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Get an expert now on TurboTax.com. This is The Rich Eisen Show. What was that? The Rich Eisen Show with guest host Tom Pelissero. Lucky, Luca's thrown out of the game. Live from the Rich Eisen Show studio in Los Angeles. Luca is saying he was talking to a fan.
I never got a fan injected, but if he's gonna talk, I'm gonna talk back. Earlier on the show, host of the Ross Tucker podcast, Ross Tucker. Coming up, NFL draft writer for The Athletic, Dane Brugler.
Senior NBA writer for The Athletic, Joe Vardon. And now, sitting in for Rich, it's Tom Pelissero. Welcome back to The Rich Eisen Show, along with Chris Brockman, Mike Del Tufo, T.J. Jefferson. I am Tom Pelissero. We got 15 days to the NFL draft, which means that our next guest, Dane Brugler, has unleashed the beast.
Let's go. The most thorough draft guide that you are going to find. He is a analyst for The Athletic.
Join us right now, Dane. I was gonna ask you, I was gonna have you go itemized through every player in the beast, but then I looked and you have 88 quarterbacks and I'm told you got a hard out at 15 after. So let's just start out by talking about some of those big names at the top of the draft. Really one of the biggest questions to me is going to be, at this point Cam Ward pretty clearly established, going to be the number one pick, but how we sort out QB2.
I'm very curious how you looked at those other guys who were vying in that position. Yeah, that's the wild card of the draft, right? Who's going to be that number two quarterback?
Will it be Chidor Sanders or not? And how early will that be? I think for the longest time, a lot of people assumed, okay, the Browns need a quarterback at two. The Giants need a quarterback at three.
It's going to be one of those two spots. But as we've gotten closer to the draft, I think people have realized, all right, teams don't necessarily see the rest of this quarterback class in that same light. And this comes a year after we saw six quarterbacks go in the first 12 picks. So it's a really unique quarterback year. And let's say no quarterbacks go two or three. Is Chidor to the Saints at nine? Could it be to the Steelers?
We're talking to the 20s at that point. And, you know, there are some interesting fits when we get there. Could we see the Browns or Giants trade back up into the late one to get a Jackson dart to get Chidor? Teams really like Tyler Shuck as well out of Louisville, who if not for being a seventh year senior, he's going to be a 26 year old rookie injuries in the past. If not for those issues, we'd be talking about him more regular as a first round pick. He has that type of talent. So this is a really unique quarterback year. The need is there.
The supply looks a little bit different than I think we're used to seeing. One of those things that's always informative to me as I talk to coaches and scouts about the quarterbacks is always, all right, compare them in another year. Compare these guys to, for instance, last year. You know, Cam Ward, depending who you ask, he'd be pretty close to the top three guys, but not above necessarily all of them. And then with Chidor, it's much more clouded when you're just talking about the top quarterbacks, the guys you think are legit starters.
Where did you draw that line? Yeah, and obviously last year, Pennock's going eight was a surprise. Nick's going 12 was a surprise. And so it's kind of a reminder, you know, like teams, they're going to roll the dice on quarterbacks. And with a guy like Chidor, there's a lot to like, you know, for whatever reason, at some point, you're not allowed to just like Chidor. You have to love him or hate him.
I don't know why it is. But look, he's, there's a lot to like because he's smart. He's tough.
He's poised. He's accurate. Not quite as accurate as maybe 74% completions would suggest, you know, 28% of his completions were screen passes. So, but he's still generally an accurate quarterback. But the way he likes to play, does he have the physical traits to make that happen at the next level? And I think Chidor can start in the NFL, but I'm not convinced that he can be a top 12 to 14 quarterback in the NFL.
And ultimately, that's what you have to ask yourself. If you're an NFL team, can he be someone that's going to help us reach the playoffs, elevate the offense around him, or is he going to need a strong support system to really get us there? And I think that's where teams, there's definitely some disconnect and some differing opinions. But, you know, the over-under and quarterbacks in the first round is two and a half.
And right now, I definitely take the over on that. With Travis Hunter, I imagine, Dave, in all the years you've been doing this, you haven't had to spend as much time just to watch one game of a guy because you're talking about like 160 snaps all the time. What was it like to study him? And how did you go about sorting out where he would rank both as a wide receiver and a corner? Yeah, I'm getting tired just watching as the amount of tape to get him. I can't imagine what it's like for him to actually put in. And he doesn't get enough credit for not just the athletic ability that it takes to do that, but the mental commitment to understand what to do on offense, what to do on defense. And he played some special teams as well.
And so it's interesting talking to teams about Travis Hunter because they all just marvel at what he's able to do. But okay, for the real world NFL transition, what does that mean? Can he really be a two-way player at the NFL?
A lot of teams are convinced that he can do it. I think the bigger question, is he a primary corner or is he going to be primarily a receiver? And then the secondary position, you try to mix in and I think teams are split on that. I think the higher potential is that corner where he has a sky-high ceiling, can be a top three corner in the NFL, but a lot of teams look at him on offense and say, look, he affects the scoreboard.
How dynamic he is with the ball in his hands. I want to keep him on offense. So a lot of teams look at him at receiver and you look at the Browns picking at number two. We know they need offensive help. They ranked 32 last year in offensive scoring points per game, 32 and third down conversions. They need a spark on offense. And if they don't believe a quarterback is worthy at number two, assuming Cam goes number one, then I think Travis Hunter is, could be directly in their sights as a receiver and they try to figure out how to mix them in on defense as well.
So setting aside Travis Hunter, who's a unicorn in this whole thing. This has been regarded as a draft class where you don't have a lot of those really high-end wide receivers like we've seen in recent years, guys who were in the top 10 type of conversation. You got a couple of them, though, in your top 15. When you looked at Ted McMillan, Matthew Golden and some of those other guys, how did you go about kind of ranking those receivers? Yeah, and there's definitely a lot of differing opinions around the league about how you stack these guys. And like you were saying, comparing this class to just, you know, past classes, especially last year, if Brian Thomas was in this class, you know, he didn't go until the 20s last year, but he would be the number one receiver in this class. And so it's not to take anything away from this year's wide receivers, but it is a little bit lighter compared to last year when you had three in the top 10 and then Brian Thomas was still available in the mid-20s, but they're still good players. And with McMillan, he's a little bit different because he's not a burner in terms of speed.
He's not going to be a pure separator. He's more of that T. Higgins who, you know, T. Higgins ran a 4-5-9 when he was coming out as a prospect. But a guy that is going to win with his catch radius, win with just being a ball winner, and maybe the separation isn't consistent, but he catches it really well away from his frame. You rarely see that ball get into his body. And then with Matthew Golden, the way he came on later in the year for Texas and helping them reach the playoffs, win in the playoffs, I love so much about how his feet, his hips, his eyes, his shoulders as a route runner, they're all connected. And so he's able to create his own space. He can work inside, can work outside.
Really like his fit. And you say like with Dallas at 12, you think about what he can bring, pairing him with a CD Lamb, that makes a lot of sense. Or pairing him with, put him in Pittsburgh with the DK Metcalf.
We'll see how that situation shakes out. So I think there's, with Matthew Golden, maybe he doesn't have that star potential, but he'd be a really good secondary option for an offense. I think pretty strong it says is Travis Hunter, Abdul Carter. Those are like the true, depending on how different teams say, like the blue prospects, right? The guys who are going to have a high-grade, potential Hall of Fame type, really, really good players.
Who else is in that category, Dana? In this entire class, who would you put in that upper echelon? And also, in other words, where do you not want to be in the draft where you're getting a lesser caliber of player? Yeah, I think this is one of those years where it's just, it's not ideal to have a pick in that 6 to 12 range. You know, it just, not every draft has 10, top 10 picks, even though 10 are going to go, they maybe don't have that type of grade and this is that type of year.
So, you know, and that's why, yeah, I think the Browns would love to move back and get up some extra draft capital, but do you really want to move away from a Travis Hunter, from an Abdul Carter? Probably not, because, you know, I think it is those two and I think you could make a case for Ashton Gente, but obviously not every team is going to be comfortable drafting a running back that high. But Gente is, when teams talk about him, they talk about him like Saquon Barkley and how we talked about Bijan Robinson, a guy that could be a true difference maker, even though we don't have testing for him, but the teams that were at his pro day just gushed about how he did in the positional workouts, how he did catching the football. I mean, you're hearing Ladanian Tomlinson comparisons and I think that's something, we didn't see him catch the ball as much this year, but that's something the teams always mention with Gente is how much he impacts the passing game and how that's perfect for today's game.
So even though we don't have a 40-yard dash for him, he put everything on tape. Ashton Gente is going to go somewhere in that top 10 and you could make a case for maybe Mason Graham from Michigan potentially being in that mix. Maybe a few others, but, you know, Will Campbell from LSU, who, you know, we debate the arm length, but if you look at the Patriots at number four, they need a left tackle. You think about how good Drake May was this year with subpar talent around him. Okay, you add Staphon Diggs at receiver. What else are we going to do to help our young quarterback?
Let's get him that left tackle. And I think you could make a case, Will Campbell, a top five player in this draft. But for the most part, I think after that initial tier of players, that second tier is lacking compared to what we've seen in years past. So it's all in newyorktimes.com, theathletic.com, the top 100, your positional rankings. I'm curious, of somebody later on, whether it's, you know, toward the bottom of the top 100, or even a late round pick, who's somebody, or a guy or two, that you're higher on than maybe everybody else is right now? You know, there are definitely a few guys, and a player who's really, I think, caught fire here recently, Kyle Williams, the receiver from Washington State, who, you know, teams are always looking for firepower. And we talked about how the receivers this year at the top are good, but maybe not great.
What does the day two receivers look like? You know, really like the Iowa State kids with Noel and Higgins, A.O. Menor from Stanford's a good player, but Kyle Williams from Washington State had a really good senior bowl. He went out and ran a 4-4-0 at the combine, and he hurt his hammies, so he wasn't able to work out at the pro day, but this is a guy that teams are trying to figure out more about.
A lot of 30 visits, a lot of workouts. Teams are really intrigued by what Kyle Williams might bring to the field. And him and Torrey Horton from Colorado State hurt his knee mid-season, so a little bit out of sight out of mind, no senior bowl, you know, was kind of late to the process, had a late workout, but there's a lot to like about Torrey Horton as a guy that can create space. People might remember him from that epic Colorado-Colorado State game, not this past year, the year before, and how effective he was in that game.
Teams like him as a potential day two pick as well. I'm also curious about this, Dane, because I do a quarterback story every year. I talk to coaches and scouts. I don't watch tape like you do, but I talk to people and try to get a general sense of what the consensus would be within the league on these guys.
But I cut it off at anybody who's like a seventh to PFA guy. You've got rankings through 88 quarterbacks here. And I'm very curious, when you get down to it, not to rag on poor Derek Engel from the University of British Columbia, how much Derek Engel tape are you able to get? How do you even find University of British Columbia tape to have any type of an opinion as you get to that stage in these rankings? Well, and that piece you do every year is a must read for everybody. It's really insightful what you get, the information you get helps me when I do my final mock draft, I'll put it that way. Yeah, look, there's 20, over 2,600 players in the guide overall. And I've at least watched one tape on all of them, but obviously some players you feel like, okay, I can move on now. And I got the gist of what he is. Maybe he's not gonna be an NFL player.
Maybe he's gonna be a CFL guy, UFL guy, whatever. But yeah, I wanna give them their due. All these guys are working so hard to get to this level and wanna make sure they're represented in the beast, give them a chance to have their testing information in there. If they're in a database with teams, then I know that teams are looking at them and I wanna treat my job like an area scout. I'm gonna do the due diligence and make sure they're represented.
So that's why I think teams really, I get a lot of feedback, a lot of texts today about the beast from some teams that really appreciate it. Cause they know I put in the work. They know that this is not just a thing I throw together.
It's a full year round project. Do they ever give you a quick little, but you're way off on this guy at the end of the compliments, Dane? Oh, sure. Well, hey, look, in doing it throughout the year, I'm constantly talking with teams about, hey, this guy and that guy and bouncing ideas off each other. And sure, absolutely. I mean, look, if we all agreed on these prospects, it wouldn't be any fun to talk about, right? It wouldn't be fun to debate them and trade different ideas about what they're gonna be at the next level.
So that debate is certainly a fun part of going through the entire process. Dane, thank you very much. Everybody just Google the beast.
I can give you all the websites and stuff. Just Google the beast, search it on Twitter. My colleague, Ian Rappfort said earlier today, one of the best days of the year. So apparently the rest of Ian's life, not great, but it is a good day to get to read the beast. Dane, thanks a ton for being here, man. We appreciate it. Nice, yeah, dude, we good.
Yeah, anytime. Thanks, Tom. Dave Bruegler, the athletic, go check out the beast. I'm not kidding you. Poor Brian Ingalls down there, the 88th quarterback. You know, somebody's gotta be last, right? Somebody, Derek Angle, excuse me.
Somebody's gotta be last. He's also got a quarterback from Iowa Western Community College, a number 1,500 deckers. That name had not come up in my conversations yet.
I never heard of that name until just now. I'm gonna be asking a few questions about it. 15 days to go. We've got a pretty good sense of who the number one pick's gonna be with Cam Ward to the Titans.
A lot of questions beyond that. Reminds me of last year. We had a pretty good sense at this time last year. Caleb Williams was gonna go number one overall. And now we get to do the fun part of debating whether he will still be number one overall when we get to the end of the day because Jayden Daniels looked pretty good out of the gate.
Drake May flashed some things as well. And Caleb Williams, well, going into year two with the new head coach. Let's take a quick break. I wanna get into Caleb's remarks about Ben Johnson yesterday. First time we had heard from Caleb in non-social media form since the hiring of Ben Johnson. Talk about where this thing goes for that entire quarterback class because it is really, really fascinating.
Stick around. Lot more to come on this edition of the Rich Eyes and Show. Every day when we're on the road, people around us endanger themselves and others by using their phones while driving. They think they're hiding it, but we've all seen them and know exactly who they are. For instance, there's the sneaker peeker who darts their eyes between the road and their texts. There's also the got a ticketer looking upset because they just got a ticket for using their phone while driving. And what about the fast scroller who can't drive five minutes without updating their social feeds? Or the nightlighter who has that mysterious glow illuminating the inside of their car after dark.
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Our members are the mission, insured by NCUA. When you see the video of you throwing to Tyree, okay, what do you think of when you see that? I just smile. I'm just thankful for David Tyree, man. There's not a better person and a guy who just, you know, who had the worst week of practice in the history of all practices on that Friday and dropped every pass and, you know, thought he was gonna be the starting receiver.
And then Lexico, you know, comes back and plays that game. And then sure enough, in the game, David Tyree has a touchdown catch and then makes the catch, you know. It's Rodney Harrison hanging all over him. You know, Bob Poppa giving the call saying, you know, he's got a wide open receiver, you know, and I guess that's wide open in the NFL. And, you know, David Tyree, just the will, the desire was there and just catching it off the helmet. Just what an unbelievable story.
And, you know, never get tired of watching that play. All right, Chris Brockman, my on-air compadre here. What'd you tell him? Go ahead and tell him what you say every time, now that he's here, you can say it to his face.
Go ahead, Chris. Well, usually I say it to Sean O'Hara because Sean is here. I mean, there were 14 different holdings on that play. He sees holding, Eli. What do you say to that when he sees holding? Yeah, he sees holding.
I didn't see it. How could he have holdings that didn't block anybody? He sees holding, Eli's just like, all right. Let him run in.
You know, I don't see it set by all four players. You know, they kind of just blocked him off. You know, I think, you know, it's not really holding. If the guy's holding me, you know, like a defense player's holding me, I think you're allowed to do whatever you want to the, you know, to the pass rusher at that point. If I'm in the grass, they can just grab them off, though, and pull them off. It's kind of free range at that moment.
I agree. Chris, you see holding, Eli sees grasping. That's what he sees.
I see the greatest play ever. That's right. I was sitting right there.
I was there in the building. That's it. Welcome back to the Rich Eisen Show Radio Network. I am sitting at the Rich Eisen Show Desk, furnished by Grainger with supplies and solutions for every industry. Grainger has the right product for you.
Call clickgrainger.com or just stop by. Tom Pellicero in for Rich. Just had a great interview with Dane Brugler. The Beast is out today, 15 days out from the NFL draft. I still can't get over Dane evaluating 2,600 players, including guys at colleges I didn't know existed, much less quarterbacks I didn't know existed. It's quite the undertaking.
It's a year round effort. It all brings us to this right now, which is a countdown in the process where if we just put ourselves in the time machine to a year ago, we had a pretty strong idea at this point. Caleb's going number one. The Bears were locked in. It was locked in realistically by like late March last year. They were confident in what they were going to do. They moved on obviously from Justin Fields early in the process and they were dialed on Caleb.
And there's a lot of reasons for that. They gave him a playbook at the pro day, right? Yeah.
Famously? They were high. I don't know the legalities of some of those things, but they definitely had a lot of communication. Yes. Teaching parts of things within the bounds of what you're allowed to do, I'm sure.
Fair, fair, fair. And then we got to the season and then Jayden Daniels came absolutely flying out of the gate after week one. Week one was not a great game for Washington, but he got himself rolling.
I remember I was on this show last October, right? It was at the week going into the Hail Mary game. It was right around that time when it was Chicago versus Washington. The Bears had the opportunity, I believe, with a win to go to four and two.
The commanders could have been knocked off their pestle. That game is in Washington. And then Tyreek Stevenson decides to be swaggering and talking to the crowd going full Luca at the tattooed sideline guy. What was he? Tattooed courtside guy? Tattooed sideline guy. Courtside tattoo guy. Courtside tattoo guy. Tattooed sideline guy. He's yelling, Tyreek Stevenson's yelling at that guy instead of playing coverage.
It's a Hail Mary. And from that point forward, they didn't win another game under Matt Eberfluss. Yeah, they were four and two. Should have been five and two. Would have been firmly in the playoff picture.
Five and two. The Bears. Didn't win again until week 18. When we reflect on the 2024 season with the Bears, like, what do you remember? You remember everybody got fired. First the offensive coordinator, then the head coach, that Caleb was not Jayden Daniels, quite frankly.
And literally it all turns on that plate. They did not win another game, I believe, Brockman, until the Packers game at the end of the season. Yeah, week 18. When Thomas Brown was the interim coach. That moment changed everything. And I remember being on the show talking about, in those previous few games, there was a game against New England and Chicago where Caleb played really well.
He had some really good moments. And all of a sudden he started going, okay, these are the small sample size things. Now you're seeing Caleb's talent come out. And everything from that point forward seemed to turn. And it became a very negative environment.
But you saw the flashes that were there. So you fast forward a year, and we're sitting here talking about Caleb Williams now having a head coach that, let's be abundantly clear. This is one of the guys Caleb personally wanted. Ben Johnson. Loved Ben Johnson. Knew enough about him. Wanted this type of coach, the young, offensive-minded, he's spearheading where football's going. It's the creativity.
It's all those things. And somebody, at least from what Caleb has said, that he wants to hold him accountable. So Ben Johnson gets hired. It was the Monday after the Lions lost after divisional playoff weekend.
So we're talking like mid to late January. Caleb had not talked publicly, and certainly not in a press conference setting, until yesterday, second day of the off-season program, when he said this about his new head coach. Starting now, him pushing me, Key, and I know that, and he knows that. Him pushing me, because it's a, as he says, and as he said before, it's a QB-driven league, and so being able to have that position right on every team, that's why that position is so important, and draft, or people trying to get the QBs is, at this day and age of the game, I would say is because it's so QB-driven, and if you have that position right, it helps with a bunch of different things.
And so building that bond, him pushing me, and us growing together for years to come is, it's gonna be fun. I can't wait to be able to help me learn more about ball, because he's super smart, super sharp, and grow and progress in those ways, so that year four, I'm out there, and Ben's obviously still calling, Ben's doing his thing, but it's a Jared thing, where Jared's out there now, he's just calling the whole game, in the sense of when he's out there on the field, and he's been the coach. One thing Jared Goff got used to in Detroit was being tested. Ben Johnson's a big believer on not just installing, not just teaching, but also making sure you are in turf, you are taking everything in, you are gathering all the information. So lo and behold, second day of the off-season program, and Ben Johnson did this. I mean, today we had our first quiz as a QB room, and it's not like a real quiz where you go up and write stuff, it's just us.
We went over a few things yesterday, talked about a few things, and Ben walked in this morning, flung open the door, made a grand entrance, and then we got to work of him testing us about what we talked about yesterday, and things like that. So already first day in and challenging us, everybody loves a challenge in this sport. It's one of the great things about this sport.
Every day is a challenge, and today we got our first one. Everybody loves a challenge in this sport. In my mind is the tagline for the 2025 Bears season, because this is not just Ben Johnson challenging Caleb Williams, who I think it's fair to say needs to be challenged, and has said he wants to be challenged. I've known Shane Waldron a long time as offensive coordinator last year. Shane's a good football coach, but totally different personality than Ben Johnson. Shane is going to be much more to himself. Ben is going to be very much, I don't want to say in your face, but he is very much going to be pushing you constantly, because Ben works that hard, and you better be working that hard, and he's at this level, so you better get to that level. It's a different stylistic approach from a guy who Caleb Williams was approaching a few weeks into the season and saying, hey, you're not pushing us hard enough.
So he's going to get pushed. But this is always also Ben Johnson wanting a challenge. Ben Johnson could have had several jobs. If we rewind back, and I cover this stuff very closely at NFL Network, if you go back, Ben Johnson had several jobs that he could have had. The Raiders made a huge push to bring in Ben Johnson.
There it would have been carte blanche. They're going to pay him a ton of money. You're going to be able to essentially work with Tom Brady to hand pick whatever quarterback, whether that's going to getting a veteran, like they did with Goff, whether that is drafting somebody.
We're going to let you start de novo from scratch, build this whole thing up. You could have gone to Jacksonville. Jacksonville had interest in Ben Johnson as well. And you get a known commodity in Trevor Lawrence, who if you're looking, by the way, for an example of you can have a complete disaster, an organizational failure rookie season, and then come back, it's Trevor Lawrence. His rookie year was Urban Meyer. His rookie year, he's having to take stuff that Urban's saying and basically go and try to communicate it to the other coaches because Urban's doing such a bad job communicating and going up and asking why players are benched.
It was a mess. It was a much bigger mess than the Bears were last year. And Trevor Lawrence, while still up and down and inconsistent and now on another new head coach with Liam Cohen, he's proven that he's much closer to the college Trevor Lawrence than 2021 or 2020, whatever year it was, disaster, COVID era, Trevor Lawrence with Urban Meyer. Ben Johnson chose to go to Chicago. Knowing that he's taken somebody who is so talented like Caleb Williams and so driven, for whatever reason, goal-oriented, has the win eight Super Bowl stuff on his phone, win the Heisman, all that stuff, these are his goals.
It's the loftiest goals you can get. But Ben was not scared by that. He looked at this guy is so talented. And these are my words, but probably more talented than Jared Goff. Jared Goff was also a number one pick and a very talented player. He hit a bottom and came back up with Dan Campbell and Ben Johnson running that offense. Caleb is as talented as you get.
And he's coming from a place where the whole world has already decided, outside of Hallis Hall, well, he's already not the best quarterback in this class because he's getting compared to Jayden Daniels and to a lesser degree to Bo Nix and down the line here to Drake May and Michael Pennix and eventually J.J. McCarthy, which I remember talking to when I wrote my quarterback thing last year and talking to a scout who said like, it is going to be fascinating to go back and look at this class 10 years down the line because there are six or seven guys, presumably including Desmond Ritter in that case as well, or not Desmond Ritter, Spencer Rattler. I always get those two names messed up. Similar. I get it. Similar, they rhyme. They are similar numbers of letters.
Spencer Rattler that could start in this league and what's the ultimate? And they're all different flavors. So like, what's the ultimate answer going to be? So Ben is going in there and saying, we're doing this my way, we're going to push it, you are going to have a very creative offense, but you're not going to start like day one of the offense is not going to be, hey, you know that fake fumble play you ran with Jared Goff, let's put that in. Let's work on that.
This is like, break it down to the absolute basics. But I think it said something about Ben Johnson. It said something about the way that the Bears pursued him that this was the job he wanted. This job is a risk, okay? You don't have, Trevor Lawrence is the safe pick. Pete Carroll going and getting Geno Smith is a safe pick because you know where the floor is.
Right, very safe. We don't know where the floor is for Caleb Williams. We saw where the floor was with a quarterback, a team with him at quarterback is, which was last year the Bears were pretty bad for a good chunk of the season. But if you look at his numbers, 3,500 yards, 20 to six touchdown to interception ratio, 500 yards rushing, he played really well, all things considered. There were, and there were stretches in that season. Again, and I'd have to go back and look and compare the game logs, but there was a stretch late September, early October, where you went, okay, this is why Caleb went above Jayden Daniels.
Well, the London game for sure was obviously best game of the season. What, 300 and something yards, three touchdowns, and they lit it up over there. And you're a hail mare away from being five and two and being one of the best stories in football and not the team that ends up firing everybody.
But Ben chose Chicago in part because of where the ceiling could be with Caleb Williams. You all right over there, Brockman? Del Tufo, what's going on over here? What was that? I don't want you to just knock down there. Eh, it was like a thing. Was that one of those boards? Under his desk is a whole situation. Yeah, there's a lot going on under my desk. Del Tufo's coughing, Brockman's sneezing, now Brockman just broke his desk.
Oh, exactly. This thing, this thing, this thing. What is that? You're lucky that I didn't take your leg out. It was a divider for some wires underneath. Yeah, don't be careful. Yeah, there's a lot of wires under here.
You can take a nut and put your feet back in those wires and let's get through the segment. But this is gonna be one of the biggest stories, I think, in the NFL this season, which is this partnership of a guy who, not Caleb's last year, because he had similar challenges at USC, but the year before when he wins the Heisman, I mean, he's electric. But it was a matter of, okay, there's all the off-schedule stuff, the superhero stuff. How do you make those plays down in and down out? And that's what they were. I mean, Detroit was a run-first team. They established it with David Montgomery and Jameer Gibbs.
And who knows, depending how this draft falls, maybe Ashton Gente drops in their general range, and maybe they get another guy to combine with the Andres Fortunos. There's a lot still to come here, but what did they do in the off-season? They went out and they loaded up on guys in the interior. They made two trades and one signing and filled both guard spots and center.
Then I asked Ben Johnson about that when I saw him at Palm Beach at the meeting last week. And it was, yeah, that's a huge part of the plan of allowing Caleb to function, which is last year he had guys in his face all the time. So if your natural instinct is, I'm gonna bail out the back of the pocket, then if you have pressure in your face, you're gonna do that all the time, which is what you saw for a lot of the season. So give them that strength up the middle.
Now, do you continue to upgrade the skill spots? You need to keep building the defense too, but they do have talent on that side. I'm fascinated to see what they end up doing in the draft. And this, again, not just Caleb and the Bears, but it's going to be that entire quarterback class. As much as our focus and so much of what we're discussing right now is on Cam Ward and Chidor and Tyler Shuck and Jalen Milro and Jackson Dart. To me, it's also the year two guys.
And what are they gonna be able to do? Because right now, if you establish the pecking order, you redrafted it today. I think most people would say Jayden Daniels is your number one quarterback. Bo Nix is number two. Then you can kind of make an argument of Drake May versus Caleb as number three. And then J.J. McCarthy and Michael Penix are incomplete at this point.
But think about the situations each of those guys are in. Caleb with a new head coach in Ben Johnson. You have Drake May with a new head coach in Mike Vrabel and Josh McDaniel's coming back there. Josh's history would suggest they're going to play a totally different style of football than what Drake May was playing in year one. You have Michael Penix, who at the moment still has Kirk Cousins peering in the background and making 27.5 million fully guaranteed this season, which is one of the reasons to believe that ultimately the Falcons make a deal to trade Kirk Cousins, which he'd have to sign off on because he has his no trade clause.
But Michael Penix has all kinds of pressure just based upon that at the moment. And now being the guy, as opposed to last year, being the guy who took over down the stretch to try to spark him. J.J. McCarthy's in a spot where until Aaron Rodgers signs, there's going to be a certain category of people who still believe that he's one false step away, even though it's always been a long shot that Aaron Rodgers is going to end up there. But J.J. McCarthy, we didn't even see him take a snap. He took preseason snaps and then got hurt.
He didn't have a single rep in the whole season. And then you have Bo Nix and Jayden Daniels, who both are coming off of playoff seasons as rookies. Jayden Daniels making a playoff run as a rookie.
And there are times, quite frankly, where it can make your life harder to have that success out of the gate because now the expectations are completely different. Like, can you imagine, if you've gone back to last year and said Jayden Daniels walking into a place in Washington that hadn't won, that is a new head coach, that has all the organizational dysfunction, yeah, they're going to win 12 games and they're going to go to the NFC championship game. Like, you would never believe that. No, never.
You would never say that that's what happened here. So now, I mean, if we were ranking these guys a year ago, we were ranking the NFC East, would anybody in their right mind have put Washington higher than third? Livefield probably would have had them vying for fourth. Three or four without question. With the Giants. Yep.
And now here we are, and you have to be looking at them. I don't know what the odds are right now, Brockman. And of course, I can't give gambling advice on this show.
Of course not. But the odds are probably much higher than you would expect for the Commander. I just want to point it out that I had the Commander second last year in the NFC East. Who'd you have first? Eagles. Okay, so you actually got it.
I got it. Did you have the Cowboys? Third, Giants fourth. That's pretty good. That was on August 26th. Just pointing that out, it's okay.
Give me your NFC North rankings going in. Do you have those? Oh, we were all way off on those. Yeah, let's bring this back to reality here. I'm not big on the selective victory tours.
What do you mean? I mean, it's still a victory. That's a victory.
I called it. All right, now let's hear your NFC North. NFC North last year, Packers, Lions, Bears, Vikings.
The Vikings, Vikings fourth. A lot of people were in that group. Yeah. I think a lot of objective people. I think you owe him a lot of objective credit for that. You know, he got that one completely wrong.
That's another one where everybody would have put the, yeah, exactly. The Vikings are the third or fourth. Do they, I mean, I think ultimately I was right because, you know, they crashed and burned and didn't win a playoff game. Well, they won 14 games. Yeah, but what did it mean? They weren't the worst team in the league.
They were over, under, I think it was six and a half, five and a half last year. Although I hammered that over, obviously. Did you? Yeah. Okay. I can't gamble, Tom.
So now the Vikings, after a 14 win season, a 14 win season, J.J. McCarthy with no reps steps in. I can't gamble. I can't give gambling advice, as you know. I definitely can't give gambling advice on the show. I'm not going to ask you for it. But if you look at the over, under on the Vikings right now, which is Brockman.
Give me a second. I was looking up my NFC West prediction from last year. How'd that one go for you? I, the Niners. Well, look, I mean, Niners fans think I hate them. Vikings is your eight and a half.
Is that what you asked? It's an interesting, that's an interesting number. Eight and a half. Ooh, which way are you going on that right now, Brock?
My initial reaction would be under. I think the Bears are better and I still think the Lions and Packers are good. They have had two, they won 11 games, I think, in Kevin O'Connell's first season. They won 14 last year. The year in between was the everyone got hurt.
Kirk Cousins was playing at an MVP level. And then they started, I think, three other quarterbacks that season. I have a high degree of faith in Kevin O'Connell to figure it out regardless of who's the quarterback. But you have an unknown quarterback.
Big unknown. You've got unique pressure points on all these guys going into the season. The pressure of the existing success, out of the gate for Jaden and Bonex, the pressure of stepping into a successful situation with JJ, Michael Penix now being the guy for the first time and then two other guys who have knew everything around them and if you have one bad year, people are gonna give you some grace on it. Probably not Caleb because everybody wants to crush him.
But most people are gonna give you grace. You have two bad years. History is not kind regardless of changes on quarterbacks who have two really bad years out of the gate. So we'll find out.
A lot more to come as this show continues to roll on. Let's dive a little bit deeper as well into the Kirk Cousins situation. The various moving parts of quarterback.
The Steelers still not having a quarterback. Let's get into that. Coming up after this.
We'll also get back to Luka Gate. Let's talk O'Reilly Auto Parts, people. They're in the business of keeping your car on the road. Oh, oh, oh, O'Reilly Auto Parts offers friendly, helpful service and the parts knowledge you need for all your maintenance and repairs. They've got thousands of parts and accessories in stock, either in store or online.
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That's OReillyAuto.com slash Eisen. What's up, everyone? It's Trevor Sikkema here from the PFF NFL Show, here to get you ready for the 2025 NFL Draft. We're dropping PFF podcast episodes three times a week with the rankings, sleepers, team fits, mock drafts, and more, powered by the same data used by all 32 NFL teams. If you want a deeper insight into this year's class and how it all shapes up on draft day, we've got you covered. Become a smarter draft fan right now on the PFF NFL Podcast. The PFF NFL Podcast, part of the Believe Network.
Follow and listen on your favorite platform. That season, I was still going crazy emotionally. I was still going the opposite directions. But the guy who threw the cup of beer at me, John Green, who's a friend of mine now, it was a $50 bet. So when the guy raises him and I hit on the score table, I thought he hit me.
I'm like, there's no reason for anybody to be raising their hands and cheering because the game is not going on. So I'm like, okay, you hit me. I went in that direction and then John Green was like, he saw me running and he kind of skinned it up.
Like, oh, I hope Meadow don't, or Ron doesn't think it's me, right? So the guy raised his hand because he owed John Green $50 that he could hit me. So they was just drunk, having fun, which everybody does that, does silly things.
But you know, it cost me tons and tons of millions of dollars. But you're friends with the guy who hit you with the beer? Absolutely.
This is the reason why. This is the reason why I reached out to him because I didn't, I don't like the whole grudges, you know? And then also, and this life is bigger than getting hit with a cup of beer, getting suspended, losing tens and tens of millions of dollars. And you know, life is bigger than that.
You understand? And things happen, you know, and we move on. How did you, how'd you find him?
How'd you find him? Well, when I first got suspended from the brawl, I thought everybody hated me. I was still young, you know, in my own mind. I had like three, four personalities at that age or hearing things, right? And I was just going crazy at that age. And then I said, you know, I need to get rid of this.
I need to feel better about myself. So I reached out to, on Twitter, I said, hey, if anybody can find this picture, I'll take you to lunch. I didn't put the name because it was John Green. And I didn't want people to think Ron Artestis reaching out to John Green to start a fight, you know? So I put the picture up and this guy said, I know who that is.
That's John Green and he found him for me. He gave me his number. I called the number from direct message and it said, this number has been changed. And then it gives you the right number, right? So, and then I'm sorry, don't make no sense why they did that back in the days.
It's pretty stupid, right? So then I called the number, I said, hey, this is Ron, can I speak to John? His wife answers. And she says, get the F out of here, right?
That's what she says, stop playing games. I said, no, I'm serious, this is Ron. And then she said, hey, John, Ron's on the phone, right? Like we are friends.
It's the funniest story, I wish we could have filmed it. John answers the phone and this is the guy who threw the cup at me, I can see why, he's crazy. He answers the phone and says, hey, Ron, what's up? Like he knows me, you understand? Hey, Ron, what's up?
How you doing? Very sorry. He said right away, I'm very sorry. He didn't even check to see if it was me. Like he just knew it was me. I would have paid anything to hear that conversation.
It was amazing. And he said, you know, I'm sorry about what happened. Then he told me the story about the bet, you know, which is like, wow. Like it made me feel so much better about that situation.
I think Ron Artest, peak Ron Artest, we in the league in technicals, Ron Artest, how would he have reacted to a courtside tattoo guy? Well, watch that, but he would have became friends with him after. Apparently. Ron's a forgiving guy. There were a lot of steps in that process first.
Now and then. The wrong number thing, that was a period in time. We were talking about other things earlier today with like cable, but you remember those days, like you would call, you would get the, this number has changed. This person's now with this number. Or you got no number. You have no forwarding number, which meant you never could come in. The number you have dialed cannot be completed.
There was the other one that said like, this number is now this, which meant like it was harder to ghost people at that time. Don't let the urge to sing along to that catchy tune distract you from that truck drifting towards your lane or that lane splitting biker creeping up beside you. Fortunately, every Hyundai offers available class exclusive advanced safety features that can alert you to potential dangers around you. And Hyundai has over 130 IIHS top safety awards since 2006, because Hyundai is always working to ensure the road doesn't get ya.
IIHS top safety awards include top safety pick and top safety pick plus awards to Hyundai vehicles from 2006 to 2005. Welcome back to the Rich Eyes show. Why was that tickling you so much, Mike?
Cause I, it's like funny. I just like can't ghost people cause that's right. Your number just got phoned into the new numbers and it would tell you. Then this was a real thing. It was the truth. The days of just the landline phone.
Oh please. Were? Three-way calling, caller ID, all the avenue. It was so much simpler. It was great. It was great. The three-way calling is still one of the greatest inventions of all time. No, no, it was great. When you were a kid.
It was great when you didn't know anything. The phone rang and it could be anyone. And you just picked it up and said, hello. And you're just like, hi, this is so-and-so from that. And there's like that wrong number or, oh yeah, yeah.
She's right here. Hold on a second. Those were the days. Yeah. And it was usually the same three people.
True. But then if you answered it, you're not the person you didn't want to talk to. You were just stuck on the phone with her. You were stuck on the phone. You were screwed.
Or you did the whole like, ah, we're in the middle of dinner. I gotta call you back. The lie. Right. You'd have the little tape machine, right? Oh God. For the voicemail.
For the screening. Oh. So my kids now, we're 10 and eight. They've gotten into Blink 182.
Like this is like everything 90s is now like back. The younger one wants to be a drummer like Travis Barker. So like she loves the drumming in that. Fantastic. The line in, what's my age again? A courtside tattoo girl at your house.
We're a long way from that. Although she did get two full sleeves at the face painting thing at the NFL party last week. They're doing like little face paint.
She comes with like tigers all the way down both her arms. Get ready. There's a line at what's my age again about call ID. And I said to him, we're in the car. I'm like, do you know what that is? So like, no, I'm like, well up until recently before the song was recorded in 1999, when people called, you didn't know who it was. And this was a mind blowing type of a moment because you right now, you know everything, you know, everyone who's approaching you digitally and otherwise. And if you get a text, you don't like it, you block them.
Never hear from them again. Don't even answer. But like, but like your text block. Just, yeah, I don't want to do that.
I'm I'm good. And it's block them. They don't know their block.
They don't know it. There was no, there was no equivalent to that. There was only one way you could block people back in the nineties, which was you just unplugged your phone. And then you blocked everyone out of the wall. And then that was the end of anybody calling you.
But there was no, there was no in-between. There was no selective, the call ID. And then the original caller IDs. If you remember, it would like, it would just give you one number at a time.
It would like cycle across. So you're going, oh, that's a good, no, no, no, that's bill. I'm not, I'm not going to pick that up. Cause most of the time in the hometown, it was the last four digits. Right. Area codes, but it's pre-air. Look, I had no area codes as a kid. Oh, you just dialed the seven numbers. Seven numbers. You just dialed four and it was Mike's neighbor. My kid number, like my first phone was one digit away from the garbage disposal company. Ooh, that's tough.
That's tough beat. That's a time that you want to be with people. Can I have a 50 yard dumpster? And of course I answered the phone and I'd be like excited to talk. I'll be right there. I'd be like, yeah, we're sending it over.
Where's your address? I would play with people. And back then they had no idea. That's like when Kramer, Kramer was the movie phone guy. Yes. Right.
And then he just started doing the, doing the movie for brown eyed girl is playing at. Well, here's the other thing. Area codes at that time were way off base here. Yeah. Area codes at the time, if you had to dial an area code, you got charged for the call.
Yes. That was a total call. You couldn't call a town that was an hour away from me. I remember growing up otherwise it was like hundreds of dollars.
Yeah. And it wasn't like you were calling Japan. You were calling Cambridge, Minnesota. And that alone was like, well, that's going to be a $50 call. Remember that you had plans that were like nights and weekends.
So it was like, don't call me until nine oh one. Then it's free. And you had heavy competition of those phone companies. You have the AT&T ads, you have the sprint ads. That's what it was all based on. Oh my God.
Even the early cell phones. Oh, I got, I got a plan with 400 minutes. I don't want to go over my minutes.
Yeah. Do you think if, Do you think if Kirk Cousins hadn't had the call ID, he answers the call from Terry Fontenot during the draft last year, we're about to take your replacement. Do you think he just like sees the numbers like, Nope, Not doing it.
We're skipping it. Or like, well, maybe this call can't be good. Maybe you as an insider, you probably answer every call. Cause you just don't know who's calling you.
But like there is some of that. A lot of people, I mean, me specifically, if I don't have the number saved to my phone, I am not answering. I answer every call. No. What do I want to talk to a random person? I don't know for you. I answer every call except if the number is too similar to mine, because what I've found is that's usually, that's the scam now, which is they give you the same area code, similar other digits, but it's a little off.
I'm always like, there's no way. And if you, if you, at that point, if it's that important to reach me, you text or call. Yeah. Which again, for Kirk, who probably has a flip phone, knowing what we know about Kirk on the, by the way. So he's back on the quarterback show. My understanding is they're in the car with him when he gets the call. So there'll be a scene on quarterback in this season, when he's driving back from the draft party, where they had him waving the towel and everything, and he'll get the call, which not the greatest moment for Kirk though, credit to him. He signed up for this as well. There's a lot of things that could play out here.
Hopefully for him, it won't be before the draft, but maybe during the draft, maybe right after the draft, there might be a much better phone call than the one that he got last April. We'll get back to the NFL in a little bit. I know Brockman, you got something good cooked up with it for us here with your burning questions. Got all the masters top five coming later on.
Not coming at the top though. Joe Vardon, NBA writer for the athletic. Hopefully he's going to have answers on where sideline tattoo guy is going next. Yeah. So quarterback season two, obviously they skipped last year. It's going to be Joe burrow, Jared Goff and Kirk cousins.
That's right. Which is a, it's a pretty good lineup. It's pretty good. Those guys went through some stuff.
Pretty good. Jared Goff, all good until the end there. Till it wasn't. Which was not all on Jared Goff, obviously, but they just played the worst game at the worst possible time. Right. Joe burrow, who had to put everything on his shoulders every single week, because they just didn't have the horses on defense. They had to score 50 points a game. I'm guessing we see a pretty frustrated Joe burrow for most of.
One would imagine. And then, you know, Kirk as frustrated as he gets, I'm sure there's no, you know, no curse words, but might have some creative other non non profanity that he might use throughout the course of the show, a very strange year. Like you cannot overstate how weird of a year Kirk cousins had.
We've never seen anything like it before. And the Kirk cousins effect on everybody else, by the way, is for all these other quarterbacks, they've all been nervous that if they sign before their team's going to end up drafting a quarterback, like that, that was a real thing. And so for Kirk, when I say that he's not going to get traded before the draft, that's because the last thing he's going to want to do, cause he has the, he has the keys to it.
He has no trade clause is wave the no trade and get sent somewhere. And then the same thing happens again for me once shame on, I won't get fooled again. I won't get fooled again.
Well, I won't get fooled again. So I would think that for Kirk and there's things that, you know, from a contract perspective, from a physical perspective, probably need to be in motion of he's going to get traded during the draft prior to the draft. Hypothetically, you could do something on Friday morning, but Kirk, Kirk, I do not believe it's going to wave his no trade clause. Even if he had an opportunity before the draft for that reason, could you do it on day two of the draft? Maybe, but then if somebody trades up, it takes Jackson dart at 33, you're in the same spot. This might be a Saturday of the draft Monday after the draft type of a situation, but until you have some of these other musical chairs filled, namely Cleveland and perhaps to a lesser degree Pittsburgh, there's still a lot of different directions that this potentially could go of all those options. I don't want to box myself in because it's April 9th and things can change, but of all those options right now, being the Falcons backup for the entire season might be the least likely of the options.
If you're comparing that to play for the Browns play for the Steelers, if Aaron decides not to go there, wait it out and get traded when somebody gets hurt in training camp or even the season him serving 17 games and making all 27.5 million with the Falcons is probably the least likely in my mind of all those scenarios, Joe Vardon NBA writer for the athletic going to join us right after this, to talk about a bizarre day and night for a lot of reasons in the NBA on the rich eyes and show. Every day when we're on the road, people around us endanger themselves and others by using their phones while driving. They think they're hiding it, but we've all seen them and know exactly who they are. For instance, there is the sneaker peaker who darts their eyes between the road and their texts. There's also the got a ticketer looking upset because they just got a ticket for using their phone while driving. And what about the fast scroller who can't drive five minutes without updating their social feeds or the nightlighter who has that mysterious glow, illuminating the inside of their car after dark. Do any of these sound familiar? If they remind you of yourself or someone, you know, rethink your behavior before you find yourself becoming the fender bender, the veering off the rotor, or worst of all, the driver who killed someone put the phone away or pay paid for by NHTSA.
