Harris: There's A Lot Of Promise With Justin Fields On The Jets

Brian, how are you, man? J.R., always great to join you, my friend.

A pleasure, a pleasure. With all the big moves that we've heard about today, the trades, the signings, the moves over the weekend, what has caught your attention the most? Well, I think Larry Matunzel going to the commanders is really interesting because if I'm the Texan, you didn't get what you needed back in that trade. I believe it's now four Pro Bowls for Larry Matunzel. But I'll tell you what, the biggest move to me is Sweat moving to Arizona after a monstrous, monstrous Super Bowl where he could have legitimately been MVP for the Eagles.

And as many people are seeing, you win, you get paid. And those are the two deals that stick out to me right away. And Sam Darnold going to Seattle, I hope it works out well for them, but I don't know how it's going to go. Well, Ryan, let's talk about Sam Darnold in a second. You mentioned the Philadelphia Eagles. Not only did they lose Sweat, they also lose Milton Williams, who's on his way to the New England Patriots.

We know when you win, people got to get paid. How concerned are you with the Eagles' loss? Like, they have plenty of defensive players.

Well, they do. And the biggest one to me is Jalen Carter. And when I watched the film, getting ready for the studio show for CBS at the Super Bowl, I'll tell you what, I just couldn't believe how many plays Jalen Carter takes off. If he increases his effort even 20%, and they can go, not that they can't go without two people on that line, but he can make a marked difference. And you're right about Williams. I mean, that's a player who, especially at New England, is going to be successful. But at the end of the day, you're talking about a team in the Eagles who has been to two of the last three Super Bowls and won one of them. So it's really a team where you've got to trust what they're doing in the Eagles. And that's who everybody's trying to chase right now in the NFL. Ryan Harris is here with us on the JR Sportbreeze show. Right before we went to break, we had a caller talking about, you mentioning Laramie Tunstall in Washington. We had a caller who was just pretty happy saying that Washington is now, you know, numero dos. They're number two right behind the Eagles.

I'm saying to myself, let's slow down just a little bit. What are your thoughts on the pecking order now in the NFC East? Well, at the NFC East, to me, it's to be the man, you got to beat the man. And if you think that the commanders somehow on paper got better, got better than the Eagles who have the experience of going to week 28 of the season and beating the best player, arguably in NFL history, then I think they're, I think they're letting the fumes out of the Potomac over there, JR. I don't know what's going on, but I'll tell you, to me, you got to be able to beat the Eagles in January.

If you want to be the man in the NFC East, and there will be no quarterback that ever has a season, the season that Jayden Daniels had, that will never happen again. The completion percentage, 85%, the first two games, you know, winning a game, winning a game when they had five turnovers. And really, to me, if you look at what they were able to do in the playoffs, turnovers always play a big role. But until their final game of the playoffs, they were playing at a high level, they need a little bit more on defense. And I think that those, those commanders, those are going to be some knockout drag out battles, but the Eagles have won those heavyweight bouts. The commanders are just entering the ring.

Now, let's see if they can eventually jump them. Ryan Harris is joining us here on the JR Sport Brief Show. When you think about the quarterback carousel, you talked about Sam Donald going out to Seattle, and we know that Geno Smith is now in Las Vegas. How do you think those two will fare given the swap? I think that you're going to have Justin Fields play better at the Jets than either of those two quarterbacks. I mean, Sam Darnold, what do you, I don't know, what do you do?

What do you believe in? And I think that's the question for Sam Darnold, too. Sam Darnold, what do you believe?

What do you believe you are? The discombobulated Sam Darnold that arrived the final two games of the season cost him approximately $100 million. I mean, could you imagine that? I mean, everybody's happy if you're a Darnold family member right now. You're saying, hey, way to go. You got 55 out of 100 guaranteed.

Way to go. And you're sitting going, yeah, but I just blew 100 million guaranteed. I could have had 150 million guaranteed, three years contract. That was there had he won a playoff game. And then you turn around with Geno Smith. He's going to the Bears.

The problem isn't where he is. The problem for Geno Smith is his coach. And Shane Waldron is now at the Jacksonville Jaguars. So it doesn't matter who coaches Geno Smith. He is going to be a very, very good player who makes key mistakes at the biggest moments of games. That's been his career.

That's who he is, JR. So to me, the most upside is seeing fields there at the Jets, possibly competing there and getting them into the playoffs on the AFC side. So with Geno, we know Tom Brady is not going to walk down and, you know, just give Geno Smith all the brain wisdom.

It doesn't work that way. Is there no confidence in Geno that knowing that Tom Brady is far, far away in a broadcast booth? Is there no help for Geno? I mean, what else does he need to see, JR? He's seen every defense. He's seen every type of playbook.

He's called every play. And it's always something. And it's at some point, if it's always something, you're not the guy.

Because, you know, you can have it. If you're the guy, you can have a roster that's not as good. See Patrick Mahomes. If you're the guy, you can lose your first six games of the year and go on a blitz to get into the playoffs or to threaten getting into the playoffs. You know, see Joe Burrow.

This is what I'm talking about. He's never, Geno Smith has never performed in that key moment. And he's similar to a Jared Goff, in my opinion. Absolutely very good player. One of the best in the NFL, you betcha.

Between weeks one and seventeen, all day. But you get to the playoffs, they don't appear. And mind you, this is from me calling Geno Smith's games over the past few years, including JR. The nine to, what is it, six to three game? A six to three game on Thursday Night Football? That's the guy? Okay.

Yes, he's going to need a lot. Don't remind me of them ugly Thursday Night Football games, right? It was the lowest scoring game of the year.

It was unbelievable. Super Bowl champ, a Westwood One CBS broadcaster, Ryan Harris is here with us on the JR Sportbreeze show. Why do you feel confident in Justin Fields with the New York Jets? Do you think he can be with the Jets past? Of course he can be. You feel confident he'll be with them past these two years? Well, I love the accountability he showed in Pittsburgh, number one, and the growth that he showed in his final year at the Bears. I mean, everybody made fun of him for breathing. Guess what? I just talked to Kerri Walsh Jennings, one of the most legendary Olympians in American history.

She starts her every single day breathing in through the nose, holding it at the top, breathing out. And oh, by the way, I played for Mike Tomlin, and he has a very straightforward, brutal honesty that every player succeeds in, and Justin Fields did too. And to the point where you heard Justin Fields say, hey, if I had played better, the job would have been mine.

I understand that. I actually thought the Steelers were going to go back to Justin Fields at the end of the year, and they didn't do that, but now what does he have to lose? Everybody doesn't believe in him. He's not going to be a distraction the way Aaron Rodgers is. He's not going to be as bad as some of the other quarterbacks, C. Wilson and C. Others, C. Sam Darnold. He's got nothing to do, everything to prove, and no pressure on him right now, and that's before you get to the draft. Well, you talk about playing for Mike Tomlin. We hear him. We know players love him, even in the NFL.

P.A. ratings, he's always right there at the top. What does this mean for the next quarterback?

We don't know who it is. Do you think it is going to be Aaron Rodgers? If I'm sitting in the war room with Mike Tomlin, my old coach, I say, Coach, I'm putting my job on the line on this one. You go get Will Howard out of Ohio State. He'll be there in the middle of the first to the late first round. He might even be there in the second round, but what I saw Will Howard do in the national championship, calling the game for Notre Dame, I don't think there's a quarterback that's better than him right now coming out in the draft. I just think there's so much opportunity for a player who's won a playoffs, won a championship, played with elite talent, has learned that he doesn't have to do everything while also running the football as he did even in the national championship. He's got a fantastic kind of way about what Coach Tomlin calls pettiness. Coach Tomlin will say, I'm there for all this pettiness.

And he did a little, you know, the King of the North tweet on Instagram. This is a guy you can build a franchise around. And if I'm with Mike Tomlin and the Steelers, I'm going to get Will Howard. So what are your thoughts on what happens with Aaron Rodgers and Russell Wilson? I'm tired of the Aaron Rodgers drama. I don't know about you, JR. What's he doing this year?

Is he going parachuting in the Swiss Alps? I mean, what do we do? If any other player behaved half the way that Aaron Rodgers did and won half the game, won as many games as Aaron Rodgers did, we would kick them out of the league. So I have had enough of one of the best quarterbacks to win MVPs. And yes, he won a Super Bowl. Aaron Rodgers is a very good quarterback. He has proven now on three teams to be a cancer. I don't want him anywhere near my young players. And Russell Wilson, people say the opposite about him. Where does he end up?

Was he a giant, a cult? Well, he has a good few years, I think, if he's willing to be a backup. But we saw what Russell Wilson did against the Bengals in the final game of the year.

Couldn't get it done. And yes, there were some other problems there, but that offense dropped, I think it was like 10 points per game, from the first 12 games to the last, what was it now, six games, seven games, five games of the season. That can't happen, especially if you're Russell Wilson. So he needs to know what works out best for him.

He needs to find an opportunity. And for Russ, that might be a team like Joe Flacco did a couple years ago with the Browns. Somebody might get injured. He could come in there, get things done around the right team and go on a playoff run for one more ring.

Ryan Harris here with us on the JR Sportbree show. As we start to wrap things up, Minnesota has lost both Donald. They don't have Geno Smith. They have to wait on J.J. McCarthy to come back healthy. I assume they're going to add a veteran quarterback to that mix.

No, they're just going to say, J.J., we believe it. I think the secret everyone's trying to hang on to in this draft is that there are quarterbacks all over this draft. You can go get Ward.

You can go get Riley Leonard. There's all kinds of quarterbacks here in the draft. Joe Flacco, I don't know if he's going to hang it up.

And if he is, can you talk him out? Can you get a Russell Wilson to come in there and start things off? So the big thing for the Vikings is going to be committing to the run game in a way that they had not done until this past season. If Kevin O'Connell can do that and save his – and then his quarterback doesn't have a complete $150,000 letdown in the last two games, that Vikings team is dangerous and they got a lot of wins in front of them.

Ryan, last question for you. There's a team up in New England that's used to winning. It's been some years and now they've added Mike Vrabel. We talked about Milton coming in. They've added Spillane.

They even added my buddy Mac Hollins. They're adding some pieces here on defense. They got a rookie quarterback, people excited about. The Patriots, how long is it going to take for them to turn things around? It looks like it's going to be fast. Well, it could be fast in that division.

The only problem is, you got to remember now, I mean, you got to win the 10, 11 games in the AFC, probably 11 within the AFC to get into the playoffs. But I have heard nothing but great things from players who played for Mike Vrabel and the key J.R. is he does not try and be like Bill Belichick, like Josh McDaniels did, like Bill O'Brien did. He doesn't try and copy someone else.

He actually brings his own flavor. He respects players. It's not as ridiculously intense on their bodies in training camp because he knows what it feels like to play in the NFC.

I'm sorry, AFC championship game. He wants his players ready for that. And I think you're going to see a quicker turn on than people believe because Mike Vrabel has the respect of the NFL players. And he understands how to do things in his way to differentiate himself from Bill Belichick. Well, we'll see.

It's not not a good thing for those teams up in the AFC East having to compete with the Patriots. Looks like they're back on the upswing. Well, Ryan, thank you so much for the time. Where can people follow you and all of your work, man?

Broadcasting everywhere. J.R., man, follow me on Instagram or Twitter. It's the same. RyanHarris underscore 68. Check me out at RyanHarris68.com or go ahead and purchase my book, Mindset for Mastery on Amazon. No problem. Thank you so much, Ryan. Appreciate it. We'll talk to you down the line, OK? Thanks, J.R. Go Irish.