The Ringer NFL Show - The Patriots Did It Again | The Ringer NFL Show

Episode Date: September 7, 2019

Kevin Clark and Danny Heifetz sit down for an emergency podcast to react to the New England Patriots signing Antonio Brown. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It is an emergency ringer NFL show. Antonio Brown is a Patriot edition. I'm standing up for some reason. I don't know why I'm doing it. My home was not expecting to pod today. That's still no explanation for why I'm standing up. I don't know what to do with my hands. We are joined by someone I have never potted with in my life.

I'm excited to do so now. Mr. Danny hyphids. Danny, where were you when this trade went down? I was writing about him being unemployed because the greatest was coming. As was I. This is very excited. for the bloggers, the two of us who were writing about what's going to go with Antonio Brown. And then we got the answer as we were writing.

It was very, very convenient. Now, Danny, you were writing, as was I, as we know. Can you take me through your just instant reaction to, I mean, really, and this is something I want to just put on the record forever. Everybody in the world was joking about this before it happened. And that's why when reports started to trickle in that it was. was happening, I thought it was maybe a joke. What was your initial reaction? Initial reaction to him getting cut from the Raiders or sorry with the Patriots?

No, no, no, no. We've completely moved on from that huge story six hours ago. That story is so irrelevant now because it has been owned by the fact that the Patriots are going to Super Bowl. So when I saw him, I mean, my first reaction was, wow, this was inevitable. This is what we all thought was going to happen. And then you think about it for a second. You're like, this is just like 2007, where Oakland sent Reddy Moss to the Patriots for a fourth rounder in the draft. Yeah. And then now Oakland's caught him and then he ends up on the Patriots. But then my third thought was the differences that Reddy Moss teamed up with Wes Welker

and Dante Stallworth. Antonio Brown's teaming up with Josh Gordon. And Josh Gordon's best comp for a player is Randy Moss. Right. Yeah. So I want to unpack that for a second. I want to say that there's a really, really big difference between Moss and Brown. and that is that we knew, and now we know looking back on it, what Moss is as a player.

There were real doubts when the Patriots got him about how much he had left. He had 553 yards of the year before in Oakland. This is Moss. Brown has had 1,200 yards in each of his last six seasons. Then the last three of those, he hasn't even played 16 games. He is unbelievably talented and there are no questions about him on the field. And I think that's the biggest difference. I think that Moss, you know, we saw that incredible 2007 season, but I think that the one thing that was shocking was how much he had left in that season.

Because again, there was two years in Oakland where he had bad quarterbacks and there were reports that he didn't really take, you know, a ton of effort on every single snap. It was a really strange time in NFL history for Andy Moss. This trade is a little bit different. I'm sorry, this acquisition is a little bit different in that regard because no one is questioning Antonio Brown on the field. It is entirely off the field. The way I view it, there are three scenarios. The first scenario is that everything is fine and that Antonio Brown destroys defenses

and the Patriots win the Super Bowl. But that scenario is the weirdest one because it means that Antonio Brown over the past nine months was running sort of an Andy Kaufman-style bit in order to get to New England and you have sort of more questions and answers. Why did any of this happen?

Was this the plan all along? I mean, I have so many questions if he just tomorrow shows up and is just completely ready to ball, right? That's the weirdest scenario, okay? The other scenario, and this has happened with people like Chad Johnson, Albert Hainsworth, they come to New England and they don't make as big of an impact as you think, and they kind of go away. Obviously, Antonio Brown's making more money than those guys make $15 million,

but they've taken low-risk flyers on guys before and they haven't always panned out. Maybe that's what happens here is he just doesn't play up to his potential, okay? And then the third option is the option I find the most intriguing, which is what if he keeps acting like he did in Oakland, but he also destroys defenses? What if he just keeps is just going full Andy Kaufman the whole season, the next five months, but he gets 1,700 yards with Tom Brady or more. And they have a 2007 style offense. That, to me, is the most entertaining thing. If I would to vote for what was going to happen, it would be that. where do you see the Patriots season going now?

So that's a really good point because the weird thing with the Patriots is that they're the reigning defending champions and they often are, but they're always boring anyway. They never have interesting players and even when interesting players go there, they become uninteresting. Yeah, I mean, I think that they've had exciting players. They become uninterested. I mean, Rob Gronkowski was an incredibly interesting person. He just had a couple of summers of gronk and then they told him not to have summers of Gronk anymore. And then he was Patriot Wade into sort of being a. a normal person. So that's how he fits into that locker room is one of the more intriguing subplots

going forward. And you're right about the on-field thing because it's, you mentioned the six seasons. That's six seasons. His last six seasons are the most receiving yards any receiver has ever had in any six-year stretch ever. Yeah. And there are some signs that he was kind of declining last year, like he had less yards per rat run and pro football focus and all that jazz. But he's still Antonio Brown and still the best stretch any receivers maybe ever had. So, and no one's doubting that he is among the hardest working players off the field in the whole league, which he loves to talk about. But how that, how he's like, he has one of those Instagram stories that's like 40 dots. Like I don't know how that translates in Foxborough.

Oh, like 40 different Instagram stories. Yeah, where you have to tap it 40 times. It's like the ringer on a Friday. So I think that that's, I think the work ethic is really interesting because I actually haven't heard anything either way because he's mostly been away from the facility about how his work ethic has been this. ethic has been this year. I think that one of the things that has gotten lost here, and as you said, he talks about it all the time, but I feel the need to talk about it. Antonio Brown works his ass off.

He is an unbelievable worker. And there are a lot of things he does a practice that rub people the wrong way, whether that's have his, you know, I think I was at a practice a couple years ago. He had his own water guy. Okay. Like he brought his own water guy. That's, he's doing his own thing. But when it comes to actual practice stuff, nobody works harder than him. He's there catching balls for hours afterwards. I mean, I remember waiting for him for an hour and he was just running and running into the jugs machine and catching the ball as hard and it was coming as hard as it could. He would have kind of third or fourth string defensive backs draped themselves on him while he was catching from the jugs machine. No one prepares like this guy except one person, Tom Brady. And that's why I think

that this has the real opportunity to be a really special relationship if Brown is the player he was in Pittsburgh. And that's, that's really what I, what I can't wait. I mean, I will say that this is one of those things where you'd like to have it in May, June, July, because that's where those sort of chemistry things start going. You could have the whole, um, Antonio Brown and Montana with Brady narrative. That might happen next year. But what I'm saying is, is that, uh, there's, there could be a real connection there if both of their work ethics line up to what I've seen in the past. And on that note, so hilariously, a month ago, the biggest question around this Patriots team was, Pass catching.

And now Josh Gordon's reinstated. Antonio Brown's on the Patriots. I have a question for you. Is Antonio Brown and Josh Gordon the best one to receiving duo in NFL history? What? Wait, if they can stay on the field, is that like the most talented duo ever?

Oh, I don't know. I mean, I think there's a lot of questions about that. I think that it's hard. I mean, on paper, that's really hard to say.

I mean, on paper, what do you put, I mean, for God's sake, Jerry Rice and Tim Brown were on it. I mean, I was obviously they were up there in their careers, but you know, you have the, I mean, there are a handful of really, really good tammons. I don't, I think it's way too early to say that that they're even better than Welker and Moss.

You have to remember, the 2007 Patriots changed football. Like that, I wrote 5,000 words about this, but I could write 5,000 more words about this. That team changed the way defenses operate. the way everybody looks at football, it is going to be really hard for them to do that. I mean, yeah, sure, there's a chance that they kind of score more points than anybody else and do all the stuff that they did in 2007. But I don't know, man. Both of those guys have to be full go immediately for all 16 games. I think that might be a little hard.

So what do you think this does for Brady who's 42 and they were kind of transitioning to we have one of the better offensive lines in the league and we're going to be running the ball and crushing people on defense? Yeah, I mean, these guys prolong. You know, it's interesting. It actually goes back a little bit to the 07 Patriots thing. And here's what I mean by that. When the Patriots, some of those guys told me that one of the interesting things about the way the Patriots came together in the off season that year was that they were, Moss was dealing with, I think, a hamstring injury. And so Welker was the offense in training camp for the first couple of weeks. So they became a Welker offense. And then Moss gets out there. And then they're like, oh, my God, we can we can start practicing with both of these. guys, that's amazing, but they'd already gotten so good at the Welker thing, then they can build on it with Moss. And where I'm going with this is that they've practiced in one way. I think that's going to be a really diverse scheme. I think that means, you know, more running backs. I think that

means some of the stuff we saw in the playoffs. They don't have Gronk anymore. I do think they'll be heavier with someone like a James Devlin. I think that, again, they will they will use Sony Michelle. They'll use, you know, obviously they were going to plan on using Josh Gordon the whole time, but they already have the offensive identity that was always going to get them to pretty good. And now they can take that identity and just add Antonio freaking Brown to it. I don't think you're going to see a ton of changes on the fly immediately because they just don't have that much time. But what they're going to be able to do is take one guy who can get open all the time and add him into the offense they have and then build an offense in September, October, November that

uses him to the best of their advantage. And you're going to be able to see the way defenses react to it. I mean, there is going to be. There is going to be. a just a absolute an innovation circus the whole season. It's going to be amazing. Do you think the Patriots threw out their game plan

for the Steelers tomorrow? It just literally just making Oh, I don't know right now. I mean, he's even playing? Do we even know that? Yeah,

I guess he can't really play tomorrow. So, I'm sure that there's going to be a lot of shots of him on the sidelines or whatever. I don't, I don't know that we'll just agree with what the, what they can do with him.

I mean, I think that at some point, it was funny to me, I wrote this in a column that's, going to go up on the ringer a little later today. But what's funny about a lot of these sort of low-cost guys, low-risk guys rather than not low-cost because Brown is making up to $15 million a year, is that when you look at what they're able to do with someone like Kyle Van Noy or Wes Welker or even

Randy Moss, when they take these guys, they say, you're only going to do what you're good at. That's the whole dear job mentality. Antonio Brown is good at everything. He can do whatever they set up the offense to do. He is amazing. And so that's what I think. think is the most interesting facet of this. I mean, I think it this changes really the entire NFL. What, where, where do you put the Patriots now? I mean, are they, are they your number one? I mean, obviously number one. I mean, here's the thing. It's like, I mean, they're certainly mine. They already have one of the best offensive lines. And again, who knows if Josh Gordon can stand the field. But I'm going to, I don't want to presume too much of Ben Antonio Brown's life, but it seems like

this is kind of what he wanted the whole time. So I do kind of think he's going to end up playing. I mean, this is the best. I mean, Julian Edelman, who was a super. MVP is their third receiver. They have a great line. They have like four running backs that would get serious time on any playing time on any team. They have to. And their defense is the best defense they probably had in a few years anyway. I agree. Yeah. They are set up to be a team that can compete, again, to compete for a Super Bowl without Antonio Brown and then they have Antonio Brown. That is remarkable. I think that there's, you know, a lot of sort of offshoot questions of what this says about the Raiders. I think that what happens now with Brown will, I mean, at some point,

it will sort of be revealed what the heck was going on with Antonio Brown in these last couple of months as far as how he was doing with the Raiders. Are the Raiders at fault for what just happened the last couple months? Because we've heard they've tried different scenarios as far as the last, the last report was that Gruden was being the good cop and Mayok was going to be the bad cop. That obviously blew up in their faces. I mean, I don't know. how this reflects on the Raiders organization. Where would you go with it? The Raiders?

All right. So I think that we're not even really two full years into Gruden having a 10-year contract with the Raiders. It's worth $100 million. He's basically unfirable. As you have mentioned, it's basically John Gruden will like outlast planet Earth and that contract will still be going on. And yet-

Well, I just want to say that it's funny to me because one of the reasons Belichick can do this is extreme job security and it's something I talk about all the time. The only other person who has job security like Bill Belichick is probably John Gruden only because he has a nine-year deal left. Yeah, the rarest thing in the NFL is long-term planning. And the Raiders could have done it. And I liked some of the moves they made even. I didn't even mind trading away Mac and Omar Cooper made sense to me if they were going somewhere with this. And part of that meant straight up, they're moving to Las Vegas next year.

They need a face for that move. Gruden was it. Gruden's on the billboards in Vegas. and they were hoping that if, you know, Antonio Brown was still Antonio Brown with his team, they turned it around, maybe make the playoffs, Antonio Brown's the face of this franchise going there next year. Now it's still Gruden, and instead of Gruden having all this mojo, it's this guy who two years in has really undermined his reputation.

I don't think people now look at him as like he totally knows what he's doing anymore. I bongled this. And I have to imagine that it's a huge, I have to imagine that even if the players want to admit it, this could be a problem with for him in the locker room because on one, you know, on one hand, you're talking about no players. bigger than the team and all these things. And other hand, they moved heaven and earth to try to let Brown play.

It's like after everything that happened with that altercation with Mike Mayock, they still didn't suspend him. They wanted him to play. Yeah. And then he released this recording of Bruton, which might have been posted illegally possibly. Wow. Yeah.

And then they release him. And I think that it might really color how influential Gruden's voice can be in the locker. I don't know, you're two years into a 10-year term. And I think that this is a terrible start. It's also not a good offense. You hate to see it, Danny. You hate to see it. And they also have Trent Brown, who they got from the Patriots,

and Trent Brown gave up the second most quarterback hits last year. And their other tackers is Colton Miller. And he gave up the most sacks of any tackle last year. It's not what you want. Patriots are going to win the Super Bowl, Antonio Brown, Super Bowl MVP or not? Is it Josh Gordon? I guess that is how this has to end, right?

Because here's the Steelers, I feel bad for the Steelers, because Steelers fans were celebrating this for like 48 hours is like, look how great we were, everyone made fun of us for losing this trade. And now this is the best thing ever. And then this is literally their waking nightmare. I've thought about this. I had sort of an epiphany when this was all going down last week.

Wouldn't the move, if you're the Steelers and you know how disruptive Antonio Brown was going to be, and apparently they did, wouldn't the move be then to trade him to the Browns or the Patriots in order to wreck a contender. Because if here's a thing, there's every possibility that they think that the,

the Steelers think that this could be a net negative for the Patriots because they certainly feel a certain way about Antonio Brown in order to get rid of him for that kind of thing. I wonder if there's like a jujitsu thing going on right now where they're like, oh, hmm, maybe this actually helps us.

Kevin, if you could find me a Steelers fan who's happy about this. No, no, I meant the Steelers organization. I meant like, because they understand, I don't think they're happy, about this. What I'm saying is, is that when you look, when you look at the trademarker for Antonio Brown eight months ago, it seemed to be only the Raiders and the bills and the bills dropped out. But what's funny to me is if you thought about, if you thought Brown was going to

be this harmful to another franchise, you should have traded him to one of your rivals. That's what I'm saying. I think that this accidentally actually has shades of Brett Farve to the Jets where it's like, Farv kind of wanted to go to the Vikings. Sput up. Packers did everything. Yeah, to prevent that. Brown, it seems, has been interested in going to the Patriots, at least longer than we thought. I do not buy that this was some plan. Kind of like when people say it's a plan, it reminds me the Joker in the Dark Night when he's like, do I really look like a guy with a plan? But I do think there's shades of like, he kind of

slingshot it his way there, just like Farve went from Packers, Jets, Vikings. I have very few rules in life, but when you start doing it in character Joker, it's, it's time to have in the pod. Fair enough. Any final thoughts, Daniels? I think you're right. Super Bowl MVP for Ontario Brown. I agree. I agree. I don't know if he's going to the MVP. I just think that this makes the Patriots. I mean, look, I picked a Patriots Chiefs' AFC championship game last week.

That game is still happening. I think maybe you get Patriots Eagles in the Super Bowl, and I think the Patriots win that game. My revised Super Bowl pick is the New England Patriots. When the player empowerment era has reached the NFL for better and worse. Well, I mean, listen, this is extenuating circumstances. I don't think anybody's going to do this again. Or maybe they will.

But I think that if you want to talk about the player empowerment era, Danny, I think the more interesting thing would be the Julio Jones deal today, which was basically all guaranteed. If you want to take, I think that... Go ahead, go ahead. In all seriousness, I think when we look back, I think you're right in that Brown's situation is not replicable for other players unless they actually just want to be a chaos agent.

When we look back at today, like, Julio Jones signed a three-year-60, million extension of which $64 million was guaranteed at signing. And that will be the more influential deal from today. Because that's crazy because here's what he did. He signed a deal for 22 million annually on average, which is the most of his position. That's a $3 million gap is between him and Michael Thomas who's second. Three million dollars below Michael Thomas is like the next eight receivers. So Julio Jones is above all these people by a lot. And then he guaranteed the whole thing and basically created a precedent because all NFL negotiations are based on precedent and they basically sit down a room and they're like, here's what similar players to you

have gotten paid. And the precedent for a player getting the most money disposition and fully guaranteeing that deal did not exist. Hey, Danny. Jones created it. Danny, I have a new precedent. If the player comes to training camp in a hot air balloon, you should cut him. All right. Thank you, Danny. Thanks, Kevin.