The Ringer NFL Show - The Dallas Cowboys’ Expectations, Plus: What Will 2020 NFL Game Days Look Like? | The Ringer NFL Show

Episode Date: September 4, 2020

The Ringer’s Kevin Clark is joined by Bryan Curtis and The Athletic’s Bob Sturm to discuss everything Dallas Cowboys (2:32) and how 2020 NFL broadcasts will be different (41:15). Host: Kevin Clark Guest: Bryan Curtis and Bob Sturm Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I am Kevin Clark. Join today by the athletic and the tickets. Bob Sturm to talk Cowboys. Brian Curtis of the Ringner will also be in that Cowboys discussion. And Brian Curtis stays on to talk about what the NFL is going to look like on our televisions in 2020

and all the media angles associated with it. TV contracts, how that affects the salary cap. Both of them are really good discussions and I can't wait for you guys to watch it. So here's Bob and Brian. Okay, joined by Bob Sturm of the Athletic and the Ticket and our resident Cowboys expert. Brian Curtis, who is so happy to be able to chop it up about the Dallas Cowboys.

How are you doing, guys? It's an honor to be here, guys. I appreciate you having me. Absolutely. So, Bob, I'll start with you. You went to what you called the funny scrimmage on Sunday. There were no numbers on the jerseys, which I think is a little bit overblown when you consider how weird this year is from a roster building standpoint.

You don't have, you know, I was talking to some people over the weekend. Normally you have, you're worried about, you know, savvy media. members outing the good linebacker who's who's going to be stashed away on practice squad and all that stuff. And I think there's a level of paranoia that coaches have that's even more heightened than normal because they want to be able to, to hide the actual good players because they have the opportunity to because nobody's always watching practice in any meaningful way. And then the expanded practice squad makes it so that you want to, uh, that you have the

opportunity to stash even more players with. But Bob, I'll start with you. What do you think having seen this team? in limited spurts in training camp is the legitimate expectation for the Dallas Cowboys in 2020. Wow. That's a great question because so much is new. And that's clearly the oddity of a Cowboys year, you're starting with, without Jason Garrett. So we'll start there. And even, you know, the approach they took on Sunday was funny because there's an internal cowboy soap opera there where, you know, the business department, which takes great joy in being valued higher than like Real Madrid and

Barcelona, definitely was trying to have a made-for-TV scrimmage that everybody would get all excited about. And more importantly, they could charge all their preseason sponsors that they lost like a game rate or who knows what that cost them. And then Mike McCarthy, and basically his first actual decision that mattered, even though it really doesn't, pretty much, you know, gave that whole concept the bird by not allowing TV to show a single play. And even if they did try to sneak in a single play, he was taking all names, numbers off the jersey. So I thought that was funny and worthy of mentioning just because we'll see how long the honeymoon lasts. We know how long it lasts with Parcells.

But if you do actually hire a coach who has his own opinions on things, you start the clock with Jerry Jones just before they drive each other insane. And then that should probably be our jumping off point. May I ask real quick, were you surprised that Mike McCarthy was able to make that sort of statement that early in his tenure? Just because you think, okay, so Mike McCarthy gets this job. He takes over a really talented team. Jerry Jones had options. He gets Mike McCarthy. Were you surprised that he's kind of going against cowboydom this early?

No, because I think they know what they signed up for. And that's part of the fun is he has two, organizational influences, right? Pittsburgh and Green Bay. And if I were to say, please list the franchises that you think are most about football in general, you would probably come up with Pittsburgh and Green Bay. And then you would might say also historically, which franchise do we wonder, do they prioritize football often enough when they actually feel the football team as their main purpose of existing? And you might actually say Dallas. So when those two guys got together, And of course, the irony is McCarthy's biggest win.

It's in the Cowboys Stadium. In fact, several of his biggest wins have been there, but one being the Super Bowl. We kind of expected there would be this new, much like Parcells, and I'm sure Brian would speak to this. The initial deal is, wow, we're a football organization that's going to do football things, which will include a cantankerous coach and, you know, his bristling at all the sponsorships and all the, you know, the meat, meat, you know, the big wig luncheons and all these things that coaches in the NFL level don't deal with because they're not college coaches. That's one of the reasons they got into the NFL so they don't have to do dog and pony shows anymore.

But so, so again, this is all great when you don't have any losses. The second the losses start is the moment usually the Jones family starts undermining their coach who dares to have his own opinion. So I don't want to get carried away with sounding all. arms and saying here we go again. But if in year three, they try to bring in Antonio Brown as the Terrell Owens of this drama, just remember this conversation. I will say that the lack of Oxnard practice means that the coach doesn't have to be distracted by CLA celebrities after practice, which is always a huge part of it. Okay, they do two hours of practice, does press comments going on? And then like someone who did three arcs on CSI is in the middle of the

field and he is monopolizing the coaching staff and their time. So back to the, back to the, the expectations question. Yeah, it's okay. When you look at this team, again,

it's hard for me to say anything by the Cowboys. That's why I wanted to have this episode. Yeah. Because they have a really talented roster, but I, it is, no one knows. I've asked 10 GMs over the past two weeks,

what does this season look like? Who has the advantage? And you hear, I don't know, seven different answers and three of them don't even want to guess because it's so crazy. So if you're thinking about Mike McCarthy, quote unquote, installing things, culture, scheme, whatever it is, paired with that talented roster, you put that where in the NFC and NFL pecking order? Well, there's a couple things to consider, but I think the quick answer, which I'm not known for, is probably in that 11-win range, I would think.

I would think they're good enough to have double digits. I would think just going from McCarthy to Garrett and just going from, you know, Maher to Zerline should offer a fair amount of. of upside win-wise. They're also in a bad division, but we should remember they are playing two extremely difficult divisions in their rotation, and that will be a problem as well.

The Eagles, you know, to me, they've already suffered some catastrophic injuries along the front that we all know about, and they are playing a slightly tougher first place to second place schedule, even though you guys know that doesn't mean a ton anymore, but it does mean instead of Minnesota, you're playing Green Bay and instead of Atlanta, you're playing New Orleans.

So I think that even matters in the division. Now, out of the division, things get crazy, but that's obviously why Garrett got run is ultimately that 2019 Cowboys, which had a relatively, you know, historic offense, at least by Dallas standards, didn't even make the playoffs. And they need to put that underachievement behind them as soon as possible. And I think they will because they've addressed an awful lot of things, But even the Gerald McCoy thing already starts to give you the indigestion of,

oh, this is how things happen when we actually start playing football. Brian, I want to ask you, and I'm with two gerologists, and we could do three hours on Jerry. But I want to ask you, Brian, having spent time with Jerry and knowing Jerry from your time with him, I feel like there's going to be a slow burn social justice Jerry Jones storyline pretty much all year this year. And I don't know how that develops and how he handles that. If you were to sort of, and obviously we don't know where America's going to be and the world's going to be and there's so many things to project. But just as far as him and how he's handled this thus far this year and how he could handle it going forward, how do you see Jerry Jones and a season dominated by social justice playing out? That's a, that's a great question.

And by the way, we should we should not sleep on the dog and pony show that was this Cowboys off season. It's been muted in a lot of ways. But let us remember that Jerry conducted the draft from his yacht like a Bond super villain. And that the Cowboys Star running back got coronavirus. All this sort of gets lost in where the world is now. Oh, yeah. Jerry's biggest instincts have always been business. And I think if you look back at 2017, Jerry was motivated by a theory of business, right, that said,

if we have players protesting during games, there are going to be these dire financial consequences for the NFL. Right. Maybe the calculation has changed for Jerry Jones, right? It certainly changed this summer for almost every business in America, right? To say that we need to think about protest movements differently than maybe our business would have been. This is everything from like American Airlines to fast food restaurants to everything, right? So now if you're saying that Jerry Jones is going to be vocally against kneeling or vocally against protests like he was rather than let us say quietly against protests. or silently against protest,

he's going to be going against just about every other big corporation in America. And I don't see Jerry Jones doing that. I just don't see business-wise, whatever his politics are, whatever his feelings are, I don't see him going out on a limb

on his own like that. Yeah, that's a really interesting one because clearly there is a correlation on some level, and we don't know what the correlation is. But there's a correlation between the simple, discussion of America's team and the general franchise value of being the Dallas Cowboys.

And where those two things intersect, we can certainly have a fun debate. But I think he believes that them being on America's team certainly matches up with the symbolism of how we handle the anthem, how we honor our troops and all those types of things. And that seems on some level to be in conflict with the most basic discussions of of how players express their own personal opinion. So I assume, even based on his state of the franchise address of a couple weeks ago, I assume at some point there is an adjustment on how he feels on these things. But man, until we get to September 13th at 7.20 or so,

a lot of us are going to be hanging on to, you know, the safety rails inside our, vehicle because we don't, dude, I don't even, I mean, you know, if you want to take this all the way to the crazy part, Kevin, you could just, you could say, are any of us, I mean, on the Sunday night game involving the Dallas Cowboys

in Los Angeles on NBC, if ever there was a time where both teams sort of take the field as if they're about to have a kickoff and then they all filed to their rooms to make a point. I would say that would be the most impactful place to do it, even more

than the season opener in Kansas City. So I have no idea what to expect there. I feel way more comfortable discussing Joe Looney for Travis Frederick or C.E. Lam or all the football things because all bets are off on how the Cowboys players and the Cowboys owner find common brown that isn't as corny as it was on Monday night in Arizona back in 2017, where he's kind of looking at the camera out of the corner of his eye and the unison, Neil that they had. So who knows is my answer to that. Corny is the exact right word that display in Arizona. That was unbelievable. I want to, first of all, before we get out of that topic, Donny Foxman was on our podcast last week,

and he made the point that kneeling no longer makes anyone feel uncomfortable. And so it almost feels like to me that, you know, allowing kneeling and being okay with that, I think is, as you guys said, a mainstream opinion. And I think that there's a lot of people who, who have said, they didn't kneel or they didn't give proper attention to the cause in 2016 who'll be kneeling this year. And so you're going to see a lot more of that this year as far as players go. And so I think that there's going to be an extra layer of protest, whether that's exactly

what you're talking about or players sitting out games. And that then becomes the actual frontier that a team like the Cowboys, which is more social conservative is going to have to deal with. All right, Bob, you wrote off of the scrimmage over the weekend. that Mike McCarthy is not Jason Garrett. Right. That is both obvious and interesting at the same time. What does Jason Garrett as a concept mean to you?

And what is the fact that he's gone mean? Well, I don't think that he ever was given, nor requested the total power of a normal head coach. I really think in a lot of personnel matters and in a lot of just general, are you the top rung in the ladder of a command? in an NFL organization, you know, did he qualify for that? Was he that guy or was he always willing to operate in the job description that the

Cowboys generally offer a man in his position? But more strategically and more meaningfully, I would simply say it comes down to Mike McCarthy has been hired to maximize not to protect the Cowboys' final product on the field. And by maximize, clearly, when you see a bunch of yards, you would also like a lot of a bunch of points. And with a bunch of points, you'd like a bunch of wins. Well, the Cowboys seem to generally minimize those results. They get lots of yards, but the closer they get to the goal line,

the more difficult, you know, it is to put up seven points. And it seems like underachievement is something that they've been doing for really the, I mean, you know, people want to put this on DAC and Zik and this crew, But, I mean, tell me this wasn't going on with Romo in his prime and so forth. And so I would say to go get Mike McCarthy and, you know, to those of you who really know my backstory, which is like four people probably, but people know where I'm from. Wait, Brian knows it from knowing you. I know it from listening to you on the No Laying Up TrapDow podcast. Okay.

So we're all, all everybody here is clear on. We got two out of four. Yeah. All right. Well, I am, by the way, shout out to the No Llanoff podcast. Oh, I didn't see that shirt. He's wearing a strapped shirt. Yeah, there's a strap shirt.

I would say that being a cheesehead by birth, I can tell you that Mike McCarthy has annoyed me for years up there. But as I separate the two paths of my life and say what would be not exactly the opposite of Jason Garrett, but a great update to Jason Garrett is a guy who doesn't think fourth down is an insane icon to possibly go for it. To pass on first down is not crazy. To basically challenge players in a confrontational way is not insane. I don't think Mike McCarthy, and I'm trying to remember the easiest way to contradict the statement, but I don't think Mike McCarthy would ever lit Des Bryant to run the sideline,

or Greg Hardy to shove a special teams coach. I just think Mike McCarthy has a concept of a football coach that agrees with my DNA. And Jason Garrett has the DNA of a guy who will not get fired by Jerry Jones for 10 years. And those are just two different concepts. Jerry loves to make the big decisions. He is an owner who is a billionaire,

and he does not want to ever feel like he's not the main story. which is why in the most a dog claiming their territory type of routine, he is probably the only owner who has a full press briefing inside the coach's locker room after each game. I mean, if you want to talk about, you know, being the alpha male in the conversation, what is more alpha male than going in the locker room as an owner and holding court with the press right there as the players are untapping their ankles? It's insane, but it's normal here. And that, you know, Brian will tell you, that's one of the crazy things about covering the cowboys is you get desensitized to what's abnormal because it's all normal.

Everything, you know, he goes down a list of things and I'm like, oh, gone, that did happen here. Should I've made a bigger deal about that? And I'm desensitized from following this team for 22 years as what goes with the circus, you know? Bob made this point an athletic piece the other day, but there are no institutional secrets about the Dallas Cowboys. Right. I will resist the political analogy here. so we don't just derail this whole thing. But you know everything in real time,

mostly because Jerry Jones says it. So when we talk about the Jones way and the McCarthy way coming together, there's this idea starting with that scrimmage that, well, maybe there will be some secrets about the Cowboys that will not just be announced to the public. And again, and Kevin follows as much as anybody, but it is amazing to me, just as a fan,

not as a Cowboys reporter, to just know who the Cowboys are going to draft the day before because it is basically announced. to every team in the league plus somebody like you. Yes, it should never be a reporter's claim that there are too many available leaks, that it is too easy for me to get information to do my job. But at some point, you do say it should not be this easy

to know everything about what they do and what they think. And I should, he's right, for over a decade with very few exceptions. Now, there have been one or two along the way, but with almost no exceptions, anybody who covers the Cowboys locally knows who they're taking in the first round because they basically put blinking lights around it. And, you know, it was Caleb-on-Chison this year.

And in fact, I think he admitted that during the scrimmage on Sunday night and C.D. Lamb dispelled to them and they actually deviated, which was wonderful news. But for the most part, we definitely knew Leighton Van der Leyen-Veash. We definitely knew Zach Martin, definitely knew Tyrant Smith, Zeeke. I mean, all these guys, if the rest of the league didn't know what the cowboys were going to do,

they did not try very hard to find out. I would spend one or two days a year in Oxnard when they had their training camp. And it was just every 20 seconds, you look around and someone was giving what in any other building would be an unauthorized press availability. But it's Stephen and he's talking about, I remember, I was doing something on the spread one time. I mean, I almost felt like I died and was in a coma because I was doing a story. on the spread offense, 2017, I guess. And Stephen's just talking, and I kind of listened in for five seconds.

And he's like, you know, we, uh, we wanted Connor Cook, because he had not run the spread. He ran a pro style. And I'd been sitting here, I'd gone to 31 other teams, trying to get basically the vague version of that. Right. We wanted Connor Cook and not, Dak,

we had Connor Cook above our board and Dak Prescott lower because Dak had run the spread. And I was just, it took me five seconds in Oxford. to get that quote. And I wasn't even trying. I was just walking past. Brian, as someone who monitors this stuff very closely, Cowboysology, you know, I've had to help people on my podcast with that Evan Selva, Mina Kimes, who have talked about the Cowboys of Legitimate Super Bowl contenders. And a lot of that's the roster stuff, but a lot of it is also just, I don't know, runaway Cowboys hype. It seems like they should be better than they are every year. And I think that those

teams tend to get talked about as Super Bowl contenders being able to take the next step. I think people bought into the Kellen Moore thing and continuity for in the year that that's important. Do you think Cowboys' expectations here have gotten a little bit out of whack just because of the strange off season, the way the news cycles have developed and kind of what you're talking about where I don't think Zika L.A. coronavirus or any of these sort of wild cowboy stories that we would normally be discussing have made much of a dent in this news cycle. So on the one hand, it's muted. And on the other hand, the day that the Miami-Mobile, Arlands had that huge COVID outbreak.

I was flipping around looking for news and I turned on undisputed. And they were doing a DAC segment with the all-time worn out pun, DAC to the future as the Kairon. And I'm going, we are, baseball may be stopping in America. And we're doing a segment on DAC that really doesn't have a newspeg other than it's, here is the Dallas Cowboys segment. So it's muted, muted, but only so much. Right.

That's, yeah, that's what they do. Yeah, right. So I do, and I do think this would be the kind of season that would have in me, again, in talk show segment, national talk show segment terms, Super Bowl expectations written on it if it were not for the events in the world right now. I mean, and mostly what Bob said, oh, wow, you have a fully autonomous human as the coach of the Dallas Cowboys, which has not been the case in a really long time in almost 15 years, right? you have a guy who might come up with a game plan in week one that the Rams didn't expect, which is something again, me coming at this mostly as a fan is really mind-blowing, right? To not be a deliberate franchise, to not be a plotting franchise on Game Day, but to be interesting. Yeah.

You know, I, that reminds me, Brian. I wrote a real big, like three-part thing back in May when we were all trying to come up with things to write about. And I wanted to write basically, Kevin, the sort of, history of the Jason Garrett era. And really, I'll, you know, clearly, I'm not going to try to summarize 12,000 words, but let's just say he made it very clear by like 2012 that he was not an above-average NFL coach. And there were like 10 clear examples of it in games, you know, back then that were all

too obvious, you know, losing a 27 to three lead to Detroit in the third quarter. at home, you know, just the Ravens to Bach. I mean, I could go on and on. But really, what it boiled down to is this simple concept. Every Sunday, there are 16 games in this league, and you just want to coach that is not the second best coach on his field very often, you know? And you just don't want to be outclassed at that position. You know, a quarterback you can only do so much about it.

Sometimes you just need Lady Luck to smile upon you to say, you know what? we've got the best quarterback on the field every week. So good luck beating us. But you can't have the second best coach 10 or 11 weeks a year and feel like you're ever going to hit your ceiling. So, so, you know, maybe the best way to summarize Mike McCarthy over Jason Garrett is the concept that more often than not, Mike McCarthy will be the best coach in the game that he's coaching. Yeah, that's the best you can hope for. Bob, I'm curious, you know, one of the things we like to do on this show is just sort of thought experiments on how teams can win the Super Bowl.

You know, you look at a team last show like San Francisco. Right. If we were to map it out last year, it would have been Nick Bosa becomes one of the best defensive players in football. Debo Samuel can't be tackled. Jimmy Garoppolo plays above average. The offensive line is as good as it is. And, you know, you sort of see those pathways.

If the Cowboys make the Super Bowl this year, give me that path. Well, the path has to be that their defensive line rebuild here, which is a, certainly it feels almost fantasy football like in the way that they've gone about it. This is the opposite of what we would all say is the best way to build a great defense, which is generally by just nailing the draft over and over again with 22-year-olds who are awesome. This is the opposite of that. I mean, Alden Smith is a pretty wacky idea. Everson Griffin is awesome.

But if you put those two guys together, you would say that both teams that they left will at least offer you a slight red flag on, you know, how that might totally, you know, hash itself out. Gerald McCoy was sort of, you know, the alpha in that defensive line room. And now for him to go to the IR and then quickly released is a pretty unforeseen idea. And then you add in what Don Terry Poe, possibly Randy Gregory. So all this is around DeMarcus Lawrence, who I think is an absolute stud. but admittedly, studs for $100 million have to get there more than five times than a season.

And so he had a very down 2019. We could argue until the cows come home on why he had a down season, but I think supporting cast had a lot to do with it. And so when you look at that defensive line that is trying to figure out how can we patch it together with guys who are 30, and in some cases a guy who hasn't been in the NFL since 2015, and say to ourselves, we think this can put pressure on a quarterback on a regular basis when we're playing them. And then you add what has to be a much better year from Jalen Smith than late Van deresh, who, by the way, are switching positions.

In a somewhat nuanced discussion, Van der Wehersh will now play middle and Jalen will now play the will. And we assume that that should be a slightly better idea than what they rolled out there last year. of them have massive injury concerns. So, and they are in front of a secondary that will start Ha ha, Clinton Dix, who is on his fourth team in three years. And, you know, who Mike McCarthy is quite familiar with. So, and then a bunch of lesser players, although they addressed with Trayvon Diggs, you know, in the secondary, I think they're going to be better.

I think they're going to play more man, but the quick answer, which was not quick at all, is the way that they go do some stuff this year is a, they have a defense that can, in some ways play matching complimentary football with the offense, as opposed to the Jason Garrett, Rod Marinelli, Chris Richard, Richard, Richard, Richard, which I think didn't play complimentary football at all with the offense. They, you know, they, they were a very deliberate, we never blitz, we never get the ball, we bend but don't break. And that, that was complimentary to the 2016 ball control offense, but not the 2019,

Kellyn Moore offense. So, so this makes more sense. Are you surprised that there hasn't been more blows in the last couple of days about Earl Thomas just because of the way the safety battle has been been playing out and I just I felt like everyone in the NFL thought okay it doesn't make any sense but Jerry's going to do it anyway right yeah I mean first of all locally there's there's always Earl Thomas buzz because I mean it was telegraph three years ago and he's a longhorn hero and those two combinations that just never stop but this might be another somewhat telling

idea of who's running the thing a little bit and how much of vote does Mike McCarthy get because this has nothing to do with Mike McCarthy. You know, Earl Thomas walked up to Jason Garrett and said, come get me. This is a Jones family obsession who always seems to love the local university products around here. And they seem to, they seem to adjust for Big 12 on their, you know, on their desire card, you know. So, so I think once Mike McCarthy knows John Schneider, like he does. I assume the intelligence they had at least told them to slow their role a little bits.

But I, you know, clearly from an X as an O standpoint, if 2017 Earl Thomas can join this defense, that'd be really cool. Yeah. Last thing, last topic, I guess I want to get to is the DAC contract because I still don't understand this. And I talked a lot of GMs where they say, if you have a good quarterback, the worst thing to have to do is to go into the draft and try to find another one or find uncertainty. And, you know, I remember talking to a GM a couple years ago who said that,

you know, when you don't have a quarterback, you can feel it in the building. Like, when you're walking around in the hallways, people are just a little more down because there's a problem that constantly needs to be solved. And it feels to me like Dak Prescott's the kind of guy you want around. I understand the actual money in the years and that kind of thing. But the fact this hasn't gotten done is perplexing to me. Yes. Going into 2020, you view this. How? Is there a chance that Dak Press got is not the Cowboys quarterback long term in any meaningful way, or do you think this will eventually get done? I think we'd have to say there's definitely a chance now.

I mean, you know, July 14th, I didn't think there was a chance that he would not be the long-term solution here. But once they get to the tag and once you have a COVID cap adjustment, I don't necessarily know how you could totally rule it out anymore. I mean, if the number doesn't adjust and it's 37 something and. in 2021 and the cap goes backwards, it gets to a point where, you know, and I'm certainly not a salary cap truth or like some people are that, oh, this team just can't figure this up. There's always ways to figure things out.

And the cowboys are fantastic and manipulating things that they actually want to get done. But it's it's now getting pretty real. And the prices continue to go up. And so now, just like the entire team, it's not really a question of where does that. is he rank amongst quarterbacks? It's where does he rank against the insane expectations that are now being put on him? You know, are you worth 45 million a year? Are you worth 50 million year?

Like somehow we went from, is he the next franchise quarterback of this franchise to? Is he better than Pat Mahomes, which is not the cut. No one never said that. But you know how going back to undisputed and, you know, first take and cold pizza and all the shows that really make my job a pleasure. They have changed the math on Dax so much that unless he is Staubach-Aitman and Mahomes mixed together, people are going to be taking shots at him, which I think speaks incredibly well to the fact that he hasn't folded as a human under all this noise. The fact that he can handle this and almost never has an expression change just says he might be perfect for this job because I think it would crush Blake Bortles or Mitch Turbisky or some of these. guys to deal with what DAC deals with.

Brian, I'll ask you that because I normally hate, absolutely hate the storyline of, you know, and it could be any city, but like, this guy just can't play shortstop in Boston. Right. He just can't handle it. And it can't play center field for the Yankees. This guy's just not ready for this. And I normally hate that or, you know, quarterback at Florida, whatever it is. But it does seem to me with the media and with like, like you're saying, Bob, the talk show complex,

that playing quarterback for the Cowboys is different. Do you think, Brian, there is a type of personality that needs to be the quarterback of the Cowboys? Well, it's been a lot of different ones, right? I mean, I don't know that we'd find a great through line from, we maybe find it from Roger Stopped at Troy Eggman, but Troy Eggman to Tony Romo would take a little bit of a detour, and Romo to Dak would certainly take a detour.

One thing we forget about Dak, by the way, he's a great story. He is now, that story has been told so many times. I think we just kind of forget it, But he's a great story. And to me, it all comes back to geriology again. Every Cowboys draft pick that has shown a pulse and sometimes half of pulse has gotten a pretty big second contract. It is very hard to remember. And I don't know if Bob even remembers who that the person would be who didn't.

But like, you know, it's sort of like, so the idea that he is going to dig his heels in here with quarterback, not with wide receiver, not with linebacker, not with linebacker. any of these other things, but with quarterback, after struggling for so long to find somebody to do this and a guy who leads the team in a way that Jerry Jones at least says he wants the team to be led, I still don't feel I completely understand it. And I don't

understand it in terms of what Kevin's talking about, NFL theory, and I don't understand it in terms of Jerry Jones theory especially. Well, the quick answer so everybody doesn't respond would be Byron Jones, but before that, I take that one completely. But you're absolutely right.

everyone gets their second contract that they can play at all. And, you know, when you talk about the math, I just think for me, the Cowboys have been paying certain prices for things for so long that they forgot what living in the real world is like. And when you find DAC and Romo at the price you found them in the draft, you kind of lose sight of what quarterbacks cost. And then they try this insane, insane public relations claim

that playing for the Cowboys, Boys allows you all these things in life like a radio show or a car dealer commercial. You get to call in for 20 minutes on Monday for 500 bucks. You know what? Yeah. And you should be more than happy to take a 20% discount on your player contract because of what it means to be a Dallas cowboy. Like we're all morons. And this is 1974.

And Tech Schram is interviewing. It's negotiating with somebody. So, so Dak hasn't fallen for their little Jedi mind trick of, hey, you're lucky to be our quarterback situation and good for him because that in fact, if you guys were out at camp last year, it was, you know, Stephen was telling everybody

the pie is only so big. You know, everyone's got to take a little smaller piece of the pie to make everyone fit. And then they give Zique all the money. Then they give Amari all the money. And then they give to Marcus Lourdes all the money. And really what they meant was we don't want to pay the going rate for a QB1 unless he has

like four Lombardi trophies carrying around with him. And And that's just insanity. But I suppose if you ever do a draft from a yacht, it costs $300 million, what do you know about reality? And what do we know about his reality? So it's just more of the same in the circus tent. Well, we'll get you out on this one.

If there's one thing we're not talking enough about the Cowboys in 2020, if there's one little nugget that you think is important that it's just not reaching the national media, what is it? Wow. I suppose the general thing, and this might be a little boring, but to me, the one thing I probably haven't done enough talking about yet is how Mike McCarthy and Zecchio Elliott find common ground. And really it boils down to, I think this front office wanted to put together the 1992 Cowboys. And they built the offensive line and the running back and they felt like they were kind of building the 92 to 95 Cowboys.

and they didn't really care how much football has changed since the 92 cowboys, including, you know, things like salary cap and the forward pass and just all these things that we've discovered in the last 30 years. And so Zeke is used to having everything built around him. Well, now they have arguably three top wide receivers. You know, I think C.D. Lamb has a chance to be better than Larry Cooper. And, you know, Michael Gallup is really special. So they should be an 11 personnel.

They should be passing as much as anybody in the league. And Zeke runs the ball. And I'm sorry fantasy football fans who will tell me how many receptions he has. He is nowhere near McCaffrey or Camara or somebody running backs in terms of receiving. So I wonder if their biggest weapon on offense doesn't totally fit with what they should be trying to do offensively. And I think that's probably a storyline that is, is, at least worth exploring. It's going to be fascinating.

Brian, any final cowboy's thoughts? No. You know, as somebody who's used to repackaging Bob's insights on Dallas Radio is my own, I'm going to stick with that one. This is great. All right, Bob, thank you so much, man. This is incredibly illuminating. I really appreciate the time.

I really appreciate being out with you guys. Everyone knows about the risks of driving drunk. If you get in a crash, people could get hurt or killed. But let's take a moment to look at some surprising statistics, Almost 29 people in the United States die every day in alcohol-impaired vehicle crashes. That's one person every 50 minutes. Even though drunk driving fatalities have fallen by a third in the last three decades, drunk driving crashes still claim more than 10,000 lives each year.

Drunk driving can also have a big impact on your wallet too. You can get arrested and incur huge legal expenses you could possibly even lose your job. So what can you do to prevent drunk driving? plan a safe ride home before you start drinking designate a sober driver or call a taxi if someone you know has been drinking take their keys and arrange for them to get a sober ride home we all know the consequences of driving drunk but one thing's for sure you're wrong if you think it's no big deal drive sober or get pulled over all right Brian Curtis sticks with us for a second segment this is like uh this is like Carson where he comes back commercial and we're just doing

a second second yeah you got invited you got invited to the couch after your set That, man, that must have been just pure uncut cowboys talk there. You must have been fired up. It is incredible. Like one of my favorite radio hosts and my favorite football team, I'm just, I'm home. You know, I really, Chewy, we're home. This is great. The one thing I didn't know until the Super Bowl between you and Jason Gallagher, two of my, my very close colleagues, both from Dallas, is the respect shown and given by Dallas sports fans to Dallas talk radio.

Oh, absolutely. Because I grew up in a place. So I'm from Orlando, not a huge talk radio culture. And then when I was in Miami, I got a little bit of that when I was in college with Dan Lebitard. Obviously, John Shambi had a great show when I was there. So that was my afternoons. But it wasn't, I wasn't like 12, you know, 15, whatever it is, like Jason Gallagher growing up with it. And obviously you had it as well.

But Dallas Talk Radio is legit. It is. It's unironic Francesa. Right? Like, I don't like him, people like Bob and his station in spite of themselves. I just actually like them. And their lineup was basically put together my junior year of high school, and it's still the lineup. So flipping it on in streaming or when I get back home and flipping on the radio, it is a wonderful experience.

We were going to the Jason Isbell concert on a Tuesday at the Super Bowl, and Jason Gallagher's dad was excited. Because he heard on Dallas radio that some of the Dallas radio, that some of the Dallas radio, guys might go to the Jason Isbell concert. Now it's real. Yeah. All right. So let's, let's move on from Dallas Talk Radio,

as much as we like it, to the NFL in 2020, what that looks like. You cover media. No one does a better job than you. And I'm curious, we are a week out from the first game. And we are a little bit more than a week out

from the first NFL Sunday. There will be no fans in, I don't know, about half of the stadiums. And then there will be 13. thousand fans, I think, in Miami. It's case by case in some of these cities. And also, by the way, when I say, when I give these numbers, it's all, it all remains to be seen because places like Baltimore say, hey, for at least the early part of the

season, no fans, we'll see what happens to November. The world keeps changing so often that who knows. But the only thing we know is it's not going to be full stadiums. And that's pretty much going to be true throughout the season. So, Brian, now that you were on here a couple months ago when we knew all, almost nothing when Bundesliga was the only sport that was that was on television. Now we've seen more. What does NFL Sundays, what do NFL Sundays look like in 2020?

I come back to a concept you've said a bunch of times on this podcast, which is that the NFL has been in the catbird seat because it gets to wait and see what the other leagues are going to do and then try to adjust accordingly. Now, whether that actually works through like two weeks of football, we'll see. But that's the idea, right? I think broadcasting is basically exactly the same thing, which is. that all these guys who are producing NFL games have been watching baseball

and they've been watching a ton of basketball and they have tried to see like what works. And I think Kevin, the answer to what works is you make it look just about like the sporting event it's always looked like. And you sort of hit this, hit the American public with,

you know what you want right now? You want sports. And you're not too worried if there's not a billion people in the stands. You're not too worried if we didn't like create 19 graphics to compensate. and state for empty stadiums and that kind of stuff. You just want football.

And I think the answer is this is just going to look a lot like NFL coverage, shot a little bit more tightly so we don't see the, so we don't see the stands. Maybe we'll have some fake fans on Fox. Maybe we'll have some fake sound and we'll definitely have fake sound. But I think it's going to look more like the NFL we know and love than anything. Do you think the fake sound? So will the announcers be able to hear the fake sound?

It depends on the announcer. Some of them want that in their ears and some of them don't. I would think most of the ones that I know, would want that in their ears absolutely yeah we're so uncomfortable just talking to to no one without that sort of in sort of the cues but then the cues are artificial it just seems very strange to me i don't know um do you think that part of this you know i remember a couple of years ago talking to someone really smart inside the NFL and we were talking about the NBA and how much they're innovating and you know they're on social media and they're they're putting clips on xyz or whatever and the

NFL, this person in the NFL was telling me like, you know, the NFL, they want to be in the middle of the innovation cycle. They don't want to be in the front. They don't want to be in the back. They want to be dead in the middle. They let the other leagues do this. But do you get the sense that the NFL, I don't know, they didn't go into this trying to build a huge board like the NBA did with the, you know, the virtual fans. And they're not trying to, you know, I think that a lot of people praise the NBA for the visual presentation. But I just don't get the sense the NFL was all that interested in innovating that part of it and kind of to your point, they just want this to feel normal. Yeah. I mean, it's the NFL in a lot of ways is the Jason Garrett Cowboys

when it comes to media innovation, right? We're just going to be right in the middle of it. We're going to hand the ball to Zeke and run over left tackle. Execution. Execution over scheme. That is, that is what happens when you have the most popular TV product in America, full stop. Right. why would you screw that up when you have something that was something like 80 of the most popular 100 television shows in 2019 when we actually still had

television like we know it why would you want to trick that out why wouldn't you just want to bring that back to the public in its normal form? I always love that list of most popular TV shows it's like 85 football games and then like the Academy Awards and then like a random

showing of a movie. Yeah. You know it's always just like they showed they showed Titanic without commercials or whatever. Yeah, and maybe a Big Bang Theory finale mixed in there. That was still on, you know? Oh, yeah.

Number 19. One of the NFL TV executives told me that, and this kind of charts the death of linear television, that they used to show the NFL ratings when they were trying to impress the owners and how good their ratings are, they would show the ratings against other sports. and then that got so

just became such a blowout that they just started against all TV like 60 minutes Big Bang Theory How I met your mother, that kind of thing And then the NFL was trouncing them And so now they just gave up They just they can't even find comparisons

Because the ratings are quite frankly just too good It is network television right Like CBS and and propping it up It exists to show NFL games right And speaking of storylines that got sort of muted by the whole pandemic and everything, how about all these networks trying to re-sign their NFL contracts, right?

Which is now an existential problem. Like, does Fox exist if Fox cannot show the NFL? Does CBS, in what way does CBS exist if it doesn't have NFL games? And that's still happening, right? Those of those negotiations are still happening as we speak. But to me, again, that was like one of those things that people like me would have been worrying about

for the last four months. And in fact, it's been somewhere in the background. Yeah. Have you heard anything substantial on that? Because I've heard a little bit and I've read a little bit about it. But this is a huge story because when we talk about the salary cap and the fact that it might smooth out a little bit, not rise to levels it was expected to or whatever. We're talking about Doc Prescott's salary and what that looks like the next five years. These TV contracts go a long way in that.

And I think the NFL had really high expectations. It's going to be tough. I mean, it's going to be tough if they can't get these deals done until after this year and maybe college football revenues are down, maybe just all revenues are down for some of these huge conglomerates. And we've seen huge layoffs in some of these huge, I would even call the media companies. They're just, you know, Comcast or whomever. I mean, this is bigger than television. But what is the latest on those TV contracts and kind of what the media landscape looks like going forward? It is a huge story.

And you remember that CBA. I mean, part of the, part of the reason that CBA had to be done then was let us get that extra inventory in there. So we have something fantastic to sell to these networks. Right. We have even more football to sell to these networks and we can maximize this for everything. I mean, a couple of things I would say that. Number one is this is the last blast of the TV networks, which sort of ran American life when you and I were kids, right? This is going to be the last contract, I think, where they're going to just completely dominate NFL football.

And that's a huge advantage for the NFL, by the way, to be not on cool cable station, but be on like Channel 5 every Sunday. Like that has been an untold advantage to the NFL. This will probably be the last contract where that happens. But yeah, the second one is if you're in a TV entertainment world where TV is not in production, TV shows as we know it are not currently being made because of the coronavirus, You absolutely need the one piece of TV that we'll put butts in the seats. Like it's actually, to me, you could certainly argue that these networks are diminished,

that they've lost lots of money, that media is in this weird half state right now. But you could also argue that what are you going to do, right? It's like the movie, it's like the movie company saying, we're going to make another Star Wars movie because that's guaranteed box office. It's the same way with the networks. You've got to resign the NFL because that's the one thing that will put butts in the seats on television. I remember in 2014 when the NFL was going through all its problems. And one of my editors was like, write a story about just what it would mean if the NFL stopped being sort of the magnet for attention and eyeballs that it is.

And I talked to one of our advertising people, the reporter, and I got on the phone with this person who, it was basically a consultant who does everything. And I put that question up. I was like, what happens if the NFL stops, you know, attracting 30 million people every time they, they throw the ball out? And the person, and I was like, what, what happens to TV? And they were like, no, you don't understand. It's, it's not a TV thing.

I mean, TV would go, would go bust if there was no NFL. But, like, the advertising industry would go bust. Like, the beer industry would go bust. The takeout industry would go bust. I mean, it was just like the thing, the interconnected things, I'm not saying bust exactly, but their revenues would drop sharply, because everything, advertising wise television wise is geared around football it's the reason so many things launch in

september if you want to make very quick inroads into american consciousness you advertise on football games absolutely and not to mention the network's own false schedules and all that stuff yeah the the the sort of network ad read during football is like arguably the most important thing in the commercial life of the america of america right now yeah no it's crazy that is incredible Who's going to be your empty stadium MVP broadcaster? Ooh, that's a good question. Empty Stadium MVP. You know, when I've talked to announcers about this, they'll say it's essentially,

it's like the road team scoring a winning, the game winning touchdown in the fourth quarter is sort of every touchdown. I think the guy, you know the guy who's actually had reps at this already is Joe Buck? Because not only has he been doing baseball, he's been doing baseball. And not only has he been doing baseball from a studio rather than the stadium, he's been doing it in a separate studio than John Smoltz. So just so we can unpack this for a second, right? Usually John Smoltz is right here.

John Smoltz is in a separate studio and neither of them are in the stadium. And to my ears, it sounds great. It sounds like normal. So I don't know. To me, you know, if you're looking at like, and I guess Nancy's had golf reps. But, you know, to me, Joe's probably had the most stadium reps of any of these guys going in the season. Yeah.

And I also think baseball and baseball. general would help with this. I mean, Joe, I think didn't Joe do your minor league baseball? Maybe two. Maybe. Yeah.

At the very beginning. But I think that, you know, that was 25 years ago. He'd obviously been a top tier guy for a long time. But I also think baseball, listen, man,

there are a lot of games on July 15th where there's just, there's just not a lot of crowd reaction. You got to crank it. Yeah. Or so, you know, the home team gives up, gives up five runs in the first and just,

nothing else happens for the rest of the game and there's just nothing going on. Like I feel like baseball, you know, basketball is a little more kind of immediate. The crowd reaction is, you know, because there's baskets every five seconds, it just seems a little bit more. The feedback, I guess, from the crowd is more immediate. So it's a little weirder to have nothing there as far as an empty gym. But I think I'm really fascinated to see if it lends itself to sort of baseball style conversations where, you know, they're just kind of, They're going full Mets booth and they're just telling long anecdotes in the third quarter because there's just no crowd to keep them in focus. I'm intrigued to see how this plays out.

I'll give you two more little storylines for 2020 in the NFL. Yes. One is the rise of the announcer in waiting. Remember when we had the coach in waiting in college football? Yes. Well, now it's Drew Breeze. It's Drew Breeze and it's also Greg Olson. Oh, yeah.

I forgot. Greg Olson is playing football, but when he stops, he will be Fox's number two announcer. So Darrell Johnson is holding the seat for him this year. But we're this this weird thing where it's like, okay, you get to be the announcer. But next year, we have an announcer in waiting or whenever Greg Olson stops playing football. That is, that is very new to me to at least do that formally. And it's pretty funny. Has that ever happened before?

You know, I'm sure guys of like, you know, that's a guy we want, right? Like he's so good. Or a handshake deal like, hey, as soon as you hang up the cleats, you're walking right into my booth kind of thing. But not like a pre-contract. Yeah, it's like it was it's literally like going to the defensive coordinator and so you know when the head coach hangs it up, you're going to be our guy. That is that is what broadcasting is done. I find that very amusing. And then the other one is I was just looking over my press releases the other day.

The carry what underwood opening of Sunday night football. Yes. This will be a particular interest to you will be done with virtual fans like the NFL draft. It'll be like a virtual element. So we will have we will have carry underwood, but we will not have the fully produced or exactly. the same produced Kerry Underwood we had in previous years. We will also not have the very awkward, like, NFL players walking around Carrie Underwood thing.

That's what I mean. Eli Manning. Eli Manning was always the MVP of just kind of staring straight into the camera as everybody else is looking incredibly cool. And now we don't have Eli Manning anywhere in football. I always imagine the shooting script with like a parenthetical that just said interact with Carrie Underwood. you know, like that was that was the stage direction in that sense.

Eli Manning's Twitter is actually pretty good. Just a lot of photos of him with his dogs. It's not a bad Twitter. I was just looking to make sure that we were going to get some Eli Manning awkwardness this year. Can he be an announcer in waiting? Can we give him a job in like 2025? Well, I've always, isn't it, wouldn't it be funny if Eli became kind of the Jason Whitten to Peyton's Romo where it's just like we, if the network can't get Peyton,

they just give money to Eli, and he's just not very good at it. I think Eli, Eli, Eli would probably not be very good at broadcasting. That is my professional opinion. Really? But Jason Whitten level? No, no, no, no. He'd be better than Jason Whitten. I just think, I think he's got like kind of a dry sense of humor,

and I actually think that he could be okay. I think he'd be like an okay studio guy. I just don't think he can, I don't know. I don't think he can come over an interesting observation every 45 seconds. It would either get totally lost or he would just smash it. Yeah. It's zero to a hundred situation. He would have Jeff Van Gundy energy, you know, on Twitter, everybody goes, oh, this guy.

What is Jeff Van Gundy energy exactly? Well, it's just like, it's like a guy who's not like a conventionally great announcer, but everybody, he's just kind of embraced, you know, in a weird way, like, oh, this is our guy. Oh, Eli. Eli did it again, you know. Yeah, and like Jeff Van Gundy, he's got a brother who is. Oh, yeah. Also beloved.

A lot of parallels here. A lot of Van Gundy's. the mannings of NBA coaching. All right, Brian Curtis, anything else? I think that's it. You know, more, and we've had a lot of announcer meltdowns at separate. So I'm just rooting, I'm rooting for a clean fall. That's what I'm really rooting for.

Well, Tom Brennaman's out of the picture. So let's just leave that, let's just leave that one alone, actually. Yeah. We don't need to do a tight five on Tom. We don't need to do a tight five on Tom Brennam. This has been a ringer NFL show on the Ringer Podcast Network. Everyone knows about the risks of driving drunk. You get in a crash.

People could get hurt or killed. But that still doesn't stop everyone. You could get arrested. You could incur huge legal expenses. And you could possibly even lose your job. We all know the consequences of driving drunk. But one thing's for sure. You're wrong.

I think it's no big deal. Drive sober or get pulled over.