The Ringer NFL Show - The NFL in 2017: It’s Complicated (Ep. 179)

Episode Date: November 9, 2017

In a special edition of The Ringer NFL Show, Robert Mays and Kevin Clark take a midseason look at what has been the most complicated season in the history of the league. Danny Kelly joins to explain why the play on the field has seemed uninspired (03:45), but points out the fun things there are to celebrate this season (17:00). Then, Bryan Curtis and the guys discuss the myriad of significant off-field issues, including the cartoonish rift between Jerry Jones and Roger Goodell (22:45) and how the pregame player protests have already been successful (28:30). Plus, Claire McNear joins the show to talk about the player health and safety (37:00), including the one thing that could actually lead to the end of the NFL (44:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Bill Simmons. I wanted to tell you about House of Carbs. Hosted by one of my best friends, Joe House. I've known him since 1988. And the entire time I've known him, he's been very, very hungry. And now he is a chance to host a podcast about being hungry. All the things that make him hungry, the food that he loves, it is a podcast by the hungry for the hungry.

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Nobody loves food quite as much as Joe House. But listen, check this out. Subscribe right now to have some carbs wherever you get your podcast. It's a special edition of the Ringer NFL show. I'm Kevin Garke here with Robert Mays. We're coming to you on a Thursday. It's a special episode because, we're sort of hitting a mid-season break.

We're going to hit the pause button on the season. And we're going to look at some of the storylines that have defined the first eight weeks, nine weeks of the NFL season. It's been a very interesting season to say the least. Probably the most interesting off-field season, I can remember. And a lot of that off-field stuff has started to show up on the field, and that's impacted basically every corner of the game, from ratings to contracts on down.

We want to unpack what's been going on on one of the most complicated seasons in recent memory, both on and off the field and in the history of the league. Robert. Exactly. I mean, it's been a bizarre year. I think both as a fan and as someone who covers the sport every single day. So today we're going to take a step back a little bit and we're going to try to assess what is the NFL in 2017. We've hit on this stuff, Kevin, pretty much every week. You know, in our two shows that we talk about, it's been a topic of constant conversation.

But we want to take sort of the long term from 40,000 feet sky high. view of this. And to do that, Brian Curtis is going to come and join us to discuss some of the relevant off-field topics that you mentioned, Kevin, including player protests, and the ongoing discussion about Colin Kaepernick. Claire McNier will also be here joining us to discuss player health and safety

and their long-term effects on how we watch and think about football. One thing that is going to be shaded by, there's two news items I found interesting. One came up on Wednesday via the New York Times. It's the Jerry Jones has hired a big lawyer, David Boyce to essentially block Roger Goodell's contract extension. What's going to happen there? I mean, there's going to be a power play like you cannot believe at the top of the league at 345 Park Avenue.

And it's going to be fascinating to watch. And that is a shadow that will cast over the rest of the season. And if you don't think it's going to be a major storyline, wait. The second thing is that Darren Ovelle mentioned this earlier on Wednesday, which is that through half the season, ratings are down 5.5%. Now, the interesting thing about that is that it's in line with the rest of television. pretty much all ratings are down 5% across the board, across the entire medium of television. But what's interesting is that I've spoken to a lot of NFL executives over the past five years,

and all of them have said they were impervious to the declines of television. When everybody else was, when flat was the new up, they were up, if that makes sense. And so for me, for them to be in line with the rest of television, that's something they're going to panic over. And so, yes, the NFL is very worried. There's going to be a lot of changes. and it's a very good time to look at the state of football. That's kind of why we're doing this right now. I mean, the NFL used to be this kind of perpetual money-making machine.

It was going to keep going and keep going. It had a mind of its own. And the fact that it stalled even a little bit is why we're having this discussion at this point. Let's start out with the on-field stuff, which is the stuff we notice every Sunday and we've been talking about. And to do that, we're going to bring in our good friend, Danny Kelly. Danny, how are you? I'm doing great, guys.

Thanks for having me on. Of course, man. So one of the main story lines with the games on the field this season has just been how these teams seem so bundled together. Parity is at an all-time high. You look at just the way the teams are bunched in the DVOA ratings pretty much every single week. It's a reality that we're facing right now. Danny, how would you try to start and explain what's been kind of an uninspired state of play on the field this season? I think that you have to kind of start with the offensive line play.

I think that's sort of, to me, the foundation of a lot of, what's happening. I think there's tons of other reasons and things that we'll get to but I think you have to start with the offensive line. It's just you just see guys coming up from the college game that just don't look good. They can't play in the pro system quite as well as you'd hope.

There's a big learning curve for them and I think that's affected quarterback play. It's affected the way that teams play the game. I know Kevin's talked about how completion percentage is up but yards per attempt is down and you know, this dink and dunk culture, we're going to talk about that. But I think it's all connected

to what's happening up front. And I've written about this a lot. I've talked to a lot of people about this. I wrote a big piece on the ringer last week, just about the state of offensive line play in the NFL and why it's kind of deteriorated. And this is a discussion Kevin and I have had, but it's a discussion worth having again

because I do think it's one of the biggest stories in the league this year. And the people that I talk to, everyone kind of has this theory. They all want a patient zero because it's kind of like any other epidemic, right? It's something, it's like watching contagion, Why is Guinephaltrow sick?

It's one reason. Let's find it. But that's not how this is gone. So many things have kind of coalesced into this huge major problem. I don't want to spoil contagion, but wasn't it a very complicated disease? That's probably fine. I mean, I don't remember. It was just the one thing I could remember.

I do remember. But it was a lot of things coming together in a very unlikely scenario. So there it is. This is like contingent. Is Russell Wilson, Gwennezz? Gwenith Paltrow in the scenario? No, I was going to say it was like Eric Fisher. Gwif,

Quentin Poutre was Eric Fisher. Yeah, but Russell, the alignment aren't the ones getting crushed here, unfortunately. It's the quarterbacks. They're the ones that are actually being affected by the disease. Someone's getting crushed. So maybe Russell Wilson is Matt Damon and Eric, you know, whoever has Reese. Oh, Hadebo. What's his name, Danny?

I can never do this. Odiombo. Reese Odiombo. He's Guanteth Paltrow. That's fine. So it starts, I think, for a lot of people with practice time. And that's the number one issue. And this is something we'll get into a lot.

And Kevin and I have discussed the realities of practice time under the new CBA pretty consistently on our show. And we haven't really dug into the particulars of it. So the things that have changed are that in training camp now, you can't do two-day practice anymore. One practice per day, the limit is four hours on the field. And that's a huge part of it. It's also 14 padded practices during the season. That's crazy. So over the 17 weeks, you have to ration out.

14 practices. So that's a huge issue. And then it goes further. It goes into the spring. I mean, you have three phases in the offseason program. And in a couple of those phases, especially phase two, which is after like strength and conditioning, you cannot line up across from one another. So for an offensive lineman that's 22 years old, he's never worked on how to find his punch, like landing points as a puncher working against another player. You can't even do that with a guy who.

coming into the league. It's not allowed. So all of these tiny little things have kind of combined to hamper the development of young offensive linemen. At the same time, it's hampered a lion's ability to kind of come together because what Jeff Schwartz told me is that during

training camp, that's when you would figure out how to block every front you could possibly face while running away and play. So if you were doing inside zone and you were doing a combo block on a two technique and you screwed up the first time. Didn't get your steps right, whatever.

All right, you do it again, you get it right. Fine, that's two plays. Then the next play, the guy moves. There are a million different ways you have to block these, and that's the time where these guys are figure it out, and they no longer know how to do it. So continuity, anticipation, all of these things have gone by the wayside because there's just not enough time for these guys to work on it.

You're telling me that when it looks like offensive lines are learning how to play with each other on the field, that that's actually what's happening? Yes. That's the problem. And it goes beyond that. It's little things. Kevin and I mentioned this, you know,

just to each other, I think yesterday or the day before. Players have iPads now. Yep. So they don't watch film together. Nope. So these guys prepare for games alone in the corner of a room or at home or whatever.

It used to be the only place you could watch is with each other. Yeah. And it's a lot more independent study, for lack of a better term. I mean, there are so many anecdotes I've heard where starting quarterback A will text quarterbacks coach A and say, hey, can I get a look at the Bengals third downs? And that guy might be on a beach in Cabo San Lucas. And you're there and you're sort of up to your own devices. That's maybe a net win because you're getting more information.

But it's not the same environment. You're not getting coached on every single rep or whatever it is. And so it's just a little bit different. And that's no matter what, whether it's good or not, it's certainly changing the way. football players view certain plays and how to identify film stuff. And especially a collective position like offensive line.

It literally is guys working together. So you need to know, all right, we're pointing out and we're spotting this stunt based on this alignment and third down and whatever. That's a collective pursuit. I mean, you have to do that together. So I think that the fact that that's happening less, that's going to hurt development of overall lines.

I think it's really fascinating how long it's kind of taken this to come to a head. you know, like the new CBA was what, 2011, and it's been, you know, we're just past the halfway point of it. And I kind of just, the metaphor that I keep thinking of is like, you know, if you take a plant or a tree or whatever out of the sun, it's not going to die immediately. It just slowly starts to drop leaves. And that's just like how I picture the offensive line play. Like, you know, the new CBA came in and it didn't like completely change the game immediately overnight. It's just slowly chipped away and, you know, like taking the light, taking the water away from that plan.

It's slowly starting to like, you know, wilt up and everything. So I just think it's been really fascinating kind of seeing it all come to a head. I think that I think to me that's a big, big part of it. I remember as much as I don't watch baseball anymore, I used to be a huge baseball nerd. And I remember reading Bill James when I was fairly young. And he had a line about spending in baseball. And the line was, I think about it all the time with the CBA, is just because something doesn't have. immediately doesn't mean it's not going to happen eventually.

And that's sort of how I felt about the CBA is that we saw all these early returns and we were like, oh, okay, the game's not that much different. Well, this is what the game is. It's, you know, completion percentage going up from 59% to 63%, but yards per catch being down. Like, no, when I wrote that a couple of weeks ago, the headline my boss put on it was literally how football stopped being fun. Yeah. And it's hard to argue that anyone's having fun with these sort of offenses.

Danny, what else? What else is kind of stuck out to you? Outside of the offensive line play, I mean, I know what Kevin has said, especially about the completion percentage, all that stuff, that's totally relevant. But, I mean, is there anything else specifically that's jumped out to you? I think that the other thing that is a big part of this is, and we've seen flashes of it. We've seen the league starting to, I think, embrace the college, like the quote college game, you know, the quote spread offense type thing.

I think when you see the teams that are able to score so many points and do so many things and confuse so many offenses when they adopt the plays and the types of things that these college quarterbacks are doing. Sorry, the rookies and young quarterbacks are doing in college and they can do it in the NFL and it actually works like, holy crap. But I think a lot of teams are still really, really slow to do that. And it just still feels like a lot of teams are trying to fit a square peg into a round hole with their quarterbacks.

Like they're asking them to do things that they're not comfortable doing because this is what we do in the NFL. And I do think it's starting to sort of evolve. And there's a bigger acceptance for and all that. But I think that it's still lagging a little bit. And I think over the next few years, I think that will change. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I still go back to the fact that the Dallas Cowboys draft board had Connor Cook ahead of Dak Prescott.

They readily admit that it was because Cook played in a pro-style offense. That was last April. That wasn't 10 years ago. That was the 2016 season. Yeah. And that's still happening. It's real. we're putting a lot of this on players, lack of development, lack of time, everything else.

And coaches are in a tough spot because of that. When you have less time, it's harder to be a really good coach, especially in position coach. But I think overall, these guys that are the architects of this team, there aren't enough of them saying, how can I do everything possible to milk what I can from this roster? And I think the best teams and the most fun teams, the ones we've liked watching this year, are the ones that have done that. the Eagles are a blast to watch.

Totally. Because they're doing so much crazy stuff. I mean, they're like, how can I figure out the weirdest possible junk to throw this defense? The Rams are the same way. It just feels like the teams with good coaches have separated themselves so much because the league is so homogenous. And I don't know if that means we have a shortage of good coaches,

if we're not finding the guys who are best set up to attack the game that way. But it just feels like it's a coach. problem as much as it's a talent problem right now. Three years ago sat in the coach's office and we're talking about the spread offense. And at that point, no one, no one was looking at the college game. And the coach said, you have to watch the college game because they're always three to four to five years ahead of the NFL and we end up stealing it so you have to be on ahead of the curve. That coach was Andy Reed.

Yeah. Wow. I like that. That's a good. That was a good anecdote. Perfect. Thank you, Danny. The best one is 60 years old.

I said to Andy, I said, can you expand on that? And he sort of said, you know, look, they're in a more open educational environment. They're not a closed loop like NFL teams are where it's just people in their own building. They're meeting with more people. They're meeting with high school coaches. Think about how much more variety a college coach sees in his day-to-day life than an NFL coach, who's only watching other pro tape and then maybe in the spring watches NFL show. That's true. It's also born of necessity, though.

I mean, it's ingenuity, but you're kind of pushed to that ingenuity by a lack of talent, by just a bigger swath of competition. I mean, Urban Meyer coaches at Ohio State now. He didn't. I mean, that's the thing. He's trying to find ways. I had a long conversation with Dan Mullen, who, if you didn't read the story, you can go back and read it. I wrote a whole story about the 2007 Patriots. And Josh McDaniels went down and met with... Dan Mullen before the 2006 season when he was at Florida and Urban was there and they'd come from Utah and before that Bowling Green. And I said, how did you invent this sort of spread system that eventually everyone involved with Urban Myers' offense became famous for? And he said it was literally because at Bowling Green they had one receiver who could catch the ball. There you go.

And so when you talk about necessity, that's what they're talking about. Like just the idea that it was like, okay, we have one guy. We got to move him around. so the entire offense is going to become flexible. The entire offense is going to be about giving them looks that confuse the defense and spread them out and they're going to give it to the guy who, by the way, can catch the ball. And the best part about this is that Urban Meyer

was the guy who coached Alex Smith, which is just amazing. We just came. We just came full circle. Yep. I was going to say, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't a part of the reason that college in high school and everything got into the spread game and started doing it so much is because they have less time

with their guys? That's a part of it. That's a big part of it. There's a very regimented practice schedule in the college game. Plus, you only have a lot of, like if the guys are really good, you only have them for a few years. Yeah. Well, there's something else, which is that it works. And college offenses are under no obligation to give the NFL the quarterbacks that look like the quarterbacks from 1986.

All right, Danny. At our core, I think you and I, we are football nerds. We derive a lot of joy from the minutia of the game. And we talked about the issues this year. They're undeniable. But there are some things in the league this year that are also worth celebrating. It's not all bad by any stretch. What has made the league fun for you this year?

So I split this up. I put together a pretty meaty list here of things that I've really enjoyed. Of things I've really enjoyed this year. And you can start with like, how much time do we have? This is going to six-hour podcast. You just read this whole thing up? So, first of all, obviously, you've got the problem this year where a lot of the superstars have gotten injured. You know, O'Dell Beckham's, Aaron Rogers, all that, JJ Watt.

But there's still guys, there's still superstars kind of, you know, at the foundation. Like, Tom Brady, he's 40 years old. He's still, like, one of the best quarterbacks of the middle. He's got, he's like at the top of almost every leaderboard or near it in passing. And so he's still there. Drew Breeze is still doing amazing things. You still got guys like Laving on Bell, Antonio Brown, To watch, Russell Wilson occasionally does. something incredible and it's okay Danny Russell Wilson does a lot of incredible stuff you

don't have to apologize to play it down a little bit I got to hide it but um and then I mean just from there there's this great new class I think of of the next sort of generation of superstars that we're starting to see like Carson Wentz has turned into the real deal deck Prescott underrated year I'm writing about that today he's he's just really really underrated we haven't been talking about of him as much totally agree yeah he's been really good the last like three or four weeks it's insane Good. Go from there. You got Jared Gough taken off. Joey Bosa is ridiculous. You got Marcus Lawrence in Dallas. Jalen Ramsey. Todd Gurley, Travis Kelsey. Those guys are all super fun. Will Fuller. I mean, obviously the whole Deshawn Watson thing is a bummer. But like,

these are really, really exciting young players that we're going to start to, you know, I think they're going to turn into like, you know, legit superstars in this league. And then like you got a rookie class that's got a ton of really, you know, This has been actually a really impressive rookie class, I think. Deshawn Watson, obviously, Davin Cook. I put those guys into the Don't Be Sad, It's Over, Be Happy, It Happened category for this year anyway. But then you've got guys like Miles Garrett, Furnett, McCaffrey, who actually is second in the NFL in catches right now, which is, I didn't realize. Marshawn Latimore, Alvin Kamara, you know, the Saints' whole rookie class basically has been really awesome.

It's changed their season. I mean, it's made them contenders in a year. Changed her franchise. Yeah, totally. That's going to be up on the ringer today. I wrote about how I think that this is the era of the facelift contender, just in the sense that with how many rookies are playing, with how young the league has gotten,

and with the parody that we see every year, a single offseason can make you a championship team. And that makes the league fun. I mean, the fact that the Eagles were able to go out and get Alshan, Jeffrey, Timmy Jernigan, Patrick Robinson, and Derek Barnett and Chris Long, and they're the best team in football now, That makes spring in the NFL awesome.

It makes every draft matter. It makes the craziness surrounding free agency matter. So I do think there are ways to kind of drive and kind of build excitement about the league that there haven't been before. And the players are only one part of it. I mean, you get the maze. They'll speak to you because, I mean, obviously there's parity. And some people think it's diluted and watered down or whatever. but at the end of the day,

like honestly, even the Bears are still in playoff contention right now and we're halfway through the year. Like, there's like four teams that you could probably say are like, okay, they're done. But that's it.

I mean, it's kind of insane to think that. I do think that's, that is, some people can see that as a bad thing. I do think there's a way to spin it in the other way in the sense that so many teams are still around. And I mean,

you kind of rode off to Sean, not wrote off, but you just mentioned to Sean Watson. It's like, this is the type of stuff that these guys, exist. Deshawn Watson is here. Carson Wenz is here. There's no reason just be like, I guess Carson Wentz is the next guy. Let's celebrate Carson Wentz. Like, why not? The dude does something every week where it's just like, what the hell just happened? I was writing about him a couple

weeks ago. I think it was like two or three weeks into the season. And I saw a couple of things in his play, like where he would do like an escape. And I was like, oh my God, that looked like Aaron Rogers. And I'm like, well, I don't want to be like totally hyperbolic and just be like, you know, total fanboy or whatever, but like, there's elements of his game where you're like, wow, that is like a superstar play. So I totally agree with that. Like, you have to, you have to really appreciate that. Can I say something about Carson Wentz? He has something that I think is rare in the modern NFL, which is that he was not marked for stardom early on, like a lot of quarterbacks because obviously he didn't even play Division 1.

And so he had, and this happens in soccer sometimes when there's sort of non-processing. aspects develop into superstars. So we has a long paper trail of just insanely embarrassing high school photos. They're just really fun that you just don't get, right? Like most like top quarterbacks are, you know, they're doing their hair when they're sophomores in high school, whatever. Like Carson-Wens has a ton of like bowl-cut photos, embarrassing like baseball photos, tons of hunting photos like without his shirt on, like really funny stuff.

And that makes him maybe the most fun thing about the NFL. Yeah, I don't want to see some over-polished guy from Mission Viejo. You know, he's got L.A. magazine spread when he's 14. I don't want that guy. That's fine. I want Wenz posing in front of a pickup truck. I love that, but I also love the fact that, like, Jalen Ramsey had a Jordan contract when he was 22, and that he's part of the most fun defense in the league right now.

That's on the other end is just as fun. That's just as fun. I don't like the, I don't like the Mark Sanchez's of the world. Danny, thank you very much for doing this. Sincerely appreciate it. As always, we will be talking to you on all of our shows. Thank you very much, bud. Thanks, guys.

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Check it out against all odds with Cousin Sal. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, now moving off the field. We bring in the ringers Brian Curtis. Brian, thank you for joining us. Hey, boys. How's it going, buddy? I'm good.

How was it the halfway point? This feels like when, remember when we were like a month into the Trump administration, someone said, it's a month, it's been a month. How has just been halfway through the NFL season? The 2017 NFL season has been going on for 37 years. Those memes, like, you know, me in 2016 versus me in 2017, that's just me in like week three versus me in week nine. I also just could have posted a picture of myself in each of those points,

and it would have been hilarious. I've aged 20 years. You didn't need like the Star Wars or something. God, no. John Wick. That was a good one. John Wick holding a dog and then John Wick bloodied up. That was a good.

That was a good meme. All right. Brian, we got to start with the news because there's some news that you are from Dallas. You have a firm understanding of the Cowboys universe. Jerry Jones has hired David Boyce. It's the Star Wars universe. There's so many tentacles.

So, I mean, it's bigger. It's bigger. The Death Star has nothing. on Jerry World. No. So Jerry Jones is how David Boyce to apparently block Roger Goodell's contract extension. You're sort of a Jerry Jones ologist, I would say. Where does the Goodell Jones clash go from here?

It's a great question. I think it'll go probably as far as Jerry Jones can make it go. It's unclear how far he can go. It seems like he is trolling Roger Goodell at this point, right? We do not think that a lawyer can seriously stop Roger Goodell's contract extension from being granted by a body that Jerry has now been thrown off of, that he sort of wormed his way onto as a non-voting member, right, and has now been tossed off of.

It's the ownership version of sort of Colin Kaepernick's collusion case, which is obviously the Kaepernick case has a lot more merit. It's actual moral content. No, they really are colluding, but it's just sort of like it's a statement more than anything. Yeah. And you'd feel a lot better about it. There are some legitimate issues here,

which is right, Goddell's power over player discipline, which we've talked about a ton. The idea of the NFL trying and mucking up all these efforts to punish people accused or convicted of domestic violence in various forms. This is not actually that. This is Jerry Jones getting really, really mad. It's Jerry Jones getting mad. It's also, I think, by the way, let's just be straight. Jerry Jones getting old, wanting to win another Super Bowl. and Roger Goodell took, he falls into the pot of gold that was Dak Prescott and Zeke Elliott,

and then Roger Goodell is taking one of those guys away for six weeks, right? And he's upset about it. And so he's decided now to retain a lawyer, last scene commanding ex-Mossad agents against Harvey Weinstein's accusers to go after Roger Goodell. I just don't, I mean, again, I think it's fun from the standpoint of let's watch rich people tear each other to shreds, but I'm not sure there's actually any moral content in this that I can get behind or even understand. It's hard to be on Jerry's side. It's not a place many people want to be.

There was such a weird theme narrative going around on Twitter on Wednesday that was like, oh, Jerry wants to be the NFL commissioner. No, he doesn't. He doesn't want to do that. He just wants to be angry. And maybe if Cadill gets ousted, then he puts in a Jones puppet or whatever. But, I mean, it's not, I think this is just Jerry lashing out. That's that more than anything.

It reminds me of all the Dallas Cowboy fans that have suddenly got interested in criminal procedure, much less Patriots fans did over the last couple of years. And they're interested in it will disappear as soon as this case is over. It reminds me, you know, there was that there was that theory. Alex Preen wrote about this about how one of the things that hurt the conservative movement and the Republican Party is that Trump is sort of an extension of conservative media and Twitter trolls and all that stuff. Jerry Jones is now an extension of Cowboys Twitter. This is what Cowboys Twitter wants him to be like, because you know the whole thing with Robert Kraft and the Patriots fans are going to flake it.

Every time you just tweeted like a neutral word about Goodell, Patriots fans would just be like, we got to file this petition against Goodell and get him out and all that stuff. And Jones is living that fantasy. And the truly weird part about that, I think, is that Patriots fans actually kind of like. like Kraft or mostly approve of craft.

Right. To be a Cowboys fan, to be a member of Cowboys Twitter is to be an opposition to Jerry Jones. Right. Is to laugh at Jerry Jones. Is to say, oh my God, did you hear what he said today? So to weirdly cheer, situationally cheer him on is to me even maybe the perhaps the most bizarre aspect of this case. Wow.

I mean, it's going to, it's, that is by far the most fascinating wrinkle of this NFL season going forward because there's going to be boardroom fights. There's going to be proxy wars. I mean, it's going to be like every other corporation in America every time there's a crisis. I mean, that hasn't been happening in the NFL recently. We've had this continuing conversation. You've written a lot about the NFL's decline or what's happening to the NFL, right? Well, owners fighting and especially somebody like Jerry Jones deciding to take on the commissioner

and or the other powerful owners in the league strikes me as a big data point in. Uh-oh. The NFL has a problem. It's amazing. Okay, now to a more serious issue than Roger Goodell fighting with Jerry Jones is Colin Kaepernick. Now, Kaepernick is, he's obviously in a collusion lawsuit against the NFL, and there's one of two things happening. We've discussed this many times. Either he's actually being colluded against, and that's probably happening, albeit unofficially.

And in that case, it's a tough lawsuit to file. or, you know, it's just it's it's 32 owners and GMs and coaches who've come to the independent conclusion that Colin Kaepernick is not worth the attention that it would bring to the locker room. Either one, it's pretty shameful for the league. How do you sort of view Kaepernick right now, Brian, in the grand scheme of the NFL? I view him as a martyr to a cause that has been, despite his status with the league, mostly successful. And I'm not sure I would have said that in week one of this season.

because he didn't have a job. And I would have said, well, you know, here's a guy who stood up for what he believed in or knelt in this case for what he believed in. And he was drummed out of the NFL. The NFL's whole idea was we don't like this kind of thing. So you're out of here. Well, what's happened in the meantime is it's a lot easier. It turns out to have a protest movement when you have cartoonish villains on the other side of it. I mean, remember the players kept reminding us this is really about police violence, right?

it's hard for the public to wrap its mind around, I think, and support and then eventually support something like that because it's not clear who the enemy is, right? Well, what happens? In comes Donald Trump and September, right? Suddenly you go from six players taking a need to more than 200 the next week, including Jerry Jones and other people like that. What happens in October, Jerry Jones comes in and says he's going to bench anybody, even though no cowboy has ever knelt for the anthem ever. What happens a few weeks later, Bob McNair compares the players to inmates. Another situation that made things worse because no Texan had ever knelt and then the entire team all but six knelt. It seems like every single week this fire is restoked by the stupidity of somebody involved.

These owners somehow make everything worse every time they try. So now you've taken a really difficult, important issue, but a difficult issue for the public to get its mind around police violence, right? And you've replaced it in the public mind with. three cartoonish billionaires who are telling the players what to do, in many cases, your favorite players. And it's not just me, when I say when we could argue about what that means. But here's something amazing. Remember at the beginning of this and people were saying protest movements, civil rights movements are not necessarily popular with the public at large.

Well, October USA Today poll, 68% of people say that Trump was wrong for the to call on owners to fire the players. And 51 to 42 said the players' protests were appropriate. 51% of people think that players kneeling on the field during the national anthem is appropriate. Now, if I told you that before the season, could you have imagined that a majority of Americans who and everyone thought this was a winning issue for Trump and for the owners? That's pretty amazing to me. Not to correct your numbers, but I have a Daniel Snyder poll here that says 96% of Americans think that the players should all stand. tweeted out by the Redskins Twitter account. Daniel Snyder, if you didn't hear that news listeners, told a room of NFL owners that

the anthem, standing for the anthem has a 96% approval rate. So we have to trust the Suffol poll or the Daniel Snyder poll. Daniel Snyder asking. I would love to see what sort of scientific environment that poll was conducted under. That was always it. I think it was a straw poll. Here's the other thing for me. We're sitting here in a week or day after the elections, the midterm elections,

or not even midterm off-year elections in Virginia, right? Ed Gillespie, Republican, part of his campaign was sending out flyers with kneeling football players on it. So imagine, now, again, and speaking of, I know we can just do this forever with Trump and with even the NFL now. Imagine if I'd told you. But imagine if I'd told you two years ago that NFL players would be a prop in a culture war-driven political campaign alongside Confederate statues and the MS-13 Central American gang. like these three things would be lumped together as part of as it turned out a blowout loss political campaign in Virginia. And I think that I mean, that's just amazing. And also, by the way, that just shows me that the players are doing something when they get that kind of notoriety.

And that's, you talk about just the cartoonish villains that are out there now. And I do think that helps. It puts this entire conversation in context for people. But under all of that, I mean, that's the ridiculousness of it. But the layer under that is that things are actually going on. I mean, I think that if the small. victories in this are Doug Baldwin being able to have his voice heard about the sensing reform and corrections act. This is all a win for the players, even if it's had to come through all

of this ridiculous. I think that's kind of the thing is we have this, these characters and everything else happening above it and then slightly underneath it, things are actually moving forward. And that's the kind of disconnect that's going on. Absolutely. Would I, would you guys have believed if I, again, two years ago, that the NFL would be a home for social activism. Yeah, I know. A league that doesn't have much of a history of it, a league that has a really weak players union and has always had a really weak players union would be the kind of thing where not only can these guys talk about this, but maybe other people can come forward later and talk about other issues. That's big. Brian, last thing, if you're looking at the future, the rest of the season, maybe we'll go short term on that because the future is a much murkier question. What's the biggest story you're watching?

In terms of protests and off the field stuff? Yeah, in terms of all of this stuff, in terms of everything that is happening off the field that is turning this NFL season into a time. fire. Two things. Obviously what happens to Colin Kaepernick is fascinating. It doesn't appear today if we were betting

that he's probably going to play. I just speak structurally to the NFL. Like you could try to end this by someone picking up the phone and offering him a contract. Right. Instead of Josh Jackson or something like that.

And instead, to Josh Johnson. Josh Johnson. Excuse me. 32 NFL owners are just either nervous, scared. I don't know. I cannot get a read on this.

So that's number one. said, though, Kevin, the fact that if they're doing it independently of one another, the idea that this group think among these people can independently go on speaks to just how systemic, the systemic problem with the way they think. I mean, this is a huge, it's just a disease. I mean, it is a in-step we have just this backward way of approaching things, disease. Yeah. It's almost scary if 32 people came to the same thing. Exactly. I've been saying that for a while now. I think that, I mean, you just look at Bill O'Brien. Bill O'Brien says, gets asked about Colin Kaepernick.

And he says, well, he is great, but he hasn't played in a while. He signed a player, Josh Johnson. They believe their own nonsense, man. Unbelievable. Josh Johnson. Colin Kaepernick has made the Super Bowl more recently than Josh Johnson is throwing an NFL pass. The other thing I'd say when you type looking for it, do all these things that are in the air in the NFL that we're talking about, some of which are contradictory, some of which have nothing to do with one another. all add up to this collective idea that Roger Gerdell and or the NFL are incompetent, right?

I mean, you have it the one time, them getting killed for being too lenient to domestic violence, now being too harsh. They took too short a time to investigate this time with Zic Elliott. They took too long. Reversals in court, because they're happening during the season, seem to be losses, even if we agree they're going to win the case eventually, right? The Jerry Jones stuff. It just, to me, it adds up to this large picture. Maybe the only picture is important as the ones in the mind of the owners, that just things are going to, going really, really badly and the NFL can't do anything right?

What a league. You know, it's Michael Lewis. You guys are you going to cover it for the rest of the season? We have to. We have to. No, we tried the soccer thing. Didn't worry. Yeah, I'm good.

You know what? I think I feel like I'm out of the worst of it. It's going to be all right. It's going to be wrong. Can we record that and play it later? The worst of it. I want to come back to Robert Mays and see that. Michael Lewis was asked what the next short, big short is.

on Wednesday morning and he said the national football league. Wow. Wow. He's even, he's off the bus. When's that book coming out? Wow. I had a boss. I had a boss who once said,

he once said that every industry has a three-pronged trajectory, which is boom, then bust, and then Michael Lewis. Does that mean I should feel like a guy, Lehman Brothers in 2005? Yeah, right now. Should be looking for a new game employment?

She feels like a financial reporter. Okay. Brian, Thank you for joining us. That was fun. Thanks, guys. It wasn't fun at all. It was depressing, but fun in a depressing way. Hey, it's Bill Simmons.

Wanted to make sure you're listening to the Bill Simmons podcast this year. We stepped it up with the guests. I don't even have time to list all, though, but let's just say we have had a who's who of A-listers, A-minus listers, B-plus listers, and sports, pop culture, movies, music. I mean, where else can you get Kevin Durant, Steve Balmer, Jimmy Iivine, and Charlie's Theron in the span of six weeks nowhere. The answer is nowhere. You can find that literally nowhere other than the Bill Simmons podcast.

We are in Year 11. It's been an honor to do it. I hope you subscribe the Bill Simmons podcast. Check it out. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast. All right. We've touched on the impact that specific injuries have had around the league this year. I mean,

whether it's to guys like Deshaun Watson or Aaron Rogers. But I think the concerns about player health go, I mean, I know the concerns about player health go far beyond. on freak occurrences like that. Head injuries, the long-term health considerations about the game have affected how we watch football and also just its long-term viability. And for that discussion, we wanted to welcome in the ringer's own Claire McNair. Claire, how are you, first of all?

I'm doing all right. How about you? We're doing, we're doing all right. You're about to be doing. It's been an interestingly toned podcast, but we're doing fun. You're about to be doing much worse, Claire. 20 minutes of talking about this stuff, you'll be a gloom.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll all need a drink when this is over. But okay, so let's get into it. I mean, Claire, would you say that considering player health has affected the way that we consume the league in 2017? Yeah, I mean, I think absolutely. I think there are two different things going on here at the same time. And the first is what you just mentioned,

that this year we've just seen a remarkable number of injuries to prominent players. and week after week, that has kind of been the story. And the second thing is I think there's an increased sense of awareness, both among fans and players, about head trauma and CTE, and about the NFL's failures on player safety over the years. And that's everything from years of denial about the link between CETE and football to trying to shut down research on the disease, to revelations about the extent to which teams deploy in some cases

abuse prescription drugs. And, you know, it's not like it's most of the, of this stuff isn't new or specific to this season for the most part. But Moore is coming to light. And it just seems like hardly a week goes by without either a terrible injury on the field or a terrible revelation of some kind or both. So I think that let's unpack that a little bit. Talking about the fact that it used to be something that was swept under the rug,

we didn't have the knowledge that we do now, just the prevalence of CTE among football players and just threat health-wise to players that are involved in the game at pretty much any level. So now that we do have that awareness, and you see a hit like the one that Danny Trevathan put on Devante Adams, it's a prime time game, it's there for everyone to see, mouthguard goes flying, it's a brutality. I mean, that's what it is. So we have this knowledge now. And even though hits like that have been legislated out of the game, which we'll discuss a little bit, they still exist. So now that we have this knowledge and that hits like that still pop up and we know that even these sub-concussive hits have a ridiculous

impact on these guys long term, how do we start to reconcile that stuff? How as fans are we supposed to watch this game with a good conscience and say, it's okay. It's okay the NFL exists. It's okay that football is still a sport. As guys go into it armed with a requisite information, is that enough? Is that enough for us to say it's okay that football still does this to people? You know, I don't know.

I struggle with this a lot. I struggle with this as a fan. I struggle with this as somebody who watches football and enjoys football for the most. part. But kind of the more you know about this, the harder it becomes to watch it and to basically support it, to put your money towards it. I mean, I'm sure you guys saw this, but there was that study not too long ago of 111 brains of former NFL players, and CTE was present in 99% of them to some degree. And it's, I mean, that's shocking. That's horrifying. And there's, you know, for all the recent efforts that have been made in the league with concussion protocol and slum.

maybe getting better, you know, it's not clear that there is a way to play this game safely in its current form. So I don't know. I mean, you guys probably saw this as well, but a couple months back, researchers at Boston University announced that they've developed a way to test for CTE and living patients. And, you know, it's not clear exactly when that will be available or what it will look like or, you know, how effective that would be or, you know, there are no details about that yet. But I mean, that's huge. That's huge because I think it's one thing to sort of know about CTE as an abstract disease and for players to say, oh, you know, well, if it happens, it happens. And it's another to know how common it is, how pervasive it is. And, you know, whether or not you have it and whether or not, you know, you're at risk.

You're at an early stage and it might get worse. We've talked about this, Kevin. I mean, we have. It's a game changer. It's a game changer because the tentacles go everywhere. because what happens if you have CTE when you're 19 years old and you're diagnosed with it? Does it become almost like some of the, you know, a heart test or, you know, some of the, they pre-test you when you get to college for certain diseases. And they say, hey, you can't play if you have X, Y, or Z at college football happens all the time.

And does that, the CTE become one of those things? Just do high schools for liability reasons shut down their programs? I mean, we probably haven't given enough thought to what happens if we know that someone has early onset, for lack of a better term, CTE. And that's the thing is with that test, you know, the numbers you threw out there, Claire, the 99 of 111. That's a self-selecting group, right? Those brains were donated because those people had shown symptoms.

And I'm not trying to diminish the impact and just the prevalence of CTE overall, but I think that you have to take into account when you mention those numbers. But if you talk about CTE and living people, that factor starts to go away. Those people haven't necessarily shown signs of CTE. You probably get a test just because you played a lot of football. And to find out you have CTE without having shown any symptoms, that's where this starts to have real wide-ranging ramifications. And the players that make these decisions now that say,

I know the numbers, I know the reality I'm still going to play, they didn't make that decision when they were 14. They didn't have this information then. So like you were saying, Kevin, if high school kids can get a CTE test, if they have these numbers in front of them, do fewer players start to make this decision? I think that those are where the real impact on the game starts to come. Beyond that, it just gets into does a player after his second contract at age 30 say, okay, I'm done, I have CTE. I mean, that then it comes to that. If you're, I'm not saying, I don't want to have a value assessment here about Aaron Rogers because I wouldn't pretend to know.

know what's going on with him. But, you know, let's say he's 31, you know, a couple years ago. And he, you know, has made $100 million in the NFL and he knows what's going on medically now because you can prove it. This is in some hypothetical scenario. Do you just say, okay, I've made enough money. I'm gone. And then you have incredible superstars leaving at the peak of their prime. That could happen. Yeah, it absolutely could. I mean, we've started to see it happen more often. I know that it is not huge now right now. we're not seeing it with tons of players, but the fact that it's going on at all is notable. Chris Borland is a guy we don't talk about it anymore, but he was going to be a star. He walked away at the beginning.

And, you know, John Urchel isn't that, but he walked away early. A lot of these players are not a lot, but more and more players are leaving the game at a younger age. And I think that it seems like a small percentage now, but the fact that it exists, period, is worth paying attention to. Right. And the really troubling thing for me is I'm blinking on his name right now, but there was a player about a year ago who left the NFL and he said it was was not until he saw concussion the will smith movie about the kind of early research of cTE and football that he even really

understood what what the disease was and how at risk he was you know it was this kind of big abstract thing you know like oh you know maybe down the road who knows and seeing so i i just i find myself suspicious of how well the NFL informs its players and surely there there are players and there will continue to be players who do know the risks and know them very well and continue to choose to play football. But I, at this point, I'm not sure I'm willing to sort of take the NFL's word for it. That kind of extends into the way the rules have changed. I want to talk about that a little bit as well. I mean, real quick, the player who retired after seeing concussion was to Brookershaw-Fergson. There you go. Okay. So, you know, whether it's out of genuine concern for the

players or a way to kind of acquiesce to growing public sentiment, like you mentioned, Claire, I mean, the rules have changed. They have been altered in the name of player's safety. And Kevin, I think that, you know, we've been watching football for so long, and Claire's come to the game a little bit more recently. How different to you is watching a football game now than it used to be? I mean, if we're trying to legislate these hits out and there's a way we can go further, do you feel like there's a way to preserve what football is in its current iteration while making it safer? Here's the problem.

The problem is that when you and I started watching football, head injuries were not a big deal. Yes. And when we would look at it and we'd say, I remember, and I've told the story, I think on the podcast before, but I remember there was a team official once who told me that when there was an era, and it was basically the era before 10 years ago, when it was, oh, thank God, he got a head injury. It wasn't a knee. It wasn't an ankle. Yeah, exactly.

Oh, boy. It wasn't a shoulder. It was a head injury. Thank God. And now we look at it and we say, I remember someone saying this once. It gets repeated a lot, which is, you know, we used to say, oh, he's fine. And now it's, oh, he's fine for another 20 years. and then what we just saw, there will be a reckoning.

And that's, I think, the gloom that goes over every football game now. And so you have, when you see a big hit, you know what's going to happen. And that is the cloud that hangs over every big hit in football. And the problem is that, I mean, the big hits are the ones that we pay attention to, right? That Devante Adams hit that I mentioned. But Lyman, every single play hit each other. Every single play. I mean, it is just sustained contact.

and sustained collisions over time. And that stuff will never be talked about in terms of like a broadcast in the NFL. You'll never have to see that and think, God, that was violent. But it really is. And those are the ones that I think are more problematic than the big hits and the ones that are never going to get as much attention. That's the problem here is that at its core, football is a series of 60 small car crashes every single game. Yep. And I don't know what you.

do about that. You can't legislate that out of the game because it literally is the game. It's football. That's the problem. The definition of football is violence. And then we start to get into the discussion again. If we know that, if that is just the reality that we deal with, what is the onus on the league to explain that to players? And at what point is players taking responsibility enough for us to say, we're good. We can watch this. Good to go. I don't know the answer to that. Old, old, old football quote. That football is not a contact sport.

It's a collision sport. Dancing is a contact sport. And that's it. It's a collision sport. How do you fix a collision sport when you know what the collisions lead to? And Claire, I mean, we've talked about this. I've written about this. There is a way to just enjoy just whatever that element of football is.

I mean, it's kind of part of the enjoyment. And at what point do you feel like in your own mind, kind of extricating those two elements is going to become difficult. I mean, I think it already is. And I wrote about this last week, but I mean, I don't, I've been feeling it this season especially. And I think it's probably a mixture of, you know, these things becoming ever more apparent.

And also I worry that it's something I'm thinking about more this season because the, you know, the games just haven't been as good. And maybe I've just been more distracted in previous seasons and not. That's fair. We're forced to think about this, but it's been there, and it is there, and it's only going to get worse. So I don't know. I don't know what the answer is.

I think that's kind of where we sit with this. I mean, this is going to be the issue about head trauma and just about player safety as we move forward. I mean, there are no quick fixes here. And there's no way to kind of figure out where the lines have to be drawn. But having this discussion is important. I think trying to figure out where they should exist, what responsibility we have covering the game to inform people about its dangers, what responsibility we have to communicate

the way that players are kind of processing all this information. I think that's where we come in. And even if it is kind of hard to untangle, this is something we should consistently do. And I think that's why we're doing it right now, Kevin. Yeah. I mean, it's the biggest issue anytime anything else happens in this sport, the protest stuff, the Goodell sort of squabbling over. the power stuff, all of it will one day pale in comparison to what the health and safety aspect

of the sport will do to the future of it. There are very, very serious issues throughout the entire league. But the thing, if football dies, it's this. Yeah, absolutely. Claire, we really appreciate you joining us. Thank you so much for your time. Great to be here. Okay, Robert, Before we get out of here, we usually offer some lasting impressions. So we'll do it for this podcast as well, just to send you out. And that's it. I do think football, first of all, is a great sport. And we really like it.

And we enjoy watching it on Sundays. And that's why we do this for a living. Having said all that, I do think things are starting to change a little bit with the perception of the sport. I think the sport, you know, look, other sports cannot get 60 million people on a regular basis to watch their semifinal, which is what the NFL gets for a conference championship game in most years. No other sport can even come close to that in America.

And maybe the World Cup can, but that's certainly not yearly. Okay. So football will be the most popular sport in America for a long time. We're talking decades. But when it isn't, we're going to look back around now as the start of the cracks in it. Ratings did not go down in the past. That just didn't happen until two years ago. Revenue has been spiking for years.

years. And, you know, the NFL wants it to $25 billion by 2027. They're halfway there. They'll probably get there. It's what happens after that that's fascinating to me. And so we are in just the most fascinating era of the football business that has ever happened maybe since Pete Roselle inventing the Super Bowl, essentially. And I think that football fans, a lot of them, you know, we hear from them a lot. They don't want to hear a lot of this stuff. They want to hear football analysis. That's why we're doing a special edition instead of just talking about this on a Tuesday or a Friday. We'll have football on Friday,

and you guys can enjoy that. But I think that football fans need to pay attention to stuff because it will impact the on-field product, whether that's the talent pool, the amount of people who play the game, the amount of people who retire from the game, the amount of money there is to go around for the players. I mean, if revenue goes down in 15 to 20 years,

that impacts the salary cap. That impacts everything. And so I think that people see a divorce between on-field and off-field stuff. And I think that as this goes on, those two things will merge. And I think that's one thing NFL fans need to pay attention to. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that there have been times this year when football has been tough to love. I mean, there's no doubt about that.

It's felt like an act of judgery to kind of engage with some of these primetime games, especially. With that in mind, though, I love football. I mean, the game has meant so much to me over such a long period of time. And I think that if you watch me, watch football, have you ever been around me as I've done it. That comes through. Every week, I have a segment in my Monday recap called The Line Play Moment that made me hit Rewind. That's not a turn of phrase. I mean, I literally stop and go back.

And I make people stop and go back when I'm watching it with them. And I feel like even with all this stuff in mind, as the on-field product is taking a step back, is everything about the game and the conversations about the game have kind of left the field of play. That is the thing I've always gone back to is that the tiny moments and the ins and outs and the gears of how this game works and the greatness that goes into the game stars are things I'm always going to clamp on to. Watching that clip of Lane Johnson tossing Von Miller on the internet this week was fun to me. I'm always going to like that because what goes into that moment is beautiful.

in my mind. The fact that he has to know what Vaughn is going to do. He has to feel that he's trying to spin back in order to do that. There is a such a complicated and just huge list of stuff that goes into tiny little football moments like that. And I've gotten a lot of them from the Eagles this year. I think they're the team. Run pass options, Fletcher Cox, and Derek Barnett playing games on third down. I think that even with all of the complicated problematic elements going on around the league right now. It is a beautiful sport that has so much worth loving about it. And occasionally, those things are hard to dig down to. And we're going to do our best. That is our job. We are here to teach you about football and show you some of the things you may

not. And among all the other things that are going on, I'm still going to try to do that because that is where I derive a lot of enjoyment from this. And even if it's felt like a chore sometimes this year, there still has been plenty of enjoyment. And I feel like we're going to get a lot more of it. So that's where I'm sitting. I still love this game and I'm still very excited to teach you guys about it. Could you imagine how much more you'd love the game if you weren't a Bears fan? I really can't.

It's something I think about every single day. And I choose not to really sit in that thought because I don't think I can handle it. All right. Thanks for listening, everybody. Thanks, everybody.