The Ringer NFL Show - ‘GM Street’ — The Grudens, the Browns, and the Hopeless New England Defense (Ep. 153)

Episode Date: October 4, 2017

The Ringer's Michael Lombardi and Tate Frazier banter about the lack of clock management in Washington's loss to Kansas City (01:00), a brilliant PR move by Hue Jackson (13:00), the woeful Joe Flacco (17:00), and what the four winless teams have in common (22:00). Then they take a look at the best job in college football (25:45) and discuss whether Sam Darnold will stay in school next year (33:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Bill Simmons. I want to tell you about the ringers gambling podcast. It is called Against All Odds with Cousin' Sal. And you're not going to believe this, but it is hosted by Cousin Sal. The biggest degenerate gambler that I know. He's such a degenerate. He has three other degenerates that he calls the degenerate trifecta. And they break down every conceivable gambling thing you would ever want to gamble on. They even take it to Captain Morgan's Make Believe Casino, where Sal makes up props on all kinds of things.

Sports, pop culture, you name it. you are going to want to get your gambling advice from these guys. Cousin Sal, he's been a staple on the BS podcast for the last 10 years. So good that we gave him his own podcast. Check it out against all odds with Cousin Sal. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to GM Street on the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Tate Frazier, and Lombardi and I just got kicked off the stage.

We're back in the pod studio. I guess we're radio talent now. Yeah, you can see that. We have the looks for Radio Tate. I mean, Tate Frazier Eye, we got bumped. I mean, it's just disappointing. It's all right. We had a good run.

We had a nice video run. It was a good run. It was a limited series, I would say. Maybe we'll be back. Who knows. But we got a lot to talk about last night, Monday night football. A lot to talk about. A game that we had said would be a fun one, obviously, in Arrowhead.

The Redskins go there, a team that looked like probably one of the best defenses going into that game. Josh Norman gets hurt early with the rib injury, which kind of hurt their defense a little bit. But still, came down to the wire. But we got to talk about a guy that his brother. His brother did not want to talk about him, and that's Jake Rudin. Wow. He didn't want to talk about him in the first half. Look, let me just say this to start out with.

I get the fact that you don't want to criticize your brother and you're in there. I understand that. I mean, I'm family first, right? I get that, all right? And nobody wants to be Fredo in this thing. Nobody wants to go outside the family. I'm appreciative of that. I get that, okay?

You don't want to be Carlo and get killed in the car. However, that being said, we as fans have an educational right to learn about the game, right? And so at the end of the first half, I'm sitting there just, you know, my wife and I were watching the game, you know, just finishing dinner and here it is. And, you know, I'm enjoying the game. Nice moment, right? And, you know, the two-minute warning comes and all of a sudden the Redskins get the ball with like a minute 50 to go. And naturally, Jay just becomes Jay Gruden, pays no attention to the clock, throws three incomplete passes. And with a minute 10 to go in the first half, he's putting back to Andy Reid. Nobody mentions a word that, you know, he didn't milk the clock. And Andy Reid still, by the way, has his two timeouts left for the half. Okay. So not only did he not run any time off the clock, he kept Andy having his two time outsource. And we're talking about Andy read, a guy that is not known for his time management. He outsources it to India. Okay. We know this. All right. So there's a direct line from India to Andy. Okay. All right. So we know this is just too, it's just too good. Like it was just like too good last. It was like a smorgasport. Okay. So then naturally what happens. I tell them, they're going to score. They're going to score. It's just and nobody says, it's just, and nobody says, a word on ESPN. Nobody says the word. Everybody's patronized in Tony Romo for telling us about football, and thank God he is, because he's the only one doing it, right? He's teaching people the game of football. They have a right to know this, right? Don't say a word. Andy Reid, thankfully, comes down the field. He gets in position to kick like a 47-yarder. 46-yarder, and the kid misses it wide right.

No harm, no foul. Again, no word. It's top secret. You know, it's like, you know, why was Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico? Nobody knows. But we don't have to answer. that question. We'll do it later. All right. So that goes on. Now, the end of the game comes. 2017. Okay. We start to drive, right? And John Gruden says, I love how he calls him Jay Gruden. It reminds me I call you Tate Frazier. I love it. It's so good. So anyway, he says, Jay Gruden needs to accomplish two things. He needs to score and leave no time on the clock for the team. I got it, John. Perfect. Great statement. You got it. Okay. Jay obviously doesn't get it. because then Jay comes down the field and with 59 seconds to go in the game, I tell Millie,

my wife, Millie, they got, Andy Reid has to call time out. I can see the phone line coming from India. You know, like call time out, Andy. We got a save time. You got to save time because if they make the field goal, we want some time. What happens? He comes out. The game clock is at 57 seconds at this point.

We're third and two. This is a time where you run it down. You don't give them a chance to get the ball back and score on you. Exactly. That's the whole point. Jay Gruden runs down. 29 seconds and he calls the timeout. With 29 seconds to go on the play clock.

So even if you want to say Jay, don't call time out, this is the dumbest thing to do. Even if you, but Jay needs a time out. Milk the clock, okay? Milk it all the way down. It would have been under 30 seconds. Okay. Now people say, well, he need time to score. Stop, okay?

If he took it all the way down to under 30 seconds and say they get the first down, say they would have gotten the first down, say they would have run a different play than throwing the ball to docks it in the end zone. people have to stop looking at the clock as not having enough time. You take six seconds and divide it into the amount of time left, okay? And if he would have had 25 seconds, that's at least four more plays to get the ball into the end zone. Plus, he has timeouts. He would have had one more timeout.

So if he's going to call that timeout, which I think is the dumbest thing you can possibly do, he should have let the clock go all the way down to 29 seconds. Let that clock go all the way down. Of course, he's not paying any attention to it. Neither are they up in the booth. Nobody's saying a word. Nobody's saying a word. What about cousins at that point?

Does he have any say in that where he looks over at coach and he's like, what are we doing? I mean, I don't know how it's cousins. He just had a baby. He had a lot on in his mind. I mean, there's a lot of stuff going on in the cousin's household. He can't possibly game managed too. I mean, what else do got to do, right? So we call time out.

I'm going crazy. I'm screaming. Bella's running around the house. She doesn't know what's going on. I'm going nuts. And the next thing I know is we throw the pass. Josh Doxon. Josh Doxon.

and he makes a great catch, but he doesn't come down with it. And that was the whole thing. And then after the game, it comes out, Jay Gruden, is basically putting a lot of this on Kirk Cousins. How? How is this possible? What did he say? He basically said that, you know, well, John Gruden comes out before this game, right?

And he said that there's a difference between good and great quarterbacks, which is, that tends to be, but where's that coming from? You know, like, let's go to the source material here. There's someone that's feeding him that information a little bit. It's almost like John does his bidding for Jay. Like this player needs to play better. Family is family. We understand that to a certain level.

We don't want to be afraid of. Nobody wants to be afraid of here. Of course. But you say all this stuff and that's all in the ether coming out of this game and heading into this game. And it comes out after this. Jay Gruden is basically like, we got to be smarter down the stretch. This falls on our guy. You know, this falls on the quarterback.

You got to understand situational football. Jordan Reed is open in the flat in that play. He was open on a double move down the field. It would have been a touchdown. And Jay's right. We need to be smarter on situational football. He's completely right. He needs to be smart.

on situational football. Like, there's nobody who's ever coached a game that would sit there. My man, Nunzio Campanelli, the head coach at Bergen Catholic, one of the great guys of all time, Nunzio, he would have never let this happen. There's no chance. Like, there's no way. Like, you've got to manage the game. And then when we come off the field, it's Kirk Cousins as fault.

Is that what you're telling me? And that's what I'm saying. It doesn't make much sense. I mean, there's a lot of blame that can be placed around calling a timeout with 29 seconds on the play clock. Or, yeah, on the play clock. Having Josh Jackson not come down with that catch, I mean, you're a wide receiver. man. The ball's in your hand. You've got to come down and make a play at that point.

Doxin and cousins aren't talking to each other on the sideline. Trust me after that. And at the end of the day, you're the head coach. You made these decisions. Why don't you take it? But that's a Gruden. We talk about Gruden family traditions. They like to throw some people around under the bus every once in a while. And that's what happens at the end of this game. So you're too young to remember. Hank Williams Jr.? I thought you're going to say Hank Williams Sr. I'm glad you went to Junior. I went to junior. I went to Junior. I don't even know Senior. I'm not a senior. No, Springsteen loves senior. But I mean, he listened to his music. But I listen to Junior, and he's like, what's a family tradition? I get that one. But I don't understand it. And what drives to be crazy is people at home think that Jay can get away. Like the Washington

media isn't like quizzing them. Okay. And Kirk Cousins has got to take this on his shoulder. Like to me, I don't know how Gruden stands in front of his team and says, you know what, that was a tough loss. We took a lot of injuries. We weren't good down the stretch. No, man, you blew the, you gave Andy Reid time to beat you. And you gave him a time out. Because what you were same before with that much time on the clock 57 seconds. Guess who's going to call a timeout? Guess who's going to get the phone in from India? Andy Reid, he's going to use one of his two time outs less. He was going to, but then he got saved. He got saved by the bell. It was similar to the Chargers Dolphins when they took, the Dolphins took that time out to save the charges.

Right. It's kind of like, are we both trying to help each other out for the good of the game at this point? Like, what is going on? And in fairness to Andy, he's in one of those tough spots. Do I call time out? Do I call time out? Like, do I want them to rush? Am I playing for overtime? They're playing for overtime? Yeah. And if I'm Jay, Gruden, all I'm caring about is either I win the game, it's overtime. Those are the only two things. I cannot lose this game. Okay, those are the three things.

We talk about false dualities. It's not A or B. It's CD. You have to play that out. And to me, like, I don't understand how he can get away with it. Look, I think they've done a good job. I think this Redskinned team, what I saw last night out of them, I think they're really a good team.

I think they might be the best team in the NFC East. They've got weapons on offense. Bill Callahan's done a great job with the offensive line. They're way better than they were in week one. If you look at the Redskins from week one, to week four, way better as a football team. Chris Thompson is a legitimate nickel playmaker. They've got receivers.

I don't think Terrell Pryor should ever run an in-cut. He has no interest in going inside. He's an outside vertical receiver. He should be Deshawn Jackson. He shouldn't be Peregrasant. He should stay on the outside and don't ever let him. He plays wide receiver like a quarterback. He don't want to get hit all the time.

He doesn't block rate, even though sometimes he will. But he doesn't really want to go in there and get pounded. Like, okay, fine, I get you. We'll throw nine rounds to you. We'll throw comebacks to you. Well, everything outside the numbers will do. So they got that. Then defensively, I think they're as good as they –

And it played hard. I think it's the best defensive football that I've seen. With Norman out there, I mean, they were good. Yeah, absolutely. Sweringer, Brown. They were flying guys around to the ball. They were causing all sorts of problems. They were fast.

I mean, look, Jonathan Allen was good. Like, to me, for them to walk off the field and say, well, we got hurt because of injuries and we got hurt because of – you know, we didn't throw the ball of Jordan Reed. It's a bunch of crap. You lost the game for your team. and this is the hardest part. See, when you get on the plane ride, and this is the Al Davis story,

we'll tell the story time here, Al Davis would always sit there and say on the plane ride home, he would come on the plane after a loss, and he would stand at his seat, and all the coaches were in first class. And he would just stare at people, and be like just trying to show how mad he was at him because he wanted them to know, like he knew,

but his point always was this. It's like they have to understand why they lost. Like they think they lost because we didn't do this or we didn't do that. And they lost because this is the reason why we lost. And that's to me the problem with the Redskins. They didn't understand why they lost. Well, who's he staring at last night? Who's Al Davis if he's on that Redskins's playing.

Jay Gruden wouldn't have been on the plane ride from home. I mean, that's what makes it crazy because John Gruden was grew up in that. If John Gruden was on the Raider plane flying home with Al on that flight, he would have had a handful. Al would have gone crazy. Al's the archa. Al's the one guy. He taught it to Bill Parcell's. He taught it to Belich.

He's taught it to a lot of coaches game situations. This is exactly what you practice for. You can't call time out there. Well, I bet Gruden would have pointed at Rich Gannon if he was staring at him. He was like that guy. Rich Gannon probably was sitting at home watching it saying, like, are you kidding me? What do you think, my question is, Tate, what do you think Tony Romo was thinking last night watching that game? Well, I think Tony Romo was thinking to himself, I can't believe how dumb this is.

I should, I would have said, if Jason Garrett would have ran down and try to call that timeout, I swear, I think, if Jerry Jones didn't jump out of the box to go down there and grab him by the neck, I think Tony Romo would have said something. And that goes down to, you have to have a relationship between a coach, especially an offensive coach and a quarterback, there has to be a trust there, like a Drew Bree, Sean Payton. And I don't think that they have that in Cousins. And you hear that with the remarks that he's good, not great.

And Cousins, I don't know. I feel like he's smart enough to know how the game is going. And you can see his frustration as they were driving down. And we should say the Chiefs, you know, more power to them to come down and actually kick that football and win the game. Look, I think the Chiefs, I think Washington lost the game. I don't think the Chiefs won the game. I think if you asked me who the better team was last night, I say it was Washington. And maybe I'm over the top on Washington, but I think this defense, and I think the improvement

they've made in four weeks from the opener, I mean, they handled the Rams. We dismissed that Ram win because we don't think the Rams are very good. Then the Rams put a bunch of points and a bunch of yards on Dallas, and we're like, wait a minute, hold on. They stoned the ram. They were good against the Rams. I think this defense is good. Mnuski's done a great job.

And I think Jim Tomasula's been outstanding. So, like, I don't get it. Like to me, and I'm giving Gruden credit here. I think Gruden's done a good job of fixing the offense, call him, plays, yeah, all that. But game management, man, Andy Reid doesn't need it, India. Jay Gruden needs it. I feel bad for Jay Gruden. Yeah, get off your chest.

All right, one more. If we're all thing to like, no one is thinking, we're going to go down to the Cleveland Browns and our boy Hugh Jackson, who comes out. He's talking about Jimmy Hasam in this quote. Right, right. He says, Jimmy has been as supportive as anybody I've ever been around in this situation. This is the first time in his situation, right? He worked for Al Davis.

Of course. Okay. So let me go on the record as saying that, said Jackson. I know everybody will be thinking Jimmy's going to throw me over in the river. That's not the case at all. He's been extremely supportive,

more than supportive from what I understand the situation's been here in the past. And he also, he continues. He said he hasn't always agreed. And he said, let's find a way to get this right. And that's what they're trying to do there. But there's pain in this process, obviously a lot.

And we just got to get through it. And I think we are. and let's point this out, the Browns, 31 to 7, they get routed by the Bengals, who have not looked great this year. And Jackson denied a report from CBS Sports, Jason Lecomforra, that there's been a rift between him

in the front office and the midst of their 1 and 19 start under the new machine with Hugh Jackson. So all that, all things considered there. So you tell me, you're the reader of this. You have kind of like, you have a handle on this. Tell me what you're thinking about when you read that. I think that's trying to get in front of it, right? That's trying to make sure that whatever the story is about internal things that have been leaked out,

you want to get ahead of it and say, we're all great, we're all good. But he puts Jimmy in it. So to me, the way I'm thinking this is, is like... He's going above the front office to the owner? What he's doing is now if Jimmy wants to fire him, he can't because he's already said how supportive Jimmy is. He's also spoken for Jimmy in this release saying Jimmy's behind it. We're behind the program. Now, maybe Jimmy is behind him.

But I have a hard time believing that when you pass on. Carson Wentz and you pass on some of these other quarterbacks into Sean Watson. This is coming off Deshawn Watson playing really good too, okay, which I'm sure they know in Cleveland. To me, this is Hughes, this is a magnificent PR move by Hugh to be able to say to the owner, here's what I'm saying for you. And so everybody thinks this is what you are. Because if Jimmy comes out and says, I don't support him or I want to fire him, then he looks like he's been being lied to. He looks like Two-Face. Exactly. So this is like, to me, this is the perfect PR. This is as good a PR move. or an advertising move.

You almost think he hired Sterling and Cooper to put this into place. I mean, really, seriously, this is brilliant. This is Don Draperish, really. And I mean, I think it's great. But it doesn't, it also is, you know, when you work at a, you ever work in a bar before? I didn't work at a bar, but I've been to a few. Okay, well, so if you're bartending with another guy and the guy says, hey, watch that bartender, he's stealing.

The guy that's stealing is the guy that tells you he's stealing. Like, you know, they ever see the line and you ever see the line? I worked at a restaurant and they did that stuff. Right. So the guy who tells you, watch that. So the guy that tells you everybody's, you know, like, that to me is like the classic case of like put the, put it on somebody else, make you watch somebody else as opposed to watching what's going on here. And if you're in a Cleveland Browns, you're one in, what are you, one in 18 over the last 19 game. One in 19 over the last 20 games, okay?

You've passed on Carson Wentz, which you would have to say was a mis-evaluation. Whatever you want to think about Wentz is a good player. That was a small school bias. Okay. All right. The jury's still out on golf. You might not think golf is great, but golf's playing way better than any quarterback you have. You've picked Cody Kessler over Dak Prescott, right? And Dak Prescott took a team to the playoffs and 13 wins last year. And then this year, you're watching, now Mitchell Trabisky's going to start on week two. You're watching your quarterback, Deshaun Kaiser, not play very well at all. I don't care whether it's Kenny Britt's fault or not, but he's not playing good at all. And then you watch Deshaun Watson put 57 on the Houston, Texas. To me, this is getting ahead of the story. You're right. This is the great PR move. This is Don't think this. What I'm saying is don't buy this. Well, Jimmy Hasam will come out and I'm sure he'll have his own thoughts on this at some point. If they continue to be one and insert big number, you know, that'll change. Yeah. And look,

they can't keep going down this path. There's just no way. Well, that brings us to a great segment where we insult people a little bit and it's called Not for Nothing. First up, Joe Flacco and the Baltimore offense. You know, Joe has to be insulted. This Baltimore offense has to be insulted. You look at the last 30 games. He's 13 and 17. He's played like crap. He's thrown 38 touchdowns. He's thrown 33 interceptions. Like his numbers are horrendous. He's the highest paid player on the Baltimore Ravens. He's one of the highest paid players in the league. He's had more offensive coordinators fired. This year, he really didn't want to lose Marty Morning Week, so they kept Marty Morning Wing and they brought Greg Roman in. This offense is as bad as the New England

Patriots deserve to be insulted. on defense and we'll get to them later, the Ravens on offense need to be insulted badly. Now, look, it's not their fault. They lost all these offensive linemen. Yonda. And they've lost Alex Lewis and they're struggling and they're moving all sorts of guys all around. I get that. But Flacco, if you're going to be the franchise guy, and I've defended Flacco up until this point.

Like, remember in week one when we insulted him when he said he wanted to throw the ball more than 17 times in his road win against the Bengals? This is what you get. I mean, the guy has been really, I mean, he's not even over seven years. yards an attempt, pass per attempt, in the last three seasons. I mean, he's at 6.41, which tells me he's checking the ball down. Now he's got a back problem. Baltimore needs a quarterback badly, and they better figure it out pretty quick. And there were some huge plays with Jeremy Macklin where he was wide open down the field and Flacco got sacked holding the ball too long. And they had a couple times where they showed Macklin wide open to the plane and he was looking

to the sideline, looking at the fans like, what are we doing here? Like, I'm wide open. Like, why are you not looking over here. And I mean, look, the line of coaches that have been fired from Flacco. I mean, I know Jim Caldwell didn't get fired, but he was his coordinator. He had Cam Cameron, Jim called well. He had Mark Tresden. Then he has Marty Mourning-Wig, and now he's got Marty Morgan and Wigan, Rome. I mean, there's been a bunch of offensive coaches have come in. The only one who really worked for was Kubiak, and Kubiak could run the football. And this is all past Kubiak. And to me, I think Flacco has gotten to the point where his usefulness hasn't been very effective, and you've got to insult them. I mean, this Baltimore

where offense is really bad. And everybody says, well, they got to win with defense. You can't play good enough defense the way they're playing offense. And that's going to segue into a team that cannot figure out a way to play defense right now. No, it's bad. And we're talking about the New England Patriots, of course. Obviously, 32nd in the league as far as total yards given up this season. They could be lower than 30 second.

And these numbers are so far from the – like, I'll just give an example, Tate. They're so far from the average. I mean, it's really remarkable how bad they are. I mean, the average on some of this rushing – I mean, they're so bad in so many categories. that it's really unbelievable. Like, they don't even come to the mean average. It's like they're digging from a hole that's so deep. And the number one hole is when you watch the tape, which is even worse than watching the game, the fans watch the game on TV.

That's bad. But when you watch the tape, it's even worse. And, I mean, the only answer for me watching the tape, their defensive lines are playing poorly. They deserve to be. Nobody's playing with any power or enthusiasm or intensity. That's all true. But I think more than anything is they're going to. have to win the game with their offense. I mean, they're going to have to

control the ball and hope their defense does something. Can they fix this? This is going to be a six to eight week struggle. I don't see how they're going to do it. Well, who's the pass rusher that they could go after if they wanted to bring someone in? Or is there, I mean, we had a guy like a Connie Ely that they bring in from Carolina. Like, they've had all these guys. He had an interception this week for the Jets, made a great play. It's been a great place. They've been a great place. They've had a guys come in that you think are going to be the difference maker, but then they're either out of house or like, they just

haven't been able to get the pieces together. is what happens. Look, they let a lot of good players go. Now they don't have players to replace them. I just think for the Patriots, this is going to be, this isn't going to just happen overnight. It's going to take some time. Can they beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers? I don't think there's any doubt they can go down and beat Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Will they give up yards? Yeah, they need to play better in the red zone. But the thing they can't give up is free access touchdowns on the screenplay. Like just the screenplay to Fosie Whitaker. Okay, I know everybody was following McCafferty. The tight end who was blocking for the screen was uncovered.

Ed Dixon. Ed Dixon. He wasn't even covered. So they can't even get just a bunch formation handled. And until they can get that, they can't play good defense. They're never going to be able to play sound defense, which they have been able to do. I have this weird theory on the Pets defense right now. I think that they're a team that plays to the tape.

And when you play to the tape against the Panthers, you play to Christian McCaffrey is getting the ball on the screen pass. They're trying to cheat themselves. Yeah. And there's not a lot of instincts that are coming on. It seems like they're almost playing to – it's like when someone's in your head. They're telling you what to do. You start thinking about what you're doing. there needs to be some instinctual stuff with that team.

And it used to be with Butler, Nikovic, some of those guys. They just haven't found that right mix yet. And nobody said this, but it's really clear on the tape. They're having a Super Bowl hangover. There's no doubt. I mean, their defenses. Now, Tom Brady's not having that Super Bowl hangover, but the defense is having a Super Bowl hangover. And I don't think there's any way around it.

Now, can it get fixed? Yeah, there's 12 games to go, and it can get fixed. It's going to take a lot of effort. It's going to take a lot of people to buy in and all of a sudden in a hurry. But it's going to be a difficult challenge. Speaking of fixing things up, we have four teams that are 0 and 4, and they need a lot of fixing. And one of those teams has had a Super Bowl hangover for at least, what, six, seven years now, and that's Eli Manning and the Giants. But what's the number one thing?

We look at the four teams. We got Giants. We got Browns. We got Chargers. And we got 49ers. 49ers. Yeah. So all four of those teams.

We look at all of them. What is the one thing they have in common? They don't have a quarterback. They don't have a quarterback. I think all four teams, really, now that you're old and four, the quartermark, you have to say to yourself, We need a quarterback for the future. You can try going with Philip Rivers. Okay, Philip Rivers, when the play breaks down, it's over.

He can't really do it. If it goes perfectly for him, okay, great. But you're 0 and 4. You should have drafted Deshawn Watson. You should have gone on with your future. Same thing with Eli Manning. How much longer are you going to be able to keep going down this direction? The Browns with the Sean Kaiser, they better get drafted one anyway.

Whether they think Kaiser is going to be the greatest player of all, they better hedge their bets like Chicago did with Trubisky. Like everybody says, look, Ryan Pace should get shot. She should be fired for signing Glennon to the huge contract and draft in Trubisky. I say no. I say no, and I say this why. Because what Ryan Pace did was he put all his assets and dollars into the most important position. And he wasn't going to just say, I got it solved.

Glennon didn't work out like he hoped, thought Glennon would be a better player. I thought Glennon would be a better player than he was. But he didn't hedge his bed. He covered himself, which I think he deserves credit for that. So I'm not insulting, but San Francisco needs a quarterback. The Hoyer's not playing to the level. So I think all those four teams that don't have a win are all going to need quarterbacks really soon. If you are a fan and you like betting on games, probably don't bet on those teams without quarterbacks, right?

I would say, look, the Giants and the Chargers, they're going to pretend that they have one because Rivers and all that. But I mean, rivers, if you pressure Rivers from the inside out, it's going to be a slow day. He doesn't move around well enough, and he can't buy a play. Melvin Gordon can't move. Melvin Gorman can't run. They can't pass protect. They have no, they have really nothing. Everything, when the offense has to go to plan, you know, like, you know, in Austin Powers,

I said, I just assumed it all went to plan, right? Well, that's what the Chargers offense is. They're like Austin. They just assume it's all going to go to plan. It doesn't do that, right? It doesn't do that. So you've got to make a play. And when he has to make a play with his feet, he can't do it.

He can't move well enough. I've seen this story before. I was in Cleveland with Bernie Coas, a great player. He was really good at one time. But when he had a move and the game. changed, it all broke down. And then his arm strength wasn't the same. And I don't see Rivers' arms the strength as strong as it was either. I love it when a plan comes together. And a lot of plans did not come together for those four teams. No, no plan has come together. No. Let's take a quick

break. And we're going to talk about some plans for betting on this on games this weekend. Before we move on, let's help our listeners make a little money. If you're watching the games, it's time to start making some money, like I mentioned before, my bookie is the industry leading website that can fill all your betting needs with their great odds, fast payouts and decades of expertise. You can bet with confidence. Your team doesn't have to win. They just need to cover the spread, folks. So what are you waiting for?

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Use promo code ringer NFL to activate the offer. visit my bookie.ag today. That is myb-bo-k-I-E-D-G-T-day. You play, you win, you get paid. And let's talk about some college football players, some guys that, you know, that we're always going to do this. A little lottery watch. We're also going to just going to talk about programs in general

and how they're fluctuating or finessing their way to the top of the college ranks. And we've got to talk about LSU, a job that is under less miles of Madhatter. I mean, you know, they were second to Alabama, sometimes even, you know, could have been the best team. We remember that 9-3-riveting national championship game in 2011. But that job is now taken by Ed O'Doran.

He lost to Troy and Homecoming this weekend. What do you do with that job at LSU? I think LSU, people laugh when I said, LSU is one of the top three jobs in most all of sports. I mean, it's better than most every NFL job. Okay, first of all, why is that? Well, Louisiana has more players than you could ever know what to do with. You never have to really leave the state.

And if you want to go into Houston and somewhere as into East Texas, you're welcome to go in there and take the best players. I mean, it's such a fertile school in terms of football players. They love the game. They're fast. They have all sorts of athletes. They've got big guys. I mean, this isn't a state like Nick Saban and Alabama. Nick Saban, there might be 15, 20, maybe there's 15 players in the state of Alabama.

And then everybody else is probably a good player but not a great player. and now you're fighting Auburn for them. And so maybe you get 10 and Auburn gets five. But then those guys you don't take at Alabama in state, if you don't take them, then the high school coaches start to get mad at you. Right. And then if Auburn takes them, then they'll start feeding all the better players to Auburn. So there's kind of like that civil war within the state that you have to fight.

In LSU, there's so many players, you can't take them all. Like, you just can't take them. It's such a great job. And for Ed Orgeron to be able to kind of walk his way in the back way to take one of the greatest jobs in college football, it's just remarkable. I mean, I don't know how it happened, Tate. You got to tell me how this happened. Well, it's all about recruiting, right?

I mean, if you're Orgeron, we obviously, we've seen him at USC. But they were smart enough not to give them the full-time job. Exactly. And that's what happened. So they had Orgeron there to USC, and they're like, he's going to hold the fort down and keep these guys. For people that don't know about Ed Orgeron, he's one of the best recruiters in college football.

I mean, he is well known in that space. You can watch the blind side if you want to see him actually make a recruiting pitch. He has that great distinct voice. He has a lot of connections that will help you out. if you're a young guy that's a five-star recruit to make sure that you get fun on where you need to go. And Ellis, you did not- You said that really well. Ellis, you did not want to risk the fact of losing a lot of these. He had a big-time five-star guys committed.

You know, Malachi Dupree is a name that comes to mind, a five-star wide receiver that are committed to that team and that program. You lose Orgeron, you risk losing those guys. I don't think you do because I think the only way you're going to beat Alabama, the only way you're going to win in the Southeast country. You've got to play chess with these coaches. You can't play. Ed's playing checkers. And he loses to Troy. He's playing checkers.

Like, if you want to be critical of Les Miles, is Les Miles really never matched the wits on Sunday with the coach at Alabama. I mean, he recruited, while they always had great players there, I mean, he ran a good program. They're like you said, they're always going to be right there. You just wanted more. So I get that. You're not getting more from Ed.

Like, there's no way you could possibly get more from Ed. To me, and now it's going to cost you $12 million if you want to buy them out. They didn't really want to pay the $9 million to buy out less miles. To me, it's one of the greatest jobs that's going to keep sleeping like that. They're never going to win a $9 million. national championship if they can't out-coach some people because the coaching is too hard in college. I think the craziest what if we look at a timeline of college football, if Nick Sabin stays, they win the 2004 title LSU, if Nick Staben decides not to go to the Miami Dolphins and rides

that out like a coach K at LSU and just says, I'm a college, like what he's doing now at Alabama, like I'm going to be the greatest college football coach that there is and he rides that out. LSU, there's no telling. There's no telling. Because he would have saved. 2007, they win with Les Miles and Savans recruits basically at that point. He could have won five, six. I mean, he's obviously doing that at Alabama, but it could have been even more.

I can remember talking to him. When he was getting ready to go from Michigan State to LSU, there was some apprehension and going down there because it is a job that requires you to kind of know the area and kind of be familiar with the clientele down. The people are very prideful. They're very much about their homegrown and the cage. And they love Louisiana. I mean, it is a state flavor.

So when you come into there and you're really not a Louisianaan, You've got to kind of – but Nick won them over with his ability to win games. And Ms. Terry won them over with her hospitality and her kindness, which is certainly – but to me, I think they went too far the other way. They hired a hometown guy or one of them, and now they're kind of stuck saying, are we going to be able to do this? And I think when – you know, I think it's going to be a problem. And let's talk about another giant that's not in the SEC West, but in the SEC East.

A lot of people that are around my age, you know, they've never seen Tennessee beat Tennessee. Like the old days where they dominate the – Johnny Majors and Philip Fulmer when they were great. Exactly. That time, I mean, I remember as a kid watching Tennessee be great, and they would play Carolina and blow them out, and I was like, I don't want to play them anymore. I was at the Music City Bowl when Bush Davis won his one bowl game with UNC in Nashville. I had Tennessee fans throw bottles at me after they won that game. I mean, you talk about volunteer fans.

They really care about their football, and they haven't had a good product in a long time. And Bush Jones is probably one of those guys is going to be on the hot seat. I mean, he's really on the hot seat. I mean, Bush was fortunate enough last year to win some close games that kind of you just wonder, like the Georgia game, how do you win that? But to me, I agree with you, Tate. I mean, I grew up. Tennessee was a great program.

It's still a great program. And, you know, when you, when you're one of the, I think I'm not sure if this is true now, but I remember at one time that Texas, that Tennessee Stadium, that Neeland Stadium was the third largest city in the state of Tennessee on game day. Think about that. It's unbelievable. Knoxville goes crazy from the games. And that river that goes to Tennessee, river that comes up, whatever the river is, I don't know.

I'm not a geography, a major. But, I mean, it's just an incredible venue for football. and they deserve to have better game. And I think that they're in the East, they could dominate the East. Because the East doesn't have a, you know, Florida is a good team. South Carolina's rebuilding. I mean, Georgia's in the East now, and I think Kirby Smart's doing a tremendous job. But to me, that is a great job.

And you just look at some of the Tennessee guys, like even at Alvin Camara, who comes out of Tennessee and he goes to the NFL and he's this great running back that everyone's buying into. He was playing part-time. I mean, they were rotating backs at the time. They really never quite get it right. I think to me, you can recruit there, too. That's the other thing. They may not have as great in-state.

players as Louisiana does, but they have a national appeal. And if they do make a move from Butch Jones, they're going to get whoever they want. They're going to get a great coach. Because it's all about flooding into other states. I mean, North Carolina gets poached apart by Tennessee and Florida and Georgia. Georgia, the state has too many guys sort of like Louisiana. They're going to go to Tennessee or to a Florida. I mean, you start looking at how the South works with those teams and those schools. Tennessee is one of the top three schools. They can get in there and be a player with anybody. When Belichick and I were in Cleveland, we would always take, it's amazing if you do this. If you took the Florida, the Florida, Georgia,

used to have an All-Star game, played Florida High School played against Georgia high school players. If you just looked at the names of the players that played in that game, that could have been to your draft list. Seriously, we would look at this list and say, holy shit, these guys are real. Oh my God, we should just draft off this list. It's like, it's unbelievable. Like, look at these guys. And so we just

decided at that point, if anybody played in the Florida, Georgia High School, they're a prospect. Give him a look. Like, if the Scouts rejected them, like, just put them up on the board. Like, we're going to go, we're going to check this guy out. Like, if you played in that game, we're checking you out. That's awesome. Let's talk about a guy that might not be a prospect in the upcoming NFL draft. There's been a lot of rumors and rumbling.

Sam Darnold may not be coming out this year. A lot of leaked reports that he's not quite ready for the prime time is what they're saying. Sam Darnold, we talked about going into Luke Falk. And for everyone that's coming after me about the Mike Leach, Luke Falk, I'm sorry. The Pacific Northwest is not something I grew up watching football. What they say? What did you say wrong? They were very upset.

I said Washington instead of Washington State. But, I mean, who cares? And I compared Jake Locker to him, but Jake Browning was who I was thinking we were talking. Whatever, who cares. Anyway, Sam Darnold goes out, loses that game and does not look like a guy that's going to be a number one overall pick right now. And now it's leaked that he's not coming out. I mean, there's just a lot swirling around this kid. I would think if you're Sam Darnold's dad and you're advising this kid, you've got to say, look, enjoy your college experience.

The Oliver Luck treatment. Yeah, exactly. Like, why not enjoy the college? Like, every time they show the USC girls, though, on the sideline, like, Like, that's the advertisement why he's not coming out, right? Like, really? Like, the song girls at USC. Like, really?

Like, they show them over there. Like, oh, my God, there's some guy in North Dakota looking at these song girls and saying, why would Sam Darnold leave that? Like, really, come on. Think about it. And so, like, to me, I've heard the same thing. And Greg Gabriel, former NFL executive in the league with the Buffalo, the New York Giants and the Chicago Bears.

He tweeted it the other day. He's hearing the same thing. I'm not hearing. I agree. I don't think Sam Darno, wants to come out. I think everybody in the media is trying to make Sam Darno come out. We're also making excuses for how he's playing. Like, just let the kid play and let him enjoy his college life. And let's keep evaluating him because I think what you saw on Friday night was a kid that kind of

was a little overwhelming for him. And when he went in that game with two minutes to go and everybody was predicting Sam's going to make magic and they fumbled the ball on the agap pressure, you say to yourself, wait a minute, hold on, just let the kid play. And we've seen the U.S. SC guy go too early. We've seen Sanchez do it. Like what you're saying, just enjoy it. And the possible number one overall pick is also in Los Angeles. And that's Josh Rosen right out the road. I mean, you can have him and take a look at him because he's been through some of those tough times. Donald is like a year behind Rosen as far as like getting hit and let him grow up a little bit. And look, I mean, really, if anybody who wants Sam Donald to come out, here's what I recommend.

Come out to SC, just sit in the student union for an hour, okay? And just watch everybody walk by. And then you tell me why the kids should leave school. It's a nice private school, I'll say that. Word on the street, Lombardi. This is one of our favorite segments where we just talk about some things that are going on in the NFL scene. And what's going on is that Mitchell Trubisky, the artist formerly known as Mitch Trubisky, is now going to be the starting quarterback for the Chicago Bears. I said it at the beginning of the year, and I'm not going to to tune my own horn here. I thought it would be after week four.

That he was going to come in after week four. I thought Glennon would have the pick six treatment. And it all is playing out to course, and it's going to start on Monday night football in prime time. John Gruden. I could already predict it, a Griner for Mitchell Trubisky if they have a win. Couldn't Gruden give the Grinder to last night? The kicker? It was Bucker, yeah, Harrison Bucker.

Who's a great kicker? I should say, Graham Ganoe and Harrison Bucker, two game winning field goals, two guys that were the kickers for the Carolina Panthers. That's pretty impressive. You know, that's a smart play by Kansas. You know, to me, if you put a kicker on your practice squad, you're telling the National Football League, you're really good. And so, like, you're going to lose that kid. Like, there's no doubt. And they did, and he looks like a good kid.

But to me, I think that Mitchell Tribisky, it had to happen. Mike Lennon didn't play well. Like I talked about, don't blame Ryan Pace for signing Mike Lennon, all the money. He had to try to do something to fix his quarterback. Now we'll find out what Mitchell Trubisky could do. But once the Sean Watson put 57 on somebody, you knew right then and there that Mitchell Trubisky was going to have to play. And what's really funny about those two guys, when he was Mitch, when he was at North Carolina,

When we played Clemson, when North Carolina played Clemson, he had this, he wanted to play. Marquis Williams was the starter at the time. And Mitch, the whole time was like, I'm just as good as Deshaun. I could be Deshawn for you guys. And now it's weird, like full circle, they get in the NFL. And it's like they're going to be opposing each other. I mean, Mitchell Dribisky wants to be what Deshawn is for the Houston, Texas now. You know that's what happened.

And I mean, look, and then last night, Gruden, who typically doesn't like any quarterback until he gets on television. He loves everybody. He's the Will Rogers on television. He really is. He loves them all. But, you know, he was talking about how great Patrick Mahomes is. I mean, you know. A guy that can't figure out the playbook and has no chance of playing this year.

Well, yeah, I mean, he loves him too. So I think to me, and look, if you're a Bears fan, this is the best thing it can happen. Because Robert Mays pay attention here. Because here's the key is at least you know what you're going to have for the future. And you can plan your team around it. And like I've always preached, quarterbacks are like baseball stadiums. You've got to build your team around them. And I think they have the kind of team that will help Mitchell Tribiskey.

They can run the outside zone. And it's the only play in football, Tate, for. razor, that the quarterback doesn't, the quarterback blocks somebody, the outside zone, because he always takes the backside defensive end with them on the bootleg fakes. So it allows the bears to really kind of help them in their eight-man front defenses that they're seeing him because when Glenn is in the game, they know it's going to be run, so they're playing run and they're penetrating. So I think the one thing, even though he's a rookie, Chibisky'll take somebody to heat off him. And he'll, he's not afraid to run the football. I mean, he can run. I mean, the kid can move.

Now, whether the kid can process and make decisions, he played well in the preseason. But granted. Now, without the experience, to me, whether he can be accurate and make play and play fast, what remains to be seen. But if he's better than Deshaun, he should play. And he's got a great relationship with Theric Cohen. And, you know, I've already enjoyed what I've seen from Howard and Cohen. I think that's a great backfield for this. To me, they might as well get started on their season. They really should get started on their next season. I know John Fox might not be their coach next year. But at least they should start preparing for it. Hey, if you're John Fox, I would embrace it because, you know what? Show the organization that you can build around a young quarterback. And you know what? Maybe they won't make a change. All right, one final thought. We've got Thursday night football coming up. We've got the Buccaneers and we've got the Patriots. If we're going to talk about this game, just what do you want to see from this game as far as the Patriots defense? What can they do to make themselves kind of write their wrongs from what they've done so far this season? I want to see them double Mike Evans, okay?

I want to see them double a receiver. I want to see them take a player. Everybody talks about how Bill takes away the best option. Well, they've got to do it against Mike Evans. They've got to take Mike Evans away. They've got to be able to play more physical up front. And then they've got to slow the game down. They've got to go into your four-corner offense.

They've got to milk the clock, and the Brady has to have the ball 34 minutes, and they've got to be able to control the pace of the game with their offense and hope their defense can make enough plays and play good in the red zone. To me, that's the formula. It's real simple. No free access touchdowns. This is what we have to do. And if you're Tampa, you want to speed this game up.

You want to get them in three corners. You want to say, hey, look, they can't rush the passer, so let's go. We'll run draws. We'll run delays. We'll keep them on the field. Keep them in their nickel defense because they can't cover us and go to hell. Do the Buccaneers look like a different offense with Doug Martin out there? I think they will, but the key's going to be for the Buccaneers is to make sure my man Phil Mickelson, Ilaw, James Winston, doesn't make those three bogey holes in a row.

And then he'll bounce back and play a really good game. He needs to play instead taking the driver out, you know, when Phil doesn't take the driver out in the British Open, James doesn't need to take the driver out against the Patriots. He needs to play it down the middle, play conservative, take what they give you, and don't try to be a hero. You hear that, James, get the two iron out, hit it in the fairway. Yeah, and let's make a par. All right. That's been this edition of GM Street. We've enjoyed it. Lombardi, thanks so much. Thanks. Thanks, Tate Tracer.

This has been part of the Ringer Podcast Network. Hopefully we'll be back on video one day, but we will see. And we will see you guys Sunday night. Thanks, guys.