REShow: Hour 3

This is the Rich Eisen Show. Live from the Rich Eisen Show studio in Los Angeles. I got to imagine when a guy like Delvin Cook gets released, where are you hearing from right now around the league? Man it's crazy. You want to tell me who?

You want to let me know where you're leaning right now? The Rich Eisen Show with guest host Tom Pelissero. Earlier on the show, Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski. Chargers head coach Brandon Staley. And now sitting in for Rich, it's Tom Pelissero. Great conversations with Brandon Staley, Kevin Stefanski on this Rich Eisen List edition of the Rich Eisen Show. Tom Pelissero here. The final hour for me on this this stint. I hope I get to come back again.

Always a pleasure being with all of you guys. TJ Jefferson, Mike Del Tufo, Chris Brockman. We'll vote on it. Sivan Diggs practicing.

You can go on now. You got it. Sivan Diggs practicing. So we shall see if he speaks after practice in Buffalo here. Teens around the league wrapping up their their mini camps in the NFL. Alan Shipnick's going to join us.

He was open starting off tomorrow just around the corner here at the LA Country Club. Right now, it's time for What's More Likely? What's more likely? Never say never, but never. All right, Tom, what's happening? You ready? I am all set. I think this is my second time playing the game.

I vaguely remember how it goes. I'm going to give it my best shot. Quick refresher. I basically give, hey, do you think this is going to happen or this could happen? Right.

And then you give an answer, not not do what Rich does. And it's like, well, I really don't think either. But let me tell you this other thing that might happen. That's not the game. It's not this, this, neither. And let me tell you this.

It's What's More Likely? This or this. Got a one word answer. I don't want a one word answer. Elaborate. Talk it out. But the scenarios are pretty big hypotheticals that might have it way in the future. Let's go. Because it's June and we're talking NFL.

So what's more likely? Kyler Murray, you heard of him? You remember him? Of course. Quarterback Cardinals? Yeah.

Yes. He plays six or more games this year or the Cardinals have the number one pick in twenty twenty four. I think that Kyler does play six games.

Really? I think the girls have a pretty good shot at the number one pick. I mean, in order to do anything with Kyler Murray now and again, everything that I've seen, everything I've heard is that the rehab process is on track, not ready for the start of the season. But, you know, if you're talking nine months, that's September from the original injury.

Nine months is usually kind of a benchmark where you're looking. I'd be surprised if he's out there week one because he plays six games. Put it this way, if the Cardinals, regardless of what their plan is at the position, whether they want to get Kyler Murray on the field, whether they want to showcase him for a potential trade, whatever it is, I would take these six plus games. But I also think they do a pretty good shot at the number one pick. Even if Murray plays shot at the number one pick? I mean, he's not going to play the whole season and they've got a lot of listen.

Look at everything that they've done. Going back to the draft. It was all about trading down a mass additional assets. You shed guys like DeAndre Hopkins to save cash and cap. You're getting all these assets in the twenty twenty four draft. You're doing that to give yourself a chance for a lot of flexibility in terms of moving up and down the board.

If you do, in fact, win some games. I mean, Jonathan Gannon is not going to roll over here. Jonathan Gannon is not tanky. The reality is the Cardinals are preparing themselves for a rebuild here. They are in the rebuild process, whether that's with Kyler Murray or without him.

This is all geared toward twenty twenty four. I think that they're going to be hard pressed to be competitive in that division this year just because of what they have talent wise. And the fact that Monty Austin Fort is really just starting the building process. But again, you've got you got a bunch of young coaches with no track record in terms of their new jobs. Talked about with Stefanski earlier, Drew Petzing's never been an OC. Nick Rawless, who's like twenty eight or twenty nine, never been to D.C. Gann's never been a head coach. Maybe these guys are the greatest coaches of all time. They all had success in what they were doing previously here. But they're also there's going to be a growth process with the coaches. In addition to the players here, there's always growing pains for teams, especially ones like the Cardinals that, you know, are trying to do something a little bit different here. And we'll see whether that path leads them.

All right. We've seen Lamar Jackson. We've seen just Jalen Hurts get big quarterback deals this offseason. Which QB most likely to sign their new blockbuster contract next? Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert, based on the conversation we just had with Brandon Staley, I would say Justin Herbert, because it sort of sounds like I asked him, is it getting closer? Are you optimistic this thing is done before camp? And he said yes on all fronts.

So I have to think that it's Herbert, the borough one. You've got different agent involved who, you know, Brian Aruld has presided over holdouts in the past. I'm not predicting that's what's going to happen with Joe Burrow, but, you know, he's a tough negotiator.

That's why guys hire him. And the Bengals have a certain type of structure. It's a challenging deal to get done. I think that the Justin Herbert one seems like maybe it's a little bit further down the road at this point. We'll see. But if I had to guess, I'd say Herbert. Rookie quarterbacks kind of dominated the NFL draft with Bryce Young and CJ Stroud and Anthony Richardson. Which of those guys is most likely to win more games in 2023? I would have to say it's Bryce Young, just because that roster in Carolina is pretty good. I mean, Scott Fitterer, the GM there has done a remarkable job building up the lines, especially the defensive front.

They've got young, talented players. Bryce Young is based on every coach, every scout I talked to almost unanimously is the most pro ready right now to come in and play. Yes, he's smaller. No, he doesn't have the biggest arm, but the processing, the maturity, his football IQ, all those things give him a chance to go out there, be the starter day one. Stroud probably starts day one too. They haven't officially declared that he's going to be the starter, but you draft the number two overall. You don't have like a, I mean, Case Keenum is your backup plan.

Maybe Davis Mills in the mix too. But I have to think it's probably Stroud who starts, but the Texans are, they're in a rebuild process here. They took big steps this year. Getting the quarterback was a big part of it.

They got a ways to go. And then with the Colts, I'm just not sure Anthony Richardson ultimately is the week one starter. Him and Gardner Minshew have been splitting first team reps through the off season.

I'm sure that Shane Steichen wants to be really careful that they're putting Anthony Richardson in a position to succeed. If that's playing week one, then great. If it's having a role and a package, maybe in the red zone out of the gate, and then you try to get him starting by the end of the year, history will tell you quarterback's drafted in the top five. They're starting at some point in their rookie year, barring really rare types of circumstances here. But is he even the starter week one? All that being said, I say it's Bryce Young.

Bryce Young. Okay. How about this? Let's go to some team stuff now. NFC wildcard team from last year, most likely to make it back this year. Seahawks or giants?

That's a really tough question. I mean, Brian Dabble did a heck of a job with the giants last year, and they're more talented now. Adding a weapon like Darren Waller is a big deal.

If Waller's healthy, which he is right now, he's exactly the type of target that Daniel Jones has not had there. The Seahawks though, I mean, they made the most of the Russell Wilson trade. Last year, they had one of the best drafts that they've had there, probably the best one since I think it was the 2010 draft. Wasn't that the one where they got Earl Thomas and Cam Chancellor and a bunch of other guys? This was the best draft that they've had there since.

Jon Snyder is one of the best. They had two first drum picks again this year. They had Devin Witherspoon and Jackson Smith and Jigba. Those guys haven't done a lot in the spring because they've had, I think they both have a hamstring issue, but I mean, that's a pretty talented Seahawks roster. They keep adding more running backs, much to the chagrin of all the people who own Kenneth Walker in dynasty leagues.

Uh, they've got yeah, raise your hand Brockman. Uh, they've got a really good wide receivers. You had Smith and Jigba now the Tyler Lockett and DK Metcalf. And that defense looked a lot more like a Pete Carroll type of defense last year.

So that's a tough one, man. They're both going to be really competitive. The giants, I think probably top to bottom have a harder road within their own division. So on that basis alone, all lean Seahawks, but I think they're both in the mix. Who else do you think sneaks in the NFC?

Is that a, is that a, I'm just asking more likely follow up to go off the top of my, I mean, what's more likely follow up. How many teams are you just crossing off going into the season? There's not that many from the NFC, right? I don't think there's that many teams.

You just go, this is probably not going to work out. I think Arizona and the bears, you can cross off probably the commanders have a hard road, but I mean, they were competitive last year with Taylor Heinecke running around and making plays. They were right there. What can Sam Howell do? I mean, there's, there's more questions. I think that's fair to say about that team. I think the Rams were terrible last year. A lot of question marks to the Rams, to be honest, the Rams guys coming back from injury, you don't know what you won five games last year.

Yeah. I mean, it was a, on every level. I mean, the quarterback gets hurt, right? The, they lose the pass rusher who ends up getting hurt in Buffalo, but that was a big deal for them. The big free agent prize, Alan Robinson, just the fit did not work out. He was open a lot and didn't get the ball a lot.

So that didn't work out. And then obviously, you know, they had other injuries across the board. Aaron Donald missed a significant amount of time. They still have one of the best coaches in the game in Sean McVay. There's no reason to think they can't be competitive here, but I mean, let's be honest after all the, you know, the bleep them picks years. They did the opposite this year. They amassed picks. There's something like 50 rookies on their roster right now because they just, they had to fill it out. So they had a lot more draft picks. They signed a lot of undrafted rookies. They're going to be a younger team.

I don't put anything past Sean because he's done more with less in his career. Last year was not the Rams year. I think they're going to be, they'll be hard pressed, but I would never rule out a Sean McVay team.

All right, let's go to the North. We taught AFC North. We talked to Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski earlier. Which AFC North team more likely to make the playoffs this year, Browns or Steelers?

Man, this is one of those classic high ceiling and high floor type of situations. Like the Steelers you can bet are going to be on the doorstep, right? It's Mike Tomlin's team. Never had a losing season.

They're always going to be right there. Right there last year. I think the Browns have more variance because they didn't win a whole lot of games last year. But if Deshaun Watson is Deshaun Watson again, there's unlimited upside for how good Cleveland can be. I mean, nobody wants to try to block Myles Garrett and Z'Darius Smith on that defense. Jim Schwartz is going to change the way that they play. He's going to have an attacking style.

You know that because he's got a long track record of doing that. They add a guy like Elijah Moore, who they really highly regard as a slot type of receiver to Amari Cooper, Donovan Peoples Jones. They've still got Nick Chubb in the backfield. I think that Deshaun Watson's the biggest X factor in all this. That's a tough call. I mean, if you're saying like, if I'm playing the percentages here, I say the Steelers just because I know that they're going to be competitive. But the Browns are a team that, if things go their way, I don't think it's outlandish to say we could be talking about a team that can contend to win it all.

All right, last one. Free agents. We've been talking a lot about these two guys. Which free agent currently more likely to have the bigger impact in 2023? DeAndre Hopkins or Dalvin Cook? That one's, it's Dalvin Cook, just based upon the fact that he's coming off four consecutive 1,000-yard seasons.

He's 27 years old. He finally got his shoulder fixed. Hopkins still play, but he's missed a lot of time between the suspension, the injuries. He's not been that guy, and DeHop would be the first one to say it.

So again, if we're just playing the percentages here, give me the guy who's been productive nonstop for the last, I mean, really throughout his entire career. Cook tore his ACL in 2017, but ever since then, he's been one of the game's best and most dynamic backs. With Hopkins at age 31, I believe, going on 32, is he still going to be able to do it? Is he going to integrate?

I mean, there's not a lot of guys who do the things that he does. Fit's going to be really important there, whether it's Tennessee, New England, or maybe somebody else comes into the mix. I think that's what's going to dictate a lot of this.

Best guest, where do these guys end up? That's a hard question. I know it's not your game to kind of speculate recklessly. I mean, listen, I think that Dalvin Cook is going to land with a surprise team. I think that DeAndre Hopkins most likely is going to land with one of the teams we think it's going to be.

I think that Hop, again, it's not out of the realm of possibility. That could be done by the end of this week, whether it's New England or whether it's Tennessee. He makes a lot of sense for both of those teams. Bill Belichick likes him a lot. We've heard him say that in the past, how highly he regards Hopkins game.

And then Tennessee, obviously, he's got the relationship with Mike Vrabel as well. I mean, if you're Hop, one of the questions you got to ask yourself too is this is kind of your, you're in all likely looking at a one year deal. You're thinking if I can have a big season, if I can show that if I can stay healthy, if I can show I'm still DeAndre Hopkins, I can get one more big contract because I'm, you know, wide receivers can be productive into their mid thirties, but I got to show I can do it. Do you want to bet the rest of your career on Ryan Tannehill or Mac Jones?

I think that that's a, that's a question that you have to consider here. No money's going to drive some of this too. He's going to want to be in the right spot. The, the whole, you know, wants to play for a Super Bowl contender thing is overblown. He's not going to these teams thinking like they're front runners in the AFC. There's a lot of good teams you got to get through in the AFC, but you do need to make sure that you're with the right quarterback in this situation because he doesn't want to end up in another spot. Is it curious to you that no NFC team is involved in DeAndre Hopkins? I don't, I don't think it's really an AFC NFC thing. I think that part of it is the familiarity. I mean, if you ask around, I mean, quite frankly, like if you ask around to people who DeAndre Hopkins has played with, played for, he's not everybody's cup of tea.

You're going to get mixed reports on it. But I think that it says something that the two guys who are two of the guys who are with them in Houston, Vrabel and Bill O'Brien, both want him. O'Brien is the guy who traded them away.

And there were a lot of dynamics involved in that, but there's not an issue with their relationship where it can't work. And if you're O'Brien and you're trying to get back to being an NFL head coach, why wouldn't you want a guy who's already knows your system can walk in the door, run the entire route tree and potentially elevate your young quarterback, who you also need to play well, if you're going to be competitive and try to get back into the playoffs. So that's where as Dalvin cook, he's a running back. He's a really good running back. You can drop him into any one of the 32 teams. I mean, probably not back to Minnesota, but the other 31 teams. And he's going to be productive. Now there's some fits that are going to be better than others.

There's no question about it. What did he tell us yesterday? I want to go a place where I'm valued.

I want to go a place where I can get in the football. He's not looking to go into some place and be a rotational back, not at this stage in his career. He's guy who he gets lathered up. He thrives on volume.

That's what he's going to want. What spot is that? Give me, give me the field. If it's dolphins or Broncos versus the field, which you didn't ask me, I think we could ask that. That would have been a good one.

That's a good question. I'll take the field. Got it. I'll take the field on Dalvin cook. Uh, Alan Shipnick is going to join us coming up right after this. He's covered every th all things PGA and live golf. Greg Norman once stared a hole through the back of his head. Let's see what Alan makes of everything going on in the cave of golf.

As the U S open gets set to tee off tomorrow, right here in Los Angeles, it's Tom Pellicero in for rich on the rich eyes and show. I just learned discover credit cards, do something pretty awesome. At the end of your first year, they automatically double all the cash back you've earned. That's right. Everything you've earned doubled all the cash back from eating at your favorite soup, dumpling restaurant doubled all the cash back from that trip where you sort of learned to snowboard also doubled. And the best part, you don't have to do anything ridiculous to get it. Nope.

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Antiperspirant wherever personal care products are sold. Rockman just out of the blue. Where were you when you sent this tweet, Chris? I mean, was that on a Sunday?

Was it a Sunday night? I was probably just at home and you just said, you know, if the Eagles make the playoffs, I'll take a bite out of Mike Del Tufo's hat. You said I will take a bite out of Mike Del Tufo's hat. Eagles have made the playoffs and you have avoided the inevitable for a week.

That ends now. I just sliced up a one inch by one inch cutout of Mike Del Tufo's Callaway hat and I placed it like little Easter eggs into the half of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Take a bite. Here we go.

Here you go. Rockman is taking a bite. Did you get a piece of the hat there? I think you did.

You chose the peanut butter too. Nope. Nope.

We don't. It's part of the hat sticking out. Oh, that is a, that is an awful piece right there in that sandwich. No, you may not. As long as you eat it.

As long as you eat it. Keep going. Keep going. I didn't go through man.

This piece is like right in my tooth. Why did you even do this? Chris? You didn't have to. You took the McLovin. Cause the Eagles stink. You took them. Oh my God.

Radio audience. I can't even tell if that's a piece of glistening jelly or a piece of a glistening gel, a jelly glistened Del Tufo hat piece. Down it just, I feel like I'm talking to Taylor eating her broccoli. Just eat it and we'll get off your case. Oh, he just went one bite. He finished it. This is not going to be good because that is peanut butter and it is jelly. And it is Del Tufo hat.

And you just jammed literally three inches by three inch piece of sandwich. It was a proud day for my future son. Oh my God. Welcome back to the rich eyes and show radio network. I am Sydney at the rich eyes and show desk furnished by Grainger with supplies and solutions for every industry. Grainger has the right product for you.

Call click Grainger.com or just stop by. We watched the video in break of Brockman eating Del Tufo's hat from 2020. And I am not exaggerating. I am physically ill. I'm sorry you had to see that. Like when you hear, you know, like a drill sound and you like get that ache in your tooth like you're at the dentist. Watching that video gave me like a psychosomatic reaction where I feel like I just ate that hat. Why the peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Did you like peanut butter and jelly?

Why was that the pick? Yes, I do like peanut butter and jelly. You still like it after that?

Well, yes, I actually had one two days ago. Any hat? No hat.

No side of hat. Here's the deal. Before everything, if you look at the date on that video, I think it was January 7th, 2020. So we knew what was obviously two months later, everything was crazy.

We used to have the greatest cafeteria here on the on the AT&T campus. Like I told you earlier, Tom, this place was live and there were people. It was bumping.

It was bumping. And they had this triple decker PBJ that they would make. It was like two dollars. I would get it multiple times a week.

And so we just thought that was the easiest thing to just kind of put a little chunks of hat in there and it'd be easy to go down a little bit of that. But could you ever eat that sandwich again? I would I would be unable. Not that specific one. I would have flashbacks.

Right. Like if I get sick from, you know, a certain restaurant, like I can't I'll never go back. I will never order there if I even if it had nothing to do with the food. If I get ill, like food poisoning or flu or whatever, right after eating a certain food, I can never go back to that restaurant.

I get that. I remember being like five or six and my mom made chili and she forced me to eat this chili. Like literally, no, you're eating it.

And I vomited. I have not since I was six years old. I'm not a chili guy either. I'm not a chili guy.

And that killed chili. I ate too many Kraft singles growing up when I was a little kid. And now I don't eat cheese. I haven't eaten cheese in twenty five years.

I just lost the taste. I don't know cheese on everything. It's very healthy.

That's very healthy for you. But I go cheeseless pizza. What is wrong with I'm going to eat pizza. It's just sauce toppings.

You're missing nothing. The cheese, the cheese. That's the issue. Wow.

Tom, you've got some super hot takes today. The American like default, which is, hey, we don't know how to develop flavor profiles in our cooking. Let's just dump a bunch of cheddar on it.

That's like the default on everything. Nachos. So you're from like cheese, the capital of Minneapolis, just from Wisconsin, with Minnesota, Wisconsin, adjacent. Come on. I lived in Wisconsin for five years.

And what did you do? And the issue was in Wisconsin, they would put cheese on things that don't really have cheese on them. Like I one time ordered I one time ordered New England clam chowder chowder at a restaurant in Green Bay. She's on and it came out and covered in cheese.

Like I like I default if there's any chance. I think there's any chance what I'm ordering might have cheese on it, like a garnish or whatever. I always am just like, and if there's any cheese, no cheese on it, because it's not always listed on the menu.

Right. But when you order something like clam chowder, you're not anticipating it's like French onion soup with like the melted cheese over the top. So when you and I were like rolling around those Englewood streets on Monday and we went to lunch at that taco spot, were you like physically ill because my taco had cheese on it?

No, I don't care. You can, you eat whatever you want to eat, but I'm just worried about myself. My kids eat tons of cheese. They watch that, you know, the Bluey show.

Sure. What are they? What kind of their dogs? But like they eat one of the things I think they're from New Zealand or Australia or whatever.

I'm just a terrible description of this show for how many times I've seen it on the show. The kid, the kid dogs, Bluey and the other one, they eat, uh, cheese and jam toast. So my kids see this and now they are obsessed with the Jack and Jam. One of the guys sitting there, make the toast, spread on a bunch of like strawberry jam and then just a big slab of Colby Jack on top. And I'm just sitting there.

It's like first thing in the morning and I'm just like, oh yeah, I'm not going to get through doing this, but like I suck it up for the kids. I'll make a Mac and cheese. I'll put cheese on the sandwich.

I wash my hands thoroughly after tumbling happy birthday. A few times live in a cold place, right? There is nothing better when it's cold. And even when it's warm, then tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. You tell me you don't enjoy that. Even every time that like you say grilled cheese, I get that little like, nope, nope.

Can't do it. But so there's this constant thing and like the grilled cheese. Yeah. My wife, Sarah would occasionally joke or some of my friends who know me will joke like, you know, what if I slipped some cheese into that? And I'm like, that's not funny.

There's nothing about you saying that that's funny at all. You're not allergic or anything. It's not like a peanut allergy where you would possibly die. I'm lactose intolerant. I just don't tolerate the lactose. You're just not into it. I will not talk. I will not stand.

Is that the weirdest? Because like Dan Olofsky has some really bad food takes. Is that your worst food take? No cheese. I'm telling you, if you like, if you travel to other places where they actually know how to cook, there's not cheese on everything. If you go to really good restaurants, they don't just make whatever dish and then go cheese. Here's a big Parmesan Parmesan all over this, you know, like you don't, you don't need it. If you know how to actually create flavor profiles, you don't need the cheese. I understand. There's like, really people are always like, well, there's really good cheeses and there's ones that taste different.

I just blanket statement. There's no cheese whatsoever. I just won't do it. Wow. I don't think that's a bad take. It does make my life more difficult because sometimes you're traveling and you have one food option and it's slathered in cheese.

Like my flight home, you know, if I'm on, if I'm in first class, it's like, you know, here's the three options. Like, are they all covered in cheese? Yes. Okay. I'm not eating. That's, that's a pain.

That's not great. We have a new, a new fantasy team name guys. Pellicero's flavor profile. Add that to the list.

It's a flavor profile. It's real. Pretty funny. That's a real thing. We lost Alan Shipnick. If you haven't figured that out by now, he was, uh, I cannot confirm or deny that Greg Norman was standing behind him when he was last seen. Uh, Alan did have something come up at the U S open or it's, I have no doubt very, here's that photo. I just that's someone that hang that in the Louvre, man. That is an incredible shot.

It's just unbelievable. Uh, but yeah, we appreciate it. I'm sure Alan will join a, another time here. So you got Cowboys questions over there, TJ.

That what I heard? You got something for me? Well, I was going to say, could you just break, break down our teams for us a couple minutes on, and start with Dallas, uh, what you like, what you didn't like about the off-seasons heading into this year, playoff chances, et cetera. So ever since Mike McCarthy got to Dallas, he's, he's a big believer in you build through the draft.

You reward your own. You don't thrive on free agency. Wants to be more balanced than they were for a long time in green Bay where Ted Thompson, the late great Ted Thompson, basically a skewed free agency entirely, other than a few spots signings here in there, Charles Woodson, there were years, years would go by and they wouldn't sign a single unrestricted free age because of the comp pick formula. Cause they wanted to reward their own guys.

Mike wants balance. We wants to build through the draft for them to execute two significant trades in one off season and not give up that much. I think it was really important for them to bring in Stefan Gilmore, who's still playing at a high level.

He wanted to get to a place that he had an opportunity to win burnish his legacy show that you can still perform at a high level. The Colts are going to be in transition. Chris Ballard was willing to work with Gilmore trades into Dallas for, I believe it was a fifth round comp pick. You now have him opposite Trayvon digs. You get Brandon cooks also on the cheap who you now are able to plug into a really talented wide receiver core where you hope Michael Gallup is a year better. Now he's a year further removed from the ACL.

Obviously CD lamb is a really good young player. He'd be the talked about guy in that draft class. If Justin Jefferson weren't also in that draft class and they've got talent in the backfield, Zeke's gone, it's going to be more Tony Pollard. They liked the young kid that they drafted out of Kansas, one of the great stories of that draft. And with Dak, you're hoping that, you know, he avoids some of the injury hiccups that they had last year through the course of camp.

And then obviously he gets hurt right at the start of the season and misses time. They want a bunch of games with Cooper rush last year. Mike McCarthy should have been a coach of the year candidate last year, instead of having to hear the annual calls for, they should fire him and go after Sean Payton and the other nonsense. No, I think the Cowboys are in a great position. They're in challenging division. I said it yesterday and you guys immediately jumped on me that they may have the most talented roster in the NFC East. That's taken nothing away from the Eagles, but the Cowboys are a very talented team. They got a really good D coordinator and Dan Quinn. It's going to be Mike McCarthy's offense this time around. Mike as a play caller is one of the best in the NFL. He's got the track record to show that regardless who the quarterbacks have been, you look at the productivity, you look at the games that they've won, you look at the number of different pieces that came through Green Bay over the years. Mike knows how to call a game and he's still been doing it. You know, Mike, Mike would still show up at the stadium way early. He doesn't do, you know, wasn't doing the full thing with his, his play sheet, whatnot, but he was still going through and doing it like he was a play caller, thinking through different things.

He showed up at the stadium six hours before kickoff because he wanted to go through it. Now he's back into actually doing this and having this be his offense, the way he wants it to run. They're not flipping the terminology because they want to keep things simplistic for Dak, but I have every reason to believe that this is going to be a really good Dallas Cowboys team. They'll have the same pressure that they always do because everybody talks about him, whether you're talking about him because you like him or whether you're talking about him because why are we talking about him? Stop talking about the Cowboys. I feel like they're going to be good.

But you know, my, my thing is I like Tony Pollard. I think he's done well, but five months after, you know, breaking his leg, I'm just wondering, man, how that's going to translate. Is he going to be ready? And then when you see a back of Dalvin Cooks caliber, who's out there looking for looking for a job. I'm like, you know, every year Jerry Jones talks about wanting to win a Super Bowl and like wanting to remake a deal with the Lord that he made back in 1992. If you're really serious and you've got a Dalvin Cook out there and you've got a starting back who is coming off of a pretty severely snapped leg. In my opinion, you got to roll the dice, man.

You got to throw them on the table. Bring Dalvin Cook in the issue with Dalvin. It's going to be the money. The money. Cowboys have a lot of resources out there. They've got young guys.

They want to take care of. I don't see that being a fit. I mean, I think it makes perfect logical sense, but they drafted Deuce Vaughn for a reason. They do like Pollard. They are optimistic in terms of his recovery is going to be good to go. They haven't been afraid to pay people coming off major injuries either. They paid Gallup last year.

Obviously he was not quite all the way back when he got back. They paid DAC a couple years ago. Which is why I'm a little worried about Pollard because it seems now that these guys come back from injury, it seems like it's going to take a full season to recover. I think that there's a much higher percentage chance and I'm not saying this because anyone has told me this, but I would say, logically speaking, there's a much higher percentage chance they're signing one of the other running backs that are out there. Dalvin's simply going to be the most expensive. He's going to have the most competition for his services. There's other guys like Leonard Fournette who we had on the show yesterday.

Kareem Hunt. There's other guys who are sitting out on the market right now that I think probably have a better chance to end up being the fit for Dallas just because the price point is going to be different. Okay, so but would you agree or disagree that maybe looking at bringing in one of those guys might not be... You really want the Cowboys to sign a running back, don't you, TJ? I just, like I said, I like Pollard, but coming off that injury, I just don't, I don't know what he's going to look like.

No one really knows what he's going to look like and I pray, obviously, that he turns into the guy that we all hope he can be, but I just don't know. I mean, listen, there's always running backs sitting out there. There's always running backs every year. I mean, look at the guys who have like signed off the street. Like Latavious Murray, like two or three years in a row, was just sitting out there, didn't have a job, and then he comes out and runs for 100 yards for somebody.

He's currently under contract with the Bills because he had a pretty good season once he landed in Denver last year after they signed him off the saves practice squad where he just had a hundred yard rushing game for a different team. Well, Tom, now, not to interrupt, but now going back to our conversation that we've had, is that the reason why this running back position seems to be undervalued now? Because you just got done saying there's so many of them sitting out there. So is that why?

That's part of it. And there's a volume of running backs in the draft every year. They've been, this was a pretty good running back draft. You can get those guys on cost control deals early on. You know, even, you know, where Jamir Gibbs and B. John Robinson were drafted, you're still paying half what Christian McCaffrey is getting by drafting those guys up there.

It's resources. It's a high draft pick, but absolutely that depresses some of the market. And the fact that there are those veterans, I mean, there's guys who are coming in on like minimum deals or in Murray's case last year, a practice squad deal with the Saints, and he comes out and he's a, you know, a savvy vet and he can still run and he can come out and he can give you the productivity. So Dalvin Cook, in my mind, is the one who's in a different category because he is a difference maker, because he is consistent, because he can do a lot of different things for you. That's why he's the one who's going to get money out in the free agent market.

The other names that are sitting out there right now, I think are going to have a harder time. Somebody is going to offer Leonard Fournette some money. Some good players out there. You're right though.

Right. You know, Kareem Hunt, somebody's going to sign them at some point here, but it's probably not going to be at the absolute top of the market because it's June 14th and that money in that market went away back in March absent a really rare opportunity. I mean, how many times have you had a four time Pro Bowl player guys made the last four Pro Bowls come off four straight 1000 yard seasons is a free agent in June. It's like the biggest it gets for NFL free agent stories at this time of year.

That one's just in a different category. Everybody else right now who's sitting out there, they're sitting out there because they haven't gotten their number yet. And that number, generally speaking, sometimes there's injuries and sometimes you can wait and that's going to be fortuitous for you. But generally speaking, if you haven't gotten your number by now, that number is not coming and you eventually have to decide, am I going to wait for an injury? Am I just going to sit and conserve my body and wait till somebody gives me that number because they are in a bind?

Or do I take the best offer I can get the best fit I can get and try to do better next time around? All right. Well, thanks, Tom. I'm a long time listener. First time caller. I appreciate you. That was quite the like, oh, you had three questions and they were all about signing a running back.

All right. I think Mike McCarthy's going to be a Hall of Famer. If he becomes the first head coach to win a Super Bowl for two different teams, he should be.

I think that he's right now, you already, he has a Hall of Fame case. I mean, he's got, would you consider Sean Payton the Hall of Famer? They have almost identical resumes. Their winning percentage is very similar. Mike made the playoffs, I believe more times than Sean did.

Obviously there's the entire bounty gate thing where he missed a year and that disrupted some of it. You know, the Saints had that, that downward turn where they went, I think they went seven to nine, three years in a row, but then they came back and one double digit win several years in a row too. With Mike, it's been probably more consistent. He's building things up in Dallas, just like he did in Green Bay. I mean, it's the, it's the year one, year two, year three type of a jump here.

I fully anticipate they're going to be really good if they can come out. If they go to another Super Bowl, if they win a Super Bowl, Mike McCarthy is a lock in my mind in my mind as a Hall of Famer. Right now, he's in with a lot of coaches who have won, won Super Bowl. He's probably had more consistent success than a lot of coaches out there. I mean, these are the, these are the moments that, you know, legacies are made of and Mike's, Mike's, Mike's aware of, you know, kind of where he is in his career at this point. The fire is still there. I know that.

I know Mike pretty well going back to my Green Bay Press, cause that day, I've known him a long time. He wants to win. He wants to, he wants to go out and kick everybody's ass. And he also wants to build a sustainable type of a thing here. And they've done that. Like, I understand, you know, when you don't, especially at Tina, we, again, talk about this much like the Cowboys, that if they don't win the Super Bowl, there's some segment of the NFL fan base that's just going all giant failure, giant disappointment.

Look what they've done in terms of how they've built that thing up. And now Mike is putting the pressure on himself. He could have fought and said, Kellen, you're not getting out of your contract.

We're keeping you here. They made the decision and it was good for everybody because Kellen goes and joins Brandon Staley in LA. Mike takes over the play calling duties.

That puts pressure on himself. There's no, there's no Kellen Moore now. It's, this is Mike's offense. If they're not really good offensively, Mike's going to take the blame for it, whether that's fair or not. But in my mind, Mike McCarthy's a hall of famer.

If they win a Super Bowl in Dallas, if he gets a second ring with a different team, I think it should be a lock. Yeah, 10 double digit win seasons in 16 years. Sean Payton at 9 and 15. Right. So they're, and their win percentage, they're both right around 60%, I believe. Yeah. Mike McCarthy, 61%.

Sean Payton, 63%. Yeah. So they're very similar resumes. And for some reason, and Sean's a really good coach too.

I'm not taking anything away from him. We talk about them in such different ways here. They've both won one Super Bowl. Two, generally speaking, has been the stuff that Hall of Fame's made of. Right.

And they both have a chance now to win a second Super Bowl in a different place. We should take our last break here. I still do want to get to a couple other teams here. You're awaiting the breakdown, Brockman. I know I'm awaiting the breakdown.

You just have looked sad. I thought you were going to ask by now. No, no, no. Well, I understand the clock. We're up against it. I thought maybe you were just coming to reality on certain things. That we're going to sign DHOP this week. I mean, never say never.

It's not out of the realm of possibility. He's there now. He's there now. Or headed there today. And he will be there through tomorrow.

And then we shall see where the DeAndre Hopkins saga ends for this year, since we'll be likely at doing this all over again with him next March. Never say never. All right. Let's take a break. Never say never.

Never. In for Rich on the Rich Eisen Show. This episode is brought to you by La Quinta by Windham. Wherever your work takes you, you know, it's going to be a good time because you're staying at La Quinta by Windham. They have free breakfast, fully equipped gyms and free high speed Wi-Fi to help you take care of any last minute business or help keep you in the know on all things sports. Tonight, La Quinta. Tomorrow you triumph.

Book your stay today at lq.com. Yeah. He's doing the one song like Dawson from Dawson Creek, the James Van Der Beek. Oh, like the part, the butt head.

And it kind of like blows off. I mean, I don't have it. I didn't think that was, I didn't think that was coming back. I didn't have Joe burrow as the guy bringing it back. I mean, Joe can kind of do whatever he wants to do. Right.

Joe burrow is my guy was hitting home runs and reds betting practice. But I mean, fashion wise, like for a guy as high profile as him, as good as he is. And he will come in dressed like he's straight out of like a music video. Like no one dresses like that in real life. And then you see him every other time. And he's just wearing team issued gear like logo gear.

But then on game day, he's dressed like he's, you know, going down the catwalk steps it up on game day. Yeah. Which I, yeah, you look good.

Play good. Yeah. But Joe's his personality, it just surprises me that he's a guy who decides to dress up like, you know, Daniel Jones will walk in with just like an untucked button down in jeans. Yeah.

You know, Joe burrow goes full on Met Gala every single week, whether he's playing the browns of the bangles. So cool. I love it. What do you got?

What do you got for me? Brockman? How good are the pats going to be this year, Tom? Come on, give it to me straight.

I knew you were going to go, you're going to dive straight into this. I think that a lot is going to boil down to the Mac Jones, Bill O'Brien combination, how well those two work together, how good that offense fits what Mac Jones does. Obviously, he knows him and Bill didn't really overlap at Alabama, but there's a lot of concepts that are going to be familiar to Mac Jones, how those personalities mesh because they are both strong personalities. They've both got tempers.

Yeah. I think that's going to be a really interesting dynamic, but let's be honest, last year, there really wasn't much of a plan on offense. It was just kind of slapped together and Matt Patricia, everybody points the bullets at Matt Patricia. What do you want him to do? Bill Belichick made the decision. All right, well, I'm not going to hire an OC. We're just going to let Matt do it. Matt's from the defensive side.

He's a really smart guy, but what are the odds that anybody's going to have success in that situation? So, obviously you saw what happened through the course of this off season. Robert Kraft has his fingerprints on a lot of different things, including bringing back Bill O'Brien, including making sure they didn't lose Jerrod Mayo, changing the dynamic a little bit because Kraft, I would say by and large does not get involved in football specific decisions, unless it's something that rises to the level of, for instance, the allegations against Antonio Brown before they released him. And obviously Kraft is going to have a heavy interest in things like that, but these are football decisions that Bill for over two decades has had mostly autonomy. Kraft's around a lot.

He talks to him a lot, but that's Bill's thing. Kraft wanted to put his stamp on things this year. He's made very clear that it was a disappointment, what happened last year. And so I think that those decisions are going to be a guiding force behind whatever happens with the Patriots this year. I still think that you look at the skill positions and there's some questions about exactly how these things are going to fit together. Juju hasn't been out there during mini camp.

We'll see how that evolves through the course of time. They got guys like Kendrick Bourne, who is really talented, has had productivity, but then there's whole games and stretches where he's virtually anonymous within the offense. They doubled down on the double tight end thing, bringing in Mike Kasicki. That could end up being a bargain type of assigning for him. We know that they've had a lot of success with tight ends in this specific offense here. And defensively, they're one of the best in the league last year. Keeping Mayo, obviously Bill's one of the best defensive minds in the game.

In my mind, it's reductive, but this boils down to Bill O'Brien and Mac Jones. If that combination works well, and if you can get Mac, I want to say get his confidence back, but I think Mac, you know, he talks about last season and what a disappointment it was. He got away from some things. He played through a lot. He had a really bad ankle that really bad that happened on the many players last play of the game. Many players would have gone and gotten surgery. He decided to gut it out.

He didn't want to do surgery. He played through that the entire season. So you couple that with the scheme. With you know the different cooks that were in the kitchen last year, there were a lot of factors working against Mac Jones. This will give us a much better metric on what Mac Jones is.

If he plays well, yeah, I think the Patriots could be a playoff team. If he doesn't, I don't see it. Why did Bill do that last year with the offense? There's a lot of different factors.

Are we ever going to find out the real answer? Why he decided to go with Joe Judge? Failed head coach.

Definitely failed in New York. And then a defensive guy that was really bad at being a defensive coordinator on his way out. And then a really bad head coach in Detroit. Well, I think well Matt was a good defensive coordinator. I think that head coach coordinator just scored again in the Super Bowl on him. 8,000 yards of offense in that game to a backup. I love when Fan Brockman comes out.

Not that this doesn't haunt him at night all the time. Only Super Bowl I ever went to. Absolutely atrocious. I mean, I could have. In terms of why that happened, there were a bunch of different factors, but it became pretty obvious that if Bill wasn't going to get certain things that maybe he wanted, he was going to do what he's done in many other cases, which is just say he's going to move people around.

These people can do it. Was it just arrogance? I want to say it's arrogance, but I mean, he's the most successful head coach in NFL history. He should have a high degree of confidence that he could pull off anything in this particular case.

Yeah, it was. Again, I think that the criticism of Matt is, you know, unfair to a degree because take any defensive coordinator in the league, whether they're good or bad, and tell him you're now calling an offense. How often are those guys going to have success? Like, what D coordinator would you trust? You call Dan Quinn. Dan, we need you to be the offensive coordinator.

Why was that the decision that was made last year? Well, I mean, there's a process you have to go through if you're going to hire a coordinator. You got to do a bunch of interviews.

You have to go outside your tree where Bill very much wants to stay in the Patriots tree. I mean, how many times do we see it? Everybody they hire or a lot of people they hire are back for a second time, at least to like the big time types of positions. They got some good young assistants on that team too, but a lot of the guys that they bring in, it's people from within the nest. It's bringing back Josh. It's bringing back Matt. It's bringing back Joe.

It's now it's bringing back Bill. I mean, there's a long history of this. People get fired someplace else. And much like Nick Saban, who brings people back, people are out of jobs.

They may not even been former Alabama assistants, but they're people who are out of work. He wants to bring them in and have kind of a brain trust. Bill very much believes in the way that they do things. He believes in how they like to play. There's a certain style of football, even though they've definitely like melded to their personnel over the years when they had Randy Moss in 2007 at one of the greatest offensive season, greatest regular seasons period in NFL history. They played a different style of offense than they were at the beginning of Tom Brady's career, 2000, 2001 in that era.

And it's different than what they were playing toward the end of Brady's career when they were still throwing it around a lot. But whether they had Gronk and Aaron Hernandez or whether they were relying on different types of players, they, they meld to that just like they are opponent specific, their game plan specific in a lot of different things. But that entire mentality, there's a reason, quite frankly, that it hasn't worked a lot of other places, which is if you don't have Bill, if you don't have buy-in from everybody around him, because Bill has the pelts on the wall and can show all the Superbowl rings, this is why we do things a certain way. It's hard to get organizational buy-in. It's hard to make people believe, okay, when Josh McDaniel's goes to the Raiders last year and Dave Ziegler, two very intelligent guys, you're, you have to kind of go through a process in which you're weeding out the people who are not on board, whether that's players, whether that's front office people, whatever else, it's hard to get everybody on the same page.

And to know you're probably going to go down before you go up because you're changing the way everybody does things. And the Raiders had the additional challenge last year of the fact that they had made the playoffs the prior year, despite the complete clown show and all the horrible stuff that happened the previous year between Henry Ruggs and Damon Arnett and John Gruden. And somehow they patched it together and won a bunch of games with a guy who, you know, by the following year was the Packers special teams coordinator. So for them to then say, okay, we're going to move from some of these things, we're going to move on from certain players, even now moving on from Derek Carr, people say why it's, you're trying to get people who are from the system, who they're bringing a quarterback, Jimmy Garoppolo, he's from within the system. Brian Hoyer is the backup.

And Brian Hoyer is the backup. All of which is a long way of saying the mentality for Bill is very much, these are the guys who know the way that we want to do things. And that's not just scheme. That is how the building runs. It is the culture of it.

It's the way that ego has to reside in certain areas within that organization. And obviously, in this particular case, he did something that was so far afield that even though if any other coach had done it, people would have said this is moronic. When Bill did it, it was, this is really weird, but who knows it's Bill, maybe it'll work out. And so I think bringing back Bill O'Brien, it's gonna be a massive piece of what they try to do. Is that combination going to work?

We'll find out. Thank you very much to Bran Staley, Kevin Stefanski for coming on today. Thanks to you guys, the fellows in the studio. It's been a fun three days. I've enjoyed it. Tom Polacero in on a Rich Eisen list show.

I hope Rich will have me back again. Love being here and appreciate all you listening. You can go home now. 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.