The Ryen Russillo Podcast - Pac-12 Questions, Miami's Rebuild, and Jets Concerns With Bruce Feldman and Kevin Clark | Dual Threat With Ryen Russillo

Episode Date: May 29, 2019

Russillo talks with The Athletic's Bruce Feldman about the Pac-12 conference, including questions surrounding commissioner Larry Scott's salary, its declining revenue, and how it plans to get back on track. They also discuss the 15-year saga of the Miami Hurricanes finally returning to the CFB spotlight, where they went wrong in past seasons, and what it will take before "The U" is officially back (6:34). Then Russillo talks with The Ringer's Kevin Clark to discuss the New York Jets' firing of GM Mike Maccagnan, Sam Darnold's development, the Jets' GM search, and more (29:26). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

hey what's going on guys it's ryan rossillo your host of the dual threat podcast and yeah we took a little break and now we're back and kyle's here shout out to kyle yep uh here's what we're doing we got bruce feldman on the pac-12's woes and a new raise for Commissioner Larry Scott. This is not going to be some sort of a hatchet deal on all that. There's a lot of numbers here, a lot of money flying around for a conference that feels like it's lagging behind others. And what is going on with the Jets? Kevin Clark is going to stop by and give us about 10 minutes on that. We probably should have done another 10 minutes on George Washington because we're both big George Washington bio guys right now. I wanted to cut the mics on. It was good.

I know. I really regret now not keeping Kevin around longer and just talking about George Washington because this is twice that we've nerded out. And again, I didn't know as much until I started reading more about him. George Washington is a really interesting cat. Which is to say, this is

something I've learned about military history as I continue my quest for knowledge. That if you were kicking it back in the 1700s and you wanted to make your mark as a man, there weren't many options for you. Blacksmith? Right? Merchant Marine or whatever? I don't know. Maybe.

Sort of. I mean, you get into it with pirates a little bit. Maybe you make some great produce trades down in the Caribbean. But a lot of guys were just begging to get some sort of officer title, have a regiment, win a battle, and then, like, that was it. That was your Olympic gold medal for, like, the the rest of your life although i don't even really know your olympic gold like is mark spitz just hanging out crushing it still so i i've just there was a guy you know who's who's um washington's one of his right hand guys he had a few

and you know if you crossed him george washington was was not he's not going to put up with it but he had this french guy lafayette who came over and Lafayette was just like, look, can I get named to a commission? And can I have this battle? And then they were, they were fighting at Yorktown and guys were freaking out about like, who was going to get to attack and everybody wanted to attack. And it wasn't just because of bravery. It wasn't just because of country. It was seriously, I want, I need to have some kind of rep. Right. I need rep. I need something that I can be known for so that my life feels like

I've accomplished something. And that's, that's some pretty heady stuff. Imagine having that pressure on you today. Like how can I be assigned to some sort of military advance where I can be a hero? How do I, is there any way I can figure out how to be a war hero by the end of the year? And that would seem really hard to do today. But back then, that's what people did. Well, you know what Revolutionary War soldiers did after they won? They weren't afraid to have a couple pops. Miller Lite, this episode is brought to you by Miller Lite. When game day comes around, there's only one thing on your mind. Winning. Miller Lite is the beer that's brewed to have more taste with only 96 calories and 3.2 grams of carbs.

So you never have to compromise on game day. It's a win-win that means game day will never be the same. Miller Lite. Hold true. We're going to bring in Bruce Feldman of The Athletic, and I want to talk about the Pac-12, because the Pac-12 right now is lagging behind, millions behind, potentially 20 million behind other teams and other conferences

from what their football programs are going to receive annually. Larry Scott in the tax year of 2016, his salary was about $4.8 million. He's got a bump up now in an article coming out earlier this month, $5.3 million a year for Larry Scott. He's double what Delaney makes and Sankey make in the Big Ten and the SEC. His argument is, well, I'm also running the Pac-12 network, a network that seems to never be able to get the distribution they said they were going to get, certainly has not broadened the revenue. There were revenue projections years ago

saying that each team could make between $7 and $10 million a year on the high end and the low end, maybe $3 million from just the Pac-12 network. It hasn't been close to that. And so when asked about his raise and the expenses of the network and the conference, which are way beyond everywhere else, whether it's travel, whether it's renting out the Pac-12 offices and all this stuff has been written about a ton already. So, again, this is not to like, hey, what's going on over there? Like there's there's just legitimate answers to these questions.

Be like, well, yes, we're in San Francisco. Or, yes, we have a bigger travel footprint. Or, yes, we have to do all these things. And there's counters that say, why don't you just have the office in Scottsdale? Why not have the office in Vegas? Why not, you know, find ways to cut costs while this current setup has not been favorable? You look at some of the recruiting stuff and, you know, it's actually better than I thought. You know, one time, you

know, talking to some different coaches, they're like, the SEC has done a better job infiltrating some of the Pac-12 schools. I don't know if that's true or not. It was just something somebody says. Oregon, depending at the rankings, is top six, top seven this year. Washington's 16th. USC's around 20. Stanford's 21. So there's still some of their top programs. The other way I look at conferences too, is I'll look at depth, where you go, how many of these teams could compete or win a national title? And it wouldn't seem impossible. And that's why the SEC's had this run where, although it's thinned out around Bama,

but Georgia, all right, we don't need to go over all that stuff. But you've had Washington. You've had Oregon. And before the playoff got started, you had Stanford at least flirting with getting into a championship game, or in these cases, two teams that have played in playoffs,

Washington and Oregon. So it's definitely something that I look at and go, is this thing heading? Will we look back at the Larry Scott run and go, wow, that didn't work out at all. Or will we look back on it and say, you know what? He had a long-term vision and there was a lot of doubting along the way, especially when you're making that kind of money and you're making that much more

than all of these other commissioners that are making more money for their schools. I don't know the answer to that right now. So to talk more about that, we'll bring in Bruce Feldman from The Athletic. Bruce, I've gone over some of the numbers here for compensation for Larry Scott, the expenses going out, the money coming in. Is this heading toward a dangerous territory for the Pac-12, or is this just cyclical and they're down and the money differentials shouldn't be made to be as big of a deal as they are right now?

You know, Ryan, I think it's somewhere in the middle of that. You know, I don't think it is, like, something that should send people screaming into panic and therapy sessions if you're a Pac-12 fan. But I think it should be really frustrating because—and we'll get to Larry Scott's personal compensation in a second. But so when these figures came out per team—now now some of this is cyclical because at one point, the Pac-12 seemed to have a really good, sweet deal per team. And now, obviously, the Big Ten has pushed way past that where we're talking about $25 million per team, with the exception of Rutgers and, Rutgers and Maryland who are late ads for this. But right now, the Pac-12 is basically where the ACC is at.

Now, I bring up the ACC and they're going into the ACC network now with the TV deal with ESPN. But the ACC just won championships in basketball and football. So it's not to say, you know, oh, my God, they don't have money and they're, they're way behind. I mean, Clemson is certainly not hurting, so it can work. It's just right now we're seeing a gap and some of the numbers are a little tricky to read because, you know, I'll bring up the big 12. The big 12 is a little ahead of the PAC 12 and a little behind the FCC, but the big 12 is a third-party rights deal.

And it gets confusing, to be honest, where Texas and Oklahoma, even West Virginia, I think when you add in the third-party rights deals, which are unique to the Big 12, they're at the SEC level, if not past it. So, you know, if you're a Pac-12 fan, I think the part that is really frustrating is, wait, Larry Scott is making $5.3 million.

And he's making not double, but close to double of what Greg Sankey, the FCC commissioner, is making. So you're looking at it and going, wait a minute. This is tied into the Pac-12 network. And the Pac-12 network has been a real struggle from getting it. We're in Los Angeles. There's two big schools here, including the biggest school in the conference. Most people here can't still get the network. So there's been a lot of mishandling. And I think what this really speaks to is a lot of the decisions and a lot of the quote-unquote leadership from Larry Scott has come across as really tone deaf. And when it comes back to, you know, that expression, keep the main thing, the main thing, the PAC 12, you know, at the highest level doesn't seem to

get that in its leadership, whether it's Larry Scott or the president of the conference, and it is setting them back. There's no doubt about that in my mind. Yeah. The rent is reported at 7 million for an office in San Francisco. And I was reading through all of it. It was saying, well, you know, we did something with Facebook's video page and YouTube content. You're like, okay, well then a lot of people are doing this. So is this really opening you up to the tech world and the ways that it was billed to everybody else? I think the argument against Larry Scott is, well, he makes that much money because, well, I wouldn't say it's an argument against him. His position has been, I'm not only the conference commissioner, I'm the head of our media network as well. But then when you start digging

into the schools had to buy back hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of television properties of their own games from these independent broadcasters so that they'd keep them all under one roof. So when you think about the money that's actually going out per team, it's even less. It's not even close to what Larry Scott pitched these university presidents and these football staffs. So I'm curious how tenuous that feels for Scott in that the last few months, there's been more and more complaints about his spending, his salary. He's doubled Delaney in the last tax year that I was able to find, which seems crazy for the Big Ten commissioner bank, half of what the Pac-12 commissioner is. But is this heading towards something where Larry has to get a huge win here in the media rights deal, which I

think is what, 2024, where if he doesn't do that, doesn't deliver, because I think there's a lot of people feel like he hasn't delivered yet. Right. And I think this speaks to the, uh, you know, some of the leadership of, he has some key PAC 12 presidents that are, that are so loyal to him and in his corner. And when he goes up and speaks in front of these groups, whether it's at a Pac-12 football media day or basketball media day, he is going to hammer the word innovative. That's his buzzword. And I think for a lot of people at the top end of the food chain in the Pac-12, they would rather look smarter than everybody else than competitive. And you can talk about, okay, well, he's the head of this media company. This media company has really struggled to serve the average Pac-12 fan.

And let's be honest, part of this issue is there aren't the passion. Let's not say there aren't any diehard Pac-12 fans, because there are, but they don't have the depth of them that they have in the SEC and the Big Ten especially. So you have a smaller pool. It's not going to be, you know, your USC fans, which are sizable in number when they're winning, but when they're struggling, which they have been, that takes a lot of the steam out of all of this. You know, UCLA, you know, an even smaller percentage of that. You have some, you know, it's a diehard fan base for Oregon and some for Utah football and some for certainly Washington and Arizona basketball. But, you know, if you can't get the product to people, it is going to kind of it's going

to be like a reciprocal thing. It's going to keep coming back to bite you. And, you know, yeah, I get it. It's expensive to live and operate things out in California, but maybe having it in the Bay area,

you know, just from the optics standpoint was probably not the, not the smartest play relative to everybody else is the power brokers in, in the college sports world. And so, um, there's been a lot of head-scratching decisions. And I don't think, just a prediction five years from now,

I don't think they're going to come around and look like they were smarter than everybody else. I just think they had such a different vision. And sometimes you have to go, all right, maybe we need to rethink this and pull back a little bit because it's not getting what we need to get done accomplished. What about the play on the field? Newhaisel has been part of this conference for a long time, and he was quoted in one of these pieces saying, just look at the size gap. The league is getting smaller, meaning the football players themselves and that that's something that puts them at a massive disadvantage and i guess just being around these these campuses like i've visited almost every pac-12 campus now in the last 10 years and living out on the west coast like these are great schools

like these are awesome places and to think that you know they wouldn't be first class and getting the right kind of players in, especially with the population that you have here in some of these areas, the high school kids in Arizona, high school stuff in California. It would surprise me if they couldn't compete, but I guess that's kind of the argument. They're trying to say like, oh, we can't compete financially, so we're not getting the players that we used to get. What do you think of that on the recruiting front? You know, I think that's maybe short-sighted, and I think that's the recruiting front you know i think that that's maybe short-sighted and i i think that's the crutch because if you look at at some of the personnel

here i mean i i aren't prove it fox sports did the paxwell title game it was washington and utah physically those players those on the in the trenches utah can can has linemen as pretty physical and imposing and impressive as pretty much anybody else, with the exception of what Clemson put on the field last year and the level of Alabama. But you look at other places, whether it's the Big Ten or a big chunk of the SEC, they're competitive with that. USC has more than its share of athletes. I mean, in the case of USC, and that's the flagship school, I think they've really struggled with leadership. It's the AD, they've had issues with the president, and it's trickled on down to Clay Helton. And so that's a problem. But I think when you look at the way Mario Cristobal has taken

basically the SEC blueprint in recruiting, he coached under Nick Saban, he recruited for Nick Saban. He knows exactly what the SEC is doing and how they are recruiting. And he has now put like a West Coast flair and it's impacting them. I mean, I think you're going to see Oregon's offensive line could play with anybody that they're going to, you know, they're going to, they obviously inherited Justin Herbert, who was there before Cristobal took over. But I think Oregon is, is right now trying to be like an SEC program in its DNA. And I think that'll pay off. that'll pay off. It's just when you look at some of the rest of the rest of, you know, I think it comes back to the just the visual of UFC being down. Everyone takes their cues from that. And when I look at this league as to where it's headed, think about if you were to rank the top

coaches in college football, I would argue that they probably have four or five of the top 15 coaches in college football. Chris Peterson at Washington, I would put Mike Leach, Chip Kelly, David Shaw, and I would put Kyle Whittingham all of it in the top 15. So it's not like they don't have big, big time coaches. They're paying some of the assistants quite a bit of money. Jimmy Lake, the defensive coordinator at Washington, Nick Saban's tried to hire him. He's still in Seattle. So it's not like they don't, I feel like there's too much generalization going, oh, you know, Nick Saban got Tua out of Hawaii when he should have gone to Oregon or something like that. You can point to some of these things anecdotally, but if you actually look at them on the field, when you look at what Washington has,

when you look at what Oregon is now putting together, when you look at what Utah has, I mean, these are not like, they don't look like group of five teams. They just don't. Same thing with SEC. I just think there's a little bit, same thing with UFC, I mean,

I just think there's a little bit of a different barometer to it. I mean, what Chip Kelly's doing with his big defensive line at UCLA, I think you're going to start to see some of this stuff pay off down the road in the not-too-distant future. I want to ask you about Miami, but first, buckle up, guys. I'm not going very far. I'm in a rush. It's too uncomfortable.

Sometimes I just forget. Don't kid yourself. There's no such thing as a good excuse for not buckling up. If you used any of these excuses or others, you're putting yourself at risk of injury or death. In 2017, more than 10,000 people were unbuckled when they were killed in crashes. That's 51% of people killed in motor vehicle crashes that were not wearing seatbelt. No matter what kind of vehicle you drive, wearing your seatbelt is the best defense in a crash. Even when you sit in the back seat, you still need to buckle up.

That goes for when you ride in taxis and use ride-sharing services, too. Cops are on the lookout and writing tickets, so why take the risk? In 2017 alone, seatbelts saved nearly 15,000 lives. So do the smart thing and buckle up every trip, day or night. Click it or ticket. Want to remind you, support for Dual Threat with Ryan Rusillo comes from CLR. If you're trying to keep a cleaner home for the summer, then you probably already realize it's tough to stay on top of the spills and stains,

whether they be from backyard barbecues or game day viewing parties. But CLR can help make cleaning your home a little easier. CLR gets rid of the gross stuff from soap scum to toilet bowl stains. It dissolves calcium, lime, and rust easily, all using natural ingredients, not harsh chemicals. With other cleaners, you'll scrub and scrub, and you're like, man, I'm just scrubbing away because they don't work the way CLR does. Use it on your bathtub, sink, coffee pot, dishwasher, all over the house, and yes, rest easy knowing it carries the EPA Safer Choice Seal. Go to clrbrands.com today or pick up a

bottle from a retailer near you. CLR, making the world a little cleaner. Okay, before we let you go, I want to talk about your piece in The Athletic. It was incredible about Miami, Manny Diaz down there. And essentially you proposed as many theories as you could based on what people think about the decline of Hurricanes football. And if you could run through just a few of those and then maybe come up, because what I thought was really special about the piece is you presented all those theories and kind of left it for us to decide. decide but um it it's got that new i don't want to say here we go again but it has that feeling of like yep new energy young coach from the area he gets it everyone's on the same page let's go we're going to get this back to miami football so take us through kind of that story and and

where this program has gotten to this point yeah and I know a lot of people are going to kind of roll their eyes. Hey, we've heard this before. I'll say this. I was not believing that Mark Rich, after he kind of fizzled out at Georgia, was going to go there and win a national title at Miami. I just think at Miami compared to Georgia, you're going to have to work even harder if you're going to do it at the University of Miami, especially with, you know, after the way it fizzled out under Randy Shannon, after it got even worse under Al Golden. I think there were some good things that Mark Rick did. And look, the best thing that he did, in addition to raising money for much needed facility improvement, was he had Manny Diaz put a real energy into the defense that had been lacking.

They'd been lacking at UM for a while. But when I talk to a lot of these former UM players and coaches, you get a lot of different theories. I mean, Eric Winston, who played in the NFL for a long time, really smart guy, grew up in Texas, and he kind of rattled off all these things. And it was everything from right you know, right about the time in the mid 2000s, you had Nick Saban, Matt Brown, and all of a sudden now they really did a better job of selling the massive competitive advantage in facilities. And the orange bowl was no more

there. So all of a sudden Miami lost a big chunk of its identity. Then they missed on a lot of evaluation. And the biggest thing he said was just, they missed on so many quarterbacks and some of them were high profile recruits. It wasn't like they weren't getting five star for high four stars, Kyle, right. You know, recruiting guys will remember that name. He was the number one quarterback recruit in the country. He played some, you know, but he, it just didn't pan out. And the position is so much more important now than it was 15 years ago. Some of the other guys, it's fascinating. They will talk about, it's not necessarily these high profile recruits that they bring in. It's really about just guys who are hungry and

ultra competitive. And I think whether it's Alonzo Highsmith, who's now an executive in the NFL and probably the most respected old Miami guy among the Miami guys talking about swagger versus the fake swagger. And I think Miami itself has gotten really twisted into this a lot. And he did a very job. People will read the story in that book. We'll see. Okay. I get it. It's not just the Miami fans who will get it. I think there's a lot of other fans from other programs will go, yeah, this is some of the stuff that pisses me off. When I watched some college athletics, where you're dealing with like a level of entitlement, you know, now that you have quote unquote five star guys and four star guys, Ed Reed, when he came to Miami, this was before really the recruiting ranking star system

was in place, but it was basically between Tulane and Miami for Ed Reed. Well, if you're going to Tulane, you're probably not a four or five star guy. You would be the equivalent of probably a two or three star guy. But the old players at Miami who were in that locker room were like, when he showed up on the visit, they're like, this is the guy we need to have. And I think when they start to see it, you know, Dan Morgan, who's now an executive in the NFL, great player at Miami talked about too, if you have to really, you know, kiss the player's butt to get him to come to Miami, he is the wrong kind of guy for them to take. And he's, you know,

he just, those guys kind of, it's almost like they can recognize it more than some of these other ones. And, you know, just there's the story in this piece about Amari Cooper and the recruitment of him. I mean, I think there's a lot of Miami fans who probably wince when they're hearing this story because this is a kid who grew up a diehard Miami fan. You know, wore Miami gear to school, everything from inner city, uh, Miami. And he didn't, he wasn't much of a prospect as a junior cause he was injured and Luther Campbell and some of the guys who are big in the youth football culture down there, we're trying to get the Miami staff under Al Golden to buy into this kid. And they had him work out basically at Northwestern high school, the whole route tree, Mark Cooper doesn't drop a ball. You know, as one of the into this kid. And they had him work out basically at Northwestern High School,

the whole route tree. Amari Cooper doesn't drop a ball. You know, as one of the coaches who worked there said, that was Amari Cooper. They just said, all right, let's get him to camp. He goes to camp.

He torches everybody. He goes up to Al Golden's offer. He wants to commit. And then Al Golden basically tells him, well, you have a soft offer. A soft offer means you can't commit to it. So this kid then gets kind of his feelings crushed, ends up going to an Alabama camp where Luther Campbell takes a bunch of these kids

in like the two vans and drives them all over the Southeast. He lights it up there. Nick Saban doesn't care whether you're a three-star guy or a no-star guy. He offers them pretty much on the spot. That kid goes on to be obviously an all American great player. And then not only do they, does Miami miss out on this kid? Then they missed out on Calvin Ridley, Calvin Ridley's brother, and now Jerry Judy, who's a great player there now. So it's like basically a bad run of 10 years of receivers from South Florida

that Miami missed out on because of a mis-evaluation. Because I think they looked at him and said, you know what, this kid, his personality wasn't what I think they expected. He didn't seem like, because he's a low-key kid, he didn't seem like he was that enthusiastic about it, I guess, when Al Golden was sitting across from him. And they went in another direction and it burned. I love the part of the story where when, I don't know if it was Dan Morgan or if it was Highsmith,

and they would basically recruit for the team. The players would be recruiting, and then they'd go back to the coaches and be like, this guy's not a hurricane. Like, he's not one of those guys. And it's super easy to say, you know, they've got to get back to that, got to do all these things. I mean, the update, this has been going on for like 15 years. Are they back or not? And even though they reached

a really high ranking coming into this year, um, you could tell right away, we're like, eh, this isn't, this isn't really what you thought it was going to be, but it's probably the best story that I've read on the canes as far as exploring all the different possibilities of why this team is the way they are because it still shouldn't be impossible for them when i think about nebraska i think it's borderline impossible when i think about tennessee getting back to what tennessee was for the longest time i don't know if that's obtainable anymore i don't want to say impossible there people have written off notre dame in the, said that's impossible, and they've certainly got that thing back up to competing,

at least in a championship, not winning. But Miami shouldn't be impossible, but it's felt like it's the longest. It's the longest are they back of anything in sports. And I don't know when it's going to end. Yeah, and I think that the thing that's frustrating, Miami fans, I feel like I joust with them when this comes up. Whenever Miami has a quote-unquote big win or goes on a little bit of a roll, and then all of a sudden it's like everybody in the media rushes out to say, is Miami back? You know what? Miami's not going to be back until there's a parade in mid-January

down in South Florida. That was a team that won national titles because you won a top 10 game or because you beat a Notre Dame team that wasn't, you know, all that great to begin with and blew them out. Those are good wins, but this didn't, this didn't backslide and start fall apart and lose its way overnight. And it's not going to happen over a couple of, over a couple of weeks or a month of good football. It's just, you know, they need a lot of work. They've been god-awful on the offensive line. They do have some talent, but it's not enough to really say it's going to take a couple of years. And people there, especially the fan base, needs to come to terms with that.

And towards what you just said, I agree with you. But, you know, nobody saw Clemson coming coming and now look what Clemson, I mean, Davos Sweeney who thought he was except for the AD there, nobody believed he was going to do anywhere near what he's done. And so, you know, it can happen, but you better have the right leadership and the right head coach. And we'll see many days for people to read the piece. We'll say at the very least, this guy is really smart.

Now does his staff have it and everything else fall into line? We'll see. But, um, you know, it was really interesting, you know, Miami,

a unique animal to cover just because of the personality and all that comes. Awesome to talk with you, man. You can check out Bruce's work on, uh, the athletic, the Miami piece,

and also on Fox. And we can follow you on Twitter at BruceFeldmanCFB. Thanks as always, man. My pleasure. Thanks, Ryan. Okay, we're going to have Kevin Clark here in a second, but Dual Threat is brought to you by Burrow, makers of clever furniture designed for real life. And if your real life is like our real life,

you're set to spend a lot of time spending the sofa the next few months because as nice as it is to see a baseball game, it's much better to see an air-conditioned comfort. Burrow's design means it's easy to move and easy to set up.

It features naturally scratch and stain-resistant fabric, sturdy hardwood frames, soft foam cushions, and a built-in USB charger. It's totally customizable so you can pick from five fabric colors,

three leg finishes, two armrest styles, any length, and add a chase lounge or ottoman. One week shipping is always free and comes with a risk-free 30-day return period. My couch is awesome. That's all I can say. So get yourself one at Burrow right now. Stop what you're doing. It's time to upgrade your sofa to one that actually stands up to your lifestyle. Get $75 off a new sofa and free one week shipping by visiting burrow.com slash dual. That's D-U-A-L and burrow, B-U-R-R-O-W.com slash dual for $75 off a new sofa. Thanks again to Burrow for supporting the show. And yes, it's sitting on the couch that I really,

thanks again to Burrow for supporting the show. And yes, it's sitting on the couch that I really, really love. I know that this has been kind of the extra bonus post everything. The NFL season is supposed to die down right now, but that's not the way it's worked out with Jets. They get rid of Mike McCaggan,

the GM. Adam Gase has had a couple of interesting interviews since then. I, what, what's the fuck? Has Adam Gase had a normal interview? Starting with the weird eye thing. It's been a rough go for him right well how weird is it that like part of me always appreciates honesty but then it's like don't be so honest about the levion bell contract

like you're this head coach levion is not exactly like you know you're gonna have to massage that relationship mike tomlin couldn't make it work, and now Adam Gase. Maybe this is the way in. Maybe you just piss him off so much that then he flips back around again and becomes a good teammate. So how does this happen? How does this whole thing happen? Well, I mean, you have to, the short answer, the one-minute interview here is the Jets. The Jets happened.

More broadly, they made a series of mistakes that were just ridiculous. I think you first go to why they even hired Mike McKagan. They listened to Charlie Casserly a couple years ago who basically just says, hire this guy I know. Never a good hiring strategy. But they've done that before too. Didn't Parcells do that with Tannenbaum? I mean, yes.

And Tannenbaum, I think, is a much better GM and a much better leader than Mike McKagan was. Mike McKagan was just a historically bad drafter. I mean, the thing that was circulating about how bad his drafts were in 2015, there's only one guy still on the team. All the rest of the guys were cut. Almost everybody, even from 2017,

had that draft class gone already. Already. So he was the draft tape grinder who couldn't actually get good draft picks. Not a good strategy if you want to. And then he's apparently not a great. He puts a ton of work in. He's just not very good. Not very good.

Not a great communicator. So I'm not really sure why he made it. I think that I don't know why you hire Adam Gase in that situation. I think, you know, the number going around the last couple weeks from the analytics guys, he's really good, relatively speaking, in one score games, which is never consistent. Without those, he has quite a poor career record. He didn't really solve Ryan Tannehill in any meaningful way. And I think that firing Mike McCagden was the right move. It was just when they did it. Why in the world would you let him give big money to a running back,

which is just a ridiculous notion in the first place, and also an off-ball linebacker for the C.J. Mosley contract? Mike O'Donnell is one of the strangest in recent memory. So it was the right move at the wrong time, and now I don't know if Adam Gase is the guy you want to give power to. I mean, if you had just fired McKagan and told a coach, you get personnel power, you could have probably gotten a much better coach than Adam Gase. And that's something that's sought after in the NFL. Guys want that personnel power.

So I don't, the whole thing, I mean, listen, their owner is working in England right now. Chris Johnson has taken over and I, you know, people thought he was going to be a little better. Apparently he's not. The whole ownership setup is clearly not working. They've got to do something drastic. Okay. So the sad part about this is that, you know, depending on the week last year with all the rookie QBs, and Baker ended up, you know, blowing everybody away. Lamar had a nice little run for the team's success.

But Darnold, in the very beginning of this whole thing, was like, oh, look at this, look at this. How much concern do you have about his development, knowing that, you know what, normally it doesn't happen. Like, hey, let's fire everybody, and then maybe fire somebody else here again soon to start off your career. Well, so the Jets are going to go down as the worst as far as taking a good young quarterback and building around him in this era. Because I think we've seen some of the models what the Bears have done at Trubisky.

I think golf with the Rams is always going to be the model. But teams are winning with even above-average young quarterbacks and then building around them with the cap space. They have a plan. They have a head coach who can do this. The Jets, I don't know if they have a head coach. They certainly don't have the plan. They've tied up their cap space now.

There's just nothing they can do going forward, really, in the next two years to solve this. So all of a sudden, 2018 is over. 2019 is a write-off. 2020, I don't know if you can write the ship. Now you're looking at year four of Sam Darnold. Well, that's when he's due for an extension. So year five is when he becomes quite expensive with the fifth year option. So you're looking at essentially a one-year window to solve this thing. And we don't know who their GM is. We don't know if they're a good enough job to get a Joe Douglas or even a Daniel Jeremiah.

If you're Joe Douglas and you're Howie's number two right now and you're a powerful number two, you're known as a super scout, why are you taking the Jets job exactly? Why aren't you rolling the dice that the Eagles are going to be pretty good this year and then next year get your pick of jobs? I just don't understand why he would take that job.

Okay, so there's not really much else to add to this then. I mean, it's ridiculous. I want to expand on one thing that I've just been really harping on, which is- Please take the floor. The Hackenberg pick was disqualifying for me and you can't recover from it. It almost reminds me, people get, Bucs fans get a little angry at me for talking about Jason Light sometimes. And I really don't think he's a very good GM, but I also think the Aguayo pick is the kicker, is the southeastern version of the Hackenberg pick, which is if you make a pick that bad,

and that's what your tape said, and that's what your scout said, that's all that stuff, you're not going to get dropped. It's over. I hate to go sort of no country for old men here, but if the rule led you to this, what use was the rule, right?

If you're the tape grinder, and this is your, it wasn't like it was first year. He'd taken Bryce Petty the year before the whole thing with McKagan was he couldn't hit on mid-round picks and he wasted two on two of the worst quarterback prospects in recent

years. So if you're Sam Darnold, if you get the third pick and if you trade up to get the third quarterback of your tenure, you're not very good at your job. And so I think that McKagnon is going to be a cautionary tale on how not to build a team in this kind of CBA era. Petty was what, fourth round? And he was, listen, I don't want to bomb on anybody.

He's out of the league, didn't do much, but that was, you may know this from being around both pro and college people, that that was, you may know this from the, from being around both pro and college people that that pick was a little, was a little bit laughed at, um, because the Bryles and he was seen as such a product of the system, um, that a fourth round pick on him was really high. No, I was told nothing they do is applicable to Sunday. Nothing, nothing, not one thing. They were like it's the most like of all the things that you'll see teams do on saturdays theirs is the least

connected to what a team would do on sunday i asked bryce petty once because i was reporting this a couple of years ago and one of the coaches had told me that bryce petty did not know what a mike linebacker was and i went to slept slept to Florham Park and it's all awkward and I said, did you know what the Mike Linebacker was? And he was like, well, why would I have to know that? That's weird. And then kind of separate from this,

he said, this is not to me, this is to other people that he had to play Madden a little bit to kind of this is after his Baylor experience to sort of get up to speed. Really nice guy. people that he had to play Madden a little bit to kind of, this is after his Baylor experience, to sort of get up to speed. Really nice guy. Met him twice.

Oh yeah, no, super nice guy. And super candid. And I would say that in some ways hurt him in this regard because he was just

too honest. Yeah. He was the Adam Gase of his day. Just way too much honesty. I didn't think I was going to be doing a ton of Jets today,

but I wanted to just, hey it's a dual threat podcast we can do whatever we want do I have to ask anything else? no, oh Gerald McCoy is he still good? yeah but is Sue good? Sue disappeared for huge stretches of last season, I was looking at the

PFF ratings, October he had three games in the 50s, which is really bad imagine their Madden ratings, three games in the 50s which is really bad imagine they're maddened ratings you're in the 50s that's bad uh like a game score sure yeah right and game game grade and he showed up in the playoffs well i don't know if the bucks are gonna need him to show up in the play i don't know if they're gonna do the whole roger clemens thing where he just gets to show up and when he wants to the bucks need to win the whole Roger Clemens thing where he just gets to show up when he wants to. The Bucs need to win games. So I like Sue.

I think he's a good player. I think he's a good player in the right system, but I don't know about that one. Excited for football? No. Really? I'm in. I still have the NBA Finals.

I still have the NBA Draft. This was the weekend for me. I binged a lot of podcasts I'd missed the past couple months, and now I'm just... Binge mode? Binge mode on NFL podcast. The Schefter podcast and the Daniel Jeremiah podcast.

I binge them like they were like Chernobyl. This is a little downtime for you though. This should be It starts. It's now.

The time is now. This is now? We have our NFL The league is done. No, but that's the time that you work when they're not working. They're just messing around.

You can get these guys on the phone right now. They're Ritz Marina Del Rey. That's not even a hotel, I don't think. But it seems like the kind of place that they would be at. You should just show up to Marina Del Rey and be like, hey, where's the nice hotel where the NFL guys are? I know they're at the Santa Monica, I think. The Lowe's? I would bet you NFL guys would? I know. They're at the, they're at Santa Monica, I think. The Lowe's?

They seem like, I would bet you NFL guys would go to Lowe's. Yeah. I mean, they're all, they're all in various Westside places

and all the, the, the players run houses in West Hollywood. All the players are here. Oh yeah. It's unbelievable. A couple years ago,

I was doing a Von Miller story and I met him in Venice and then I had to call a bunch of teammates and every time I got one on the phone, they were within like five blocks of me

they're like where are you right now I go around Sunset Boulevard it's like okay me too they're here I can't believe how many NFL guys are here

during the off season wouldn't you be here well I moved here too but to be near to be more near right I screwed up though

like Dan Quinn in the off season yep Gus Bradley he lives here full time he's like you no I ran into him he's a South Bay

what is he in the South Bay yeah yeah you could have been nicer what what's so funny it's just kind of funny oh that it's true

yeah I had a mutual friend and you know just a bunch of guys ran into each other Gus Gus was great man that's great stuff yeah that's great stuff no so we have our NFL planning meeting tomorrow I had a mutual friend and, you know, just a bunch of guys ran into each other. Gus was great, man.

That's great stuff. Yeah. That's great stuff. No, so we have our NFL planning meeting tomorrow. Like, this is the beginning of, at the ringer, this is the beginning of NFL season. Yeah, see, I can't handle that. I can't handle that. I still have, I got a championship to win here.

I got the draft. And then it's going to be the most absurd couple weeks of free agency ever. Because this is, it's just going to be nuts because of terrence ross yeah and vucevic all right that's kevin clark he has he has an orlando magic project he actually is working on we have to let him go thank you thank you ryan hey thanks for checking out dual threat we'll be back again for the next few weeks right here as part of the ringer podcast so make sure you subscribe rate and review you