The Best of The Dan Patrick Show

00:00:00
Speaker 1: You are listening to the Dan Patrick Show on Fox Sports Radio.

00:00:04
Speaker 2: It happens every single year, every year, and it's going to happen in the draft where somebody saw something at the Combine and maybe change their opinion or elevated their opinion, or maybe lowered their opinion. All I care about is what did you do on Saturdays Sunday. Nobody's blocking, nobody's tackling. Okay, you get to jump, you get to run, you get to throw, lift weights, interviews, medicals. I get all of that. Now. If something happened with your medicals, I understand why you would fall. But the forty yard dash, I'm not that interested in how many times you can lift two hundred and twenty five pounds, I'm not interested in. Now there's the cone drills. There's certain drills for receivers that I'm very interested in. But I think we get caught up because there's nothing going on, and it's like, okay, it's kind of football, and then you're gonna see these guys on draft night and you're gonna go and I remember him at the combine. Every year there's one or two guys that elevate their status and all of a sudden they change draft boards. Anthony Richardson, Oh my gosh. Now, when I watched him, there were times when I went man and then other times I go man. And now the Colts have said to him, you can work on a trade if you want too. Kind of signals you've moved on from Anthony Richardson, Yes see, Yeah, I.

00:01:34
Speaker 3: Think the combine is important for some positions. It is much more important for some positions than others. You know, I think if you're looking at edge rushers in particular, if you're looking at how explosive they are, those those are all numbers. The forty time might not necessarily be the most important. How many times are they going to run forty yards? But you're just getting a glimpse at how many times are they going to have to use their vertical like that? Probably not many, but you're just getting an idea of how athletic they really are, and that's something that I think is pretty important if you play that position.

00:02:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll talk to Lewis Riddick about that.

00:02:07
Speaker 4: That.

00:02:07
Speaker 2: There are certain positions with certain drills where you go, okay, now a vertical for an edge rusher. Yeah, yeah, I'm okay with that because you're going to be jumping up, you know, knocking down passes. Maybe you use that person to block field goals. I think there are elements of these skills that you can use on Sunday forty yard dash. Not as interested, but I am interested in what's your time for the first ten yards of that? Because that's football? The first five yards of that? Yeah, Seaton, Yeah. Like this kid.

00:02:39
Speaker 3: David Bailey from Texas Tech. Right, he made himself some money. Oh my gosh. He he's six three, two fifty his times if you look at the way all of his measurements broke down, He's faster than Antonio Kramarti, quicker than Devonte Adams, jumps higher than aj Green, and he's more explosive than Adrian Peterson and heavier than Von Miller.

00:02:59
Speaker 2: Those are crazy numbers. But I want to know what he did in college because Shamar Stewart of Texas A and M we went to the Bengals. But with the fifteenth pick, he had great numbers, but he didn't have He had four sacks in college and he's an edge rusher. That would concern me when you see somebody has all that talent and you go, well, what do you do in college? And then you go, oh, that's where I would use the numbers against that player. But I guarantee you there'll be a couple of players who are selected higher than they should be. Now, one scout already told me he had nineteen first round grades. So we know that there are more than nineteen picks in the first round, so there are going to be check and see, Okay, there's going to be eleven players taken higher than they should be. So factor that in that he had nineteen first round grades. But you know, this happens every single year. I mean, I remember Vernon Golston and I'm going that guy is going to be He's going to be an All Pro for ten years. Who is that? Justin Gilbert who was going to the Cleveland Browns he was going to be the next Dion. I mean every single year there's at least one guy that we go, oh my god. I mean Jidavian Clowney, if you think about it, had a disappointing career. The expectations were off the chart. So you know, by comparison, it was like, Okay, had a decent career. But it's because we just we fall in love when you're not competing against anybody. Now, there were some throws yesterday, like Ty Simpson had I think a pretty good day, Carson Beck, I think had a pretty good day. But they're just throwing the football. I want to see what you do on Saturdays. And because of that, do I want Carson Beck? Do I want Ty Simpson? Is somebody gonna go all in in the first round, which they probably will for Ty Simpson. Okay, happens every single year. But that's the fun part of this. And here's another thing. At the combine. That's where you get your director of player personnel. That's where you might get your president. That's where you'll get a coach and or GM. These are guys who haven't been studying this. They've been working on their day job. Now you're going to come in and this will happen. You have your own scouting department who spent the entire off or the entire college football season, and now we get to the off season, and now the experts come in and they're going to overrule the scouts who have spent all of this time giving grades to these players because somebody's gonna go, man, he's fast, he can jump high. We're gonna take him. And that's where your scouts will say, you know, hey, we got a second round grade on it. Well, we don't want to lose him. No, not that they sound like that, but you don't want your front office.

00:06:16
Speaker 3: People, I hear that on Hard Knocks all the time, actually don't want to lose him.

00:06:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, well it could be the Giants front office. Yeah, yeah, you're free to go and seek a trade. Saquon Wait where are you going? Philadelphia? See yeah, Pauli.

00:06:32
Speaker 5: Going back to that player seat mentioned David Bailey of Texas Tech. He had everything at the combine. He broke all the records and had these great numbers, but he also had the performance during the season at Texas Tech last year fourteen and a half sacks, twenty tackles for losses, both led the United States, both led NCAA.

00:06:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm fine with that. So he only led in the United States, not in Europe.

00:06:55
Speaker 5: But there's a guy who didn't didn't have three sacks out of the combine.

00:06:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but it's fun. And then there's the interviewing part of this, and Johnny manziel Ace the interviewing part of this because he's such a hustler. You can't. You can get coached up to do the interviews. But then Todd mcshae was, you know, the draft analyst. He had this to say about the USC wide receiver Mkai Lemon. He didn't do well being interviewed.

00:07:28
Speaker 6: The fact of the matter is, again talking to general managers in the league, the interview process is going a lot better for the other two Tyson and Tate than it is for McKay Lemon.

00:07:38
Speaker 2: And you know, me, like, I'm a Lemon guy, So that part's interesting.

00:07:42
Speaker 6: But I'm just saying there are teams out there that may have him in a bucket, and there are teams out there that I specifically talked to that appreciated what they got out of the interviews from Jordan Tyson and Carnell Tate more than they did from the mckaye Lemon ones.

00:07:54
Speaker 2: So be that as it may. Now, Lemon's a great player. He really is. I think he's undersized, but I think, you know, at USC, he was great, and mel Kiper loves him. Mel Kiper is like that guy plays football. But the interviewing process, and by most accounts, he kind of turned people off that he was he was making weird eye contact. I don't know what he was doing. It almost felt like he was auditioning for a role or a documentary or I don't know what he was doing, but you know, one guy to described it is, I don't know if he's trying to seduce me. I'm not sure what's going on because he just had these weird looks at people. And I don't know what that if that matters, you know, can you play on Saturday? Can you play on Sunday? All right, you're quirky, you're a little weird. Everybody made a big deal about Kati Williamsy paints his fingernails. I go, I couldn't care less. Are you a good teammate? Can you play? I don't care what you do. I was around Rodman all those years and he was wearing dresses like the dude could play, didn't matter, he could play. But yeah, the interviewing process, and I'm sure Mendoza aced it now Stacey Dale's she was talking about Mendoza and just said, he's your dream. He tells you everything. You know, he's a team for He's just he can't wait to help the other players on Indiana at their pro days. It does matter a little bit to some of these teams. You just don't know how much it matters. That's the tricky part. But that's where you get the new set of eyes coming in. And then they're going to bigfoot the scouts who spent all year looking at this, Jeremy Fowler of the Mothership on the coaches who are assessing quarterbacks now in free agency and also assessing quarterbacks in the draft. Jeremy Faller will join us in the final hour of the program, as we always do every Monday, best and Worst of the weekend. What you saw that you liked, you didn't like, and say good morning to our radio affiliates over four hundred cities around the country that carry this program. Seet and you got a poll question, or at least one to figure out. Think about ponder here for the first hour.

00:10:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, why don't we start positive best month of the year for sports?

00:10:25
Speaker 4: Mmmm.

00:10:26
Speaker 2: We do this every year. I do this every year.

00:10:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, because March is underappreciated in terms of hmm, even at number it's probably considered the second best month for sports.

00:10:36
Speaker 2: And you're gonna be watching a lot of basketball teams that you didn't watch at all during the regular season. I was watching Illinois State in Belmont yesterday and I you know, there was no shame. I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna be watching. You know, Belmont got a twenty six wins or something something. Miami of Ohio stays undefeated. But if Bruce Pearl, who's now an analyst former head coach, said if Miami of Ohio doesn't win their conference tournament, they may not make the tournament with one loss. They wouldn't. Now granted strength to schedule, uh not pretty. It'd be like me on the bench press. But they're still undefeated and there's something to be said for that. Whether it's a novelty or not. It's still undefeated. But if they would bow out like the first or second round of the MAC Tournament, didn't sound like Bruce Pearl was now he got lit up on social media. But what he's saying is their strength of schedule is terrible, but you're still undefeated and you've got to take somebody from the MAC. Can you take two teams from the MAC and we might be finding that out. Yeah, PAULI back to the poll question. Can March stand alone without the benefits it gets from the month of April, because the Final four and final game are played in April. Baseball starts in April, the Masters is in April.

00:12:09
Speaker 5: Am I right about those?

00:12:11
Speaker 2: I think I have to combine March in April? Is that fair? In October? How fair is that? T I don't think. I don't think you can, because I gave you September, October and March in April.

00:12:22
Speaker 3: Nobody wants September. Forgets September.

00:12:24
Speaker 2: I love September.

00:12:25
Speaker 3: The April has the NBA NHL sort of playoff push right the start of the baseball season, it has the Masters, and it has technically the end of what is called March Madness. So I don't really think that the final four belongs to the Final four actually belongs to March.

00:12:45
Speaker 2: Now, and you got the draft, the Draft in April. Sorry, yeah, I have to do a combine. Well, you're pooh pooing the start of March. Here, I see what Seton's saying.

00:12:58
Speaker 3: I'm saying that March is great, but it's not April. It's not it's its own thing. But I think that the final four actually belongs to March, not April. Okay, just because of March madness. Yeah, it's called March mad I know where there's no, it's not called the April final four?

00:13:18
Speaker 2: How about awesome April? Yeah?

00:13:19
Speaker 3: Well yeah, why don't you try to trademark that you think it's so great?

00:13:25
Speaker 2: Hey, Todd, how's it going?

00:13:27
Speaker 4: Okay?

00:13:28
Speaker 2: Just good, just just checking on you, pacing myself. Oh you are? Why? Why is? Why is today?

00:13:36
Speaker 1: I haven't had.

00:13:37
Speaker 7: Anything drunk to say just yet that I don't want to be accused of just talking just to talk and making it so.

00:13:43
Speaker 2: Now there's more pressure on you because now the audience is going, okay, all right, it's coming. Yeah, Todd's strong comments for March right around the corner build up.

00:13:54
Speaker 1: It's a building.

00:13:54
Speaker 2: I love it.

00:13:55
Speaker 7: But that, but I don't think there's a close second October, whether you since you were asked, if we didn't really.

00:13:59
Speaker 2: Ask, okay, but if I gave you April or I gave you October, I'll take October, all right. I'm taking April.

00:14:06
Speaker 8: October.

00:14:07
Speaker 7: You got the NFL going on the come. I don't even know how that's even a debate in March April to October. That's what I'm trying to figure out.

00:14:15
Speaker 2: It's because we're debating. That's why we're debating.

00:14:19
Speaker 7: No, but for that to be a debate, that has to be like a really strong argument. To me, there's not a close second October.

00:14:25
Speaker 2: Okay. If I gave you March in April or you could take September or October.

00:14:29
Speaker 7: I'll take Septober October ten out of ten times, Okay, not even a blink.

00:14:33
Speaker 5: All right, Yes, Paul, I'm missed October at Reggie Jackson. But I'm missed October for a number of reasons. It's a debate. April and March are heavy. There's a lot of hope of baseball opening. It's a debate.

00:14:46
Speaker 2: Let's take a break here, Marvin. How are the arms long?

00:14:50
Speaker 5: Yeah?

00:14:51
Speaker 8: Very impressive. Did you trophy?

00:14:54
Speaker 2: Did you go home and hug your wife? Say? Hey, how does that feel?

00:15:00
Speaker 7: She said pretty much the same, But I said it's two inches longer than everybody else.

00:15:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, take them break. We'll settle on a poll question. Got phone calls in the on deck circle. We're back after this.

00:15:12
Speaker 1: Be sure to catch the live edition of The Dan Patrick Show weekdays at nine am Eastern six am Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the iHeartRadio app.

00:15:23
Speaker 2: Hey, it's Rob Parker and Kelvin Washington from The Odd Couple on Fox Sports Radio and in addition to hearing us live weeknights from seven to ten pm Eastern on Fox Sports Radio, we are excited to announce brand new YouTube channel for the show. That's right. You can now watch The Odd Couple live on YouTube every day.

00:15:43
Speaker 3: All you gotta do search Odd Couple FSR on YouTube again YouTube, Just search Odd Couple FSR.

00:15:49
Speaker 4: Check us out on YouTube and subscribe.

00:15:53
Speaker 2: Lewis Riddick of The Mothership great contributor throughout the entire football season and of course in the off season ESPN, NFL College Football Analyst, and you could tune in for NFL Draft Daily three Eastern weekdays on ESPN two, ESPN APP and also Disney Plus. All right, give me the most important drill at the combine and you, as a former front office guy, would say that will equate to success on Sundays.

00:16:24
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, it's it's different for each for each position group. So when you're looking at obviously, when you look at the forty, which is always the marque event, you know it's different for the DB's As a post OFFENSI alignment, you hear all the time of offense alignment, it's about ten yard split for dbs, Like corners in particular, it's about ten yard split. The forty is more heavily weighted for corners because look, if you're sub if you're not sub four or five in the forty at corner, you're probably gonna have to be like ridiculously proficient as far as your instincts and route recognition, because you just need raw speed.

00:16:57
Speaker 6: You just do.

00:17:00
Speaker 4: I think, for like wide receivers, I love to watch the three cone drill and in the twenty yard short shuttle because obviously a lot of their their movements lower body explosive, this being able to change direction, moving to serpentine, that's all important. So like right now, when everybody's like up in arms about Carnel Tate's forty yard time being, you know four or five to one four five two is agent saying it's lower, blah blah. Look it really, if if we really judge wide receivers by forties, Jerry Rice would have went undrafted. So I mean, it's just like you know, there, it's always different from position group to position group. I think across all position groups, everyone likes to see what a guy's vertical jump is because that is really just about raw physical explosion. And there were some dudes this year who was like, I mean, I was telling my son about some of these guys in and their vertical jumps, and he's like forty three and a half inches from standing two point Like, yeah, man, these dudes are jumping out the gym. So it's it moves based on position. But I think forty ten splits three cone, those are the ones that you really want to kind of pay attention to from a measurement standpoint.

00:18:03
Speaker 2: You know what caught my attention. A couple of guys had a better vertical than Vince Carter, and I go, I don't know what it means, but that's pretty damn impressive there, don't I don't know. I mean, there's certain positions where I could see where you would say, oh, you know, this guy, if an edge rusher, somebody can block field goals, maybe vertical comes in. But these guys are preparing for the combine. So that's the tricky part is you know how good are they or how good will they be as football players. I still maintain what I see on tape on Saturday is now your medicals. The interview process like those are important, you know, are you the height that they say, the weight you say? Other than that, I just don't. It's a and teams do this though, Lewis. Every year somebody's going to go, oh my god, like Anthony Richardson, somebody's gonna go by what they saw this week in Indianapolis and change what they probably saw for three months in the college football season.

00:19:13
Speaker 4: Yeah, And usually what that is is then at this point in time is where a lot of other people come into the evaluation process, namely coaches, namely administrators, you know, whether it be a team president and owner, whoever it is. They haven't been out on the road since August and September October and I've ever they've been watching tape. They've been doing their own thing. I mean, coaches have been coaching their teams. So what winds up happening is sometimes they can come in and they can Now it's important for a general manager in particular to not let this happen, but they can kind of blow up all the work that's been done all few days, and next thing, you know, like everything is in chaos, when really you want to just keep the train on the tracks. And keep it moving down the road. It's just another piece. It's confirmation a lot of times for what you've seen on tape, or it's the reason why you go back and maybe evaluate a little bit more, especially if a guy isn't as athletic in the testing numbers as you thought he looked on tape, or if a guy's a lot more athletic looking than you thought he was in the tape, then you need to go back and research was he hurt during the season, what kind of scheme was he dealing with during the season, what kind of coaching was he getting during the season. So or you know, you don't want to miss on somebody who maybe just had who dealt with an injury, dealt with a bad situation during the fall. But he is a great athlete, and quite honestly, he does have football instincts, and maybe you could wind up catching someone whose values a little depressed and wind up really hitting on him once he gets to your place. It's another it's just another data point. But I'm with you. There's no games being played right now, no guys who were catching passes, intercepting passes, rushing the passer, So let's not make crazy, wild changes on people's evaluations, although there were some guys who really did confirm what you saw on tape. And the cool part about it, it's all the top players that we're doing it, and they blew it up as far as they're testing, which right now is going to make Night one of the drafts super super exciting.

00:21:08
Speaker 2: Lewis Riddick of The Mothership, former NFL defensive back and pro personnel director with the Eagles, also was in the front office with Washington. You can see him on NFL Draft Daily three eastern weekdays on ESPN two, ESPN APP and Disney Plus. It's weird to say, hey, is the best player, the most talented player going to be taken number one overall? And the answer is no. In basketball, if the Portland Trailblazers had taken the best player in the draft, they would have taken Michael Jordan, but they at the time you had to have a big man, so you pass, you know, a Keem goes one, then you got Sam Buie. But the NFL do they do that as well. It's position. You're not going to take Jeremiah Love number one and he could be the best player in the draft or Sony Styles or whoever you want to throw in there. That is it's it's the person in front of you. Aside from quarterback, it's it's need. There could be a defensive back who's the best player in the draft. He ain't gone number one, but yeah, so how do you justify when you take somebody even if you know the guy who's gonna go four picks later is the best player and and you know could be a Hall of Famer.

00:22:28
Speaker 4: Because it's it's it's always well, there's there's really there's two things. It's always like a there's always a battle between best player available and best player available at the position that you do need because you are actually trying to build a football team and you're not just collecting talent. So it's like like, let's just say, for instance, if somehow, some way, which it won't happen, let's just say Fernando Mendoza has slid down the board to number you know, to number nine in Kansas City's there on the board. They're not going to take Fernando Mendoza even if he was the best player on the board at that time, because it just doesn't make sense, right, So you're always trying to balance those two.

00:23:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, but take quarterback out of the equation.

00:23:05
Speaker 4: True, okay, true, So I think what winds up happening is there, and I remember being taught this a long time ago. You need to come up with a way in which you prioritize the positions in terms of importance one through twenty two on a football team, obviously, Okay, we'll take quarterback out at the top. So the other twenty one positions, what exactly how do you prioritize them?

00:23:26
Speaker 2: So you know that?

00:23:27
Speaker 4: Okay, when you're looking at your board like you have typically if you can picture a board, a physical board up in the draft room, you have all the positions across the top of the board horizontally, and then everybody stacked vertically within those positions, and you kind of and then you have like a grading scale on the far left, and you kind of slot them in vertically across positions like this. So what winds up happening is depending upon how you you know stack positions. So let's say that your top five positions are quarterback, pass rusher, defensive corner, offensive tackle, wide receiver. Let's see that those are your top five positions in that order. Most teams are going to have those five positions in some kind of order outside of quarterback. Okay, and you come up and you're and you're up on the you're on the clock, and say you're at pick five, right, and you're looking across the board, and you have three guys at premium positions who are all literally, as you look horizontally across the board, on the same plane, you haven't graded exactly the same. Now is when you go to how you prioritize building a football team? Yeah, okay, and how you prioritize building a football team sometimes it's like philosophically, how you believe you know teams should be built. There's obviously salary cap ramifications that are involved here, So you know a guy who winds up, you know, positions that carry a higher value in the NFL when you're talking about you know what the franchise tag would be with the average year, average salary per year would be. You want to kind of get those guys when they're younger on a rookie contra. You don't want to have to be in free agency having to find those kinds of people, So you wind up prioritizing those number one they have high positional value on a football team anyway, as far as how you play the game. And number two, that's usually gonna come with a higher salary. So you want as much cheap, affordable labor as you can possibly get, so you're gonna prioritize those guys higher. That's why running back, that's why it slides down the board, and that's why pass rushers, corners, offensive tackles are always gonna go higher. And there may be guys who go higher even if they are on your board. Jeremiah Love is sticking out. He's above everyone. But you're gonna but you need an offensive tackle. You may take CC Mauinoa from Miami, even if he is a notch below Jeremiah Love simply because of the positional value to your football team.

00:25:46
Speaker 2: But if you take Jeremiah Love in the top ten, which he probably will, Yeah, so you're gonna double down on that. You're gonna have to pay him as a top ten pick, yep. And then if he works out, you're gonna have to pay him again yep. Correct, Like, if you draft him and he turns out to be great, then you get to that fourth year, Well, now you're doubling down on that position. So now you get into that Zeke Elliott situation, and then you go how much gas does he have left? Can I get eight years out of Jeremiah Love? And that's why teams I didn't get nervous with that top ten pick on a running back.

00:26:25
Speaker 4: You know what's also interesting about that though, See, I do think traditionally, like back in the two thousand's, early twenty tens, late nineties, Yeah, you used to you always thought about could I get how much runway can I get with a player? Can I get two contracts out of him? Can I get a decade? Can I get ten years? You see how fast the league changes now? How much I mean coaches get two three years and they're blown up out of there. I do think the mentality has changed some, meaning, look, we got to win now. Otherwise we see how impatient owners get right now. Yeah, so I think a little bit of that calculus has changed. Like, I don't know if you worry about that so much as you look with Jeremiah, I wouldn't be worried about that, about doubling down and trying to figure out, you know what am I gonna do with this second contract. I just want to get through his first contract. I want to win some games. I want to be able to go worse to first like some of these teams are doing, because if I don't, I may be out here in the way in which he is able to help you win football games with his explosive playmaking ability, which is priority number one for every general manager and head coach right now.

00:27:30
Speaker 2: But why just take him at two? You know what?

00:27:33
Speaker 4: Probably because they're thinking this, Look, they're gonna believe at some point here. I think they're gonna franchise bres Hall. They really do like breast ball, and Breeze is a good player, and I just don't think that makes sense for them. But I think, look, could Tennessee wind up taking him, Could Arizona wind up taking him? Could the Giants at five for sure wind up taking him? I absolutely think so. I absolutely think that he may not get past the Giants at five. He's well, they saw what they gave up, and I understand why they thought they maybe needed to give this up, meaning let Sa Kwan go. But they saw the difference that he can make. They saw the difference that he can make. Now, obviously you need to make sure your sae Quon went to the perfect place with the perfect offensive line at that time. But Jeremiah is different. And I know for a fact as I hear it all the time. It's what every head coach is after. We need guys who can win games on one play. It's too hard to try and go ten to fifteen plays, and Jeremiah can do. I ended up running back. Coach told me this, tell me this Dan, he said, you know who he reminds me of. He goes, don't, don't, don't. I'm not saying this is the one to one comparison, but he moves with the ease and fluidity of Eric Dickerson. That's what reminds me of. And I haven't heard anybody in my entire time of scouting since I got done playing compare anybody to Eric Dickerson. Nobody, No, but not a single runner. That was pretty high praise. And I respect the hell out of this guy who told me.

00:28:56
Speaker 2: That you're in love with love.

00:28:58
Speaker 4: I say, yeah, I'm not the only one.

00:29:00
Speaker 8: Yeah, everybody, he's a special Yeah.

00:29:04
Speaker 2: But see then I go back to the Jets. Why not have another playmaker? Yeah, okay, I have Breeze Hall. I get another playmaker. I want to put pressure on you on the defensive side. Yeah, now, now deal with this. We'll we'll incorporate these guys in the offense. If he's the second best, most valuable player, difference maker, I have a hard time passing.

00:29:27
Speaker 4: The only problem is like they were, they were like epically historically bad on defense, Like they have no playmakers onside, they gave all of them away.

00:29:38
Speaker 2: We're just gonna score more points. We don't have to score one more point, Lewis.

00:29:42
Speaker 4: Well, I mean what you're looking at is can we address it somewhere later on down the you know, down the line. I know they're gonna get a quarterback too, so that that's the other thing too, Dan, I mean, what are they gonna do with sixteen? What are they gonna do?

00:29:53
Speaker 8: I mean, are they gonna.

00:29:54
Speaker 4: Wind up taking a guy. I'm sitting here looking.

00:29:56
Speaker 8: At my board.

00:29:56
Speaker 4: I'm going, hey man, they got to get somebody. They gotta get somebody to pull the trigger. I know they've got so many different things going on there, but yet, Jeremiah's got a lot of people right now in personnel departments sitting there going should we we saw what Jamier Gibbs, did we know what Bjon Robinson can do? We saw what Saquan can do when he's at the right spot. Are we set up to where we can get that kind of return on investment if he's ours? And I think that's this is this is the fun time of year. It's a fun time of year for us. I don't know how fun it is for the teams. And you know, we're actually trying to make these decisions. But there's some dudes, man, there are some guys right now who just showed over the week, over the past week, that the athletic component of the game is skyrocketing. These athletes are insanely, insanely talented and skilled and trained, and the game has never been more more specialized and more athletic than it will be in twenty twenty six.

00:30:54
Speaker 2: That's for sure, great to talk to you as always, of course, thank you, Bud, already most riddick of the Mothership.

00:31:01
Speaker 1: Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of our shows at foxsports Radio dot com and within the iHeartRadio app. Search FSR to listen live.

00:31:13
Speaker 2: Jeremy Fowler The Mothership, ESPN Senior, NFL reporter, David Montgomery traded from the Lions to the Texans. Your thoughts on that, and then what's that mean for Joe Mixon?

00:31:28
Speaker 9: Yeah, Dan, David Montgomery's trade market might as well have had a trade me sign at the NFL Combine because teams had the full expectation that he would welcome a change of scenery that Jamier gives being the one in Detroit. Montgomery fell like at age twenty eight, so it's some miles left and he had a good market because he's only do six million dollars. So Houston gave up a lot to get him a fourth and a seventh round pick, which is a little rich. But GM Nick Cassario is one of the most aggressive in the league. He will do a trade like that and get ahead of it and just take the guesswork out, even if it means giving up more than maybe he would have wanted. So that certainly helps. Montgomery will go into Houston as the number one back. I think that's pretty clear at this point. They have what he mark's a young player, and that leaves a big question mark for Joe Mixon, who is a cap casualty candidate. Anyways, So I believe that that marriage is probably over at this point, barring a surprise. You know certainly that they loved mixing last year, so maybe there's a chance he can come back healthy this year. But it seems like the writing's on the wall with this Montgomery trade.

00:32:26
Speaker 2: Does CJ. Strong get a contract extension before this new season?

00:32:34
Speaker 8: You know what?

00:32:35
Speaker 9: I actually think there's a trend that could be brewing, and this will be an interesting.

00:32:38
Speaker 8: Case study for that. Do teams pay.

00:32:41
Speaker 9: Quarterbacks the huge money even if that quarterback is not a top tier guy? Right like we saw it with two years ago, Jared Goff, Trevor Lawrence, Jordan Love, all those guys were kind of outside of the top ten. They all got paid. It worked out for some, it didn't work out for Miami and Tua where they're now stuck with fifty four million dollar and guaranteed money. I think the teams are going to rethink that process that they don't have a guy who's at the top shelf, if they have a guys in the middle shelf, they might wait a year, make them prove it in that fourth year. So you know, Houston has made clear they want CJ. Stroud to be their quarterback in twenty twenty six. What that financial commitment looks like is still unknown, and I'm not wholly convinced that they're going to do it. I think they could kind of wait this out a little bit and see what he does, continue to build the team around him. Now, I do believe Stroud is not just looking for the most massive number you can think of. He doesn't want to suppress his own market. But he does know that they got to pay Will Anderson the pass rusher, they got to pay some other pieces, They got to build a winner around him. I think he values being in Houston doesn't want to cripple them long term as well. So maybe because of that there's a sweet spot deal that they can do in the short term that makes sense for both sides. But I just think buying large teams are going to start to wait. I mean, Dan, you know, you've seen there are eight or nine quarterbacks out there in the last few years of guys that were not very good coming out, got benched set and now they're good options. So you're not beholden to the draft pick that you selected who's maybe like good and not great. Like you can wait a little bit and you can find a Daniel Jones or a Baker Mayfield if you need to, you know, just because you don't want to pay the guy you have right.

00:34:15
Speaker 2: Now Kyler Murray's market are the Cardinals on the hook for how much?

00:34:22
Speaker 9: So they're on the hook for they've already paid or locked into some guarantees. I think it's eighteen million somewhere around there. He's got another big trigger coming up, I believe the fifth day of the new league year. So think mid March is an artificial deadline. I think it's close to twenty million. It's a pretty big number that would be on the hook for if they let him stay on the roster through say March fifteenth or whatever that date is. So that's an artificial deadline that they are going to move on. It would be a shock if they kept him on that number. So if you cut them, that does open up a situation where a team, because of the guarantees has already been paid, can get him on a cheap contract. Potentially he's going to have value. You know, Minnesota, I know is considering Kyler Murray. He's one of their stronger considerations. I would say, along with Geno Smith, that's probably tier one for them. You know, maybe they look into the Derek Carr situation, but I haven't heard anything strong there that teams are in that market right now. TUA would probably be more of a backup, second tier option for them.

00:35:20
Speaker 8: So all these guys want.

00:35:20
Speaker 9: To go to Minnesota, Dan because it's a great environment. You've got Kevin O'Connell, You've got Justin Jefferson, you got some pieces to work with.

00:35:26
Speaker 8: That is a hot team right now for the quarterback market.

00:35:29
Speaker 9: Even though they don't have a lot of money to spend, they have all these quarterbacks that are probably getting cut that are cheap because of the offset language and the guarantees they already have.

00:35:37
Speaker 2: Is JJ McCarthy going to get cut?

00:35:40
Speaker 9: I would be surprised if he gets cut. It's a similar situation to Anthony Richardson last year. I think in a perfect world, they would like to bring somebody on, like if you bring on Geno Smith. Let's say, right why I think he's interesting to Minnesota is because you know he's had enough struggles where if you bring him in and sell him as a competitor to JJ, you can kind of sell it, but you can also sell it as yeah, he's probably the starter, So you're hedging both ways and you can keep it alive with JJ a little bit and maybe he surprises you in camp, but you know, we've all been there.

00:36:13
Speaker 2: Dan.

00:36:14
Speaker 9: It's kind of like when you get broken up with where somebody starts seeing other people, Like when they do that, it's kind of clear it's probably over. So there's that element to the JJ McCarthy situation as well. Similarly, Anthony Richardson with Daniel Jones. When they signed Daniel Jones, they were probably going to start him. They were going to have a competition in camp and maybe see if Richardson can play him out, but they sort of knew where it was going. I think this is a similar situation in Minnesota. They know where this is headed, but they'll leave a little wigger room for JJ to maybe surprise him.

00:36:41
Speaker 2: Okay to Jeremy Fowler, Mothership ESPN senior NFL reporter, if the Steelers don't have Aaron Rodgers, what is plan.

00:36:50
Speaker 9: B right now? I would say Plan B is Will Howard, who's a six round pick. You know he that wouldn't be the flashy option, but they, you know, talking to people there, they really do like him.

00:37:01
Speaker 8: A lot.

00:37:03
Speaker 9: You know, he's great in the huddle, in the locker room, he's great with teammates, he's ac quitted himself well.

00:37:08
Speaker 8: They felt like Aaron.

00:37:09
Speaker 9: Rodgers did a really good job mentoring him last year that he might just be ready to play now. The flip side of that is they've done a lot of homework on this draft, dating back to really two years ago. They've been kind of loading up for this draft class to potentially take a quarterback. Now it's not as strong as people thought it was probably going to be six months ago when you had all those names that you know, whether it's Drew al or Penn State or three or four of them that you thought were going to be in the mix in the first round. It just didn't work out. So that's the crapshoot of the draft. But they've done a lot of homework. Or if they took one this year, it would not shock me. And maybe it's somewhere high. Maybe it's Tye Simpson in the late first or they can find a way to get him in the second, or Garrett Nssmeyer day two. Like I do think they've looked long and hard at those type of options.

00:37:52
Speaker 2: The Jets situation, what did they do at quarterback?

00:37:58
Speaker 9: So for playing musical chairs, Dan, they're probably gonna get the last chair, like whoever's whoever's left, the Jets are going to get.

00:38:07
Speaker 2: Why, you know, nobody wants to play there.

00:38:10
Speaker 9: I mean, unless they're willing to just overpay. You have to overpay in New York to get the guy you want. No nobody wants to play there. I shouldn't say nobody, but it's not an attractive spot for these quarterbacks. Like I mentioned Minnesota. You know, I would say Arizona and Miami are both probably slightly more attractive than the Jets right now. I would say that, and the view of these quarterbacks or people in the market. Now the Jets offer Garrett Wilson, they have a pretty good offensive line, Breece Hall, They're probably going to tag him. So you do have some pieces there. They got a ton of first round picks in the next two drafts. Darren Mougie, the GM has set that up with trades, so you know you might have something. But they got justin Fields. He's still in the books for ten million in guarantees. You know, they very well could just kind of bite that bullet cut them and move on. I just think they'll end up getting, you know, one of those bridge options. Maybe it's Jacoby Brisset at in Arizona, trade him, It could be somebody like that. I just don't think they're going to get the top top option.

00:39:04
Speaker 2: Can somebody build a bridge and name it the you know, Jacoby Brissette Bridge, like.

00:39:10
Speaker 8: The Brisette Bridge. Yeah, yeah, I mean.

00:39:12
Speaker 2: They should after all these years he's been a bridge quarterback. I mean, there's Teddy Bridgewater, but you know it's like it's Jacoby Bridgewater. Kirk Cousins sure gonna have a home.

00:39:27
Speaker 9: I think there's a chance of that. I think he's gonna have to wait a little bit. I don't since he's in that top tier guys that's going.

00:39:32
Speaker 8: To get a job right off the bat.

00:39:34
Speaker 9: I think he'd be a backup or a third option for Minnesota. Backup as in, I mean, like who they want to sign as their bridge, you know. I think he's sort of in that group with two in that second tier from Minnesota for example.

00:39:49
Speaker 8: But I don't.

00:39:50
Speaker 9: I don't think it's going to be moving on him heavy out of the gate. Now he's got to be released by Atlanta. That will happen at the new league year next week, and then you go from there. He's played well enough to get a job somewhere, but there's not a clear path right now that I'm hearing. I think he could just strategically wait a little bit and look, he's got this TV situation in his back pocket. You know, he kind of did a trial basis during the season, did pretty well. You know, he's good talking football like, he kind of has that as an option. I think he still wants to play, but certainly he's intrigued by that side of things.

00:40:21
Speaker 8: On the broadcast media side.

00:40:23
Speaker 2: What about my guy, Malik Willis.

00:40:25
Speaker 9: Malik Willis is going to get He's gonna get a nice contract. He's gonna get paid. Some of the numbers that have been floated out there several times last week, thirty plus million dollars. I would shoot that down. I've talked to a dozen teams about it. They don't have him in the thirty million dollar range. They have him in that twenty million dollar bucket, maybe twenty five. So I think that's a sweet spot and less things get crazy and he's just got three teams that have to have him. Miami's definitely in Arizona might very well be in, but they also might go Jimmy Garoppolo another bridge option for you, Dan, and then the third one would be I mean, you know, like maybe the Jets won't overpay.

00:41:02
Speaker 2: There, but Pittsburgh is not an option.

00:41:05
Speaker 9: I don't sense that right now. Cleveland as well. I don't think Cleveland's an option. Malie Wills's agent is David Mulligetta, who has Deshaun Watson, who has a chance to start in Cleveland.

00:41:15
Speaker 8: I would be shocked if that.

00:41:16
Speaker 2: Do you think that's a legitimate shot that Deshaun Watson's his starting quarterback this upcoming season.

00:41:23
Speaker 8: I think it's a shot.

00:41:24
Speaker 9: I don't know if I'm gonna say legitimate shot, yet I do believe it's it will be on the table. I was oil They're gonna let those guys compete in rule.

00:41:30
Speaker 2: But if he's healthy, though, he should be the starting quarterback well.

00:41:35
Speaker 9: And I would say people close to Deshaun would tell you that the Kevin Stefanski Deshaun Watson fit just it didn't work, and it probably wasn't the offense where he's been best. You know that Gary Kubiak wide zone system where it's a lot under center in the play action. Todd Monkin's system will be better for Deshaun Watson. It's it's more of what he's used to. Todd Monkin is sort of a chameleon. You know, he can change his offense a lot of differ ways, but he can appeal to the guy who was really good in college and did some spread offense concepts like that's Deshaun. So the feeling is like, hey, let's try this. Maybe he's got this last year left on his deal. We owe him forty six million dollars. Nobody's going to take him, so let's just see how it goes and roll the ball out and see if Shador Sanders or Dylan Gabriel can beat him out.

00:42:19
Speaker 2: The Raiders' situation, so you take Fernando Mendoza. Yeah, I don't assume he's going to start this season as the number one quarterback unless you hear otherwise. But I think they got to beef up that team a little bit, certainly the offensive line. Who is the backup or maybe who's going to be the starting quarterback with the Raiders.

00:42:40
Speaker 9: Well that's a big piece to all this, Dan, because you have Geno Smith who could find a home as a starter elsewhere. Still, you know, last year wasn't all his fault. It was a really bad team. And so I think what's happening here is if you're Gino, you're saying, Okay, if I stay here, I'll probably start. But we're still bad and I'm playing eight games that I'm gonna get benched and then my career is great. Where can they just trade or release me here and I can get out and go to a Minnesota or a Miami or somewhere to just reset my career again, which he's done multiple times.

00:43:13
Speaker 8: And you know, to his credit, he's become a pro bowler, you know, a couple years ago in Seattle.

00:43:16
Speaker 9: So that's the sense right now. I'd be surprised that he's on the roster in Vegas. I think what they'll do is w'll draft Mendoza and they'll get a steady veteran somewhere, whether it's eight and O'Connell who's there, or it's somebody else, you know, somebody who can kind of half mentor half play games and just get men does out there when he's ready, you know, whether that's week one or week twelve or next year, But they're trying to play the long game there with everything they know they need a lot. They're gonna be active and freegency because they have to. They've got one hundred million dollars to spend. They're gonna get a guard or a center, and a receiver and a linebacker. Like they have a lot of holes and it's going to take two years to film. Great stuff is always Thank you, Jeremy, Thanks, Dan, appreciate it. That's Jeremy Fowler.