The Ringer NFL Show - The Patriots' “Scandal”, MVP Advanced Analytics, and the Next Coach of the Cowboys | The Ringer NFL Show

Episode Date: December 12, 2019

The Patriots' “scandal” has come and gone. Why aren’t we as upset at New England as before? Then, who advanced analytics is telling us should be the MVP and why they’re wrong (0:30). Next, a take shop about legalizing sideline spying (11:50) before we preview the biggest three games of the week headlined by the Rams vs. Cowboys (27:50). Finally, we speculate about which coaches Jerry Jones will look to hire (Lincoln Riley and Urban Meyer) if and when Jason Garrett gets fired (48:00).  Host: Kevin Clark  Guests: Rodger Sherman, Danny Kelly, and Bryan Curtis Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the NFL show is brought to you by State Farm. When you needed a game plan for protection, State Farm agents are here to help. With personalized service, agents are available to talk in person over text or through the State Farm app. So go with the one with coverage and agents you can count on. Find an agent in your neighborhood today. State Farm. Talk to an agent today. It's a ringer NFL show, part of the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Kevin Clark.

Today will be joined by Roger Sherman, Danny Kelly, Brian Curtis. First, we want to start with the... So this week has been really interesting from a media consumption. standpoint in that I don't think we're doing the normal Patriot scandal thing. That scandal has come and it is gone. When I saw the initial report, I thought this was going to be a news cycle swallowing story that a apparently rogue employee filmed the sideline in Cincinnati. This is not much of a scandal. Judy Batista, the NFL Network reported that the people in the league office who've seen the tape essentially say that it's nothing you wouldn't get from a normal TV copy.

but what I find interesting is that that really hasn't stopped us before. Deflategate was illegal in the same way maybe running a red light is illegal. And now I understand we'll get to the first spy gate, spy gate 1.0, as they're calling it now in a second. But I think that the capacity to be really upset at the Patriots has diminished. I think we need to remember how ridiculous the media coverage and the NFL comments and the investment. investigation of deflakeate war, to put in perspective how strange it is, that there isn't all that much fury about this current scandal. Mark Brunel cried on television about deflakeet. Somebody asked Tom Brady how they're supposed to tell their kids about deflakeate. He wanted a football

deflated and then a reporter said, how am I supposed to, in a sport of uncomfortable truths, every single corner, everywhere you look, it's uncomfortable. This guy needed to know how to tell his kid that Tom Brady wanted to deflated football. When I think, I saw a couple tweets this morning about people making their urine lists and they were saying, I can't believe such and such was this year. I can't believe Old Town Road was this year. I can't believe the Fire Festival documentaries were this year. I saw a couple of those.

I can't believe deflakeet happened this decade. I can't believe it happened in the history of humanity. I can't believe this happened on this planet. We're not getting the pitchforks out for SpyGate 2.0. I don't know why that is necessarily, possibly because it's not much of a scandal. But again, that hasn't stopped anybody before. They spent $22 million investigating deflategate. Part of that could be that the Colts really wanted to press the issue.

And that's why it was investigated. I was at that game, the Deflategate game. I saw Ryan Grigson really upset. There's a lot of GMs I've seen really upset in Foxborough. Normally it's because they've built a team that can't compete with the Patriots. That was certainly true of Grigson. But it turned out that the reason he was saying this is BS is because Dequell Jackson got a football and flipped to the sideline. I think there's a lot of reasons that we quickly move on from scandals.

Obviously, the Patriots got out ahead of it and said, we were just doing the do-your-job thing. So if anyone doesn't know, essentially, they were filming of something for the Patriots in-house media that was a day in the life. They've done the equipment manager. Now they're doing the advance scout. They get eight and a half minutes of footage on the sideline. But I think that beyond the fact that media has changed in the last five years, beyond the fact that the Patriots have changed, beyond the fact that everything's changed.

I think that there's an appreciation probably for all the different ways the Patriots have won in the sense that I was talking to somebody in the office a couple days ago where they were saying they seemed post-cheating because they had won the game against the Falcons. They were 28 to 3, and they've gotten so many little edges.

And we know now that they win because Bill Belichick will switch from a 4-3 defense to a 3-3. for and back again because he wants to get an edge in the free agency personnel department, or that he'll use Julian Ellumann as a defensive back, or that he will be more adaptable than anybody in the history of football and put Jonathan Jones on Tyree Kill and take him out of the game, or that he will just completely destroy Sha'am McVey and the Super Bowl

to the point that teams figure out how to defend Shao McVeigh, and that carries over for the first three months of the season. I think the Patriots have just in a weird way, overcome the very famous cheating scandals that they had in both 2007 and 2014. Now, I do want to talk very quickly about the first spy gate thing because that's the reason this was a story in the first place. If the Carolina Panthers or the Tampa Buccaneers were filming eight and a half minutes of a sideline, this is not a story at all.

I don't think even though it happened in full view of the press, it just would not be a thing. If your parents catch you smoking and they're not happy about it and then there's a burning smell for the rest of the time you live in their house, they're going to suspect that you're smoking again. That's kind of the SpyGate 1.0 legacy. That was a remarkably stupid thing for the Patriots to do. It didn't even give them, according to the Patriots, much of an edge. Bill Belichick told Tom Curran a couple of years ago, I guess,

in this column that Curran wrote very good on this particular, whatever you want to call it, not a cheating scandal, this moment in time, that if there were 100 things the Patriots were doing to get ready for a game, that the stealing of the signals was 99. There's a Gary Myers book a couple years ago where Robert Kraft asked Bill Belichick on a scale of 1 to 100, how much should SpyGate help you? And the answer was one. And then Bob Kraft called Bill Belichick a schmuck. That was in the book. I think it just shows you how stupid they were to do that because now it will always be a story when a guy in a Bruin's hat in the press box is filming the sideline. I don't think there's much glean from that. We're talking about with Roger Sherman later in this episode. But I just don't think. we have the capacity to get the pitchforks out for the Patriots anymore. And I think it's, it's really interesting to me that the last time there was a Patriot scandal, we had, you know, Ted Wells investigating.

We had spent $22 million on it. Tom Brady was suspended for four games, I guess, because he broke his phone. I'm not really sure. But for whatever reason, we can't get upset at the Patriots anymore. We can't get the pitchforks out. We can't get up for this scandal. But the bottom line here is that we're just not doing it. We're just not doing the Patriot scandal this year.

it's going to be a one week story at most. If anything, this seems like a false flag planted by the Patriots to get everybody to forget that the fans booed the offense on Sunday. But this is a minor blip. It's the story of the week. It's not the story of the season. I thought initially it might be the story of the season. There's just not a lot there.

So barring some sort of crazy break in the story, this is it. It's just another minor footnote for the Patriots. It is not going to be SpyGate 2.0 nor deflategate 2.0. No one's going to ask Bill Belichick how to explain this to their kids. I don't know where Mark Brunel is, but I don't think he's crying. All right, one more thing I want to get to very quickly before we get to Roger Sherman. The MVP race. Is it over? I don't know. Pro football focus has a great article today, Thursday, on the MVP race and the fact that Russell Wilson is their pick for MVP because they have a wins above replacement metric that essentially

makes the argument that Lamar Jackson has a lot of help around him, whereas Russell Wilson does not. So Russell Wilson, according to PFF, has 3.1 wins above replacement. A full win more than the next highest player, which is Dak Prescott. And beyond that, and this is the argument here, Wilson has accounted for over half of his team's total wins, according to this metric. And Lamar Jackson, who is 1.7 wins above average, okay, he has a lot of talent around him. and the Ravens offensive line has generated the most wins above replacement. So this is, I don't want to make this a stats-heavy argument. What PFF is saying basically is what we've been saying on this podcast,

which is that the Ravens put, the Ravens put Lamar Jackson in the best place to succeed. And the Seahawks haven't done that in a long time. How does that change the MVP race? From the voters perspective, it doesn't. It doesn't. I don't think the voters think about this stuff. I think the voter, we've gone very Heisman. We've gone very Heisman in the sense that it's the best player on the best,

team and I understand that. I think Lamar Jackson is the MVP. I just think it's closer than it's going to be. I think that Russell Wilson should be a very close second. I don't think that's going to happen with the voters. I think it's going to, you know, it reminds me a little bit. I went through this a couple weeks ago. There were a, there have been a lot of MVP awards where it looks like it's one A and one B on December 1st, then by January 1st when the voting comes in, it's unanimous. and I kind of feel like we might trend that way with Lamar Jackson and we shouldn't. I know it's a very narrow thing, very small thing, but I think that the MVP discussion is, is now where it needs to be. I think that there needs to be more context put on it.

I've written about it. We've talked about it. And I just think that in general, Lamar Jackson is your MVP, but Russell Wilson should get more attention than he's going to get in December because I think people are starting to see that tail off and they shouldn't. Kevin, quick question here. What's up? Hi, Craig. Long time, first time. Hey, buddy.

How much you think of the MVP, though? I mean, do you think half the reason why Lamar is probably going to win the MVP is because it's just, it's the right storyline, which is not a bad thing? Yeah, no, that's, yeah, yeah. So that's what we've talked about a million times since podcast is it's a narrative award. And he is the best player and the best team. He is as good a running quarterback as we've ever seen. He has more, just the eye test.

I mean, if you're watching Lamar Jackson on any Sunday, you're going to say this is the best player in football. He's embarrassing people. I understand that. He is the MVP. I'm just saying that I think that in some ways, we're not going to give Russell Wilson the credit he deserves for the season he's having. That's all. It's a narrative award. Yeah. It feels like Lamar's going to win the comeback player of the year and he hasn't played a year before because everybody just wrote him off. I think he's going to win every award. Can we give him two awards? Defensive player of the year. I mean, Ryan Tannhill after that tackle last week might be in the DPO Y discussion. That's a take shot. Well, you never know. I mean, someone,

tweeted at us this week is could Ryan Tannahill tackle George Kittle? Wow. Which is a nice little crossover joke. I like that. Well, you can't even tackle them with a face mess, so. Yeah. All right. And now it's time for the State Farm Safe Byte of the week, the team you can count on.

When you need a game plan for protection, State Farm agents are here to help with personalized service. Agents are available to talk in person over text or through the State Farm app. So go with the one with coverage and agents you can count on. I want to talk about the hottest team in football of the Baltimore Ravens. They have in New York Jets this week, but they are basically matchup proof. They've played well against the Patriots, the Seahawks. Of course they're going to play well against the Jets,

but they'll play well against any team at this point. Lamar Jackson has either 100 yards on the ground or 100 quarterback rating in every single game since October 6th when they beat the Pittsburgh Steelers. They have won every game since September 29th when they lost a very weird game against the Cleveland Browns. Nobody has scored more than 20 points on them since that aforementioned October 6th game. This is a Lamar Jackson-led team. We should celebrate Lamar Jackson, but when you think about the entire franchise,

this is everything working together. John Harbaugh, offensive coordinator Greg Roman, Eric DeCosta, the first time GM, Ozzie Newsom, the GM who took Lamar Jackson, among many other players on this team. This is a personnel triumph. The offensive line is great. The defense is great.

This is at this point as reliable a team as there is in the NFL, and you can count on them to beat the Jets. State Farm. Talk to an agent today. Okay, now it's time for take shop. We're bringing in Roger Sherman of many things, including a breakout star of the hottest take. Roger Sherman, start with your take shop. So this thing the Patriots did, that should be legal, right?

Okay. Wait. What specifically should be legal about it? So what it, and correct me if I'm wrong. They went to a game that they weren't playing in and they had someone to film the sidelines of an NFL game with 70,000 people in attendance, probably less. It was a Browns Bengals game. But this is an event that happened in public, in full view of dozens of television cameras. Really, the only thing that is illegal is apparently filming a thing that's in public and anyone can see.

And I mean, I just think we're currently coddling the Cincinnati Bengals and any other team that's bad at hiding their signals from video cameras. It's not like they broke into someone's facility or like they have like drones flying over at team's practices. This is a thing that's in public and, you know, like every once in a while, they'll show a coach on the sideline on the actual broadcast. So the best arguments, and there are a couple, for against the Patriots cheating in this particular scenario, is number one, it was the Bengals, which I understand that if there's an argument, they never played this coaching staff before,

they want to see the similarities to the Rams, whatever it was. I saw a couple of those different arguments. I don't necessarily buy it. But number two is that if the Patriots were still cheating in the same way they had 12 years ago, wouldn't they have come up with a different way? And also, wouldn't they have gotten more?

So the first initial spy gay thing was they were on the sideline filming the coaching staff directly with a with an actual like TV type camera, right? And it was during the same game that they were playing. Right. Now we're in the press box in full view of a bunch of media members. And it's a guy who is a Patriots employer, craft employee, and he just got a cell phone camera pointed right at the sideline. This seems like a bad way to cheat if they were doing. I feel like the Patriots would be better at this if they were innovating their actual cheating from 12 years ago. It seems like a bad way to cheat, but should it be illegal to film an opposing team sidelines? That's kind of what I'm getting at, right?

The point I'm getting at is I think in 2019, I've talked to this, talked to a million coaches about this. There are no real secrets anymore. I mean, like, there's game plan secrets, but you're not going to glean any game plan secrets from Patriots when you watch the Browns and the Bengals. going to see everything that's pretty normal. I mean, like, can't you just zoom in on some of this stuff? Don't we have incredible HD TVs where you can figure out, hey, they're doing this? There was a thing on, Urban Meyer talked about this a couple weeks ago. You probably saw it, Roger, where he's talking about how he loved viewing, looking at opposing coaches because they could figure out, especially on special teams. And I think he mentioned Bill Belichick does as well, how much

guys care on particular plays that maybe have a tip off on what, what they're going to do, you know, as a from a game plan standpoint. But I don't think that that is necessarily, gleaned from filming the sidelines. It's more about a feel thing of you looking across. I don't think Zach Taylor's reactions against the Browns and Freddie Kitchens. Would you react the same way to Freddie Kitchens versus Bill Belichick, Roger? Are you saying that Freddie Kitchens and Bill Belichick are as good at one another as coaching? That's what I'm saying.

I'm saying that if you, my take is that if you were looking at Freddie Kitchens and then you were looking at Bill Belichick, you'd react differently to each one. Yes. I think that's, I would say that that's safe to say yes. Anyway, the point being is that I am kind of in agreement with you in a sense that there's just so many other ways to get a leg up or to decipher what teams are doing that I just can't imagine that there's anything a team can glean from filming the sideline that you couldn't get. Judy Patiz said this. She said this on the NFL network. She said anything that they had on that tape, you could get from a TV copy.

So just let them do it. Let everybody cheat. Also, if the Bengals, this is another edge, right? If the Bengals were able to glean anything off of the Patriots, if they were able to cheat, then good for them. But the problem is, if everybody was able to cheat, the Patriots would just be better at cheating than everybody else. That's the problem in this fantasy here, this hypothetical, is that if you opened up the cheating avenue, the Patriots would find another way to gain an edge.

Well, if you opened up the cheating avenue, then it would be legal. and then the Patriots would find another illegal thing to do. Oh, good point. They would habitual line-steppers keeping going another way. Wow. What would they do? Well, I mentioned breaking into an opposing team facility. There hasn't been an actual water gate in football.

Sure. Sure. So you're just assuming, okay, so they would just take it. They would say, we need to get more illegal, and all of a sudden they would just go full G. G. Gordon-Liddy. They would go full G-Gordon Liddy. I feel like there's only been hacking

in baseball, we could get some hack. I'm sure Bill Belichick knows some hackers. Yeah. He seems like he runs in. I actually doubt Bill Belichick knows hackers. Why? He seems kind of anti-computer. I, do you think he has

what's face on his phone? Yeah, no, is the face app stuff or whatever the hell he says, is that just to obscure the fact that all of his friends are hackers? That's to obscure the fact that he runs with the Russians and or Ukrainians, depending on which political parties. you believe in 2019. Okay, well, let's go ahead and pull ourselves out of this tailspin and get to my take shop. Because we've already, once we get to Belichick, Russia, we need to just move on to my take shop.

You agree that you should, like, I don't see anything wrong with, with, I don't see why filming and opposing sideline is like a big taboo. It's, it's in public. You can see it. Someone could look at it with binoculars. Well, also, I think that the reaction to this is that nothing's actually going to happen to them. Because it's a mundane thing or? Yeah, because it's mundane. And, it's it is it's it's it's kind of legal now whatever they were doing whatever they were doing was kind of legal are you saying that there should we should be able to send any that we as a league any team should be able to send a scout to just film the sidelines that what you're saying i'm for it yeah put a okay i mean put the play sheet in front of your mouth while you're calling

in your place well that's that's my thing so the the astro scandal i talked to michael bowen about this too why don't they just why don't teams just get better at at disguising their signs yeah It's, it's, that's the thing. They're the team at fault. The team at fault is the team that has bad signs, not the team that is stealing the other team signs. Like, I think I must, there must be something wrong with me because people kept on freaking out about the Astros of the Patriot Scandals like. And I'm like, yo, you're like legalized it. I'm like, legalize it.

I'm like, this thing the Astros did people, the Astros are like, we didn't do that and it's bad. And I'm like, no, I think you did it and it's good. Yeah. Well, cheating is good from Roger Sherman. What a take shop. Okay, so I'm going to go with, and this is a broader coaching discussion. We have Brian Curtis on later, I'll talk about the cowboy situation, which I'm sure we'll get into this. But you're a connoisseur of coaching.

You have extensive college football background. You know a lot more about it than I do. I don't get to watch college anymore. But I just want to, I think Tom Pelliser did a great job talking to Mike McCarthy this week. Jay Glazer had some reports last week as well. I think Mike McCarthy might be a better candidate than we think. So here's what happens. So Tom Palisero goes in visits with Mike McCarthy in Green Bay or Depeer.

My family was from DePier, but he visits him in DePier. And Mike McCarthy has hired six coaches or has a staff, a fake staff of six coaches who operate like the 33rd NFL team. And they're just analyzing trends and figuring out analytics and all of this stuff. And I kind of think this is what you want. I've had discussions with analytics people with front office, people with coaches, with owners. And we've talked about whether or not it's easier for a smart analytics person to learn football, who doesn't know it before or a football person or on the analytic side of it.

And the answer really is the football person learning the analytics side of it. because they can get the distilled info and they can, you know, the best is if you have a grounding in both, right? But if you had to pick one, you would want the guy who understands every detail about football and then you can teach him to go forth and forth now. You don't need to do the math. You don't need to come up with the equations. You just need to understand what they mean. Exactly. Exactly. It's harder to understand football than it is to understand that you need to go forward on fourth and two from the 50. Yeah. I don't know anything about math. And I'm like,

Yeah, analytics are right. And some smart person figured it out for me. Exactly. I didn't crunch the numbers. I just read the Bill James abstract. And it was like, this seems right. So anyway, so the point being here is that Mike McCarthy is understanding this. This is what you want.

Like, everyone, I think there's a lot of dunking on Mike McCarthy because he obviously had a bad go of it the last couple of years in Green Bay. He had some really stale play calls. It just wasn't going well. Obviously, the Tower Dunn story and Bleacher report comes out. And all of a sudden, there's just this huge anti-McCarthy sentiment. I get that. But isn't this what you?

you want, which is an old dog learning new tricks. I don't think that he is. I don't think he should take the cowboy's job. I don't think he should be the number one candidate. But he's got he's kind of operating exactly the way you want a fired coach to operate, which is he's trying to evolve. He's got this whole thing going. He's got Jim Haslett on his fake staff. He's got house. Wow, he got Haslett. He got Haslett who's taken, in the story, they said he's taking the year off because he had ankle surgery. So he's on the 33rd staff with Mike McCarthy. They're just talking about trends or watching film. It's interesting to me because I think that when you, I don't think coaches watch enough of each other. I think that they all game plan for the next week. And I don't

think there's a total, if they play Kansas City, they'll look at Kansas City. But this is something we talked about a couple weeks ago with Jimmy Garoppolo. When Jimmy Gropolo was hurt, he and Mike Shanahan just hung out. And because Mike had nothing to do and Jimmy had nothing to do. And this was last year. And they just watched other offenses. And he talked about how cool that was because he doesn't get to watch a lot of offense. He just watches the defense of the next week that they're playing. And so I think that if you're Mike McCarthy, you're just taking a step back,

you have one of the things he said in the article was that you have, when it gets to March in the NFL, you're all of a sudden making free agency decisions and you're making tender decisions. And all of a sudden, it's the draft, and then it's May, and then you're just working on game planning. You never really get to step back.

So listen, I'm not saying Mike Hardy's going to rebrand here as Sashi Brown or that he's going to be Sean McVeigh in September when he gets a job. I'm just saying if I'm Washington, if I'm the Giants maybe, there are a couple of openings where I'm saying, you know what, Mike McCarthy has won, but more than that, he seems to be open to learning, which I think is as good as you're going to get for a lot of head coaching opportunities in 2019. Yeah, I mean, the idea to hire a bunch of coaches to come hang out at your house, he's paying them actual money. He's, he's, I didn't, that was unclear to me. But like, that's the best idea I've

heard for a coach who's out of work. He's made tens of millions of dollars over the past long period of time. And how do you demonstrate that you are, you know, ready to be an NFL head coach? Even if it turns out all they're just doing is hanging out watching football together, which is also an important thing to do, that's just such a good way to sell yourself. Like, this is a man who instead of like taking some OC job somewhere went and spent and and hired his own staff. If I was like an NFL owner and I was easily impressed by things, this would be the thing that easily impressed me more than any other thing

that's ever easily impressed me before in my entire life. Well, it's funny because he has the resume of a type of person who would impress an easily impressed person, right? He won a Super Bowl. He had, I'm looking here, something like eight straight years, seven straight years of the playoffs. he got to the championship game in 14 and 16. Obviously, things fell off the, went off the rails in 2017, 2018, but he's not a bad candidate

from a resume perspective. It was just things got so bad at the end. And his offense looked so stale that everyone just talked themselves out of Mike McCarthy of the candidate. And I actually don't think he's that bad. I mean, he's a, there's a street named after him in Green Bay. I saw that the other day. I mean, like, that's, that's, he did win a Super Bowl there.

Yeah, I think you're touching on something, which is that the grind of football, you know, maybe having the same job for a decade is probably not the best way for a coach to grow. Having no job and just thinking about how you can be better and not having to worry about preparing your six and eight team for week 15. If you actually just have time to think about things and, you know, get out of that week to week grind, which every football person lives with and it wears them down over the course of their careers, Yeah, it's an innovative idea and it could possibly be what's best for him as a coach.

And more importantly, what's best for him to convince someone to hire him? One time I did a story about how they couldn't find a street to name after Mike McCarthy because after one in the Super Bowl, he gets one because Vince Lombardy has one. And they couldn't find the street and then they had a ton of compromise and all that stuff. But then it was going to cost them more money because they had to say Mike McCarthy because in Wisconsin, they're very cagey about former Senator

Joseph McCarthy. And so they had to say Mike McCarthy. And I wrote this whole thing about it was one of the weirdest things that were written in my entire life. Anyway,

does it come up on ways if you type in like Mike McCarthy Avenue? Yeah, I have not done that. I've just seen it though. It's a real official street title. It is, yeah.

Yes, it is. Does anyone live there? Or is it just? No, they all are. You should go to Green Bay sometime. All of the streets are, there's a whole area where all of the streets are named after Packer grades.

And they're the real streets. And who's like the, what's the like line to get in? Is there like? You know it when you see it, Roger. But if you win a Super Bowl, you get in. Is there a Marquez-Valdas Scantling Boulevard coming up? Not yet. I mean, there will be in 2025.

All right. Roger Sherman, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. All right, thanks to Roger Sherman. We're going to get Danny Kelly to preview this week's games. Before that, let's get a quick break. Pepsi takes all NFL celebration. to the next level.

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These are the moments that stick out to me when I think about celebration in the NFL. NFL players have gotten so good at celebrating since they changed the rules a couple of years ago. They innovate. I have not seen a touchdown recently that didn't have at least some creativity to make the game a little bit better. And Pepsi has always been there. Pepsi, the official sponsor of the NFL reminds you to always be. celebrating. All right, Danny, three biggest games of the week. We're going to start with the shockingly important Bill Steelers game to wild card contenders. Go ahead. What do you think about

Josh Allen versus this really, really interesting Steelers defense? So yeah, Josh Allen to me is pretty much appointment viewing at this point. He's clearly not, you know, like he hasn't developed into a top level quarterback at this point, but he's very much improved over last season, I think, and he's going in the direction of being a franchise quarterback, which I don't think I would have necessarily even still predicted last season. So let's be clear. It's a slight turn towards franchise quarterback. He's not on the express lane here.

So the biggest thing for me that he's improved on is he doesn't play hero ball quite as much as he did last year. Like every time he'd get outside the pocket last year, I was like, okay, this is going to be a turnover. And now, you know, he still does that. And I think he did one last week, which was he almost got a deep past last week kind of just like threw it up there for his receiver. But he does,

he makes better decisions now. And so I think that's been a big part of it. However, the one thing he has been struggling with, which is what he kind of was known for is his deep ball. He's got that cannon for an arm, but he's been very, very inaccurate going down the field this season.

And so, and especially last week when the Ravens basically dared him to beat them deep. And he, you know, they were running cover zero stuff and basically giving him, you know, opportunities to beat them deep. And he was one for 11 on passes of 15 yards in the air.

So that wasn't great. And on the season, he's actually, I looked it up per PFF, 32nd out of 35 qualifiers and deep ball accuracy, 34th out of 35 on deep ball adjusted accuracy. So that accounts for throwaways and everything like that. So 28% down the field. So it's very, very, very sketchy deep ball accuracy. And now he's going up against the Steelers defense, which has been very, very, very improved against the deep ball over the last, well, basically since Mika Fitzpatrick came in

week three, early on in the season, they were just hemorrhaging passes down the middle of the field. And Fitzpatrick has been a big key in basically locking down the middle of the field, sort of like an Earl Thomas style player where, you know, teams are just avoiding that area of the field now. They're very infrequently attacking deep in Minka Fitzpatrick's area. And when he does, he's been picking off pass. is at an incredible rate. So to me, this is a very interesting matchup

because I think the bill's offense is definitely more intimidating than what the Steelers are able to do right now, though there's kind of some exciting, you know, things going on with like Deontay Johnson and James Washington. Duck Hodges is fun, but the Steelers' defense is no joke. I mean, they're third in DVOA right now, and they're taking away deep passes, you know, over the last since Fitzpatrick came.

And so I think that's a, big, you know, advantage for the Steelers this week. Yeah, Derek Klausen football outside. He said a really good piece this week about the Steelers defense. And he was basically saying that the Steelers are really good at sending an extra defender, like the nickel, all the time. And this is, there's a couple things about that. Number one, they're really good at disguising it.

And number two, I thought it was interesting. This isn't necessarily, even though, obviously, the, the bills have developed a slot game. It's not, they're not running the McVay offense. but I thought the interesting point he made was that against teams with tight formations, sending a nickel is really effective. And especially when they want to pass out of it. And so they're really good at disguising that stuff. Josh Allen is, as you said, a much better quarterback than he was this time last year, I would say.

I just think he can still be baited into some really interesting mistakes. I think that we saw him really struggle last week. And even though he performed Diverably in the fourth quarter and they did have a chance to win that game against the Baltimore Ravens, I still think that being

really aggressive towards him is in general a winning philosophy. Do you have in this game? I think I lean Steelers because of that, because of the matchups. And like you said, last week,

I saw this stat. Pre-Espan stats and info, the Ravens blitzed him 30 times. Yeah, yeah, and he was seven of 24 on those passes. That's what I was getting at. So I do want to say this. I think the Steelers are turning me into like a football guy.

Like I think that the difference when the Steelers and the Browns in 2019 is so huge that I'm ready to just stop listening to anything except like all of the things that old school coaches tell me about culture and winning mentality and all of this stuff because this was a team that law got first of all got pounded by the Patriots in the first game of the season. but then had tons of injuries, you couldn't do their quarterback. And then they trade for Minka Fitzpatrick and everybody laughs at them, trade a first round pick. Well, they're going to be, remember everybody,

including myself, I don't have drafted from like fifth overall and they're near a quarterback. Well, they're going to make the playoffs. They're going to make the playoffs. Meanwhile, the Browns do all of the things

that we think are what gets you to winning football. Yeah. Efficient offense. They tanked at one point. They had got Odell Beckham. They understood the value of a superstar and they went out and got him. then drafted to Miles Garrett, who not only from athletic testing perspective, but an on-field

perspective, we both love. And they're just not good. And now I feel like, as I watched the AFC North this year, I'm just like, man, I am turning into Jeff Fisher. I mean, I definitely kind of get that. And I think a lot of it is coaching. So maybe, you know, Tomlin's been, he's got a lot of, he had continuity, obviously, with coaching, one of the longest tenured coaches in the NFL at this point. And so I think there's been moments over the years where people thought maybe they need to change things up at the coaching. But I think the coaching has been a big part of it this season.

They definitely never wavered. And like you said, for a while there, it looked like they were trending towards a top five pick. I think they dropped to like one and four at one point and they just looked awful. Their offense has not been that great all season. And they've still managed to just eke out wins every week. they have a very, very good defense that can kind of like control everything. And they've had injuries.

They've had so many injuries like obviously Juju and Rothsburger, James Connor, been out. So yeah, man, I definitely kind of understand that's like what is it about like how do you put a finger on what culture can bring to a team? It's very, it's very interesting. Well, part of the reason old school coaches, bad old school coaches, like talking about culture is it can't be measured. And so you can just say, hey, I'm building a culture here.

And it turns out you're just lying. And you're just bad at your job and you're just not doing anything can be measured. It's just like, that's why they like intangible so much. They go, well, you know, I like, I like my guys who care a lot. And it's like, well, actually, it's just you don't want to put in work to find good players, right? Anyway, the point is that Mike Taun is a good coach and he's not a bad coach. And there's actually a really good culture in Pittsburgh. All right.

Yeah. Texans Titans. Yeah. Ryan Tannahill named quarterback in week seven. Since then, the Titans have the second most offensive touchdowns scoring the second most points in the NFL, 31.4 points per game. I want to ask you this question because it's something that now has engulfed NFL Twitter this week. What do you do if you have to sign Ryan Tannahill? You're paying them $1.8 million this year because essentially the dolphins picked up $18 million. What do you do if you're the Titans? Is this thing real? Do we sign him to a two-year $45 million

deal here, or do we say, sorry, Ryan, we're going to franchise tag here, prove it? Yeah. Well, I think they, I think they'll probably lowered the franchise tag kind of over his head as a piece of leverage. And I also do think that both sides have a little bit of leverage here in the sense that, I mean, Tannenhill kind of floundered for the first, whatever, seven years of his, of his career. And now he's found, like, the perfect fit.

And so on one hand, I think. obviously Tan Hale's going to have leverage because there's very few good quarterbacks in the NFL and he's been playing amazingly. But at the same time, you'd think that he would want to stay in this situation in this scenario where they're playing to all his strengths. They're doing exactly what he does best. And in theory, they give him a good chance to keep this career renaissance going. So I saw Mike Sando wrote a column the other week for earlier this week, I should say,

for the athletic. That was really interesting. And he talked to some executives in the NFL. guy kind of threw out the idea of the Jimmy Garoppolo contract where you kind of reward him. Well, you reward in the sense that it's like it looks big. It looks like a great contract. And in theory, like if he plays through it, he's going to make a shitload of money. But at the same time, the Titans can get out of that deal.

Like the Niners have an out with Garapolo where essentially they're paying him a whole bunch of money up front in the first couple of years. But if it doesn't work out, then they can get out of that contract without turning it to like a name. full scenario where you're literally stuck with them for three years and you can't trade him or whatever. The Niners paid Garoppolo $41.9 million in cash in 2018 because essentially they had a huge amount of cap space and they realized how they could sort of game the system to where he gets a big deal, but then they have cap flexibility going forward. He's making 17.

He's making 17 this year. But his cap numbers are okay for an elite quarterback. It's going to be 26 and 2020, 2020, there's outs in it, it's fine. I agree with you. I just think that, I agree with you in terms of that being a creative contract structure, but I don't actually think that,

I don't actually think they should give that to him. Well, maybe not quite, maybe not that, maybe not the magnitude. Yeah, maybe not the magnitude or whatever. But the Titans also were just a different team,

and they're not going to have, they're not going to have that style of cap space that the Niners had when essentially they were just doing a complete tear down. Right. I do think they need to kind of go with him, though. I think he obviously he's probably going to regress at some point, you know, and he can't keep playing at an absolutely elite level.

Like, I don't think he's the best quarterback in the NFL, but he does make that offense run really, really well. And I think that they should probably stick with that as long as it's working. Yep. All right. What do you like in this one? So the thing that I think is going to be very interesting about this matchup is that the Titans run a very similar sort of identity and style as the Broncos do. And the Broncos tore up the Texans last week with a bunch of play action. You know, it was kind of like the, it was sort of the 49er style thing with Rick Skangarello,

where he's running a lot of play action, getting guys open, lots of yak. I think the Titans are essentially kind of the same identity with AJ Brown, you know, getting him open in space and then letting him do stuff after the catch. Obviously, Derek Henry is a huge part of what they do. but play action is a huge, huge deal in this game, and I think that's going to be the main thing I'm watching. The Titans have one of the highest play action rates in the NFL since Stanley Hill took over, and the Texans, I believe, are ranked 25th versus play action.

And so that's a bad matchup for the Texans. And I don't know what the deal with the Texans is right now, because obviously they came off of a very, very impressive win, and then they just put up a dead last week. Can I ask you a question before you finish your point? When was the last time you knew what, quote, the deal was with the Texans? You know, that's actually a great point. And it just is an excellent representation of kind of the Texans over the last, like, basically the Bill O'Brien era.

I just never really know what to expect from them. And yeah, so this week I think is just going to be kind of a very, very interesting. And it's a huge, huge game in terms of playoffs in the division. Yeah. So to me, I'm going to be watching that specifically the Titans play action attack and what they can do against the defense that gave up chunk, chunk plays against play action last week. Yeah. So who do you like? That's a good question.

I kind of like the Titans, honestly. I have a lot of respect for the Texans and what they're able to do on offense. And I think with Sean Watson, you know, they're in it pretty much any game. But I kind of just like the matchup for the Titans this week. at home. Yeah, I was going to say, at home, I'm going with the Titans. I don't feel great about it. The Texans are just so inconsistent.

I mean, Texans might win this game, I'm 31 to 3. Honestly, they are completely unpredictable. But I'm going to go with Titans at home. Really intriguing game. And listen, we've talked about this. But the Titans, this is the first time I can remember in a long time that they are not, they have not, at one point last year, we just stopped talking about the Titans on purpose. Like, this is an exciting team.

This is not normal Titans football, which is amazing when you consider that they drafted Marcus Marioo is one of most exciting players in the issue of college football. And I think that I did the Red Zone power rankings today on the website. And I talked about it,

a little bit about this, where they were a tough watch for a long time because it was a mismatch with coaching staffs and Marcus and Marcus couldn't stay healthy, so then you ended up with backup quarterbacks, all this stuff. The fact that the Titans have gotten so exciting

without Marcus is a real, I mean, It's slightly you in theory-esque. From a pure watchability standpoint. Absolutely. I completely agree. The Tannahill story is fun and it's like a good kind of, you know, comeback type story or whatever.

But like Derek Henry and A.J. Brown are legitimately two of the most fun players to watch right now. I agree. Henry is just beasting through people. He's like way, he's like one and a half times as big as any other running back in the NFL right now. It's like, it just doesn't look real. and then same with AJ Brown. I mean, the dude looks like,

he just looks like he's bigger than everyone he goes up against. And so, yeah, it's just a lot of fun to watch. I actually had that in my notes. For the first time and maybe forever, I'm excited to watch the Titans.

Imagine how Nashville feels. All right, let's bring him Brian Curtis. Danny, you're going to stay. We're going to do Cowboys Rams. Okay, for Rams Cowboys,

which is the intriguing game of the week, I think, because one of these teams, I don't know. I mean, in a weird NFC, one of these teams could become

kind of a sleeper. I'm not sure or they both might suck. I have no idea. We're bringing Brian Curtis from the press box. Media columnist for the ringer. Brian, how are you? Official correspondent for weirdly interesting NFC teams. That's been the Cowboys. That's been the Cowboys for a very long time. Danny, you want to talk about the Rams a little bit. What are you expecting out of this game? So my question is, are they back? I mean, it's a very, very big deal because for the first time since, I don't even know, like before the playoffs, they, looked like the Rams of the last few years,

going up against the Seahawks who, they were just like doing whatever they wanted at will against the Seahawks. And for the first time in what felt like forever, the Sean McVe offense, like the essence of what they do and what we all kind of fell in love with and were astounded with over the last

few years returned. And they were attacking like every piece of the field. They're using run game, play action, bootlegs, screens, misdirection, sweeps, wide zone, inside zone, basically just kind of carving up the Seahawks at will. And my question is, like, are they back?

Obviously, you know, we won't find out for a couple games because the Seahawks and Rams are, you know, division rivals. They've seen each other a ton of times. It doesn't necessarily tell you anything, but I'm just kind of, I'm wondering if they're back. Brian, as a Texas fan, does the Are They Back question just give you PTSD? I just, I'm just banging my head on the desk. Yeah. Are we going to do that for the next 10 years with the Rams? just, oh, the ramp, McVeigh is back, baby.

Yeah, and there have been kind of a low-key, are the Cowboys back over the last couple of weeks, right? And that now we know the answer is definitively no, not back, and they're not coming back. That was going to be my question. Is beating the Cowboys at this point even a sign that you're back? Yeah, I don't think it counts. I really don't.

This is where, like, dumb media takes actually went over Smart Media takes, because smart media takes us actually, actually, NFL players don't quit. That's a very like newspaper columnist thing to do. I'm sorry, I watch Cowboys Bears. The Cowboys quit. They're okay.

That's okay. People in all walks of life quit. Journalists quit sometimes. The Cowboys have quit. And I can't imagine them coming back, whatever that would mean. You know, maybe,

maybe they've quit less than the Eagles. So that, that's the only outlook I say. see this season. Brian, is there anything specifically you just want to see other than actual maximum effort from all 53 guys? Is there anything in this matchup that they could provide you with any glimpse at the Cowboys?

And remember, I was in the Niners press box yesterday and somebody was talking about playing that the Niners could have to go to Dallas. And I actually didn't know what they were talking about until it clicked that there's the chance that Dallas hosts a playoff game still because of the NFC, East and all that comes with it. Is there anything that you want to see Brian from the Cowboys that would encourage you to think, okay, maybe this team is an actual playoff team instead of just that we have to play in a

playoff game because those are the rules? Actually, making a tackle would probably be number one in the list. But I think just big picture and semi seriously would be Dak Prescott. Remember when we had settled the Dak Prescott question earlier in the season? Oh, he is really good. He is worth the money or at least a lot of money. He hadn't played well the last couple of weeks.

weeks. Right. And I think if there's any way the rest of the season is going to be fun for the Cowboys, it involves Dak Prescott throwing a bunch of passes and playing really well and playing like he did five, six weeks ago. I did a segment earlier in this in this show, Brian, that Dak Prescott is actually second in the NFL according to PFF and wins above replacement. Yeah. Which shows you, I mean, he's kind of an analytics darling. I love him. We've, we've talked about him on this podcast a million times. He's really, really good. But I just think that there, I just, I don't know if he right now is the type of quarterback that can rise, that can rise above his coaching staff in this way.

I mean, this is a very bad coaching staff that is playing out the string, essentially. Danny, any prediction here? I still think I kind of lean cowboys in this one. I just think the cowboys are so much better at home. And the Rams, you know, in the Jared Gough area, at least have been far worse on the road. and so I think the home field advantage certainly helps the Cowboys in this one and I think that the

you know as at what Brian was talking about like the Cowboys offense is just so much better at home too you know especially Amari Cooper so I kind of lean the Cowboys here but you know for the first time in a while like I actually have some confidence in the RAM so I think it's going to be a close one Brian same question I'm a little leery

against picking against the Cowboys because I do feel there's a false hope game coming, a circle of the wagons, you know, we just were not dead yet. But, but having watched the last couple weeks of Cowboys football, I think the Rams win by like 15 or 20 points. I will say, I can't wait for that false hope game because the, the Jason Garrett's smugness at the press conference is going to be so amazing. People said this team quit. I knew they didn't quit. I knew that the, the will this team had. It's just going to be amazing. We knew they absolutely. Absolutely not. Okay.

Danny, thank you so much, Brian. We're going to come back to you. We're going to talk a little Cowboys future. All right, thanks, fellas. All right, thanks, Danny. All right, Brian, you're sticking around. We're going to talk about the future of the Dallas Cowboys because after a couple of weeks, we've had some Jerry Jones.

I don't know if you'd call them meltdowns or just Jerry being Jerry, but it seems like we're headed towards the end of the decade long or near decade long, Jason Garrett era. First of all, who do you want to get this coaching job and who do you think they'll get? I this is actually one of those the few times in Cowboys history where I feel those things have been aligned or at least in Jerry Jones Cowboys history because I think when this job opens up and it is going to open up he's going to go talk to Lincoln Riley. Yeah. I think he's going to go talk to Urban Meyer. I think there may be, you know, somebody else may wiggle into that finalist group. But I think that's the kind of guy he's going to want.

I think Jerry is very trend conscious. He's also going to overcorrect away from a kind of weird CEO detached guy like Jason Garrett. And he's going to want a guy who's going to run the offense and fix the offense. And maybe somebody with a college background, which he's done twice before, right, in his history with Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzer. So that to me is the best bet at this point. Again, I don't want to shade too far into actual hopefulness. But that feels like where we're going. Lincoln and Riley just can't stop creating Heisman trophy candidates or winners.

Urban Meyer has done what he's done. Matt Rule, I think, right there in Texas, is as good as candidate as there can be from the college ranks. I think it's interesting to me. Urban Meyer has had, everyone talks about the Belichick influence on Meyer, but I think there's been a Meyer influence on Belichick. Josh McDaniels went down in 05, I think,

to Gainesville and learned spread offense from Dan Mullin, and that obviously manifested itself in 06 and then 07 when they just spread the ball around and scored every time they wanted to with the Patriots with Randy Moss and Wes Walker and those guys. my question here, Brian, you know Dallas. You're from Dallas. You spent time with Jerry Jones. You spent a lot of time at training camp, of practice, all that stuff. Is there, I don't want to get too media narrative here. You know, you know how in Boston or New York, it's, oh, that guy isn't going to work in New York. Oh, the New York market's going to tear this guy apart. But in all seriousness, knowing that the Cowboys are a unique situation, Jerry Jones is unique owner, all that he's the GM. Is there a type of personality that works as a Cowboys coach that either wouldn't work in another market or. or has to that's required. Is there a Cowboys coach profile that we need to be looking at just to be able to manage Jerry?

That's a great question. Jason Garrett in a lot of ways is kind of an anti-person in public. But, you know, his real talent and the way I'm going to remember his years as it is as a manager of Jerry. You know, if you look when he became head coach in 2011, full-time head coach, the Cowboys personnel got a lot better. the Cowboys had been kind of careening around as a franchise, right? That's the year they draft Tyrant Smith. That's the year they just start making kind of boring, plotting draft picks that have created a really talented team.

And the credit I think Jason Garrett deserves this is a guy who went to Jerry and said, I'm not a threat to you. So you're going to listen to me, right? He's as a, he is a Jerry whisperer, if nothing else and probably is, in fact, nothing else as a coach. But so, so that's a. good question, you know, because if you go to the college ranks, if you go to a guy like Lincoln Riley and especially Urban Meyer, those guys are used to having lots of autonomy, right? They're the

king. So, you know, I think as a media guy, I think all those people will be fine because they'll give a great press conference. They know that, you know, being that guy is part of the thing. But I think, you know, to me, Lincoln Riley is young enough at 36 and is also a guy who's from Texas, right? I mean, you're going to a guy who was born in the state of Texas and says, you get to be the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys that would probably process the whole idea of, okay, I've got to defer to here. Jerry's going to give a press conference after every game. He's going to be able to kind of understand that part of the job. Yeah. And I think that people like Riley and people like Matt Rule, I think there's a interest in just the game of the NFL level. And I think Myers, I think is in that category. I'm not really sure. I never heard Meyer talk a top. about the NFL outside of of his relationship with Belichick. But I think that, you know, I think if you ask Debo Swinney right now, who the five best teams in the NFL were, I don't know if he would know that.

You know, I think he knows that Deshaun Watson is good and he's Michael Jordan. But I think that the, I think that when I've spoken to Lincoln Riley, he's talked in detail about Chip Kelly's contributions to the NFL or Josh and Daniels contributions to the NFL or Doug Peterson's. We've talked about that. He said that he saw the big, he saw a big 12 game when he watched the, the Eagles and the Patriots a couple of years ago. I think he has a real genuine interest in the actual game.

I think actually that's a prerequisite when you're talking about college coaches going to the next level is just understanding. Listen, there's a lot of college coaches who are going to be able to succeed just because their schemes are better. And most college coaches' schemes are better than the pros. But I think that it's really interesting to me having talked to Lincoln Riley, just how much he has tracked the development of NFL schemes and maybe he'd have an edge there. I think that's a great point.

I think it's a little different between the two of them, not to interrupt you, but Lincoln Riley, it's almost like Billy Bean. Will my shit work in the NFL? That's his interest. With Urban Meyer, it's more like I've had two of the iconic jobs in college football. I had Florida and I had Ohio State. He said the other day on Fox, oh, the Cowboys, that's a big job. And I think for him, it's like, I can go get that big job.

That's the next thing, maybe the final thing on my resume. To me, that's the appeal for him. Yeah, I think it's fascinating. I think, you know, Paul Feinbaum came out. said that he doesn't think that Urban Meyer would co-exist with Jerry Jones for more than a day. And I don't know about that. I mean, I think I think there's kind of a winning cure is all kind of thing. I think that, you know, you talked a little bit about what's happened this decade of Cowboys football. Remember, they ripped the draft card, the Johnny Mansell draft card out of Jerry Jones's hands.

Remember that detail? Like, I kind of feel like even Jerry, even though Jerry Jones is still Jerry Jones, I still kind of feel like it's not, as you said, it's a more boring approach to personnel that it was a decade, two decades ago where he just wanted to kind of let it rip. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's been for the best, you know, because, but he will still, he's seeded a lot, but he'll still come in at certain times. Like we've seen this last couple weeks, Jerry Jones has gotten really involved in the Dallas Cowboys last couple of weeks, mostly from a media standpoint, but he's, he's around. And I think that's what he wants to do at this point. I think he's ready to delegate a lot, but he wants to still be.

able to push the button and kind of appear when he needs to. Thinks he needs to. Yeah. Brian Curtis, thank you for joining me. If you had to guess who's coaching the Dallas Cowboys in 2020. Lincoln Riley. All the way,

right. All right. Okay, thanks to Brian Curtis. We'll be back on Sunday night as usual with the Ringr, the NFL show and the Rinder podcast now. Pepsi takes all NFL celebrations to the next level, whether it's a Hail Mary touchdown, a defensive stop on the goal line or a Super Bowl win.

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