The Ringer NFL Show - Domonique Foxworth | The Ringer NFL Show

Episode Date: August 27, 2020

The Ringer’s Kevin Clark is joined by ESPN’s Domonique Foxworth to discuss other sports’ protests against racism and what kind of protests NFL players might do (2:34). Then they speak about what this season could look like for Lamar Jackson (25:05), how different it is playing cornerback in today’s game (33:58), and more. Host: Kevin Clark  Guest: Domonique Foxworth Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Use promo code The Ringer at checkout to save 15%. It's The Ringer at the checkout. NFL show, part of our podcast network. I'm Kevin Clark, joined today by Dominic Bonsworth, who has many titles. We'll get you those in a second. It is 10 o'clock Pacific right now. We don't know any news that's going to break after this, but right now we're going to discuss this moment in time, this moment history, sports history. NBA has canceled its games for the next few days at least. Edg. Morgianowski reports that their playoffs will resume. At least a quarter of NFL teams have canceled practice today.

and we broke it all down, and then we got into the 2020 season and then talked to football. So here's Dominic. Okay, Dominique Foxworth, ESPN analyst, former president of the NFLPA, also worked at the MBPA, former NFL player, University of Maryland,

Star, and Harvard Business School graduate. Anything else? Devillishly handsome. Devolishly handsome. I forgot about that. Maybe the most important thing. I want to thank you for joining us. We talked about doing this show last week, and we talked about the topics, and I said we wanted to talk about the future of activism and social justice.

And one thing we didn't know is that in the interim, the world would change and sports would change. And I think that what happened on Wednesday will be talked about for as long as there was sports. The Milwaukee Bucks started a movement that led to the cancellation of every NBA game, a handful of basketball, soccer, WMBA games. I think that the, excuse me, Adrian Roginowski reported this morning that the playoffs will resume at some point. At least a quarter of NFL teams have canceled practice today, Thursday, as a Thursday morning. There might be more. There are some postponements. We don't know what the next couple of weeks looks like from a sports standpoint, from any standpoint, quite frankly.

Dominique, I want to ask you first, when you first heard the news about the Bucks, your initial reaction was what? I mean, I was surprised, honestly. It's a big step. And I think more than anything, I was impressed because it takes a lot of courage. And you mentioned off the top how much experience I had with the union. A lot of union fights come down to being willing to not play those games. And it's not always just about money. It's about what you've sacrificed to get to that point of being willing to put that on a line to get some personal gain.

It's almost impossible to galvanize the players in a modern age to do something like that, which is what makes this so impressive is they don't stand to gain more money. They don't stand to gain more popularity. They don't stand to gain better pensions or whatever health care, whatever the things that we may have wanted to go and strike for,

what's standing the lockout for. They're doing this because they are, I think Pablo Tori made the analogy that they are the country's parents, essentially saying you don't get to play with your toys until you clean up the rest of this stuff. And so it's a commendable sacrifice for them and be willing to make.

When you saw the news that at least a quarter of the NFL had canceled practice on Thursday, the NFL and the NBA are different leads. You have experience working with both unions. Do you think, and it's interesting that yesterday's movement started four years to the day that Colin Kaepernick took a knee, do you think NFL culture is changing at least a little bit as far as open-mindedness towards social justice? I mean, NFL, you know this more than I do, but I certainly know it. NFL coaches for the longest time have been so terrified of anything that can be labeled a distraction.

And that's a catch-all term for anything they don't like. And I'm curious if you think that the pendulum is swinging a little bit or is the NFL still going to be the league most resistant to any sort of meaningful change? Yeah, I mean, I think you agree with me and that the distraction thing is largely just a farce that they use to try to control the players. but I do think that smart leaders, I think, they don't look forward to bad things like this happening, but smart leaders, I think, acknowledge that there's an opportunity in that. And there's something to be said for reaching a level of commitment and buy-in for a team or a group of players or a group of anybody.

Like that, that level of buy-in, I think, goes up significantly if you feel like someone cares about you and cares about you genuinely. And that's one of the things that you lose in the professionalization of sports. I think most people probably played some sort of high school sport or maybe even played in college or played younger than that. You know what it feels like to be on a team. And you also know what it feels like to have a job. And frankly, the NFL, for so many of us,

feels like what it feels like to have a job. And I think there is so much value in feeling the cliches that we talk about being brothers and being in a family. There is so much value that I think bleeds onto the field. It's hard to measure, but it bleeds onto the field when you believe that you actually are a family and people actually do care about you more than they just care about what you can do for them. What do you think now, having seen the last 24 hours, what do you think this NFL season

looks like? Do you think that, you know, obviously a lot of players have said they will kneel this year? Do you think there will be more interruptions? Do you think there will be talk of protesting by canceling a game? Where do you see this playing out, Dominic? I think public opinion has changed so much that kneeling seems to have little to no value at this point. Because like the point of a protest is to make people uncomfortable. Nailing doesn't make anybody uncomfortable anymore. It feels like the whole, the whole country.

And that's the reason why the players, I think, have become a little bit more aggressive and ambitious is because they see the tide kind of turning against what we held as, what we believed was holding it up in the past. And I think the idea of canceling an entire NFL Sunday and the way that the basketball players have, at least for now, put the playoffs on hold like that,

is a different type of discomfort that I don't know. What will happen in this country? As scary as that sounds, or as silly as that sounds to think taking away football could be destabilizing to some degree. Like, if you remember how people reacted to Kaepernick merely taking a knee, the idea that people don't get their Sundays or Mondays or Thursdays like, we'll see what happened.

I think it's certainly on the table. the players to decide to do something like that. And I think it's almost inevitable if another person is shot or killed by police officers, I think it's more likely than not that weak players won't show up. I think that's fascinating. You said something recently that I found extremely powerful, which is when you're black in America, you cannot be one thing. You cannot be a coach.

You cannot just be a player. You're a black coach, a black player. and that the burden falls upon you to fix the problems of this country and to spell out the ideals of it. And I was wondering if you could expand on that a bit in sports and the burden we put on black coaches and the burden we put on black executives to talk about fixing the process and all of that things. When that's not really, that shouldn't be their job. Yeah, no, I mean, I think it's hard for me to explain it any better than you did just there. But it is just a reminder. and I know people get tired of hearing the buzzwords,

be it white privilege or anything like that, but it's a real thing that's part of the privilege is that there isn't this extra expectation. And I think part of the reason why I say that is because I know myself to be responsible for heaping some of that pressure on the players and that you look at them and you're like, but you're black, you're supposed to care about these issues.

But that, to me, isn't fair. And I think the fairer thing to do is, to recognize that we all are here and we all have responsibility, whether you're a football player or not, whether you're black or white or whatever. But the truth of the matter is white people have a choice and they have a choice to make. When they walk out of the house,

they can decide whether to engage in some protests. They can decide whether to contribute to some nonprofits they believe to be working to improve these things. They can make those decisions, and those decisions just aren't there for black people because no matter what you say or where you contribute or how you act,

you still experience American society in a different way than your white counterparts. As far as tangible change going forward now, you know, obviously the NBA players are asking owners for certain things for commitments going forward with social justice. If you were an NFL player right now, what would you be focusing on as far as commitments from owners, executives from the league?

Yeah, I mean, I think you have to, You have to call them to act in the circle that they have the most influence, which is within their league and within their front offices. I think addressing those issues is important. And I think it goes all the way up to the top of ownership. Like I think that's one of the more embarrassing things about the NFL right now. We've gotten to this point where there are not, there isn't black ownership. And I hear people saying that there aren't enough black people that have the money to do that.

It's not actually true. You look into somebody's teams being purchased. So many of them were purchased. so much on credit and not even necessarily having the full ownership of the team. So like if it was something that they prioritized, it would have happened by now and it's something that they should consider especially going forward. We don't know what's going to happen in Washington with that team. We'll see what happens there considering another

sexual assault harassment claims in D.C. D.C. being a majority black city would be an interesting place for them to maybe look to, I'm getting ahead of myself, but if a team does come up, if that team does happen to come up, there'd be an interesting place for them to look to get some more diversity into the ownership ranks. I don't want to paint with too broadly a brush,

but having been in NFL locker room, certainly and having dealt with the NBA union, I'm curious if you can spell out, if there is any difference between those two locker rooms and what that, you know, why this would start in an NBA locker room. Obviously, NFL has followed. followed, but just the dynamics of both of those locker rooms with, you know, 80 guys in a training camp now versus, you know, 12 to 15 guys in an NBA locker room and how they're different as far as this sort of action, Dominique. Yeah, I think the NBA locker rooms are star focused to a degree. There's so much power and the stars have so much power and influence.

So I think when they get behind something, you really have no choice, but as a player, rank and file player, but to get behind it. It's a little different in NFL locker rooms because the root of the sport, frankly, makes it so that it's different because everybody on a football team is playing a different game if that makes any sense. So like in basketball, everyone blocks, shoots, passes, dribbles, and it's a small team. So culturally it ends up aligning even though there's some international players. It's very different in football because everyone is doing something different. They come from different places. They have different allegiances. And you don't really spend time with the whole team as much you spend time with your position group.

So they've become these little sex and fiefdoms within the locker room that are strong contingents whenever there are decisions being made. So it's so much harder when you have more people. And arguably, I guess, a more diverse group of people, it's so much harder to galvanize around anything in particular. So it doesn't seem like it's very difficult right now with this issue because it seems like the momentum is there for the entire country. So I'd be surprised. And this is one of those issues that it makes a lot of people uncomfortable. And given what happened to Drew Brees, if someone in your locker room is like,

we're going to make this stand for social justice. For nothing more than fear, I think there would be so many people who would just, like, get in line. So we'll see what happens when the season comes up. The Ringar NFL show is brought to you by Fandul. This season, there was a brand new way to play fantasy football on Fandul, introducing best ball contest, the simplest way to play season-long fantasy.

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But let's take a moment to look at some surprising statistics. Almost 29 people in the United States die every day in alcohol-impaired vehicle crashes. That's one person every 50 minutes. Even though drunk driving fatalities have fallen by a third in the last three decades, drunk driving crashes still claim more than 10,000 lives each year. Drunk driving can have a big impact on your wallet too. You get arrested and incur huge legal expenses. You could possibly even lose your job.

So what can you do to prevent drunk driving? Plan a safe ride home before you start drinking. Designate a sober driver or call a taxi. If someone you know has been drinking, take their keys and arrange for them to get a sober ride home. We all know the consequences of driving drunk, but one thing's for sure. You're wrong if you think it's no big deal. Drive sober or get pulled over. Let's switch gears a little bit and talk about the actual season.

I'm curious your perspective as someone who has played defensive back in the NFL. It seems to me that defenses are going to be flatfooted. early in this season, just having 14 padded practices and just how different that might be. You played in the league in 2011 where they didn't get an off season, but it wasn't like this. What does this season look like? Just from a early season kind of defense standpoint, schematically, and when we fire up this season on September 10th, it looks like what because of everything that's happened the last couple of months? Honestly, I think it's going to be hard to tell the difference of the on-field product.

I think we'll be hyper-sensitive, so maybe we'll be able to pick some things out. But by and large, people who are in the NFL know how to play football. Maybe the schemes will be a little bit simpler, but that is nothing, that's not going to grab the eye of the average fan or even the average media member. They won't notice that there is only one check in this coverage and there's not three checks as it would normally be.

So I don't think that we'll be able to notice it very much, but I do think whenever you shorten the practice schedule, or opportunities, it exacerbates the current problems for bad teams and which works to the benefit of good teams. You go back to 11, you look at the names who were, who made the playoffs and the teams who did well those seasons, like it was established coaches, established well-run organization. So it's just, I think there's less room for variance. So we'll see the Ravens do well, the Steelers do well, the Patriots will do well in this

circumstance. People who have proven to be efficient and smart with their time in the past will be efficient and smart with even less time this year. When you talk about just being efficient and smart, how can a coach be efficient when it's 14 padded practices? Is that, is that just, I don't even know. I mean, how do you jam 14, how do you jam, you know, what would have started in May into 14 padded practices? I guess I would ask it from the other direction. It's like, what do you need to cover? What do you need to teach your players? I think so much of that time, and then I think I know, so much of that time is installing and reinstalling things that we know.

Like, we actually spend the full day installing cover one in the off-season workouts of coverage that everyone knows. And then we get to training camp and we install it again. So I think so much of those practices is about the nonsense of making guys tough. And like we're going to make you hurt because that makes you, that makes you a tougher person. Like, I think there's a sorting process. You don't make it to the NFL by being solved.

You don't make it to the NFL by not understanding simple concepts. So I honestly think that so much of that other time was filler. You know, it was meant to keep guys busy, keep guys out of trouble and that sort of stuff. I honestly don't think it's going to be that hard to install all the things that you want to install. Obviously, veteran teams have an event. because they know it like the back of their hands, but even rookies. Like they know cover one,

cover four, cover three. They know simple blitzes. They've been reading their playbooks. Like, I don't think it's going to be that. When you talk about efficiency and I guess the filler you could say,

I'm curious your thoughts on Joe Judge in New York because he seems to be doing the, I'm establishing a culture here thing when there's really not that much time for it. He seems to be doing, though, we're going to make you tough kind of thing. Do players respond to that? Is it also?

I mean, there's a case you made that it's just noise anyway and that when you put on the pad in September, it doesn't matter if you're a hard ass or not, and this is all theater. But if you're playing for a guy like Joe Judge, how do players just take that to they roll their eyes? What's the emotion there? I mean, no coach is perfect.

So I think that the players will give some leniency to someone who's saying the type of things that Joe Judge is saying and doing the things that Joe Judge is doing if he is proving that he brings some values them out the way. But by and large, it's just in isolation, this kind of little giant style stuff that they're trying to pull or like remember the Titans practice schedule. They're trying to pull. By and large, players roll their eyes at that because they're like, what? This is, this is nonsense. But if it comes with him putting them in the best situations to make place,

then they'll grow to respect and he'll grow and become more secure and not have to do things Like, I mean, the whole establishing culture is a funny thing because you can't really impose a culture on a group of people. I mean, culture is something that kind of you cultivate, given the word. Like you build based on the personalities and the people you have there, just the same way you would build an offense to fit the skill set of your player as you develop a culture to fit the personality on your team. So just coming in and being a hard ass, I mean, maybe that's the right thing for certain situations, but it's not. always the right move. Real quick, I want to get into, you know, a couple of these head coaches have addressed the social justice aspect with their team in the last couple of days. I'm curious how you think that works. Should this, you know, if you're a coach right now, if you're Matt

Patricia or whomever, do you let the leaders in the locker room do it? Do players want to hear from their head coach that they have the support in the social justice arena? What is sort of the process there? Right. Yeah. I mean, I think it's different for each coach. But I do think that, as I mentioned up the top that smart leaders revel in opportunities like it. Right. Because if you think about the people in your life that you respect, care the most for and work the hardest for and do the most for, those are people who were there for you when things were tough.

Those are people who demonstrated that they really had your back. And I think that when something traumatic happens, everyone's guard is down to a degree and advances in a relationship that would take months can take hours in a situation like that. So I think smart coaches would recognize this as an opportunity. And if it is something that they are knowledgeable, knowledgeable about and passionate about, then they, by all means, feel free to lead the meeting.

If it's not, then let somebody else lead the meeting, but show that you're engaged and show that you care and show that you want to learn. If for no other reason, then it will make your team better. It will absolutely make your team stick stronger together. and when adversity hits, when you're digging down to try to find whatever you need to push through, like knowing that the people in the locker room care about you to that degree, I think is something that you can pull, that you can draw on to find that extra little motivation.

But maybe I'm a bit romantic about all that stuff. There obviously were important moments in your career as far as off the field stuff. But did you guys ever have a situation with any of your three teams where you address social justice in the locker room or was it just a different era back then? Oh, no, we definitely, I mean, we had, yeah, these conversations all the time. That was one of those things that is good and bad about the locker room is that there almost are no rules on what you can and cannot talk about. And sometimes it revolts, sometimes it results in, like, racist and homophobic stuff.

And also those lead to people being brave enough to have the conversations and confront people about these sorts of things. but the DBs are always disproportionately black and also disproportionately outgoing and aggressive. And so like it was always us in the middle of these arguments with offensive linemen who we felt like the world was a little bit more sheltered than the world that we experienced. So that happened all the time, honestly.

Was it an education process? Or was it old tense sometimes? Oh, yeah, absolutely. It was both. I think, I mean, you know, football. players don't have a problem with a little tension, a little confrontation. That isn't necessarily a bad thing around some of these delicate issues. It can get a little uncomfortable.

But yeah, there's definitely confrontations and there is definitely tense discussions about these sorts of things. I remember being in Denver when in the middle of a game, the defense on the other team, like when we were on special teams, defensive players and other team were like telling us that our offensive linemen were saying things that were just offensive to black people. So, like, that led to something else in the locker room because we're, like, we don't know if this was said, but, like, we have to bring this up because, like, you can do whatever you've got to do to get them out of their game. But there's some things that we just can't be on the same roster if you're actually saying and doing these things.

I don't know to the degree that any of this was true or false, but it led to some tense conversations in the locker. Did you feel like your teammates were listening in that circumstance? As far as just internalizing what you're saying or were they kind of dismissing you? I mean, it denied it so that we were there at that point. But we never heard that complaint again. And it didn't, like, it didn't tear our team apart. I think we went 13 and 3 that year. So we were fine.

And it was, yeah, it's like you talk about distractions. And back to the thing of the top, like this, it's just evidence that it's just the most nonsense thing ever. because I've been on teams where guys had beef about like talking to the same woman. Like there's been real beef, been on teams where guys' parents died in the middle of season. And there is like real actual things

that you consider distractions. And they show up and they perform because the professionals. Yeah, no, I agree with you. And distraction culture, again, it's a catch-all for anything a team doesn't like, anything I did anything that coach doesn't like. I remember really early in my career, I remember when Bart Scott was with the Jets.

he was in the locker room and, you know, that a Jets team, there was always a media story. And someone said, this is a distraction. I remember him kind of just casually walking away and saying, you know, the only teams that are actually distracted are distracted by being crappy at football.

And that's, and that's kind of how I feel about it. If you're a good team, everybody's rowing in the right direction. Right. And almost anything can be. Mark Scott said crappy? I don't remember.

I didn't want to put words in his mouth that he didn't say. This is nine years ago. But it's just, it's, I think that the locker room, is a lot, I guess my point is the locker room is a lot more complicated than most of us who've never been in it, think, I guess you could say. And so that's that. All right. So back to what the season looks like. I'm curious for Lamar Jackson, who, and you worked, you coached, excuse me, you played

under John Harbaugh. This is a year where I think the narrative would be, can defenses catch up to Lamar Jackson? And I don't know if that can happen on Zoom, exactly. in May and June and July. And I've talked to some folks who think that maybe the fact that they've been able to watch more film in him could help. But I also think he crosses the line of scrimmage of 14 miles per hour. And he's the most accurate passer on some passes in football. So there's that.

If you were kind of handicapping what Lamar season looks like from a scheme standpoint, from a defense is catching up standpoint, what does this look like? I mean, defense will be a little bit more comfortable with it because they've seen it before. From a stat standpoint, like he'll regress because like what happened last year is just like, impossible to happen, but that doesn't mean that he's progressed as a player. He'll still progress as a player. But the important thing, I think, to understand about Lamar and there's so much confirmation bias when it comes to analyzing Lamar, people who liked him from the beginning, and I'm one of those people, probably guilty of overhyping him some, maybe a tiny bit.

I don't know, man. I mean, he was amazing. I don't think you could overhype Lamar Jackson right now. I mean, I'm with you, but I do think that he's not perfect, obviously, but the people who didn't like him oversell his shortcomings and don't acknowledge how special what he does is. So I think the important thing to understand about Lamar and the Ravens is it's not a gimmick. A gimmick is like one play or a couple of plays. It's like a well-developed offense with like counters if you try to stop something and then counters to those counters. And the most, I think, scary thing about this is if you play your defense against their

zone reads as well as possible. The best case scenario is a one-on-one with Lamar Jackson and one of your players. So, like, that is your defense working. And maybe your guy tackles him five out of seven times. But those two times he might go for 20, 40, he might go to whole field for a touchdown. And that, I think, is the reason why you can't really stop this offense. It is a nightmare for defense is quite frankly. You played for John Harbaugh. Did you see it coming that he'd be this adaptable and open to rearranging basically everything about his organization to make Lamar Jackson better? Did you see hints of that when you were there? Yes. And I don't think you can give it all to Coach Harbaugh. I think it's just a, yeah, I think

it's just the organization. And I think coach Harbaugh definitely came in being a special teams coach, not being like having any particular offensive dogma that he just lived and died by, which is a nice place to be. But I think that he had that predisposition. And then he came into an organization that, I think, cultivated that in him and helped him grow into a coach who was ready to actually be a coach and not a dictator as so many other coaches want to be. So I remember when his job was on the line in that final season with Flacko.

And I remember just like being as outspoken as I possibly could be about how no, this is a really good coach who is adaptable, you're not going to find a better coach. So I was happy to see what happened with Lamar Jackson and them turn this into as great as it was. I think it'd be, it's hard to say that I saw this coming. I can't say I saw it coming, but I did know that Lamar Jackson in Baltimore

was going to work out. I didn't know he was going to be MVP in a second year, but I knew it was going to work. Yeah, I think that it's equal parts not surprising and just completely shocking, depending on what you were looking. I mean, it was just like, I knew he'd be good, but I didn't know he was going to make guys

like they were in high school in the second year. Yeah. Now, to the question about figuring out how to stop him, like I watched all of his games several times from the last year. And the two losses that they had were the Chiefs and the Browns. And in those particular games, the Chiefs always play well offensively, but the Browns played really well offensively. And, like, the stop Lamar Jackson, like, I think that is important because their team is so well integrated

and the styles of play of the offense, defense, and special teams work well together. I think you have to really play well offensively to play well defensively against Lamar Jackson in my mind. And the teams that didn't play well offensively, like the Steelers who wanted teams

who were not great on offense but played really well against the Ravens defensively. I think it's not because in watching the game, it's not because some special scheme. It's because they had dogs. That's what it comes down to. You have to have a number of special players who you are comfortable putting in some really bad situations because you're going to have to compromise yourself in so many different ways and you need people that are talented enough to overcome the compromises you put them. Yeah, it's going to be fascinating.

I want to talk a little bit about the new CBA. You know a lot about it. You've been on the inside of labor negotiations. So the vote happens at the very beginning of a life-changing, globe-changing pandemic. And that was people talked about that kind of late in the voting process, that everyone kind of saw that there were going to be some problems on the horizon that may have had a little bit of impact on the vote. But again, that's sort of unknowable.

But now we know that the cap is going to be tied to revenue that is not going to be where the league thought it was or the union thought it was. There will be no fans or limited fans or 13,000 fans in some cities in the stands. So at least tens of millions of dollars will come out of the cap. Knowing what you know about the CBA, knowing what you know about the league, the future of team building for the next three, four years looks like what? I don't think it'll be as impacted as we think it will be. I think the NFL will, obviously, they'll fall short of their revenue targets. but I remember during the lockout, one of the things that they did was, they called it smooth the cap.

And I predict they'll do something like that again. Like it'd be unlikely that they go with like an NBA style thing where there's a glut of money in one year. And you end up with the KD Warriors. That, the NFL and the general managers won't allow that to happen. The coaches and the owners and the commissioner is something they don't happen. So I don't think, honestly, that it'll be too different from what we've come to explain. And you saw, like, big deals are still getting handed out. So all this stuff of people being afraid to pay guys, like, good players are getting paid.

So I honestly don't think that we'll see much of an impact. Maybe the growth of the salaries will be slightly smaller than we're accustomed to. But they're still going to be getting paid. And they won't let it be a big shock where the cap just dips because that'll, that's not good for anybody. It's not good for the player. It's not good for the league. It's not good for anybody. They won't let it get to that point.

A few more for you. When you look at the Mahomes contract, having been, again, on the inside of the NFLPA and, you know, going through it all, anything surprised you about that deal? Or is that it, was it the sticker shock and the number a bit surprising to you? How did you process that deal when you saw it? Yeah. I mean, I think the sticker shock was a lot of years, you know, and a lot of dollars. So we hadn't seen a contract like that. And then when we dug into it, it wasn't. as Mahomes friendly as the big number would suggest. So, I mean, I don't think the contract was all that surprising necessarily because if you look at what they wanted to accomplish and what Mahomes wanted to accomplish, everybody kind of got what they wanted out of this deal. And I am giving my union background.

I'm always wanting guys to get as much money as they possibly can, but also I recognize that the value of one more million dollars when you're getting tens of millions of dollars is not near the value of being in a place that you're comfortable and happy and having a team that is built around you to let you succeed, which will only add to your happiness and comfort.

So like I, prior to any player signing a deal, like I will always like take all the money, get all the money. And then once they sign a deal, if they're happy with it, then I'm happy with it. So like I think Mahomes is in a great spot.

He's going to be fine. And I'm happy. that he's going to be there with Andy Reid to not ruin what has been a magical two years for all of us, except for, I guess, Broncos fans. Yeah, Broncos and the Raiders and the Chargers who need to figure out. Maybe they can make it like the World Cup and just draw divisions differently each year. Speaking of Mahomes, is to playing defensive back a different job now? I mean, like you have Kyler Murray on past over 30 yards last year was it hitting 80% of them.

them. I mean, this new generation, man, I wouldn't want to play cornerback. Is it is a different job when you watch it now, Dominic, and how has it changed? I mean, it's gotten progressively harder since the inception of football. I feel like playing cornerback is the one position that has not gotten any easier. And I think there were times when quarterback was getting harder and harder, but then we started changing the rules to make it a little bit easier for them. And it's, it's much easier for receivers. And it gets less taxing for various. people on the defense. But what comes with that, I think, is the value. The value of the cornerback goes up. The value of the defensive back is higher than it's ever been. And people

finally have come to the realization that coverage is more important than anything else on your defense. And I think all that, there's a scale effect, kind of a give and take. Like if you're going to take all this pressure, which in difficulty that comes with being a defensive back, what comes what that is, I think, more rewards. We just saw Buda Baker get paid. You talk about being surprised about a contract. That was a contract that caught my eye because I know Buddha's pretty good, but like I was shocked.

But I'm not surprised when you look at the grand scheme of things, the value of somebody was versatile in that position. Last thing for you, Dominique, when I was a freshman in high school, I told you the story, but the listeners need to hear it. When I was a freshman in high school, my mom went to University of Maryland. So we went to the Florida State Maryland game. I believe you were a freshman in college. I sat next to your parents.

And your parents said to me, and it was the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me, are you a recruit? I do not look athletic. I am not built like an athlete, but it is the nicest thing anybody's ever said to me is to confuse me for a recruit. Why are your parents the nicest people at Earth? You don't know. They played you.

They just scammed you right there. They fluffed you out with a little compliment. They're really very, very mean. They're good people. I mean, you're selling yourself short. They might have thought you could get for something. I don't know. Play quarterback.

I was a little heavier back then. Maybe they thought I was just a project. The fridge was going to coach me up. Oh, yeah, Ralph, Ralph had an affinity for thick guys. Hey, that was the Orange Bowl year. So that was a big year for me. So we,

I was supposed to be redshirting, but then we got to the last two games. We needed to win them both to win the championship. and that Florida State game, our corners got torched. So my red shirt got torch right along with it. So then I started against Clemson, and we won that game and I got a player at a game. And then we beat NC State.

So that was the best thing ever. Burned my red shirt, got to stay healthy and actually be a part of an ACC championship because no one wants to be on the team and not actually playing. Absolutely. Well, you were a Maryland legend already that year, and you continue to be a Maryland legend. Dominic Foxworth is one of the best conversations ever had on this podcast. Thank you so much.

Thank you. It wasn't very fun, though. Next time, can we have more fun and make some jokes? Like, I'm a fun guy. I mean, we ended with your parents thinking I was a college football recruit. That's the funniest thing it's ever been said on this. Thank you so much, Dominic. Anytime, buddy. It's been the ring around a fellow show on the other podcast network. Everyone knows about the risks of driving drunk. You could get in a crash. People could get hurt or killed, but that still doesn't stop everyone.

You could get arrested, you can incur huge legal expenses, and you could possibly even lose your job. We all know the consequences of driving drunk, but one thing's for sure. You're wrong if you think it's no big deal. Drive sober, get pulled out.