The Ringer NFL Show - Trade Deadline Recap | The Ringer NFL Show

Episode Date: November 4, 2020

Kevin is joined Yahoo Sports senior NFL reporter Charles Robinson to discuss why guys like Will Fuller of the Houston Texans and Stephon Gilmore of the New England Patriots didn’t get moved (2:40). Then they discuss how the Patriots (15:30) and Cowboys can look to improve (23:05). Host: Kevin Clark Guest: Charles Robinson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It is the ringer NFL show, part of the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Kevin Clark. Great show today. Yahoo's Charles Robinson joins talk about the trade deadline, some of the minor moves made, the moves not made, some of the big names who may have been on the trading block, plus Patriots and Cowboys and Antonio Brown. Today's episode of the Ringer NFL show and the Ringer Podcast Network is brought to you by State Farm. Getting great car and home insurance from State Farm at a surprisingly great rate.

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What's going on, buddy? I want to kick this off by sharing a conversation that took place in my household this morning. It's a real, real conversation. Okay. So what are you doing today? Oh, well, you know, it's the trade deadline, and I'm going to keep an eye on the election today. And I actually am going to do a podcast. I'm going to do a podcast of Kevin Clark.

Oh, my God. Are you going to be on Slow Newsday? Oh, wow. No, it's, it's, baby it's just a podcast. Oh. Oh, is Mina Kimes going to be on? Oh. No, no, I mean, it's just, it's just going to be in Kevin.

Can you poop the dog before I get home? Well, we'll get you on Slow Newsday one of these days, but we're here to do an emergency trade deadline podcast for a trade deadline where nothing actually happened. It was exciting for about 10 minutes there when it's like, Will Fuller might get moved, you know, the last week or so to find Gilmore's name was thrown around. most of the big names here, big being relative term, those were dealt days ago.

Yannick and Gakwe, obviously a couple weeks ago, goes from Minnesota to Baltimore. Carlos Dunlap goes to Seattle after he puts his furnished home on the market. But this was not anything. You know, Avery Williamson goes from the windless jets, the undefeated Steelers. But this wasn't anything spectacular. In talking people around the league trials, did you expect this? Because there's so many things, the cap is going down. And the rising cap allowed smart, flexible GMs in years past to sort of start making these moves.

Oh, hey, play a little bit of fantasy football. Obviously with the cap going down or flattening, that does not happen anymore. I think there's just so much uncertainty around the league. The cost of the value of draft picks is going up because no one knows what the future of free agency looks like. So I think there's a lot of reasons this happened. But from talking to around the late, Charles, did you expect this? Yeah, I did because there was one team in particular in the ASC. that I knew they were sellers and buyers.

They had a couple of pieces that they wanted to move. And then, you know, they're in the playoff picture. So they were also buyers. And so I checked in this morning and I said, you know, where are we at? Like, what do you think is going on? And this, this, the GM was just like, it's dead. He's like, this is dead right now. He's like, I don't know if this is like COVID or, you know,

because guys are, you know, people were trying to sort of offload players or get this done, really or at least get infrastructure in place late last week. And if it didn't happen, you know, everybody's just kind of, you know, dinking around right now. But as you said, I think it's this idea of like teams sitting there going, okay, well, we can roll some salary cap into next season. So we don't necessarily want to be buyers right now. You know, next season's free agent class could be interesting because there are going to be a lot of guys

who we think are going to have to sign one-year deals. They're going to be some economical purchases. So maybe we're not going to go for it this year. And then actually, it was interesting as GM said to me too, he said, look, a big part of the component of this, too, was two big sellers that we all thought were going to be there, were Philadelphia and maybe the Saints, early in the season, you thought, hey, if this doesn't go right for the Saints, they're going to try and sell off because they've got all these salary cap problems next season. Well, both of those teams are in the playoff picture.

You know, Philly's sitting there going, they're giving us the division. So we're not going to offload a bunch of salary now. Let's go for it while we still can. and, you know, and then obviously the Saints are where they are. And then I think another one, too, the Texans being, the Texans fielded a lot of calls for not just Will Fuller, like a number of, like, defensive players, their wide receivers. And I think part of the problem was you had GMs who are like,

we don't know what the hell of the Texas are, like Jack used to be like running this thing. And like the guy is like, it's like, you know, telling Jimmy Swagger like, hey, man, like can you maybe, pull off a couple trades for our franchise. Like he doesn't know what he's doing. And so, you know, they're like, hey, you're coming out of the box with like Will Fuller with a second round pick.

And teams are like, you're not getting a second round pick for this guy. He could get hurt in like literally 30 minutes after we trade for him. He could blow out his knee. And we're not giving you a second round pick for that guy. And so it just, I think it mucked up a lot of the picture. And that's how you end up with like basically the trade, all these trade deadline shows. It's like the Facebook meme with the mom was like, no kid showed up. my kid's birthday party. Like, this is terrible. Yeah, no, and I think that we're in agreement on that

and sort of how that played out. With Will Fuller in particular, did you get the sense that the Texans were going to move off at some point or even that, you know, we're used to once that negotiation gets deep with the Packers and obviously adding a weapon to that, that team would, would do a lot, you know, with Aaron Rogers. Did you get the sense that you thought they were close or was it always just sort of they were too far apart with the second round valuation? No, I didn't think they were. ever close. Like, I don't think, like the, the, the, the Goudi, Brian Goudicunz wasn't going to give him a second round pick.

Like, and, you know, like, I think, like, was Matt LaFleur interested? Absolutely. Was Aaron Rogers, would you love to have had Will Fuller? Absolutely. But Brian Goudicunst is, I mean, before he landed that GM job, he was a road scout for a long time. He's a, he's a, he's going to be a hoarder of draft picks. You know, in Brian Gutagun's mind, he's like, hey, if we got to go get guys, I'm fine signing some guys in free agency, but I'm not going to just start surrendering

assets, you know, particularly considering the offense playing pretty well. And Aaron's, you know, functioning at a high level. We have a number of sort of role players who are, they're maximizing right now. So I thought, if anything, the Packers might have added a defensive piece, which I think they need more. I mean, they could use some, I mean, a run stopper, you know. A run stopper would be, it would be nice to have. At some point, someone's got to stop the run in Green Bay. and they could have used that. Yeah, no, I mean, I, I, I'm not doing anything was a little bit surprised me, but as you sort of mentioned, Brian, Brian Guttenkundt, I talked to him a couple weeks ago,

talked to him a handful of times, no one, I mean, obviously, this is a league with Bill Belichick. So Bill Belichick plays the longest game out of anybody. But that Ted Thompson's school, they're very disciplined. Yeah. They're not going to reach, they're not going to go off their board. I mean, the whole Jordan love thing is because they believe in best player available and they play the long game, right? Yeah.

And so they're not going to say, hey, we can win a Super Bowl. let's panic, trade a second round pick for Will 4. So that part did not surprise me. Stefan Gilmore, was there anything there? Was that just, you know, the Patriots being the Patriots, is that someone like Stefan Gilmore is always available. That's why Chandler Jones gets traded. That's why Jamie Collins gets traded.

I mean, that's just sort of how the Patriots operate, is that if you can get value, they'll maximize it. But was that ever real? And did you think that the Patriots might have been bigger sellers than they were today? Well, so I've heard Gilmore for a first than a player. I heard it could have gotten done for it first. Now, and to me, the Patriots is not a surprise. They managed to get a first out of branding cooks.

Like, I mean, they managed to get, you know, they'll move off of a player a year early if they have to, if they can get a pick out of it. But what I think chilled the market a little bit, and actually the AFC GM, what I talked to this morning, I think would have been a Stefan Gilmore buyer if the price had been a little bit lower.

But what he said to me was, you know, I know there's another year on that guy's contract, but I'm not giving up a first unless I'm getting a guy back and I know he's locked up at least two or three years down the road, which means I got to redo a deal with Stefan Gilmore. My owner doesn't want me to. He's not like, hey, let's do long-term contracts. Let's deal for a guy at the deadline and then do a new contract with him. No owners are trying to do contracts right now. So I think that actually chilled the market a little bit with Gilmore. And I asked him, or the Patriots aggressively.

He's like, no. He's like, they're not aggressively. He's like, they're kind of ambivalent. He's like, it's weird when you talk to him. It's like, maybe they're buying some players. Maybe they're selling some players. They're listening. They're checking to see sort of what you're offloading.

But he never felt like this was Bill sitting there going, hey, we got to, you know, we have to kick this into gear. We've got this massive reclamation project that we have to get underway. They already have cap room next year. They're already in good shape. So I don't think there was. any inclination on their part unless they could get that first round pick

and move to get them. Before we move on from the broader trade deadline sort of topic here, was there any bigger player that was a surprise to you that was at least brought up in trade conversations? We said, hey, that's interesting. Yeah, well, Watt, I think J.J. Watt, there were, you know,

I know the Texans, there was some interest in potentially, you know, grabbing J.J. Watt, and I actually think, like, if Bill O'Brien, it's still been with the Texas, Texans, and they were in this place right now. JJ Watt might have gotten help. Like J.J. Watt may have said, hey, you know what?

Like maybe it's just time to sort of move on to the next phase of my career or whatever. But, you know, Watt, I think is happy sort of with the development since Romeo Crenel came in. I know Crenel really didn't want to give up any pieces because I know people don't want to believe this, but Romeo Crenel would like to keep that head coaching job. And so that, but that was one that I think there was a little bit of poking around. I am surprised, frankly, that the Tennessee Titans didn't make a bigger move. Like, you know, obviously the Desmond King move from the Los Angeles Chargers was an economical move that they made. I thought maybe there might be sort of a last second flourish to try and get an edge rusher because Vic Beasley and Jadavion and Clowney just are giving them nothing right now in terms of finishing sacks.

But that obviously didn't happen. Titans are an interesting case. I think that I saw over the weekend that they're giving up the worst third down against percentage in the history of the league. So the fact they didn't make maybe more of a move. I don't know, but they think they can fix it in the house. It's fine. I want to get back to the Patriots for a second.

So you wrote this week, really good column basically saying that it's time for a rebuild in New England. And I thought you made some good points. I was really surprised to see Belichick's defense of his cap strategy over last week because that is very, very, very. unusual for him to defend anything. I mean, frankly, I mean, when there's any misstep, I think he lets the results speak for itself.

And obviously, this has been an awful season. And Cam Newton has not met their expectations. The skill guys have been terrible. And, you know, the opt-outs were something. But I don't think that anybody expected them to be playing this sloppily. And again, I didn't think he'd come out and say, you know, we sold out on the cap and obviously limited all that stuff. That's just not.

You expected it. Okay. Why did you expect that? See, I think I have a conspiracy theory about this. This is only knowing, you know, knowing some of the people who... Conspiracy Charles. I think that Tom Brady's success is bothering you bill more than people think. I really do.

And I think that I think Bill knows and has always known. First off, I think when Brady departed, there was more to that than anybody. I think Bill thought that that would fix itself. Hey guys, Kevin here. About 10 seconds of this answer was dropped due to technical issues. insert your own joke here about technical issues popping up during a Belichick conspiracy theory answer. However, Charles finished his point basically said Belichick misjudged the Brady situation with her agency and then said that he thinks it's significant that Belichick sought out

Charlie Weiss to give the interview to since there wouldn't be much pushback. And the reason why he's going to roll out this idea of it being a cap issue with Charlie is because Charlie's not going to go, well, geez, Bill, let's look at your draft classes going back four or five years. Let's start to look at the fact that, you know, you've drafted some serviceable players, but, you know, I don't give, I really don't care if people think Pro Bowl is a metric or not, but you can't go back to 2014 and not have a Pro Bowl or who you drafted. It can't just be, well, Malcolm Brown was our, or Malcolm Butler was our pro bowler, and we just happened to sign him as an undrafted free agent as a rookie and luckout. I mean, he's gone a long time without these. I think when you look at all those drafts, they're just, that's not the big fat piece of the foundation that you should be able, if you're really good general manager, you're really good. drafter, 52 picks. You should have 15, 16, 17 guys who are filling out a really strong, robust backbone on your team.

And instead, a lot of the COVID optouts were guys from before that and older guys and guys in their 30s. And so I thought it was interesting that he rolled it out there for Charlie. And I think he knew there's going to be a follow up to this with the Boston media, which there was. So Bill comes out and he repeats it again. And it's like, so if I keep repeating this enough times, It's not going to be, man, look at Tom.

And what we had been hearing, too, is, like, all these forlorn, like, Patriots fans were, like, oh, my God, like, Tom's having the success in Tampa and Bill, what did we do? Why did we let this happen? And why couldn't we work this out? I think this is part of Bill constructing the narrative of, like, hey, this isn't all on me. This was part of the plan. And, okay, if you say so, I think that's BS. I mean, it was very much, look over there because don't look at my drafts. Look at our salary cap.

And I wasn't surprised from that side of it. If you're going to blame anything, it would be that because you don't want anybody to start looking at your, you know, the skill guys who drafted, for instance. But I also think that any, it's just uncharacteristic for me to see any excuse from him. And that's why I was surprised with the whole thing. And so I guess, let's game this out here for a second. What do the Patriots do to make this in any way better for 20, 21.

I mean, I don't, I, I'm not sure that really this is, I mean, get Cam to play better. Like realistically, like what do you, the only thing particularly when you don't make any, I know they made, you know, a minor move with Isaiah Ford and all that. But to me, if you're going to make your roster better, the easiest way for any team to make your roster better is to get your quarterback to play up to his talents. And Cam, I don't care what Cam says with since the COVID stuff, he's not been the same player. Like something's not right there. And I don't know if it's health related. I don't know if it's, you know, he's having some confidence issues. I'm not exactly sure what it is, but he does

not look like the same confident player that he was thrown off his back. Now, granted, Cam throws off his back, but a lot. But it's just, you're just seeing these things that are cropping up now. And it's like, okay, Josh McDaniels, you got a bunch of people around you every time I head coaching job opens up, they make sure that your name's out there with reporters and in the ether for every head coaching job. Here you go. Do it with this guy. Like do it. Like fix it. Like figure it out. Figure out a way to repair this with him and make it work. And I know Nikiel Harry's not there. And I know Julian Edelman's on IR and all this stuff. I mean, look, Aaron Rogers last season, the dude made it to the NFC title game with a lot of luck, but not a lot at the skill positions.

right like so figure it out like you get it's that's how you're going to improve all right let's go to the other side of that equation which is tom brady who's having all right listen the giants game was not a triumph exactly but they won everything's fine he out dual dandy dimes but if i'm looking at this this this this this ntonio brown situation i think it's one of the most i don't know fascinating is the wrong word because it has real disaster potential because it's ntonio brown and he's left three organizations who generally know what they're doing and those organizations wanted him would do anything to get him out of the building. And now you're dropping him into a Super Bowl contending team. Your read on this, you wrote about this last week on Yahoo, your read on this is what and how do you

see this playing out? Well, my read on it was it was Tom. And the thing was to me, when you watch this whole thing unfold with Tom and Antonio Brown after he was offloaded by the Patriots last year and Tom just having this like social media love affair with the guy and constantly sort of like coaching him up and giving a pat on the back on IG and you know um and then going and spend time with him during the Super Bowl and in my mind I'm like if he's leaving the Patriots I don't think that I remember thinking this like there's no way he's not telling Antonio right hey man I'm I'm getting higher like we we can play again we can play together again and I think it so I think Tom Antonio didn't burn that bridge. You burned every other bridge. I will say this. The fascinating thing to me about Antonio

Brown is, A, seeing how kind of all of the off-the-field accusations, the civil suit, the sexual assault allegations, all these things are now sort of becoming sort of, they're fading. It's like you turned on the, you know, you turned on the filter on your Zoom and like, hey, all of a sudden the whole background gets fuzzy. Like, it's kind of what's going on with Antonio Brown. And that and then also I think in a weird way it tells me something about Tom like I think Tom has a killer instinct where he does not care about certain like Tom is more about winning and in pretty much any any means necessary than people realize and I think Antonio Brown is an illustration of Tom being more of a killer like I want to win I don't care if a guy's got

problems I'm going to make excuses for him if I have even even the Tampa thing I mean that that team was built for him. Tampa, if it was a normal season, Tampa would not be, is not the most amazing franchise. It wouldn't have a great atmosphere. You know, they had a bunch of empty seats last year, all that stuff. It's not, all he cared about was this team and this roster and this coaching staff maximizes my ability to win. By the way, I said the funniest part of that, the Brady thing on Monday night was when he was like,

well, Antonio Brown's here, I lived with me because he moved across the state and doesn't know anybody. It's three hours from, from Broward County. to Tampa, okay? He didn't move. This isn't a soccer player. I moved across the world here, okay? I lived three hours from my, from my home, and I, you know, for my childhood home. And I was there yesterday.

Listen, he's not going to college. He's grown, okay? He's a grown man. Like, you can move to his new city. Right. 75, Antonio. We're going to be fine. Yeah.

And by the way, you know, you have financial means to construct whatever environment you want around yourself to last for a couple months on a football team. and not be. And oh, by the way, it's in the middle of a pandemic. Like, what's the deal? Like, oh, you can't go out and he's not going to be able to hang out with people outside. Well, guess what? Most people really can't anyway.

But it's, yeah, it's, this is just quintessential, interesting folds of Tom Brady, Trump, Tony Robbins, you know, Antonio Brown. Like his, I don't know who said it on, on Twitter, but it was great. someone said his Christmas card list is like amazing. Amazing. Amazing. Yeah. It's, it's Tom Brady lives an interesting life. All right. Let's finish up here with the Cowboys who are, deep sigh. That's the way you put it. Deep sigh. So they may not start to Nucci this week. Cooper Rush might get a look. I might promote from the practice squad in some way.

Andy Dalton does no longer have a concussion, but now he has COVID. this is awful. Do you think there is any chance that Mike McCarthy's won and done? I don't because I think that I think Jerry and Stephen are both stubborn and I think they're so invested in him that, you know,

I think that went out the door when you saw Jerry, there's an economy to how Jerry Jones speaks and normally he is very like, hey, we're still in it. and we're, you know, we still got a chance in the division lead. And he's still kind of doing that. But he started to creep in this idea a week or two ago about like,

we knew we had the right guy in case things went bad. Like if we had to go through something like this, we had the right guy to do it. And I'm like, when he started saying that, I'm like, man, firing this guy. Unless something like somebody comes available, unless Sean Payton comes available. I personally think he'd fire anybody for Sean Payton. I just don't think. I could use, you know, we haven't had a good Sean Payton to the Cowboys Room right.

Yeah. And we can just, with Breeze leaving, we can just fire that right back out. Let's get it going, right now. Let's throw a can of gasoline on this whole thing. But, you know, so I don't, yeah, I don't think that McCarthy's going anywhere. Now, Mike Nolan, you know, if, if I think if it gets to the point where it's, it's just doesn't get any better. And frankly, I think it actually did get a little bit better. You know, you saw some guy, I mean, Randy Gregory comes in, get late in Vanderech back into

the defense isn't going to, I think there's a chance it won't look horrific the rest of the way. That's going to give Mike McCarthy the credit to basically use with Jerry and Stephen and say, look, he's going to be okay. We just need to keep working on the roster, the defensive roster, and fit it to his scheme and we'll figure it out. But I don't, yeah, I don't think he's won and done. I think the bigger question now is whether it gets bad enough that they fall into that complicated gobbly gook that's facing the Jets, and the Giants and some of these teams that could potentially land the top two pick and sitting there going, and Trevor Lawrence is amazing.

Let's say the Jets get the number one pick. Okay, it's going to be Trevor Lawrence. They'll offload Sam Donald. They'll figure it out. But that number two pick, teams are going to have to look at Justin Fields and they're going to have to sit there and go, is this guy in the mold of the next wave of quarterbacks that can literally, you know, transform who you are for the next decade?

and do we are we sure about DAC because we have not gotten to the point of signing DAC? I don't think it'll get there. I really don't. I think even if they had that pick, they'll take a tackle. But you don't want that conversation happening in the Cowboys fan base.

And you and I both know. Like it was funny, I told someone they're like, why do you keep writing about the Cowboys so much? And I'm like, because people read more Cowboys when they lose than when they win. And I'm like, it's basically like their fan base is like, it's like that person who drives on the highway and there's an accident way far ahead.

And they're like, well, I can move three lanes over and move on with my life and speed past this. Or I could stay in this lane the entire way, hoping that's a horror show. And if I get there and it's just like a rear end accident, at least I get to flip everybody off and scream four letter words. Like that's the Cowboys fan base. They're in it to see the wreck. So I've actually not written as much about the Cowboys my careers I should have. Just from, you know, I lived in New York and just geography-wise, I was just more in tune with it. East Coast teams, got down to Dallas, you know, four or five times over the years.

I went to one of the playoff games down there. But remember TV executive telling me this once, and I absolutely believe it. That numbers wise, metrics wise, the TV networks understand that if you just covered the Cowboys on like a random Wednesday, you at all times, if you just did Cowboys from sun up to sundown, you would get better ratings than if, than your normal NFL programming. Without a doubt, like they have the analytics on this. if all the networks, if ESPN Netball Network just went wall-to-wall Cowboys, the ratings would go up. I don't think there's any question.

It became the Cowboys Channel. Yeah. I mean, we see it. I mean, no, you know, just this, what we write, what we produce, we see the metrics of it. And Cowboys, like I said, I mean, I think it when it's worse, it's actually, I'm kind of like, okay, I need to move off and let me go cover the rest of the league. And it's, and unfortunately, it's just always this like, there's just always this churn with the Cowboys. And let's be real. Well, part of that, too, is that Jerry Jones is like the only owner.

He's the king of contact. He talks every week. He talks twice a week. And honestly, like, not only twice a week on the radio, but there was a time when before COVID, he talked to you after the game. So you'd get the owner three times a week talking about what was going on. It's, yeah. Or any time in like the hallway.

It's not press conferences. Every other, just so the listener knows, in 31 other buildings, not counting the Packers, obviously, because they don't have an owner, but we'll have Mark Murphy as a stand in here. It is so hard to get the owner to talk in most of these places. So hard. It is,

they have these formal press conferences. I would say on average two or three times a year. Some owners talk once or never during the year. It's just, the owner just does not want to talk. Jerry Jones will talk to you whenever you want. I mean, Brian Curtis has written amazing pieces about this all the time,

and I just, I can't say enough about it. But what I will. say is that turns on its head in a year where Danucci might start and all of a sudden Jerry Jones goes on the radio and says quite frankly it was too big for

him. He wasn't ready. I didn't he have more yards and Carson Wentz. Like he wasn't ready for this experience and I'm and then and then obviously the COVID news comes out about Andy Dalton and I'm like maybe you shouldn't have waited for the COVID test to come in before you start killing this guy

because like I mean what if someone that asked about Garrett Gilbert or Cooper Rush and he had said something negative about these guys too. He just can't you know, he can't help himself. He produces content without even, without even trying. But that's content. And now we get Garrett Gilbert. Yeah. We're Cooper Rush.

Cooper Rush and Garrett Gilbert's splitting snaps of practice in week nine. Kevin. Anyone who's watched the offense line, you could like put in Melissa Gilbert behind the office line. You're going to get the same, okay. And same ratings and same ratings.

Awesome. Charles Robinson from Miyahu. Thanks for joining us, buddy. Thanks, ma'am. All right, thanks to Charles for joining us. This was a special Tuesday edition because of the trade deadline. The schedule for the rest of the week, Cole, Ryan and Chazier, and Caitlin Jones will be on this show on Thursday. Warren Sharp and Chris Vernon will be with you on Wednesday, and then Warren and Joe House on Friday. So great week of content here at the Ringer NFL show. This has been the Ringer NFL show on the Ringer Podcast Network.