The Ringer NFL Show - Vikings Shake-Up, Coaching Carousel Complete, and the Start of Super Bowl Week!

Episode Date: February 3, 2026

Sheil and The Ringer’s own Billy Gil get together on the first day of radio row at Super Bowl LX to analyze and discuss some of the biggest NFL news that happened over the weekend.(00:00) Vikings fire their GM, coaching carousel news, and Super Bowl LX radio row first day(5:51) Vikings fire GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah(16:29) Cardinals hire head coach Mike LaFleur(22:14) Raiders hire head coach Klint KubiakThe Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available.Host: Sheil KapadiaGuest: Billy GilProducer: Chris SuttonVideo editor: Stefano SanchezSocial: Benjamin CruzProduction supervision: Conor Nevins and Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Ringer NFL show. I'm your host, Sheel Capadio. We are live here in San Francisco for the Super Bowl, but there's so much happening around the NFL, a shake-up in the Vikings front office, new coaches for the Vegas Raiders and the Arizona Cardinals. We're going to talk about all of it with my friend, Billy Gill, who is on the scene here with me.

Let's take a break. We'll come back with Billy. All right, we are back here on the Ringer NFL show. Shield Capati with Billy Gill in person. Look, I'm touching you. I mean, unbelievable. You can watch that on Netflix. Yeah, we are here in San Francisco and Billy.

There's a lot of Super Bowl talk, obviously, but there's a lot of stuff going around the NFL. So we're going to get to all of it. The Vikings, the Raiders making a new hire, the Cardinals making a new hire. Did anyone notice? We'll talk about that. But first of all, how's your little Super Bowl taste going so far? Can I tell you something?

Yeah. This is my favorite week of the year. Really? Really? Yeah, I'm wondering if it's the same for you because I think there's two trains of thought with the Super Bowl and like Super Bowl week, media week and all that, is, is this like an exciting celebration of football or is this like a sad march to the death of the season where it's kind of depressing because after Sunday there's no more games for months? It's not sad for me.

I love the offseason because I can't put myself in like Drake May's shoes, but I can put myself in like some John Schneider's shoes, you know, and be like, oh, you know, what should he do this off season? Should you trade this guy? Should you sign this guy? So I love the off season, the trades, free agency, the rumors, the politicking inside the buildings, which we're going to get to. So not sad for me. You look like you're a little more sad maybe than I am.

I'm sad. It's exciting all the weeks going on. It's Monday, if we're going to be honest, Monday is like the slowest day of this week here. But like there's already kind of like a buzz in the air. You're going to start seeing people coming, propositioning you to come on, you know, come on the show, promote some things. I have something that happened a little while ago before you got here. We were propositions.

So someone was walking around. His name was Ed. And he looked around, he saw the banner, saw the ringer banner. And he said, that's Bill Simmons, right? And we're like, yeah. And then he's like, okay, I didn't want, I didn't have the heart to tell Ed, Bill's not going to be here. But he was excited about that.

And we thought like, okay, I wonder what Ed's here to sell. What's Ed pitching? What's going to go on here? Yeah. And Ed gave us this flyer. Okay. What are we got? It's the Jim Ursaig collection.

He works for Christie's. So Ed is trying to let everybody know that Jim Ursa's private collection of memorabilia, both sports and music, will be up for auction March 13th to 17th. So if you want certain things like, you know, the saddle that's Secretary at War when he won the Kentucky Derby, you can have that. How much? Estimated $1.5 million to $3 million if you want that. If you want Kirk Cobain's Fender guitar, estimate.

made it $2.5 to $5 million. But this is what Ed's doing. He's walking around, he's telling everybody, hey, you know what, Mr. Ursay? Mr. Ursay, could we talk about that earlier. Mr. Ursay passed away. Mr. Ursay's family is still running things over there in Indy. His daughter is kind of one of the stories of the NFL, I think, right? Yes, absolutely.

A woman of intrigue, I would say. Yeah, standing on the sidelines, where is the headset. Maybe we can find her this week. I don't know if she'll be here. I like that. Someone will be here on behalf of the Jim Ursay collection. and Christie's, and Ed told us that if we wanted to, they have some of these items here in person that they could bring so that we could show the audience. Now, I don't know if we're

going to get to that. This is one of those things where we tell Ed, you know what, Ed, thanks so much. We're going to run this by the host. We'll call you later, let you know how it's going. But, I mean, what are the chances that you could get Al Pacino's annotated script from Scarface? Wow. I mean, that may be here instead. A Babe Ruth bat might be here. That's why there's so much security. That stuff is somewhere. That's probably what's going on here. I would imagine.

You know what I call this? What? The Netflix bump. You know, before we had the night, they weren't coming over here to show us guitars. Now that we got the Netflix bump, everyone wants a piece of you. See?

I guess. You felt that, haven't you? All right. Can I point out to the audience something else real quick? Yeah. So, Shield came, gives me a hug, says, hello.

First time that we really interact in person. We've just been doing it online so far. And the first thing you say to me is, I didn't think you were this tall. Well, listen, that's what happens. You talk to people in these little boxes on your computer, then you meet them in person, and I always thought we were the same height.

You know, I'm about 5-10. What are you, 6-1? 6-2? Yeah, about those parts, yeah. I usually lied down about my height. I think I'm one of the only people that lies and says that I'm shorter than I am. Okay.

Because I don't want people, like, I'm not 6-2, but I'm a little more than 6-1, so I'll say 6-1 or I even say 6 feet because I don't want to get caught. I don't want like a Diego Pops. obvious situation where you're saying I'm six feet tall and then you go and have to have some sort of official measurement. You're 5'9. So I always lie down. So that if people ever follow up with my doctors or whatever and they're like, let's look into like Billy's actual height,

I didn't lie about being taller than I am. If anything, I just said I was short of than I am. All right. I'm a weird guy. I like that though. Six to six to and listen, we're in this place. People are measuring left to right. It's a lot of football guys. So they're probably sizing you up. Now one guy who was not deemed to be a football guy in Minnesota, Billy, that's where we're starting the football talk today. Because this Minnesota Viking story, I think, is the juiciest story in the NFL right now. So Vikings fire GM Quesi Adofa Mensa, and you don't get GM firings this time of year.

Either you decide to do it like right when the season's over during the season or you wait until after the draft. But there's a lot of reporting about this. It feels like there was some infighting maybe in the beach. building the athletic, Alec Lewis and Diana Rossini did a lot of reporting about this. It sounds like to me, maybe Kevin O'Connell won a little power struggle or they're saying, all right, who are we actually handing the keys to the organization to? You've read up on the story, correct, in between your Jim Mersey collection,

browsing? I mean, I'm kind of enthralled. You could get, look at this, this Beatles drum. You could get it. I mean, there's all kinds of stuff. Jim Mersey had quite the collection. Quite the collection. But you've been reading up on this.

What is the most interesting aspect? of this story to you. So there's the headline-grabbing situation with paternity leave, right? That, yeah. I think we'll get to that in a moment. It seems as though this was destined to happen for a long time, and they thought maybe this would happen last year, and then they signed him to an extension just to kind of let him go this year.

No one was ever on the same page with him is what the story makes it appear. And there was kind of, even Brian Flores, before he signed his extension, he let his contract expire because he wasn't on the same page. It seemed like he wasn't happy with the direction that the front office was going. But I think the most interesting thing, and you kind of mentioned it was the timing, is they had him go to Alabama for the Senior Bowl.

And he was going and he was talking to agents of players whose contracts are expiring. And he was kind of going through all of the motions, as though, which obviously he didn't have any clue that this was going to happen. But they let him go all the way out there, do all of this stuff for the draft. Just to, as soon as he got back,

let him know, hey, by the way, this is done here. Mobile Alabama's not easy to get to from Minneapolis or from anywhere for that matter. It's the start of the off season for a lot of these teams that are out of it. So you're right. That's why it feels like

something happened. Now one thing that might have happened is Sam Darnold got to the Super Bowl, Billy. And you can tell Kevin O'Connell hasn't hid this over the years where he's been like, Kirk Cousins, yeah, be great to have Kurt Cousins back. And they're like, no, we're going to go in a different direction. And then they would 14 games with Sam Darnold. And it seemed like Kevin O'Connell's like, yeah, it wouldn't be bad to have Sam Darnold back.

You know, I think we can win big with him. But they used this first round pick on J.J. McCarthy. And so the organization decided we're going to have a walkaway number with those quarterbacks and we're going to actually see what we have in J.J. McCarthy. It feels like that was at the heart of this where Kevin O'Connell maybe wanted some things quarterback-wise, Kressi Adolfo Mensa, maybe said, well, we got to cut the cord. And we drafted this guy. We've got to see what he's got.

and maybe that's why the timing was so weird. They said, Darnold is one game away from winning the Super Bowl and we don't even know who's playing quarterback for us next year. Well, he has had a very poor record in drafts and we're now headed into the draft. And it seems as though the quarterback decision

might have been made because he committed so much to that quarterback in the first round in the draft where you let Sam Donald walk and now he's going, as you mentioned, to the Super Bowl and then you have to start questioning, well, do we want this guy to now, I think four out of their 28 players? that they've drafted under his watch.

It's been bad. First round picks have been bad, no doubt about it. So I think that the average is 368 starts over that period of time, over people that were drafted. This is according to Kevin Sefer. And what the Vikings have gotten is 172 starts. So they're like half as many starts as what an average draft class would, you know, give you.

Yeah. His drafts haven't been good. You're now headed into another draft. And I guess they decided, you know what, we can't continue this. Let's pull the plug now. It is late. I don't know why they waited until after the senior bowl. he was already going and doing draft analysis and evaluations.

They also had like a weirder interview type thing where normally they send everyone out to New Jersey to meet with the Wilfs. And this year they said, you know, we're going to do this over Zoom this year, which is probably not a good sign. No, Billy. The wolves aren't going to go to Minnesota. Change is brewing. It's what they always say.

All right. We got to talk about the paternity leave thing. Okay. Because, you know, you read the reporting on this. And my theory is that Quessia doofa menza is too. well-adjusted to fit into the NFL world in some degree. So a couple examples of this. One is the paternity leave, and I'll read you the exact description in a second.

And the other is, when it comes to his poor draft record, he's like, well, the draft is kind of random, you know? Yeah. Which, that's actually true. I actually agree with that. I'm not a GM. If I were a GM, I wouldn't be saying that after you're missing on all these picks, but that actually has been proven true.

And there are other GMs, like Ravens GM, Eric DeCosta has said this. like there's a randomness to the draft. So DeCosta says because there's a randomness, we want to get as many picks as possible. Adolphamenta didn't do that. So he's saying it's random, but at the same time, he hasn't had a lot of picks there.

So that's one. But we've teased the paternity leave thing too long. Let me read it to you. So this is from the athletic. It says following the birth of his first child, the general manager left for paternity leave, missing about two weeks of training camp meetings and practices and working remotely, Billy.

during that stretch. Word of his time away from the team traveled quickly around the league among some rival executives and coaches. It was met with disbelief. Now, I think that's good reporting. I'm not making fun of the... I'm making fun

of this NFL world where the guy, it's the summer, okay? It's training camp. It's training camp. The draft is over. Free agency is over. You're churning the back end of the roster. He's working remotely. He didn't even take the two weeks off. And because of that, the guy's getting ripped around the NFL.

Well, his hiring was questioned from the beginning, right? He didn't play. He didn't really have coaching experience. He was an outsider. He was an outsider. He was a numbers guy. He was an outsider. As you're saying, it seemed as though they were looking for things to have him,

pin him down on, I'd say. You know, if things didn't work out, we could say it was this, it was that. So when he then takes off the two weeks of paternity, I feel like people were looking for that. Now, granted, we're leaving out the fact that the Vikings, had the best record last year. 14 and 3. Yeah, like they had an incredible...

During his four years, Billy, they were 43 and 25. Yeah, it was not... They weren't bad under his watch. The drafts were bad. This season went poorly, and it really might have come down to the Sam Donald decision is why he isn't there anymore. You know, it seems like there were some relationship dynamics

that were, because we think about GM and we think draft, pick the players, manage the cap. I do believe that, like, the role of the GM now, you have to have good relationships with everyone in the building from scouts, to personnel people, to coaches, to analytics, to training. Like, that's kind of your job is to take the input from all these different areas,

weave it together and make good decisions. And it sounds like he's kind of admitted that, all right, I was inexperienced. I was doing this for the first time. And maybe I could have done a better job with that. So I'm kind of rooting for the guy. And I'm room for him to have another baby, take paternity leave with another organization, and do a good job at his job. Maybe have like a year off, have another kid, take plenty of time.

He'd take plenty of time. No one will judge you. He's not tied to a team now. It seems as though he was also like unavailable to some people in the staff, right? Where he wasn't necessarily talking and the wolf side just sit him down. Say, hey, you got to be more present here. You have a general manager. So then he'd go and he'd talk to the media and he'd say things that like general managers wouldn't say.

Like, ah, you know, it's kind of different from the spreadsheets to actually how things play out. It's like, don't say that. Like, why are you quite? A little too honest. Yeah, I think it was too honest. Don't be so honest. Right. He'd work off hours, they'd say.

He was like, that schedule doesn't work for me. He had soccer practice. He wanted to see his kids. Yeah. That's the thing. We're making that. Like, he's made out to be the weird person. Yeah.

Because he wanted to spend time with his kids and work around spending time with his kids. Monster. My bottom line on this firing is that I think it's fair to say he didn't do a great job because they are not positioned right now to be a contender. I think they're their quarterback situations uncertain. I think that aspect of the job he failed at. I think the draft. Yes, there's randomness,

but I don't think his process was the greatest with the draft. And then again, you got to build those relationships because this is what happens. When you have a powerful coach like Kevin O'Connell, it's like when ownership gets put in a position

where they say, coach your GM, and then they look at both your track records and then they go with the coach. But I will say this about Kevin O'Connell, though. Do you remember how he said, was it last year or two years ago?

He was like, quarterbacks don't fail organizations. organizations fail quarterbacks. Do you remember this? Don't say that if you're a coach. Well, he said that and he got all this love for it. Everyone's like, see, that's why, you know, these organizations, the jets, they don't put. And guess what now?

It looks like he thinks he has a quarterback who's failing his organization and he wants someone else, Bill. That's what I'm saying? You keep looking around. You look very nervous. No, I'm just trying to happen. Someone's going to come punch me or something? You're saying a lot of bad things about the NFL. I don't know if Ed now knows that we're not going to buy Jim Mersey's guitar.

So Kevin O'Connell, yeah. When the good times are good, don't say these crazy things. Then you have to kind of backtrack on when the bad times are there. Because now you feel Gigi McCarthy is what we could be saying if we're following you by your word here. Could be. Now, listen, it's a little tease. We're going to talk about the Raiders and the Cardinals. I may have a quarterback idea for the Minnesota Vikings.

So let's take a break. We come back with the Raiders, Cardinals, finding new head coaches, and maybe a quarterback that could be on the move. The Ringer NFL show is brought to you by Fandul. Last call for football, and Fandul is giving you a daily profit boost every single day leading up to Super Bowl 60. Today's 30% profit boost is on over-under and alternate passing yards props.

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Fandul.com. Gambling problem, call 1-800 gambler or visit RG-dash-Help.com. Call 1-888-7-7-7 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut. it. All right, we're back here on the Ringer NFL show. All right, Billy. So these head coaching vacancies are now all filled. We think. The ink isn't dry, but we think, I know you might have an issue with the process, but the Raiders are going with Clint Kubiak, the Seahawks offensive coordinator. That's according to ESPN's Adam Schaefter. And then the Cardinals are going with Mike LaFleur, the Rams. Can we just start with this? Are the Cardinals the most irrelevant team in the NFL? Like, I was looking at it going, does anyone care? Are there any?

Any headlines? Are we the only people here discussing that the Cardinals hired Michael LaFleur? Like if we went out and did a, not even a man on the street, like a reporter in Radio Row, and we said, do you know who the Cardinals hired? I don't know what percentage would actually know or care. So Michael Flore, he coached a number of places. He played in college, he played three years in college, quarterback for two years. Then he stopped playing quarterback, and he was a safety his last year. And then the very next year, I guess he realized this isn't going to work out for me. So he went and he was coaching at his college. He coached a college a couple of years. years and then he bounced around. Now, here's where things got interesting. He coached in college from

2009 to 2013, but Michael Flore is the little known coach, or one of the little known coaches, from the Falcons super coaching staff that they had in 2015 to 2016. So when he was there, the head coach for the Falcons, remember, this was a, this was a situation where his brother was the offensive coordinator. He ends up going on. And they had, this is a staff that included. Let me guess. Yeah, go on.

Mike McDaniel. Mike McDaniel. Kyle Shanahan. Matt LaFleur. Matt LaFleur. Dan Quinn. That's all I remember. Rahim Morris.

Assistant head coach, wide receiver coach. Oh, right. Jeff Ulbric was there. He was a linebacker's coach. So this now, in retrospect, going back, this 2015, 2016 Falcon staff. Yeah. Almost all of them ended up becoming head coaches.

Now, Richard Smith, the D.C., we haven't heard from him. I don't know what Richard Smith is up to. Do you know what Richard Smith is up to? I don't know. I don't know what Richard Smith is. Well, maybe we'll check into him. Maybe in the next coaching cycle, we go back. He might be here.

That's why we ought to keep our voices. No, shh, don't scream out Richard Smith's name. He might appear here. And then, I mean, the real problem is, then we have to talk to Richard Smith. Yeah, we don't have a lot of good questions. Yeah, exactly right. We don't want to talk to him. I mean, I'm sure he's a lovely man.

Yeah. So, anyways. Please, alive, Billy. If he's not, we'll edit it. I'm just saying, we'll edit it if he's not. Why did we go in that direction? Because I don't want to. Hold on a second.

Richard Smith. While you Google that, I will say Michael Flore now has to coach against Sean McVeigh, Kyle Shanahan, and Mike McDonald for six of his games to have you found out. He's still with us. It appears. Good. I hope he's in good health. Where is he?

Okay. Richard Smith. He's a Bears linebacker's coach right now. There you go. So he's still in the league. Now, here's one. one thing about Mike LaFleur that I wonder, and I'm not ready to say that it's a red flag or not a red flag, but it is something that I was wondering. So after that season, the coaches all kind of

split up and parted ways. Kyle Shanahan goes to San Francisco. Mike follows Shanahan to San Francisco and has never worked with his brother again, never worked with his brother beforehand, never worked his brother after the fact. So now I'm kind of looking around and I'm wondering, what's going on here? Well, what's going, is there a rift here between the brothers? Does, you know, does Matt know something about Mike that we should know that he doesn't know? Like, if you're not going to work with your own family, is this something that we should be excited about? It's an interesting question.

And I do remember he was with the Jets. You remember Mike LaFleur with Robert Sala with the Jets? I do remember thinking he was doing a good job there. Okay. And, you know, he kind of got a raw deal because their team stunk and did it win a lot of games. Blessing in disguise going from the Jets to the Rans. And now they both have, and now Mike LaFleur and Robert Sala, who are running the offense and the defense for the 4 and 13 Jets in 2021,

are both head coaches in the NFL. Let me ask you this with the Matt LaFleur and Mike LaFleur thing. Is there a non-zero chance that the Bidwell, I think Mr. Bidwell, that's his name, right? Sure. That he thought he was hiring Matt LaFleur. He looked up like pro football reference. He's like, LaFloor, whoa.

This guy wins a lot of games. How's he out there? You know, maybe someone sent him. There was the athletic. article this year like you know matt little for his coaching for his job so he thought and then there was those rumors after loss he thought they actually happened and he thought he's hiring mat lefleur i think there's non-zero do you think there's like a no take see backsie situation where it's like they signed him now they can't i mean obviously yeah five-year contract that's a lot that's a big

every coach is just getting that's a big commitment for someone who's never coached before these coaching agents they're doing a good job i mean billy good for them i suppose right that's right i'm a little worried, by the way, if I'm a Cardinals fan where he was not their first choice. They wanted Kubiak and then Kubiak, which, are we going to get to Kubiak? The only thing I'll say is that, you know, all this happens all the time in the NFL where a team doesn't get their first choice and it's a blessing in disguise. Did you know the Ravens wanted to hire Jason Garrett and then they had to settle for John Harbaugh back in the day? Did you know the Eagles at one time wanted to hire Ben McAdoo and they had to settle for Doug Peterson who won them their first Super Bowl? So that

happens all the time in the NFL, but Clint Kubiak. So you're right. He's kind of going, Arizona, Vegas, who wants me, you know, and he's having those conversations. He's still coaching in the Super Bowl. Thank you. Can we focus on the Super Bowl? He had conversations with both teams Saturday while he should be preparing for the Super Bowl. You said, I have a wandering eye. This guy's not paying attention to the biggest. You're learning from Clint Kubiak. And here's the thing about Kubiak. I don't know if you know this out there on Netflix lands. Six years, six different places he's been. What's going on with him?

Commitment issues. Red flag, number one. Can't stick with a team longer than the season over the past six years for whatever reason. Biggest game of the season, obviously. The Super Bowl, what is he doing to prepare for the Super Bowl? He's talking to the Raiders and the Cardinals. Character issue right there.

If you're spending your Saturday, he's talking to the Raiders and the Cardinals, it's kind of like, what are you doing with your life? But that's what he's doing. He's going out there. And then he's telling one of them, hey, you know what, I'm going to be your coach, but I can't sign until after the Super Bowl

because those are the rules. And again, commitment issues. Now you wonder, is this a guy that's going to back out of this situation if you win the Super Bowl? Which, by the way, the Seahawks, we haven't talked about this. You and I haven't talked about it anyways.

They're going to be for sale after the Super Bowl. They could win the Super Bowl, and you could just forget, forget Ed and Christy. Maybe that's why you could forget Chris. You could buy the Seahawks, the Super Bowl champions. Forget these guitars and the Beatles and all of this stuff, Scarface.

You could buy a Super Bowl. champion after the season. Crazy. Maybe Kubiak wants to be an owner. Possible. If, if I'm the Seahawks, you know what I consider doing? Now there's flirtations out there. You see this is a guy that's very clearly distracted. He doesn't want to, you know, commit to one team. He doesn't want to commit to another team. He's not really committing to your team if he's, you know, out there flirting with the other teams. You know what I say? I may be, I pull the old Lane Kiffin treatment because Lane is the only person that I know that this happened to and it's happened to him twice, The first time was in Alabama where he committed to be the coach of Florida Atlantic.

And then I think Nick Saban was like, you're a little distracted. Why don't you hit the road before the national championship? And we're going to bring in your successor here. So, Arkesian's going to be our coach for the national championship. They lost that game, by the way. That plan didn't work out. But they famously left him on the tarmac or the bus left with that, whatever that situation was with Lane. And then Lane, it happened to him again this year.

He has to be the only goal. Lane's clearly doing something wrong, right? I think we can agree. This isn't a college show. But he's doing something wrong if two college teams have told him, you know what? Everybody always kind of accepts their next job before they leave, but we're done with you. You're not going to be coaching for the remainder of the season.

I think maybe you think about that for Kubiak. Okay. So you say the Seahawks move on before the Super Bowl. It seems as though he's already moved on. He's not paying attention. He's not focused. Saturday before the Pro Bowl, before the Super Bowl. He's not paying attention to his team.

He's talking to other teams here. Good week, by the way, if you have a famous last name in the NFL. Lefleur and Kubiak, new jobs. I actually like this. the Raiders. It's the best they could do. You know, what are they going to tell? So now you get a Mendoza. Well, that, right? Raiders, is a sneaky good job. That's what I'm saying. I, this is a good move for Cubiak. Mendoza, Bowers, why would you go to, why would you go to Arizona if you were him? Crazy.

The only way anyone would go coast Arizona Cardinals is if you had zero other options. I can't imagine picking them over anybody else. You're going to get cooked by these three other coaches. Your quarterback, who knows who it's going to be, irrelevant. I don't think they even have a lot of cap room. No. This is why the McDermits of the world are like, I'm going to sit out of you. Like, I am not going to go to coach the cardness.

Yeah. He made the right decision. Raiders are not, I'm not going to tell you the Raiders, it's going to turn around for them. We would never be so crazy as to say that. But if you told me, like, end of last season, that the Raiders are going to end up with Clint Kubiak,

Mendoza had quarterback, and Fischer. Ashden, Gentie, Brock Bowers. So now you draft some old linemen. Max, Crosby still. You draft a wide receiver. I would trade Max Crosby. You have 82 million, I think, in Cap room. They have money to spend.

Get some draft picks. And then use that elsewhere on the offense. I think they could be okay. So we'll see what happens. But you know what? Who was the Raiders quarterback last year? Gino Smith. Who's the Vikings quarterback

going to be week one of 2026? Gino Smith, Billy, you heard it here first. Wow. I don't know if you heard it here first. This is the first I'm hearing it. Okay, good. This first I'm hearing of it. I thought maybe Richard Smith had, you know,

Phil generally. Careful. He might be coming around the corner here. Okay. That's a guy. I don't know this for a fact, but I'll tell you right now. Richard Smith, right? That was his name. Richard Smith, no chance he was around for the birth of his children.

Not a chance. Not a chance. But if his children are listening, we appreciate that. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. And your father loves you probably. Your father loves you. More than likely he was not at your birth.

It's the NFL was shaming him. Poor planning, by the way, I would say. You know what I mean? For the most part, like, you know, you have. have like the nine or ten months. Like if you're trying to have the kid, you kind of count backwards. Who's poor planning? I mean, listen, I don't want to be the one to call the kids an accident. You know what I mean? Like that's not in my nature. But like, you know more or less how long it's going to take for the baby to be born, right? But he was training camp. So the planning seems

brocate to me. You got, look, if you're that regimented and that strict, you got to count down, you got to say, we got to do this in the off season. And even though, you know, you're probably on a team that's not going to make the playoffs. You have to kind of factor that and say, If we go on this crazy run in the Super Bowl, we need to plan this so that the baby's born in April safe. Well, no, the draft. What are you talking about? He's the GM.

That's literally the worst time. There's no safe time for babies before. He picked a good time. He did a good job. He planned it out. All right. So there you go. What are we talking about?

That's the news around the NFL. Because, you know, we're going to have all week to talk about the game. Yeah, maybe. We got some great guests lined up. We're going to talk about the game. But there was so much that happened between the end of last week, the beginning of this week. I thought, you know what, we got to talk about it. today. So we'll get to the rest of it. Don't worry about it. All right. His name is Billy Gill.

I'm Shield Capati. Thank you to Christopher Sutton for producing. Corey McConnell setting up this beautiful video. Benjamin Cruz helping us with social. We will be back tomorrow on the ringer NFL show. 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and present in D.C., Kentucky or Wyoming. Gambling problem. Call 1-800-G-800-7-7-7.com. call 1-88-7-8-8-9-77 or visit ccpd.org slash chat in Connecticut or visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gambling helpline, MA.org or call 800-327-50-50 for 24-7-supported Massachusetts or call 1-877-8-N-Y or text Hope, NY in New York for Louisiana. Call 1-877-770-7867.