Mike Golic, Draft Kings Analyst

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Now does a great job for DraftKings. And that is Mike Golick, kind enough to join us right here on the Zach Gelb show on CBS Sports Radio. Mike, appreciate the time. Thanks so much for giving us a few minutes. How are you?

I'm doing well, doing well. Bittersweet, I guess, because we only have one football game left and then we're in the offseason. And that's like a sour for time for everybody.

Yeah, so you've been in the media game for a long time. You know how much of a zoo Super Bowl week can be. I can't even imagine how many fools basically just act like fools on opening night.

What it's going to be like, especially when you have the Taylor Swift factor in this. Man, I mean, now luckily she's not going to be around until the game, so you won't have to deal with any of that. And we're used to dealing with Kansas City. You know, they've been there before. Certainly San Francisco was there a few years ago, but this is kind of the matchup. Though I did pick Baltimore. I thought they were going to win that game. And boy, what a game that was for the Kansas City defense, really the Baltimore defense as well. But yeah, Super Bowl week is always crazy. The week now, too, the bowl before is turning into a crazy week as well.

But looking forward to it. Then, sure, why not be in Vegas? So any money I made this year, I'll blow it at the blackjack table. Yeah, Dan Campbell probably hits on 19, I would say, right, when he's at the blackjack table?

How about it? I'll get back to Kansas City, but since I just made the joke about Campbell, where did you stand with this decision-making yesterday, especially in the second half? There's three plays I know the people that are talking the most about it would be the two fourth down plays. And those weren't the ones that I thought were the egregious mistake.

Now, I could have gone either way. I know Dan is a go forward on fourth down. 34% of the time, way more than anybody else in the NFL. 18 times he's made it on fourth and three or less. And he's consistent. You know, we sit there and talk about blackjack table. If the deal is showing seven or higher and I have 16, I'm hitting every single time.

I'm consistently going to do that. Now, for Dan, in these situations, I think they can be different. The first one in the third quarter, what, about seven minutes ago in the third quarter? Why I could have seen kicking the field goal, it would have been a shorter field goal, I think about 45 yards or so. It would have put them up three scores.

That's what I looked at. Because they were up two scores, 24 to 10. Could have gone 27-10 and been up three scores. But they didn't.

Okay. And a drop pass, I believe, on that one as well. Fourth quarter, now you're down three. Would have been a 55 yarder. Would have been a longer one. Badgley only kicked in four games this year. And he hadn't made an outside field goal past 40 yards. Or he was one for three in the last, I think, year and a half on outdoor field goals over 40. And that would have been a 55 yarder.

But that would have tied it up. So, I understand, and more importantly, the players get it as well. The egregious one to me, and the one I can't justify, is when you're at the two yard line with a little over a minute to go. You have all three of your timeouts. You're trying the three timeouts.

The currency that holds for you is greater than just about anything. Because what it does, if you score, it effectively lets you kick off into the end zone. You don't have to onside kick it. Because nobody recovers an onside kick anymore.

The odds are ridiculously against you. So, why they ran a ball with about a minute to go on the two yard line, I have no idea. You can't justify.

Any former player, analyst, anybody that tries to justify to me, I can't go with it. You pass the ball, pass the ball, pass the ball. Get in the end zone that way. That way you have your three timeouts left. You can kick the ball off. Now you can use your timeouts, stop them on defense, and get one more chance for a field goal to tie.

That, to me, was the most egregious one. That's a Ben Johnson call, but Dan Campbell's the head coach. He can get in the headphones of Ben and say, listen, pass the ball.

Do not run it. We do not want to waste a timeout if we don't make it. And that's exactly what happened. I couldn't agree more, especially when you take that timeout. I don't think they should have ran the ball there anyway, but if you do, you've got to have your next play ready to go.

Because once you call that timeout, as you just saw, even if Detroit makes the stop with the way that the clock was with about a minute left, you basically ended the game there once you didn't recover the onside kick. The problem with running a play and having a next one ready to go is, me as a former defensive player, I'm going to tell you what's going to happen there. We are going to lay on you. And we're going to be really slow getting up. And it's a mosh pit down there by the goal line. So there's a lot of bodies involved. So it's going to take a long time if you're a defensive player to get up out of that pile. You may slip and fall back on the pile. You try not to go too long or the refs are going to stop the clock.

But they're going to bleed the clock. I just do not see a scenario of running that ball. And I've heard people say, well, it was there. If they had one block here, then it was there. Well, you know what it wasn't? It wasn't there. If I had two more numbers right on the powerball, I wouldn't be talking to you right now. But it didn't happen.

So the guy didn't get the block, and you didn't get in, and you wasted that timeout. Mike Golick here with us. Great analogies all around. We go from blackjack, we go to the powerball.

It's all set enough for Mike and I to lose a lot of money in Vegas coming up in two weeks. Also with Detroit, the thing that bugs me today is people go, Dan Campbell's just an aggressive coach. And I like aggressiveness. I don't think it's all what you have to be passive. Like it takes a special person to turn around, an aggressive person to turn around this Lions franchise. But when you're 30 minutes away from a Super Bowl, I'm not saying you get passive, but you just got to be smart.

And I just thought his decision making at times yesterday was just too stupid. So I think analytics has become the F word of sports, right? And we say analytics. Analytics have been around forever.

When I was playing, that was our game plan. Analytics told me on second and seven plus, they run X amount of plays out of this formation. We had analytics. We need to throw out the word analytics and say information. So the information in this situation may say to go for it. But I see baseball managers do this as well. There are analytics, again, information in baseball, but there's still a gut, right? Just because it says it doesn't mean you have to do it because situations are different in every single game and in every game depending on the time of game.

Third quarter, fourth quarter, first quarter, whatever. So that's why I could have seen kicking the field goal. It doesn't mean you're not aggressive.

This isn't winning points for machoism, and that's not what Dan Campbell is trying to do. He is just trying to say we're going to stay aggressive and always try and get the seven, not the three. And the most important thing, Zach, is the fact that the players understand that. The players aren't surprised by that. The players in Kansas City aren't surprised on a third and nine when you would maybe run the ball, everybody else would, to make the other team burn a timeout that Andy Reid is going to throw a pass to get a first down, which is what he did.

So players aren't surprised, and that's the most important thing. But I still think there can be decisions that are made. It doesn't mean, oh, he lost his aggressiveness. No.

No. He's playing this situation. This situation in the third quarter would have got them up three scores if he kicked the field goal.

This situation in the fourth quarter would have tied the ball game for them if he kicked the field goal. So it's just information gathering, and then what do you do with that information? But you know what? Here's the thing.

I know that we usually say, you know, there's analytics, and I'm with you. You've got to trust your gut more so than the numbers. I think Campbell's gut, though, also told him to go for it in those spots.

Oh, I'm sure it did. I mean, and maybe he'll learn from it. Maybe he won't. He says he doesn't regret it, and that's cool because, listen, one of those fourth downs, it hit the player right in the hands. You've got to make the catch, okay?

The other fourth down was somewhat ugly on a roll out, and the ball landed in space. So one could have worked, but that's the odds you're playing, so he's going to stay aggressive. But I do think there is room for interpretation given different situations during different times of the game. You know, I've never really seen a player, Michael, like Brock Purdy, who all the guy does is win, and I've been guilty of this. You know, I've called him a game manager, and I don't mean that in a negative way.

He did a little bit more, obviously, than game managing yesterday, so I've got to give him his credit like that. But it's weird that he's turned into a very polarizing player, and I think it's actually the best thing for the Niners, because when it's Super Bowl or bust, it's tough to find some rallying points. Every player in that locker room, they believe in him, and they're trying to prove the entire world wrong about Brock Purdy.

It's amazing. My son and I on our show on DraftKings had Richard Sherman on the show, and Richard Sherman said it right. He said, everybody loves an underdog story except for Brock Purdy. This guy's Mr.

Irrelevant. He's coming and plays well, and it's like some people don't want to give him his due. I mean, remember Kurt Warner? What a great – they made a movie called The Underdog. I mean, my God, you know? I mean, you almost couldn't have been more of an underdog than Kurt.

Here's Mr. Irrelevant, you know, in a game, you know, playing against, you know, first-round quarterbacks and performing well. Now, granted, he's got a good cast around him, but still, I covered him when I was calling college games when he was at Iowa State, and always from the neck up, made smart decisions. Now, for Westwood 1, I called the game against Green Bay a couple of weeks ago when he didn't play well. And was that rust?

I don't know. Remember, he had 19 days off because he didn't play in Week 18. So he was off in that game, the entire game. And in this game, he was off in the first half, 7 of 15 for 93 yards, under 50 percent. But he made some of the throws when he had to.

So how do you not give this guy credit? And talk about a scary moment. How about the championship game last year when he gets his arm hit again to Eagles and he's knocked out of the game? This year, the one interception he throws, Josh Pascal from Detroit, hits him right in the hand. And how many times have we seen quarterbacks get a busted hand or a broken thumb in a situation like that?

I thought, oh my God, it's going to happen again. Luckily for them, for San Francisco, all it was was an interception. But yeah, he deserves credit. Now, does he have talent around him?

Yes. But name me a team where you don't have talent around you, you know? I mean, that's just good team building by John Lynch and that management group with the 49ers.

So this guy deserves a ton of credit. And his two runs, we thought Lamar was going to be the guy that you would have to stop running the ball. It happened to be two big runs by Brock Purdy that helped seal the game for him. And I find it funny, everyone freaks out about the game management conversation with Brock Purdy. But I was talking to Mahomes after the game yesterday and I just asked about his defense and he goes, I learned this year when the defense is rolling, I just got to manage the game and not make turnovers. So it's funny, the best quarterback right now that's playing on the planet could say he was a game manager yesterday. Nobody cares.

But with Brock Purdy, it's all as the game manager is the franchise quarterback. Your fever is high and the pressure to log in at work is too. But when you finally decide to take care of you, there's Instacart. Just because that one perfect coworker of yours is attending all meetings, camera on while she's sneezing, coughing and aching doesn't mean you have to do the same. Take it from us. Trying to stay on top of things will only get you further behind. Instead, get everything from tissues and teas to cough suppressants and comforting soups delivered through Instacart in as fast as 30 minutes.

If anyone needs anything, they can just redirect their questions to that one perfect coworker of yours. And food is enjoyed. Sillo Stove, the perfect flame for the big game. A peanut butter M&M's production in a world where Super Bowl winners get the world's admiration and a fancy ring.

But the runners up get nothing. One retired cop. That's one retired quarterback. Read the script.

Oh, sorry. One retired quarterback returns to claim what's his. That's claim a ring with diamonds made from M&M's peanut butter. But you're on a roll.

The Ring of Comfort coming soon to a Super Bowl. You don't have to be Mahomes the magician when your defense is playing like that right now. Would you still like to be up three touchdowns? Absolutely.

Certainly you would. But I mean, think about it. Seventeen seven and a half. That game in the second half, the Chiefs offense got shut out. It was three nothing Baltimore in the second half. That's how well the defenses were playing in that game.

So Mahomes is right. When your defense is dealing, I mean, things are going to make you look even better. Go back to Tom Brady winning the Super Bowl in Tampa Bay.

They don't even reach the Super Bowl if their defense isn't incredible during the earlier rounds of the playoffs to get them to the Super Bowl. Even the early years of Tom Brady winning Super Bowls, that was more the defense than the offense. But it's always the quarterback that we count the rings, which I think is somewhat ridiculous to say, well, how many rings does he have? We don't ask that about Jerry Rice, you know, or the greatest at other positions. It's always the quarterback. Well, going off that conversation with the quarterback, what does Lamar need to change? What do the Ravens need to change so when they can actually win a Super Bowl?

Because this one. So this is the one where I have to turn Lamar and I've been a big Lamar supporter. You're at home, right? The Chiefs are vulnerable.

They're in your building. And you've had two playoff games in your building in this run and you only played one good half of football. So I put some of this because it's rarely one person that causes anything. Now, Lamar certainly didn't play like the MVP he's going to win.

And I heard you talking before and you're right. It's a regular season award. He deserves the award and doesn't go into the postseason. So, you know, don't start saying, oh, he doesn't deserve the award. Yes, he does for the regular season.

But there's more people here to blame for mistakes. You had, defensively, you had veterans and Patrick Queen and Roquan Smith and Ja'Davion Clowney with dumb 15-yard continued drive penalties for Kansas City. You had Zay Flowers. Do you want to say he's a rookie so you give him a pass? Getting up on a big catch, spinning the ball right next to a guy and doing the crab right next to him. You're going to get called. Now, do I think you should be able to do that stuff?

Hell yes. It's professional football. Go ahead. But you're not allowed. And that's the rule.

So you have to follow the rules. Don't do that. And it's a cardinal sin, not in the goal line, on a goal line play, but where he caught that ball. Do not reach.

Do not reach the ball out for the goal line unless it's fourth down and you have to get in. And he did. And Lageria Snead punched it out.

It was a great job. But, I'll even go to the coaching staff. Todd Monken has been phenomenal for Lamar Jackson this year. They got away from their identity though.

How? You're the number one rushing team in the NFL. That helps Lamar.

Not only is he part of that, but it helps him in play action as well. You run Justice Hill and Gus Edwards three times each. And this game isn't a blowout. It's not like you have to leave your... Look at San Francisco. They were down 17 and the mix of pass and run was still only a difference of two. So they stuck to their game plan even down that much. Baltimore wasn't down that much.

How do you go away from the run that was your identity all year long? That to me was a monster mistake by Baltimore. It was almost as if it was arrogance from Baltimore where they were trying to win a specific way, but not the bright way. And it doesn't matter how pretty it looks or what people say. As long as you win, that's all I care about this time of the year.

No, that's exactly right. I don't know what the reasoning was. I find it hard to believe coaches who have been around for a while are going to have that attitude of we're going to try... We'll show you. We don't have to even do it the best way we've been doing it to beat you.

I highly doubt they're thinking that, but I'd love to know the thought process. Because Gus Edwards in his three carries was averaging over six yards a carry. I mean, how do you not keep going with that? Even if you get stuffed, you get stuffed. Then you bust one. You go for two yards, two yards. Then you get six. Then you get three. Then you get one. Then you get 15.

Then you bust one here and there. I am amazed that they gave up Lamar. Listen, Lamar held onto the ball too long in the pocket.

Now, give Kansas City credit. Spagnola had a lot of pressure and blitz looks on Lamar. And the third part of being a running back failed for Baltimore. There's running the ball. There's catching a pass. And there's picking up a blitz. And they did not do a good job of picking up the blitz with their blocking at all. Give Kansas City credit for that. So, Lamar was hanging on the ball for a long time in the pocket.

And kudos to Kansas City and their coverage. But he would start running a little late in some of these. And wasn't getting the yards he's used to getting. It was not a great game for Lamar. It was not a great game for some of the experienced defensive players. And I don't think it was a great game for the offensive coordinator, Todd Monken, either.

Last thing I'll ask you, Mike Golick. You've seen a lot of quarterbacks. You've been doing this for a long time. How far are you willing to go with what you've already seen out of Patrick Mahomes? Well, I mean, there are those that are saying he's the GOAT already. I mean, come on. We've got to get a little bit of longevity to this, okay?

I mean, we have to. Now, what he's done in the beginning of his career, he's already in the Hall of Fame. You know, I call the games at Westwood one in the Super Bowl. I'll be working the sideline with Laura Oakman. In the booth will be Kevin Harlan and Kurt Warner. And after last year's Super Bowl, we were with Kansas City and Philly, we were riding back after the game and we were talking with Kurt about it because, you know, this is Kurt talking about quarterbacks in the Hall of Fame. And he said, listen, he said, Pat Mahomes has already surpassed what I ever did. He's a Hall of Famer and this was last year he said it right now.

So he's just adding to it right now. So now it's going for where does he end up all time. I'm not going as far as he's the greatest quarterback of all time at this point.

I mean, that to me is knee-jerk reaction, living in the moment right now. Let's give some credit to quarterbacks who have played a long, long time. You know, has some longevity in their career and success throughout it. He's had a ton of success early in his career and now, you know, five, six years into his career has been incredible. And he is a Hall of Famer right now without question. But I'm going to pull the reins a little bit on the greatest of all time. Now, he's putting himself in conversations with that. But does anybody who sits there and say he's the greatest quarterback of all time right now, I'm going to definitely push back on that one a bit. And I agree, but the question is then where is he right now?

Like, is he already top five to you? I mean, we sit here and we do this. We forget about the Johnny Unitases of the world.

You know, that's the thing, especially the younger generation, they'd have to Google some of these pieces. Do we just throw all of them out? You know, where's Dan Marino still in this because he only went to one Super Bowl and never won one? You know, it's such an opinionated, subjective thing on what you're looking for in a quarterback. Is he one of the most athletic quarterbacks and magical quarterbacks with how he can get rid of a ball we've ever seen?

Without a doubt. Like, Steph Curry will go down not as the greatest NBA player of all time, but the greatest shooter of all time. And he'll go up, push up the ranks as far as greatest NBA player, but he's not going to be that, but he's going to be the greatest shooter. So, Mahomes may get the greatest quarterback of all time, but right now, he's probably one of the greatest, if not greatest, playmaker out of that position.

I'm so bad at where you rank because I think we leave out quarterbacks from decades and decades ago that people just don't know how to rank them with the quarterback of today because they're not the athletes of today. He is Mike Golick. Make sure you check him out, DraftKings analyst, and also I'd be remiss if I don't say, check out the Gridiron Grates. I know Mike does some great work with them, and they have a great Super Bowl party coming up that's for a great cause.

Gridiron Grates, and then also on behalf of Southern Recipes and the fine folks with pork rinds, Mark Singleton, our buddy with Rudolph Foods. So, Mike, we'll see you out in Vegas. Appreciate it. Sounds good. I'll be at the Blackjack table. You got it. There he is, Mike Golick joining us.

A Peanut Butter M&M's production. In a world where Super Bowl winners get the world's admiration and a fancy ring, but the runners-up get nothing. One retired cop returns. That's one retired quarterback. Read the script.

Oh, sorry. One retired quarterback returns to claim what's his. That's claim a ring with diamonds made from M&M's peanut butter, but you're on a roll. The Ring of Comfort, coming soon to a Super Bowl new you.

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