After Hours with Amy Lawrence PODCAST: Hour 1

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That's the crazy part. We are weeks away from a brand new champion. Potentially. I guess there is a chance it could be the Kansas City Chiefs again. Wouldn't count them out. But we're into this stretch where the NFL is a behemoth.

For those of you who pay any attention to viewership or ratings. In the next few weeks, including the Super Bowl and both the AFC and NFC Championship games, especially if those games feature San Francisco or Dallas on the NFC side. Certainly Kansas City, but a Buffalo, who's one of the hottest teams going into these playoffs. Or even a Cleveland. I think that as much as Cleveland has been through what, five different starting quarterbacks and it's not the picture they intended. If Cleveland would get to the AFC Championship, it's such a sentimental favorite.

You'd see a lot of people piling on. But if we're talking about teams that are high profile, even outside of the general NFL fan base, Pittsburgh obviously. These are teams that will attract even casual viewers to Championship Sunday.

So those three games and then even Dallas Green Bay this coming weekend. We're talking about ratings that are off the charts. These will be some of the highest rated, most watched shows of the entire year. Any genre. Drama, comedy, and after the writers and actors strikes, they're trailing behind anyway.

Certainly award shows, any other sport. The ratings for NFL playoff games dwarf almost everything else on TV over the course of the calendar year. And so we're supposed to be reveling in the fact that the playoffs begin in mere hours and yet all I can think is, gosh, what a week, I'm tired and we haven't even started the games yet.

And how different the landscape in football looks. Following these last three days. Two of the longest tenured head, well the longest tenured head coach in the NFL. And another one who had lasted nearly 15 years at his job.

These guys are gone. And it's just odd. Most of my network career, which goes back to, eh, 04, 05. It's always included Bill Belichick in New England. And most of it's included Pete Carroll.

And to not have those guys on the sidelines, to not think about them as the head coaches, it's jarring. And then in addition to that, no Nick Saban anywhere in college football? I remember when he was at LSU. I remember the hullabaloo when he took over at Alabama. And to not have a Nick Saban in college football is just strange. As a side note, Mike Tomlin is now the longest tenured head coach in the NFL.

Though there is a fairly vocal faction of Steelers fans who believe they can do better. Longest tenured head coach in the NFL. John Harbaugh, who was hired the year after Tomlin, also in the AFC North. Second longest tenured head coach in the NFL. Andy Reid with Kansas City. And Harbaugh's got five years on him. He's the third longest. Wow, how things change.

How quickly they can change. We were barely off the air on Thursday morning. I wasn't even home yet. I was at the grocery store when the news broke about Bill Belichick and the Patriots parting ways. 24 years, 9 Super Bowl appearances, winning records that are the envy of the league, the six rings, the countless, laughable, cantankerous, awkward and uncomfortable press conferences. There's no one like Bill Belichick. And he did not forget how to coach.

In case you thought that was possible. Neither he nor Pete Carroll forgot how to coach. So Pete has decided he will stay with the Seahawks, at least for now. Nick Saban has decided he will remain with different capacity with Alabama. He showed up to work on Thursday, you guys. Did you see the video of Nick Saban pulling up in his vehicle to Bryan Denny Stadium, where he's going to get a different office? He showed up to work. In fact, as the stories go, even before his Wednesday meeting with the team and assistant coaches to let them know he was retiring, he was still doing SEC Zoom call meetings and also still auditioning or interviewing potential assistant coaches. Nobody had any clue that he was about to retire. They kept the news under wraps, and I don't know if that was because he wanted to help as much as he could until the very last second, or because he just wanted to keep it from leaking, and so he just kept doing his job until the very last second. We'll hear from Nick Saban in his own words on this edition of the show. It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio. Hello!

Happy almost Friday! What, what? How much more can the sports world pack into one week? That's what I want to know. Actually, I don't really want to know.

Please don't try it. Let's not go there. But we're talking about the final week of the NFL regular season, the playoff picture coming together, with the firing of Arthur Smith on Sunday night, and then on into Monday, where Ron Rivera loses his job.

We find out then, Mike Vrabel, which I believe was Tuesday, Pete Carroll's Wednesday, Nick Saban's Wednesday, Bill Belichick is Thursday morning, and you guys crack me up with your, hey, Bill Belichick would be great for Dallas. What, what, what is wrong with people? They just refuse to pay attention. I really can't control that. True.

I can't control it either. Thank you, Bill. Yeah, I've heard and seen some really wacky theories about how the Chicago Bears will change their mind now that Belichick is available. That the Dallas Cowboys will be ousted this weekend by the Packers and instantly McCarthy will be fired and Bill Belichick will be hired by Jerry Jones. I don't think he's done coaching. I think that's pretty obvious. He's looking forward to what's next. And just as a rhetorical question, how many more teams might have considered making a change if they had known Bill Belichick would be available? It might be too late for most of those, although I guess never say never.

Where is Belichick the best fit? That's a great question. One that I've seen different websites take a stab at, including ours.

Jay, this is really funny. I'm pretty sure. So we're at times a little suspicious of the CBS Sports website, CBSSports.com, because it seems as though a lot of the articles take quotes or reports from other websites and just write them up and put them on our own website. Not plagiarism. They attribute. It's just rather than use the reports from CBS peeps, they take them from elsewhere.

A little pilfering. Again, with attribution, it's not as though they pass it off as their own. But here's something that I hadn't seen lately, which, well, you know what? It's not true. When I do check the CBS Sports website, it's often that I see stories from a week ago. They have to fill out a certain algorithm of stories, and so you'll go and you'll look.

Not only have half the stories become betting lines now, but you'll see a story from like a week ago that maybe they're hoping people will continue to check out. Something that happened on Thursday as I was looking, as I'm scrolling through the CBS Sports website on my phone, and I'm looking at all these Bill Belichick stories, and one of them is possible destinations for Bill Belichick. But it became very clear as I was reading it that it was written long before Belichick had actually parted ways with the Patriots, meaning somebody just threw it back up on the website like, hey, look, look at this, these apply. I'm not kidding you, the number one spot was Dallas. I have a feeling that article was put up or was originally written before the Cowboys won the NFC East. Because how can you replace Mike McCarthy when they've won the NFC East and Jerry Jones is adamant that he couldn't be more thrilled with the job McCarthy's done? Dak Prescott is at the very least a top MVP candidate, if not the actual NFL MVP.

I just don't know how you in good faith. I'm gonna see if the story's still there, and I'll show it to you. The number one destination for Bill Belichick is Dallas? Was that after the 49ers game, maybe, where they got clobbered by them? Yeah, going back to like week six.

It was clear the story was regurgitated, but I thought, for heaven's sake, how far back was this story? Okay, I gotta find it before they take it down as they hear us talking about it and think, oh, rut row, gotta take that one down. So yeah, I don't know that I would put much stock in the CBS Sports website finding Belichick a new home. Yep, Dallas Cowboys. It's not the number one option right now, but it's number three on the list.

Number three, huh? Not even mentioning Mike McCarthy. Don't worry about him. Who? Completely irrelevant to the situation here. What does he have to do with anything? My goodness.

I just want to read you the first line, which cracked me up. The big question here would be roster control. Oh, really? That's the big question about Belichick going to Dallas? About the fact that they already have a head coach? Wow.

Seriously, I'm saying I can't get over the fact that they actually put this on the CBS Sports website and believe that it would be taken seriously. Are you ready? Okay, here we go. I'm going to read more. The big question here would be roster control. Again, I feel like this in parentheses would have been a good place to put if in fact Jerry Jones moves on from Mike McCarthy. No, none of that. There's no caveat.

I'm reading. Would Jerry Jones, the owner and GM of the Cowboys, thanks for explaining, allow Belichick to have the final say over roster decisions if he were to bring the future Hall of Fame coach to Dallas? Because if he doesn't, that probably ends the conversation.

Oh, really? Not the fact that the Cowboys won the NFC East and are hosting a playoff game this weekend? And Mike McCarthy is the only Cowboys coach in franchise history to lead a team to three straight 12-win seasons?

Those things aren't factors. This is just rude almost. Not even a mention of Mike McCarthy. If you want to preface it like if they lose and the Dallas moves on, this is not even a mention of Mike McCarthy here. No, it says, boy would this be something.

The greatest head coach of all time joining forces with America's team. Is it me or is that irresponsible? A little bit. A little bit. I'm not sure I would classify this as journalism.

It's an opinion, I guess. Let's work under the assumption that Jones would give way and at least be fully collaborative with Belichick in this endeavor. Get me some oxygen.

Yeah, I'm stunned. The Cowboys already have a roster ready made for a Super Bowl run. If Belichick wants to catch Don Shula... They're on it.

They're currently on the run with the coach they have. I don't understand. It's not over. Oh my gosh.

Seriously, just as a side note, probably don't take your information seriously from that particular article. Get me some oxygen. We need to send it to Jerry Jones. Hey Jerry, do they know something we don't know?

Yeah. Oh sorry, Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones, do they know something we don't know? Oh my gosh.

I just, I was blown away by that. Of all of the ways that you could write about Belichick's departure and his future, that's what you'd choose? Who's Mike McCarthy again? Who? I've never heard of him. I'm a little embarrassed. Not great. You gotta mention him at least a little.

At least once. And I repeat, the biggest question here would be whether or not Jerry would give Belichick full control. That's the big question. Okay. We've gotten slap happy.

But here's what I know. I tweeted this earlier, it's so true. Never, ever, ever, a dull moment. It's the NFL. It's never a dull moment. Never a dull moment. I wish it was the NDM.

No, that would make no sense whatsoever. Okay, on Twitter, ALawRadio, guess what we've got for you on this edition of the show? Football, of course.

But also your sad saps of the week, maybe a little bit of a facepalm Friday as we head towards your Friday morning. And then we also need to put up a poll. Now I'm not sure how Producer J is going to do this. Because we're going to make some people mad. That's the question.

How do we navigate the Game of the Week poll without making people mad? Jay, have you decided? I know one that's out already, so that helps. Uh oh.

I'm a little bit nervous to ask you which one. One's gone. It's out. It's just gone. It's done. I think it's obvious, the one I'm thinking of.

Miami, Kansas City? No. Well, maybe because I can't see it. Right, exactly.

Neither Producer J or I have Peacock. But here's what I know. Within hours, the game will be on NFL Network. And I know it's hard not to watch it live. I'm going to listen to the radio on Saturday night. But the game will be flipped on NFL Network within hours.

I promise you that. It's what happens every single Thursday into Friday. We watch the Thursday Night Football game. I do have Prime. But if you don't have Prime, all you have to do is wait for a few hours and the game is replayed in its entirety on NFL Network.

It will be the same thing with this game on Peacock. Trust me. NFL owns the network, owns the rights.

It will be on NFL Network at the very latest by Sunday morning. Trust me. All you have to do is run your DVR on it and you'll be golden. Which I will be doing because that's the only way I'm going to see it. I'm not getting Peacock.

I'll tell you that much. No, not for one game. No way.

Although Oppenheimer is apparently going to be released on Peacock as well. I saw it. It's good. You saw it in the theater. I really want to see it. It's a good watch, but I wouldn't give the NFL what they want to see Oppenheimer. No!

Don't feed the monster. Just watch it on the network. Meanwhile, let's give the viewership to the network. Alright, let's get serious.

No, I was going to say let's get serious, but that's no fun. We'll dive into this Belichick-Patriots parting of ways. This divorce, if you will. Not irreconcilable differences necessarily, but a future that takes them in different directions.

It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio. Around New Year's, we get a little obsessed with changing ourselves and forgetting the things we're already doing right. Like taking our supplements every morning or scheduling me time into our day. Therapy helps you recognize those victories and keep up the good work in the new year without changing everything. BetterHelp offers affordable online therapy so you can try New Year's Same You with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash grow today to get 10% off your first month.

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This is After Hours with Amy Lawrence. Bill Belichick going back to Monday. Man, and we knew this was a possibility. It had been reported and speculated and rumored and of course even predicted by many in the New England market as well as across the country. And it became official on Thursday. Right on the heels of Pete Carroll and then Nick Saban and one of the best coaches in history in football at any level is now available.

It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio. We're going to start with the end of Belichick's comments on Thursday and work our way backward. We're going to move on and I look forward, I'm excited for the future. But always very, very appreciative of the opportunity here, the support here and what Robert, what you've done for me. It's a very emotional day for the organization and the end of an era, like I said, that will be hard to be replicated. I know there will be a lot of questions about the future and we'll have a chance to cover that in the next few days.

But I'm not sure today is the time to do it. Bob Kraft was right there next to Bill Belichick. And as Bill said in closing, we're going to move on, he did turn and shake the hand of Bob Kraft. Now there have been a lot of reports about how the relationship between the two has soured. There are stories that you can find anywhere, both inside New England with insiders and reporters who've covered all of Belichick's tenure with the Patriots. Men and women that I know very well.

Maybe next week we'll have a chance to connect with one of them. So there's lots of different theories and reports about how things went horribly wrong. Ultimately though, even had the relationship not been quite as chummy or close as it was when Tom Brady was there, when you're winning, that's all easier to accept. So of course, Bob Kraft wants to wait on the future, but did express a little bit of why this is the right time to move on. Our family is the custodian of this asset, the New England Patriots. And we know how important it is to the psyche of the community and what's gone on here the last three, four years isn't what we want.

So we have a responsibility to do what we can to fix it to the best of our ability. You don't hear many owners refer to the family as custodians of what is a New England tradition. And he does talk about how the Patriots, and I would say just as much the Red Sox, the Celtics, the Bruins, the Patriots have a history that features a lot of losing. Before the Kraft family took over, before Bob bought the team, a lot of losing. I've mentioned this before, but one of my earliest memories going to an NFL game, in fact, it may have been my first ever NFL game, I was maybe 12.

We live, we were living in New Hampshire, my mom, my stepfather, my brother and I, and we went to a Patriots game in December, I think it was, it was freezing, that part I remember. This isn't the old Foxboro. The stadium is nearly empty, and I'm not joking when I tell you that it wasn't even half full. There was nobody in our section, as in nobody, and anybody who showed up there early, meaning they were there for the beginning of the game, they were gone by second half. It was so empty that down below us, I mean we could have sat anywhere in our section, but down below us was a very large, I mean very large drunk man, who was yelling the entire game. And you could hear him, his voice was echoing around this empty stadium.

And I remember exactly what he was saying. For those of you who know Patriots history, Steve Grogan was a long time backup quarterback for the Patriots, this is all he kept yelling. We want Grogan! We want Grogan!

For hours, I swear, like we, my brother and I, we had a headache just from hearing this man yell. And so there were some bad seasons pre-Bobcraft. And Bob recognizes, or takes it seriously, his responsibility that the Patriots and their success or their failure, has a lot to do with how sports fans in New England live their lives and how they feel. It can bring a lot of joy, excitement, anticipation.

Not to mention, happy sports fans spend more money. But I thought it was interesting how he put it. There was the question of trading Belichick. That was something that was speculated about for a couple of months. Whether or not Belichick would be made available. And as we learned and talked about earlier in the week, the difference, and so that's why I don't really like calling it a trade necessarily, but the difference is that the coach has to be willing to go where you send him. You can't just send a coach somewhere that he doesn't want to go. So it's not really a trade, if you will. It's more like an exchange of assets. Either way, why didn't Belichick become available in a trade, Bobcraft?

He is so valuable in how we could extract something. I didn't think it was right for Tom Brady, who gave us 20 years, and I don't think it's right for Bill, that each of them earned the right to be in a position where they should do what's right for us. For me, this is a day of gratitude and celebration.

I'll start with Robert and his family. It's great, so much thanks for the opportunity to be a coach here for 24 years. It's an amazing opportunity. We received tremendous support. We had a vision of building a winner, building a championship football team here. It's exceeded my wildest dreams and expectations, the amount of success that we were able to achieve together through a lot of hard work and contributions of so many people. I'm very proud of that and always have those great memories.

I'll carry with me the rest of my life. I like that he indicates never in his wildest dreams did he expect to have the type of success. It was 20 years, essentially two decades of dominance. With the six Super Bowl rings, but also the other appearances, the loss to the Eagles, two to the Giants, nine Super Bowl appearances, that's obscene. All the winning records, all the AFC East championships.

I mean, he as a coach holds so many records when it comes to both regular season and playoffs. And I can't wait to see what happens next. Honestly, as intriguing as it was to see Tom Brady go to the Buccaneers and what he took with him, all the experience, the wisdom, the winning culture, the tradition, the respect, the credibility. Oh, when Belichick lands at his next gig, imagine the excitement and the rejuvenation for that franchise and fan base. I can't wait. I don't exactly.

See, here's the thing. Marco Belletti's in studio. He's a good fit anywhere. He's a Hall of Fame coach. If you want your franchise to instantly take this huge step forward, Belichick is the way. Now, he may not be the right guy in terms of a personality, be in terms of institutional control for some of the owners out there, but every team can benefit from having a Bill Belichick as its head coach. Yeah, no, he could still coach. I mean, he had issues with roster management and getting players and picking the right players. He had a lot of issues with that over the years. But you give him guys in front of you, he still knows how to put together a game plan probably better than anybody else. I mean, that's something that when you look at the history of this, it's not just the winning. And that's look, that's the foremost and that's the thing that we think of when we think of the Super Bowls and rightfully so, the winning that he did. And I understand the Brady aspect and I'm not doing the what's more important, Brady or Belichick.

I'm not doing that nonsense. To me, what Belichick though, what he kind of did, he became more of the chameleon better than anyone else did. It used to be like, it was almost like you knew what the other team was going to do. They walked on the field, this is what we do best and we're going to do this and if we're going to yell it out to you and if you could stop it, so be it, but you can't because we're better than you. That's what teams did when they were dominant and when they were better than you. Belichick was kind of the start. And it almost, it started with the Giants a little bit towards the end with the defense coordinator and when his head coaching job, it was almost like he changed things. It was like, this is what we need to do today.

We'll be different next week, but this is what we're going to do today. And there are a lot of teams that just can't do that. Whether it's, you know, the idea that you can adapt. There are a lot of coaches, this is my system, this is what I do, this is how you're going to adapt to what I do. Belichick was really good at, this is what I got and this is what you do well, I'm going to take away what you do best and this is how we're going to combat it. He was almost like a counter puncher before anybody else was.

That to me is how the game has completely changed in the 20 years. He didn't do it the same way every time. Look at the six titles. They were all different. Every single one of them.

That is so hard to do. There are no other coaches that I can think of. There were blueprints, there were fingerprints. You knew what every team was. Belichick changed every year depending on his personnel. One of the things that I loved about him is that he would take a player who played one position and he was constantly looking for guys who could be versatile and give you different skills. And he would take a player that was generally used to being in one spot or that defenses slash offenses were used to game planning for and he would put him in a completely different role.

And somehow it would work out. He could see the talents, the skills, the abilities that could be used in different ways, not the traditional ways. Yeah, and like I said, he was just a mastermind. He watched film and depicted not only what you did best, because everybody does that. You always know what the other team does best, but he could figure out how that works. It was almost like to figure out how the round hole, the round pit, he knew how that works.

All right, then what we can do to beat that on this side to do this. It was just kind of like, how did you think of that in the week? And I know it's a long time ago, but I think back to like some of the old videos with the Super Bowl.

I mean, it's in the Hall of Fame. The Super Bowl 25 blueprint from the Divas Coordinator spot with the Giants against the Bills, who they were, I mean, the Bills were just flat out better and their offense was so explosive and so ridiculous. And Belichick walked into a room with guys like Lawrence Taylor and Carl Banks and Leonard Marshall and said, the only way we win this game is if Thurman Thomas gets at least 100 yards.

And I remember Carl Banks in the video 100 times looked around each other going, what the hell are you talking about? We don't give up 100 yards on the ground ever. This is what the Giants were predicated on, their defense. Stop the run, make you throw. And Belichick was like, if we do that, they're going to throw all over us and we're going to get killed. We have to allow them and get them to run the football so we can slow them down. Because if we let them throw the ball, we're going to lose. And he said it took like three days for the defense to buy in. But Lawrence Taylor kept looking, are we serious? Is we're really going to do this?

Are we really going to do this? That's remarkable. And back then there was no, that year especially, because of the Gulf War, there was no week off. So they went from NFC Championship on a Sunday to play in Super Bowl Sunday. Took them three days to get his defense to buy in. And that defensive game plan is still in the Hall of Fame right now.

Fantastic stuff. And Bill Belichick will of course be the object and the envy of whatever team gets him. Because it's going to be an instant step up. So we'll hear more from him, more from Bob Kraft about making this choice and moving on. And then top of the hour, excited to welcome a brand new guest to the show. He's a former Michigan quarterback so it's timely. What if Friday, Saturday, Sunday, his coach Jim Harbaugh decides that he is moving on and heading back to the NFL potentially? So I'll ask David Cone that question when he joins us from Nashville.

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No long-term commitments or contracts. That's Stamps.com Code Program. The After Hours Podcast. In the Super Bowls in the past, you guys haven't scored in the first quarter? Thanks Mike, yeah. Sorry to remind you. Yeah. And all the negative stuff in the Super Bowls we need to be aware of too.

How much do you look at that history this week and say, you know, do something? Like we try to score in every game. I know that's probably hard to understand. We try to go out and score and keep the other team from scoring as our goal every game.

This is After Hours with Amy Lawrence. That dry sense of humor. That duh type of response. I know it incensed some reporters and some national media.

I've always found it amusing and I get it. He's not an easy guy to interact with. He's so single-minded and he keeps us on a need-to-know basis. Us meeting the media. Well, and the fans, right? And most of the time he doesn't think we need to know.

What do I look like? But I found it amusing, I suppose, because it's not my job to cover him on a day-to-day basis. Although I will tell you, when I was working in the Providence radio market, which was my last stop before I moved to network, I went to Patriots press conferences almost weekly. And there were times where a football question, an X and O question, would be posed to Belichick and if he had the time and he liked the question, he would launch into some type of complicated, in-depth explanation of a play or a moment or a plan or an idea or a concept. And it didn't happen every week and it didn't happen often. But you'd be blown away by the intricate detail without a board, without a monitor, without a diagram, just out of his brain.

The mad scientist. I'll never forget those moments where you could catch him and he would light up because it was just football. It's after hours here on CBS Sports Radio, obviously raving about the guys that he coached during his 24 seasons with the Pats. Great deal of thanks and appreciation to the players. Players win games in the NFL and I've been very, very fortunate to coach some of the greatest players that have ever played. Some of the greatest players that have ever played for the Patriots. Some of them are already in the Hall of Fame. Many more are going. But again, regardless of how long any of the players were or weren't here, what their role was or how many games they played or even if they didn't win championships, I respect the way the players come to work here on a daily basis. All of them I've coached well over a thousand.

It's immediate for you guys. I don't know that anybody's gotten more coverage than I have or we have in the past 24 years. I meet with you guys a lot. I respect what you do. You're our voice to the fans. Even though we don't always see eye to eye all the time. Well, sometimes, but not all the time. I do respect what you do. As you can imagine, there are lots of tributes pouring in from his former players.

And we'll try to work those in as we head through the next three hours of the show. But I've seen them all over the place. And there are some that are on social media, but others that have done interviews. I know that Stephen Goskowski, the longtime kicker, was actually on CBS Sports HQ.

I've seen other guys that were part of Sirius XM NFL radio. And so the reaction is always interesting. Because when a guy walks away or when there's a parting, you tend to get a more authentic response.

You tend to get a little more of the emotion. And I actually wondered if Bill Belichick got emotional when he was talking about Patriots Nation. So we'll hear from him a little bit later on, plus more from Bob Kraft about his confidence that this is the right time and the right move for the Patriots. But after the top of the hour, Nick Saban showing up to work on Thursday, walking into the building, already has cleaned out his previous office, has been set up in a new office in Bryan Dennis Stadium. He's going to take on an advisory role.

That's not intimidating. He's going to make sure the transition is smooth as possible. I love that it feels like Alabama football is the reason he made this move now. I mean, to me, this seems like the type of move, and when you hear him talk about it, that was done with the health of the Tide in mind.

It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio. Around New Year's, we get a little obsessed with changing ourselves and forgetting the things we're already doing right. Like taking our supplements every morning or scheduling me time into our day. Therapy helps you recognize those victories and keep up the good work in the new year without changing everything. BetterHelp offers affordable online therapy so you can try New Year's Same You with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash grow today to get 10% off your first month.

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