. They blew the 17, 14 point lead against the Bucks. They had another double digit second half lead that they blew against another team.

I can't recall it is at the top of my head. Frank Reich's record in close games is like, I want to say it's like 45%. And a lot of these really good coaches are above 60%. Reich, the little stuff that happens late in games is a problem right now for Reich. And that's tough for me to overlook. We talk about like Sunday coaching. But you like point to the specific examples. Just losing close games doesn't mean you're making this.

It's easy to lose close games when your quarterback is car. Carson Wentz, we didn't have those same criticisms of him in prior years. I would argue no one is more effective at losing close games than Carson Wentz. Yeah, listen, close games are playing. Close games are coin flips. I absolutely give you that. I think that you get regression to that and you're fine. The double digit blowing leads are not.

And again, you can you can say all you want about Carson Wentz. Why did Chris Ballad bring Carson Wentz in? Chris Ballad made it very clear. It wasn't Chris Ballard the one of Carson Wentz in the building. That's fair. That does fall on right. But if we're excusing one of your mistake, for coaches, then I'm going to give them an excuse.

Right. Pete Carroll is obviously coming off a bad year as well. You have to look at the track record. We can't just go. It would be very boring list if we just looked at 2021 performance. So I understand why. And Steve, you're not alone when I was looking at some of the other folks list this morning. You're not alone if I think Reich is the 10th best coach. I guess my question, Solac, is would you rather have Reich or Doug Peterson?

Doug. Yeah. That was my take. Because if I didn't have Carol 10, I was thinking about having Peterson 10. No. No, Doug, for sure. I did text to you and I was like, I want to force Doug in here just because I keep forcing Eagles into these lists. But I don't know.

That's much. All right. I had Pete 10, Lefer, 9, Rable 8. All right. Steven, did you do your 9-8? I just remember. Yeah, Flore and Carol. I had Carol.

Solac, 7 through 5. All right. So I have a, I'm a, I'm a little bit on the Matla floor train. 7 through 5 for me, this is tier 2. I have Sean McDermott at 7. I have John Harbaugh at 6. And I've, I have Matt LaFleur at 5. I really hate the McDermott's at 7.

This entire tier 2 is just a really, really, really good group of coaches. Somebody had to be last. It's McDermott. I don't know. He's the man. He's so freaking good. It's heartbreaking that he's there. Harbaugh initially had higher.

I honestly thought that Harbaugh had had a little bit more playoff success recently. I did not realize the last time they made it at the conference championship, which is obviously very tough to do, was in 2012. And then they had a five-year stretch in which they only made the playoffs once with Joe Flacco. And then obviously they made it three of the last four years, but they are one in three over those four years. And so Harbaugh took a little bit of a knock. Obviously, longevity is there.

I still think he's an incredible coach. Just time to make some playoff bushes here, especially now they're in the Lamar Jackson era, and that should be a really dominant era for you. I have every confidence that they'll do that. And then five from me is Matt LaFlor. And again, maybe this is just super reductive. but LaFleur has won 80% of his games.

Yeah. And there's, like, I, he's 180%. He wins a lot of football games, man. Is this a short circuit? Yeah. It's like, it's, because it's not a good podcast argument. It's just, yeah. I think that he made offensive changes relative to what he brought to Green Bay,

to what that offense looks like now, kind of integrating around Rogers. Losing Devante is really, really tough. But I do give Leiflofflor, whatever. some piece of the pie of credit for generally being able to keep Rogers happy, working with a quarterback who is Mercurioly, not whatever Stephen thinks Russell Wilson is, but he is a guy who can be a little bit tricky, I think, to keep happy. And in general, the Green Bay Packers has won 80% of the games before coaching.

Like, for a perspective, before us won, it's 0.796 is his winning record over three years. Yeah. The next closest, in terms of active coaches, is McVeigh at 0.679. It is a massive delta between LaFleur and second. I think that deserves a bump in the rankings. How broken are we that winning 80% of your games is not a good podcasting argument? I'm talking about it in the media space where it's just like... Wins are not a team stat.

Yeah, you just go into a pod, any pod, any network, and just be like, well, they win games. I don't know. I don't know if that's a good argument, brother. I'll just quickly do mine. Shanahan 7, Harbaugh 6, McDermott 5. Ruiz, what do you got, Boston? I had those same three, those same three just different order. McDermott 7, Shanahan 6, Harbaugh 5.

Did anybody think about putting McDermott way too high? Because I almost put him at 3. Yeah, I like, I, right. I know I said this on one of the pods we did and you yelled to me, Kevin, but like McDermott's out of like 7 or like one. You know, like it's, it's, all right, like, he's, is he like calling plays? No, that was, who was it on the GM pod? It was Mickey Loomis.

I think it was either number one or off the list. Yes. Which was iconic. Yes. Shaw McDermott is not the Mickey Loomis of coaches, okay? Yeah. It's just because we give so much credit to Bean and because we give so much credit to Allen,

there just has to be naturally a reduction, right? A shrinking of that piece of the pie that belongs to McDermott in terms of the bill's success. However, as you've noted, Kevin, we're not in the building. And if we are underestimating, McDermott's impact in terms of like developing Allen and building together this roster and putting it all together. It's been one

of the most impressive turnarounds in terms of roster management over the last few years and that would bump McDermott off the list. So it is tough. He kind of got put there because like, I'll put it in this way. If they beat the Chiefs, I, McDermott would have been like four, but he didn't so I get to stick him at seven inch kind of like, you know, shove it off from the side a little bit. Do you think that

McDermott felt fine about losing that game until just now when he realized you could have been size four I think so Lexley? I think he was over it and then he realized what it cost him on this July 6th podcast, and he was like, whoop. No, I agree. I agree with all that. I think McDermott could be as high as two on my list.

I'm not putting them over my top guy. And I kind of mentioned this during the GM podcast that I think we do give too much credit to Bean. Sean McDermott is the one that helped hire Brandon Bean. I think he deserved some credit for the roster. And something Solak said earlier, I think you said Kyle Shanahan's the hardest coached the rank on this list. I would argue that the floor is the hardest.

because I do think it's a cop out to point to Aaron Rogers and say he's the reason behind all the success but I still want to see him develop a quarterback and have this success without Aaron Rogers. Yeah. I think that's fair to ask. Do you want to see him go to Jordan Love?

I want to see him go to Jordan Love. He helped pick Jordan Love too. So I feel like that's an indictment of him. It's funny because like I say LeFleur is one 80% of his gains but the secret thing that I don't say is you have to click on Perfable reference. you have to turn off the sample size controller

so we can actually see how many where the floor would rank because they don't rank him because he only coach three seasons. So he's like not on their all time list yet and so it's a little bit like he's won 80% of his games if you allow for a three season coach

to get ranked. And that's got right. That's the other side of that point. It's very fair. And I would argue that he's been partly responsible for their playoff exits the last two years. I think Damico Rines totally outcoached him last year.

And then the year before that, I think he, we all talked about the fourth down decision. I think that really affected their ability to win that game. So I would argue that he had a big hand in them losing the last two years. Did DiMigo? Did DiMico outcoach him that much? They scored one touchdown. Yeah, but Rogers did not have a good game.

Special teams. Special teams. Yeah. He didn't have a good, I do think Damiko outcoached him, though. He took away Devonbi Adams, and they had no answer for that. I would say DeMico outcoached him, but if you're asking, me who's more up fault for that loss than the Niners. Just between the floor and Rogers,

I would say, I would say Roger. I totally agree with that. So, like, I'm looking at the winningest coaches of all time. You probably saw this. Do you know who the winningest coached by winning percentages? Like, adjusted for sample size? There's guys that have just won 100% of their games.

Well, no, no. I mean, the guys who have done, who've coached, it looks like at least four seasons, it looks like. Yeah, yeah. So, right, when you don't have it sorted. It's Guy Chamberlain. Guy Chamberlain who was in his bag with from 1922 to 1927,

Canton Bulldogs, Cleveland Bulldogs, Frankfurt Yellow Jackets, and the Chicago Cardins. He won 78% of his games, which is more than John Madden, who was second, Vince Lombardi, George Allen.

Jim Harbaugh. Look who's fit. Jim Harbaugh. That surprised me a lot. Okay, but what was his early down pass rate and how often you go for it on fourth down? It looks like he never won a playoff game because he never played in the playoffs.

I just realized, I just realized, Stephen, I didn't look at any fourth down attempts to charge the teams that we're going to get yelled at for doing this. Heck, all right. He won four championships without winning a playoff game. So, guy, do it in January, brother. All right.

So that's interesting. Let's do four through one and then we can just start debating people. So like, go ahead. Yeah, so McDermott-Harbaugh LaFleur, that's still my tier two, has McVey at four, Tomlin at three, and then in tier one for me, Andy Reid at two, Bill Belichick at one. And to me, that's, it's not no-brainer. It deserves attention, deserves thought. But for Reed and Belichick to been around for as long as they have, until won as many games as they have and to go to the playoffs as often as they had, to me just puts them in a rarefied air.

McVeigh over Tomlin was something I thought about and I debated. Yeah, it was tricky for me. It was tough for me. again, maybe it's a little bit of the, the, you know, whatever, um, uh, therapy thing, right? We're like, I just have such a respect for how Tomlin ran that team. But I think that the last couple years of Rathesberger holding back that team so much. And yet still we got to remember, they like made the playoffs. Yeah. Recently is a testament to Tomlin's coaching.

And I think that getting to see Tomlin with a different quarterback, even if that different quarterback from the Dr. Chibisky is going to remind us just how ludicrously winning this guy is over the course of years. So I kept Tomlin at three, but I would hear McVey over Tomlin and fully understand it. So I think that's, I do disagree with you. I think it's wrong. McVeigh doesn't get enough credit for, A, we talked with the super team stuff. It's really hard to integrate superstars or former superstars into a roster as quickly as he does. And you think about all the different guys, not just O'Dell and Domican Sue.

Like those guys come in and they produce immediately and never hear anything about them. Nothing ever gets out of that locker room. It is a little bit Tomlin-esque, just the ability to manage a roster and kind of know what the locker room is and all that stuff. Yes. But look at McVeigh's management of assistant coaches. Look at the fact, you know, Jordan Rodriguez did that piece on Thomas Brown. He's going to be head coach. He's going to be a good one.

He's not even the O.C. Liam Cohen is. I'll tell you a funny nugget, nugget number two in this one. When it looked like Miami was going to go cheap because they always do, back in the pre-Mario days in like November, I was texting with the NFL source who they were basically saying I was like come on man like give me a name give me give me somebody we can hire that would

turn this thing around and they were like Liam Cohen like Liam Cohen is the next one and and then Miami actually looked at him as the O.C. after Mario and I was like I tweeted this I was like yeah I don't think he's going to stay in college and he didn't now he's the OC at the ramps anyway

but that's like the cradle of coaches he's developed there You look at what's going on in Minnesota. You look at just the entire tree that he has. It just shows you how special of an environment that is and how sustainable this is. You know, Kevin Demoff has talked about this. He's the team president and the COO.

But, you know, winning is the best competitive advantage, right? And people want to go there. And the next version of Odell Beckham, who becomes available in the middle of the season, we'll want to go there. And this builds on itself. Guys want to be there. And you want to talk about therapy. Like, part of it is never even having to deal with it because guys are already

happy once they get there. And McVeigh has built something. Tomlin is the exact same, except Sean McVeigh just won the Super Bowl, and that's why you have to give the nod to him. He has built something that I feel like going forward is far more sustainable.

What's a more impressive feat? Winning a Super Bowl or getting Ben Rothensberger to the playoffs in 2021? Or this is open for conversation. I'm going to give you a third accomplishment, which is making Antonio Brown look normal, which Mike Tomlin did.

Yes, yes. The people forget that we thought Brown is just a good receiver for a long time. No, it's very true. And the point you made about McVeigh, in terms of like, people want to go to L.A., which, like, the city itself is an advantage, but if you want to

go there because Sean is the man and because they win football games, it's extremely well taken. And a lot of my Shanahan analysis, for better, for worse, it's not fair to Shanahan, but is viewed through that filter of well, this is what McVey does relative to what Shanahan's able to do in terms of the managing their team. It is worth noting McVey, you know, other type of the point,

McVeigh is one and six against Shanahan, which is not a reason to rank him below Tomlin, but he has gone through a bunch of assistant coaches. He has gone through a bunch of offensive coordinators. He's continuing to cycling out these kind of second-level coaches who are responsible for other, you know, for units and for his team management. And yet every single year, the Rams always hit this hump in the back half of the season. Remember we were talking about this with Stafford?

and they're showing the offensive EPA for play and just like the points for game just go down in the second half of the year. McVeigh does have a schematic genius tag attached to him. And while I do think that's fair, there are adjustments that I think other coaches are better at making throughout the year that McVeigh doesn't. That's where I'd like to see him improve, frankly,

is his ability to be flexible within a season as opposed just like making these changes in the summer and then expecting to be able to ride the whole season off that one shift. But I would get some notes for Big Sean. Wow. I would defend him in this way, like up until last year, he didn't have a quarterback that necessarily allowed him to make those adjustments. I do think there was like a lull during this last season that suggests that it is an issue.

I just don't know if it's as big of an issue as we thought it was before staff at came along. Kevin and I are out here ranking coaches. Stevens out here ranking coaches who have had bad quarterbacks. That's right. You have to take that into consideration. You talk about Ben Rathesberger. talking about Ben-Rothusburger, but like,

McVeigh made a Super Bowl with Jared Gough. Yep. Which is, he's bad, too. And also, yes. Like,

it's not like Matthew Stafford is the best quarterback in football. Okay. So, like, I just, you can't build a winner around Matt Safer.

I don't know if you heard, but that can't be done. I was pro Stafford as anybody except, like, probably Kelly Stafford. I mean, that's extremely pro-stafford. Yeah,

she's just big on that. Like, I always, I get over a lot of, I was going to say, you don't have Dan B. Orlovsky. I actually, when I did that staffer profile, Connor Evans was like,

can we cut some of those Rolovsky clothes? Like, we've, we're doing a little. Like, I got Orlovsky in the phone for like 30 minutes. And I was like, you know what? Orlovsky stays. Nice, I like it. I like it.

He's been on this island. He deserves his time in the sun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Also, this was like two years before any of it. It's like we needed to get it on record that Rolovsky was, was here. He was renting out. He was renting out rooms on Stafford Island.

He was a speculative buyer. He was an investor. Does he get credit for it, though? And you're just friends with the guy? No. He literally said in the story, like, imagine if he had Sean Payton or Sean McVeck. I was trying to figure out what coach Stephen was asking. Does he get credit for that, though?

That's Stephen's main question of this podcast. And it was actually just Orlovsky for knowing Maths, Matthew, Stavford. that he gets credit for knowing if he's a good quarterback. Stephen just, does he get credit for it? Does it, was it really him?

All that matters. All that matters. All right. I got Andy Reid at fourth. Oh. I dropped him. For what? And we want to talk about making adjustments.

I think Andy Reid is Zach Taylor. That's part of it. But I think that speaks to a larger issue with Andy Reid. I don't think he adjusts. He doesn't adjust in the middle of seasons. I don't think.

I think he eventually finds... I don't know how to say this, but I don't think he adjusts in the middle of games is what I mean. He doesn't adjust. He just eventually finds the right thing to do. No, no, that's not what I mean. I think over the course of the season, he has enough talent now where he can't adjust

because Patrick Mahomes is Patrick Mahomes. But if we go back to like the Alex Smith years, there were a lot of seasons where they started off hot and then over the second half of the season, they couldn't adjust and they fell off. And then having Mahomes, I think, filled in some of the blanks that we had criticized read for over the first, what, 20 years of his career.

And I do think he lost them that, that AFC championship game. I think they got too cute in the second half. I think their play calling could have been a lot better to prevent that comeback by the Bengals. I still think he has problems managing games. He has problems using timeouts. And we are one miss Jimmy Garoppolo pass away from them not having any Super Bowls with Patrick Mahomes for four years.

And he got out-coached by Tom. I feel comfortable saying that. Yeah, but they also had no off. You and I playing off. Like this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this. This is unbelievable. Was Reed's play calling in the second, was Reed's play calling in the second half of the AFC championship game, great?

No. Was Patrick Mahomes bad for the second half? Yes. They, the bagels dropped the defense of tackle and he lost his dog all mine. Also, bringing up that, like, the Alex Smith years weren't sustainable. I'm sorry that Andy Reid made Alex Smith literally the best deep passer of football for an entire year, and he couldn't keep that up. I apologize for that.

On Bath of Andy Reed, they took Alex Smith and turned him into fucking Dan Fouts, and they couldn't keep that going through January. I'm just, I'm real quick. How about that? Run the football. Listen,

I'm just real quickly looking at the playoff stats for Alex Smith. He made the playoffs in five years. Oh, four of them were with the Kansas City Chiefs. Reed and Smith were together for five seasons, and in four of them, Reed took Alex Smith to the playoffs. How'd that turn out? It's Alex.

And then what happened? What are we talking about? Alex Smith, who went to the NFC title game and then had the 49ers in position to make another Super Bowl but got benched for Colin Kaepernick. Yeah, with the fourth winningest coach

of all time. We already went through this. John Harbaugh. Jim. Jim, bad look. By So lack. I freaking never know which Armad is. No, no, but I'm splitting here.

Hears obviously here. Like, Andy Reid is a great coach. I'm nitpicking right now. But that's why I would have them under those guys. Because I think all of the criticisms you can have of McVeigh, you could have for Andy Reid, but Andy Reid never made a Super Bowl with Cherit golf. Is that, okay.

Like, should he try to? No, I don't think he's capable of doing it. He couldn't even make it with Donovan McNabb. Well, they got to four straight and it's a chance of games. Again, I'll ask, and then what happened? Do you remember when McVeigh made that Super Bowl with Jared Gough and then the team scored three points?

Because the Patriots put six guys on the defensive line and John McVeigh said, I have never seen this before. Go back and watch the tape of that game. There were receivers open. There were receivers open. That's bad. I'm sorry.

Robert Woods didn't have 50 acres of space around him when he was wide open in the touchdown. Endzone and Jared golf through it 15 minutes late. I'm sorry McVade couldn't speed up that process. Steven's rankings are based off of Woods open in the end zone and Emmanuel Sanders open for the Garoppolo touchdown. Those two plays, just defining the top five for Stephen. McVeigh led or laid the foundation for Kirk Cousins eventually making a billion dollars in this league.

He deserves credit for that too. Best facts. I'll give you that one. All right. So Andy Reid's number four. Who's number three for you? Tom wins number three for all the reasons we see. said. I think the AB thing is maybe the most impressive feat that we've covered on this podcast. Just keeping that roster together, I would ask this, do we criticize him for sticking with Ben Rathesberger as long as he did? Because I think there's an argument that can be made that

not jumping ship costs them a chance that may be making a Super Bowl. Because the roster around Rathesburg two years ago was so freaking good. The quarterback was just that bad. Who could they have, first of all, they were contractually held hostage because he would just show up and they're like, you guys owe me $30 million. But second of all, I mean, obviously part of them. They kept extending them. You think that Phil Rivers would have made the Super Bowl with that team? No, I think he would have made, he would have won a playoff game or two. I think that's like, I do hear that argument.

Again, we're getting into a piece of the pie nonsense. I do think Rothfisberger's career coming to the close as Kevin. and Colbert was kind of like thinking about retiring and everything, probably put the Steelers in a position where they were like, we're just going to finish this out. You know what I mean? Like the only person in the nucleus that was prepared to like make a dynamic change was Tomlin. Everybody else was just kind of like,

the Steelers tend to kind of tread water in that way and tend to kind of go slow. And I struggle to fault Tomlin too much for it, though I hear the point. And going back to Ruth, one more thing on me. Kevin likes to mock the whole too high revolution. He's like, oh, you put a second safety back there. what are we going to do? Guess who actually said that? Andy Reid, it took him like three months to figure it out.

He was scoring like 13 points against like the Giants or 20 points. Do you want me to mock the two-eye thing again? Yes. I'm just going to, I'm going to quote our pal Dominic Foxworth. It was the second thing they ever did. They put one safety back there first. And then they said, what if we added a second safety? Guy Chamberlain was doing it.

Winning his Coach in League history, baby. Yeah, exactly. We approve some of the pudding. All right. Who's number two for you? McVeigh. Good coach. Doesn't get enough credit

for his defensive coordinator hires. I think he argued the best assistant hire of the last five years, I think, is him hiring Staley. Yeah. Both Shanahan and McVeigh are really good at hiring defensive coaches. And I think a lot of it is about how they think about offense.

And that is really cool. With that set, he hired Rahim Morris because he's his boy from Tampa. Let's call Spade to Spade. The Raheem Morris hire was not like a Brandon Staley Sire. And Wade Phillips was there because Sean was a 30-year-old kid. So the defensive thing for Sean, I think, like, like you said, it's probably largely underrated, but I don't want to call it the whole thing.

You know what I mean? He hired a guy that was writing blogs like three years ago. Yes, the Stanley Hire is awesome. And turned him into the hottest coach in the league. All right. Guys, I have Andy Reid number one, and I have Sean McVeyerner, number two. And I have Belichick number three. I don't like that. Embarrassing.

I disagree. Okay. Let's hash it out. Do I need to show you the 2018 AFC championship game? Do we need to go back two years when Belichick almost beat Andy Reid with Jared Stigman quarterback? So I just want to clarify something. We're weighing career achievements. And we're doing career, and I think I have Belichick for one of this list. We're doing career achievement awards on this list, certainly.

That's why two of us have Carroll on the list. But this is a ranking for 2022. And I think if I was going in any roster, any roster in the NFL, Andy Rudy would be my first choice, Sean McVeigh, would my second choice, Bill Belichick would my third choice. That's just the way I look at it for 2022. And I think that Bill Belichick is the best coach in the history of football.

he's probably the best defensive, excuse me, the best mind on either side of the ball in the history of the sport. But I'm talking about right now, and I'd rather have those two guys above him than Belichick. He did a heck of a coaching job last year with what he was given. He briefly got into Shaw McDermott's head and made him become a different coach for like three weeks. That was special. But there's just been two years where he's not been the best coach in football. And I, you know, part of this is the, I have to be honest, part of it is sort of the Brady-Belichick legacy debate. And we see what Brady's been capable of in Tampa.

And that is just a smit, just a smidge, changed how I felt about the last 20 years of patriot'sdom. But nobody runs a team better than him. Nobody runs a roster better than him. Nobody understands a bigger picture in a global picture better than Bill Belichick. But for 2022, I'd rather have McVey and Reeve. That doesn't make sense to me. You guys... It's no sense whatsoever.

You guys would rather have Bill Belichick with... So let's say you have the... What's the most average rostering league? The Patriots. New England. And he made the playoffs with them. Andy Reed and Sean McVeigh are not making playoffs with that team. You don't think Andy Reid and Sean McVeyer would make the playoffs with the Patriots roster.

Yeah, with the Patriots. What is Andy Reed going to do with that offense? I... Jacoby Myers 13 targets. I don't... Kendrick Boren run a deep crosser. There is talent on that. on that roster. I mean, Belichick assembled the roster.

So, I mean, I guess we're getting into Belichick, the coach versus Belichick. That's why he ranks a low on our GM list. But I do think that both of those guys would make the playoff. I think that they would be extremely similar results. Yeah. I, um, again, I like hearing

the way that you guys think about these things. And Stephen always references these like kind of like one-offs, right? I was like, should I bring up this game? Should I bring up that game? Like, bring up like this event, right? And that, to me, ring, that that approach being so true when it comes to Belichick, where when I think about games,

particular matchups, in which, like, one coach just took another coach, put him in a full Nelson, and for four quarters beat the daylights out of them. That coach is always Belichick. It's like,

it happened with McVeigh occasionally in, in the, in the heyday, right, in 2018 before anybody figured it out. And then Vic Fangio, hold him to six points. Then Belichick watched that game and said,

heck yeah, I'll do that. and then they did that in the Super Bowl and then McVeigh's really never done it again schematically. We're just for four quarters, X's and O's independent of who's on the football field, just beat the brakes off another dude.

And Belichick does it like two or three times a year, right? All the drop eight nonsense against Mahomes. First game that was a 2020 season, I think? Might have been 2021. No, it was COVID year, 2020. Against, it was Belchick against Mahomes, right? Like, the thing about the three-past game against the bill. Like nobody, like, should he have had a three-pass game?

Probably not. But there's no other coaching the league who possibly could have coached that game and won it. Like in these one-offs, in these moments in which truly a coach beat another team, period. It's always Belichick. It's never anybody else. And so to me, that stands so stark relatives are like, Reed's really good at offense. Like, Belichick just beat people on both sides of the ball. you just just just oh chocobby per set let's score 27 points on the texans they'll score nothing like it's just

these games are just absurd you know what i mean yeah i would say go ahead sir he was asked at a press conference i think it was last year it was recently though i forget what was it about special teams no surprisingly yes about punting was it was it about his new year's revolution a resolution rick it was based on some statistic like about passing and yeah and he said we prefer to win and usually I would write that off as coach speak, but I don't think anyone embodies that that approach to game planning

like Bill Belichick. And it changes every week. And I think that's why he doesn't get enough credit for or recently. I feel like Andy Reid has gotten more credit because he's running a team that's flashy that scores a lot of points and does all the things that we think teams should do in the modern NFL.

So I agree with you. I've done, I've written probably tens of thousands of words about Belichick's best game plan starting obviously I mean you can go back to the Giants certainly you can go back to the Brown certainly but I mean even with the Patriots era when you look at the first Ram Super Bowl second Ram Super Bowl the things that they did I mean like I remember going to a Saints Patriots game a couple of few years ago in Jimmy Graham I think it set the record for consecutive 100 yard games they put a cube to leave on Jimmy Graham and I don't

believe he didn't get a catch right he went from like a record setting 100 game mark to to not having a catch no one can come up with a game play but I'm Bill Belichick in the history of the world. Having said that, I think that you're Solac giving not enough credit to someone like Andy Reid, who was able to create magic out of nothing throughout his career, I think. And I think

that Belichick's always been better at it. But right now, I think Andy Reid is a coach I'd rather have with that 53-man roster. And we're splitting hairs because we're not going to see Belichick with Patrick Mahomes and we're not going to see Andy Reid with Mac Jones. and we can't visualize it. But I do think that nobody is better

at coming up with offensive game plan right now in the world than Andy Reed. And that's been true for probably over a decade. And so you're getting into, what would you rather have, the best offensive plays or from week to week, the most creative universal game plan?

Because they're two very different things. They are two very different things. But I will say, if you, like, hey, Ben, you need an elite offensive designer. All right, I'd love Reed. I'd take McVeigh, I'd love Shanahan, a floor I would trust as well

in this regard. You gotta stop the best offense. I would like Bill Belichick and then there's nobody remotely, like, staley, maybe in a few years. I'll be able to, like, mention in that air.

Matt Patricia. Yeah. And now Matt, and now Matt's on the offense side of the ball. Who knows what's going to happen? Actually, actually, if I'm looking for somebody to stop an offense, I actually would like Matthew the O.C.

With the D.C. What if Matt Patricia? What if Matt Patricia gets another head coaching job based off his work as offensive coordinator? Then Belichick, there's no more doing these lists. It's just Belichick for the rest of time. All the rest of the time. It is, there's something to be said for offense beats defense.

I agree with you. There's also something to be said for other people get close to doing what Reed can do. Like, A.C. is the best of the past decades. Sure, okay. But I do think there are other offensive designers who have just dominance across the course of week in, week out. There is nobody. who gets close to doing what Belichick has done in terms of stopping those elite offenses,

which is something that we almost categorically say does not occur in the modern NFL. What about Vic Fangio? Vic was good at it. Vic was quite good at it. Vicks also fired. And one of the reasons why Vicks fired is because Vic couldn't do all the other stuff that is part of being a head coach. I'm just talking about designing a defense.

I'm not talking about, right. I don't know one's questioning whether or Vic Fangio is a better coach. I'm just saying that we're talking about the gap between one and two. And I don't think it's the gap between Bill Belichick and like, you know, the worst I see. I'll put it to this way. I'll put it to this way. I think Big Fangio is an extremely respectable number two. I also think that Big Fangio had a few, at a few defensive coordinator jobs, was a defense coordinator for almost a decade before his approach to defense really started to take off across the course of the league.

Number one. And number two, when his defense approach. which did start to take fire across the course of the league. Several other defense coordinators were able to implement it not only well, but improve upon it, as we've seen with Brandon Staley and as we're like that he continues seeing, with people like at Giro Everow, who's now in Denver, so on and so forth. Nobody is doing anything like that with the Belichick's defense, right?

I think Vic is what it would look like if Belichick were mortal. I think it's what it would look like if Belichick were human and could be understand on those terms. Belichick is just a different class. Like, to me, that's just the long and the short of it. And I would argue that Vic, for how long he's been successful as a defensive coordinator, has been doing basically the same stuff the whole time. Sure. But Dick Leboe, I'm like, there's a really good book called Blood Sweat and Shock by Tim Layden.

And in any, Bill Belichick, the aforementioned Bill Belichick, the third best coach in football, was talking about Dick Leboe. And he was saying basically like, nothing has changed from Dick Lebo's defense. It is the same stuff, and it just happened to work for three decades. And so I think Vic Vanjo, even if his ship came in later in his career to where his style of defense became more in vogue, like that it's okay for that to last for 15 years without much tweaking. No, no, I think that's a good thing. Like, that's a good thing for him. I'm just saying Belichick has shown the ability to change and to adapt.

Of course. And in ways that no other defense. coach in the history of the sport, I think has. To argue against my own point, to argue against my own point, like he switched from a 3-4 to a 4-3 just to help because he wanted

different free agency targets because the 3-4 guys were getting too expensive. Like, no one has a more adaptable mind. But this isn't an adaptable mind ranking. Like, the heat be number one. It is, but it isn't. It shouldn't. But it is.

I thought this is a therapy ranking. Okay. But it's not an adaptability, adaptable mind ranking in the sense that if it were an adaptable mind ranking, it would be Belichick 1, Belichick 2, Belichick 3, Belichick 4, Belich 5. No, but the other 31 coaches can't do this. They don't have this. They're not coded this way.

It's on their DNA. That's why Belichick's one period. It's because Reed might be the best offensive designer that we have. I don't agree. I don't agree with that. Reed, no one is better at taking things from the college level and putting them into the pros that Andy Reed. Nobody.

And there was a, there was a, a lag period between when colleges and pros had a completely different offense. And at one point, really, but I mean, Chip Kelly was obviously an outlier here. And that ended up not working because he actually didn't have a second playbook after his first year. But nobody was melding those two genres of football better than Andy Reid. So I don't think that there's some huge gap between adaptable minds. Belichick is number one. But Andy Reid has done a hell of a lot of innovation in the NFL.

We started out as a Green Bay West Coast assistant, and now all of a sudden is, you know, then at one point he was running the Chris Alt pistol. Like, he can do a lot on the offensive side of the ball. So, and like this, I feel poorly, because I feel like I'm just saying the same refrain over and over again, which obviously is just like us talking in circles now. But like, yes, and then other people did it.

Right. And then, like, you know, there were members of his coaching tree that went on and did similar things. There are members of other coaching trees, right? Like, what has Matt LaFleur done? Larger taken the Shanahan West Coast offense and RPOized it, right? Like, there are other dudes who, to varying degrees of effect or, you know, taking different, you know, branches and different trees and grafting them in different ways, have done a similar thing. And Reed is too for me.

I will tell you right now, read is better at that in terms of like the grafting process, right? The interchanging, getting stuff within your own burn actor within your own terminology. Reed's better at that than most offensive guys. He is the best. Belichick does it. And then nobody else does. Every coach that tries to imitate him can't. Again, the only dude who we've talked about

in terms of my career in sports media that has maybe done it is staley and we're still waiting for strong proof of concept. So to me, it's just we're talking about two separate things, two just different categories of the approach schematically to the game. One is replicable and Reed is the best at it. The other is not replicable and Belichick is alone in it. and we're not giving Belichick enough credit

for what he does on the offensive side of the ball. We have Dean Peas on record saying that when he was defensive coordinator there, which coincided with the offensive breakout with Tom Brady, Belichick was spending 30 minutes in the defensive meeting rooms. And he was spending the rest of the time with Brady and figuring out the offense and getting Brady ready to run this offense. I think we don't give him enough credit. They've gone through so many offensive coordinators.

And the offense, the tenants of the offense, the main tenants have remained the same throughout. I think Belichick should get credit for both sides of the ball. And there isn't another coach in the NFL that we could say that about. Not one. I don't think, I actually disagree. We give plenty of credit to Bill Belichick versus. Like the meetings with Tom Brady are now like stuff of legend.

It's been a bunch of the wickershawk, all of that stuff. Like Charlie Weiss wasn't even invited to the meetings. The OC, they were just like, actually, we'll let you know if we need you, but we're actually going to be in here figuring out how to beat Ed Reed. Right. and we've seen some video of that and some of the NFL film stuff and it's hugely illuminating.

But I do think we give credit for it. I mean, like, I really... And why did we have to wait five minutes into the Belichick debate to bring it up? Five minutes, brother. We've been going. We've been going for an hour. But to me, like,

they basically invented the modern NFL spread in 2007. The Josh Cano's went down, met with Dan Mullen, and they just figured out how to do it. And I don't, I think we do, I think, I have to be honest with you, Stephen.

Like, I kind of think Belichick is properly rated on both sides of the ball. Like, he's the best defensive mind in history. For 2022, if we're ranking the best coaches of all time, he's second only after Guy Chamberlain. Yeah, that much is obvious. That goes with that day. He is that Bill Belichick is the best coach of all the time,

but we're not ranking the best coaches of all time. Otherwise, Bill Walsh should be on my list. If you give Andy Reed and Bill Belichick the same roster in 2022, we all know which team would do better and which team you would bet on to win in a one. In the modern NFL, I would take the best offensive plays over the best defensive place.

He says this two minutes after saying we do give Belichick enough credit for the offense. No, he's not the best offensive mind of all time. No, he's not, but he's a good offensive mind and the best defensive mind of all time. Andy Reid is one of the best offensive minds of my time. First of all, first of all, dude, first of all, I just not, by the way,

I like that I said first of all 20 minutes to do this debate. we're rolling into this with Matt Patricia and Joe Judge being the OCs this year. Okay. So, or whatever you want to call it. And I understand last time there wasn't an O.C. Bill O'Brien was deputized. So maybe there's some secret plan we don't know about.

But going into this year, we're talking about Belichick on the off the side of the ball. And it seems to me he's being a little bit reckless on that side of the ball for 2022, which, by the way, is the ranking at hand. Let's wait and see. You know what? The ranking is today. We can't re-rank them in October.

You're the one who wanted to be on this pod. Now you want to wait until week nine to rank. I'm saying before we criticize him for the offensive situation right now. Let's see what happens. I trust Bill Belichick. I'm down to criticizing. This is nonsense. What are you doing, brother?

Let's get offensive coordinator in the building. Let's get a wide receiver's coach. Let's get a wide outs coach. It's getting an OC. Let's get it. There's got to be somebody who's available. And Belichick's going to handle it himself. He's fine.

I mean, he honestly would be a top 15 OC for sure. 15? three. No. He's done it. He's done it in spurts before. But also, he was, remember he was kind of the DC a couple years ago?

I don't know. All right. So what's everybody's top? Let's just do that again. Let's just do top four. So like? Top four or top? Yeah.

Okay. Top four from May 4, McVeigh, three, Tomlin, two, Ville, Belichick. Okay. And Ruiz? I have Reed fourth, Tomlin, third,

McVeigh, second, Belich first. Okay. All right. Anything else, guys? We're on to Cincinnati, baby. We are on to Cincinnati. We'll be back.

What are you going to do next week? We were supposed to do a ball pit with one of the best past rushers in football. I need to check on that. If we get that, then we would do pass rushers next episode. But we'll figure it out. We'll see you guys next week. It's been the Ringar NFL show on the Ringer Podcast Network. Thank you, Tufon.

First production, up with additional productions provision by our junior rim. See you next. Thank you.