The Ringer NFL Show - Fiery Matt Nagy, the Browns' Big Picture, and the Bucs' Receiver Issues

Episode Date: December 21, 2021

Kevin and Nora begin the pod by sharing their reactions to the Vikings' 'MNF' victory over the Bears and discuss Matt Nagy's coaching tenure in Chicago. Then they talk about the Browns' brutal loss to the Raiders and how it will affect the franchise this season and beyond. (23:44) Finally, they touch on Chris Godwin's injury and what it means for the Bucs' passing game (34:44). Hosts: Kevin Clark and Nora Princiotti Producer: Arjuna Ramgopal Production Assistance: Chris Sutton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up everybody? I'm J.J. John G. Stramski. And I'm Jason Gough, and if you haven't heard, the ringer has gone local. I'm bringing the fire. I'm bringing the rain from the big apple with my show, New York, New York. And I'm reping Shy Town with my new show The Full Go on All Things Chicago. We've got episodes three nights a week with all the reaction to the local teams and guests. Plus bonus episodes around all the big games and storylines. So whether you're uptown, downtown, downtown, in the burbs, or a transplant. Make sure you follow New York, New York, and the full go on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast.

It is the Ringar NFL show, part of the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Kevin Clark, joined on a Tuesday morning for a holiday edition. New schedule. It's Norr, Princiotti, nor what's going on. Happy holidays, Kevin. I'm in the holiday spirit. You have a Christmas tree behind you. There's a Santa hat on the Christmas tree.

There is. Wow. No Christmas tree. We only have a couple days to sort that out. What we do have is some bad, bad, bad football. We're going to break that down. Bears of Vikings on Monday night. Brown's Raiders.

the Chris Guywin injury, which we'll get into a couple of big picture things with the quarterbacks and the coaches that we saw last night. Let's start, I guess, with the Vikings and the Bears. Dan Pompeii, I think, made the best point about this, which is that I think there were 14 bears missing due to COVID, and it looked the exact same as what it's supposed to look like. If you had just drawn up what a Bears' primetime game is, and by the way, it's not the Bears' fault. They keep getting into primetime. Whoever in the league office is like, we need more bear. is primetime. We have some notes for the league office about this. Come on. You don't love those vertical

shots of the city of Chicago. They don't make it all worth it. And the booth eating Chicago pizza in the booth. Oh, there it is. Like that's not going to save anything. There was a desperation of this game that was, that you could have just, if you'd written it down in an envelope for the game and what does this game look like? You would have been 100% correct when you pulled it out at the end. So this game went exactly how we knew it was going to go. What'd you think? Well, I think that's the right point, right? Like I have stuff written down like. like Thomas Graham Jr. exclamation point. And I don't know how to feel about that, right?

Because it's like, all right, does the fact that, you know, the baby bears backup secondary was actually pretty good? Right. Does that tell us that there's personnel misevaluations going on? I don't know. Like, we're not seeing practice. We don't know enough to really seriously make that evaluation. Like maybe Kirk Cousins just decided to stink. Maybe it was just a weird game.

Like I don't know, but I also know that the bears have sort of lost the benefit of the doubt where you're going, okay, fine. Maybe like this is not starting CB1 of the future. But it does make you think like how many, sort of how many stones are left unturned here. And there's not enough faith in the organization. to be like, no, no, that can't be right. It's like, no, it, it might be because, yeah, like, who would have expected that to be all that different other than the Vikings, like, somehow playing their first non-close game on, like, the worst night for their offense.

Okay, so Matt Nagy has the ability to plunge his team in a despair so thoroughly. Like, this is going to be his first losing season ever. Like, he made the playoffs last year. And it just feels like one of the worst coaching tenures of all time. It's literally just a feeling. He has turned a winning record as a coach. And I know Vic Fangio has a lot to do with that in the first year because they went 12 and 4, then 8, 8, and then 8 and 8.

But he has a winning record as a coach, and it still feels like a colossal failure. I mean, that's just, and part of that is because of games like this. He's got a little bit of Bill O'Brien that way. Yes, exactly. Where Bill O'Brien, the year he got fired, Bill O'Brien was up 24 to nothing on Patrick Mahomes. And he turned that into the end of his career. Bill O'Brien took that and was like, watch me and my career this way. Like, only Negi and Bill O'Brien are capable of that.

I did think it was interesting, Nora, like, he was kind of fiery last night, Nagy. And it reminds, I think there were people who thought, including me, I thought maybe he was trying to get kicked out of the game, maybe light a fire. Like, I think he was looking for a headline there. Like, Negi's not going down without a fight. I talked to people when we know Matt Nagy. They say they actually kind of doubt that. that he had some grand plan.

I think he was maybe just angry and blowing a gasket and spiking a challenge flag. You think Matt Nagy might have been unhappy about the way that things were going? And in multiple fronts, yes. That seems possible. I loved, this was from the pool report, the reporter who was talking to Scott Novak, asked the question, are there magic words that you can't say? And Scott Novak just goes, yes. Well, he got the one person.

So if he got another unsportsmanic conduct penalty, he would have been thrown out of the game. And he didn't get it. And when he was spiking the challenge flag, he looked like he was going for it. It reminded me, there's a great, great, sports illustrated article from like 10 years ago

by Thomas Lake about Bobby Cox about how Bobby Cox's whole thing was he would just get thrown out of a game just to spark his team. And I kind of feel like if there was any conspiracy theory, it was, Madaghy he was trying to do that. You know,

there have been rumors for a month he's about to get fired. Like, I don't know. I mean, that would maybe be the only plan. But again, the one thing I don't want to do is give Matt Nagy too much credit. Like, right? That's the whole thing.

And like, I'm actually surprised that we don't see more of this from Meggy on the field. Like, just in the sense that the thing I was here is he always sweats the small stuff. Like, we saw that manifest itself when he tried out six kickers or signed six kickers and tried out many more a couple years ago, you know, kind of flustered with the media all the time from what I hear. And like the fact that he doesn't blow a gasket more on the sideline is a little bit surprising. And now that we're getting close to the end, it's, I guess it's just don't.

natural he'd be upset um okay so let's let's talk to a picture about the bear's sir for a second justin fields looked okay last night when he had a clean pocket um the splits from pff were were pretty remarkable in that in that front he was uh he had a 44 percent completion percentage under pressure 7 or 3 percent completion percentage when kept clean um his yards per attempt more than doubled when kept clean not a surprise um and he needs to to stay upright uh this is the end of of of that egg i don't think there's any sort of question about that. It was interesting to me.

Brad Spielberg put these numbers up this morning that Fields now ranks fifth and big time throw percentage, according to PFF. First and percentage of passes thrown beyond the first down marker, 47%. So that's an interesting number. And obviously he has, he is sloppy. He fumbles the ball.

He takes these sacks. He makes mistakes. And we saw even last night, like, when he got hit in bounds, the one that led to the Temen Jenkins penalty. He got hit in bounds and it's like he waited to the last second, still got clobbered and they couldn't even draw a penalty, right? Like he played that the exact wrong way. He has things to do, but a good coach can fix this. And I'm curious, Nora,

if you're the Bears right now, if you're a McCaskey or you're Ted Phillips, you do what? I think you look for someone and look, it's come up a few times last night and recently that because of the new interview roles, there's some advantage. to if you're going to move on from your coach doing it quickly because you can get a jump start on on looking for the replacement. I think you and it's not that this isn't what they've tried to do in the past, right? It's easier said than done. But I think the only thing that you care about is finding the right person to develop Justin Fields. Right.

Because I was chatting with a personnel exec last night and asked like, okay, if they redid the first round of the draft tomorrow, what order the quarterbacks go in now? And his answer was Lawrence is still number one. And then Mack Jones, then Fields, then Wilson, then Lance, which by the way, the end of that is interesting to me. By the way, by the way, I don't, I don't interrupt you, but it would be curious to know, like, when, when Lance would go and when Wilson would go? Would they go, like, in the 20s? The thought was Lance might fall out around one.

Okay. Yeah, that was my follow-up question. It's like, if you redid the draft, is Zach Wilson, like, the 27th pick? Right. Like, he's the fourth quarterback. But yeah, Mack Jones probably fit. Yeah. So if anything, you know, Fields is sort of around the same,

but potentially a little bit more coveted because of particularly, I think the downfield ability and the explosive playability that that he's just put on tape, right? And in a really tough situation because he was still, their red zone offense was a nightmare last night. They didn't score a touchdown inside the red zone four times. other than that, though, he looked pretty good. And there's clearly that the sacks, the play under pressure is not entirely his fault,

certainly because that offensive line is a disaster. But there's a lot to clean up, but there's also just a huge amount of ability. And I've got to imagine that that's incredibly tantalizing to anyone, you know, if you're Josh McDaniels, I don't know how you weigh that against something like Jacksonville. I still think probably just Lawrence is. such an unbelievable opportunity that that's like a one-two kind of thing. But you find the coach who you think can do the most with Justin Fields because clearly there's a lot to be done there. I guess my only advice is just to both those because Lawrence and Fields will have open

coaching vacancies. The ownership means just stops growing around and fix it because like the lesson of the last 20 years is that a lot of times quarterbacks don't fail. They are failed. And both of the ownerships have the capability to fail their young quarterbacks. And with Lawrence in particular, you're a guy, it came from Clemson where I know people joke about it, but like they are really, really high on character on the roster there. And, you know, he probably, you know, he probably came from a culture that he probably really liked. And it was a winning culture. And then he goes to Jacksonville.

And it's a joke. And Urban Myers kicking kickers. And he's blaming coaches. And he's spending his off days in bars in Ohio. And I just, you have to go out and spend as much money. I mean, that was the thing we learned from this coaching carousel in college over the past couple of weeks. Just go out and spend whatever it takes. Even if you have to trade a draft pick, whatever.

I mean, that was the rumor I heard about Chicago, is they were going to go kind of big game hunting to try to save fields, to go and kind of fix this treadmill once and for all. Because the problem is, like, Matt Nagy was a extremely coveted assistant a couple of years ago. I mean, I remember that. I mean, there's a reason that he became the bear's coach when that was open and it was considered a good job. The risk you have is you're going to hire Matt Nagy four years ago and you're just going to do this all over again. And so I know that maybe you try to just go out and try to get Godfather an offer with money and picks to somebody who's really, really established.

I don't know. I don't know what it looks like. If you're Jacksonville or Chicago, these teams have the money. They have the ambition. And I just, just please don't screw around and ruin these guys' career because you don't know how to make a hire. I wouldn't hate it if they did, right? Like there's always a risk and, okay, if you make a Godfather offer and somehow, that's not the right one, then you spent all these resources and didn't get the guy.

But there's a reason that we don't really have anything more to offer here in terms of what they should do than just like find the right guy. There's no formula for it. I mean, there's, we kind of know what not to do in certain situations, like, i.e., maybe don't lay it all on the line for Urban Meyer if he needs people to convince him to come take a job. And there are certain examples where you can see the writing on the wall. A lot of them, there's no set formula for getting it right. So it's just, you know, whatever they do, whether it's perceived as the right move or the wrong move or good or bad or the person they hire has a sparkling reputation or people have mixed feelings about them. Like, there's always going to be this element of like holding your breath and just

waiting and seeing. But you've got to imagine that they at the very least will be high up on people's lists because of the quarterback. And that's certainly something. Yeah. I mean, also just because the bears should be a good job. Like they should. It should be. It should be the most. It's a really great sports town and people really like the bears. And if you become, I mean, like Mike did go won a Super Bowl in 1885. There's a photo of him behind every bar in Chicago. Like, you become a god there. I mean, it's like winning in a huge college program or something.

So it should be a well-thought-after job. It will be a well-sought-after job. I'm just saying that the risk that, I mean, the problem with the NFL in general is that it's kind of a closed loop. And there's no other, I was talking to somebody with us yesterday, where it's like every other sport, there's at least a vaguely analogous league somewhere else, right? Like, if it's European soccer, there's hundreds of leagues you can just choose from.

If it's the NBA, people can hire from Eurobasket. get, there's the G League if you wanted to develop guys. I mean, damn, I was into a magic game of the day. There were five G league players that signed that day. Like there's more of a minor league system, feeder system. The NFL, this is it. And so you're going to go, okay, well, who are the best coordinators? Well, the Bears already did that.

And so I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that part of the problem when you're trying to hire in a situation like this is that you're just going to do the same thing you did four years ago and hope it's better this time. And that to me is the problem. Anyway, that's my take. Can I add one more thing? I'm with you that I think it's more likely that Nagy's just mad. I do think that coaches should try to get ejected.

I want someone to just make a real honest go at it. But it's too, the problem is with Negi, I agree with you. I'm 100% in agreement with you. The problem is it's way too late. It's way too late. And Negi's made so many coaching mistakes. It's not too late to entertain me. Oh, yeah.

No, on that. But, like, you just look at the totality of this. I mean, I was thinking about Negi the other day, and it's like everything that he had, remember this BS about the Mahomes model? The Mahomes model was going to be in Chicago. What were we doing? The Andy Dalton was going to play the Alex Smith role. Does anyone know what the Mahomes model was?

The Mahomes model is having Patrick Mahomes. But also, also they had one of the best offensive. Play callers in the history of the sportist head coach. They had Matt Nagy working with Alex Smith that year. And then they had Mike Kafka, who was the quarterback's coach, basically be Patrick Mahomes' private coach that year. And then Alex Smith helped him obviously in the quarterback room as well. And so it takes a village to raise a quarterback.

Also, they were good. That's what I'm saying. Alex Smith, also Alex Smith was actually good, whereas Andy Dalton was not good. And so they had all of this infrastructure here. The Bears had none of it. Is there any evidence that the Bears had a coach even remotely as good as Mike Kafka? Let alone Andy Reid, let alone Eric B. Enemy, all those guys. Like, they didn't have the depth and coaching staff to have the Mahomes, nor did they have Mahomes, nor do they have Alex Smith.

Like, that to me should have been red flag. Anyway, point being, too far gone from Matt Nagy. He should, the next coach should start, get. getting kicked out like second game of the season. So like second game of his career. If Kellyn Moore gets that job, I want him out of there in the second quarter of his second game. I'm into it. But I do think there's a little bit of, you could do a little, a little last minute reputation

laundering by getting kicked out of a game, I think. Because I do think that a critical mass of people then tack on the, yeah, but remember when he got kicked out? Like, that was awesome to their Matnagie reflections if he goes and does it. Is there anything image-wise that could save Matt Nagy's image right now and, like, prop him up for a good... Like, if he goes to a press conference tomorrow, he knows it's getting fired and he says, what? What is the best way to go out? Maybe if he wrapped...

Like, we got convinced that Drew Locke was good for, like, two years because he, like, wrapped for 30 seconds. I think Matt Nagy could try that. I was going to say that he should just go to a press conference and detail all of the horrendous mistakes he made and why he made them. Just total transparency. Like full accountability. Totally. Total transparency and be like, everybody sit down, have a little coffee jug for the reporters. Just like an hour of just here's why I screwed up. And then maybe he gets a better job next time. Well, that's the other thing is that like if you give journalists free junk food.

Well, yeah. I mean, that's or just say their names back to them, which is the cheat code. Yeah, just say their names, bring snacks. And then, yeah, not like full accountability for the sake of accountability, but just for like the sake of sort of voyeur. people being like, oh, that sounds like a disaster. Now I'm entertained. Now I like you. You've contributed to a positive experience for me. Media management for coaches is the easiest thing. Just say yes to whatever weird premise a reporter has and then to say their name back to them and every beatwriter in America will love you.

Easy to do. And free food. Vikings. We didn't even talk about them at all. Yeah. So they need Adam Thielen back, which seems like is probably going to happen because he was trying out of ankle during warmups and then they made him inactive. So maybe he can get back next week.

But again, I'm not willing to appoint the baby bear secondary as these diamonds in the rough that we've only not seen the season because of mismanagement after one game. Right. But it's not great that cousins looked that bad playing against a secondary of backups. but part of it was they could just bracket Justin Jefferson all the time. And they're in the playoff picture right now, but they have the Rams Packers and then the Bears again. So they need him, I think.

And it's funny that on such a bad night for their offense, they were finally able to not play a one score game. I guess maybe you look at that and think like, okay, they've got tough games coming up. But if the Vikings are capable of one thing, It's generally playing to the level of their competition. So maybe when you're playing the Rams and Packers, that's a good thing. But it's hard to feel good about 3.6 yards per attempt for Kirk Cousins.

Absolutely nothing downfield. But again, I do think some of that improves a little bit if Jefferson's not getting just like all of the attention. Have you played around with the ESPN playoff scenarios? I always play around with the 538. Well, so the ESPN one has you can put in, it's easier to do the all. all the games. Like, because 538 only has the next two games. So as you said, the Vikings are in right now,

but they still have the Packers on the schedule. There's some real chaos that could happen here. Like, if you, if just the winning percentage, it just the teams are supposed to win, win the games for the rest of the season, the bills and the Patriots would play in the first round. McDermott would hate that.

So McDermott, if I had to put money on like a good coach getting kicked out of a game, it's John McDermott. Oh, that's a great point. Like there's like there's a world in which you only get kicked out of a game if you're a bad coach who's going to probably get fired and you're doing it as like a last ditch effort to do whatever. There's also a world in which, and this is the world I want to live in where we normalize this and coaches just like do it sometimes. And Sean McDermott, who I think is one of the best coaches in the NFL has a real tendency to run a little hot under the collar.

That's a great one. That's a great one. I'm looking at the playoffs right now. I feel like Cliff could use a rebrand as a guy who gets kicked out. I feel like he's running a little cold right now. Yeah, that would be weird. I don't think, like, Cliff is so calm. I know, but that's why you do it. That's why you do it. Like, Matt Nagy was not the kind of guy you think is going to do it, but he did it.

You tried. Yeah. Yeah, so they have the Rams on Sunday. So this problem must probably sort itself out. But do you remember the listener question we got on Sunday that was like, should the, should the Cardinals and the Bengals hope to lose out and miss the playoffs so they can get a new coach. The answer probably to both of those was no. And we went through it on Sunday.

But I actually do think that it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world for the Vikings franchise if they just missed out this year, didn't get the seven seat. I mean, like, what are they going to do? Go into Dallas and win in January. Go into Tampa and win. I don't see that. So maybe miss out this year and just kind of retool the franchise, make some coaching changes and it just might be might be time for them um you know as he said last night

kirk cousins uh one of six beyond 20 yards uh three point six yards per attempt uh it's i i feel a retool coming and i thought it was a nice performance for them last night obviously without 14 COVID players on the bears it was a different deal um but it just you know it might be time for both these franchises yeah well i think the difference there is the viking Vikings have just been so mediocre for four years, basically. I mean, there's a playoff appearance in there. But seven and seven so far this year, there's seven and nine last year, 10 and six, eight and seven and seven and one.

They have been sort of just like balancing right on the edge of, okay, we paid Kirk Cousins all of this money. We have some, a few really good players. But there's no depth. The defense has struggled in years. when Zimmers felt like it shouldn't have. They've never made a clear decision over or reached a clear decision point to be like, we got to blow this up and start it again. They've always been a little too good to do that,

but they've also been not good enough to make anything real out of it. Well, that's the great middle of the NFL where nothing ever happened. And it's a little bit more angsty for the Vikings to be there because of how much money the quarterback makes. But I don't think, I do think that. I'm with you that the answer to that question is almost always no. Like, making the playoffs is still hard. If you can do it, that's meaningful to fans.

That's an accomplishment. Wasn't meaningful to Bears fans last year. Okay, well, the seven seed is stupid. I hate the seven seed. I just like that one thing that's important is ownership is clearly just not taking the seventh seed as seriously. Like they're not, like, the whole thing about like, oh, they expanded the NCAA tournament and now coaches are all keeping their jobs,

because they can make it. Like, the NFL is the side of the seventh seat. It's just not a thing. So we're moving on from it. It's good. That's good. That gives me hope. But yeah, it would be good for them to,

if something forced the Vikings to hit reset, I would not have a problem with that, certainly. All right, Raiders Browns. This one was tough. 22 players on the COVID reserve list, including 10 starters for the Browns. They still had a chance to win. They went from a,

So this is kind of the AFC in a nutshell. And this was a similar situation to what happened with the Ravens on Sunday, but not as dramatic. So if the Browns had won last night, they temporarily would have been the four seed. They would have had about a one and two chance to make the playoffs. They would have been the division leader. They now have a 16% chance to make the playoffs and are the 12 seed currently in the AFC. That is how stacked together the AFC is right now. And that's why you can't lose a game like this.

And that's why there's sort of a cruelty in what happens if you are out 22 players, including 10 starters in a week where there's a winnable game. This is brutal for the Browns franchise. I think it's going to have kind of long-term ramifications. What'd you think? Well, they couldn't get a first down when they needed one, right? Like, first of all, thank you to the Browns for ultimately making this an entertaining game because Mullins pulled it together somehow, brings them back from 10,000.

to nothing. But all they needed to do was get a first down and Carr wouldn't have gotten the ball back and through some combination of, look, I get being pretty conservative with the game plan in that situation, right? But then you get to a moment like that. And I don't know if it would have been different if they decided to throw the ball once, right? But you do kind of get get to a point where it's like you might have to take a risk right when you're without 10 starters you have to take some risks to to win the game and and stay in contention and I think that's really tough I mean they've got Green Bay on Saturday by the way the Saturday thing is brutal yeah no going from Monday to Saturday is just absolutely brutal I mean I guess on the

underhand half the team didn't play so I thought about that I thought about that I thought about that. Yeah, they're well rested. Some of them are fresh. But so you probably get Mayfield, Landry, Austin Hooper, are likely to come back. Miles Garrett couldn't move at the end of that game. Yeah, that was tough. And they lost Tack McKinley. So it kind of, it's not going to be good. But also, I mean, again, 13% chance to win the division, which is really their only path to making the playoffs. This is going to be a real tough road. It's tough if this is how the end of the line looks, right? Because, you know, you just have, you're not going down with your team, right? Like if this is the game that leaves the Browns out of the playoffs,

they didn't really get a chance to do it with the guys who are normally on the roster. With their coach, with their coach, by the way, with their coach. They didn't get a chance to do it with their coach. Missing the playoffs for the Browns this year, it's interesting because the narrative on this team has changed so much. I think we all really liked them coming into the season. When Mayfield had the initial injury, I actually had written them off and said, the ceiling on this team is much lower.

They can still win some games, but they're not going to compete for the playoffs. That has changed. They actually competed for the playoffs. So in a weird way, they didn't come close to me with my expectations, and then they exceeded my revised expectations. I'm curious, I just want to talk big picture here, because I don't really necessarily want to get into the nitty-gritty of that particular game because it was brutal.

Do you think missing the playoffs for the Browns, even as strange as it happened, and with this game yesterday, where they were out 22 guys, do you think that this changes the outlook on Baker Mayfield and just how Andrew Barry is going to go up building that roster? I don't really because I don't think it would be a smart decision if it really did. And I think that they are a smart organization. Right. Like Baker wasn't playing.

And while it happens all the time and it is human nature that things like squeaking into the playoffs by the skin of your teeth at the end of a season change. perceptions from ownership and and lead to teams making important decisions, I think the Browns are going to be pretty clear-headed about the decisions that they have to make going forward. The tough part of that is that what to do with Baker-Mayfield from a contract standpoint is genuinely like the most vexing question in football right now. Before the season, it was already head-scratching, right? Not head's great, but like that was the thing everybody's talking about, what do you do with Baker Mayfield when the market for him is over $30 million and he's probably not worth that? And you can probably get a huge percentage of his production somewhere else for a lot less money.

And so, you know, it's kind of a butterfly effect in a game he doesn't play him. You know, it gives you an out to now that, now they're not going to make the playoffs. It gives you an out and it gives you the ability to start over. I honestly, I don't know what you do. I think you probably offer him a quote unquote below market extension because that is probably his value is not a mega contract, not a Josh Allen situation, not what Lamar Jackson is going to be offered eventually or has been offered eventually and will sign eventually. I don't know what you do.

I'm just, one thing I know is Andrew Barry is, I've heard him talk about it, not even just to me, but to other folks as well, he tries to make decisions in a vacuum. And he tries to have as little bias as possible. And so I agree with you in as much as if they're not going to let this particular game determine how much money they allocate to their quarterback or if they allocate any money to their quarterback. But I do feel like it has the possibility to just change the course of the short term. And I don't know.

I don't know. I mean, it is one of the most fascinating things. haven't really had a quarterback like this. I mean, we had, you know, going back to, if everybody remembers, but 2012, 2013, 2014, when a lot of quarterbacks, Russell Wilson being won, he made less money than the team's long snapper the year. They won the Super Bowl. Colin Kaepernick was another where these guys were like mid, mid-round rookie contracts, and they were just crushing it. And everyone said, well, you're going to see the end of kind of borderline extensions. And I remember the litmus test in this was Jay Cutler.

And it was like, okay, well, Jay Cutler, you can't win a Super Bowl with the Bears. They're not going to give them all that money. They can go find out elsewhere. And then they just gave them $126 million contract in 2014. I remember someone saying that to me, like early 2013. Like, look, the Bears are going to take a stand. The Jay Cutler's of the world are never going to make that money. And then they just did, right?

And he made a bunch. And that just kept happening. And we saw kind of the 2015, 2016, 2016, 2017. Remember that time where Derek Carr and Matt and staff and all those guys were taking turns to being the highest paid player in football. That's just the price of doing business to quarterback. And what I'm intrigued to see is how Andrew Barry approaches the fact that for a quarterback who's not top, top, top tier, but that is the price of doing business with him. How does a guy like that approach the quarterback position? Someone had tweeted at me a couple weeks ago that in an interview I had done with him, Barry, before last.

season I didn't even remember this that he had said that if you don't have the quarterback position sorted out you're in neutral and someone said to me well is are the brand does he feel like the Browns are neutral right now and at the time he didn't feel that way I mean he didn't feel that way before the season either he like you like to make a Mcfield but I I how the Browns and Stefanski and Barry view the quarterback position to me in the next couple of months is maybe the most fascinating story in football I feel the same way particularly because look, there are elements of the quarterback market that are sort of out of whack in that you have

situations like, I think you could argue that Josh Allen, for instance, is not maybe providing the bills with quite as much value as they are paying for him. Also, if they had to redo that contract tomorrow, it's happening the exact same way because there's sort of value as you break it down to, you know, dollars and cents and EPA and numbers. But most of these things, close to all of these things, are completely based on precedent. And the Baker-Mayfield situation feels like the closest thing we've seen in a while to a situation where you could argue it's worth trying to break a precedent for. Can you get a starting quarterback signing an extension with the team that drafted him to take a below market deal?

That's not a thing that really happens very much. It's not a thing that's happened in an analogous situation in a really long time. It's hard because agents don't want to do it because it looks like a failure. on their part. Players don't want to do it because it says something about how much the team, you know, believes in them. And the team is always going to argue for, you know, whatever gives them the most flexibility and saves them the most on cost. In a perfect world, you would look at the Baker-Mayfield situation and go, all right, this is one where it might be worth meeting in the middle, right? Like the Browns have given us quite a bit of evidence that would

healthy Baker Mayfield. They are a playoff team. Things go wrong in any given season. That doesn't necessarily mean they're going to make the playoffs every year. But they've shown that that's what they can do. It's just these are human beings and you start to put it all together. And you know, you can make a strong argument even just for going year to year using the fifth year option, using the franchise tag. But again, how does the person respond to that?

Like Baker Mayfield for better and for worse is not. has a track record of telling people how he feels. That's correct. And you wonder if that would turn into another situation like that. Because honestly, like no one asked for my opinion. If it were me, I would be really, really, really, really tempted to just go year to year because you can do that for quite a few years. You do for three years after the fifth year extension or fifth year option.

You can do for three freaking years, although it gets expensive. Yeah, but if you take the option plus two tags, it's still, I believe the average of that still comes in under 30 a year. And that's a much nicer place to be then over. But we'll see. I agree with you that it's one of the most fascinating questions right now. All right. Chris Godwin out for the season.

This is brutal. You know, we even heard a lot of Godwin praise on the, from, from Aryans, via Ariens on the broadcast on Sunday night about his blocking and all that stuff. He makes people miss. We saw how valuable he's been in some really big. game since Brady came to Tampa. And this changes things. They're going to get Antonio Brown back.

Bruce Aaron said yesterday. He doesn't, he doesn't care about what anybody says about his views on Antonio Brown. What he said in the past with Antonio Brown, Brown's going to come back. He's going to play. But they lose an element of their offense. What do you think? Yeah.

Well, the question is who is going to fill the slot receiver role, right? Because one of the things that made the Bucks win the Super Bowl last year was that they had just unbelievable depth at wide receiver and at all the past catching positions. Now, you can look at that two ways, right? Like they don't have the same ability to just come at you with Evans, Godwin, Antonio Brown. Then you have the tight ends. At the same time, you do still have, you know, you're getting, you're getting a pass catcher with a good track record playing with Brady and Antonio Brown back.

It sounded like Mike Evans also got. got hurt in that game, but apparently he's going to be fine. You still have an enviable group of receivers. The thing I think is very few of those guys, like even the smaller ones, even, you know, like Scotty Miller, he's not really a slot receiver. He's not really, like he doesn't really play that. He's really more comfortable on the outside, even though he's sort of like small and shifty.

They don't have a guy who can do even the JV version of. what Godwin does. So then the question is, do you change the offense in any significant way to account for that? Do they go back a little bit to more of the type of offense that they ran last season where it just seemed like Ariens's influence was more of the dominant one, whereas this year it just seems like a little bit more like Brady has sort of had a year plus to put his fingerprints on the thing.

And maybe there's a reversion to more of the downfield stuff that they were doing last year, which is not necessarily bad. But it's just Godwin, he does so much in terms of being able to work the middle of the field, helping them block. And they're really going to miss that

because it gives them a lot of flexibility. And while they have guys where they can, you know, they can put a starting offense on the field where you're going to go like, oh, that's a talented group. It's just not the same structurally without him. So I think it's a big loss. So there were two players that Ariens in the broadcast compared to Godwin,

they'd played with, or they he'd coached before. One of Ms. Heinz Ward, who is retired that had multiple media gigs. He's good. The other one played last year and is bopping around golf courses all over America. And it's Mr. Larry Fitzgerald. Now, Larry Fitzgerald was actually asked last week if he would come back to play for the Cardinals after the DeAndra Hopkins injury, and he said no. But he has not been asked, if I'm not mistaken, he's not been asked if he would like to come to the Tampa Buccaneers and try to win a ring, play with Tom Brady, who I think he has some sort of podcast with. And they also have the connection that Belichick loves Larry Fitzgerald more than any human being on the planet.

But if I'm Bruce Ariens, I'd just make the call to Larry Fitz and say, hey man, how about six? weeks of just making a few million bucks, blocking, making some catches, being a good locker room guy. Let's just see how it goes. You're probably, I know he's old. I know he's not what he was. He's not even close to what he was, but he's, he'd be a nice option to have for the bucks in that call. Get him out of the podcast racket too. Clear out, Larry. More market share for us, baby. Heck yeah. He's on the let's go podcast with Tom Brady. Oh, the let's go podcast. Someday we're going to do a deep dive on the let's Go podcast. Dude, it's pretty good.

It is pretty good. He gets people on there. He's making jokes. Brady had that joke a couple weeks ago about Julian Edelman going as Wes Welker for Halloween or whatever it was, just saying it was a cheap imitation. I mean, that was good stuff. We could have Brady on. We'd accept Brady on the ringer NFL show. Tom Brady, come on the ringer NFL show challenge. Speaking of Wes Welker, every single time I see Wes Welker on the 49er

sideline, I am surprised to see him there. happened at least 15 times. Like, the inability of certain things to lodge themselves in my brain is really remarkable. Do you remember a media night for the Chiefs Niners Super Bowl? Boy, do I. No. Okay. Well, were you there? No, I wasn't. Then that's why, you know, Welker was just wearing just wearing just like a kind of like one of those, you know, like J-Crew 2010 like tablecloth type button down shirts, just standing there. And I don't think most people knew he was a Niners assistant coach. Like I think people just thought he was just like a member of the media.

He was just standing in the middle of there. And he was answering questions and stuff. He didn't want to answer questions. He doesn't like that sort of, because everyone's going to ask about Brady or whatever. He just wants to talk about the actual Niners receivers. But yes, that is, I think that's the vibe. As people forget that Wes Walker is there all the time.

He was a Texan assistant for that with Bill O'Brien. Yes, true. The best kind of incognito Media Day story is that an Eagles kicker named Jake Elliott, he still the Eagles kicker. he um he was walking with jason galliger and roger sherman and he had his credential in his uh jacket okay and this is at media night and he's just walking around with the ringer video team and i'm like what's going on over here and they told me that he didn't want to answer questions so he decided just latch on with the ringer and i don't think you knew we were and he just wanted to pretend like

he was a media member. So he was just following around like Jason Gallagher. And I bet you if anybody went out of him. He fit right in. He fit right in. He was going to say, hello, I'm Kevin Clark. That's great. That's hysterical. Yeah, so there you go. Anyway, that's how we'll end this podcast. Anything else, bud? No, that's it. I'm just Googling Jake Elliott to see if I could, like, if I squint, if I could mistake him. He could be on the ringer video team. Totally. All right. Next up on this feed is the Wednesday preview show, getting you ready for all of this week's action. We'll be back on Sunday, myself, Nora, Stephen Ruiz.

Thank you, too. Chris Sutton for a production help with additional production supervision by Arjuna Ramqbal. He's been the Run Run-N-FL show on the Renair Podcast Network.