Speaker 1: The volume.
Speaker 2: All right.
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Speaker 3: for an hour plus. John Middlecoff, former NFL scout, has
Speaker 3: his own podcasts three and Out. It is Sunday. There's
Speaker 3: a lot to talk about. Listen, Let's let's start with
Speaker 3: a non competitive game. Rams forty two, Niners twenty. It's
Speaker 3: just amazing. The Rams are the least penalized team in
Speaker 3: the league. No penalties in this This is one of
Speaker 3: those things when I used to cover the Patriots, right,
Speaker 3: I was when I was on the East Coast. They
Speaker 3: went years and I was always like, nobody fumbles for
Speaker 3: New England and I used to tell friends, I'm like,
Speaker 3: is it a stickham thing? People would field on the ball?
Speaker 3: An they're well coached the Rams for the second year
Speaker 3: of the least penalized team, you go into a heated
Speaker 3: rivalry game, no penalties, no turnovers. My take is obviously
Speaker 3: the Niners were all banged up, but it is so efficient.
Speaker 3: You can see the coaching with the Rams. That's what
Speaker 3: I feel like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the forty nine ers, their defense is
Speaker 2: a mass unit. But when you play a mass unit
Speaker 2: and you're a good team, you score in every drive
Speaker 2: and that's essentially what the Rams did. And Stafford is
Speaker 2: a dominant player, right now. I mean, he's a legitimate
Speaker 2: He's probably had some years. I have to really dive in,
Speaker 2: but this feels like his highest level of play consistently
Speaker 2: week in week out, especially when you factor in his age.
Speaker 2: Remember McVeigh all offseason said, listen, we value what because
Speaker 2: of our money situation, we are underpaying Matt Stafford and
Speaker 2: we know it. They approach this offseason with him much
Speaker 2: different than they did years ago with the golf situation.
Speaker 2: They were just transparent about it. They're like, we know
Speaker 2: we technically have to underpay him. We know he's better
Speaker 2: than what we're He's maying forty million dollars a year.
Speaker 2: I mean, Trevor Lawrence makes more than him, right, Tua
Speaker 2: makes more than him, Perty makes more than him. So
Speaker 2: he is Pukah is an incredible talent and and him
Speaker 2: have that. He has like a Rogers level rapport with.
Speaker 3: Him immediately immediately he had no training camp. I mean,
Speaker 3: give me a break.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well yeah, I forgot about that because the back
Speaker 2: didn't work. So you try they are. It feels like
Speaker 2: we're on a collision course right now. We're recording this
Speaker 2: obviously before the Monday night game, so we'll see the
Speaker 2: Eagles and the Packers. But I would say the Rams
Speaker 2: in Seattle look like they're playing at a really high level.
Speaker 2: The forty nine ers offense actually is playing at a
Speaker 2: really high level. It's just defense that they're rolling out
Speaker 2: me and you, and they got no chance to stop
Speaker 2: a good team.
Speaker 3: I was gonna say, if you looked at the box
Speaker 3: score and didn't look at the score and watch the game, Niners,
Speaker 3: move the ball. I'll say this about Mac Jones. You know,
Speaker 3: Mac Jones is a big, sturdy kid. I think he
Speaker 3: throws a really nice ball. He's not super athletic, but
Speaker 3: like I get when I watch him, like I get
Speaker 3: why he was a great high school college and a
Speaker 3: pro bowler. Like Mac throws a real ball. He makes
Speaker 3: good decisions, tight spiral. You know, he moved out and
Speaker 3: threw a touchdown pass, you know, scrambling to a tight end.
Speaker 3: It's like I would have no problem as a bridge
Speaker 3: quarterback for a couple of years going with Mac Jones
Speaker 3: if I was an NFLGM or a coach. He's one
Speaker 3: of the better bridge guys in a law and to
Speaker 3: me in a while.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd even argue he's probably better than that. You know, Like,
Speaker 2: clearly you watch Sam Darnold, his physical traits are that
Speaker 2: of a guy that was drafted really high in any draft.
Speaker 2: Quarterback inflation are back in the nineties. Mac doesn't have
Speaker 2: those physical attributes. But he's an NFL starting quarterback. But
Speaker 2: he's on a two year contract. Count did you see
Speaker 2: the clip with Brady when they asked him on the
Speaker 2: pregame show about you know Mac Jones and he said, well,
Speaker 2: once upon a time, you know, you can't not go
Speaker 2: to Mac Jones the way he's playing. And I found
Speaker 2: myself in a situation a long time ago, and I
Speaker 2: look at me now, I'm probably not here if I wasn't,
Speaker 2: and I just went. I actually don't think it's that
Speaker 2: controversial to say Pretty's tow doesn't work. He can't even
Speaker 2: dress for games. Mac Jones is the quarterback for the
Speaker 2: entire season. Like, I don't expect Perdy to play, and
Speaker 2: if he does, he'll immediately just reinjure his toe. That's
Speaker 2: what happened LT. That's the injury he has. He's got
Speaker 2: a unique injury. It's not one of those things that
Speaker 2: just heals. He's never gonna be one hundred percent. So
Speaker 2: if he's compromised. Mac Jones is keep playing to me,
Speaker 2: Mac Jones plays the rest of the season. And you know,
Speaker 2: the crazy thing is, Colin, we're not that far away
Speaker 2: from the Bears and the forty nine. Ers play in
Speaker 2: about four or five weeks, and that could potentially be
Speaker 2: for the seventh seed. Now the Niners, they play the Cards,
Speaker 2: the Titans, the Browns. Remember we talked about at the
Speaker 2: beginning of the season, the Patriots and the Niners. There's
Speaker 2: the Bear schedule gets a little more difficult, Packers a
Speaker 2: couple of times, the Steelers, even the Vikings, I think
Speaker 2: next week in Minnesota, so the Niners, but they all
Speaker 2: they play each other. So if the Bears can just
Speaker 2: kind of hold serve, we could have a pseudo, you know,
Speaker 2: December playoff game for that seventh seed Niners Bears, which
Speaker 2: would be pretty fun. It'd be I'm also the Mac
Speaker 2: Jones thing. Let's say you could trade him this offseason.
Speaker 2: I think he's too valuable to the forty nine. He
Speaker 2: makes no money, He's on a two year, seven million
Speaker 2: dollar contract, and perty is, let's face it, he ripped
Speaker 2: up his arm. Granted that was the last game of
Speaker 2: the season, but if that happens in October. He missed
Speaker 2: the season this year. I mean, onces he goain to
Speaker 2: end up playing two or three games. Mac Jones value
Speaker 2: to the forty nine ers, I'd argue, is more valuable
Speaker 2: unless you're getting like a first round pick, which you're
Speaker 2: probably not. I'm not giving them away. I'm just holding
Speaker 2: him for the next this year, next year until perty
Speaker 2: proves that he can stay on the field.
Speaker 3: Oh and the Niners will get calls on Matt Jones.
Speaker 2: And they'll say and Kyle, Kyle's been open about it.
Speaker 2: He wanted to take him, and then I think as
Speaker 2: the process went on, he kind of went to the
Speaker 2: guy with in quotes more upside. But there's no way
Speaker 2: Kyle does like him. Now. You know he's well today,
Speaker 2: he's just slink. He didn't have incompletions, I mean hitting
Speaker 2: guys on the hill, and beside Kittle and McCaffrey, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of DeMarcus Robinson's and Kendrick Bourne. He's not
Speaker 2: throwing to Jerry Rice and John Taylor out there.
Speaker 3: Colin no, no, I mean I'm impressed with mac Jones.
Speaker 3: And the other thing we saw in the late window
Speaker 3: when raw usters get depleted, which they do November on
Speaker 3: elite quarterbacks Golf Stafford and look at the way late
Speaker 3: window Darnald blowout wins when you have a b quarterback
Speaker 3: and Mac, I'm telling you max If Max a backup,
Speaker 3: he's the best backup in the league. To me, he's
Speaker 3: a he's a bridge or a franchise guy. And he
Speaker 3: struggled to compete today. So what you saw in the
Speaker 3: late window, this is something I've been on now for years. John.
Speaker 3: The bottom of the NFL by November looks like the
Speaker 3: bottom of the NBA. It's unwatchable because the league is
Speaker 3: so quarterback dependent when if you don't have a star quarterback,
Speaker 3: because everybody's I mean the Rams are lucky, they don't
Speaker 3: get penalties, they don't get hurt. I mean, nobody's hurt,
Speaker 3: Buy and large. Everybody's banged up right now. Everybody's dinged up.
Speaker 3: The Packers are dinged up, the Niners are dinged up.
Speaker 3: You know, it's just the way the league is. It
Speaker 3: really helps to have a horse quarterback. And you saw
Speaker 3: it today. So you know, Rams in a blowout win
Speaker 3: forty to twenty six as we went on the air,
Speaker 3: and that game wasn't quite done. I want to talk
Speaker 3: about the Bears for a second. So Chicago beats New
Speaker 3: York twenty four to twenty and so it was Kayleb
Speaker 3: Williams and Jackson Dart, and Jackson Dart out played him
Speaker 3: for the first three quarters. But there is something I've
Speaker 3: said this about Kayleb Williams multiple times. John he doesn't
Speaker 3: get hurt and he doesn't throw interceptions. Jackson Dart gets
Speaker 3: hurt a lot, and he'll throw picks. Now Jackson, I
Speaker 3: thought he plays with a ton of confidence. He throws
Speaker 3: a nice ball. Jackson played really really well. He had
Speaker 3: a couple of touchdown runs. One was a twenty four
Speaker 3: yard run. It was a big time run. Both those
Speaker 3: quarterbacks can really way above average movement, way above average.
Speaker 3: Now again, Caleb had a great fourth quarter. But when
Speaker 3: I watched the game, and you have to watch the
Speaker 3: whole game, there's becoming an issue with Jackson Dart. He's
Speaker 3: blue tenttonent. He's getting banged up a lot. This is
Speaker 3: my brock Purty thing. If you're a little smaller or
Speaker 3: you play with a lot of confidence. Baker Mayfield used
Speaker 3: to do that. First couple of years. He played with
Speaker 3: more confidence than he should have. Somebody would pick him off.
Speaker 3: He'd square them up. It's like, bro, you're a quarterback,
Speaker 3: You're not a free safety.
Speaker 1: Would it worry you?
Speaker 3: The Jackson Dart concussion today, the constant blue tent visits
Speaker 3: and the injuries.
Speaker 2: I think it worries me. With all these young quarterbacks,
Speaker 2: they all have a style. You know, I would say
Speaker 2: Caleb Williams style is the same thing. He's just built
Speaker 2: more like a like a tank. They all scramble around
Speaker 2: and run around. I mean, Jaden Daniels nowhere to be found.
Speaker 2: Where did he get hurt running? You know? I mean
Speaker 2: this is the new age. We watch football every Saturday
Speaker 2: for four plus months and it's fantastic. But they're all
Speaker 2: moving around. So back in the day, Peyton Manning, Tom
Speaker 2: Brady one, all those guys are huge. The quarterbacks now
Speaker 2: are smaller. I mean they're definitely smaller, but they move around.
Speaker 2: To me, the Jackson Dart the play that he got
Speaker 2: injured on, the one that he fumbled, it was like
Speaker 2: a quarterback power which had worked earlier in the game.
Speaker 2: So when you're calling those plays and the guy's name's
Speaker 2: not Cam Newton, you know this is the NFL. You
Speaker 2: know he got rocked by like three guys, And I
Speaker 2: mean there were a lot of plays. The strength of
Speaker 2: Caleb was on full display today. How many sacks did
Speaker 2: you break out of? I actually think there's an element
Speaker 2: that it's like, I'm not gonna sound critical, but he
Speaker 2: almost throws too hard. There were so many balls that
Speaker 2: were dropped by those guys throughout the game. It's probably
Speaker 2: you know you're there, right, how cold is it in Chicago?
Speaker 2: You probably can't feel your hands. Balls are probably I
Speaker 2: bet some of those guys are gonna wake up in
Speaker 2: the morning with sore hands. But on the balls where
Speaker 2: Jackson Dart was completing him, it was more rollout lobs.
Speaker 2: It's hard to complete. The Brett farv Farvest players used
Speaker 2: to talk about this in Green Bay, like it is
Speaker 2: hard to yes in December and November, and I just thought, like,
Speaker 2: it's not that Rome is a bad player, but you
Speaker 2: catch that. I would say Caleb Williams has right now
Speaker 2: as strong of an arm as anyone. In the end,
Speaker 2: he led a couple rip today where you're is like,
Speaker 2: that's Josh Allen, if not stronger, it was Jesus.
Speaker 3: How about he rolled right?
Speaker 2: I was impressed. I've been hard on him. I thought
Speaker 2: I was impressed today with how he played in the
Speaker 2: weather too.
Speaker 3: He rolled right. He threw a ball to Dj Moore
Speaker 3: in the end zone. He caught it, but he was
Speaker 3: out of bounds. John. It was forty yards. I swear
Speaker 3: to god, it was a line drive to left field.
Speaker 3: It was about as high as the shortstop. It was
Speaker 3: a freaking rope in a windy, cold environment, and DJ Moore,
Speaker 3: to his credit, caught it, but it was out of bounds.
Speaker 3: His the word I always use with Caleb, and I'd
Speaker 3: never used it with any quarterback before, is just horsepower.
Speaker 3: He is a V eight. I mean it is he is.
Speaker 3: And here's the air thing. The knock on him Caleb
Speaker 3: is he holds the ball too long. But I was
Speaker 3: thinking about this today. He doesn't throw picks, so in
Speaker 3: his mind is yeah, I'm gonna hold it longer than
Speaker 3: other guys because my escapability outside of Lamar Jackson is
Speaker 3: probably second best in the league. So first of all,
Speaker 3: I'm stronger than Lamar Jackson. So if I do get hit,
Speaker 3: I mean he rolls.
Speaker 2: You can't if your breaks like a younger Russ Wisley.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or big ben where a defensive player gets on
Speaker 3: his shoulder and he just brushes him off. So I
Speaker 3: think a lot of him holding the ball is I
Speaker 3: just trust that I'm going to escape. And you know,
Speaker 3: I watched it a couple of times today. When he
Speaker 3: had that big run down the sideline, I'm like, if
Speaker 3: he was a running back, you wouldn't want to size
Speaker 3: him up if you were a safety.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's a big dude.
Speaker 2: I remember we did this maybe like week two and one.
Speaker 2: Thing that jumped out to me, you know, because last
Speaker 2: year their games were just so I mean they had
Speaker 2: what like a ten game losing streak. I mean, they
Speaker 2: didn't matter bad. You watch him this year. He is
Speaker 2: way more athletic than I think people thought coming out. Also,
Speaker 2: you know, when you're judging him against Arizona and Arizona
Speaker 2: State and Colorado right in college, you see him against
Speaker 2: these NFL guys, He's running faster than them. Now. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm not saying he's Lamar Jackson in the open field,
Speaker 2: but he is way faster than I expected.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: I thought he kind of won them the game down
Speaker 2: the strets today. He may he did play after a
Speaker 2: huge play four It flipped when dark gets hurt. Russell Wilson,
Speaker 2: who's just man, it's hard to come in in a
Speaker 2: game where it's freezing cold, but god.
Speaker 1: He looks terrible.
Speaker 3: So Caleb's fourth game winning drive in six weeks. And
Speaker 3: my whole life, I have watched the Bears lose games
Speaker 3: like they're winning. And this, by the way, it's different.
Speaker 3: Denver's winning. But the quarterback plays awful. The quarterback play
Speaker 3: with Chicago's wildly dynamic. And what's interesting, Caleb's gotten better
Speaker 3: late in games. He may not be as good on
Speaker 3: the script that he was in the first four weeks.
Speaker 3: Like now he's doing stuff on his own. And I
Speaker 3: mean right now this season, in the fourth day, he
Speaker 3: had seventy seven yards passing, a passing touchdown, one hundred
Speaker 3: and nine passer rating, fifty two yards rushing, and a
Speaker 3: rushing touchdown. Okay, and again that's not the script, that's
Speaker 3: the opposite of script. Those were crucial drives to win
Speaker 3: the game with a ton of pressure. Yeah, I think, well, I.
Speaker 1: I think he's a hit.
Speaker 3: I listen, winning games is like today I watched the
Speaker 3: Colts ough, God drove me crazy. They won the game.
Speaker 3: This is that's why with analytics. Sometimes I'm like, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna get points sometimes not the touchdown. I need to
Speaker 3: win the game so we all keep our mortgage right.
Speaker 2: Well, well, to me, the Bears game, if that had
Speaker 2: been a probably its priority in Chicago. But let's say
Speaker 2: it's a seventy five degree November early November game. You know,
Speaker 2: perfect weather, let's even say like sixty. I like, well,
Speaker 2: the Giants are terrible when it's freezing cold. That makes
Speaker 2: the game very difficult. I don't care who you're playing.
Speaker 2: I'm sure you saw some of that Wisconsin. You know,
Speaker 2: Washington game. I owe an Oregon game. It is hard
Speaker 2: to play in those environments. No one can feel their hands,
Speaker 2: hard to breathe. I have way more respect, Like I
Speaker 2: don't judge scores. You know you're not gonna hit many
Speaker 2: explosive plays in the passing game. What is all? But
Speaker 2: you know, if you go back and I saw it
Speaker 2: firsthand because they played the Niners when Lafour got there
Speaker 2: and they resurrected Rogers' career, they were playing these home
Speaker 2: games in Green Bay. It's freezing cold, so your vaunted
Speaker 2: pass attack does not work as well. And you know,
Speaker 2: University of Washington has one of the best wide receivers
Speaker 2: in the league, one of the best quarterbacks in the country.
Speaker 2: They could not operate. They have a great offense, it
Speaker 2: doesn't function. Or you know, Oregon has NFL players everywhere,
Speaker 2: they couldn't come function. So it's like, I just go, hey,
Speaker 2: if you got to win a game thirteen to ten,
Speaker 2: I actually think and it's an awesome Listen, if you're
Speaker 2: a Bears fan, you apologize that nobody about winning games.
Speaker 2: After the last the Giants, this thing I defended probably
Speaker 2: three or four weeks ago. I'm like, listen, he went
Speaker 2: all in on this quarterback. He was right, right, I mean,
Speaker 2: there is if you just pull gms right now, I
Speaker 2: think thirty two of them would take Jackson Dart over
Speaker 2: cam Ward today. Now their careers aren't written, but today
Speaker 2: Brian Daboll was right about the quarterback he liked. Problem
Speaker 2: is his team. I mean that's I think I read
Speaker 2: the Day of stat that that's his fourth game in
Speaker 2: which he had a second half lead of ten plus
Speaker 2: points and obviously he's had now multiple double digit leads
Speaker 2: in the fourth quarter in which they employed I mean
Speaker 2: today he kicked the field goal they had twelve men
Speaker 2: on the field, but Russell's in the game, not Dart.
Speaker 2: He declines the penalty and takes the points instead of
Speaker 2: just getting the first down because and listen, I thought like, hey,
Speaker 2: you don't want to risk fumbling. You're up twenty to ten.
Speaker 2: How are the Bears going to score? But then it
Speaker 2: bit him in the ass. And there were reports, you know,
Speaker 2: local radio people have connections to ownership that said the
Speaker 2: ownership was close after the Denver Bronco game. And this feels,
Speaker 2: you know, you're up twenty to ten, you're cruising. Maybe
Speaker 2: they give him a little break because darts in the tent.
Speaker 2: But man's it's hard to it's hard to kind of
Speaker 2: fend off the arrows, Colin, when you keep having these
Speaker 2: devastating losses.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's nothing on these New York football teams. It's
Speaker 3: just it's just it's a football swamp. Like I think
Speaker 3: people just go to drown in these places.
Speaker 2: I think didn't have one hundred yards today total and
Speaker 2: they won. Didn't total running, hand passing.
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Speaker 3: Jonathan Taylor. Wow was he great? Went to Berlin, carried
Speaker 3: the Colts on his back two hundred and forty four
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Speaker 3: MA Crispy Miami thirty Buffalo thirteen. It was sixteen nothing
Speaker 3: Dolphins at half. An interesting number is Josh Allen had
Speaker 3: three point five to three seconds to throw. That's his
Speaker 3: highest since twenty eighteen. Nobody's open, so they didn't make
Speaker 3: a big move at the trade deadline, and I think
Speaker 3: everybody thought they should probably add a piece because Kansas
Speaker 3: City's defense but they had ninety yards at half. They
Speaker 3: didn't have they didn't pick up a first down on
Speaker 3: third in the first half. And this is a Miami
Speaker 3: team we thought quit three weeks ago. We always talk
Speaker 3: about quarterbacks. You get until the second year, Thanksgiving, second year.
Speaker 3: I think we've just got to be brutally honest with
Speaker 3: Sean McDermott here. It's not just Kansas City. There's just
Speaker 3: too many games where you're just like, I mean, Buffalo
Speaker 3: should never look like that. Ever, they should never look
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 2: I understand in college when you have a two top
Speaker 2: ten teams play each other, and then the following week
Speaker 2: you're playing a two win team and you're tied at halftime,
Speaker 2: Like these are nineteen year old guys. This is a
Speaker 2: team that's now for the last five years been one
Speaker 2: of the top what two or three teams in the
Speaker 2: entire league.
Speaker 3: And they've got older players here. I mean, they've got
Speaker 3: a lot of twenty seven, twenty eight, twenty nine year olds.
Speaker 2: The coach has been there, I think since twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: Josh has now been the starter for a long time.
Speaker 2: It's not just on Sean, it's also you know, the quarterback.
Speaker 2: You know Peyton Manning, Tom Brady. They take a lot
Speaker 2: of that responsibility as well. So today was embarrassing. I
Speaker 2: mean it truly well it was. It should have been
Speaker 2: fourteen nothing. I think the kicker missed an extra point.
Speaker 2: It was fourteen nothing or thirteen nothing for you even
Speaker 2: blinked two had a couple. He threw a beautiful touchdown
Speaker 2: pass to Jalen Waddle, yes, and it was like, okay,
Speaker 2: fourteen nothing or thirteen nothing. Bill starts slow. I've seen
Speaker 2: them happen and then ended up winning thirty five to
Speaker 2: twenty or something, and they never got out of the
Speaker 2: malaise and it started raining. It was probably human and
Speaker 2: they just look lifeless. Josh threw one of the worst
Speaker 2: interceptions I've ever seen him throw. I don't know if
Speaker 2: he's on the wrong page with the wider You just
Speaker 2: threw it right to the wide receipt or to the cornerback.
Speaker 2: They had an awful fumble early in the game when
Speaker 2: they were driving. They just looked lost. And that's the
Speaker 2: type game when your main rival, now who's back, is
Speaker 2: winning and now has a lead, kind of a commanding
Speaker 2: lead because they already beat you and their scheduled so
Speaker 2: easy so they're not going away. Andy, you just look
Speaker 2: big picture, this is going to be the worst team
Speaker 2: of the Verbel Era for the next couple of years
Speaker 2: when you factor in how young it is. Right, you
Speaker 2: just listened to a couple of guys that just started
Speaker 2: playing their left tackle. It's his rookie year. Their quarterback
Speaker 2: is his second year. This is the first year of
Speaker 2: the coaching staffs together. So like their ros pointing up,
Speaker 2: and I think it kind of reflects that the Bills
Speaker 2: can really get up for the Chiefs. And for whatever reason,
Speaker 2: I remember hearing like Houston Rockets, maybe because Kenny Smith say,
Speaker 2: you know, the sad part is right when we got
Speaker 2: good Jordan retired. They could never stop a keep and
Speaker 2: we always played the Bulls well and if we ever
Speaker 2: saw them, we would have stopped that streak because they
Speaker 2: would have had no shot because they had no center.
Speaker 2: We were a team that we played them really well.
Speaker 2: And some in basketball it happens a lot, right, your
Speaker 2: matchup football kind of happens sometimes, but if you're good
Speaker 2: enough whatever, for whatever reason, the Bills match up because
Speaker 2: their pass rush is good. They treat that game in
Speaker 2: the regular season like the Super Bowl. They just look
Speaker 2: like the best team in the league when they play
Speaker 2: the Chiefs, yep, before and after then they look much
Speaker 2: more pedestrian. Today though, was I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 2: I felt like it was one of the more embarrassing
Speaker 2: performances of the Allen Sean McDermott little air or I
Speaker 2: think it may be the most.
Speaker 3: I thought maybe they lost a few years ago at
Speaker 3: home on the opener to the Steelers and they were
Speaker 3: a favorite, and I was like, what in the hell
Speaker 3: is that? I thought that game against the Saints this
Speaker 3: year it was competitive. I was like, Oh, what would
Speaker 3: bother me today? Is that Miami in the first half
Speaker 3: average six and a half yards to play. So in
Speaker 3: my take is it would be one thing if the
Speaker 3: offence sputtered your defensive coach, John, I've been on this forever.
Speaker 3: What do you do with your side of the ball?
Speaker 3: That wasn't just Josh Allen like that defense had no energy.
Speaker 3: That defense, I mean it just they generated this incredible
Speaker 3: pass rush against Kansas City and really, I mean two
Speaker 3: is one of the easiest guys to rush in the league,
Speaker 3: and he had time to throw. They ran the ball.
Speaker 2: Is in New England? Are you taking New England. As
Speaker 2: we said here today, do you think New England.
Speaker 3: New England's got the better coach. I think New England
Speaker 3: and now with Williams and Trayvon Henderson, it's like, oh,
Speaker 3: I feel like New England now is on the up,
Speaker 3: like they're an AS sending team. I don't think Buffalo is.
Speaker 3: I mean, we forget before that Kansas City game, I
Speaker 3: mean we'd seen them Buffalo go to Atlanta and get worked.
Speaker 3: I mean, they've had that Saints game they want at
Speaker 3: home was troubling, Like they've had a lot of Somebody
Speaker 3: told me this in the league at the beginning of
Speaker 3: the year. They said, Buffalo doesn't have nearly the roster
Speaker 3: people give it credit for. They're like James Cook, Josh
Speaker 3: Allen Oliver, the defensive lineman, who's like, who's hurt. They're like,
Speaker 3: you know, Dawkins the left tackle. I was talking to
Speaker 3: it an executive league and he's like, you know, he
Speaker 3: goes the better rosters or the Rams and the Eagles
Speaker 3: and the Lions and the Packers, and Kansas City's like Ravens.
Speaker 3: He's like, Buffalo's roster's not that good. Josh left tackle, quarterback,
Speaker 3: running back, interior d Lineman. That's why they went and
Speaker 3: got Bosa. I mean, they've drafted a lot, a lot
Speaker 3: of draft capital on their defense. That's why they went
Speaker 3: and got Bosa, who played well against you know, Kansas City,
Speaker 3: Seattle forty four, Arizona twenty two. It was thirty five nothing,
Speaker 3: So you know, it's just impossible to keep that up.
Speaker 3: And Darnold had a couple of just like funny like
Speaker 3: bizarre turnovers that ball bounces off a tight ends helmet.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm gonna throw this to you. I got
Speaker 3: Pete Carroll and John Snyder. You know this battled. They battled,
Speaker 3: and there was a little tug of war on Pete's
Speaker 3: kid and John Snyder. And I'm not going to go
Speaker 3: into too many details, but Pete and John John almost
Speaker 3: left for Detroit, remember that years ago because he wanted
Speaker 3: his final say. Well, since Pete's been out of the building,
Speaker 3: John Snyder's two drafts have been a plus, a plus
Speaker 3: he is now doing and I think John Jason Light,
Speaker 3: Howie Roseman, how he's a deal maker. I'm not sure
Speaker 3: there's many guys better than John Snyder at just personnel
Speaker 3: college personnel drafting it there's not a lot of guys better. Again,
Speaker 3: I think Jason light and Tampa's are really good. That's
Speaker 3: Seattle roster. I wrote this down young, fast, physical. You
Speaker 3: can turn the sound down. John against Washington and against Arizona,
Speaker 3: it looks like a college mismatch. They are so fast,
Speaker 3: they are so physical. Donald's in total control of the offense.
Speaker 3: Play action, run game, deep game. I don't see the whole.
Speaker 3: I really don't see the whole with this team. They
Speaker 3: drafted that safety. That kid's a banger of the South
Speaker 3: Carolina safety. I don't see the weakness with a team.
Speaker 2: I think the point of difference they have that obviously
Speaker 2: play the Rams is upcoming week, which is an incredible game,
Speaker 2: is their dbs are good and the Rams aren't. I
Speaker 2: think that's the difference because the offenses are both elite.
Speaker 2: Pass rushes are awesome. Coaching staff's high end. If you
Speaker 2: and me were the NFL, like in college, how they
Speaker 2: have the College Football Committee and he rank them one
Speaker 2: through twelve. I would rank Seattle after this week number one.
Speaker 2: They would be my number one team, and you just
Speaker 2: if you just watch them without the sound on. Obviously today,
Speaker 2: but over the last couple of weeks, the team speed
Speaker 2: in which they had. I think the the Lob team
Speaker 2: with Pete was probably the most physical team I've ever
Speaker 2: seen live. I do think the fastest team I've ever
Speaker 2: seen live is the Peyton Manning Denver Broncos. Their defense,
Speaker 2: every single guy could run fast defensive lot. It was
Speaker 2: DeMarcus Ware, von Miller, Wolf, Malik Jackson, Trevathan they had
Speaker 2: a key to leap, but their speed and physicality was
Speaker 2: just I've never seen anything, and I've saw him live
Speaker 2: a bunch of times. This team has some similarities to
Speaker 2: those two teams who are kind of taken the league
Speaker 2: by storm. Every guy, I mean, like you said, em
Speaker 2: and Worry he's like six. He is their potential Kyle Hamilton.
Speaker 2: But they already had some good dbs right they drafted
Speaker 2: the kid Witherspoon from Illinois. They already had Woolan. Obviously,
Speaker 2: their their linebacker play is fast. Once they got Ernest Jones,
Speaker 2: they're they're head coach. I mean, we talked so much,
Speaker 2: and rightfully so about these offensive coaches. He's got a
Speaker 2: chance to be pretty special. His demeanor, he has a
Speaker 2: very modern demeanor, you know, like when you watch Vrabel.
Speaker 2: Rabel is not the throwback of like what I grew
Speaker 2: up on guys screaming he doesn't he's not is maybe
Speaker 2: he's a players coach. Yeah, when the doors are shut.
Speaker 2: I think he's on him in the meetings. But on
Speaker 2: the sideline, he's very common collected. I would say, Mike McDonald.
Speaker 2: It almost feels like is he on a couple of
Speaker 2: zanies or something like it?
Speaker 3: Show?
Speaker 2: But he he there's no he because he knows like
Speaker 2: he is. He is very common. His team reflects that.
Speaker 2: And I would say this their personnel move of trading
Speaker 2: Gino and signing Sam has got a chance to be
Speaker 2: an all timer. I mean that's got a chance to
Speaker 2: be because they didn't give Sam. I mean he's gonna
Speaker 2: end up probably. I mean he's not going anywhere for
Speaker 2: a while. They gave him one hundred million dollars over
Speaker 2: three years. I mean it's relative to the other contracts
Speaker 2: we've seen Colin around five million guaranteed.
Speaker 3: So the salary, the cap hit is just nothing.
Speaker 2: JSN looks like Jerry Rice. I knew the guy was good,
Speaker 2: but this year he is. It's like Pooka by the way,
Speaker 2: right when but now this guy was we knew more
Speaker 2: about Jsn Than pooka Ohio State and first round pick.
Speaker 2: But you knew after a couple of weeks Puka was
Speaker 2: a rookie, Like is this real? And then it just
Speaker 2: never stopped. You know jas N like, is he really
Speaker 2: this good? In every single week? It's like he's unstoppable.
Speaker 3: And Jaysen was like a five star recruit first round
Speaker 3: I think it was a first round receiver. I think yeah,
Speaker 3: the only question was is he a one? Everybody knew
Speaker 3: it was really good. Now you're like, yeah, he's just
Speaker 3: contested catches speed. Then they go get Rashid's heat from
Speaker 3: New Orleans and you know that he now has the
Speaker 3: offensive coordinator that he had in New Orleans. Now he's
Speaker 3: in Seattle again. This is a big play offense. What
Speaker 3: I like about Seattle they can grind you down. If
Speaker 3: they have a lead, they can run the football up
Speaker 3: they have a lead. They're a big play offense. They
Speaker 3: can play from behind. You know, I'm just I'm writing
Speaker 3: this down throughout the course of the game. Jasn first
Speaker 3: receiver to one thousand. It's not that weird with Seattle
Speaker 3: where they averaged six and a half to seven yard
Speaker 3: to play like it happens regularly, and there is something
Speaker 3: to be said of trusting your eyes. I think this
Speaker 3: is now even more than Mike McDonald. I think it's
Speaker 3: John Snyder's organization. And I've texted Snyder a couple of times.
Speaker 3: He travels. I mean he's at every weekend. He is
Speaker 3: a you got to go to these games. Like they
Speaker 3: always say, to sell a company, you have to take
Speaker 3: a thousand meetings. John Snyder's on a plane every weekend.
Speaker 3: He doesn't scout off the TV or film. He wants
Speaker 3: to go to the games. And I mean they're just
Speaker 3: when I watch them play. I'm like, when you're a
Speaker 3: big playoffense and your quarterback has mobility, so you can
Speaker 3: go down the field. The quarterback, you can move the pocket,
Speaker 3: you can grind people with a lead. You know, it's
Speaker 3: like Detroit if GoF had mobility, and that's the whole
Speaker 3: Like GoF doesn't, but Detroit's a big playoffense and can
Speaker 3: grind you down. Just think of Detroit's offense and then
Speaker 3: if Jared Goff could move, you'd be like, shit, what
Speaker 3: do you do? But we've seen Detroit do that for
Speaker 3: three years. I think Seattle, like if you don't pay
Speaker 3: attention like we do. Obviously, people that do this for
Speaker 3: a living shit, man, they're they're embarrassing teams these How
Speaker 3: often do you get a thirty five nothing lead in
Speaker 3: the first half of a pro football game?
Speaker 2: And Arizona had been playing well, even their records not
Speaker 2: that great, they have been in every single game they
Speaker 2: played this year. A week ago they easily could be
Speaker 2: you know, coming into this game, they could have been
Speaker 2: six and three. I would say the thing with John Schneider,
Speaker 2: when you think about we talk about offensive coaches, You're like,
Speaker 2: if JJ can't play for Kevin O'Connell, that's a JJ issue,
Speaker 2: not a Kevin issue, Right, If you can't play for
Speaker 2: Kyle Shanahan, that's a you issue because and and that
Speaker 2: skill is why those guys are going to be paid
Speaker 2: at the top of the market until they retire from
Speaker 2: the NFL. John Schneider start, he was the guy that
Speaker 2: pounded the table for peak against Pete Carroll for Brussell
Speaker 2: Wilson and ultimately got him to relent and draft him. Obviously,
Speaker 2: that changed the course of their franchise when they pivoted
Speaker 2: off Russell, and remember John wanted to do it earlier.
Speaker 2: Try to trade him to the Cleveland Browns so he
Speaker 2: could draft Josh Allen. That's what he was gonna take.
Speaker 2: Then he trades for Gino or he gets Gino as
Speaker 2: the backup, and they were cool with like, I think
Speaker 2: we can handle this for a little bit, and he
Speaker 2: was right. Gino was actually and they got Drew Locke.
Speaker 2: Remember they won a Monday night football game against the
Speaker 2: Eagles with Drew lock who is the worst of this
Speaker 2: whole group. And then he pivots to Sam Darnold. Like
Speaker 2: I would say, as a quarterback evaluator, John schniders as
Speaker 2: good as it gets from a GM perspective. And if
Speaker 2: that's going to be the guy that you're going to
Speaker 2: invest most of your money into as a franchise, his skill,
Speaker 2: let alone his ability to build the team, it's I mean,
Speaker 2: this is now like how many different iterations of the team,
Speaker 2: the lob team. Remember then they transitioned in the late
Speaker 2: twenty tens. They were still good, you know, they weren't
Speaker 2: they weren't going to Super Bowls, but they were never
Speaker 2: They didn't have four win seasons, they were winning nine
Speaker 2: to eleven games. And now, I mean, what do they
Speaker 2: look like to you? A fourteen win team. I mean,
Speaker 2: who's there if Devine to Adams who kind of hurt
Speaker 2: his back at the end of the game. We have
Speaker 2: to monitor that throughout the week. I like see. I
Speaker 2: think that's gonna be a tough way.
Speaker 3: Tough, sharpest young boys in college football. Josh Paate. I
Speaker 3: love having him on. I got to tell you, through
Speaker 3: the years, when I talked to most of my sources
Speaker 3: aren't players or coaches. They've always been executives. Because I
Speaker 3: probably absurdly of Oa's fashion myself is if I didn't
Speaker 3: do this, I'd want to be a GM, not a coach,
Speaker 3: not a player. I like all the architecture of building stuff,
Speaker 3: and when you talk to them about players. I remember
Speaker 3: when Josh Allen came out of Wyoming and I would
Speaker 3: talk to gms and they're like, Okay, did you see
Speaker 3: the throw against You know it wasn't against Oregon or Iowa.
Speaker 3: There's a throw and it was. It's remarkable how often
Speaker 3: it's a play, a moment, a drive and a scout
Speaker 3: goes Okay. The Penn State game for Sam Darnold at
Speaker 3: the Rose Bowl, that's the one everybody went, whoa, whoa,
Speaker 3: this is? This is different Fernando Mendoza. So first of all,
Speaker 3: he was going to go to Yale. He settled on
Speaker 3: col So the kids obviously in Indiana's a good school.
Speaker 3: So we know he's got brain power. We know he's
Speaker 3: six five, we know all that stuff. That last drive
Speaker 3: on the road, Penn State couldn't run face. The defense
Speaker 3: made three throws, the one in the back of the
Speaker 3: end zone. Like I'm like, Okay, that's a Sunday player.
Speaker 3: That's not normal. That's Herbert at Oregon, you know, carrying
Speaker 3: average people around him. Not average, but cause I think
Speaker 3: I think Indiana's got good players. They don't have Ohio
Speaker 3: State guys. Maybe, But I watched that drive and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 3: he has to come out. That's the number one player
Speaker 3: in college football. I don't care about Ohio State's linebackers
Speaker 3: and corners. That's the impression it had on me. It
Speaker 3: was just sitting on the couch going, oh my god,
Speaker 3: this looks like Sunday. What was your takeaway on it?
Speaker 1: I thought it was there are very few moments like this,
Speaker 1: But I was watching it in an airport. First off,
Speaker 1: seeing a big sporting moment, seeing a big football moment
Speaker 1: in an airport. It's always unique because it's really a
Speaker 1: unique setting and you're not there often if you cover
Speaker 1: the game. So that was Number one, was just to
Speaker 1: take away of how surreal it is that, Wow, the
Speaker 1: entire world's fixated on Indiana football in this moment. I
Speaker 1: thought it was one of those moments where you see
Speaker 1: someone come of age, like you know someone's got potential
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, it just happens. Right,
Speaker 1: And sometimes it's just a moment, Like sometimes guys just
Speaker 1: hit a lucky shot or make a lucky throat, but
Speaker 1: it's rare. You don't get lucky three times like that
Speaker 1: on the same drive. It's something that's in you. It's
Speaker 1: potential you have, and it's not that he hasn't shown flashes.
Speaker 1: If you're paying attention to college football, right, you knew
Speaker 1: about him. If you're paying attention to the Mott drafts,
Speaker 1: you know about him. But you've been waiting for that. Okay, So,
Speaker 1: like you were talking about scouting there, I've always sort
Speaker 1: of disagreed with the approach of boiling down a player
Speaker 1: in your mind to like highlight culture, like I think
Speaker 1: of one or two grows. I've always wanted to shave
Speaker 1: the best and the worst off and take what's in
Speaker 1: the middle, and that's the player. And that's hundreds and
Speaker 1: hundreds and hundreds of plays. But with Mendoza, he's lesser
Speaker 1: known to the general public. You just I guarantee you
Speaker 1: there's a whole army of college football fans out there
Speaker 1: that know the name Fernando Mendoza and they know he's
Speaker 1: the quarterback in Indiana. They probably hadn't even watched him
Speaker 1: a whole lot. That was when they saw him, and
Speaker 1: that that matters for your Heisman crowd, But that also
Speaker 1: matters for that locker room. It's one thing to go
Speaker 1: in there and win thirty eight to ten like A
Speaker 1: and M just went and took care of Missouri and
Speaker 1: Marcel Reid didn't have to do on that Saturday what
Speaker 1: Fernando Mendoza did. And I just could not help. But
Speaker 1: in the moments afterwards, go back to Oregon. Last year,
Speaker 1: Oregon just goes wire to wire undefeated. Yeah, that one,
Speaker 1: like close games early before they got their act together
Speaker 1: and they go undefeated and they're totally clean, and they
Speaker 1: go in the playoff first round by and then they
Speaker 1: get Ohio State and they just get drug and that
Speaker 1: was the first time and they really tasted their blood,
Speaker 1: and Indiana looked like they were on a trajectory to
Speaker 1: maybe do that, and instead they didn't have to suffer
Speaker 1: the consequences of loss, but they dealt with something. They
Speaker 1: dealt with having a crawl over broken glass to get
Speaker 1: a win. And I mean, I'm never going to be
Speaker 1: in a major college football locker room as a player,
Speaker 1: but I cannot imagine what that flight home was like.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine what it's like to look in the mirror.
Speaker 1: Man as him, Just look in the mirror. Everyone's been
Speaker 1: talking you up. But sometimes there can be a little
Speaker 1: imposter syndrome, there can be a little self doubt. There
Speaker 1: can be none of that with him anymore. It was
Speaker 1: amazing to watch.
Speaker 3: Yeah, great second half. Penn State marched up and down
Speaker 3: the field with their backup quarterback over and over and over,
Speaker 3: and you were like, oh my, we got, we got.
Speaker 3: I almost tweeted, who's your daddy? I was so close
Speaker 3: to the play on words. I was like, we're gonna,
Speaker 3: We're gonna get an upset. And then he took that
Speaker 3: ball and I was just like, wow, that's impressive. You know,
Speaker 3: the this weekend. Oklahoma Bama. I like Bama, Iowa, USC
Speaker 3: take the points. I think it's twenty seven twenty six
Speaker 3: either way. Iowa was a tough matchup on USC, Texas, Georgia.
Speaker 3: I'll take Georgia. I want to talk about Kaylen de Bor.
Speaker 3: That's all I want to talk about. So I said,
Speaker 3: when Saban left and Kaylen de Bor took over, I said,
Speaker 3: that's the greatest handoff in the history of college football. Generally,
Speaker 3: you give it to somebody on the staff because that's
Speaker 3: what the players want. It doesn't work where you bring
Speaker 3: in somebody and the culture doesn't work. He's just a
Speaker 3: winning guy and Kaylen de boor Sioux falls, Fresno State,
Speaker 3: but Washington he was twenty five and three people assumed, well,
Speaker 3: it's Bama. He didn't have to rebuild anything. I said, no,
Speaker 3: the time out. Now it's a whole different ballgame. This
Speaker 3: is Bama nil. That's a whole different ballgame. Secondly, he
Speaker 3: is different than Nick and there's going to be things
Speaker 3: he likes coordinators he does doesn't. I'm like he was
Speaker 3: almost punished because everybody thought Nick handed him a Rolls
Speaker 3: Royce and I'm like, no, he handed him A used
Speaker 3: Rolls Royce. It wasn't as dominant as it was two
Speaker 3: years earlier. Georgia now had as good or better players,
Speaker 3: and the nil world had changed. Texas now could just
Speaker 3: buy players. So if you watch Bama and you watch
Speaker 3: Kaylin de boor with quarterbacks, I think Ohio State's the
Speaker 3: best team I've seen. I think Bama's too. I think
Speaker 3: Bama is the second best team in the country. I
Speaker 3: don't think Indiana quite has the personnel, and M's beaten
Speaker 3: a lot of teams that fire their coaches, so I'm
Speaker 3: not quite sure I buy that. Yet they haven't played
Speaker 3: like Ole, Miss, Oklahoma, Georgia, Bama. What do you make
Speaker 3: of Kaylin de boor the doubters, the critics, and where
Speaker 3: they are.
Speaker 1: I mean, a lot of the doubt and the criticism
Speaker 1: was just folks wanting Alabama to fall off. It's been
Speaker 1: a long time since you could really take reasonable shots
Speaker 1: at Alabama up in the South. So, like, I know
Speaker 1: the vibe about Alabama around the South. So there's some
Speaker 1: of it where people are kind of wishcasting they're hoping
Speaker 1: that they're right about doubting Kaylin to bore. And then
Speaker 1: there was another crowd that just flat out you know,
Speaker 1: thought that he took, like you said, a seamless baton
Speaker 1: handoff and it should be full stride in any kind
Speaker 1: of fall off, any kind of looking at the clock
Speaker 1: and oah, we're off pace a little bit. That indicates
Speaker 1: that he's an impost. And then you get to backfill
Speaker 1: with all these pre cooked theories people have in the
Speaker 1: South about how well, if you're not from here, you
Speaker 1: can't recruit here, and how's he going to recruit at Alabama?
Speaker 1: And he didn't know this place, he didn't know the culture.
Speaker 1: So you know, the same stuff they said about Brian
Speaker 1: Kelly ended up being valid, not because he wasn't from
Speaker 1: the South, it's because he didn't work to the degree
Speaker 1: you need to work at ls. So the thing about
Speaker 1: Kaylan is the style he won with at Washington's what
Speaker 1: you need to pay the most attention to the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three Washington season. What they have like seven to
Speaker 1: one possession wins or something like that. So they were
Speaker 1: winning a bunch of close games, but there's so much
Speaker 1: there's some randomized nature to that. But when you get
Speaker 1: a big sample size of one possession games and you're
Speaker 1: that good in one possession games. There's more than just
Speaker 1: luck to that that skill Bama had been used to
Speaker 1: win in forty two to ten, and so he's come
Speaker 1: down here and even in the games where they're winning,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of what he did at Washington. It's
Speaker 1: one possession games, and it aggravates people so much because
Speaker 1: they want to run for two hundred and fifty yards
Speaker 1: and they can't run the ball this year, and yet
Speaker 1: they're still scaling their offense despite not being able to
Speaker 1: run the ball, which I think is the biggest feather
Speaker 1: in the cap of ty Simpson. Mendoza's doing it with
Speaker 1: a ground game, Julian's doing it with a ground game.
Speaker 1: Bama can't run, and Ty Simpson still does it. That's
Speaker 1: all I would say about him if I were promoting
Speaker 1: him for the Heisman. But deboor year one in that
Speaker 1: building this week, Colin a year ago, they were in
Speaker 1: the thick of the playoff race, They're going to go
Speaker 1: to Oklahoma. They get their doors blown off, blown off,
Speaker 1: and that was really when the ant bed got kicked.
Speaker 1: That's really when all the rumors started filling out. That's
Speaker 1: when all the you know, the truth started getting dealt
Speaker 1: because they didn't feel like they had anything left to
Speaker 1: play for. So you start hearing some grumbling and you
Speaker 1: start really finding out how oil and water that building
Speaker 1: had been. Some of the old guards, some of the
Speaker 1: new guard. And he walked in, and I want to
Speaker 1: remind everyone he walked in the weirdest possible time, maybe
Speaker 1: in the recent history of college athletics, because he takes
Speaker 1: the job. Saban retires and it was weird, like an
Speaker 1: early January kind of thing. So he takes the job,
Speaker 1: and the portal opens for thirty days, but they can't
Speaker 1: take They can only lose for thirty days, that's right,
Speaker 1: and then you patch it up as best you can't.
Speaker 1: Julian saying, was there by the way he leaves? Caleb
Speaker 1: Downs was there? He leaves? Well, then you go through
Speaker 1: spring ball, and I remember talking to him about this
Speaker 1: after it happened, and he didn't make any excuses. I
Speaker 1: was almost trying to make excuses for him. But it
Speaker 1: was a situation where you had to run your spring
Speaker 1: practice knowing that after ball, when you really want to
Speaker 1: get down guys throats and you want to try and
Speaker 1: install as much culture as you can, they could just leave.
Speaker 1: There's a post spring portal window and they could bail
Speaker 1: on you. These aren't your players, you didn't recruit them.
Speaker 1: How are you going to have a roster going into
Speaker 1: the season. So they had to kid glove their way
Speaker 1: through spring ball a little bit. And even then, like
Speaker 1: you get to the fall and you're kind of you're
Speaker 1: trying to build the plane in the air, and it
Speaker 1: used to be a nice plane, and so no one's
Speaker 1: going to accept any kind of turbulence up there. And
Speaker 1: that Oklahoma game is where it really came undone a
Speaker 1: little bit, and that's where you really started hearing it.
Speaker 1: So it's so crazy to fast forward a year from now.
Speaker 1: It just so happens to be they're in the thick
Speaker 1: of it again. Oklahoma's coming in again. I'm interested that
Speaker 1: you said you like Bama because a lot of people
Speaker 1: like Oklahoma.
Speaker 3: This week.
Speaker 1: I love Bama this week. I'm interested in why it
Speaker 1: is you like Bama because I got one reason.
Speaker 3: Well, I guess my take is, I think I think
Speaker 3: the offensive coaching at Bama. I tend to believe that
Speaker 3: offensive coaches are tinkers. So I think Deborr and his coordinator,
Speaker 3: you know, like when they went to Georgia, you're like, oh,
Speaker 3: that's a that's a perfect game plan. I think defensive
Speaker 3: coaches venables tend to have this is what we are,
Speaker 3: and we're just gonna be more forceful. I tend to
Speaker 3: think with defensive teams, you often get what you get,
Speaker 3: and you get it by like week four. I think
Speaker 3: offensive coaches Ryan Day is a great example. Last year. God,
Speaker 3: you watched the Michigan game, then a week later you
Speaker 3: watch Tennessee and then a week later you watch Oregon.
Speaker 3: You're like, oh shit, they didn't peak until the second
Speaker 3: week of the playoff. They're tinkers. Chip Kelly was always that,
Speaker 3: he was always tinkering. So I tend to think Alabama
Speaker 3: is just getting better. They're just every week. I feel
Speaker 3: like they're two possessions better, whereas I feel kind of like,
Speaker 3: I know what Oklahoma is. I've seen the best of Oklahoma.
Speaker 3: That's very good, but I think zero ten being the
Speaker 3: best one on being not good. I think Alabama is
Speaker 3: about a seven. I think they're going to get to
Speaker 3: about an eight and a half. Now Ohio State's a
Speaker 3: nine and they may just stay there. But it's why
Speaker 3: I think Bama's the second best team in the country.
Speaker 3: I think they've got a tinker as a coach. I
Speaker 3: watched them at I watched them at Washington. Just manipulate,
Speaker 3: Tinker improve Anyway, That's my take is that I think
Speaker 3: four weeks ago I may have felt differently. I think
Speaker 3: the offensive coach over the defensive culture.
Speaker 1: I like Bama, So I'm with you. They are beating
Speaker 1: people on Saturday a lot, staff wise, like they are.
Speaker 1: They got one of the best stats in the country offensively, especially,
Speaker 1: So's here's what's interesting about that. If you watch the
Speaker 1: LSU game last week, they're coming out of a by theoretically,
Speaker 1: you should just be shot out of a cannon. We're
Speaker 1: ready to peak in November they won twenty to nine.
Speaker 1: I think it was if you watch the game, you
Speaker 1: saw how much meat was left on the bone. Offensively,
Speaker 1: you saw how much like just off the fingertips type
Speaker 1: explosive passes they missed on, And I think that is
Speaker 1: part one of the separation. Saturday. You just you focus
Speaker 1: on precision and accuracy all week after a game like that,
Speaker 1: and then number two, Oklahoma's real hallmark is they can
Speaker 1: shut you down running the ball. I'd almost feel more
Speaker 1: uncomfortable for Alabama if part of their offense was built
Speaker 1: on the ground game. They already don't do anything on
Speaker 1: the ground. Lesser teams have shut them down running the ball.
Speaker 1: So what Oklahoma's built to take away you can't take
Speaker 1: away from Bama because they already don't do it. And
Speaker 1: yet they still scale their passing game anyway. And the
Speaker 1: two other offenses that they've seen that can do through
Speaker 1: the air what bamacam or Ole Miss and Tennessee and
Speaker 1: I think one of them through for three nineteen and
Speaker 1: the other one through for three to eighty or something
Speaker 1: like that against them. So it's going to be a
Speaker 1: real high profile game. It'll be a good fight. I
Speaker 1: think Alabama's going to have one in the thing by
Speaker 1: double digits in the end.
Speaker 3: So Lane Kiffen, I've known Lane for a long time
Speaker 3: and I think Lane's smart. I think he's again gotten
Speaker 3: better and better. I made this argument is that you
Speaker 3: can bounce around ole Miss LSU. You can bounce around
Speaker 3: They're all I mean these guys these days. If ole
Speaker 3: Miss can pay ten, LSU pays eleven, there's less pressure
Speaker 3: at ol Miss. I'd stay. I'd stay Ole Miss. It's
Speaker 3: Oxford's beautiful that I said. I think actually he could
Speaker 3: be an NFL coach and like Harball, he'd walk into
Speaker 3: the sport for the first three years. He knows all
Speaker 3: these players way better than your GM does. Also, like
Speaker 3: a Miami to because of the contractual situation, is going
Speaker 3: to be your quarterback for a year, but you probably
Speaker 3: got to draft your next quarterback. And most of these
Speaker 3: guys are second round quarterbacks. Well, he knows nuss Meyer,
Speaker 3: and he knows Simpson. He knows all these guys. South
Speaker 3: Carolina kid, he knows all of them. So by the
Speaker 3: second round, nobody's going to know those quarterbacks better than
Speaker 3: Lane Kiffin. Either recruited him, played them, played against him.
Speaker 3: Do you think Lane Kiffin do you think he's considering
Speaker 3: the NFL.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think he is. I think several of them are.
Speaker 1: I think there's some names considering the NFL that would
Speaker 1: totally completely put jaws on the ground if the names
Speaker 1: ever got public. I think these guys are always considering
Speaker 1: the NFL. Now, you'd never get the truth out of
Speaker 1: most of them, but yeah, I mean, look, you know
Speaker 1: the kind of mentality it takes to succeed at the
Speaker 1: highest level of college football, especially if you specialize on
Speaker 1: a side of the ball goes hand in hand with
Speaker 1: the kind of mentality that thinks I could win in
Speaker 1: the NFL. I could win on Sundays. I want to
Speaker 1: test myself against the best. I want to see how
Speaker 1: my offense does. And especially with Lane, like you've got
Speaker 1: the Oakland Raiders chapter in his past, you don't think
Speaker 1: he wants to make good on that. Yeah, I'm a believer.
Speaker 1: I'm a believer. Saban never did it. I'm a believer
Speaker 1: he wanted to make good on the Miami Dolphins part.
Speaker 1: Didn't like all of the other extracurricular that comes along
Speaker 1: with the NFL relative to college. But yeah, I think
Speaker 1: he would consider it. I think they actively consider it
Speaker 1: all the time. What I don't know, and I think
Speaker 1: this is really what the decision comes down to, is
Speaker 1: what do you personally value the most beyond football. Like
Speaker 1: some guys hate recruiting, they're looking at the first exit
Speaker 1: door to get to the NFL. Right, Others they think
Speaker 1: it's their wheelhouse. They think that's one of their strongest suits.
Speaker 1: They actually love being around young people. I will never
Speaker 1: forget when I was coming out of college down in
Speaker 1: Columbus and I heard you talking about Parcels one day
Speaker 1: and you described him as a meatball with arms. That
Speaker 1: is what stuck with me. That is what NFL coaches
Speaker 1: look like relative to college coaches, because you're around adults
Speaker 1: all day instead of younger adults. So past that, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think he is considering it.
Speaker 3: You know, let me throw this at you. I had
Speaker 3: a really smart guy tell me this, a current college coach,
Speaker 3: and he was talking about ole Miss and the limitations.
Speaker 3: He said, offensive recruits will follow the coach. Right, They'll
Speaker 3: follow Sark Lane Kaitlin to offensive players. They want to
Speaker 3: know who the coach is, what the system is. Great
Speaker 3: defensive players. They want to go to Georgia, Texas, LSU.
Speaker 3: Not about scheme. I want to get taken care of.
Speaker 3: I want nil check. I got to play in the trenches.
Speaker 3: That's the limitation of ole Miss. When I asked somebody
Speaker 3: about Old Miss, they said, Lane's always gonna get offensive guys.
Speaker 3: He go. Offensive guys follow the coach. Defensive guys don't.
Speaker 3: He's never gonna have Georgia's defensive personnel. He never gonna
Speaker 3: have Bamas. He's never gonna have Ohio States defensive guys
Speaker 3: go to the big schools. You see all sorts of
Speaker 3: great offenses in the history at college football. You can
Speaker 3: go to Hawaii, you go to BYU, you can go
Speaker 3: Indiana and see a lot of the top ten college
Speaker 3: defensive all time. There's a lot of Georgia, Bama, LSU, Michigan.
Speaker 3: And so this coach said, Lane knows he's limited. When
Speaker 3: he faces the big dogs in the SEC, he'll have
Speaker 3: to upscore him. They're not stopping them. And so that's
Speaker 3: just something that's something to think about. I thought it
Speaker 3: was very very wise.
Speaker 1: I think it's been taken into consideration. And when you
Speaker 1: do your pros and cons, there's not going to be
Speaker 1: a clean list under the cons for any of these jobs, right,
Speaker 1: so it all missed. That's what you have to ask.
Speaker 1: But then what if you're Lane Kiffin, you have to ask,
Speaker 1: all right, but what state do I reside in? I
Speaker 1: reside in Mississippi. The one thing that you're gonna say
Speaker 1: about Mississippi is it pumps out NFL front future NFL
Speaker 1: front defensive talent every year. Now, historically they've gone to
Speaker 1: other schools, but that's why it's been case by case
Speaker 1: a nightmare to play Mississippi state role. Miss in certain
Speaker 1: given years because they're just freak shows out of Scuba
Speaker 1: and Philadelphia and Columbus and you've never heard of those
Speaker 1: places Yazoo City, Mississippi. But they got future first round
Speaker 1: NFL draft picks coming out of there. I would think
Speaker 1: to myself, Man, if I can keep enough of those
Speaker 1: guys home, I'm gonna get the offensive guys. But like
Speaker 1: you're right that that is the case. If I'm representing
Speaker 1: him and selfishly, I want him at LSU or I
Speaker 1: want him at Florida. I want him at Florida because
Speaker 1: I'm saying, dude, they've got the track record of offense
Speaker 1: like you want Spurrier even when Urban was there. The
Speaker 1: difference is you can get the defensive talent down there
Speaker 1: as well. That's what i'd sell him on. Yes, Sark
Speaker 1: told me this when he was at Washington.
Speaker 3: He said, we I can get first round receivers and
Speaker 3: tight ends and quarterbacks at Washington. It's defensive tackles. You
Speaker 3: can't get him in the Northwest. We just don't. We
Speaker 3: may have one every other year who's an elite defensive tackle,
Speaker 3: and so you know that's why, you know, I just
Speaker 3: think it's a reality of even in southern California as
Speaker 3: great as that state is right now, USC, if you
Speaker 3: look at their interior d line recruiting, there's Texas, there's
Speaker 3: an Oklahoma kid, there's a Texas kid, there's a Minnesota kid,
Speaker 3: and not a lot of LA kids on that defensive front. Now,
Speaker 3: Lemon the receiver lanes from Arizona. You know, may Ava,
Speaker 3: they got in Vegas, a running back walk gone from Calabasas.
Speaker 3: USC's offensive talent, you know, it's a lot of LA
Speaker 3: kids and West Coast kids. But no, I think Lane's
Speaker 3: a great example of the willingness to evolve as a
Speaker 3: human being. I think Lane today is just a much
Speaker 3: better human being. Not that I know him that well,
Speaker 3: but there were a lot of people out on Lane
Speaker 3: and he went small school one, and I think Nick
Speaker 3: Saban deserves a lot of credit. You know, Saban took
Speaker 3: a beat up Lane and a beat up Sark. I mean,
Speaker 3: I tell you a lot about Nick Saban. Those guys
Speaker 3: were not They had lost a lot of glare in
Speaker 3: college sports.
Speaker 1: I think. I mean that twenty fifteen teen he had
Speaker 1: alone just doing a deep dive on that staff alone,
Speaker 1: pretty unbelievable at Alabama, that Saban had, But I mean,
Speaker 1: I remember when Lane was at Alabama, I remember when
Speaker 1: Sark had gotten to Alabama, and you're hearing the stories
Speaker 1: behind the scenes and thinking to yourself. I mean, like
Speaker 1: one of the greatest magician tricks that I thought about
Speaker 1: Nick Saban when I first came to sort of see
Speaker 1: behind the curtain is everyone watched them and they're this
Speaker 1: machine and they're winning, and so you think, oh, they're
Speaker 1: free of all the crap that everyone else has to
Speaker 1: deal with, and then you find out there's tons of
Speaker 1: infighting there. All of these coaches are alphas, all of
Speaker 1: these coaches are type a's, and he's just it's like
Speaker 1: herding cats, and he somehow did it. But to do
Speaker 1: what he did for Lane Slash with Lane, to do
Speaker 1: the same thing for Slash with Sark, that's pretty unbelievable.
Speaker 1: But the other part of that is, at some point,
Speaker 1: it don't matter how much someone else is trying to
Speaker 1: help you if you don't want to help yourself. So yeah,
Speaker 1: a ton of credit to Nick Saban. Absolutely, It's not
Speaker 1: like Kiffin's having to rediscover himself at publics like he is.
Speaker 1: He is coaching major college football. But at some point
Speaker 1: you got to look in the mirror and realize I'm
Speaker 1: a full grown adult, like it's up to me, and
Speaker 1: thankfully he did that.
Speaker 3: M