April 29, 2024 - Doug Collins Podcast
55:29
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| You want to listen to a podcast? | |
| By who? | |
| Georgia GOP Congressman Doug Collins. | |
| How is it? | |
| The greatest thing I have ever heard in my whole life. | |
| I could not believe my ears. | |
| This house, wherever the rules are disregarded, chaos and mob rule. | |
| It has been said today, where is bravery? | |
| I'll tell you where bravery is found and courage is found. | |
| It's found in this minority who has lived through the last year of nothing but rules being broken, people being put down, questions not being answered, and this majority say, be damned with anything else. | |
| We're going to impeach and do whatever we want to do. | |
| Why? | |
| Because we won an election. | |
| I guarantee you, one day you'll be back in the minority and it ain't gonna be that fun. | |
| Hey everybody, welcome to Friday's Finest. | |
| I wish I could be happy. | |
| It's not that way today. | |
| I am wearing black. | |
| Not just because I am a Raiders fan, but I am, as I've said, a Falcons fan because I was born into it. | |
| I am looking for the annulment papers this morning. | |
| I don't get it. | |
| One job, man. | |
| One job. | |
| They could have picked a long snapper and nobody would have said anything. | |
| But we picked a quarterback who, by the way, this is not personal for Michael Penix. | |
| He's a great guy. | |
| He needs to play. | |
| But the Falcons, really? | |
| Well, here to solve my problems today is our Friday's Finest crew joined by the amazing, yes, Coach Chan Gailey is with us today and we're so happy to have him as we've had him for several years now discussing football, everything going on about the NFL and the college football time. | |
| We're glad to have him here to discuss the draft. | |
| Joining me also as well today after the break, Chip Blake, James, we're all here ready to go. | |
| So great. | |
| Welcome to Friday. | |
| Strap in. | |
| We got a lot to talk about. | |
| We'll be with you right after the break. | |
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| All right, Coach, I'll start with you. | |
| I'm sitting there last night. | |
| I'm watching all these quarterbacks go off, which I think I'm going to be the Debbie Downer in this whole thing. | |
| I believe there is maybe one that will make it past four years with the original team. | |
| Maybe. | |
| But number two, I thought this was a year I don't have to worry about the Falcons. | |
| We'll just, you know, we got an edge rusher. | |
| We need some defense. | |
| We've got a quarterback. | |
| You've been in those draft rooms. | |
| You've made these picks. | |
| Help me understand this one with the Falcons. | |
| I have no idea. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Well, I can sort of shed some light on it, but I can't make sense of it, okay? | |
| I can shed light but not make sense. | |
| A lot of times what you have is a general manager who is in charge of personnel making decisions And he is looking at the long-term solutions for a team. | |
| Whereas coaches are looking not long-term, but what helps us win now. | |
| If you spent the money to go out and get a quarterback, You're saying, okay, we want to win now. | |
| How do we do that? | |
| Probably a backup quarterback isn't the best way to make that happen right now. | |
| So you're speaking out of both sides of your mouth to me as a GM or as the hierarchy of the Falcons. | |
| We want to go out and get a quality quarterback, but we don't want to help him. | |
| We want to think about long-term, but... | |
| We need to win now. | |
| It didn't make sense to me either, and I'm sure there's a lot of people that it didn't make sense to. | |
| But, you know, that's life in the NFL. There's a lot of people that don't make sense out there. | |
| And every quarterback, to your point, gets drafted higher than they should have. | |
| Almost every one of them. | |
| There's been a few that haven't, but almost every one of them. | |
| Well, Coach, before we open it up here a little bit with James and Chip, and again, James is smiling this morning, so that really infuriates me. | |
| But other than that, because I thought Chip and I were going to have to be lifting him off the floor today after all the stuff from the Vikings. | |
| But one thing that came out last night, and Coach, this is one that only a coach, I think, can answer, and one who's been in the draft room, but also coaching in the NFL. It became apparent last night after, again, Atlanta Falcons shocked the world in not a good way, that they waited until they were on the clock to call Kirk Cousins and tell him. | |
| How does that affect, I mean, you just paid him $100 million to come to Atlanta to be your quarterback, to, you know, to do all the things that you want, and you wait till they're on the clock getting ready so he doesn't hear it from the TV first until, you know, the guy on ESPN said they may drive for him. | |
| Is that got to cause some friction coming into a new team like that? | |
| It does with management. | |
| Hopefully it does it with coaches. | |
| Okay. | |
| Because people, I think players understand that that is, in most cases, probably 90% of the cases that are out there, those are two different factions. | |
| And that's the problem with most places. | |
| That's two different factions. | |
| If they're not in sync, I mean, we could sit here and talk about the 49ers reaching way, way a long way. | |
| But evidently, they're on the same page about the type of person that they're wanting for their football team. | |
| And that's why they reached for Pearsall. | |
| So, you know, it's... | |
| You have to be on the same page as management and coaches, or you're looking to create problems. | |
| One quick follow-up on that, though. | |
| It has been reported in the Atlanta Press today, and this is going out, you know, so you're all hearing this. | |
| We're doing this full time today. | |
| That Raheem Morris, the new coach at the Falcons, was really high on Pennix. | |
| And it's almost sounding like Morris was wanting Pennix And again, with the dynamics of Arthur Blank and the new general manager and the coach you don't know, I like your answer, but if it gets out that Morris was pushing for Penix, could that be a bigger problem? | |
| If they don't win, it is. | |
| If they win, it's not an issue. | |
| If they don't win, everybody's going to turn around and say, and you wanted him? | |
| And we just paid all this money to this guy? | |
| I mean, if the coach wanted it, it creates a problem in the football team now. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Because who's the leader? | |
| Did Raheem Morris not want Kirk Cousins? | |
| Is that what he's saying? | |
| Yeah, that's what I'm wondering here, you know? | |
| I know. | |
| I mean, if I was Raheem Morris, I'd deny 100% that I was Fari, you know? | |
| I get it. | |
| I get it. | |
| Hey, let's go to a couple of things. | |
| Let's go around the room, though, first. | |
| I want to get some reaction. | |
| First, we'll go to Chip, and then we're going to come back through and get just general reactions last night, Chip. | |
| Well, look, I would agree with what Coach said with respect to, you know, you can't look at the decision to bring in Kurt Cousins at $180 million and then drafting Michael Penix at eight and say both of those are good decisions. | |
| Only one of those is probably going to end up being a good decision if you're lucky. | |
| You know, yesterday and even today, Doug, I mean, if the five stages of grief are denial, anger, What is it? | |
| Bargaining depression and acceptance. | |
| I was in denial yesterday and angry yesterday. | |
| And I'm bargaining right now, so I'm slowly making my way through. | |
| But, yeah, it makes absolutely no sense. | |
| I think Coach is right. | |
| You know, look, I'm a big fan of Michael Penix. | |
| I love the story, the fact that he's come back from two ACL tears on the same knee. | |
| I mean, how many 23-year-old kids can say that? | |
| Had an absolutely great season last season. | |
| I was really proud of him. | |
| But not only has he had knee issues, but he has separated his left shoulder in 2021 and he dislocated his right shoulder in 2019. So already we know that this kid is injury prone. | |
| We know that Kurt Cousins is coming off an Achilles surgery. | |
| I mean, at best, with the Curt Cousins deal, you know, the best case scenario for Falcons fans with Curt Cousins is that he can give you two strong years or maybe three. | |
| And if that's the case, the person that you just picked at eight is not going to see the field until 26 and 27. So it does send mixed signals. | |
| Are you trying to win today? | |
| Are you trying to build for the future now? | |
| I don't know. | |
| It certainly looked like Coach Morris and Terry Fontenot were in sync yesterday. | |
| I saw their press conference. | |
| I don't know if they gave that first thing this morning or if they gave that last night. | |
| But it certainly looked like they were in sync. | |
| Obviously, there's always the possibility that they weren't. | |
| But remember, Raheem Morris' first year in Tampa. | |
| It was 2009, and he drafted Josh Freeman in the mid-first round then, and that didn't work out really well either. | |
| So, look, you know, we're not asking Pennix to come in and be the starter, but at a minimum, I don't know how many teams, if any, had Michael Pennix graded ahead of J.J. McCarthy. | |
| It certainly looked like most teams had J.J. McCarthy graded ahead of Michael Pennix, and maybe that was because of the injuries, but I'm just shaking my head, Doug, but I'm already at bargaining and I'm through denial. | |
| I'm still at denial, but also one of the things, and Coach, I think you understand this as well, even if you benched and you kept him on the bench for two or three years, he's going to be 28 years old, 27, 28 years old when he's trying to come back there. | |
| All right, James, we're going to give you an opportunity. | |
| You're not in mourning this morning, so let's see. | |
| No, I just want to thank the Atlanta Falcons organization for allowing Dallas Turner to follow the Minnesota Vikings. | |
| And allowing us not to... | |
| All we had to do is trade our second or third round pick. | |
| And we traded up one to go get JJ McCarthy, which it is what it is. | |
| If he ends up being great, awesome. | |
| If he's terrible, we have nothing going on. | |
| But for now, I am a full JJ McCarthy fan. | |
| I'm going to watch his highlights and pretend that he's the next John Elway. | |
| And I'm all in. | |
| And I'm super excited. | |
| But the Penix pick is crazy because... | |
| I think I think what's weird about it is if you're gonna take a quarterback with that position and you're planning on him being a backup and you guys mentioned it that he's injured but like wouldn't you take Bo Nix then who's more of a project right if you're gonna if you're gonna take a backup quarterback in the first round which sounds insane when you say it out loud with the eighth pick a backup quarterback you're gonna take a project over somebody that has to sit three or four years depending on Kirk Cousins injury and then this guy already has an injury history But | |
| at least the Atlanta Falcons made the draft fun. | |
| Because it was super boring before that. | |
| Because we had to watch Drake May, whose career is probably going to end in the same way I'm blanking out. | |
| What was the kid who was there last year? | |
| He was with the Jacksonville now. | |
| Mack Jones. | |
| Mack Jones, thank you. | |
| Mack Jones, you know, they have the same problems. | |
| They've fixed none of the problems. | |
| I hope they don't even let him touch the football field this year because that's what I was hoping the Vikings were going to do was go up and get Drake May because I think he's probably, outside of Caleb, he's got the most potential to be a great player. | |
| Huh. | |
| All right, coach. | |
| Let's get off the Falcons for a little bit. | |
| We will return, believe me. | |
| I've got to go lick that wound up several more times this morning, but let's get off the Falcons for a minute. | |
| Unprecedented draft last night as far as quarterbacks. | |
| And the one thing I kept hearing, even to an extent with Caleb at number one and others, was that there was this reach factor. | |
| And that teams were just reaching here. | |
| I'm almost saying this was the group mentality, the groupthink. | |
| Actually, I did a podcast coming out next week on groupthink. | |
| And it seems like this is what happened. | |
| But I want to take a step back. | |
| I want to go to a professional who, like I said, what was your overall impressions of the draft, the quarterbacks in the draft? | |
| And then I have one that I want you, and when you get through, I want to have a question because I believe one of the quarterbacks drafted looks a lot like somebody that you've been high on for a while. | |
| And if he has another great year in Tampa Bay, would prove you right, which I think he possibly could. | |
| And that's Baker Mayfield. | |
| But what's your overall impressions of last night? | |
| Well, as I said earlier, everybody always overreaches for quarterbacks. | |
| We've made the position, we've made the game about the quarterback. | |
| That's what we've made it about. | |
| So, the other thing that you try to do is you draft to help the quarterback or you draft to stop the quarterback. | |
| That means pass rushers and corners. | |
| You draft to help the quarterback. | |
| That means offensive linemen, tight ends, wide receivers. | |
| Bill Coward, he said, you draft one of three positions. | |
| You've got to take a quarterback only if you think he's a great one. | |
| In the first round I'm talking about. | |
| Left tackles, pass rushers, corners. | |
| Those are the, that's what you draft. | |
| Yeah. | |
| And that is the way the thing seems to be going right now. | |
| And I'll tell you who I think. | |
| I think two people got great values because of the run on offensive players. | |
| I thought that corner that I think it was the Eagles got. | |
| Was really, is going to be a really good player. | |
| Played at a small school, but... | |
| A kid from Toledo? | |
| Yeah, a kid from Mitchell. | |
| Yes. | |
| I think they got a really good one there. | |
| He played so good down at the Senior Bowl, practiced great. | |
| I think he's got a chance to be one. | |
| And then, I'm partial, but I think Bo Nix is going to be a really good quarterback. | |
| I think he and Sean Payton will be a great match. | |
| I was talking to my son this morning about that, and I said, you know, if you look at matches, you know, if Jalen Daniels goes and Kingsbury can help him in D.C., that might be a good fit there. | |
| I'm not sure there's any fit for Caleb, and I made it clear, I don't think Caleb Williams will be, I think he'll follow Justin Fields pretty quick up there, but the match of coach and quarterback is so important. | |
| And Bo Nix and Sean Payton, To me, it goes back to sort of the old Drew Brees, you know, correlation down in New Orleans. | |
| But my question is, and I didn't think about Bo Nix and Chip. | |
| I saw Chip sort of look at this as well. | |
| Bo Nix, I think that you've got two quarterbacks that resemble Baker Mayfield in their style and their play, and whether that can translate into long-term, who knows. | |
| But that is Bo Nix. | |
| It is JJ McCarthy in the draft. | |
| If you watch them play in college, They're all that sort of all-over-the-place, spastic kind of play that wins games, but doesn't. | |
| How do you feel? | |
| In years past, when you first came into the league with Denver and you were with Dan Reeves and everything, do you think they would have ever been this kind of hysteria over quarterbacks, although we did have six in 83 that went? | |
| What do you think it is now? | |
| um i think that we have um made it a passing league first of all uh i mean fullbacks don't can't even get jobs anymore you know um blocking tight ends have a hard time getting jobs anymore um so we've made it a passing league and then If you make it a passing league, | |
| then the ones who pass the ball are the stars of the league, and they're doing everything they can. | |
| Every rule that comes out is to protect the stars and create points. | |
| Those are the rules that are coming out. | |
| They're guised as, let's protect our players, but they're trying to create more points and protect the star of the league. | |
| And so everybody's trying to find that star. | |
| Carolina missed, Houston hit last year. | |
| So out of these six, probably one of them, maybe two are going to last, as you said, four years with their original team. | |
| Chip, what do you got for the coach? | |
| Well, I'm happy to hear Coach's comments about Bo Nix. | |
| As everybody knows, I mean, you're not going to find a bigger Auburn fan than me, and I hated when he left Auburn. | |
| But I think, you know, obviously he made the right decision, and I said that when he left. | |
| I mean, you know, if Bo Nix wanted to play the next level, and he did, he needed to get out of Auburn. | |
| And he went all the way across the country three time zones away, got as far away as he could. | |
| And, you know, I'm happy for him. | |
| And look, he's, you know, James had mentioned kind of a project. | |
| I mean, nobody started more college football games in his career, I think, than Bo Nix, largely because two factors. | |
| Number one, everybody had an extra year eligibility in a COVID year, and the players played more games in college. | |
| And so, look, I am now a huge Denver Broncos fan. | |
| I went to college with Bo's dad, Patrick. | |
| He was a quarterback at Auburn when I was there, and he was a really good guy. | |
| And Bo's a good guy. | |
| He's got a good head on his shoulders. | |
| He's a competitor. | |
| He loves to compete. | |
| He's very accurate. | |
| We've seen that. | |
| And, you know, I think he's got the ability to flourish under Sean Payton. | |
| And, you know, I'm going to be cheering for him. | |
| I candidly thought Bo would go before Michael Penix did. | |
| You know, they both put on a clinic the two times they played each other last year. | |
| So, look, I'm a big fan. | |
| I hope it works out. | |
| You know, I hope it works out. | |
| But I, you know, I'm still baffled at what the Falcons did. | |
| It's just tough to... | |
| It's tough to have an evaluation and a discussion about the draft. | |
| I mean, I think it was one of the more surprising picks that we've seen in the first round in quite some time in an NFL draft, certainly in the top ten. | |
| James, what do you got? | |
| Coach, can you convince me that J.J. McCarthy is going to lead the Vikings to a Super Bowl real quick? | |
| I don't want to say that Doug laughing is the right response. | |
| No. | |
| I don't want to say that. | |
| James, I don't have any good news for you. | |
| Sorry. | |
| You know, Coach, I have been trying to convince myself for a minimum of three, four weeks now that this is my pick because that's the only... | |
| I was hearing... | |
| I'm going to be honest. | |
| I wanted Drake May. | |
| I thought... | |
| If anyone can teach him, I guess the footwork was the issue for him, right? | |
| That's what a lot of people were talking about. | |
| There were two people that would help him along his way, and that was Kevin O'Connell for the Vikings and the Giants because of what their coach did with Josh Allen. | |
| But seeing him with the Patriots seems like it's just going to end in utter disaster. | |
| But then I was like, okay, I have to convince myself J.J. McCarthy's the move. | |
| And at the same time, I was also thinking, oh, well, Michael Penix might be there if somebody else takes J.J. McCarthy. | |
| And sure enough, the Falcons went and blew up the draft, so we end up taking J.J. McCarthy. | |
| I'm happy with Dallas Turner. | |
| We needed a defensive end. | |
| I was hoping we'd get a corner because that's kind of where we've been getting killed, but I'm happy with Dallas Turner because he's arguably the best defensive player in the draft, and he dropped to 17, so I can't be mad about that. | |
| But yeah, all right, so you told me the answer. | |
| J.J. McCarthy's going to be terrible, and we have to start looking next season. | |
| Wait, I didn't say he's going to be terrible. | |
| I said lead you to a Super Bowl. | |
| Oh, okay, okay. | |
| So I might have another Kirk Cousins on my hand. | |
| Perfect. | |
| I get to sit around and watch him do nothing. | |
| Yeah, you have an eighth-round pick again, just like the Falcons. | |
| Get ready. | |
| Coach, I got one of your old teams. | |
| Been a mystery. | |
| We haven't had a chance to talk because we both went out for a little while since the end of the season. | |
| But interestingly enough, your former boss, Jerry Jones, and the Dallas Cowboys look lost right now. | |
| They, and maybe they're not, maybe they just, you know, but either it's a money issue, it's a directional issue. | |
| I mean, you were there, you worked in that, you know, organization, you were the coach there, and they picked up an offensive tackle last night. | |
| Yeah, that's, I mean, that's good for them. | |
| It would have been even better for the Falcons. | |
| But, you know, what's going on with Dallas? | |
| What's up there? | |
| You know, I really don't know. | |
| I think, you know, Jerry was a different person when I was there than he is now. | |
| That's from the outside looking in now, because I'm not close to the situation at all. | |
| I mean, he was really hands-on in the draft, very involved, sat in every meeting, all that. | |
| It sounds like to me that he's not as involved anymore, and maybe his son's doing that now. | |
| But he's a wheeler-dealer. | |
| That's what Jerry is. | |
| Jerry wheels and deals and figures out a way to try to find success. | |
| And it's not like they've been awful, they just hadn't won at all. | |
| And I don't want to throw rain on James right now, but you may be wishing you had Kirk Cousins in a year or two, because it could get worse. | |
| You've won a bunch of football games up there with him, and I was hoping the Falcons were going to do the same thing. | |
| Yeah, I think we've opened ourselves up with the Falcons to just this constant question. | |
| And I think Chip sort of stressed this before, is that Penix is getting a bad, and look, I wish we had not taken it. | |
| I make no bones about it. | |
| I don't wish him ill. | |
| I wish he'd have went somewhere else and had a chance. | |
| But now you've just created chaos, and I think the draft should never be about creating chaos. | |
| And it's like the Falcons, you know, you and I had a podcast about a year or so ago, maybe last year about the draft, in which teams that focus on what they know are the ones who succeed in drafts, you know? | |
| And the Falcons, it's almost like they don't understand the process of the draft. | |
| It's like, I don't get it. | |
| I just really don't. | |
| Doug, what are you talking about? | |
| They took a quarterback this year and they took a running back last year? | |
| How could you not have a... | |
| My God. | |
| If you think about it too, what's worse is that you have B. John Robinson might be the most talented running back in the league and it means nothing. | |
| It means nothing if you take them in the first round. | |
| Well, we're just going to do a podcast, Chip. | |
| One of the Fridays, fine. | |
| Coach, you want to come back? | |
| We're going to let James just dissect the Falcons draft choices for the last 10 years because it's been bad. | |
| It is bad. | |
| I mean, you know, the interesting part here, though, is you made an interesting point, and Chip, and we always talk about these interactions, but you made a point. | |
| Do you think Philadelphia Again, I always like to see good work. | |
| And I'm agreeing with you because this kid, this, you know, cornerback that Philadelphia picked up is an interesting pick, but that took some people in the draft room actually knowing what they were doing. | |
| And, you know, they went after him and got him and, you know, I think like the Purcell pick out of, for San Francisco as well. | |
| Explain what goes into that. | |
| How could a team, you know, what does that come into? | |
| Well, first of all, you have to do, you have a lot of people doing legwork. | |
| The people doing the legwork who are going out to the schools, getting the information, talking to the trainers, talking to the equipment guys, talking to the counselors. | |
| You know, you can't just throw on the film. | |
| You got to get background on these people. | |
| And the fact that the Eagles didn't select somebody from Georgia or Alabama this year is a minor miracle, to be honest with you. | |
| Yeah. | |
| But the people doing the groundwork have to do their job, and then the people that are going to make the decisions have to listen. | |
| They have to hear what's being said. | |
| Now, do you have some people come in there? | |
| You can't listen to the guy who yells the loudest. | |
| You got one scout that's going to jump up on the table. | |
| Well, you got to know when he jumps on the table what that means, and you got another guy that just sits there and explains everybody, and you got to know what that means. | |
| You got to read your people and know your people, and then you have to dissect all that, put it all together, and then make a good decision. | |
| That's how it happens. | |
| Real quick, Doug, I've got a question for Coach Gailey. | |
| I mean, last week in preparation of the draft, there was a video that was circulating from, I believe it was last year's draft. | |
| It was Monte Austin Ford, the GM at Arizona. | |
| And it was a fascinating clip. | |
| I don't know if you saw it, Coach. | |
| It was about a three and a half second clip when they were on the clock in the first round. | |
| And, I mean, he probably talked to seven teams in three minutes. | |
| And, I mean, he had a phone to both ears. | |
| And it was, you know, okay, you got this. | |
| All right, would you give a 25 for 17? | |
| Okay, you won't do the 25. All right, hold on one second. | |
| You know, and so I guess the question is, two-part question, how many people are in that draft room typically on average? | |
| And of the people that are in that draft room, How many people engage in the discussion on who to take, right? | |
| Because James had mentioned kind of before we started recording the situation that LA found themselves in with drafting Brock Bowers because, you know, he thought they were likely to pick Michael Penix. | |
| Kind of walk us through that dynamic in the first round, not the second, third round, but how much dissension is there? | |
| Is there dissension when you're on the clock, or do you get to a point where, okay, here's our board, here's our six guys. | |
| If our first guy's available, we take him. | |
| If not, we're taking two. | |
| If not, we're taking three. | |
| Kind of walk us through how that process works on draft night. | |
| Well, it depends on how your board's set up, first of all. | |
| Is your board set up on best player to worst player, or is your board set up on best player for our team through whoever's not the best for your team? | |
| So you're making some calculated decisions prior to draft how you set your board up. | |
| And then in the time that I've sat there, and we get a call five minutes before it's our pick, and somebody's saying, we'll give you this for your draft choice, or we'll give you this for your draft choice. | |
| You're obviously not going to say yes, because you may get a better offer with five minutes left in your pick. | |
| So you're waiting as long as you possibly can, and you can get three or four or five phone calls. | |
| Like you said, you saw that guy. | |
| You get three or four or five. | |
| But what that means is you don't have somebody that you really like. | |
| And you're open to trading that pick to go down because you'll take some of those other guys down the road because you don't want to spend the money, the capital, that it's going to take to get a guy that you really are not that high on at that point. | |
| And the other question that is asked is when you say, who are you trading up to get, you ask, who is it? | |
| Yeah. | |
| So you gain some information by who they want, and then if they're going to take the next guy that you would really like, you might not trade with them. | |
| You may get a better offer, but you might not trade with them if the next guy on your board that you really like is one they want. | |
| So there's so much that goes into that. | |
| And you asked the question, how many? | |
| Most people have the GM, the head coach, the owner, if he wants to be there, assistant GM, and the scouts are in there. | |
| So he'll turn around and ask the scout who actually scouted the guy. | |
| What do you think? | |
| And then you make your decision from there. | |
| And they'll even like we would sit as assistant coaches down in our offices and five minutes before it was our turn, they'd take three coaches up there and say, OK, talk about this guy. | |
| Talk about this guy. | |
| Talk about this guy. | |
| Offensive line guy may be there, pass rush guy may be there, and in case whoever falls to us. | |
| That's a fascinating process. | |
| It brings up another question, by the way, and Chip will get this inside joke. | |
| It just proves that Training Day is a classic football movie. | |
| That's all I'll say. | |
| No, Draft Day is a classic football movie. | |
| James? | |
| But, Coach, last night, I want to follow up on Chip's question, and then James, it's yours. | |
| Last night, we saw these pretty pictures of draft rooms, okay? | |
| You notice when they show in, they had like 25, 30 people in the draft room, all sitting there. | |
| Is there another room off to the side that they're not showing? | |
| Actually, there used to be. | |
| Now, it's all for show. | |
| They want to give the aura that they're very organized and very sharp. | |
| It's become a show now instead of like it used to be where you had the head coach and the GM and the owner sometimes, or it could be Jerry, who is the owner and the GM. And maybe the top two or three scouts sitting in there in a little cubbyhole, and you make a decision. | |
| It's now production. | |
| It is a true production. | |
| James? | |
| Listen, I had one question because I was curious about it. | |
| Obviously, when the draft was Coming down to six, the Giants were up and everyone was like, well, they could take J.J. McCarthy. | |
| And they said, we're taking Malik Nabors, so that means they're sticking with Daniel Jones. | |
| Which... | |
| Is what it is. | |
| I'm not going to start hating on the Giants for no reason. | |
| They don't really have a lot of options. | |
| They clearly didn't think J.J. McCarthy was better than Daniel Jones. | |
| They made that very clear, which also scared the hell out of me when we took J.J. McCarthy. | |
| But Malik Nabors and Romo Doomsday, I genuinely don't know the difference between the two of them as far as, like, I know one's got speed, one's got hands, one's bigger, whatever. | |
| Did the Giants make the right choice by getting a wide receiver? | |
| Like, that was the right move, right? | |
| Because they didn't really have another option there. | |
| They needed to get David Jones some help. | |
| Well, they have not had an elite guy for a while. | |
| Since Odell for one year. | |
| Yeah. | |
| So, they needed to go that direction, whoever it might have been. | |
| I thought it was a pretty good pick. | |
| And I can't tell the difference in those top two or three anyway. | |
| They were all great. | |
| I mean, it's great how good that is. | |
| Also, how about the Bears just stealing Romo Dunze? | |
| They now have three possibly elite wide receivers on one football team with Caleb as a quarterback. | |
| That's terrifying to me. | |
| Well, you better... | |
| You better hope that they don't have egos, because you can't throw three balls at once. | |
| Correct. | |
| Yeah, somebody will get lost in that mix. | |
| I'm just surprised, I guess I'm not surprised, but that the Chargers didn't take a wide receiver knowing they have no, I know they need, listen, getting Joe Alt is not a bad thing, right? | |
| They're going to protect Justin Herbert. | |
| But last year, they got rid of both of their wide receivers. | |
| They let Mike Johnson go. | |
| Yeah, and they let Keenan Allen go to the Bears. | |
| So I guess them having no... | |
| I know they had the kid last year. | |
| He was terrible. | |
| I'm blanking on his name as well. | |
| But I thought they should have gone with one of the top wide receivers available instead of Joe Wall. | |
| James, I'm just going to tell you one thing. | |
| Sitting in draft rooms for years, Running backs and wide receivers grow on trees. | |
| That's fair. | |
| You can find one anywhere. | |
| That whole second, third round is going to be wide receivers. | |
| I'm going to tell you, there are so many good wide receivers that are still out there. | |
| You'll get a good one. | |
| Go all to once in a generation kind of guy. | |
| I get that. | |
| Yeah, right. | |
| All right. | |
| Makes sense. | |
| Yeah, that's interesting. | |
| Chip, you got anything? | |
| Well, I mean, I agree with, I mean, Joe also beast, right? | |
| He's 6'8", 330, a left tackle. | |
| I mean, if there's one guy in this draft that if you look at, you know, one through 32 and And you had to make me guess today, you know, which one of these guys is most likely to make the Hall of Fame. | |
| I'm putting my money on Joe Alt if he can stay healthy. | |
| You know, especially when you look at the statistics on how many of those heavies, those offensive linemen hit, you know, in the draft compared to the skill players. | |
| But I want to go back to and kind of hear everybody's thoughts. | |
| I mean, I can't remember watching an NFL draft before that kind of mirrored my fantasy football draft. | |
| I mean, there wasn't a defensive player taken until 15. You know, of the 32 picks, 20... | |
| I think 24 of them are offensive players. | |
| And it just kind of talks about what Coach talked about at the beginning is, you know, this is a passing league now. | |
| You've got to score points. | |
| Certainly, you've got to keep your opponents from scoring points. | |
| But, you know, wow, the run on offensive players was just unbelievable. | |
| And then, you know, one thing that I think was very fair from this draft is that, and I say fair, I mean that in jest, is that the fastest player in the draft, That made me so mad. | |
| So the rich get richer at the end of the draft. | |
| Yeah, the draft was very boring up through the sixth pick, really seventh pick, J.C. Latham going to the Titans, and then it got really interesting after there, but a lot of value left in the second, third round on defensive players, And to coach his point about, you know, how much depth there is at wide receiver, look what Puka Nakua did in his rookie year. | |
| And I think he was a fourth or fifth round draft choice for the – Tank down was the third round. | |
| For the Ramblin last year. | |
| So, yeah, certainly a lot of talent at the wide receiver level. | |
| And I think that's right with running backs too. | |
| You can get a lot of talent deep in the draft. | |
| And, you know, recently there's been a lot of teams that have signed undrafted free agents that have done well at the running back position. | |
| So, you know, look, I – you know, it wasn't two drafts ago – it wasn't two drafts ago that Mr. Irrelevant became a quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers. | |
| And then went on to do, you know, do pretty well the next couple years. | |
| So, you know – Round two, round three, all the way to round seven. | |
| You're still going to have some quality people who are going to get a lot of playing time. | |
| Last thing I'll say, and then I'll shut up. | |
| You know, I always enjoy looking at the, after the draft is done, the draft analysis that, you know, Mel Kiper and Adam Schechter and all of these, you know, so-called experts do. | |
| And they grade each team on how they do. | |
| And, um... | |
| And that's, you know, it's fine. | |
| I know the Falcons grade this year is probably not going to be good. | |
| But the reality is, if you really want to determine how a team does in the draft, you probably got to go out four or five years and then look back. | |
| You know, because what, you know, look, it certainly, to me, it didn't seem like it was the right decision for Mike Fenwick to get that pick. | |
| But I hope I'm wrong five years from now. | |
| You won't be. | |
| The reality is we won't know. | |
| You know, we won't know. | |
| And we'll know in time, but we just don't know today. | |
| Did we lose Dougie? | |
| No, I'm here. | |
| I was waiting on Coach. | |
| Coach, I think Chip made a great point. | |
| In today's league, and maybe this is a different way to answer this question, in today's league, is the draft as important as it used to be, or is free agency and a combination of the draft more important? | |
| Well, the draft's important for your bottom line because you get players at a lower cost than you get free agents. | |
| So you're hoping to get a great player for four to five years at a bargain, basically, is what you're hoping. | |
| If you hit on Puka Nakua, we were talking about the quarterback at San Francisco. | |
| I've heard him. | |
| He's making less than... | |
| 90% of the league. | |
| And he was up there to be the most valuable player. | |
| You know, I mean, that's how you help your football team is by doing a great job in the draft because you're going to spend money in free agency. | |
| You can't help it. | |
| You've got to try to upgrade your football team. | |
| But you get the bargain. | |
| You get the bang for your buck at that level so you don't go over the salary cap. | |
| All right. | |
| Second round through seventh round, Coach. | |
| Does your mindset change? | |
| What's y'all say to you? | |
| Drive for show and putt for dough. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Is the first round the driver and the second through the seventh round the putter? | |
| Well, we always tried to talk about First and second round, you take the best football player that you can get, that's on the board. | |
| That's generally what we thought about. | |
| And from the second round, from third round through the seventh round, you drafted Neat. | |
| You were going to try to get a player that you thought would fit a need in your team, a punt returner, a fast receiver, a big linebacker, or a fast linebacker, or whatever. | |
| But that was the thought. | |
| First two rounds, great players, guys that you think are going to be great for a while. | |
| After that, you drafted need for your football team. | |
| Places that you knew you needed depth, you needed help. | |
| If you're a linebacker, you draft a couple of linebackers because if they make it, which a third rounder and a fourth rounder should make your team as special teams, backup linebackers, it really helps your salary cap. | |
| So you try to do it that way. | |
| A quick question, and we'll do one more last round here. | |
| But in that regard of looking at it right now, on sort of a lighter side, I've never seen Bill Belichick and Nick Saban smile as much as I did last night. | |
| Oh, granted, they have no worries. | |
| They get to criticize. | |
| They get to talk up. | |
| They get to talk down. | |
| They have no worries right now. | |
| I guarantee you Nick's more worried about a putt he missed the day before on 18 than he was about the draft or about anything. | |
| Bill Belichick last night was talking about watching a Bergen Catholic game. | |
| I'm from Jersey. | |
| I know that. | |
| When he was talking about that, I was like, oh, he's happy as hell. | |
| He has nothing to care about anymore. | |
| I mean, that documentary came out for reasons I can't understand that made the craps look like monsters. | |
| Am I the only one who thought that? | |
| I didn't think for a second Bill Belichick was the problem. | |
| And I know he's part of it. | |
| But to me, all that said was the craps are petty and angry. | |
| And Bill Belichick is on the Pat McAfee Show, which is the best thing that could have happened to America. | |
| And because he gets to just be free and have a good time with a bunch of dudes. | |
| And he showed that last night. | |
| He showed it on the NFL 100 when he was getting excited talking about players from the 40s. | |
| You know what I'm saying? | |
| Like, Bill Belichick kind of seems like he's in his element because he doesn't have to be like, we're going to play on Sunday and we're going to win or we're not going to win. | |
| Like, that's all it's used to say. | |
| So he just seems like he's happy as can be. | |
| Oh, that was a stupid question. | |
| Following up on that coach, Saban and Belichick both, and I think this goes back to something Chip's mentioned, James mentioned, you've mentioned. | |
| They were brutal. | |
| Brutal. | |
| On the six quarterbacks. | |
| I mean, Belichick in particular, they were coaches honest, okay? | |
| And I thought that was so refreshing last night because none of them had glassy eyes. | |
| None of them said, oh, this is a great... | |
| But Belichick broke down why all of them have problems. | |
| Saban said the same thing. | |
| I think that was the best thing ESPN could have done last night. | |
| Well, they... | |
| They see it in a different light than everybody else. | |
| And it's not a production for them anymore. | |
| They're not trying to, you know, recruit. | |
| They're not trying to do anything anymore. | |
| They're not worried about a player's feelings. | |
| They don't care about that stuff. | |
| And I'm going to tell you, it's a wonderful life to live to not worry about that. | |
| They don't have to convince themselves that that player might help them. | |
| Now they can just be completely free to be like, that guy is dog water and I don't want him on my football team. | |
| Belichick actually said that last night. | |
| I'm excited. | |
| First of all, I'm just excited now to know that Chan has officially told me that the Vikings are going to be terrible for the next five years. | |
| No, no, those are your words. | |
| I'm sticking to that. | |
| No, but in all seriousness, that draft last night was so boring. | |
| And I just, again, I want to thank the Atlanta Falcons for coming out of left field. | |
| And after deciding, we're not going to take... | |
| We're not going to take... | |
| Coming out of left field. | |
| Head coach. | |
| We came way further than the left field. | |
| Yeah, you guys drove straight out of the corn maze. | |
| James, we came from the old Turner's Atlanta Fulton County Stadium. | |
| You guys decided we're not going to take a Hall of Fame head coach because our CEO or whoever's in that building didn't want to lose his power in that place. | |
| And then you're like, you know what? | |
| Now that we don't have the Hall of Fame coach, and don't get me wrong, I'm excited. | |
| I like the Falcons head coach. | |
| But now we're going to go into the draft. | |
| We need a defensive player most. | |
| Our defense is horrendous. | |
| And we just spent $180 million, $100 million guaranteed. | |
| Let's go get ourselves a backup quarterback that might not play and has injuries and is arguably the oldest quarterback in the draft. | |
| I'm excited. | |
| The Falcons' future is bright, guys. | |
| Okay. | |
| Well, we've got James' take now, Chip. | |
| That's James' take. | |
| Thank you for that, James. | |
| Chip, what do you got? | |
| Well, let me ask Coach this. | |
| You know, in politics, and Doug can confirm this, we have a saying that if you want to keep a secret between two people, you've got to kill the other person, right? | |
| And so, you know, not a whole lot gets out. | |
| Walk me through how much chess is played and how many smokescreens go up. | |
| And here's what I'm kind of getting at. | |
| I mean, Atlanta signed Kirk Cousins on March 13th, right? | |
| And they picked Michael Penix on the 25th of April. | |
| You know, how many times, I guess it's kind of a two-part question, because, you know, Atlanta probably went into the draft last night. | |
| If the GM and the head coach and the owner were in agreement that this player is on the board, and Atlanta had to know that Michael Penix was going to be on the board at eight. | |
| I mean, but, you know, kind of walk me through that dynamic. | |
| I mean, you guys ever send up, you know, false smoke screens to make it look like you're really focused in on one player and you have three or four meetings with one player and you're sitting in the room going, you know, I know that Dallas really likes player A and we like that. | |
| I mean, kind of walk me through that. | |
| How much chess has played lead up to the draft? | |
| A bunch. | |
| The problem is some people are playing chess and others are playing checkers. | |
| There's some really smart people that know what they're doing and there's some not so smart people that think they know what they're doing and they're the most dangerous to have in your organization. | |
| You do that all the time. | |
| You try to make sure you're not showing partiality to the guy you want and all that kind of stuff. | |
| That goes on all the time. | |
| The problem is most people can't keep themselves From talking to Adam Schefter or somebody like that. | |
| Give me the inside scoop. | |
| They must get a case of wine a month or something for leaking that information. | |
| But it's crazy. | |
| Last night, Schechter broke the Atlanta news before the pick. | |
| They came to him. | |
| Schechter said, I'm getting this, folks. | |
| It's going to be Atlanta looking at picking a quarterback. | |
| And it was like before, and it was like they held it. | |
| Here's my problem with what you just said about chess and checkers, because I don't even think last night that the Falcons were playing goldfish. | |
| Because I think the bigger problem here, and I may be wrong, Coach, but you've alluded to it. | |
| I think they lied to Kirk Cousins the whole time. | |
| I think they kept this a secret, because if you remember, Pennick said he didn't even meet with Falcons management. | |
| I think they were keeping this way off to the side. | |
| Cousins is under one discussion. | |
| Hey, I'm going to come in here and help the team. | |
| Look, I think the draft was worse than the pick last night. | |
| I think it's going to cause problems in the locker room. | |
| And you're going to have the young, because Atlanta is a younger team. | |
| We forget this. | |
| They're still a younger team. | |
| And you're going to have an older quarterback and a new or flashy quarterback. | |
| I think the Falcons just dumped in the nest completely last night. | |
| Well, I cannot disagree with anything you just said. | |
| I wish I could, but I can't disagree with anything you just said, especially if Raheem Morris was on board with the pick. | |
| Yeah, and it sounds like he was. | |
| I mean, you see the press conference, you heard the word that was coming out from Schechter and others that Raheem liked Michael Penix Jr. You've got a $100 million quarterback sitting there. | |
| That you've never coached. | |
| You just made it back to the Falcons by the skin of your teeth to coach. | |
| And now you've done this. | |
| And last night they showed this interaction between the GM and the, and blank. | |
| I don't think it was what they're making it out to be, but they just put on the line. | |
| That made, that was, I'm sorry. | |
| Go ahead, Jan. | |
| I just, that video was nothing. | |
| They were just talking. | |
| They were just talking. | |
| It was absurd. | |
| Yeah. | |
| It was just crazy. | |
| Um, coach two through seven, I mean, I think it's going to be interesting here today and over the next couple of days. | |
| We'll get back later. | |
| We'll have another time. | |
| We'll discuss the draft as a whole, getting ready for the season. | |
| But at the end of the day, I want to finish this out today by doing this. | |
| You made a comment, one of the first ones we ever did because we talked about draft. | |
| And you made the comment, and I alluded to it earlier, about culture and longevity, I guess it is. | |
| And I think your prediction back then has lived itself out last night. | |
| There are teams who know what they're doing and there are teams who just frankly don't. | |
| Right. | |
| And is that safe to say we sort of saw that on full display again last night? | |
| Yeah. | |
| You get people That a dangerous person in the draft room is somebody who thinks they know what they're doing or thinks they're smarter than somebody else. | |
| I see something. | |
| I know something. | |
| I can do something that nobody else can. | |
| That's not the way it works. | |
| If you pick an offensive lineman in the first round that plays 10 years for your football team, It doesn't have to make all pro. | |
| Just be a really good offensive lineman for you for 10 years. | |
| That was a really successful first pick. | |
| It doesn't have to be flashy. | |
| You don't have to blow up the world. | |
| You don't have to be smarter than everybody else. | |
| Just do what's right for your football team and the organization. | |
| But our world has gotten to where I got to make a name for myself. | |
| It's not about the team, the organization, America, anything else anymore. | |
| That's where we're at, folks. | |
| As you look at the draft, James, Chip, Coach, Gailey, it's always glad to have you here. | |
| Again, I will have to say in all fairness, not the show I thought we were going to be having today. | |
| James is far more happier than Chip and I thought he would be today. | |
| Not anymore. | |
| Not that Chan told me my team stinks. | |
| And that's the perfect way to go out. | |
| Folks, thanks for listening to Doug Collins' podcast. | |
| We've got some interesting stuff coming up in the next little bit. | |
| I want you to be a part. | |
| Coach, again, as always, thanks, buddy, for being here. | |
| Chip, James, thanks a bunch. | |
| We'll be out. | |
| We'll see y'all next time. | |
| This is Doug Collins' podcast. |
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