1st & Goal: Carrington Harrison, 610SportsKC Host

The NFL season is inching closer and closer.

Who are the contenders and who are the pretenders? We have four downs to figure out your team's future. It's time now for First and Goal on the Zach Gelb show. We'll preview the defending Super Bowl champion, the Kansas City Chiefs right now with the man who I love his afternoon show on 610 in Kansas City, also does a tremendous job here for CBS Sports Radio. But you know why this guy is my favorite? Because he introduced Hickey and I to Jack Stack in Kansas City when we were out there for the NFL draft. He is the great Carrington Harrison here with us to preview the Kansas City How About Them Chiefs and he joins us right now on CBS Sports Radio. Carrington, what's happening?

Gelb, how's it going, man? I wish that I had, you know, made a TikTok or boomerang so people could have saw your face when you had those Kansas City burn ins for the first time in your life. You know, you had never had them before. You guys had a lot of questions about the menu. I said, you know what? I'm a veteran.

I've lived in Kansas City my entire life. Let me place the order for you. We had a fantastic meal, man. I'm happy to be on with you today. It was tremendous from the wings to the burn ends to the brisket, even to that carrot cake cupcake at the end, the cheesy corn, the baked beans. They were absolutely delicious.

It's even so good. I'm going to Nebraska for a football game. I'll have to link up again. I'm going to Lincoln for Nebraska, Michigan at the end of September and I'm flying to Kansas City just so I could get some barbecue before finishing up the journey. Okay, that sounds good.

You know, let me know when you're in the city. I'll definitely take you to another barbecue place. You can actually jack stack. Actually, you know, they can actually ship the barbecue to you. So what they do is they freeze dry it for you and then you can just heat it up right there for your tailgate. I've done that a couple of times. You know, when I tailgated here, that's something that Kansas City and love to do as well. So yeah, you got to do that, man. So I will be 700 pounds now because I know that information.

I'll be doing that probably every weekend. All right, let's start off with the Chiefs Carrington Harrison. Not a lot of crazy things with this football team because you have Patrick Mahomes. You're expected to win the Super Bowl each and every year. But one piece of drama is this Chris Jones holdout. He was tweeted last week that he'd be willing to sit out up until week eight. What is the end result here, in your opinion, that happens with the Chiefs and Chris Jones?

That's a great question, man, to be real with you. I've gotten this wrong every single step of the way. I didn't think that we would even be at this point with Chris Jones. You know, like, he's under contract. This isn't like, say, Quon Barkley, who was franchise tagged, or Josh Jacobs, who was franchise tagged. Every day the clock is running. So if you add it up right now, he is at $2.1 million in lost wages, and he's not a player on a rookie deal, so they can't waive the fines.

The fines are what the fines are. I mean, at some point he has to show up. Because he's under contract, he has to play a set number of games to accrue a year towards free agency. So there's no question in my mind that he's going to play football this season, and you and I both know this, tomorrow is cut day. I mean, your roster is set tomorrow, so if the Chiefs are going to trade Chris Jones, they're going to trade him tomorrow by 3 o'clock. I just don't know why you would trade him after cut down day.

Now, I don't think they're going to trade him. He's the most important player on their defense, but at this point the leverage is just starting to run out. The only leverage that I believe Chris Jones has is in a couple of Thursdays against the Detroit Lions, and Chris Jones needs that game to be a 41-38 Chiefs loss. High scoring defense lets them down, and everybody is saying, we need Chris, we need Chris, because you've got to remember last year the Chiefs lost Tyree Kilz and won the Super Bowl. So I think if these antics from Chris Jones just continue, I think a lot of the Chiefs' kingdom is just saying, hey, well, we saw what happened last year when we lose a superstar. We didn't miss a beat.

We won another Lombardi trophy. Why can't we do the same thing with Chris Jones? I would say that he has done himself more harm than good, at least from the fan perspective, with how he's played this entire situation.

Interesting. And here's what I would say. On offense, as long as you have 15 upright, I don't care who he's throwing the ball to. But after that, the biggest concern for the Chiefs is, can they make timely stops? And Chris Jones is an enormous part of that. Do they need, in your opinion, Chris Jones this year for them to win a Super Bowl?

Yeah, I do. I actually think that the, that how they lost the Super Bowl has sort of clouded everybody's judgment because the offensive line let them down. You remember, they didn't have their left tackle, didn't have their right tackle, and that ended up being the biggest problem. Where at least with the Chiefs now, they're so concerned with their offensive line, which makes sense, everything that you just said, keep 15 upright. I think people have sort of forgotten how the Chiefs didn't go to the Super Bowl in Mahomes' first season because their defense was so bad.

You're right. You're not asking the defense to be top five in the league. You're not asking them to be the Jets or San Francisco or the Broncos even defense. You're asking them to play complimentary football and be able to get off the field. And you consistently keep teams under 27 points.

If you do that, you should think that you're going to win far more games than you lose because of how good your offense is. I'm not sure if they can do that without Chris Jones. You also got to remember at least heading into week one, you're not going to have Charles Amenuhu.

He was one of their big pre-agent acquisitions. He's out for the first six games. They're also not going to have Snead, one of their top corners. So you're, you're potentially going into a game against the offense that was top five last year without three of your top, I would say four, maybe players on defense.

That's big. So going back to Chris Jones, to me, he has all the leverage is you guys need me. You guys can't win without me.

The only way to really see that is against a team with a capable offense. That team is week one, the line let's get to the next down Carrington Harrison here with us every year. It seems like there's a player that you're supposed to break out for the Kansas City Chiefs on offense. Who's the player this year that you think we weren't spending a ton of time talking about last year to have a big year this season? It's probably a wide receiver just because there's so much turnover at wide receiver. I'm not going to nominate Marquez about the Scantling just because at this point, I think we kind of know what Scantling is. He's probably a 700, 750 yard wide receiver.

Not really a guy that's going to tear up fantasy. So I'll throw a couple of names out there. Also Sky Moore. He was the second round pick a couple of years ago out of Central Michigan. He is a breakout candidate. I would also say Kadarius Toney. Now, you know, Kadarius Toney very well just with the Giants.

No one has ever questioned the talent with Kadarius Toney. He is just always injured. He was hurt at Florida. He was hurt with the Giants.

Hell, he was hurt last year with the Chiefs. So I think there's a belief, hey, if we can keep them upright, if we can keep them healthy, maybe we can do something special in the passing game, at least when it comes to him. So if you're asking me to throw a couple of names out there for a possible breakout, I'll throw those two out there. I'll throw two wide receivers, Sky Moore and also Kadarius Toney.

Let's get to the next down. Carrington Harrison here with us. Hey, whenever we have you on, we usually talk about the future of Andy Reid and how much longer he's going to coach. I don't think he's retiring anytime soon.

So I'll throw this question, a similar question to you, though, but with a different person. What about Travis Kelce? The guy just keeps on looking better and better. He's like fine wine. He gets better with age, but he's now 33 turns 34 in October. How much longer do you think we have of good prime Travis Kelce?

That's a great question. I feel like it's like Tom Brady. And let me clarify with Tom, I feel like we always kept saying, well, eventually Father Time is going to get him.

Father Time is going to get him. Well, yeah, it did. But he was 43 years old when it eventually happened that we kept trying to play that game at 35 and 36. And obviously, a lot of us were wrong on Brady's clock. I'm not saying that that's going to be the same thing for Travis Kelce that he's going to play. But go back and look at Tony Gonzalez.

Tony Gonzalez didn't decline. He just retired. He just stopped playing football. I could see that being the same thing for Travis Kelce. He obviously has the media interest. He obviously can do a lot of different things.

I could see Travis Kelce just at 36 years old, just waking up one day and saying, I don't want to do this anymore. I've made a lot of money. I have a very successful podcast. I can be in a movie.

I can do all these other things. So I'm not really sure if Travis Kelce just has a decline where one year, he only had 400 yards receiving. I could see him having a year where he has 50 catches for 900 yards and then he just wakes up and says, I'm done.

I'm out. Looking at the offensive line, Orlando Brown Jr. now at Cincinnati Bengals. They bring in Donovan Smith. Where's the confidence level with this offensive line with the big boys up front? Hi, I mean, I would say the chiefs probably have one of the five best offensive lines in the National Football League.

I'm not going to say they're the best, but they're certainly in conversation to be one of the best. You got Donovan Smith who played for the fucking years last year. There's expectation that he's going to bounce back at left guard.

You got Joe Toomey. He's one of the best interior offensive linemen in the league. You've got Creed Humphrey who arguably is the best center in the league. You've got a Pro Bowl caliber right guard at Trey Smith. And then at right tackle, you make the big move to go get Juwan Taylor out of Jacksonville. So there's a lot of confidence about their offensive line this season.

Let's get to the final down. Wrap it up with Carrington Harrison. Alright, we have to talk about Mahomes. We know that he's the best quarterback in football. You talk to him each and every week. The rest of the top five when you look at the NFL quarterbacks this year, it's Mahomes one who's two, three and four and five for you.

I guess I would just start with this. We have to quit comparing Patrick Mahomes to other quarterbacks in the National Football League. Patrick Mahomes is at the level where he is chasing Joe Montana. He's chasing Tom Brady.

He's chasing Terry Bradshaw. Like he's not competing with Joe burrow. He doesn't have a ring or Josh Allen. He doesn't have a ring Lamar, whoever you're going to throw out there.

It's funny because I would say burrow is two. I would put Allen at three after that. I kind of feel like you can throw four through eight and a hat. Like, I mean, we watched Aaron Rogers last year. I just don't know if Aaron Rogers is still a top five quarterback in the league.

If you want to say Jalen hurts, okay, I'll listen to you. Jalen hurts only did it for one season last year. If you want to say Justin Herbert, he has as many playoff wins as every single person listening to the show right now.

Trevor Lawrence, Trevor Lawrence has never thrown 30 touchdown passes in a season. So it's weird that you have those top three who I think are pretty established, but after you get past them, to me, it just doesn't really matter. Like to me, the conversation is more is can your team win a Super Bowl with the quarterback that you have? And there's probably only eight teams that feel like you can win a Super Bowl with the quarterback. Like ask the Dallas fans. Dallas fans don't feel like you can win a Super Bowl with Dak Prescott or Minnesota fans with Kirk Cousins. So I actually think that's the more important conversation than who the top five is. Cause I'm not really sure if there are, I'm not really sure if there is a top five right now.

Well, let me follow up and ask something differently. We know what the standard is for the chiefs, whether they could win a Super Bowl every year, that doesn't happen. You know, Brady didn't win the Super Bowl every year, but the guy ended up getting seven Super Bowls. When you look at the AFC and the NFC, is it Cincinnati and the AFC and Philadelphia and the NFC that those are the two teams that if the chiefs don't get there this year, you expect one of those two teams to win the Super Bowl? Yeah, I would say that just from talking to chiefs fans every single day, I don't think the chiefs fans are worried about any team in the AFC that's not the Cincinnati Bengals. Buffalo has never beaten Kansas City in a game that really matters. I mean, there's a rivalry between Kansas City and Cincinnati and obviously Kansas City has the two championships. Cincinnati doesn't have a championship, but I mean, Burrow is the only one outside of Tom Brady to go into Arrowhead, beat Patrick Mahomes in a game that matters.

So there's just going to be that level of respect. We already know about the regular season. These two teams play each other late in the year.

That feels like it could be a game that determined who has home field. Eventually in the AFC, you have to get Patrick Mahomes on the road. How crazy is it that Patrick Mahomes has played in three Super Bowls and won two of them? And he has never played a true road playoff game. He played that Super Bowl, but that was in Tampa. That also was a COVID Super Bowl.

So that's obviously different. But Buffalo has never hosted Patrick Mahomes in a playoff game. Cincinnati, Baltimore, whatever team you want to throw out there.

So if you want to talk about winning the AFC or going to the Super Bowl, you've got to find a way to make Kansas City the road team in the AFC Championship game. You can listen to Carrington Harrison on the free Odyssey app on one of our great affiliates, 610 out in Kansas City in the Odyssey family. You can also check him out right here on CBS Sports Radio. Carrington, I'll see you at the end of September. We appreciate it. Absolutely, Zach. I appreciate you and Ryan, man. Thank you.

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