REShow: Steve Aschburner - Hour 3

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Seriously, though, see terms and check it out for yourself at discover.com slash match. Check it out. It's just keep on coming. This is the rich eyes and show with guest host Tom Pelissero, a really talented player. Calvin Cook is not coming in for four or $5 million live from the rich eyes and show studio in Los Angeles. There are a bunch of running backs, Josh Jacobs, Pollard, Bartley, earlier on the show Steelers wide receiver Alan Robinson, still to come senior writer for nba.com Steve Ashburner plus your phone calls, latest news and more. And now, sitting in for rich it's Tom Pelissero. You heard me talking there about Delvin Cook.

It has been a week, been a month. It's been a year for NFL running backs. Saquon Barkley talked yesterday for the first time this offseason at his charity event. Right now, no deal done with Saquon Barkley, no deal done with Josh Jacobs, no deal done with Tony Pollard, the three franchise tag running backs. Delvin Cook's a free agent. Other guys like Jonathan Taylor hoping that their deals are going to be addressed.

And I want to go back to what Saquon said yesterday to the media, talking about his contract situation as well as the market for running backs as a whole. I think it goes up and I think you mentioned it before about, oh, quarterbacks in the Super Bowl and how many rushing yards, the top rusher, but every team is not, like every team, Pat Mahomes is a two-time Super Bowl MVP, two-time MVP. And like this is, not everybody have Pat Mahomes and this is no not to Daniel Jones, so don't even try to flip like that. And then you look at the Eagles who play, Jalen Hurts, a great quarterback, that team is amazing, but every team is not the Eagles.

Every team doesn't have that much talent. And when you come to my situation, come to me personally, I feel like that I helped our team a lot. I feel like not only on the field, but off the field.

I feel like as a leader, I feel like obviously there's a conversation of my numbers going down. I think there's a whole lot of other stuff that happened to place NFL. We were a one-dimensional team in the beginning of the season. We were running the ball. We have a great coach. We played Detroit Lions. They came in, bust that ass, stopped me.

We had to switch it up. And we have a great coach with days with Cavs, and we had a whole new game plan. We came out and found a way to get the job done and make it to the playoffs. But going to the running back market, when you talk about the running back, no, I don't agree with that. I think that it's not fair because I don't think Tennessee Titans, Tennessee Titans is a great team, but Derrick Henry is one of those guys on those teams. St. Fran is a great team, but Christian McCaffrey is one of those guys on the team.

Josh Jacob, Delisco, on and on. And I think when you talk about the New York Giants, I think even Pierce came on and said it. I have a lot of respect in this league, and I think that's how I should be viewed. Bust that ass. That's the main thing I took away from that. Put that on a shirt, man.

That's good. That's got to go on a t-shirt. That's got to be part of the Giants slogan for this year. 2023 Giants, bust that ass. Actually, I think Dan Campbell probably already made that into a shirt for the Lions.

Detour Alliance, bust that ass. Saquon is in a different spot because he's made money. When you're drafted, Del Tuvo is losing it. Second overall pick, right? Second overall pick.

You're talking about a completely different stratosphere in terms of the money that he's already banked. Del Tuvo, are you okay? Wow, you killed Mike.

Mike Del Tuvo comes in, bust that ass. That's it, I got to get that as a drop. That's mandatory. Oh my God. That was my phone ringer. Oh no. You and TJ just got me. All right, I'm back. We got to be professional, guys.

Tom's here, okay? Bust that ass. Let's just play that on a loop. Bust that ass.

Bust that ass. The idea still that even somebody who's made the money that Saquon Barkley has, and really, I mean, he has a case there. They were an offense that was very much centered around him, particularly early last season. The idea that if they don't get the deal done by July 17th, he would hold out for the entire season, to me, feels far-fetched. He didn't slam the door on it, but ultimately, you are talking about giving up money this year. And I think that there's a natural fear for the players as well as the team that if you do that, your career is going to resume like Le'Veon Bells did.

He got a bunch of money from the Jets, didn't work out there, bounced around to three more teams, got released a few times, and then turned into a boxer. Now, I think that Saquon, in terms of natural abilities, but as talented as any running back in the NFL, and I don't think that any of us are blaming any player for wanting to get the maximum value that they possibly can. We talked about earlier in the show, the running back market right now is so depressed that unless somebody can break through and reset the expectations, it's hard, man. It's going to be hard just to all of a sudden say, well, we should get paid more.

I'm not suggesting that they all need to band together, though I do suspect, based on some of the things that I've heard, that they must all be on a group text. Saquon and Josh and Tony Pollard and Jonathan Taylor, they've got to be talking about the fact that none of them are right now feeling like they're going to get offered money that's anywhere near the top of the market. The top running back in free agency was Miles Sanders this past year. People within the league had Miles Sanders penciled in as an 8 to 10 million dollar player. And he sat there for two or three days after the negotiating window opened and signed with the Panthers for, I believe, 6.35 million. David Montgomery, another top one, signed for, I think, six. Alexander Madison replaced Delvin Cook for 3.5 a year with upside. So teams are looking at this, number one, not wanting to put a ton of money into a position where you do have a depreciating asset, there's no question about it. But also where you feel like you can replace the production with multiple players and then if somebody gets hurt, it doesn't completely gut your team because you weren't paying one guy 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 million dollars. So who are the special players who can actually force that reset of the market?

Saquon is one of them. It's a matter of how you proceed here. How do you attempt to do this other than pushing it all the way to the wall on July 17th and trying to get the best offer? The Giants made him an offer back in October, November that with upside wasn't significant money. It wasn't at the top of the market. It wasn't 16 the McCaffrey's getting. It wasn't 15 the Camara's getting.

But it was significant. Where are they at now? All I can tell you is they've discussed different structures, different things in terms of the base, in terms of the incentives. Listen to Saquon's voice. They're not in his mind anywhere close right now. Josh Jacobs, there's been virtually no negotiation. If there's one that I think is going to end with him either playing or maybe not playing on the tag, it's Josh Jacobs. I would not anticipate if they don't get a deal done by July 17th.

At this point, there is no suggestion that that's going to happen. I don't think he's there at the start of training camp. I truly don't know if Josh Jacobs shows up by the start of the regular season and that was the centerpiece of the Raiders offense a year ago. So can that force the issue in some regard? Can Saquon force the issue?

Tony Pollard is probably the one that gets done at the lowest number of the three just because of the circumstances here, what Pollard's made in his career. And even though he's very important to that team, the Cowboys also, their contract structures are very friendly to players. It's a lot of upfront money.

That one, if I had to guess right now, I'd say they find a way to get that one done. But once you pass July 17th, that's it. The only thing you can negotiate at that point is an improved one-year deal. There's no multi-year deals after that. So if you're a running back or you're any player on these tags, you got to dig deep at that point. What are we actually going to do? This is the best we're going to do. Am I going to stay healthy and have a good year and next March cash in?

And even if I get to next March, is the market any better? Is the market any better for Saquon when the Giants can just go, we're tagging you again? Raiders could tag me, even if he sits out the year. Raiders could say, well, we're tagging you again. And that's the leverage that teams have. If you're a linebacker, you've got all the leverage in the world if you get franchise tagged.

It's like an inside off the ball linebacker, which is why nobody tags them right now. Because the franchise tag number is so high, it actually helps the player in negotiations with the running backs. Once those big contracts, like Adrian Peterson signed in 2011 on an extension that was worth like $12 or $13 million a year, something like that, it was a huge deal. There's only two guys in the league making more than that.

Right now, 12 years later, every other position has doubled and tripled. The highest paid quarterback in the NFL around that time, like 2011, 2013, was Aaron Rodgers making $22 million a year. Ten years later, we've got $50 million quarterbacks. We will soon have a $60 million quarterback. Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert, Patrick Holmes maybe again.

One of those guys is going to 60. It was 22. That was the top of the market 10 years ago. The cap has like doubled in that span.

But what happened? You had some really big money contracts that got done and it pushed the level of everything else up. The wide receiver market. Why does everybody now get three year deals that are almost entirely guaranteed at $20, $22, $25 million plus?

Because that started being the thing. One team did it, the next team did it. Now that's the way those contracts go with running backs. Right now it's the opposite and it's working against them.

That's not to say it's right. You're still playing in the NFL and you're still making a lot of money. Is it as simple as, oh, it's a passing league now. There's more emphasis on receivers and defending the receiver and getting to the passer. So those are the positions that get paid. Is it that simple? Obviously it's not.

What is the reason? Premium positions for years and years have been quarterback, left tackle, pass rusher. And even left tackle for some teams has been devalued to a degree because the quarterbacks are so good and get the ball out so fast.

But those are really the premier positions. The difference is just those difference making type of running backs are not getting difference making type of money. I think there's certainly something to, yeah, I mean just look at where guys are getting drafted now. You get five, six receivers in the first round every year. You get a lot of corners in the first round too. You're not seeing very many running backs. We got two this year and that was a lot.

It's a different type of a marketplace than we were accustomed to seeing here. Running backs used to be the first overall pick. Right. And now one of them is still at number two in Saquon. That's like the last guy.

Yeah, the Kijana Carter days are probably past us at this point. Even B. John Robinson, Jameer Gibbs. People want to know why in the world did the Lions take a running back at wherever they got a number 12 or whatever the pick ended up being that they traded back to.

Because they think he can be a difference maker. But you're getting him at a rate that's actually going to be less than if you went out and you paid a Dalvin Cook on the open market. Again, Dalvin Cook is going to get a bunch of money. If Saquon or Josh Jacobs got their tag rescinded tomorrow, they'd go out and make a bunch of money.

If those teams become willing to trade those players, they're going to do well. But it's not going to be at the top of the 15, 20 million dollar range. It's just it's not going to happen. The only way you bring that back is if some guys take a stand to get that money. But in order to do that, you've got to be prepared to do what Le'Veon Bell did. I mean, Le'Veon Bell, back in 2017, the deal was basically done. It was five years. It was over 12 million dollars per year.

He would have made, I want to say, top of my head, 30 over the first two years and 42 over three. So it was big time money that the Steelers were offering. And it was more or less all agreed to. And like the story as I understood it was, Le'Veon was going to go in and sign it and then just changed his mind, like at the deadline.

I'm not signing it. Ends up holding out, comes back, plays on the tag, then the next year holds out entirely. He's already left money on the table at that point. And that's one of the things you always have to remember in these situations when we're talking about holdouts, the potential of missing an entire season. Or even like Lamar Jackson, where you can break down his contract that he ultimately got any which way. The reality is by not pushing the issue two years earlier, when he was entering year four as a former NFL MVP and making like three million bucks, there's money he left on the table in 2021 and 22. You can't get back no matter how big the next contract is. So for the running backs, short earning window, if you've made not that much money in your career, giving up 10 million or not taking the 10, 11, 12 million dollar per year deal, it's hard.

And that's not to argue it from the standpoint of the teams, though certainly that's part of why they don't feel the need to pay up. You've got a captive audience here. These guys are all being tagged for the first time. You can tag them again in a year. You want to take the money now, we'll pay you more than two tags up front, and then we get a deal on the back end. Melvin Gordon, who kind of did something similar, kind of passed up on what looked like a sure thing contract that didn't work out. Right.

Ended up taking less. I mean, Jamal Williams was another one in free agency this year, where the Lions offered him more money, I believe it was more than a million dollars more per year. They wanted more money. The Lions at some point went, well, David Montgomery is going to sign.

We got to do something. Like you either got to take it or not. They turned it down. He gets, David Montgomery gets $6 million per year in Detroit. And I want to say Jamal went to New Orleans for like 4.5. Like that's a, now there's moving parts in free agency that don't exist at this time of year, but there are things like Dalvin Cook sitting out there. And you have to be wondering on some level, whatever Dalvin's going to get relative to what we're being offered right now. This might make a lot more sense than it would seem to on the surface, or it would have seemed back in March when these teams were probably trying to get a deal done. If the market's going a certain direction, I mean, there's no justification to say Dalvin Cook should be making less money than Miles Sanders. Right. And he's not.

He's going to get more money than that. But is it going to be closer to Christian McCaffrey? I don't know.

I don't know what the numbers get there just because of the time of year that we're in here. So we'll hear more. I don't know if we're going to hear directly from Saquon again. I think he said his piece. Not about Daniel Jones. Don't spin it like that. Not about, this is not about Daniel Jones.

Breaking. There is no quarterback like Patrick Mahomes in the entire league. There won't be. Don't take any comments to be anything else other than Patrick Mahomes is really good and can single-handedly carry a team. And bust that ass. And bust that ass. Bust that ass, Del Tufo.

We need that. Perfectly with your reaction Monday, Tom. The beginning of the drop was someone busting ass. That's right. That's two for Del Tufo today.

Okay, I'll take a break. Speaking of guys carrying teams single-handedly, Nicole Jokic falls in that category, I think. Single-handedly? Okay, Jamal Murray too. Jokic does a lot. Even if it's not all one highlight. Steve Ashburn is covering the NBA Finals. Game 5 tonight in Denver. What does Ash think about this series? What does he think about the future of LeBron James?

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No kidding. Yeah, we won. And then it went to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. I had to argue about Barney the Purple Dinosaur one step away from the United States Supreme Court. The funniest part, because the case is over, I can say this now.

Yes. I had had the costume, the evidence of the trial, I had the costume at home for some reason. And my wife and her friends used it to have a birthday party for some of our kids, for some of the kids in the neighborhood. And they had all, you know, this is back before cell phone pictures and all this pictures of all this.

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It was the dumbest thing you'd ever seen in your life. 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 click Grainger dot com or just stop by. Tom Pellicero in for Rich today. Please be joined right now by senior writer for NBA dot com. Usually a frequent guest of the old Tom Pellicero show on local Minneapolis radio over a decade ago. My friend Steve Ashburner is with us.

Steve, great to talk to you again. Where do we find you today? Hi, Tom, I'm in I'm in Denver. I'm awaiting game five and what a lot of people here think is going to be the final game of the NBA finals. So are they right now putting up the road barricades and whatnot already? Are there store owners, you know, nailing up wood over their glass windows? Set the scene for me there in Denver. Yeah, I just came in from outside.

It's raining. So nobody is outside, you know, and that includes city workers. I've seen no signs of that. It's actually been a pretty low key final city. I mean, when you're close to the arena, you get a sense, you know, that there's a buzz there. But just in the downtown, you know, restaurants, bars, I assume, if I were to go to any.

Sure, Steve, get that in there. It doesn't take over the city, at least it hasn't. The way I've seen it in some of the, I would say, the Rust Belt cities like Milwaukee and Cleveland and, you know, the cities where it seems you live and die on your sports teams. I think the array of outdoor activities here, like a lot of West Coast teams and cities, it almost has people a little less engaged. You can just say everybody's high, Steve.

He really coded that well. Everybody's very mellow there. I didn't talk about smells, you notice that. So you've been covering this series, you've been in all the games, Game 5 tonight in Denver. What signs of life, if any, do you see from the heat to make you believe we might see a Game 6 here? Oh, I mean, it's their life force. It's their orneriness. It's pluckiness, feistiness, all of that intangible stuff about we're going to be the team that you can't put down. This is Michael Myers sitting up in the background in Halloween when you think he's gone. That's how the Miami team operates and it has served them well.

There's a point, though, where you never say die, you eventually have to say die. It just seems that four rounds in, having done what they did as an asterisk number 8 seed, they technically were the seventh best team in the East and then they lost the first play-in game. So they started to play from 8 in the tournament. But to do what they've done, remarkable, all credit to them. But they have limitations that were in play to get them to that seventh place finish in the East.

I think they've butted up against some of that stuff. They're scoring offensively, they rank very low, and they're having a difficult time getting to 100 in the finals here against Denver, a team not necessarily known for defensive prowess. They're trying to do this with Jimmy Butler as their best player. You don't see a lot of that in NBA championship annals. The history of the league is you really do need a Hall of Fame, sort of a no-brain Hall of Fame type player to carry you, to get on his back and go all the way. The only comps I can think of for Butler, in recent memory, Chauncey Billups, when Detroit won, I think it was 2004, that was really an ensemble Pistons team.

You have to reach all the way back to maybe the Supersonics in 1979 in Seattle when they had a franchise for Dennis Johnson, who was a Hall of Famer, but not really a superstar. He and Gus Williams carried their team. This is a star-driven league, and if Jimmy Butler is your number one, it might explain why you don't get all the way over the top. What is Jimmy Butler in your mind at this point? Is he a good two on a championship caliber team? Where does he fit in at this stage in his career? I will qualify all this by saying I was in Chicago working out of that city when he came in as a rookie, and I kind of underestimated him at every stage. First I thought, he's the number 30 pick, last pick of the first round. He came from Marquette. I went to Marquette, so I sort of had a rooting interest, but I thought, he's going to have a tough time making it in this league. He's got shorter than usual arms.

The trajectory on his jump shot is flat. Well, he established himself defensively first with Tom Thibodeau, and then he took off from there. He has exceeded any ceiling that I might have had in my head about him. That said, I do think at any point going forward, including this year, but certainly as he hits age 34 and beyond, he needs to be your second best player at best. Miami needs whatever it is, whether it's a Damian Lillard type, and he's that young either, but he needs another guy. He's also not a natural born scorer, and so he functions best as facilitating the offense, taking over some tough defensive chores sometimes, and that requires energy that you can't just all leave at the other end. So, yeah, I think all props to Jimmy for getting this team to this point and having done it in the bubble a few years ago, but it goes against the grain of what the traditions are, and I will not cut any slack for an ankle turn two series ago. People don't cut a lot of players, certainly star players, slack if they have an off night regardless of their injury situation, so you want to play at that level and be in that conversation. By now, his ankle should not be an issue.

Now, if he has surgery a week after the series ends, then I take it back. Senior writer for NBA.com Steve Ashburner is our guest. Steve, you've covered this league for a long time in Minneapolis, in Chicago, nationally here with Nicole Jokic. And I've been trying to think of this for several days here about who the best comparison would be to him historically, because to me, and again, I've always qualified this with I have very cursory NBA knowledge. I'm not I covered the NFL for a living.

That takes up a good majority of my time. But to me, he looks in every regard like a throwback type of a player from the 50s, in terms of everything from the haircut to the way that he shoots the ball to the pass first type of mentality at times. If you have a cop through your entire time covering the league for the Joker, who is it?

I'm not going to go back nearly that far. I think he reminds me in a lot of ways of Tim Duncan. You know, low to no profile away from the court.

You know, his accent sort of limits his engagements with the media. Well, with Duncan, it was just a simple stoicism and where he played and not having a flashy game, facilitating teammates. I don't think Duncan had any top 75 guys at his side when he helped that team win five championships.

And well, David Robinson for, you know, at the start. But, you know, certainly later, Parker and Ginobili Hall of Famers, but largely because they played with Tim Duncan. And I think I think Jokic to me is reminiscent of that. He didn't excite people, you know, and it's usually to use a popular term these days. The casuals, you know, people that aren't diehard basketball or NBA fans, you know, might not engage as much with Jokic's game. Same as Duncan, you know, the big fundamental, as Shaq called him. And, you know, that's not as exciting as the dunks and the barrage of three-point shots and, you know, ferocious, you know, give me that rebounding type of things.

So that's my comp. And that's I made the same point earlier, Ash. I don't know that if you and again, I'm certainly in that casual category. And I think a lot of people, especially young people, consume the game now through highlight reels. Right. It's YouTube and it's a highlight on Twitter here and there. I don't know that there's a single Jokic highlight that you just sit back and go, wow, that was amazing. There's no, you know, LeBron James, Michael Jordan level thing. It's just when you sit there and watch him through an entire forty eight minute game and everything that he does up and down the court and the way that he creates things for other people. And then somehow, again, even without the highlights, you get to the end of the game and he's got 30, 20 and 11.

And you go, wow, that was a remarkably effective game for somebody who maybe isn't going to have a single thing that's in the sports center top 10. Well, I mean, I'm sure you can find highlight reels of his passes and a lot of those are breathtaking. Now, you know, admittedly, I mean, his vision, his court vision is one of his greatest strengths.

Well, we can't look through his eyes, but we see the end result when he sees cutting players and opportunities and openings that very few people could hit and delivering that ball. I feel a little bad for him from the standpoint that if the improbable were to happen and Miami were to claw its way back and steal these finals at this point. That is Steve Ashburner, senior writer for NBA dot com.

With all due respect to Miami Heat and the fans, it looks like whether it's tonight or the next game, Denver is going to put this to bed. Right. I think so.

Yeah. So my thing is, you know, you're looking at this team, you're looking at the structure. You know, there's a new salary cap coming into the league.

And my thing is, Chris, do we feel I'm hesitant to use the D word, but do you feel like Denver can do this? Are they a budding dynasty or do you feel like this is kind of like a one and done? Are we seeing a kind of shift in the way basketball was played? Because, you know, the Warriors kind of they kind of made the Steph Curry blueprint about how to run off some titles. And now the Nuggets are kind of doing it in a different way. So do we feel like this is something that can be sustained?

Can the Nuggets like continue this or is this kind of like a one and done? That's kind of what I'm interested in. Great question. Love where your head's at. Thank you. That's a wedding crashers reference. Mike, Mike, Mike. We know that, Tom. I think the way Denver runs its team. Right.

It's very unique to them and their situation. Right. No other team has a point center.

OK. I mean, LeBron, I guess, could play center and he always has the ball in his hands. But if you look at other teams in the West, OK, Lakers are old. LeBron is near the end of his career. I think it's safe to say Phoenix is in kind of a bit of a turmoil. New coach Chris Paul.

Is he gone? Yes. You have Kevin Durant and Devin Booker. And that is enough to be a contending team. They're going to be top four next year, I think, in the West.

Right. And you look at the other kind of teams. Memphis has this job Maran situation, even though they weirdly played better without him the last couple of years. But still, anytime your superstar is set to miss twenty five plus games, that's an issue. So, yeah, I think Denver can kind of keep this going for a while.

Jokers and in his prime, which is going to go on for now, a few more years. Yeah, there's Jamal Murray is now a super duper star in this league. They've got the pieces around them. I don't think there's any reason why Denver can't string a little run here and make two, three, four finals in a row.

I don't I don't see that being an issue at all. Yeah, that's kind of my thing I've been thinking about, you know, as the clipper fan here. I keep sitting back and wondering, what if, you know, had they stayed healthy?

But the fact is, I came and look at Tom because they never stay healthy. There's always something weird that happens with the Clippers. So I don't even think you can really count them in the mix of basically, you know, can't really count them in the mix because there's always a hamstring or a finger or an ACL or something weird that's going to take out the Clippers. The Warriors are going to be a year older. Dallas is kind of interesting what they end up doing. Does Kyrie stay? I mean, LeBron James, is he suddenly in the mix down there? Because looking like he's lost some weight a little bit. If you see him working out workout videos from Luca Sacramento, do you think they were kind of a one year flash in the pan?

Is that sustainable? I mentioned Memphis and Phoenix. Minnesota, they're an interesting case too. But do you really think they can contend for the one seed?

Unclear. Denver is a really good team. I think they're going to be a really good team for the next few years. Meanwhile, one health related update for tonight. Tyler Harrow upgraded to questionable. Hasn't played in eight weeks since undergoing surgery for broken right hand.

Sounds like he's going to attempt to play according to reports. How significant is that, TJ? Very significant.

Well, I mean, I want to say very significant, but like you just said, he hasn't played in eight, what, eight weeks? We're talking about eight weeks. Oh, man.

That's like how much cardio were you getting in? You know, were you doing any? Yeah.

A lot of bucket hats. I feel. Yeah. I always text Brockman during the game during the last like three Miami series and said that Tyler Harrow looks like a SoundCloud rapper. Sitting on the Miami bench. I think one of the most interesting things about Harrow is when he broke his hand, how he sat there and tried to get out of the game.

They threw him the ball and he hit a three with a broken hand. So but I don't know, man, sitting out that long. Look, maybe he'll have the Willis Reed effect. Maybe he'll come out.

But then again, Willis Reed played in front of the home crowd. Harrow will be on the road. I don't know. Maybe you come out and hit like two threes and get the heat fired up.

I don't know. They need something. They need him, man. It was Kevin Love trying to give him a boost last game that lasted about two possessions. And it was OK. That's enough. That's all we had.

That's plenty. We got another notable name not showing up for an NFL minicamp. Is this one going to hurt Brockman? We'll find out. Coming up right after this is the Rich Eisen Show.

Tom Pelissero in for Rich. Get an inside look at Hollywood with Michael Rosenbaum, actress Kristin Ritter. Your parents let you travel by yourself. It was a different time. They just put you on a train. As a 15 year old girl, you went to New York. I went on a bus and I did get picked up at Port Authority. They thought I was a runaway. What would they do?

They detain you and get people on the phone and then they finally let you go to your modeling job. How many times did it happen? Once or twice. It just seems like it wouldn't happen. It happens. Yeah. Inside of you with Michael Rosenbaum, wherever you listen. This is a letter written in March of 1998 to Colts owner Jim or say what at the time a month away in the draft.

The decision between you and Peyton. Right. It's from Hunter S. Thompson. Dear James. Dear James. Dear James. In response to your addled request for a quick 30 million dollar loan to secure the services of the Manning kid.

I have to say no at this time. But the leaf boy is another matter. He looks strong and Manning doesn't. Or at least not strong enough to handle that. Welcome to the NFL business for two years without a world class offensive line.

How are you fixed at left OT for the next few years? James, think about it. You don't want a China doll back there when that freak sap comes crashing in. Wow.

OK. Let me know if you need some money for leaf. I expect to be very rich when this death movie comes out. Your faithful consultant, Hunter, and it's signed HST. The absurdity of the fact that a Hunter S. Thompson knew who I was and be that he was he was trying to persuade Mr. Orsay to draft me instead was just comical and not to see it for 20 years.

How does it just it's just nowhere to be found to be found. Right. I called John Walsh of ESPN. It's a thousand percent real. Wow. And Hunter S. Thompson was a huge NFL fan and obviously an opinion on the 1998. Well, I think now that we know that a lot of people had an opinion on the 1998 NFL draft. This is amazing.

I love that line is that you don't want a China doll back there when that freak sap comes crashing in. The irony of all this, the irony of this, he would go on and play start the most consecutive games of anybody. And I would be injured going into year two and missed the entire season. So we're just just reminding people strong underlined. Yes, strong. Patriots not at full attendance, Brockman, as they began their mandatory minicamp today. No, Lawrence guy. That one.

We'll see exactly how that plays out, because if you look at his contract right now, it's fair to say he's substantially underpaid. Also not there. Trent Brown. But according to Mark Daniels from Mass Live, flight canceled because of a hailstorm. That's why he's not there in Texas. A hailstorm in Texas. Wild guess that's not enough to avoid a fine.

It's like baseball size. It's a real deal. I'm sure Bill doesn't care. Bill does not. It's the same thing, the speech that they always give in terms of like, OK, it's snowstorm coming in. You need to find a way to shovel out. Leave early. You need to be here.

Let's be his best permission. That is not an excuse. Trent Brown is stuck on that team. He was one that early in the off season, there were some questions about whether or not potentially he could be on the outs. I believe they restructured his contract at some point. And so it sounds like he will be a part of that Patriots team here. The only player absent that we know of for sure related to contract is the Neil Hunter with the Vikings, who's a three-time Pro Bowl pick, 28-year-old pass rusher. He's got like 71 career sacks. Ten and a half last year.

Fully healthy. And the situation in Minnesota continues to be fascinating to me. I understand the philosophy of it in terms of you need to make some of those hard decisions with the players that are making a lot of money, who are in a lot of cases veteran players in relative to trying to keep your core of those young guys together for the long haul here. So they moved on for a bunch of players throughout the course of the off season. Dalvin Cook was the one that I would say people within the league were the most surprised by, that they couldn't find a way to work out something in terms of a pay cut or a trade. Dalvin wasn't adjusting his contract, and so that kind of went out the window. And now here you have the Neil Hunter, who's another one of your locker room leader type of guys on a team that I believe, top my head, this is how fast the NFL moves. I believe the only two players left on the Vikings who were part of the Minneapolis Miracle Game are Danielle Hunter and Harrison Smith. I don't think there's anybody else left now after Cook, Kendricks, Thielen all moved on. So you're going in a really young direction here. And at the same time, coming off a 13 win season, you still got a veteran quarterback in Kirk Cousins, who's playing out in a contract here and has the opportunity to once again hit the market, just like you did back in 2018 as one of the highest profile and the guy who's going to make the most money of any of the free agents, which brings me to a really fascinating question here because, and we'll see what the season goes, how the season goes for Minnesota overall, how it goes for Kirk Cousins, who put up some of his best numbers a year ago, and for the second straight year was really good in a lot of clutch situations.

You like that? If Kirk Cousins, if he plays out this season, if he plays roughly the level that he did last season, which Kirk's always going to be a borderline, depending on how you have them, borderline top 10 type of quarterback, how much is he getting on the open market? And for how many teams is he going to be an upgrade? The top of the quarterback market right now is $50 million plus. Is Kirk Cousins a $50 million plus quarterback when he's the only one getting out there? Jimmy Garoppolo is the one this year, and his deal was, I want to say for $28 million a year, $25 million somewhere in there, mid-20s, high-20s. A lot's been made of the contractual clause, but anybody who knows how the Patriots have done their contract for years knows that they put those waivers in everybody's contracts, and nobody gets their signing bonus until they sign.

It's unique when it's your starting quarterback and you have a press conference, you delay for a week or two and then still bring them in, but every expectation has been he's going to be healthy, he's going to be ready for camp, hopefully the foot holds up fine, but they plan on him being the quarterback. He didn't have that break the bank type of market this year, but still got paid handsomely by the one team that had made the most sense for him to go get him. Who goes after Kirk Cousins after this year? If we just game this out on a broader sense for the quarterback market in general and the number of players who potentially could be available at that position after the season.

So if we just look at the quarterbacks, it's clearly him. You've got Ryan Tannehill who can become a free agent. We'll see how this season goes in Tennessee, but another guy who's made a lot of money, won a lot of games, gone to the playoffs. Baker Mayfield on a one-year deal. We'll see what happens with him in Tampa. He also becomes a free agent here. Then you've got the Sam Darnold, Jamis Winston, Gardner Minshew, Jacoby Brissett, Marcus Mariotas of the world.

And then there's all those other unresolved situations. In a year, remember, a lot of people right now, and things can change, we've seen this change before, but a lot of people look at the 2024 NFL draft as being potentially one of the best for quarterbacks we've seen in a long time. Caleb Williams, Drake May, there's going to be some other names that get pushed up into that conversation as well.

Those guys should, again based on what we saw last year, be high, high picks if not number one and number two in some order. Overall, what happens with Kyler Murray after this season? He's probably not going to be healthy to start the season.

At some point he plays, but the Cardinals have loaded up. They're quite likely not going to be good this year. They could be in position to draft a quarterback and potentially trade Kyler Murray. I'm not saying that's what they're going to do, but they have certainly amassed assets like a team that thinks they might need to go out and get a quarterback. There's other quarterbacks who potentially could be available for trade at some point after this season. There's a lot of quarterback movement that can happen within the league, but the hard part about projecting that stuff out is, if we were sitting here last June doing this show, would anybody have been sitting there going, well, Geno Smith's definitely going to hold down that Seahawks job and they're probably going to re-sign them. Geno only signed a one-year extension. That's another job that potentially could, he could become available after the season. The Seahawks could be in a position, even though they should be pretty good this year, they could be in that quarterback market a year from now and they definitely got practice looking at the quarterbacks because they did the tour with all of them taking selfies and talking to all these guys.

What becomes potentially of that situation? What becomes of your guy Mac Jones, Brockman? I know. Big year for Mac. It's a big third year coming off a really disappointing season for a lot of different reasons. Bill O'Brien comes in. I am really interested to see that dynamic between Mac Jones and Bill O'Brien because they both have tempers. They're both highly competitive. You could see some fireworks on the sideline at potentially the points this season. Unlike any we've seen since Bill O'Brien versus Tom Brady, which is a very productive relationship.

Nothing wrong with that. But what happens with Mac Jones? What happens with Tua? After the season, they exercise his fifth year option. So they've got him fully guaranteed in 2024. I think we all hope on a human level Tua is healthy and comes out and plays well and can put the concussion issues behind him.

We just don't know. They don't know exactly what direction that all is going to go for him through the course of his career here. So that's a lot of potential quarterback upheaval after this season. But to me, it also comes back to, we were just talking with Steve Ashburner about, you know, how Jimmy Butler, Nicole Jokic, like how you look at them in terms of being able to be the centerpiece of a team. As Steve says, a star driven league.

You need the star players to win. I think that you've seen outside of Peyton Manning in 2015 with the Broncos, which we talked about before, a Hall of Fame caliber player who was not performing at a Hall of Fame level that season. Other than that, there's very few examples of a team that won it all, won big and didn't have one of those guys. Patrick Mahomes, as long as he's upright, is going to be a Super Bowl contender every year for another decade. Joe Burrow should be in that conversation every year for the next decade plus. Josh Allen, same category. Josh is coming off a down year too. He's playing with a goofed up elbow for most of the season.

A lot of people don't even know. I mean, he was wearing a brace on that elbow because the damage that he had is, and then eventually just got to a point where it was several games into it and he's just like, I can't do this. He had to change his throwing motion.

He eventually took the brace off. He was slinging it at the end of the season, but he played hurt last year. A fully healthy Josh Allen should be in that conversation every year. You've got to put Jalen Hurts in that conversation. You can compete with Jalen Hurts, and because of the team they've put around him and maximizing things and they've given him receivers and they've given him a defense, they're willing to push some things in terms of from a cap perspective and make sure they're putting a good team around him. That's a guy who, again, smaller sample size than some of the other guys we're talking about, but Jalen Hurts over the last season and a half, has been playing close to as good as anybody in the entire NFL.

I don't know where Lamar fits into this. He's got one playoff win. He's not been healthy two years in a row down the stretch. Now he's been paid. Does he push through those injuries now that he's gotten his check? Maybe.

He's still a dynamic player, but he's got a whole new offense in front of him. If you don't have one of those, and I may have forgotten somebody here, I'm going off the top of my head, but if you don't have one of those handful of guys, can you win? Do you feel like going into a season, if you have anybody other than Mahomes, Josh Allen, Burrow, Jalen Hurts, maybe a couple of other guys, do you really feel like we can win the Super Bowl this year? Or do all the stars have to lie?

Everything has to go right for you to have a chance. To me, that's the NBA. Yeah, it's a lot of fun to watch a lot of the teams, and the Heat are an example of a team that's found a way to push through even though they don't have that star power. They don't have the traditional one, two, or three punch of other teams. But do you really feel like if you are a fan of the Timberwolves, you're a fan of the Mavericks, at least going into last season? You've got Luka, who's a very good player, but do you really feel like you could put everything around him? To me, that's the modern NFL right now. Do you have that guy or do you not?

And if you don't, you're going to keep looking until you find that guy. Kwasi Adofo-Mensah, who's the Vikings general manager, made comments along those lines. Conspiracy theories, paranormal, UFOs. Science teacher Andrew Greenwood stated that a child ran into his classroom and was hysterically screaming and talking about the flying saucer outside. Hundreds of children ran out of their classrooms to go outside and see this unidentified flying object that was just above the school. Just imagine a bunch of kids running out of school.

Most of them probably just ran home. Theories of the Third Kind, on YouTube or wherever you listen.