The Ringer NFL Show - Ep. 79: Day 1 of the NFL Combine

Episode Date: March 2, 2017

The Ringer's Robert Mays and Mike Lombardi get together in Indianapolis to discuss the history of the NFL combine (01:00), the Rams using the franchise tag on Trumaine Johnson and what it says about their direction (04:00), and what Johnson and the rest of the franchise-tagged players are doing to the free-agent market (06:45). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode is brought to you by The Mask Man Show. Each week, David Shoemaker and Dave Schilling bring you everything you need to know about the world of professional wrestling. You can catch the mass man show on our Channel 33 podcast at iTunes.com slash The Ringer or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to The Ringer. My name is Robert Mays. I'm a writer at The Ringer. And sitting with me in the J.W. hallway, I guess, in Indianapolis, Indiana is Mike Mardi. Mike How are you?

I'm good. I think it's a corridor. I'm not sure it's a hallway. I've never seen this part of Indy before. It's a corridor. So just a little inside baseball. We're at the NFL Combine, which is why we're together in Indianapolis. We're doing some on the ground podcast over the next three days.

It's me and me and Mike today, and we'll get Danny and Kevin on as the week goes. So Indy has this really, really strange interior walkaway of stuff where if you don't want to go outside, you never have to. It's the perfect convention town. It's the best one. You know, the first time we came here was 86. First year was 84. We were in Phoenix. The next year we were in New Orleans.

everybody was too drunk to come to the party. And then 86, it came here, and none of this was built. And just to watch this town grow over the last 30-some years, it's been really remarkable. It's great. It's a good event. I was talking about it with a lot of people this week. This is my ninth one because I was going in college.

I'm only 29. But I've been going to come to this since I was 21. This is my longest tenured sports rating thing. So I feel weirdly at home every year we come here. It's fun. I mean, the year it was in Arizona where outside it was cold. That's when Jerry Rice ran 447 on the grass. Arizona State.

That's crazy. You were there the first time with that when he was in a draft. I have every combine going back to when it started in 86, 84, so it's fun to look at and kind of compare people because it's always good. The one thing about this combine is the surface has rarely changed. So you could compare a player that ran in 1988 to a player. So the surface is somewhat similar. So that's what I was talking about.

One of my favorite things is when at the combine we do the GM coach interviews, the podium stuff. Right. So all the GMs talk. and the guys that have been around forever. Like Dave Gettleman has been, he was with the bills in 1986. Right. So he was talking about how trusting his instincts

as a personnel person, whatever, it's that it comes from three decades of, oh, I remember this guy was like this. Right. And he was asked a question about small school prospects. And he's like, yeah, the best example is John Mobley,

who played at Cutsown in 1996. Right. And it was like, the fact that they could pull that stuff out and that you can too, that's one of my favorite things. Right. It is pretty much a consistent

measure. Right. And, you know, the thing it makes it is, is the experience matters in this profession. So you can, you don't want to draw and compare a player to exactly what another player was, but if you know a guy's certain style ran this way or worked out in a certain way, you know, we've all been fooled here at the combine by

the athleticism, really by steroids. That's really when you boil down the blown picks in the draft, a lot of them come down to steroids. And with that, without that testing, I've always believed that if you don't work out at the combine, you should come back and have to retest again for urine so you make sure that we're not getting fooled. Now that's never been

able to be passed. But to me, I thought it was a way to stop players from not working out because what could happen is a player could come to the combine, not work out, and then do it through an extensive six-week training program utilizing a lot of a lot of different substances to help them excel, have a great pro day and all of a sudden, wow. And that's happened before. Totally. But if they had to come back, like a recheck physical, if they had to come back and recheck again, and had it passed another urine test, that would stop all that. So to me, it's just a way. But that's where you can learn a lot from, you can learn a lot from remembering the past dates.

And that's what Al Davis used to do all the time. I used to be in a room with Al Davis and he would say, okay, what did this guy run at the combine, put up his numbers? And then you can constantly look at it and see compare of some, because, you know, the one thing you do know is a guy that John Mobley played so you know what his career was like. Totally. Yeah, absolutely. Because you have that, now you have the results after you had the actual analysis. So we'll get in this a little bit of that. stuff, but I want to talk about some of the news that's come out over the last 24 hours or so.

And I saw you tweeting about this. So the Rams put the franchise tag in Trayne Johnson. And that has not only whatever that means for the Rams, but it has plenty of implications in other ways. So first of all, that choice for the Rams. Right. You have a guy that you tagged the last year that you had tons of caps based last season. You could have signed him to a long-term deal.

Does it seem like they just don't know what they're doing in relation to him? Well, it's taking another step further. They also saw Janarge Jenkins get a huge deal. with the Giants who they had. They chose Johnson over Jenkins. They made that decision. Now, for whatever reason, that's what they did. They saw the contract that Jenkins got.

They made that choice. They could have come back and offer them. To me, it doesn't make any sense. To me, when you do this for a player that's not worth $16 million, and that's my point. Like, this player is not worth $16. There's no team in the NFL who's going to pay Tramaine Johnson $16 million on a four-year deal.

There's just no team. So why are you scared of losing them? Don't be afraid of free agency. Embrace free agency. Say, look, we have plenty of cap room. You know, we want to some. you to a long-term deal. If we can't sign you to a long-term deal, it's probably in our best interest to just pass away, find another player. For me, I always believe, and I wrote about this

in the ring or scout inside out, like Tremaine Johnson doesn't necessarily give me a corner in the Akeeb-Talib Mold where he's just going to shut down the other opponent. I mean, he had one interception last year, 11-pass broken up. Now, I know he had seven, two years ago, but the reality of it is, I don't see him as a shutdown corner. He lacks top-end speed as the route goes. He lacks top-end speed down the field. So in Wade Phillips's system, I don't know. I don't see him being a great cover man. If he were playing cover two, if he was playing for the Carolina Panthers, of course, they wouldn't pay. But they wouldn't pay him $16 million.

That's the point, right? Right. It doesn't fit his skin. Just because you don't have a better option doesn't mean you should allocate your resources that way. And just because you have cap room doesn't mean you should allocate your resources either. And I think that's where the Rams are. The Rams are just, look, it's easy for the Rams. They'll pay $16 million.

It's no big deal. He comes off their books. They've got to eat up cap room anyway because there's no way they're going to spend. They're going to have a hard time getting free agents to come if they don't turn this thing around. I think it's a really short-term thing. Look, it really comes down to most teams that win make decisions based on sustainable values, meaning that they're looking at their crystal ball for two, three years down the road. If I sign this player, how does it impact me?

Most teams in the NFL are operating just totally on situational values. This situation presents this. Here's the answer. And what most teams don't do is what I call false dualities, which is simply this, A or B. Okay, most decisions are never A or B. That's a false duality thinking you have two decisions. No, it's A, B, C, D, and E. And the people that can think of C, D, and E are the ones making the better decisions.

I think the Rams made a horrible choice. Yeah, I mean, and if you think about the deal he would have gotten last year, it definitely has less than $32 million guaranteed in it. I mean, they, so you are costing yourself while also burning money, essentially, because if he hits free agency next year, you don't get anything. You don't get anything past this season. been in the league. I think sometimes these decisions are about cash flow. I know fans don't understand that. But what happens is when you tag a guy, you don't have to start paying this

player any money until September. And the teams get their money, okay? They get all their most of their money starts coming in in August. That's the TV money. Then September, October, November, December, January, comes all the money. If you don't have a huge season ticket base, your cash flow during the season, during the offseason is kind of light, where if you tag the guy, you're basically renting them and you're paying as if rent because you only start paying in September. And so even though the money's guaranteed, you don't have to start paying them until you're getting your TV revenue. So when teams do something like this that have a ton of cap room, it tells me they don't have a really good cash flow situation. Which is unfortunate considering they're trying to build a

palace in Los Angeles and like that's exactly what they need. Right. But they're going to, that palace will generate all the cash flow they need. And they're just, look, when you hire a 31 year old head coach, okay, how old you're 29? He's two years older than you. I know. Bill Belich. I've said this on Simmons's podcast. Bill Belichick at 31 was the linebacker coach. Yeah. Okay. He probably should have been.

Greg Popovich was the assistant coach at Pomona Pitzer. I mean, like 31, all due respect to your age, it's a hard job to be a head coach. I'm a moron. I don't think I should not be a head coach of the NFL team. I was talking to a head coach in the NFL and I told him, I said, you know, you're a better head coach than you were five years ago. And he says, yeah, no doubt. I said, where were you at 31?

He's like, well, a hard job at 31. I mean, it's a hard job. There's no place to go learn to become a head coach. And if you've never been tutored by one of the great coaches, the Parcells, the Belichicks, the Joe, if you've never really been a tutor in their system, it's hard to just go out there and operate on your own. And it's not even just like if we talk about it in actual realistic terms. I can be okay at my job at 29, in part because the purview of my job is incredibly small.

I've learned a lot of things in the past six years that I've been doing this. But for the most part, what I have to do every day, what my responsibilities are, they're small. It's a small window. Being the head coach of an NFL team involves like 78 million things. And I think that's part of the reason and experience matter so much more in that profession, because you need to know what every single one of those 78 million things is, and you need time to do that. There's a great movie that was out before you were born. It's called Body Heat.

It was with Kathleen Turner and Mickey Rourke and William Hurt. It was a great twist of William Hurt. It was a great, great movie. It's rentable now. It really has a great drama. I have not seen it. I will admit. I will admit this.

And Mickey Rourke, and the line applies. Mickey Roark tells, Mickey Roark's kind of like a thug, and he helps William Hurt come up with his idea on how to murder somebody. Sure. And Mickey Roart utters the line of the movie and says, you know, there's a hundred ways you could screw up a murder. And there's a hundred ways you have to think through to commit a murder. Yep.

And if you think of 30 of them, you're a genius and you're no genius. It's the same thing with a head coach. There's a hundred things that can go wrong, right, being a head coach, and you can only think a 30 of them if you're a genius. Totally. So I always think of that line all the time. I'm like Sean McVey. I think Sean McVeigh is a really good coach,

but he's got such a long, tough road ahead of him. I think it's going to be impossible. Then they do something like this, and you just know he's not getting help from his front office. Who's mentoring him? Who's teaching him how to do it?

Yeah, and as he's got a mentor, quarterback, and as they're kind of starting over offense, everything winner. Yes. Quarterback, never played in our center with an offensive line. They are more of a mess, I think, than people are giving them credit

because you have a weight Phillips. You have some of that talent on defense. Because everybody just assumed the mess with just, Jeff Fisher. Yes. So Jeff Fisher gets to, he gets the mess put underneath them and it's really not realistic. So I want to talk about Tremaine Johnson, but more in the sense of what it means as a trickle-down

kind of effect. So you have a Tremaine Johnson. He's, I believe, now the seventh guy tagged. Yeah. So you have seven guys tagged. Last year, four guys played on the tag. So you had not as many that were off the free agent market. So the pool was bigger.

I just feel like we're coming up in this perfect storm as next week begins in free agency of. There's a ton of money. The best players are not available. There are spots in this draft that people don't love. It just seems like they're going to be guys. Like, AJ Bouyee today, when Tremaine Johnson gets that tag, he's got to be celebrating.

I'm sure he's just pumping his fist. Do you feel like it's going to be kind of out of control when the market opens next week? Well, remember, the first four teams have, if you combine what the first four teams have, they have $300 million available in the cap room. So, yeah. But, you know, at some point value, you have to make a value decision. Sure. And you can't always just say, well, he's not worth it because you'll end up with no player.

So you're going to have to decide what you're going to be willing to overpay for. Look, Ron Wolf overpaid for Reggie White. That worked out really well for him. And that got other free agents to come to Green Bay. There's some times where you're just going to have to overpay. But I think on certain positions, like that corner, I'm not sure you can always over. Defensive linemen I'm more than willing to overpay for it. Yes.

If he's a pass russure and can dominate. Like Olivier Vernon, I think they overpaid for him, but I think it was a great sign. Yeah. But you're always going to overpay in free agency, right? Just by nature of the guy. being in the market you're going to overpay. Now it's a matter of degree. Degree of, right. And that's right. And I think that with all this money, you know, look, if, look, agents are going to do this. They're going to tell everybody, San Francisco's involved

with their player, Cleveland's involved with their player, and Jacksonville's involved with whether they are or not, because they know those three teams are going to spend a lot of money. There's like these weapons you can wheel with those teams. And that's what they're just going to say, oh, you know, we're going to go to Jacksonville. We're going to go, well, look, you've got to be able to play poker. That's what I wrote about. You got to be the guy in rounders and be able to see what the tell is. And I think that's, that's why this thing here is so fascinating. You see all these meetings, and agents want to be seen in a meeting with somebody to sell their client that he has so much interest. And then we read about it today.

I mean, we read about it all day long. I mean, this guy's going to get interest from five teams, six teams. You know, you just have to be patient and you have to build your team on the long lens, not on the short lens of free agency. Because, look, Jacksonville, they've tried to build their team on free agency. And all they do, they're going to cut house probably in another day or two. How many more guys have they signed a huge contracts that they end up cutting? Yeah. It doesn't work.

And part of the reason I think that those guys do. didn't work out. And I think that I've argued, I've argued with Barnwell about this like 17 million times. Just like the idea of using free agency to get, free agency to get to competence, which matters, it's important to be competent. But if you don't hit the right guys, it doesn't matter anyway. And especially if you don't draft the right guys. Right. And to me, you don't want to get good. It's overspending. I mean, you've got to build your team the right way. And I just don't seek free agency. To me, what New England will do is take the first week off a free agency. You know, they'll wait to see, that's my New England's not going to franchise

Does anybody? They're going to wait to see what the market really is for all their players. And they're going to make an individual decision based on that and realize there's no player bigger. I mean, Chris Long already said he's not going to sign back. Now, that's more because of the way they run their scheme and how he's taught to play. He's not a five-technique defensive benefit. Right.

Exactly. And more than that, I think it was just the way they want to rush the pass. Sure. They don't want to ever go around the quarterback. They want to go through the tackle and the inside shoulder. But they'll let free agency play out to them, just like the good teams will. Because if you make a dumb decision, it's going to cost you. So when you're looking at, first of all, I want to go back to this one thing, because we're talking about Jacksonville.

You know, you mentioned San Francisco or everything else. I think the big player for me that I'm curious about as we move forward next week is Tennessee. Because of all the teams that have a ton of money, they have one very big exception about them. They have a real team. And they have a real quarterback. Right. So I feel like they're the team with 70 million or so or whatever they have, 56. It's up there.

They're in the top five. that can make a big splash with one or two guys and get to a point, especially on offense, where we're sitting there at the start of next season being like, okay, I'm into what's happening there. They're the exception to me in that group. Right, I think that they can build their team and they can also do it for 17, 18, and 19.

I think if I'm John Robinson, I'm looking at where I am, right, and I want to build this team to where I know it. I'm going to get an extension on Mariotta. I want to build a team so that I know I can keep this team intact for the next five years because they've got some really good young players. They need pieces. whether they sign a receiver or not, but they have two first round picks.

The fact they're five and 18 is just, it's crazy. They're going to get such a board chest right now. And the worst thing they can do is mess up their locker room. The worst thing they can do is overspend for a guy that's not going to come in their locker room and give them 100%. I would be as concerned about character more than I would be what I was doing. You say that, and I had never heard somebody say that before until Chris Ballard said that today.

So when I sign a free agent, you got to know it's the guy that you just gave all that money to. who's going to come in and show everybody else in the locker room, this is how we do it. And you don't think about that stuff. I don't. I don't. Fans don't.

I mean, because the locker room affects you, that's what happened to Jacksonville. Totally. That's why Tom Coughlin's talking about Jacksonville needs to get more mentally tough. Well, they overpaid. They took away the mental toughness by signing the players that they signed. Yeah.

They took away the incentive for mental toughness. Do you really think if you're overpaid, you're really going to be mentally tough and want to have to do it? No, of course, not's human nature. So you have to breed that. I think Ballard's right. I think he's got to be concerned with who he puts in his locker room.

And he's got guys on the team that they've paid money to that haven't delivered. That's a message that goes to the front office. You're willing to tolerate this. You're going to pay Duane Allen X amount of dollars, and he's not being able to deliver this. So I think it's important. That's where the Patriots, again, that's where Seattle. They always have concerns. They're willing to let players go because they're more concerned about making sure the locker room's healthy.

Culture matters. And what violates culture and what kills culture is free agency, overspending for players, you know, going out there, the Eagles have overspent for this player or that play, their defensive line, they can't sign it. They're cap strong now. How's their culture in the locker room? Yeah. That becomes a problem.

How's a depth on their team? That becomes a problem. I mean, last year they were good on the defensive front. We're winning games. Their depth wore down. They didn't have enough talent on the defensive front. So when the season came late, they couldn't really match it. I think that's a concern.

You have to kind of build it on a three and four year scope. So one of the thing that I heard today that I thought was interesting was Rick Spielman talking about Peterson. And just in the guise of, we don't know whether he can. come back because what we're talking about, all that money, those kind of shadow teams anyone could throw out to pump up a price. It just feels like it's more fluid now when it comes to what the market is going to be than it has been in recent years because of all this confluence of factors that's happening. They don't know if they can bring Peterson back because, one, they don't know what his market's

going to be. And two, they have no idea what they're going to have, what situations they're going to be in because I think they're going to spend on some players. So that's the problem. Yeah, they have to. But look, look, they had Peterson for three games last year. average under two yards of carry. He was not, that was before the injury.

I know their offensive line stinks, and I know they weren't very good, but the backs that came in to replace Peterson averaged over three yards of carry. So when you just look at it on a line item basis, I mean, you have to be really concerned about, you think you're going to sign Peterson and get the same Peterson three years ago? I don't think so. No. And one thing, what has the NFL taught us if it's taught us anything is declining running backs don't come back.

They just keep declining. The tread on the tire is gone. And I mean, Peterson's a warrior. He's a great guy. I mean, when he came back last year off the knee, it was almost comical. Actually, I think it was bad that the Vikings let him go back out on the field again because he didn't look like half the player he was at one time. Yeah.

And I'm sure that he's a name. Somebody will talk themselves into him that shouldn't. Like, an owner will get involved there in a way that is just not, doesn't make any sense whatsoever. But yeah, I think that you're right. It's even if it's not just Adrian Peterson, it's the way they're going to have to do with Captain Munerlin because of this exact thing. Just the idea that, Rick Spielman said this today.

He said, I don't, I'm trying to be honest with these guys and tell them, I don't know what's going to happen because I don't know what's going to happen. Right. I mean, you have a sense of the market, but you should have a sense of what you're willing to pay. Sure. And I think that's where it has to come from. Again, you've got to scout inside out. You've got to know what you're willing to spend. You've got to know where you can get value.

And you can't be held hostage. I mean, look, you're going to be held hostage by a rundown defensive tackle. Look, that's one thing the history has taught us is you can find rundown defensive tackles in the draft in any round. So why would I overspend for a rundown only? Here's where you don't overspend. You don't overspend for, if I can formation a player off the field, I can't spend for him. Yeah.

It's not a being first and second down. If I can formation the player off the field, meaning if I'm in three receivers, one back, and you want to put nickel out there, the player doesn't go. If I can keep that player off the field by formation, I can't pay him. And that's the thing. I mean, Damon Harrison was an exception to that last year, but if they don't hate on Genoris Jenkins and Olivia Verde, it doesn't matter.

But they pay him more on situation. They'll play them in their sub. They'll play him to push the pass rusher last year than he had been. Because what I think they, what people misconstrue about rundown players, like Brandon Williams would be a better pass rusher is everybody wants more athleticism for the scrambling quarterback inside a tackle. But sometimes the value of pushing the pocket is as important as a guy that can run off the field.

But it's also the fact that we were talking, even that people thought that Kansas City and Baltimore were going to franchise Dantari Poe and Brandon Williams, this is exactly what we're talking about. You don't give that guy top five positional money. when he plays the same position as KK Short plays, you franchise him. Right. That's the difference.

You can get for a quarterback. You can't formation short off the field. You can formation Williams and Poe off the field. Which is why I was so surprised that there was a shock that they both weren't franchised. Like, that doesn't make any sense. And really, if you study Poe on tape, I mean, to pay Poe consistent. I mean, Poe doesn't give consistent effort. He's a little bit like he was at Memphis, Memphis, University of Memphis.

I mean, he doesn't give consistent effort all the time. So to pay him. I think Brandon Williams is a really good player. I think he's a hard guy to block. I think if he had more, if he would power the pocket more and pushed pocketback. You could justify paying them, and I'm sure Baltimore would like to keep them. But to me, you've got a fine rundown. You can't pay everybody. You can't pay everybody. Totally.

All right, Mike, that's all we got. Today was a little bit more about just the league because it was just coaches and GMs today. We didn't see any players. We didn't talk to any players. Tomorrow that changes. You know, the coaches and GMs talk again, but guys are going to start filtering through. So me and Kevin and Danny over the next couple days, we'll have some more stuff that's league-centric, but we'll also be able to tell you a little more about the prospects as we see them for the first time and chat with them. So Mike, thank you for doing this, as always. Thank you, guys for listening. Talk to you soon. Some people still don't get podcasts. What's out there and how to listen. You can help that with a click. Right now, think of someone

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