Colin Cowherd Podcast - INSTANT REACTION: Packers Steamroll Saints, The Packers UNIQUE Advantage, College Football Playoff Backlash

Published Dec 24, 2024, 5:05 AM

Colin gives his instant reaction to the Packers blowing out the Saints on Monday Night Football.

While he normally waits until AFTER the game to record the pod, Colin only needed until halftime to decide the Packers/Saints game was the least competitive game he’d seen all year (4:00). Instead, he dives deep into the Packers unique situation of not having an owner and why that’s proven to be a huge advantage when it comes to stability and management (7:30).

Finally, he addresses the public backlash to all the blowouts early in the College Football Playoff, why the blowouts were entirely predictable, and why blowouts will get worse as they expand the field of teams in the future (13:30).

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So it's twenty one nothing Green Bay at half, and you know the Saints have like thirty five yards passing, So I thought, I'm just going to do a fifteen minute pod if the Saints come back and win. Screw what I said. That's the least competitive football game I have watched in the NFL, certainly that I've watched every play of this year. And I'm going to get back to that game in a second. And it has to do with the Packers. But you know, one of the things I'm proudest of. I do a segment every Monday called Colin Wright and Colin is Wrong, and it's one of my higher segments I've ever done. Every week. And I do think people appreciate just saying, hey, I whiffed on something. And I've said before that I'm I'm willing to change my mind if I get no information. And I was thinking about watching the Packers tonight about I'll give you an example of something I radically changed my mind on. So I would say, forty years ago, I liked the Olympics far more than the World Cup. And the reason was is at forty and forty five years ago, when I'm you know, fifteen years old, twenty years old, college student, high school student, and as somebody that absolutely loved sports, you didn't get three straight weeks of sports. You didn't have this proliferation of regional networks and local networks. You know, when I was a kid growing up fifteen years old, you got an NBC Baseball Game of the week. You know, I lived in around Seattle. I couldn't get Mariner games except on radio. You couldn't watch Mariner games. And I you know, I was a kid from divorce. We didn't have the money to go to Mariner games. It was a two and a half hour drive. I lived on the each in Westport, Washington. So you know, like once every five years, I'd go to a Mariner game. So the Olympics, you know, for a sports obsessed fifteen and twenty year old, was three straight weeks of sports. It didn't matter that I didn't care about the sports at that point, I'd never skied. It didn't matter. I'd watch the Winter Olympics. I wasn't in track, I didn't care. I'd watched the Summer Olympics. It didn't matter. I still don't care about Olympic sports, most of them. But it was three straight weeks of sports. And then you have, over the course of the last forty forty five years, this proliferation of cable and again all these networks. I can turn on my television any day of the week and get twenty games. I mean, you can fish around on you know, a Tuesday and get you know, during the baseball season, I can watch every baseball team. So the Olympics now today don't feel as special to me because I didn't care about the sports and the Olympics then or now. But the fact that you got three straight weeks of sports was really unique. Now it's not. And so now you could have the Olympics. I'll watch the opening ceremonies, maybe a couple events. I just don't care. But I love the World Cup. Some of that is I worked at two networks with World Cup and soccer analysts and experts, so I'm around more soccer people, and frankly, you know, I every four years, you know, it's something new, it's something fresh. I mean, how many NBA games, how many football games? Can I watch? The quality of soccer is great. I know more about soccer. It doesn't matter if it was the other place or Fox, I'll watch more soccer. A lot of my adult friends have given up baseball and they're more soccer friends fans. On a Saturday morning, they'll watch English Premier League, you know, and I have a lot of friends like that. I've also gone to Europe more in my life, so I'm just more. I'm just more into the World Cup than soccer. I've totally changed my opinion on that. And this is where I get back to the Packers. I always thought not having an owner was a disadvantage to the packers. Is that having a stan cronk who can literally as he's on the tarmac true story of flying out of the country can tell Sean McVay all right, go for it, Go get Matt Stafford. Like you know, it's gonna be expensive. I'm gonna pay for Jared Goff in Detroit and Stafford in LA. Let's go for it. Big advantage. But I'm watching the Packers tonight and think about this. Ten of thirty two teams in the NFL, thirty one percent of the NFL has five wins or fewer for a couple of weeks to go. So the Saints have five and they'll lose tonight Carolina. The Jets in Chicago have four, four and eleven. Vegas, Cleveland, Tennessee, Jacksonville, and New England are three and twelve, and the Giants are two and thirteen. So that's ten of thirty two teams. That was only five last year. It's doubled. That is a really really large bottom and unwatchable part of the NFL feels very much like the NBA. It really does. I mean, thirty percent of the NBA or more as unwatchable. And I think there are two reasons for that number. One more and more because a rule changes and culture. Quarterback just means more. I mean, there's only one great quarterback in the NFL. That's not going to make the playoffs. Joe Burrow, cheapest owner in the league, terrible defense, shaky o line, and he's still fighting for a playoff spot. They may make it. Statistically very little chance, but they may make it. He's the only great quarterback that won't make the playoffs. If you have one year in, if you have a good rookie quarterback, Jayden Daniels, Boon Nicks, you're in. Michael Pennix, my guess now is going to win the remaining games for Atlanta, They'll be in. If you just have a competent rookie quarterback, a penex down the stretch, Bick, Jaden Daniels, You're Inquarterback's more important than ever. And number two is billionaire owners now the poorest owners billionaire and it wasn't like that ten years ago. And billionaire owners are less patient. Firing as staff and having to pay forty five million dollars is more of a rounding air, and so you have more chaos among coaching staffs and more chaos in the coaching community. So between it's more quarterback centric and more impulsive owners. You just have more hot messes in the NFL. And I'm watching tonight. I mean, I'm one of these guys that can sit down and watch almost any NFL team, Giants, unwatchable, Jacksonville, Tennessee, Cleveland, Vegas, hard to watch Carolina. With Bryce Young, I can watch a little Jets, Aaron Rodgers, I'll watch Chicago, I'll watch Saints tonight, unwatchable. So it's just interesting. It's something I've really changed my mine on is that having an owner I always thought was a huge advantage, But I think Green Bay going forward having no owner because I now believe because of the impulsive nature of billionaires, richer owners less patient, more impulsive. There's only about four to five great owners. I think the Hunt family in Kansas City's excellent. Stan Kronkey with the Rams is really excellent. You know Robert Kraft. People will argue he's frugal but pretty solid owner. But there's a lot of average to below average owners right now. There's more good quarterbacks and good coaches in the NFL than great owners. And I think going forward, you're allowed to be much more patient. I mean, you're allowed to sit Aaron Rodgers on the bench for three years and grow. You couldn't do that if you had an owner. No way you could have a first round quarterback and not rush him onto the field. The owner would be harping every year. There's no way you could have Jordan Love sit for three years as Aaron was getting prickly and high maintenance and passive aggressive, and owner would have stepped in and said, ship him, let's play the kid. Just why do you think Green Bay, more than any NFL franchise, can keep using this formula, drafting, you know, high end quarterbacks first round and not playing him for three years. You could not do that. Even with a good owner. You couldn't do it. There'd be too much pressure. I mean, I think you'd be surprised how often owners listen to sports talk and listen to fans. Gms are too busy to listen, so are coaches. Players don't really care. Billionaire owners who have people under them want to get the temperature of fans. In the media, and I mean, there's no question that New York media is influenced. Woody Johnson influenced by the New York media firing Robert Sala. No, everybody was banging on him. And if Woody Johnson's not listening, his kids are listening. We've heard stories about Woody Johnson's kids having influence. So I think it's a real advantage for Green Bay going forward. And I believe strongly in this, and I never used to think it is that as the wealth and the net worth has gone up ten times for owners, you don't have to worry about Brian Gouden Kunst, Mark Murphy. Who are they answering to the Packers board And it's you know, not a lot of power there. So you know, Washington Green Bay, and I don't think it's a coincidence that they have been able with the last two star quarterbacks to just let him sit for three years. No way in the world could you do that with an owner, even a good owner. So tip of the cat to the Packers. Some more thoughts on college football. There was a lot of angry reactions to college football, and I really thought the games would be more competitive. But in retrospect, you know, college teams struggle on the road, and I think you have to realize with certain things like as sports fans, especially football fans in America, were sort of spoiled, right, I mean, you have the Pacific ten o'clock window, the one o'clock window, Sunday night, Monday night. It's very formulaic. In the NFL, got to have a quarterback to win. You have four or five major broadcast teams. You really know what to expect when you roll out of bed on a Sunday morning. With the NFL, you got your Red Zone early, your Big Fox games, CBS games, late Sunday night Football, NBC, Monday Night ESPN. You get used to it. And college football is a little bit of a barnyard musical. It's you know, it's games starting early, mid late. You never know, you turn on a game Saturday at midnight, you'd find something on. You know, there's just games everywhere, and it's always been a sport that has blowouts. And so I guess in retrospect, as this tournament expands to fourteen or sixteen teams, you're just gonna get blowouts. That's just the way it is. I mean, I'll say this again, go back to Nick Saban's heyday, that twelve year run where they were really dominant. There were years there weren't three teams that could compete with them on a neutral field, maybe LSU, Georgia, Ohio State, Clemson if they had good quarterback play maybe, so don't expect the twelfth best team and the eleventh, the tenth, and the ninth and the eighth going forward to play road games and to compete. I mean, hell, I'm watching Tennessee get steamrolled and they got pros. They don't have Ohio States pros, but they got pros. And I think we just have to understand that the one similarity between the college football regular season and the college football Playoff is these are nineteen and twenty year old kids and they are extremely influenced by circumstances. And like tonight, the Saints are a bad team in Green Bay, they'd lose at home, They'd lose in Green Bay. That's that's not a circumstance. That's a personnel issue, coaching issue. But in the NFL, you know, you go on the road right now in Vegas, they consider the home field advantage to be a point to a point and a half. Because of improved technology and improve travel, teams just travel smarter than they did eight, nine, ten years ago. But I mean, people are really freaking out about the college football Playoff, and I mean it's better than the alternative bowl games with empty stands. Going forward with the nil with players who don't really want to play in them. Some do you know, some six win teams. It means a lot to end up in, you know, a bowl game. But a lot of these big name schools that are disappointing. I mean, just look atf Ohio State wasn't playing in the playoff this year. They'd be in like the you know, the Citrus Bowl or something. You know, seven eight, ten guys on that roster. They're looking to the NFL. Some would even play. So you take a deep breath. We're a little spoiled by the NFL and the quality generally, the time, the structure, the formulaic nature to it. You know, it's the margins in college football on any given Saturday, there's twenty blowouts. Sometimes when you have good teams square off, you know, I mean Ohio State and Tennessee those are blue bloods. That thing was over in eight minutes. It wasn't even competitive generally. In the NFL. You know, Ravens face the Steelers, Chiefs face the Texans. You know, you kind of feel like both teams have a chance. One team may be better. Home field matters a little, but you kind of know, you know, if you get two good quarterbacks and two good coaches. I mean the Jets and the Rams. I mean you got Aaron Rodgers Matt Stafford, and that was a good football game. The better team should have won and did. There's a competitive football game for three quarters. They're all pros. So I think the college football playoffs is just going to get better and better. But we just got to bake it in college teams on the road, even talented ones. Things go sideways really fast, really fast. The volume