The Ringer NFL Show - Matt Ryan to the Colts and Other QB Dominos to Fall

Episode Date: March 21, 2022

Kevin, Nora, and Kaelen offer instant analysis into the trade that sends Matt Ryan from the Atlanta Falcons to the Indianapolis Colts (0:56). They also discuss some other quarterback-related topics: Jameis Winston’s and Marcus Mariota’s deals, and Baker Mayfield’s and Jimmy Garoppolo’s unresolved situations. They wrap up by talking about The Athletic’s in-depth story about Urban Meyer’s tenure as the head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars (25:12). Host: Kevin Clark, Nora Princiotti, and Kaelen Jones Associate Producer: Isaiah Blakely Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For as long as I've known the NBA, it's been a Stars League. But even among the Stars, there's an exclusive club. Russell and Dr. Jay, Jordan, Kobe. They're all part of a select group that paved the way for the NBA superstar of today. And some even shared secrets with each other along the way. From Spotify and the Ringer Podcast Network, I'm Jackie McMullen. And this is the Icons Club. It is the Ringer NFL show, a part of the Ringer.

podcast network. I'm Kevin Clark. Semi emergency. Vagely emergency podcast here on a Monday afternoon. Nora, Prenzi's here. Nor, hello. Hi, Kevin. Caitlin Jones is here. What's going on, buddy? What's up, y'all? How are you guys doing? So, I'm good.

It was not, this is a different day than every other, let's get to the microphones day that we've had over the past 10 days. the most pressing thing that happened is that Matt Ryan got traded for a third round pick to the Indianapolis Colts and it changes I think the tone of the rest of the quarterback dominoes James Winston by the way is also coming back to New Orleans which is a different type of domino there's a lot that comes along with a move like that a lot of destiny's changed today and then the athletic posted an article by Jason jinks and mike sando that detailed the Urban Meyer disaster that honestly could be a two-hour pod.

We're going to limit ourselves to just half of this short emergency podcast. But let's get to Matt Ryan off the top. Nora, when you first heard this, and there were rumblings this morning that a deal either had to happen or that the Falcons were super duper committed to Matt Ryan. I think 4 p.m. Eastern was a deadline. A couple hours for that, the deal was announced. But this was a turning point in the franchise for Atlanta and for Indianapolis. thought what when you saw this news?

Well, it's a huge departure from the status quo for Atlanta, but I think it's kind of exactly what the cults have done for years at this point, right? It is a low, ceiling, high floor, risk-averse Chris Ballard, veteran quarterback move, ultimately the third consecutive. I think it's worth asking whether or not the team. team is in as good shape. It's still definitely a team that, you know, if you're someone like Matt Ryan, you're going to think of as capable of winning games and being a good context to play in. I'm not sure if they're quite as good as maybe someone in his position would hope, but I think

there's still on that sort of wild card cusp for Atlanta. I mean, they're taking the biggest dead cap charge in the history of the sport. And that's only after. that has, that record has been set in the last year. So just a big decision for them, I think a year after they decided to kind of run it back and see if they could be competitive to tear down and rebuild. The dead cat record just keeps falling. Remember when Antonio Brown did it a couple of years ago and the two hours wanted to get rid of them?

And then I think Jared Goff was another one. Stafford was obviously up there. It's like the four minute mile. Jared goth and then Carson Wends. Yeah, and then Carson Wends. Like, it's just going to keep falling forever and ever because teams are more comfortable with this. The dead cap record like two years ago

was like $5 million. That's not right, but it was really, really low. Antonio Brown like laughed. Right, like a receiver. Just like a receiver who had behavioral problems. Now it's just like old quarterback. Now it's just like, whatever. Hey man, hey man, it's like, hey man, what are you doing later?

I think I'm going to take the biggest dead cap charge in NFL history just to see how it goes. $40 million in dead money on my salary cap to move on from Matt Ryan. It's going to be fine. It's good work if you can get it. By the way, the Atlanta Falcons have agreed to terms with Marcus Marriota. We're going to get to that.

Kalyn. Another domino. This is a domino. We're just playing dominoes here. Big domino day. No, like you guys say. Hold on.

Kately, I'm really sorry. I don't need to put you off. Kevin, I'm going to pick with you. Didn't we say like three days ago that we were just not going to do this podcast. Didn't we say on air? Well, so there's two things.

Number one, this is a workday afternoon. What else are we going to do? Number two, that was going into the weekend. I was like, do not, we're not going to do it. Like, we're not going to get everybody together on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. Everyone has to leave their family and talk about Matt Ryan. We're not going to do that to anybody. We're going to do the listener.

We're not going to do the listener. So that was specifically a weekend thing. The second thing, the second thing I want to say is the Urban Meyer thing. put this over the top. It got us into, we got a pod here. That's where I was going. We had to talk about that. Kaelin Jones, Matt Ryan.

What does he bring? I mean, I, like Nora was saying, it's a really high floor move. And it seems like this has been the trend, you know, since the Colts fell down from quarterback heaven when you know, they had 20 years of Pete Manning and Andrew Luck under center. And now they've been kind of wandering around the wilderness.

So, I mean, I get why you make the risk of us, decision because again, this is a talented enough team to where they should be able to compete in the AFC self. They should be able to push the Tennessee Titans. But again, Mike Brable has shown that he's a good enough coach to get that team to win, you know, over 10 games every season. So I think it's really tough sledding for Indianapolis. I don't think it puts them over the top per se, but it does keep them competitive, which, you know, I think that's really the best they could do at this point in the QB carousel. I feel as good about the Colts. right now with Matt Ryan as I do about the Titans.

They're one A and one B for me in that division, which by the way, to qualify that, I don't care about the division at all in the context of the AFC. Like, I do not care. Like, congratulations,

have a banner, have a T-shirt, wear a nice hat. But, no, I do not consider that division to be particularly relevant to the AFC in general when you look at some of the other conference. Does that mean that you think that the Colts roster

and now quarterback situation is on paper better than the Titans? because the Titans get awarded three process and culture wins per season. It's not a process. It's just culture. It's just pure culture. It's just pure culture. You guys can have the quarterbacks and the good players and the Titans that go ahead and have a culture.

Deal with it. So I think that this is, if the Colts become the clearinghouse for getting a pretty good old guy every year. Philip Rivers two years ago, Wentz was young, but that was a mistake. That, to me, is a better role to me

than trying to solve this long term with a stop gap. If you can get a absolute star who's under 30, go ahead and do it. Carson Wentz was not that. If you can draft a quarterback with the top 10 pick,

I would do that. But I think that this is not a bad option for a stop gap. The way quarterback's age now, Matt Ryan, this is not like a one and done from Matt Ryan. This is a good strategy. As I said, they're probably a playoff team right now.

By the way, they were probably a playoff team last year if they just beaten the damn Jaguars. So I like this move. This was the best case scenario after, I guess, I guess after once the Texans said that they couldn't meet with Deshaun, this was the best case scenario for the Colts. Yeah, but the thing is with that,

like you said it's a good idea in terms of the stopgap solution, but how much longer before the stopgap solution becomes a long-term issue for them because it's been, we're going on four or five years of a different quarterback under center. So I mean, sure, like in the interim, I think it makes sense.

But if this happens, if we're still talking about the Colts, rotating and picking a random person at quarterback, you know, two, three years from now, then you have to question the process because Ballard's done a great job drafting, but the quarterback has not. made sense. So they've got to be more aggressive at some point in the next year or two.

By the way, Stephen Ruiz texted in. He's going to Malik Wilson's Pro Day. He texted in to let the listeners know that Chris Ballard is still on fraud watch in his book. Okay, so I understand what you're saying, Kaelin. And it's an interesting point, but the commitment needed to find a

star quarterback. I mean, they gave away a first round pick for a bad quarterback last year. They already did that. Imagine what would we have to be given up to get a good quarterback in a track. We just saw it. Right. And we've seen it over the past couple of years. It starts at two firsts, and there's a commitment there. You know, the seminal thing for me ever was reading Moneyball when I was in high school.

And there's a line in there from Billy Bean where he said, when you have to do something, you're screwed. Like the moment you have to do something, you're screwed. And the moment that I think the Colts say, okay, we're just going to go super duper all in, trade two first round picks, three first round picks, even if there's not a Matthew Stafford available, that's when you wreck your franchise. So I think to pay the money for Matt Ryan, that's just the cost of doing business and a third round pick, that's just good business in my book. I'm okay with that.

Listen, I'd love for them, if I'm Chris Bauer, to have a long-term solution. I love them, Justin Herbert. Great. Like, everybody would want that. But if you're looking at this off season, they cut bait on Carson Wentz,

which was all of all this is considered a net positive genius move relative to how good Carson Wentz is. And so I don't, I think that they could not have done any better relative to the situation that they entered into for the 2020 offices. There are some teams, by the way,

and I know that you read the story from Zach Kiefer and stuff, that that whole thing was a disaster, Ursaid wouldn't meet with Wentz, all that stuff, but there are some teams that are lazy enough or uncreative enough to actually just run it back with Carson Wentz. There's a lot of franchises like that. So I'm okay with how the Colts have come out of this. That's fair, but at the same time, like,

you're not necessarily wrecking your franchise. Because if you look at, I mean, it's a very arbitrary stab, like AV, based on draft picks beyond the third round, the Colts and the Rams are the best of developing players. So to me, that says Chris Boward is good enough at identifying talent, whether it's in the draft of free agency, to build a roster, go be aggressive, utilize the first round picks, empty the clip and compete.

Like to me, at that point, you're not competing if you're going to continue to be risk-averse when choosing the one position where you have to be, you know, have the most gumption to attack it. Great argument, but we're dealing with purely hypotheticals here. Fair, fair. Because I don't know, if you called all 32 teams and said, hey, man, I'll give you two first round picks for your quarterback. You're not going to like who says, let's do it.

Right now, you're not going to like that. That, that to me is the problem. That's why I'm giving the Colt a helmet sticker for what they did the past couple months. Was everything mismanaged up to that? Yes. With Carson Went's trade bad? Yes.

But it's okay what the business they've done the past couple of months. I'm in, I'm giving, Chris Bauer is off of fraud. for now. Nora? I'm into, I never put Chris Ballard on Fraud Watch. I adore Chris Bellard. I think everything you just said is true. I do think part of the reason it's true is because it's a terrible quarterback market. And their strategy is incredibly risk-averse. And there's not a lot of sort of opportunity costs out there because the general consensus is that there are very few good quarterbacks available. So playing at the way that the Colts typically play it is really, really, really reasonable in this kind of environment.

So for 2022, I'm totally there. For what it's worth, I was not really there last off season, but on some level kind of understood it and liked the decision two years ago. In general, I think they're sort of veteran quarterback thing. To me, it's not amazing, but when you consider what the alternatives are, There's a lot of logic to it.

The question is just at some point, you have to take a swing that is going to accept a greater degree of risk. And what happens when Chris Ballard is willing to do that? We don't really know because he just hasn't done it at quarterback. And if they want to get out of the like, okay, maybe you're a wildcard team zone, probably at some point that requires not a Philip Rivers, definitely not a Carson Wentz,

probably also not a Matt. Ryan. You were talking about risk incurred. Last year they traded up to a first round pick, a conditional first round pick for a guy who couldn't throw the ball three yards without getting it intercepted. That to me was the risk. That's a bad evaluation though. That was bad.

Also, there's some bad evaluation that went into that probably, but like Carson wins in a weird way was still a relatively high ceiling guy in that context. And he ended up being a relative, like, they did not tank the team. they were able to remain competitive until the end of the season. And that was the type of. And then what happened? Reasonable that they would. They didn't make the playoffs.

They burned out embarrassingly towards the end of the year. They lost to the Jags. Like, I'm the first person to say hand up. It didn't go the way anyone would have wanted it to. And clearly there were inside the building issues left and right there. But it's different than- In Jacksonville and an indie.

That was a toxic game. Yeah. And before that, the Raider game. It really, really wasn't great. Right. They needed to win, they needed to win, what, one out of three games and they just couldn't do it. It was a pretty spectacular collapse. But it is a different situation doing that where the quarterback who is still statistically kind of middle of the pack. Now, if you look at it, maybe you have different feelings about that. But that's a different situation than drafting a guy in the first round and maybe finding out that he just absolutely can't play. or maybe finding out that he's the next Justin Herbert, right? But, like, that is a different type of low-end, high-end acceptance of variance than what they've been willing to do in the last few years.

Yeah. Let's do some winners and losers here that we haven't discussed already. I'm going to start. I'm starting to think that holding this L right now might be Mr. Trey Lance. Because the music, so the word is, is that they didn't want to, to go after Jimmy G. The Colts. They didn't want to go out for Jimmy G.

According to Diane Rossini, because there were concerns over the shoulder injury, not from the medical side of it, but from the missing time in the off season with a new team. That was a red flag, according to Rossini.

At some point, if you're the Niners, don't you just make it work with Jimmy G still on the roster? Do you release him? Do you trade? I mean, they were running out of teams that will take on that contract. The Niners are apparently telling teams

that they have an offer for two seconds, quote, unquote, in hand. No, I don't know who that's from. Astronidge, I don't know. But that was their asking price to combine. And if they can get it, I think they will take it. Can we go through the NFL and find out who, okay, so let's assume, I don't think they would train them to the Seahawks. Well, so what, that's what I was going to say,

what if it's from Seattle and the trepidation is we don't want to train them to the Seahawks, but it's in the back pocket. it's nobody in the afc west the giants no giants are set it can't be carolina because carolina doesn't have the right picks for that unless it's like

nine years from now why are the giant set uh daner jones and i'm forgetting her to backup is it's a rod taylor okay so the giant's not we're really stretching so we're really okay well there's two separate things the giants are set on

what they think they're doing a quarterback. They're not set on what they have. They're not set on what they have. Yeah. They're not set for the future. They could also, they could take a quarterback. Yeah.

Or they could trade their pick. The only team that seems not set is the Seahawks and the Panthers, I guess, yeah. What about, okay, this would never happen. What about Washington? Commander should trade for Jimmy Graslow.

That would be wild. Well, they traded for Carson Wentz because they didn't think that they were going to be able to trade for Jupiter, but now I think they probably could. No, the other problem we hear is that Baker Mayfield is just available. Right. That's what I was waiting to get to. Like, Baker Mayfield's also out there. Like, it's hard to find landing spots for these two because, you know, there's a dwindling market at this point. Everyone who was QB needy, QB hungry seems to have found a quarterback at this point outside of the Carolina Panthers who are just been desperate for the past year and a half.

So this Baker thing, so let's get to this report that there's really no market for Baker. And I feel for him because we went through this on Friday because I still think that Baker's is actually better than Jimmy Garabolo.

So this is per Adam Schaefter. There was a team that asked for a pick to take on Baker Mayfield's contract, almost like a Brock Oswald situation, which is just Tough. I don't think he's there.

I don't think he's there. No, he's not brought as well. And then she after said, they're not getting a premium pick. I think we kind of know what that means. Are you guys surprised there's no market for Baker? We don't think Baker's going to end up in everything I just set aside, Seattle.

I still think that makes sense. I guess, are some of these teams tanking? Secret tank job. Aren't you, aren't you worried? in some cases that that you're going to

win too many games with a Baker Mayfield or Jimmy Garaplo? That's my concern. Yeah, so you're probably trying to avoid winning so that way you could take a franchise passer in 2023. I am pretty shocked that there isn't a market for Baker, but when you consider

the context, like the trade for the Sean Watson happened you know, so late again in the cycle that all those teams that probably would have been interested in Baker Mayfield, Jim Garoppolo, like, they've already got their guys.

So at the top of the draft next year is probably going to be some combination of Bryce Young and C.J. Stroud. I would not throw the Miami quarterback into the top of the draft just yet. That comes later. Not ready yet. There's a number of teams

that are going to be real bad this year. Real bad. You can talk about the Houston Texans there. You can talk about probably, probably the giants. The Panthers are in that mix. The Seahawks are in that mix. I don't think the Falcons may be in that mix.

The Falcons are definitely in that mix. We might see some historic, not tanking, but just like we're going to start, you know. I mean, also the commanders don't think they're tanking, but brother, they are tanking. They're doing an accidental tank. By the way, just if we're doing winners and losers, the Falcons were unable to get the 73rd pick, which was one of the third rounders that they could have gotten back and had to settle for the 80 second. Now, there is no reason that they shouldn't have been able to negotiate up to the better third round pick. Listen, you play hardball.

Chris Ballard, play hardball. That's how you get off a watcht watch. Anyway, I want to close my point on Lance real quick. I think Lance is going to be good as a starting quarterback. I just think that all of the talk about him not being ready. And even Niners fans are saying, of course he's not ready. That's the point of an offseason to get ready. But if he's even a little bit raw in September,

that's the easiest thing in the world for Kyle Shanahan to say, we're going to play September with Jimmy Groplo and then New Stempernel and that stuff. That to me is a concern. Can you guys name all the starting quarterbacks for Colts and, week one since 2016? Since 2015. We're going to do a sparkle quiz here. Luck.

Jacobi Berset. Yeah. Scott Tolzing, was he? Scott Tolzeen. Yeah, you bet you. He's one of them. Philip Rivers. Wentz.

Yep. Right? Is that five? And luck. Yeah. Yeah. Luck twice. We did it.

Ding, ding, ding. I don't remember Tolzeen at all. I don't remember Tolzeon on the Packers playing. that one year where Rogers broke his collarbone or something. That was a tough year. That's a tough watch. All right. So anything else on this, Matt Ryan,

James to the Saints was an interesting domino to fall. Anybody care about that from a playoffster standpoint? So last I checked we hadn't seen the money involved. I am kind of curious what he got, just because until he got hurt last season, didn't look half bad. I think he was getting like five and a half. Five and two.

And I'm curious if that number has actually gone up a little bit. I imagine it's close to the same. But I'm curious if anything of the arrow, yeah, for James is up or down. He got two for 28 with 21 guaranteed, right? Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah.

Wow. Oh, yeah, it was a big deal. He got some good money. That's more. than I would have guessed. Huh. Are we happy for Matt Ryan? Indy seems like the best place he could have ended up.

Yeah. Also, I'm glad he didn't have to just stay after all of that nonsense. It was so nice of him to push the deadline to Tuesday. Like that, that's pretty classy of him. I wouldn't do that. But it's nice of him. And it's weird that it's so, like, there was no way to send him out. Like, I feel bad for Falcons fans.

Like, last year, you didn't. realize that was it with Matt Ryan. He's a pretty good quarterback for him. Can I just, so our colleague Danny Hype that's tweeted about this and, and I do think it's worth bringing up. What do you guys know about Matt Ryan? Do you know anything about Matt Ryan other than the fact that he went to Boston College? He's been the quarterback for the Falcons for a long time. Seems to like his wife a lot. Uh, lost to the Patriots in the Super Bowl. Take some questionable sacks. He's a wine guy. I, I, uh, I actually do. I mean, he's been on on his day. So, I mean, you know, I know quite a bit about him. Okay. Can you tell us one thing?

Give us one hobby. One, I mean, he is an absolute golf sicko. Really? Okay. I'm sorry. We need to just not accept white men liking golf as a personality trait. No, no, but this is like, like, so, so I'll give you an example. And this is, this is going to be lost on most people. but the day before we had done the slow news day I played Baltis Raul which is a nice course in New Jersey and I just mentioned that because I knew someone had told me he was like really into this stuff

and he started telling me about he'd never played Baltis Raul but he started telling me about like the intricacies of their recent renovation which had been like six months earlier by and they told them about the golf course architect and we talked about that for a while really deep stuff okay

nerds out over interior design I don't I don't think that, yeah, he's a golf course architecture dork. How about that? I don't know if that's true, but he was into it. You could have your own show. I'm really very clear. I'm super happy for Matt Ryan enriching his life through the love of the sport of golf. I'm just saying that does not make me feel like I know any particular unique about Matt Ryan.

One thing. I kind of knew he loves golf before you told me he loved golf. I'm going to give you something. I'm going to give you a take I just made up. If you have a basic hobby, but you delve into it so deep at some, point it stops being a basic hobby because you're like the number one hobbyist of this basic hobby you know like if you're really into yoga but you become like the yoga person it's no longer basic that you're into yoga okay the yoga person who's the yoga person right now this to me is

TBD but the YouTube people the YouTube people get like 50 million views on our yoga videos like that Matt Ryan is that for golf courses Should we talk about Urban Meyer now? Yeah, I want to get my take out on this. I'm jealous of Robin Meyer. In the same way, I'm jealous of people who haven't started watching like the Sopranos because he got to learn so much about the NFL. He got to meet all the characters all at once.

He'd never watched NFL game in his life, apparently. Didn't know who Aaron Donald was, didn't know who Debo Sammy was, didn't know what Jamie was, and he got to watch football, the NFL, pro football for the first time. must have been really exciting for him. I love that for him. Yeah, someone who watched Subrano's for the first time during the pandemic, like 2020. Yeah, I can't imagine what that feeling is like for,

you know, to see Aaron Donald making plays and stuff and being like, yeah, that's him. That's the guy. I mean, you got to know who Polly was just two short years ago. Oh, yeah, Pauli Lano. Yeah, that's unbelievable. And the same way, I wish I didn't know

about Aaron Donald got to discover Rondonnell. Now, let's get serious here for a second. Yeah, yeah. What on earth was going on with Urban Meyer being in the head coach with football team? This story, this is like a real emperor has no close moment for like the coaching profession in general. Because Urban Myers actually like has won college national championships and he's clueless. And by the way, I want to say something just to get to close the loop on one thing, which is that there were people out there who were like, maybe he was joking, maybe he was tongue in cheek. I checked into this.

Not people in Jackson and people who know him. no jokes. I can rule out him joking. This is kind of his thing to not have any idea what's going on. Charmed life. That's all I can really like credit it to

because it doesn't make sense like for him to be as clueless as he is and for all of these stories to come out where you're clearly someone who is not likable in a position of power where people are supposed to follow you. I just don't understand how he was able to have as much success that he was able to at the college level.

And I get it like you're, again, like the position of power in college, like you have a lot more leeway to be kind of tyrannical in that sense. But at the NFL level, it's not surprising that that didn't work out because you really just don't need to be an asshole. And I think we've talked about it before with John Gruden and stuff. like the guard for coaches, for GMs, like it's obviously changing, but part of that is the emotional comprehension. That's why, you know, again, like out here in LA, like Sean McVeigh, Brandon Staley, they're big culture guys in addition to being big exes and those football guys because the culture matters. Like guys want to follow you and especially like guys who are in this age bracket now. Like you can't do the tyrannical dickhead stuff anymore. And which is a good thing.

It just doesn't make any sense. Pressing pause on Brandon Staley in the McVeigh culture bucket until he can tie the Raiders. All right. So I just think you see a methodology in that story that was never going to work

telling players he was going to fire their coach in front of them. Like that's not really how you motivate. You can bully 18-year-olds like that. You can bully 19-year-olds like that, but you can't bully 20-year-year-olds. seven-year-olds who make in many cases more money than you, or not many cases, actually, depending on the position group and depending on the player's

situation. But I was, I couldn't believe that that situation could look any worse than it did in December when he was fired. I mean, this is a guy who kicked a kicker and then Lambo was like, don't kick me. And he said, I can kick you whenever I want on the head coach, which, what did you think this job was, big man? Unlimited kicks. Unlimited.

That was in your contract? Anyway, I just couldn't believe. I just, I couldn't believe this story. Because I just, I don't know. I'd believe anything about Urban Meyer's tenure at this point. By the way, I want to shout out Urban Meyer for being correct. Aaron Donald was a guy who looked like he could give them problems. was indeed a problem.

I talked with you people and Indy about just sort of what that situation had been like and the stuff that's ridiculous and was in that piece deserves the headlines the other sense that I've gotten is that in addition to all of that just not a lot of work going on.

A lot of motivational quotes being sent around a lot of using the internet. A lot of causing problems. I've heard that. Not being very nice to people. A lot of texting assistance, motivational quotes.

Just a very large amount of the time was the sense that I got. I heard from someone this morning and I shared this with you, Nora. Our guy, terminally online to the point that he's constantly on Twitter. Constantly on Twitter,

but not NFL. Twitter, I guess. I don't know. So you were the one who brought up to the Twitter thing. My source did not know. My source did not know what he was looking at on Twitter just to say that he was, he's a big Twitter guy in a way you would not expect. Like constantly doing the scrolls. So that that sort of track.

I had not heard that personally, but that sort of tracks because I just, I talked to the people who had worked there when we were at the combine. And there was a lot of just like. you know, look at my phone and you just see sort of like a text screen where it would be just sort of like a lot of questions left unanswered or in really unspecific manners, but then just a lot of really just a lot of weird motivational quotes. Like I cannot stress this enough how many weird motivational quotes that man was sending people who he was allegedly partnering with to try to win games.

Wow. Should I stop sending motivational quotes to the ringer NFL group chat? Yeah, this is actually why I brought this. This is an intervention Kevin and Scott's talk. Just a bunch of, that guy's named John Gordon. Just a bunch of John Gordon quotes about Kevin's a big live-lap-love guy.

Joel Austin. All right. Anything else, guys? Don't be a dick. That's how everyone should live their life. The motto everyone should live their life by, just don't be a dick. What I feel like,

let me ask you a question, Caitlin. John Gruden is out Urban Myers out I feel like we might be at all time lows of NFL head coach tickets Wow yeah I'd have to I'd have to go through the list

I don't I can't think of anybody who like Rubs me the wrong way immediately right Bruce Aaron's just grouchy I don't know if he's an asshole but he's just grouchy definitely different I think we might I think there are our dickhead reserves are

are low in pro football right now. Oh my God. Okay. I regret saying that one now. The other thing is that both of these guys are past the point of no return. There is no rehabilitating. Yeah. It was interesting to me because I was on the show earlier today and Izzy Gutier

asked me, he's like, what was the thing that Meyer did that you can't come back from? Like, what was the one event where it was like he's done? And I said it was nothing in this story. It was nothing with Josh Lambo. The event that he couldn't recover from is the fact that he lost a bunch.

Like if you've inverted that record and he went 11 and 2 in his first 13 weeks, we're looking at a completely different scenario here. We're going, well, it's tough to get along with,

but he demands excellence. That's how our, this stupid, cynical profession we cover works. Yeah. That's a really good point. Let me twist what you said. Don't be a dick

unless you're going to go like 13 and 2. Yeah. And win national champions. Ideally, if you're going to go 13 and 4, also be nice. But if you just absolutely can't, it's better to go.

There's a sliding scale. There's a sliding scale. I just want everybody to get along. Well, it sounds like a conjectional thing. They got Dougie Peterson hanging out, handing out ice cream. Dougie P. Let's go. All right.

Thank you to Isaiah Blakele's production help with additional production supervision by Arjuna Ramcapole. We'll be back. I don't know. Wednesday. Unless something happens tomorrow. A, Nora?

Baker. Baker Mayfield? I'm not doing a Baker-Mayfield pod. We'll pick that up on Wednesday morning. All right. Bye, guys. See you. Bye, Kevin.