The Ryen Russillo Podcast - Cases For/Against the Next Generation of NFL QBs with Kevin Clark

Episode Date: May 26, 2020

Russillo shares his thoughts on “bad optics” surrounding the return of certain sports (1:13), before he is joined by The Ringer’s Kevin Clark to examine the NFL’s young QBs including Josh Alle...n, Sam Darnold, Kyler Murray, Lamar Jackson, Baker Mayfield, Daniel Jones, Jimmy G, and more (10:00). They also talk about Dak Prescott’s contract ambitions, how the coronavirus pandemic may affect the salary cap, the success of "The Match 2” and the pros and cons of having athletes mic’d up for live sports events, and more (42:57). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 what's up today's episode of the ryan rossillo podcast on the ringer podcast network is brought to you by state farm just like basketball the game of life is unpredictable talk to a state farm agent and get a teammate who can help you navigate the unexpected. I didn't expect Brady to be that bad at golf for that long, but then he kind of turned it around, you know, say competitive enough. That would be hard. That would be pretty hard. Although if there's no one at the course, I think it's easier. No one at the course than people actually being there. I've never had to. Yeah. I don't think I've been asked to play in a couple of celebrity tournaments. to yeah I don't think I've been asked to play in a couple celebrity tournaments um you know whatever that means but I definitely didn't want to because I just imagined I was going to take a take a thumb off of a kid with an ice cream cone not paying attention um out of the t-box so just not good
Starting point is 00:00:59 enough and yeah I would imagine even though you're with Phil and Tiger, I'd rather have it be that way on TV with no gallery. Get a teammate who can help you navigate the unexpected. Talk to a State Farm agent today. We are going to talk to Kevin Clark. He actually has a great piece on the match to the golf that we saw on Sunday. We'll get to that later, but I want to run through a bunch of the quarterbacks, the younger guys, talking yourself in or out of who they may be uh for the rest of their career and some other kind of i don't know if it's news and notes stuff we have some deshaun watson you know the dac contract but it's not so much like hey should dallas pay dac more is he being treated unfairly is dac selfish for asking what he's asking for if all of these things are true it's more about some of these caps could take a real
Starting point is 00:01:45 hit here and then it starts changing things around for what kind of cap space a team even has to be able to use on some of these higher price quarterbacks so we're going to do some of that i do have a couple things that i want to get to uh just off of the the start of this so it's not as an official uh the open this week but everybody loved the golf because it was on and it's not really any more complicated than that and it makes you think that i'm sure some tv executives are looking at these numbers i think it's almost six million viewers going okay well what can we put on next week and this is always an observation about us, but why couldn't this have been an option earlier on? Well, because people worry about the optics. I never know if the optics people are the people that bring it up, that's
Starting point is 00:02:33 a very small number, or if it's actually like 50% to 60%. If they had played golf, say, in April at some point, would people have said this is too soon? Well, what does too soon mean? at some point would people have said this is too soon. Well, what does too soon mean? Does it mean that if four guys are out there with isolated cameras playing golf together, are they putting themselves, are they putting others in danger? Yes, I think the more that we've dealt with this, the more that we think we understand it. And there also can just be kind of the human nature part of it. It's like, all right, I've been quarantining here for a while. I've been doing this, but I just need to get out. I need to do something. It certainly seems to be the case in my neighborhood because the beaches were packed in a way that I've never
Starting point is 00:03:11 seen them packed as far as people in the water. And yes, there's distancing between setups. You can't have a chair at the beach that I live near. You can't have a chair, but you can sit on a towel, which I guess was some way of trying to deter people from showing up, whatever. And even the people enforcing it was like, look, man, we're just trying to figure this whole thing out. But I don't think there would have been any problem having some kind of thing on, but I'm sure there would have been just initial pushback that somehow doesn't exist now, which is probably nothing more than, all right, now I'm impatient and I actually want some options. So think about that. If it were to happen in April, would you have been a person that goes, oh, this is too soon? It's just not, you know, everything that's going on in the country. We can't have people out there
Starting point is 00:03:55 playing golf. And by the way, raising over 20 million for charity, because I'm sure the TV executives are like, could we have gotten away with announcing something like this? Or we've gotten criticized where there've been so much pushback. Cause the other thing too, that's always weird is like, whoever goes first deals with the brunt of it. And then other people get to kind of draft off of that because now I'm sure plenty of guys are trying to figure out, well, what can we put on? We can have it happen quickly and get another big TV number. We'll have it go towards charity in some way, but yes, we're going to make some money off of this as well, just so we can have something on TV. And then that way, even if we're just inside of the event, promoting our own content on a TNT, then it's a win for us because
Starting point is 00:04:34 6 million people are watching ads for bones. I don't know if bones was actually advertised, but you get the point. And it also leads into what was been going on with this NBA and baseball thing, where I had heard that the other leagues wanted baseball to announce first because if something goes wrong, then baseball kind of led the charge. I really always think that stuff's a massive waste of time. I just do. Like, okay, so what's going to happen if people start testing positive if you come back and play baseball?
Starting point is 00:05:02 That people would say, well, basketball guys are testing positive, but baseball is the whole one that started this. Do you know how dumb that actually is? All of these leagues want to come back and all of them want to play. But to try and position yourself after somebody else makes another decision, here's the deal.
Starting point is 00:05:16 Baseball seems so much further away from making a decision here. And there could be a resolution on this by the time the podcast is even released. But they seem to have far more work to do, because they do, than basketball does. Where it's like basketball, what announcement are you waiting on waiting for baseball? Just go ahead and do your thing. If you end up announcing it's first, and then yes, some players do test positive for coronavirus, and they're quarantined, and you keep moving along.
Starting point is 00:05:42 Although, whatever playoff scenario you have, where if it's somebody who is a big-time player, then all of a sudden, say the Milwaukee Bucks, and it's Giannis, and you keep moving along although whatever playoff scenario you have where if it's somebody who's a big-time player then all of a sudden say the milwaukee bucks and it's janice and you go hey sorry there go your championship hopes that's gonna suck but i i don't want to listen to nor would i care for the opinion of the person that would say well basketball deserves more criticism because they decided days before baseball to come back first none of that matters all of that stuff is irrelevant that's why even though i understand the criticisms of the potential danger of baseball or basketball coming back but i always thought that basketball orlando thing made all the sense of the world because you've ever been down there you're like actually this probably could be pulled off down here where it's a secluded enough
Starting point is 00:06:24 situation where everybody's pretty safe as long as everybody else is doing what they're supposed to be doing. But when the NFL was going forward with the draft and there weren't a ton of people, but it was at least brought up. And I don't know, is it brought up because you feel like it makes you look like an intellectual? Like, oh, the optics right now with everything that's going on in the country, everything that's going on in the country, it sucks, man. No doubt about it. But just because things suck, it doesn't mean there can't be these moments of enjoyment that are somehow prevented because people are worried about the optics argument. And I never understand that.
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Starting point is 00:07:39 we have i think we i think we remedied it this morning i had a real kind of top-notch guy going oh yeah i don't know. You guys, you got some problems here, but I'm going to make sure everything's great. And he kind of gave me the look of like, I'm also talking about cash. And I was like, all right, fine. Here's some side cash because somebody else did it wrong, which means I'm out the cash because I can't really ask for somebody to reimburse it after you buy the house. And then he leaves, double thumbs up, you know, social distance elbow.
Starting point is 00:08:08 And it didn't work. So I may have ruined a pile of clothes because I think they mildewed up. Pretty good. So that's what I'm saying. And the reason I'm bringing all of this up is that I noticed I wasn't sleeping great on my Whoop device. I'm like, okay, something's wrong here. We need to get a little bit more shut-eye because you get a recovery score each morning based on your HRV, your resting heart
Starting point is 00:08:30 rate. Mine's been pretty good. I'm pretty excited about my resting heart rate. Those numbers are good. Sleep performance counts as disturbances. You're like, man, what's up with the disturbances? Oh, what was going on at 4 a.m.? Was that when I was fighting off zombies in a dream? Because the heart rate went way up. Okay, that makes sense. It's actually pretty amazing stuff. So you can use this data as an indicator for how to approach your day. The app has built-in features like Strain Coach, which gives you target exertion goals to work out optimally based on your recovery data. This also, with this app, has a sleep coach, which tells you how much sleep you should be getting based on your goals the following day. So that part's really cool because it'll tell you what you're supposed
Starting point is 00:09:08 to do. By the way, I finally hit 20 on my exertion and it was a day that I moved out of my house into another house. So I didn't even work out. I didn't run. I didn't hit the bag. I didn't bike. I didn't do anything. It was strictly moving all day long was the number that is now my peak, and I don't think I'm going to top that number. And here's the deal. If you want in on this, you want in on tracking the data. If you want to sit there with your wife, one of your best friends, compete with each other.
Starting point is 00:09:38 I mean, this is just a conversation starter. I don't know what you're doing during quarantine if you're not tracking all this stuff. But Whoop is offering 15% off with the code RASILLO, R-U-S-S-I-L-L-O at checkout. That's W-H-O-O-P.com. Enter RASILLO at checkout to save 50%, sleep better, recover faster, and train smarter with Whoop. Do we get to call you senior writer? Does that not happen at the ringer? I don't care about titles. I just show up in ball.
Starting point is 00:10:09 I don't need to see on my chest. It's Kevin Clark from the ringer. All right, let's just jump right into this, okay? So I was texting with you last night, and I felt like, as much as I love talking to QBs, there's so many young guys where you could probably talk yourself into either conclusion. There are good stats and bad stats for almost every single young guy.
Starting point is 00:10:30 And I want to go over kind of where you're at right now, talking yourself in or out of these guys. And then I'll just jump in and I'll even share some of the research I did on this. Okay. So you ready? Yes. All right. Josh Allen. I love this one. We're doing some next-gen stuff. Fifth in average attended yards, which is really amazing considering he was 30th in yards per game. So what that tells you is that Josh Allen's not afraid to chuck it. He just isn't going to complete it that often. Josh Allen is one of the most fascinating quarterbacks I've ever watched. I think that the Houston playoff game last year was Josh Allen. That was Josh Allen. It was at times breathtaking, at times maddening. His passer rating while being kept clean is lower than Lamar Jackson's passer rating when under pressure. I think that speaks a little bit to the inconsistency of Josh Allen.
Starting point is 00:11:28 It also speaks to the other worldly talent of Lamar Jackson. But I think that there's, if we were to go through numbers we like versus don't like with Josh Allen, this could literally be like, like a 10 episode thing. This could be like the last dance where we just talk about whether or not Josh Allen has a chance. I think that, you know, for every strange stat, number one being that
Starting point is 00:11:50 I think he was fourth. PFF had him as fourth and uncatchable passes last year at 26%. I believe he was the worst deep ball thrower in the NFL with passes under over 20 yards. And then he was second in the NFL and forced missed tackles by a quarterback, finally Lamar Jackson. His scrambling ability is really good. He has the ability to make plays when it seems like he shouldn't make plays. And I think that I am so impressed
Starting point is 00:12:20 with what Buffalo has done the last two years. And I think that for every spotlight that gets put on the Sashi Brown, Browns, or even the Dolphins where they're just tanking and trying to build up or do a quick two, three-year rebuild, the Bills are kind of the biggest dead cap charges in the history of the sport, take a roster and basically just flush it and build in two years. I think that what Brandon Bean has done has been really impressive. And the quarterback being that missing piece or not missing piece, but the outstanding piece where if that clicks, they can win a damn Super Bowl. I think that's maybe one of the top five most fascinating stories in the sport right now. Okay. and win a damn Super Bowl. I think that's maybe one of the top five most fascinating stories in sport right now. Okay, so that's a compelling case for the organization. Yes.
Starting point is 00:13:11 But I'm sensing hesitation because I think we already kind of know who Josh is. I think it's going to be one of those things where I know what you want it to be, Buffalo. I just don't think that's going to be it. And the Dallas game is hilarious because he was incredible. But it almost feels like your buddy from college that shows up to a wedding
Starting point is 00:13:30 and just crushes it. Like his date was awesome and everybody's parents loved him and parents keep asking about Josh. Whatever happened to that Josh guy? I really liked it. And you know deep down, like he brought it that weekend, but that's really not who he is. That's what I feel like his Dallas Cow cowboys game was just an incredible weekend at a wedding so kevin cole who does really good work um had an article a couple weeks ago about
Starting point is 00:13:56 how rare it is for a quarterback to actually break out in their third season and i thought it was interesting because there haven't been a lot. You either know who a guy is by his second season or he just kind of flames out. And the guys that Josh Allen and Sam Darnold are kind of graded near, it's not a great list. It's strangely the one kind of superstar who did break out in his third season was Troy Aikman. But a lot of that has to do with the fact that the Cowboys were just such dog crap when he got there. And obviously the organization took a step forward and, you know, it was just a different era of quarterbacking. But I think that it would be it would be kind of an anomaly for Josh Allen or Sam Darnold to just sort of become a top tier passer in their third year after so much in the first two years. I think it's it's really something interesting to watch. But I I agree. I think this I really something interesting to watch. But I agree.
Starting point is 00:14:46 I think what we've seen out of Josh Allen, even though he's improving, Robert Mays went out and interviewed him last year. And Allen basically said he didn't play the seven-on-seven stuff that other guys did in Texas or whatever. He's from a different part of the country. He didn't have that year-round stuff. He didn't throw in the offseason. I think that there were
Starting point is 00:15:07 similar arguments about Ryan Tannehill. He played receiver in college at some point. He didn't get that total quarterback education that some guys get. But I think that how much you can improve at the NFL level is especially once you get into your 20s, I think that it stops being significant that you might be behind the learning curve. I don't think Josh Allen's going to have some year 27 breakout because he didn't throw you around.
Starting point is 00:15:33 And so I think that just generally, his learning curve is fascinating to watch. And I'm intrigued to see how that goes. Okay, you said a bunch of stuff I love there because I always thought this was the Bill Walsh thing. And I don't know if it's in the book or if said a bunch of stuff I love there because I've always, I always thought this was the Bill Walsh thing. And I don't know if it's in the book or if it's one of his quotes, but I know this thing exists
Starting point is 00:15:49 where it was kind of like 20 starts and you know. And yes, there are exceptions, but don't argue exceptions when I think you're right for the most part. And the biggest mistake people are making, not that you're doing this, you should do a long form on this in that here are all the quarterbacks,
Starting point is 00:16:04 here's who they were after 20 games or 32 starts. And then this is who they became and how much variance is it or how often did that guy end up losing his job because he didn't really develop. But what people are doing now is they're looking at some of the greats of a previous generation. Maybe you just go back 10 to 15 years and go, well, look at this guy's first year. Look at if you do a look at Tom Brady's first year thing and then try to argue that your guy's going to be awesome because Tom Brady didn't throw a ton of touchdowns in the beginning, you're completely dismissing what Tom Brady was asked or not asked to do in an offense. So I see that a lot where it'll be basically fan bases or local media will kind of build up their guy and you're going, well, you're comparing different eras completely
Starting point is 00:16:44 because even passer rating or completion percentage, you can't just bank on those and go hey sam darnold had an 84 passer rating because when i started breaking down the sam darnold thing now sam darnold like what do you what do you build on there in the second year the completion percentage jumps a couple points yeah touchdown interception ratio 17 15 his rookie year 19 and 13 his second year he fumbled more took a couple more sacks the passer rating jumps up there a little bit but i am also worried that darnold who there's some things visually i like better than josh allen but i go what if i mean imagine if the jets are looking to replace him in two more years. Yeah. So go ahead. Give me your Darnold. So I think Darnold,
Starting point is 00:17:28 I think that he has the right GM and Joe Douglas, who's obsessed with the lines and building out an offensive line at tackle. I think is going to be really important for him. I don't, again, I'm not expecting some huge jump from year two to year three, but I think there could be some basic competence. I also think there's two things about the AFC East quarterbacks that's intriguing to me. Number one is that it's really easy. I saw Eric Eager say this the other day. It's not a huge leap to say Sam Donald might be the best quarterback in the division at the end of the season. at the end of the season.
Starting point is 00:18:03 And because Tom Brady's gone, because it's Josh Allen, we don't know where Tua is, there is essentially a playoff spot available in the AFC East because the Patriots are going to come back down to earth a little bit. I still like them in that division. And I also really, really like Buffalo
Starting point is 00:18:16 as a franchise, as I said. But also then there's the seventh wildcard too. And there aren't that many good quarterbacks to where you only really need incremental improvement from a sam darnold to get to nine wins which is all it's going to take for extra wild card and then will sam darnold then be deemed a success and be put on the track to get the mega extension or whatever i think that the weapons that darnold has um are still not where it needs to be i think the coaching is not where it needs to be. I think the coaching is not where it needs to be, but I like the improvement on the offensive line.
Starting point is 00:18:46 I think Joe Douglas did a nice job. I think Joe Douglas kind of crushed the draft. And so I've been, I've liked what Darnold they've done around Darnold. I think there'll be some incremental improvement, but I don't see him being a top 10 quarterback anytime in the next two seasons. I think it's really hard.
Starting point is 00:19:05 You know, you had the Mono thing last year. I think it's really hard to make a determination on how much you should pay any of these guys. And Donald might be the hardest to figure out. Yeah, all fair. It might be, hey, better weapons, better line. He's going to be fine. I'm telling you, like the Detroit game
Starting point is 00:19:22 that we saw at the beginning of his career is a bit like the Josh Allen Cowboysboys thing where you go look at this you know the from the start to like feeling good about it um but to say and i'm not saying you said this but to go hey he could be the best in the afc east by the end of the year that's a really great sounding sentence that as soon as you go okay compared to two guys that have never played in Josh Allen, who we just got done talking about, like congrats. So, all right, let's keep it moving. Kyler Murray, the good, his deep ball numbers were incredible depending on how you want to frame deep ball numbers. But if you go 20 plus yards or more, um, his completion percentage versus expected completion percentage was six and a half points higher. He was like fifth in the league on that. Touchdowns and interception ratio was really good. The passer
Starting point is 00:20:08 rating was really good. He was 32nd, though, in completed air yards. Now, that could be just Kingsbury and those guys are making sure he was comfortable moving him out of the pocket. He did a great job against pressure because people were really, I think, afraid to send full pressure against him because he might be as good a runner as Lamar, which is saying something. Not to say he's as productive as him. And there's no part of me that goes, hey, one year in, I'm ready to see anything that wants me to write him off. Because I do think those area yard numbers have a lot to do with them. I want to say even babying him, Kevin, but just making sure they're not asking him to do too much. But I'd say for the most part,
Starting point is 00:20:51 you have to feel good about him after his rookie year. Yeah, I feel as good about him as I do about the Cardinals offense in general. I'm high on both those things. Cliff Kingsbury's ability to adapt as the season went along is what you want to see out of a coach. And I was skeptical of the hire at first. I just thought that an NFL team could have given him a bunch of money to be offensive coordinator and he would have done it maybe, that you didn't necessarily need to make him a head coach right away.
Starting point is 00:21:13 But his ability, and I understand going from a defensive head coach, the Cardinals wanted to go all-in on offense with a young quarterback and all that stuff. There's a million reasons why you make a type of hire like this, but I was still skeptical. quarterback and all that stuff. There's a million reasons why you make a type of hire like this, but I was still skeptical. The ability for him to grow as a coach as the season went along was hugely impressive. Kyler Murray's ability to get better tracked with that. I think he had the fifth most deep attempts, and I think that there's obviously room to grow there. I think he had 17% of his passes were off target last year or uncatchable. Um, that could improve, but I, I like, it was as good a, a year as I could have expected from him.
Starting point is 00:21:51 And I'm expecting when we talk about obviously the biggest growth being from year one to year two, this is a guy I circle where I say, okay, this is the guy who might have a huge step up this year where we're talking about him being borderline top 10. If the offense is where it needs to be, if DeAndre Hopkins is the asset we still think he is, if there's a David Johnson addition by subtraction thing, because you're not worried about getting the ball to whatever version of David Johnson existed last year.
Starting point is 00:22:22 Although I don't think Cliff Kingsbury cared about that after, after a little bit. I think that this is, I think the weapons that he has sets him up to be a really, really good quarterback in, in 2020. I'm sort of, I'm fascinated to see how this lack of an off season affects a jump from year one to year two.
Starting point is 00:22:38 But if anybody can do it right now, it's Kyler Murray. Okay. So everybody feels good about Kyler. And I think that's the right play. And I also think there's an eye test of element too where you go this guy was making plays for this team that wasn't a great team last year from where it started to how the season finished up I think there's a lot of positives there speaking of positives and I'm not even
Starting point is 00:22:56 putting Lamar Jackson on the list as if there's some doubt uh because going back and looking through the numbers again last night it's almost one of those kind of months removed from the season reminders of, Oh my God, he was 36 and six touchdown interceptions. His QBR is above 80. His passer rating is the 11th highest season, single season passer rating number we've had. And granted passer rating can be all over the place, but when it's really, really great or really, really terrible, it's a pretty good indicator of what you did that year. And then you look at the sack numbers. He was sacked 23 times. It's less than half of what a guy like Russell Wilson or some of these other guys that get sacked all the time that do scramble. Now it comes back to the two playoff games and the numbers are like, wait a minute, what's going on here?
Starting point is 00:23:41 The pick ratios off the fumbles. He didn't lose all of them, but he had a lot of them. And to even put him on this as if there's any kind of negative, like I'm not doing the, I'm hoping to be canceled because I didn't suggest he play another position like a Tebow, a Matt Jones or an Eric Crouch. It's just that when you look at the argument for, did Lamar just take everybody by storm and freak everyone out? This Baltimore offense was incredible. Is there something to be said about preparing for him? Because he still, this year in the playoff game,
Starting point is 00:24:11 threw for a million yards. It just didn't happen once he started getting closer to the red zone and stuff, which is surprising because he was absolutely, it was one of the most dominant seasons we've seen from a quarterback during the regular season. Yeah, I think that teams catching up with Lamar Jackson is going to be talked about the next three, four months.
Starting point is 00:24:32 I just don't think that right now in his current form, you can catch up with him literally or figuratively. I mean, I think that one of the things when I was in Baltimore a couple months ago reporting it, they were talking about just his acceleration is as important as his deceleration, like his ability to just bait guys into missing, um, tackles almost like James Harden a little bit where you, the, the ability to stop on a dime is, is part of his, um, his
Starting point is 00:24:56 talent. And I think that the running is always going to be there and that he's going to get better as a passer. And I think he's still younger than Joe Burrow. And I think that's something that is probably important. And I would say Sam Darnold is younger than Joe Burrow too, by the way. There's some weird age stuff with quarterbacks right now because of guys who left early or whatever. But I think that he's in the exact right organization to understand how to keep his career progressing.
Starting point is 00:25:25 I think Marshall Yonder retiring is a bit of a hit. But I think that they understand the curve and how defenses adapt better than anybody. I think John Harbaugh is a top five coach in this league. I think they've got a great infrastructure. And so I'm not necessarily worried. Is he going to get injured at some point? I mean, every quarterback gets injured. Is it going to be this year?
Starting point is 00:25:47 I don't know. But what I will say is that because of this no offseason thing, because I think continuity is king, I think that they're probably my favorite right now for the AFC. Probably 1A and 1B with the Chiefs. I haven't really made a determination. I think it's going to be a very chalky year. And I think if you're going to sit around, you know, NFL teams are obsessed with other teams in their division. I remember one time I was talking to Bob McNair
Starting point is 00:26:13 and we were talking about Mario Williams. The day Mario Williams left, actually, Houston, but he was talking about why they drafted him. And he said, because all I cared about was stopping Peyton Manning. That's all I cared about. And I just wanted to stop Peyton Manning, so we're I cared about. And I just wanted to stop Peyton Manning. So we're going to draft a guy who's going to stop Peyton Manning.
Starting point is 00:26:28 It didn't really work. But I think that teams put a target on quarterbacks who are in their division or coaches who are in their division. And I start to think that if the Browns and the Bengals and the Steelers were in a normal offseason, could right now, literally right now, be in OTAs and minicamp trying to figure out how to stop Lamar Jackson. They might have a chance, but I think you're doing it over zoom and you're just looking at tape. I think it's going to be really hard to figure out how, how to stop Lamar Jackson in that kind of offense and that kind of offseason. Excuse me. Yeah, that's a great point. So you don't see any regression. Well, statistically, there was Mahomes' regression last year, but that didn't mean he was a worse quarterback. Yeah, no, it's a good point because there's some Mahomes stuff.
Starting point is 00:27:12 I happened to get in a little bit of a Mahomes wormhole when I was looking up these other guys. I wasn't going to put Mahomes in this list. There's some numbers where you're like, oh, wait, he was behind a bunch of guys in this category or that category. And it's like, okay, who cares? He's still the best, and you would take him number one ahead of every single guy so exactly um all right baker this one was a little tougher to find the good number because all of the numbers
Starting point is 00:27:33 are just worse than they were last year the good number would be on deep balls even though the deep ball numbers from last year to this year dropped because everything dropped he still found a way it tells you he will force a ball into the tightest window and he still ended up doing a pretty good job can even though with all the receiving talent that he has he didn't have open receivers on these throws nearly as much as you would think with those guys but then you look at the bigger numbers the rating drops off dramatically the interception spiked by seven the touchdowns drop completion percentage drops I mean everything drops I also think this is a bit of a guy just getting his ass kicked throughout
Starting point is 00:28:09 the season I thought it got worse and worse where he was just getting physically pounded so if that's a positive it's that he was freaked out a little bit in the second half of the season because he's running around like that's what I saw when I watched him but I'm not ready to write him off it's just a big big change of conversation around somebody that we probably talked up too much. No, we did. I'll just say it. We talked up Baker too much at the end of 18 because they played a bunch of crap teams when they closed out the season.
Starting point is 00:28:36 Yeah, and if there's one good number, it's literally 2018. That's the number. Because he played a 2018 season where we saw some flashes, and I think there's a Freddie Kitchens tax here where I am willing to throw out 2019 a little bit because Freddie Kitchens was such a bad coach. He had weird mechanical habits that second year quarterbacks just shouldn't be developing or drifting into. I was shocked by that.
Starting point is 00:29:01 And I also think that we were just in in the media, myself very much included, were just too early sometimes on teams. And I think that it's funny when I did an interview with John Dorsey last year, or two years ago, excuse me, when he first took over. And he said, listen, for a rebuild, you got to have patience. It takes three years. And John Dorsey was fired after year two. And this is the third year of that.
Starting point is 00:29:27 And obviously he doesn't get to see the finish line, and there's a lot of reasons for that. But I think that when I think about how this all came together, I think a lot of times we are too early on teams. I remember the 49ers hype a couple of years ago, and then obviously they broke out in 2019. But I think that they were able to see where the holes were last year and they were able to go out and sign jack
Starting point is 00:29:50 conklin and address their line in the draft um on the right side and it's on the left side and i think that they they are a team that is actually having a quietly good off season but because we were burned so much last year we we can't talk about it. We can't hype the Browns for two years in a row. Yeah, right. We're just not allowed. Yeah, we're just not doing it. Nobody wants it, so.
Starting point is 00:30:11 Nobody wants it. And so I think that Baker can take a step forward in that way. I just don't think, I'm having a hard time thinking that he's ever going to get to the lead of the elite after seeing what I saw last year. I think he can be a very, very good quarterback. I just don't. I think that when I saw Baker last year and then you add Odell, I was thinking that these guys were 2021 Super Bowl contenders. And I don't see that track right now. The John Dorsey not being not being like that seems like he just got the job and was wearing
Starting point is 00:30:46 the sweatshirt yesterday and baker was doing the impersonations like it was just one of those things in in the what you keep track of and the things that you're reminded of you're like oh that's right dorsey's already out after it shows you i was there on the first day of camp last year and everybody was a celebrity there, including John Dorsey. I had to meet John Dorsey on one side of the field, and then we were going to go do our interview. And he was being treated like he was Odell Beckham or Baker Mayfield or Jim Brown or any of these guys that Browns fans love. And four months later, not only was he out of the job, but like Browns fans were oddly just furious at him. Like I remember I think Mays said some pro Dorsey stuff on his way out and he just got attacked for it.
Starting point is 00:31:32 It is amazing how quickly that that went. And again, Dorsey said it was going to take three years. And then it wasn't his fault that everyone got excited about the Browns in year two, and they just weren't ready and they hadn't filled out the roster. Right. It's just that he, he's the one that hired Freddie kitchens, right?
Starting point is 00:31:53 No, that I, that's a, that's a, that's a problem. And that was one. And this is something that we've talked about, but I remember talking to Freddie kitchens and one of my,
Starting point is 00:32:01 one of my, uh, guideposts on whether or not a new guy is smart or or is a good coach you can never tell on these things what i like to do is if a guy has thought about something or has reasons for something or maybe thinks more analytically or more deep i tend to assume that that that that coach or gm is really smart and has, has the ability to be a good coach, um, without ever having seen him coach, have a head coaching experience. And when I talked to Freddie last year, I just didn't, I would ask him a question about some philosophical thing or some deeper thing.
Starting point is 00:32:38 And he just had nothing for me. And I was just like, man, I don't know how much thought this guy's putting into this whole thing. When we were talking about John Dorsey was talking about scouting for Baker and the receivers that he would need, and he was getting so in the weeds, and it was really cool to hear. And then I asked Friday the same question, and he's like, yeah, just get him some good receivers. They did. They did get him some good receivers. They did yeah okay i have a couple more and then i have a couple uh bigger nfl questions that i want to get to daniel jones a good number i found is he was third in aggressive throws how about that hey aggressiveness throws next gen uh fourth worst
Starting point is 00:33:18 yards per attempt he run the football and him not being a disaster was the positive because of how mocked the pick was. So that was a win. Uh, this one, I, I have no idea because I mean, we're only talking not even a full year and I would, I don't know. I don't, I don't have anything on him good or bad to be honest with you. Like I'm, I'm not emphatic one way or the other about Daniel Jones. I'm going to need him to stop fumbling 18 times. I mean, that's a huge red flag. I mean, I cannot get over the turnovers there. But so, I mean, essentially he had 12 interceptions,
Starting point is 00:34:01 but he had the 18 fumbles. That's just a lot of balls on the ground or going to the wrong person. Um, I think Daniel Jones has a chance to be competent. I think the bar was so low after the draft because he got dragged through the mud so much. And I was definitely a part of that.
Starting point is 00:34:17 Um, I think the victory lap from giants fans was a little bit too early since it took place one minute after his first game. And I think that is Joe judge and that coaching staff with Jason Garrett, Freddie kitchens, by the way, is on that staff. Talk about some fireworks.
Starting point is 00:34:33 Um, I, is this the staff that's going to get, get the most out of Daniel Jones? I'm not totally sure. Jason Garrett is, is, is a,
Starting point is 00:34:43 uh, has not called plays in a while. And when he does, he seems to value execution over scheme, which is interesting when you consider all the scheme lords around the NFL. So I think that Daniel Jones, again, has a chance to be better than we thought. He was a top 10 pick.
Starting point is 00:34:59 So, I mean, one would hope so. I just don't see a lot of positives from the Giants right now. I mean, Saquon's really good, but I still think they have so long to go that we're not going to be able to figure out if Jones is good until that elusive year three, where, again, it's against the odds to have a breakout then. Mitch, I think we're all off of him.
Starting point is 00:35:23 No. Yep. Haskins, way too early have i don't have a take i got nothing on that either yeah his body fat percentage being at four percent seems kind of low uh that would be great if true i'm sure he's in terrific shape but some of those low single digits i always kind of wonder like is that actually what you are like are you a 90 pound croatian gymnast no wasn't there a dk metcalf number floating around that if it was true he'd be like a deceased person yeah yeah there was i'm not a i'm not an expert on it you know you try to keep it low but uh i think there's some real fake numbers out there and everybody just eats them up. I mean,
Starting point is 00:36:05 people love retweeting 4% body fat on somebody. Here's a curve ball. It's the last one I have for you because I don't, I don't really want to do golf because if I do, if I do golf, then it means I got to do a bunch of other guys and everything. Although golf story has taken as many turns as you could in this short amount of time, which is pretty remarkable. But realizing that Garoppolo's played 16 games only once, he's only played over six games in a season just last year. So there's an argument that we're talking about a 29-year-old quarterback going into his second full season.
Starting point is 00:36:43 I mean, that's what he is. Now, it's a little dismissive to say his sophomore season i mean that's what he is now it's a little dismissive to say his sophomore season when he's been around for a while but he was third in completion percentage but he was actually second worst in average attended to the sticks which basically means how often are you throwing to those first down markers and only Teddy Bridgewater, who is low in a million categories, by the way, that Garoppolo was only better than Bridgewater. And I do think that that is a telling number. Now, you could talk scheme again. You could talk about the outside guys and that it was really a running attack with Kittle. And this is still a quarterback that plays in a Super Bowl.
Starting point is 00:37:26 attack with Kittle. And this is still a quarterback that plays in a Superbowl, but I still, I think it's fair to have more questions about Garoppolo. I actually, he may have answered a lot of my questions where I think it's like, okay, he's all right, but I don't think he's going to be the superstar that maybe people thought he would be, especially with what was a misleading one loss record at the beginning of his career. I think that you're right. I think we know Jimmy Garoppolo is. I do like the idea that he hasn't played enough and he's 29. He's just the West Coast Taysom Hill. He's 29
Starting point is 00:37:51 and we still don't know what he is. Now, Taysom might be the single most overrated player in the entire league. I agree with that. It's really amazing to see how this has developed over the past couple of months. It went from Taysom Hill is like a good change of pace to we're going to give Taysom Hill $10 million guaranteed to Taysom Hill is the future. He's pushing Drew Brees.
Starting point is 00:38:14 Is this like a bit from Sean Payton to see how far this can go? If he keeps leaking, can he get Taysom Hill on some like top 10 quarterback lists is that what he's doing right now he's canceled the offseason we know that he's canceled the offseason they're not gonna have any zoom stuff and it seems to me Sean Payton's entire goal this offseason is to get Taysom Hill as much ludicrous buzz as possible well it's working it's absolutely working and I'm not even anti the tasem hill plates like okay cool this is kind of fun look how creative they are this guy can do a lot of different things but i i don't know that there's ever been somebody regarded this high that's done their job as little
Starting point is 00:38:56 as he has this would be like saying somebody's the next truman capote because he had a nice paragraph. That is a good way to put it. All right, back to Garoppolo. So his dead cap goes to $2.8 million in 2021. His cap hits are 26, 26, and 27 the next three years. I think Jimmy Garoppolo is pretty good. And I think that if they're not up against it with the cap, even though obviously some of the moves they made't if they're not up against it with the cap even though obviously some of the moves they made um showed that they have uh not as much flexibility as they used to have remember they they gave him uh 41 million dollars in cash the beginning of this contract just to smooth out the the cap hits but 26 and 27 is still a big number um i think that there's an argument to just say that he's pretty good.
Starting point is 00:39:45 Let's just keep things afloat. If they wanted to get aggressive, listen, Kyle Shanahan has been able to make a lot of good quarterbacks, make a lot of crappy quarterbacks into good. And he's obviously had turned good quarterbacks into great quarterbacks. We saw that Matt Ryan MVP year. But if anybody can do the plug and play system, anybody in the NFL can do the plug and play system and say, we're going to take a guy
Starting point is 00:40:09 in the first three rounds. We're going to pay them peanuts. And then we're going to trade them in four years. If anybody could do that for the next 20 years, I would bet it's Kyle Shanahan, right? Yeah. I don't have a problem with that. And it worked like I can't be too critical of it because the way it was designed I mean they were they were in it I mean they had a chance to win a Super Bowl but it would have felt really weird to have to do this like I just don't like having to do that be like no you can't criticize Jimmy because it worked they won a Super Bowl I'm like no no I'm not I'm not saying he sucks I'm just saying that their ceiling is lower than what was once thought for him. I agree, but I still like the way that offense worked. I still think that I'm going to trust Kyle Shanahan on this one. And I think that if he wants to get ruthless at some point, he can. But I also think that they're doing pretty well. And again, this is a continuity year.
Starting point is 00:41:07 I would not be surprised if they won the NFC again. More with Kevin, especially on some of the concerns about what you could be doing here salary cap-wise with some of these top quarterbacks because we could have some problems. And it's just something I want to talk about with him. Before we do that, though, during this time of social distancing, connecting with friends over a beer today
Starting point is 00:41:22 looks pretty different. As the original Light Beer, Miller Lite has always been there to bring people together in real life through Miller Time. Miller Time is a moment for people to come together in real life to connect over a few beers. But having Miller Time is tough when you can't be with your people. I can't wait to reconnect with all my pro athlete friends because almost all my friends are pro athletes now. And they said, hey, you look like a pro athlete. We should all hang out.
Starting point is 00:41:46 And I was like, I agree. So that's what I've been up to. Miller Lite is the beer that makes Miller time possible. Miller Lite is the original light beer that tastes great and is less filling, which means it won't get in the way of enjoying time with your people. The reason I like a Miller Lite guy is because I used to work on my truck a lot. And there was a guy that used to bring over some Miller Lites. And I was like, hey, do you have a blue tarp?
Starting point is 00:42:10 He's like, do I have a blue tarp? I've got a million blue tarps. And if you want to borrow one and maybe not even give me a great window on when you're going to return it and possibly even keep it just because you're forgetful, maybe not even thoughtful. And the work that you're doing on your truck, you're not even ever going to complete anyway. You're just going to park your pickup truck with the hood open, with a tarp over the engine on the to-do list, and just going to sit there and flap, and we're going to look at it with a couple Miller Lights.
Starting point is 00:42:37 Well, I think I just described everything about it. It tastes great and less filling. So, Miller Light, the original light beer. While you're home, enjoy a classic. Available for delivery today. Celebrate responsibly. Miller Brewing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 96 calories and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces.
Starting point is 00:42:57 Okay, a couple other teams. The DAC contract thing. I'm trying to think. We wasted a lot of time on the ezekiel elliott stuff when in fact jerry jones might have been the only owner left that was going to do something like that and yet some of the criticisms that dallas you know they i saw some people again people that cover football going oh how do you how do you bring in alden smith and not take care of your quarterback like well do you think that do you think yes do you think they're perhaps entirely different
Starting point is 00:43:29 negotiations i can't believe they gave alden smith 160 million dollars guaranteed i thought that was a little much but listen jerry knows what he's doing jerry loves those edge guys which uh i don't even really want to do a ton on Dak, but now that we're hearing the numbers that he wants to reach, how could actually the pandemic maybe change what he can even get? Because that's something that we haven't really even touched on yet because both for the NFL and the NBA, there could be some really weird stuff going on with what max players would be.
Starting point is 00:44:04 Granted, the NFL doesn't have max players would be. And granted, the NFL doesn't have max players in the same way NBA guys do, but the quarterback essentially becomes your max guy. Yeah. And the max is essentially negotiated by whoever, whatever elite quarterback sign, sign an extension most recently. Um, so right now it's around 36 because of Russell Wilson and Jared Goff was who's not elite but got elite money. Okay, so the pandemic and the salary cap is probably the story we're not talking about and we need to be. But I also think there's so many variables that it's hard to discuss with any real certainty. So the cap this year is 198.2.
Starting point is 00:44:39 And there's going to be a slight spike next year. It's risen $10 million or more every year since 2013. And I think that with the new CBA, there will be some smoothing, unlike the NBA. But I think that the effects of the CBA, the minimums go up, and the cap is still tied to revenue. And if there's no crowds this year, and if the TV deals are not what they thought they'd be, and if you don't get the same merch because stores are closed, all of this stuff, I think that there could be a very real revenue shortfall. And then the cap either stays flat which obviously was a near
Starting point is 00:45:25 disaster a couple years ago in the nba when when um the the finals wasn't very long and there was a revenue shortfall um or there's there's a real drop in which case it would be a financial ice age for teams um and i don't know what would happen in that regard i think that there has to be you know i saw a couple stories that were like, man, the Eagles and the Falcons are capped out. You don't want to be them next year. If there's a drop of, let's say, $20 or $30 million in salary cap, the NFL would have to make massive changes.
Starting point is 00:45:57 It would not be, oh, you're capped out, you're screwed. Every team would be capped out. They'd have to have bailouts. They'd have to have amnesty provisions they might have to just have uncapped years and just say hey guys just figure it out um it would have to be a complete overhaul of the financial system in football if the cap were to go down 20 30 million dollars because it's not no team uh who operates in any in any efficient way even has even has, you know, $30 million in cap space lying around when they're trying to win. Okay. There are obviously teams that do it from year
Starting point is 00:46:30 to year. Um, now how does this, the DAC contract stem from there? I don't know if I'm Patrick Mahomes, do I just try to take a deal right now, knowing that this might happen? Do I try to take $40 million a year, um, over the next four years maybe it's all guaranteed i don't know because i have so much leverage um and then i think once the the watson and mahomes deals are signed dax dax deal goes up um but i also think that look generally this might become a kurt cousins thing this might become dak playing out the franchise tag and getting there and there might not be that much money for him if the pandemic really slows the cap down like we think. Albert Brewer had this amazing nugget that I just cannot get over, which is so Stephen Jones comes out and says that no $20 million quarter or there isn't a good track record for highly paid quarterbacks winning the Super Bowl. That's correct. Okay. There's been eight years of players making $20 million a year in the NFL,
Starting point is 00:47:26 and only one player has made $20 million a year and won the Super Bowl. Do you know who it was? One player, $20 million a year, won the Super Bowl. It's the last eight years. I guess Brady would have been south of it. Uh, Von Miller, uh, Von Miller. No Von Miller's extension was after the super bowl. Uh, Frank Clark.
Starting point is 00:47:59 What Frank Clark. So that wasn't his average annual salary though. Was that his number for the year uh i mean frank clark's pretty close to pretty close to 20 a year i mean he got that mega extension he got five years 104 but yeah okay i i think that that goes to show you that we look at the wrong thing sometimes with quarterbacks i I mean, there have been some awful contracts on some of these Super Bowl teams, okay? And I think we look at salary cap efficiency and all that stuff,
Starting point is 00:48:33 and we probably focus on the wrong things. If you pay Dak Prescott $40 million a year and the cap keeps growing, you're still going to be able to win the Super Bowl as long as Dak Prescott plays like a $40 million a year guy. I think that we view every move in a vacuum. We do this in the NBA too. going to be able to win the Super Bowl as long as Dak Prescott plays like a $40 million a year guy. I think that we view every move in a vacuum. We do this in the NBA too. And I think that we're so focused on who wins the deal or whatever. Listen, I think that how much you pay a quarterback now has become overrated once they get to the veteran stage of their career. I completely agree on this one. I think it's a really nice thing where you can say, hey, here's the argument for doing this.
Starting point is 00:49:06 And I don't even know if Jones is doing it to negotiate publicly because I'd heard Dak, as we had said last fall, and has been confirmed now in multiple places, that he turned down a massive number. When it was 35 mil a year and over 100 million guaranteed, Dallas is like, all right, okay, well. So this isn't like Dallas doesn't think Dak is good. It's just, okay, how far can we go here? So this isn't like Dallas doesn't think Dak is good. It's just, okay, how far can we go here? First of all, the front office is, to get a $10 million bump every year,
Starting point is 00:49:32 and I've gone over it too, to say the cap's gone up $70 million in seven years here, essentially, that's an amazing thing to have, especially when you can renegotiate this stuff in ways the NBA can't even do it. So you can even move this stuff around. When you're screwed in the cap in the NBA, there's no fix the NFL. You can find ways to go ahead and fix this. And you're getting this 10 million bump every single time. And I remember baseball for a really long time had this thing where there had been no one. I don't know if it
Starting point is 00:49:57 was leading the league in home runs or over 40 home runs for a guy in your lineup where no team had won a world series and in over a decade with like a big home run guy so then it becomes well wait a minute does this mean you don't want to have a home run guy and it gets guess what guess what like you just go all in on one pierre yeah right you don't want home run guys we need more guys like ekstein at the top of the lineup and it just was something that happened and it's the same thing with the big time receivers like oh when's the last time one of these diva big time receivers well yeah if david tyree doesn't catch the ball then randy moss would have won a super bowl and you know there there are
Starting point is 00:50:35 these things that happen that yes this is happening and yes this is a way to describe it but i'm in complete agreement with you that it doesn't necessarily always make it law, though. Yeah. There's a cap quirk that no two players who've combined to make over 21.8% of the team's salary cap have ever won the Super Bowl. And I believe that the only guys who approach that number, the 21% number, are Steve Young and Jerry Rice. But the problem with that argument, and I do think that spending wisely is extremely important, but Matt Ryan and Julio Jones are over that number and they were up 25 points in the Super Bowl. And they didn't lose the Super Bowl and blow that 25 point lead because of their cap management. It's just when you were dealing with only Super Bowl winners, it's small sample sizes. Exactly.
Starting point is 00:51:20 And the Garoppolo number has always been like that number that it was like the cash number coming home in the beginning of that extension you're like what are you guys doing and they were front loading it i've been over this thing a million times it's the same thing with the way they redid golf and golf was close and i don't know did golf was golf went in the super bowl the first year of his extension or was that before the first year kicked in it was after he was still on the rookie deal he was still on the rookie deal okay yeah um yeah i taught because he was eligible for an extension during the playoff run i remember talking to kevin demoff about that at the super bowl and that's right because then they said the way he handled the loss in the press
Starting point is 00:51:56 conference was the reason why they knew they could pay him all the money and i was like that's an that's an amazing reason to go. That guy handles himself real well after a loss, $36 million a year. Look at Seattle, who's done a great job throughout all of this. Percy Harvin, the assets they gave up for Percy Harvin, and he's a complete non-factor for the most part. I mean, a couple plays here and there,
Starting point is 00:52:19 but everybody that always is like, oh, the Percy Harvin thing. All right, last little thing here before I let you go, Kevin, because you mentioned Deshaun Watson, who likely will take the money. But as we had said on this podcast back in the fall, we knew Bill O'Brien and Hopkins weren't exactly on the same page. I don't know how much better relationship
Starting point is 00:52:36 between Watson and O'Brien is. It's just that O'Brien, I assume, realizes he can't be the same way with a star quarterback that he can. And I still can't believe what he did with Hopkins, but he can't get away with that with Watson. So they may be together despite not, I don't know. I don't know how far I can go with this, but I don't think that relationship is all that great either is what I'll safely say. Yes. I'm in agreement with you. I don't think that, I think they have to learn to live together
Starting point is 00:53:05 because I don't think that either of them are going anywhere. It is really hard for a superstar quarterback to get to free agency or force a trade. In fact, it's basically impossible. There's no incentive for Houston to not sign him to a mega extension. There's no incentive, quite frankly,
Starting point is 00:53:22 for Deshaun Watson not to take it, take the money and try to make the best out of your situation. It is with three franchise tags on the table and years left on your contract. It's just nearly impossible. Bill O'Brien has a lot of power in that organization. And, you know, it was funny. We did on our Ring around FL show, we did a prop show last week,
Starting point is 00:53:43 and we were looking at first coach fired and Bill O'Brien is like third or fourth on the betting odds. That's crazy. He's the GM. You can't fire a GM and a coach in week four. I mean, he is entrenched there. And part of that is they wanted to give him ownership of the results and all that stuff. Jack Easterby's got some power. I think Bill O'Brien is a much, much, much better coach than we give him credit for now. I think that's part of that. Because he's such a bad GM,
Starting point is 00:54:11 we have now thrown the baby out with the bathwater and we say he sucks at everything. I don't think that's necessarily true. I think Bill O'Brien's a pretty good coach. I just think that he's not handling things well as far as I think the Hopkins thing could have been smoothed out. And by the way, if you hadn't, if you were looking for a destination for DeAndre Hopkins, why would you
Starting point is 00:54:31 trade him to a place that's going to light him up offensively for David Johnson? You know, I heard Bucky Brooks say this on the movie sticks pot a pot. I love that part of the reasoning he thinks that they got David Johnson was because in that division, now you have Derek Henry and there's just a lot of bulk and power and you're going to need that running back. Well, there's a lot of guys better than David Johnson. You'd have to trade DeAndre Hopkins for him. And I understand where Bucky's coming from. And I think that, by the way, that's one thing we don't talk about enough as far as coach, as much as we all sit around talking about assets and all this stuff, coaches are still talking about toughness and competitiveness and out-toughing you and stuff like that. And I think that's why we talked a little bit last
Starting point is 00:55:13 night about teams that had good off-seasons or whatever. When coaches talk about having good off-seasons versus the media, they're usually two very different conversations. And I think that a team like the Texans looked at their offseason, and instead of saying, let's get assets like the media probably thinks or like we talked about with the NBA, they were talking about refining their style of play. And for some reason, they thought David Johnson needed to be a part of that. I completely disagree. But it's, I don't know, man.
Starting point is 00:55:43 Whatever's going on with that houston front office needs to stop or else it's going to be bad for both o'brien and and watson social media has totally turned on o'brien to the point where he's probably perceived as worse um when you know one of my things the counter to the bill o'brien stuff that he's the worst coach ever is that how come he's always still in the playoffs like if he's bad you know good coach bad gm yeah last thing because and i knew i'm keeping you longer than i promised kevin but your piece up on the ringer right now you really enjoyed the golf with mickelson woods manning and brady uh i like your line when you were like let's have this next weekend. Let's have it Monday. What was it about it that at least got you?
Starting point is 00:56:28 Was it the quarantine or was it the product? It was a little bit of both. I would say, so I've watched every single sport that's come back. And the event I enjoyed. I have watched Korean baseball. I thought Karl Ravich did a nice job of filling a rain delay from his home, by the way. We didn't talk enough about that.
Starting point is 00:56:46 No, we haven't. 90 minutes of Carl Ravitch filling time. All right. So I think that I've watched every event. I think the event I enjoyed most before this was UFC 249. And part of the reason for that was because the broadcast was so good. Daniel Cormier, our Spotify colleague Joe Rogan, your former radio colleague colleague john annick i believe right yeah my guy yeah and um they were so energetic and were good passionate stand-ins for the crowd um you know doing the things they
Starting point is 00:57:19 normally do but it just seemed like a more full event you could hear the corner men you could hear all these things you could hear you know i, I, at the funniest point where that was made, I think in the third UFC event was that guys were not rushing back from getting hit in the private parts because there was no crowd to, uh, egg them back on. So they would take more of the five minutes allotted if you could hit in the private parts. Anyway. Um, I think that, that without crowds, you're going to need some passion. And what ended up happening on Sunday, I thought, was we saw what a good replacement for no galleries and no crowds is, which is legitimate trash talk, which is guys really caring, mic'd up, reacting to everything, the minutiae of it all. If there's no crowds at the wide world of sports at Disney, yet every single bench is mic'd up and you can hear if someone, if James Harden is trying to draw a foul and the five guys against him just start screaming at him, like I want to hear that
Starting point is 00:58:17 and I want to hear it unedited. And if it's empty arenas, they can have it on a 45 second delay and get out anything that would be bad. I've heard from people who work in the nfl actually heard this from somebody who worked in the nhl that if you got unedited raw feed of what happened on the court the court or ice or field of play that it might just be a national scandal um but i think you can work that out and i think these guys will know they're mic'd up but i think that generally generally what I saw Sunday was a blueprint for how sports can return. And that means almost unfettered access. That means guys who are candid and when they're struggling, there's a camera on them and a microphone on them. Seeing Tom Brady just absolutely suck while everybody roasted him and then him turning it around was amazing.
Starting point is 00:59:04 So it was not just that i enjoyed it it's that if the networks and the leagues watch that and take the right lessons from it that's how sports can come back and be entertaining i'd love to see it happen i just don't know that they can i think it would be bad and then it would turn into all of these arguments that we'd have on these talk shows being like, is it okay that another man can talk to a man like this at his place of work? And you're like, okay, well, their job's a little different than most of ours. And I don't know if I have this right, but I know at least on the radio side, your delay, if you have a couple of swears, then you run out of delay until you get it back.
Starting point is 00:59:44 No, because I remember i had a guest on or i think it was a co-host and he just didn't realize like which words you could or couldn't say he was filling in and i was like whoa this guy's just swearing when we were doing the radio show and then my producer was like f word no he was it was kind of like he was saying like anatomy you know i don't know i'm not yeah sure I could just say it now if I wanted to because I always sometimes forget. But then I swear more with Bill than I do on my own sometimes. Or I'll say the F word once.
Starting point is 01:00:13 And for whatever reason, I'm not doing it now. I don't know why. But he was saying, he was like, oh, that guy's whatever. And my producer's like, hey, dude, we've had to dump him twice. We're out of delay soon if he does one more. We may not be able to catch it. So I don't know. I don't want to say I know for certain,
Starting point is 01:00:30 but I do think there's a technical part of it where if you had a bunch of instances in a row, then I don't know that you'd be able to dump out of this stuff all the time. That's kind of why it exists because of that one slip-up thing. So if guys started calling each other all sorts of shit, there you go, there might be a technical problem on the broadcast because of that one slip-up thing. So if guys started calling each other all sorts of shit, there you go, there might be a technical problem on the broadcast because you wouldn't be able to consistently
Starting point is 01:00:51 keep dumping out of it. I don't know if I'm right on that, but I know at least for radio, it was a problem that came up. So I could do more research. Yeah, I could have not said anything and done more research, but I figured I just wanted to do this research
Starting point is 01:01:03 because I research the rest of the stuff. My concern is that the networks see this and their impulse is like oh let's just put tweets on the screen and nothing else changes and it just sounds cavernous and the announcer is can't bring the energy i just think that there's a there's a bridge to where listen the the lesson is not celebrities the The lesson is not charity or whatever. All those things worked. But what really worked was just the energy and the passion, which I think you can document. The reason we liked that event on Sunday
Starting point is 01:01:34 is because we got to see the personalities as they were. Everybody was themselves. Nobody was playing a character. Phil was pure Phil. Tiger was pure Tiger. People like Brady and Manning. The last time they played in the AFC Championship game, they got like 60 million viewers, right? So people just like seeing those guys in their element. And I think if the NBA or the NHL or baseball can bring that,
Starting point is 01:01:54 if you mic up Mike Trout, he's not going to be Mr. Personality from what I gather, but he can be the best version of Mike Trout he can be, which is going to be entertaining. People like authenticity and genuine reaction. The best thing for me when I watched the World Series, I don't really care about baseball, is seeing the dugout after a huge home run and the guys are going crazy with each other. And you can bring an extra layer of access to where you're not only seeing that camera thing, you're seeing what did they say to each other afterwards? And, and I understand the delay part of it and all that stuff. But at some point,
Starting point is 01:02:28 you can say, listen, this is how we get people to watch is how we get the casual fan to watch. You can check out Kevin with maze. That's Robert Mays and Danny Kelly on the ringer NFL show. Hit that subscribe button and check that one out. And you can also follow Kevin. It's at by Kevin Clark. I know you have a big slow news day is one of the best things
Starting point is 01:02:52 anyone does at ringer. And I've been on it a couple of times. You guys have a big one coming up here soon. We do. We have an NFL player coming on. It's, it's, uh, it's coming out next week. I'll say that. Oh, so you can't even say. All right. It's big time. I can't. I can't. And I will say he's definitely in the running to be more famous than you as a Slow News
Starting point is 01:03:15 Day guest. I feel good about my appearances. You are a legend. I appreciate that. I went on Mina Kimes's podcast a couple weeks ago and she was talking about slow news day and she was talking about she was in the rotation and i accidentally said that you were my favorite guest and i i kind of blacked out and forgot that i was talking to another frequent guest and uh there's not not a lot you can do in that spot
Starting point is 01:03:41 well hopefully some people start complimenting me on social media because I don't know that she's been supported enough. She's amazing. I'm one of those people. She is. She's amazing. Everybody loves her. So she can handle being ranked number two on Slow News Day.
Starting point is 01:03:58 She is. Okay. Thanks. And the guest tomorrow will be definitely in the running to be just as famous as you guys. All right. Sounds good, Kevin. Thank you. Okay. thanks and and the guest tomorrow will be definitely in the running to be just as famous as you guys all right sounds good kevin thank you okay it was good to talk just some uh straight football there with kevin so please subscribe rate and review as always to the podcast we'll be back on thursday Thank you. you

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