Colin reacts to the first week of NFL games including Aaron Rodgers losing to the Vikings and why he needs to learn patience. He shares some bad news for Cowboy fans and why we have another example of Dak Prescott's inability to elevate his teammates. He tells you why he was right about the Patriots and wrong about Derek Carr. Plus, Fox Sports NFL analysts and Super Bowl champion Sean Payton joins the show in studio to give his analysis of why the Packers struggled against the Vikings and what the Cardinals need to do to get the most out of Kyler Murray.
Thanks for listening to the Best of Herd podcast. Are you sure to catch us live every weekday from twelve to three eastern, nine to noon Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and FS one. Find your local station for The Herd at Fox Sports Radio dot com, or stream us live every day on the iHeartRadio app by searching Herd. This is the Best of the Herd with Colin Cowhern on Fox Sports Radio. Here we go. It is a Monday, and we are as you would expect jam live in Los Angeles. It's the Herd wherever you may be and however you may be listening iHeartRadio, Fox Sports Radio FS one, one hour from now. Where Colin was right, A lot of that where Colin was wrong. J Mac, I'll tell you what. The pass rushers are ahead of the past blockers. There's a lot of battle line issues in the NFL right now, the kicking issues. So you can see, you know, in our life now, there's never been a time where preseason none of the starters are playing preseason, and it looked like it in Week one. Yeah, Joe Burrow didn't take a preseason snaps. It's four interceptions and a fumbled No big deal. Yeah, So let's start with this. When you have kids, and let's say you're kind of an impatient person. I'm an impatient person and I had kids, and when I add kids, you sort of build in patience. Kids make mistakes. Kids make a lot of mistakes, and then you hope as you get older, your kids become like fifteen and eighteen and twenty two, they don't make the same mistakes over and over. But as a parent, you understand you're teaching them. Their minds aren't fully developed. Their brains aren't until they're twenty three, twenty four years old. It's okay. You got to have patience. When Aaron Rodgers loses Davante Adams, you have to now develop patients. So Aaron does ayahuasca. Maybe that helps, get a new girlfriend. Maybe that helps. But yesterday was a classic example. Romeo dubs Christian Walkom Watson. Everybody, ah, so unbelievable. That's preseason. So Christian Watson drops a big time throw to start the game. Would have been a touchdown. Maybe the game's different, maybe the score is different, maybe the momentum's different, but he didn't. He dropped it because he's a rookie. And then by the way. Rookie Romeo Dubbs had a miscommunication with Aaron Rodgers early, and what did he do with both of them? Patients understanding now he ghosted him. Christian Watson didn't get another look until the fourth quarter. Romeo Dubbs Matt Lafleur had to create reverses for both the rookie wide receivers because Aaron decided, I'm not going to you. That's why AJ Dillon had so many catches and the tight end had so many catches. Aaron went back to what he's comfortable with, eye rolling, bad body language. Once Aaron realized in the fourth quarter he was trailing, he was running out of time, and he had no choice. I mean, Sammy Watkins really, Randall Cobb really. Then he goes back to the kids. But he just decided after those young receivers. Watson dropped a throw, of course he did. It's a big spot. You're on the road. Of course, It's understandable pro bowlers drop passes. Christian Watson first NFL game, Aaron Rodgers, they made a mistake. He's a kid. Romeo Dubbs miscommunication. He played at in Nevada, didn't even played a major conference it's the Packers at Aaron Rodgers. You're on the road. You can't hear. The Vikings are good. The game's faster. There's a lot of different speeds in football. There's preseason speed, there's regular season speed, there's playoff speed. This was the fastest game those young receivers had ever played in. They played in smaller schools, they'd never played in an NFL game. This was the Vikings arrival on the road. Of course, the game was fast. Of course they had a drop. Of course they didn't hear or they miscommunicated their kids, and Aaron gos them. And that's what I said. Aaron has always had trust issue that's okay, had trust issues with this family that those have been public, That's not my opinion. They've been He has trust issues with a vaccination that was public. He has trust issues with the media that's public. I'm not guessing here. That's not an opinion. That's documented. And he's also had major trust issues with wide receivers. We saw it in the fourth quarter last year in the playoff game where he through for seventeen yards and was outplayed by Jimmy Garoppolo. He wouldn't throw to anybody outside of Devanta Adams. So it's like, you gotta bake this in their kids. They'd never played in an NFL game on the road, the Vikings, a team that, by the way, Kirk Cousins has had his way with Aaron Rodgers loud. Those kids had never played in the stadium that big. One guy played in an FCS school, another guy plays at in Nevada. He gat like twenty five thousand people. It's one of the loudest stadiums in the league. It's national Television, it's Fox, it's Aaron Rodgers, it's the Vikings. Of course he dropped the ball. Of course, Romeo Dubbs. It wasn't ready for a play. That's a lot to ask a kid who never played in games like that. And Aaron went back to be in erin. Ghost them. You've been doing this to friends for years. Ghost them. Can't do it. You gotta bake stuff in with young people. You gotta bake in mistakes. I got a company, I got young people. You gotta bake in mistakes. You gotta bake in anxiety, you gotta bake in nerves, you gotta bake in lack of experience. Aaron after the game, though. I hope he doesn't hold a ground. I see it'd be great to have a seventy five orite toestdown to start the game, but drops are gonna happen. It's part of the game. It's the mental stuff that we just can't have because we're hurting ourselves, whether we're going the wrong way on a block or or you know, missing the protection something or missing a hot or not run the right route the right depth. There was just too many, too many mental mistakes, completely predictable mental mistakes from small college players playing in their first NFL game. I was talking to Peyton Manning last week. He sets something those really interesting. We were talking about the speedy games, and I'd never heard this. He said, you know, there's preseason speed, there's regular season speed, there's division game speed. I'm like, dude, He's like, yeah, Raven Steelers, Bengal Steelers, Vikings Packers, that's a faster version of a normal game. So if you were asking those kids, that is a big bite. Of course, you're gonna have mistakes. It's up to you, as the star quarterback, the Hall of Famer, to get over it. Be there, understand, be patients like having kids. Got baked that stuff in. Well, we shouldn't have to bake stuff in with Dak Prescott. He's been around for a long time, right, But in what was one of the ugliest games of the weekend. You know you want that big sunny night game to be a showcase. That thing was hard to watch, and Dak Prescott late in the game hand on a helmet out sixty eight weeks. Here's Jerry Jones. Dak will be out for a little while, and so we'll be dealing with that as well. So this was a really tough night for the Cowboys and a really a surprising night. But of course when they add to it right there, Dan to lose him for several weeks. We'll say more about how long, how many weeks that may be. It's not that surprising. We continually, I continually kept saying, where did the Cowboys get better this year? Weapons worse, old line worse, pass rush worse. So I don't see the Cowboys winning this division. McIntyre taught me into believing the Giants are better than I thought, so I moved them up to third place. Now they now they're at the top of the division with the Eagles in Washington. So, but here's the thing. Can we stop the excuses with Dak Prescott? Well, the offensive line? All right, let me set this up for you. You're paying him forty million dollars a year. Brady had to go on the road. Brady didn't have Gronk, Brady didn't have a B. Brady was on the road. Brady's forty five years old. Brady had offensive line issues. Brady's got a new defensive coach, Chris Godwin's hurt again. Chris Godwin's always hurt. You think it was perfect for Brady on the road, new coach, offensive lines of mess protection all messed up. No comfort zone with Gronk and a B. Chris Godwin's hurt. Brady looked great. Stop making excuses. This is the first year it's not perfectly aligned for Dak Prescott. I'm paying you forty large. Bro. You gotta make plays ceedee lamb, two catches, eleven targets before you got your thumb injured. That's on you. You gotta make things happen. This was the classic here's why we pay you the big bucks game, and it was a dud. Dak's reality he is elevated by America's team. He does not elevate. I don't want to hear about a bad offensive line. Justin Fields one with a terrible offensive line, Mitch Rubisky one with a terrible offensive line, Daniel Jones one with a terrible offensive line. Well, he lost, Amari Cooper, Patrick Mahomes lost, Tyreek Hill had five touchdown passes. Keenan Allen got hurt early for the Chargers. Justin Herbert looked great. It's Week one. There's bad offensive line play everywhere. Justin Fields had a terrible offensive line, didn't make the big mistakes. Beat Kyle Shanahan beat a better roster. So I don't want to hear about the excuses. It's not perfect. Yeah, Buffalo, now you know, after all these years of building their roster, a lot of things are perfect for Buffalo, but not totally perfect. Their own line has issues. But I said this all off season is that you know Dallas is becoming the Raiders in the last ten years Al Davis owned them. They're not up with the trends analytically, They're kind of behind. They're living in the rearview mirror. The owners starting to say Kouki stuff, talks too much like this. When you pay a quarterback forty million dollars, you gotta be able to overcome O line issues. That's the reality of forty million bucks. That's why I would pay. By the way, Lamar Jackson lost his best receiver was in a contract dispute. I watched Lamar Jackson, You look pretty good at me. It wasn't a perfect offseason for Lamar Jackson. He lost his best receiver. Receiver called him out. You got some new offensive line guys hurt last year back this year talking contract. He looked good at me, Patrick Mahomes, bunch of new wide receiver, judusmiss Schuster, young kids on the road look good to me. But we gotta stop. We gotta stop with the excuses. It's not pretty for anybody. And before he hurt his hand, this team, this offense was a mess. It was a meth. Be sure to catch live editions of The Herd weekdays in noon Easter nine am Pacific on Fox Sports Radio FS one and the iHeartRadio app. I You everybody realizes drafting a quarterback is really hard. You can see a receiver can run, or a running back has the moves, or a left tackle has the feet, But so much of quarterback play is based on do you have the stomach for it? How is your work ethic? Are you a good leader to people rally around you? Cognitively? It's all going a million things going on. It's hard. Green Bay's a great organization. They may have a huge whiff on their hands with Jordan Love. San Francisco is a great organization. Can Tray Lance play? You can blame the weather, folks, but if a pilot crashes a plane, you can't go, well, it was raining. You got to be able to land a plane in rain, and you gotta be able to play at court. You gotta be able to play football in rain. Brady spent twenty years plan in Foxboro, blizzards, wind, cold. You gotta be able to figure out how to land a plane in that stuff, and you gotta be able to play quarterback in that stuff. I don't want to hear about rain. Justin Fields had to plan it too. So I've got evidence now last year, two starts, this year's preseason, and yesterday. That's a lot of evidence. Trey Lance completes about fifty percent of his throws. That's it. You can't start in this league at fifty percent, I got multiple games. Now, now, now there's there may be a situation where another offseason and he gets up to sixty percent, sixty two percent, which I think kind of the line. But we got a loaded roster here, we got a clever coach, we got great receivers. We're one of the smartest coaches. We got Jimmy Garoppolo when in seventy percent of his games with this roster in this coach. When you draft a young quarterback, he's got to be good pretty soon. By year two, he's got to be good because you're not paying him anything. So those are the years years one, two, three, and maybe maybe four because a lot of teams they pay their quarterback kind of early if they're good, like a Mahomes. But you gotta be pretty good pretty quickly because those are the only times, because of the position you play that I can surround you with great talent. The minute you pay that quarterback, he's gonna play with less talent. Go ask dak right the minute you pay the go ask Aaron Rodgers. So A it's hard to draft a quarterback. I am by no means saying it's easy. Guys that I respect in this league. It's they've whipped on quarterbacks. It's the hardest position to draft because we ask so much of these young kids. But the second thing is if you draft him, you gotta play them by year two, and they've got to be ready to play because by year four you're paying them, so you have a competitive advantage. The Rams had a competitive advantage with Jared Goff for about two years. Then they pay him and they're thin like everybody else. Dallas had a competitive advantage with Dak and then they paid him, and now they can't afford a second big time receiver. And so I got evidence here. You can't be tired. I don't want to hear about the penalties by the Niners. Here's what concerns me. Whether when an offense scores their points like the Steelers in the Niners early in the game, and then can't move the ball later because that's schemed. A lot of these teams come in with twelve to fifteen design plays to work against that team. Can you score in the third quarter? Can you score in the fourth quarter? By the way, Garoppolo, can y'all crap on Garoppolo? He outplayed Brett He outplayed Aaron Rodgers in the fourth quarter of playoff game in Lambo last year. So you got to be careful about this. When a quarterback looks pretty good early, they came into the game with those plays, they worked on those fifteen plays. They want to get a seventeen nothing lead. Trubisky, he can read, he can follow a game plan. But if you can't score in the third, the fourth, you can't move it in overtime. That concerns me because that's where Josh Allen makes plays. That's where Matt Stafford and the Super Bowl, or Joe Burrow can make plays, or Justin Herbert off script no longer perfectly designed. The defense have shifted. The other guys have shifted. They've seen what you can do. They've taken away your strengths because everybody comes in with like ten plays that work. Even bad teams have ten plays that work. But Justin Fields was making plays in the fourth quarter. Justin was making them late. That was Justin Fields with a bad old line with less talent Trey Lance had that roster. That coach couldn't do anything late. So I've got some evidence here, and you can't don't want to hear about penalties and rain. You got the better coach, you got, the better schemes, you got, the better roster, got the better receivers. I don't want to hear about it. Got to be able to land the plane, got to be able to play in rain. So now I've got multiple games of evidence, a couple games last year, yesterday, preseason where accuracy is a huge concern. Now again, I'm not bailing on anybody, but I'm saying, is I hear all these excuses when you give up a bunch of first round picks to get a quarterback? Nobody wants to hear the excuses. This this those fans in San Francisco, you lose to Seattle, you're owen two go look at the Niner schedule here, come to Pro Bowl quarterbacks. In two weeks, you get one more Seattle offense, and then it is like, gotlet of Pro Bowl quarterbacks. You gotta be good. I don't want to hear about weather. I don't want to hear about dumb penalties. Now, Trey Lance, I think is a coachable kid, amenable to change. I think he's got talent. I think there's any question he's big, he's strong, he took a lot of hits here he was after I made too many mistakes. Defense kept us in the game. Had a big miss to to Tyler Croft in the end zone. I tried to throw a perfect bus, just put it right on him and he was wide open. Turn the ball over, took a sack then oxide of field goal range that I shouldn't have Missedievo on the third down. It's another third down to Juan. Just too many mistakes, a lot of stuff to clean out for sure for me. But man excited and still got my head up, excited to get ready to go next week. All right, that's the right thing to say. And again on this show, I am rooting for fun football. I'm never rooting for against young quarterbacks, even with Baker Mayfield. The game's better with good quarterback. You watch yesterday? What are the games that are hard to watch? Bad quarterback play? Oh, Colin, you love the NFL? No, don't. I love the NFL with teams that have good quarterbacks and good offenses. I don't like watching crappy offense either. And what are the games yesterday? They are kind of hard to that. That Giants Tennessee game was not exactly Thrilla in Manila. Okay, it was not exactly great. What your quarterbacks are average, be sure to catch live editions of the Herd weekday said noon Easter nine a Empacific. Where Colin was right, blazing five had a winning week. I went three and two. Had Cade York not kicked the fifty eight yarder at the horn, I would have gone four and one. So we had the Lions covering, the Texans covering, and the Vikings winning out right. Listen, Jags are a little bit of a hot mess, but they're young, they're growing. Trevor Lawrence has got to occasionally throw a ball, not one hundred twenty five miles an hour, but three and two opening week. We are good with that. Where Colin was right, boy, Derek Carr looked small yesterday. Now some of it is offensive line struggled, but you put Herbert on one side of the field and Derek Carr the other and it was noticeable. Now Derek needs protection. He's not big, he doesn't have a huge arm, he's not shifty athletically in mobile, so he needs his time. And he did get Davante Adams multiple looks. That part I liked. He went right to Davanta Adams, but three picks, a passer rating in the sixties not good, and Derek just again. The Chargers have upgraded Khalil Mack in his grill all afternoon. Maybe it's just a pass rush, but he looked small where Colin was right. I kept saying all off season, my sources are telling me this accuracy thing with Trey Lance is ugly. Now I know it's raining, Okay, I get it, But you got to be able to complete the ball in rain. This is a fall winter league. So last year he completed about fifty percent. This game, he completed forty six percent. That was the lowest completion percentage of any starting quarterback Week one. So now I got evidence piling up. I've got a coach saying publicly he needs more time. So we don't make stuff up here, folks. If we get a source and a source and multiple sources tell us they're really struggling with his consistency, yep, So you saw it now. George Kettle was out. The weather was not ideal, but you can see optically it's a struggle and he's struggling to throw guys open where Colin was raw. Well, the La Rams were my number one team and heard hierarchy, and they got steamrolled by Buffalo, and frankly, they don't look nearly as deep. They only average three point seven yards of play. They miss Andrew Whitworth at left tackle, and I'm not sure there's anything they can do about it. Now. Cam Akers is in the doghouse and Alan Robinson and Matt Stafford will eventually get it right. But their offensive line issues. Not sure you can correct them. You can make a trading deadline move, but I'm not sure you can correct them. You may have to sign ob j to get a little more juice on the outside, but they didn't look like they were in the same class offensively as Buffalo. Where Colin was right, well, I said, yeah, Vikings are gonna beat Green Bay. Viking's gonna win the division. But what I really said is stop telling me how's Davante Adams gonna be without Aaron Rodgers. The question I kept saying was what's Aaron gonna do without Davanta Adams. He does not trust young receivers, and you saw it yesterday. Once Christian Watson dropped that, football didn't go back to him until the fourth Romeo Dubbs made a mistake. Communication ghost at him. This was predictable. Aaron's history is you burn him as a media member, you burn him as a teammate, you burn him as a friend. He'll move on fast. You can't do that with this roster. Sammy Watkins and Randall Cobb are not the answer. These rookies and Alan Lazard. That's your season. Get over yourself. Kids make mistakes. Yesterday was predictable where Colin was right. We we gotta stop praying and preaching at the altar of Bill Belichick post Tom Brady. The Patriots are six and eight in fourteen in division games. The only team they can beat is the Jets. They are one and eight against Josh Allen and Tua. So we can keep to bills. Got it all figured out? Coaches or coaches, No, they're not. It is ridiculous to tell me that a defensive coordinator understands offense. Do you know how hard it is to be great at anything? You can just throw up a special teams coach and he can call a game. You got to be out of your mind. There's maybe seven great play callers in the entire sport. So this is predictable. Listen, I don't take away anything from Bill's resume, but arrogance punctures a lot of dynasties, and mac Jones is He's not the primary issue here, Folks. They got no speed and not a lot of guys open. You can blame mac Jones. There are not a lot to work with here. Where Colin was wrong. Scott Frost fired at Nebraska. Not only did I think he was a good hire for Nebraska, the former Husker I thought was the best possible hire. I mean, the guy went at thirteen to OZ at Central Florida. I thought this was going to be a slam dunk. People liked him. He was known as a good recruiter, that there was no blemishes on the resume. Good guy got along with people intense could recruit. Maybe Nebraska's done in twenty two once they joined the Big Ten. They can't recruit Texas anymore. Maybe it's a Nebraska issue, not a Scott Frost issue. But he went sixteen and thirty one. They lost to Georgia Southern, which all I know it's in the southern part of Georgia. That's all I know. So Clay Helton and Georgia's Southern went to Lincoln and beat them. Wow, where Colin was right? USC already top ten. Listen, you folks who want to doubt Lincoln Riley. I've been told by two GMS he is easily the best offensive mine in college football. Ryan Day is second Lincoln's first. Buy a long shot. They're not going to win a national championship. They have one pro athlete in their front seven defensively, but the bottom line is offensively they are a complete handful. They look like a pro team. Multiple sets, personnel manipulation. Caleb Williams, for the record, is completing just shy of eighty percent. He's a fantastic player. You cannot rebuild a program in one off season, nobody can. But in the transfer portal days what we have now you can rebuild one side of your team. So the offense is good enough to win a national championship. Now that that part's fine there, they're good enough everywhere on offense, O line, workable quarterback, receivers, running backs, they're okay. At tight end they're fine. But for all the people doubting Lincoln Riley, you sooner fans, come on top set. They were four and eight last year. A Hi, this is Jay Glazer. And you may know me for the world of football or fighting or even shows like HBO's Ballers. Well you don't know is for my entire life. I have lived in something I refer to as the gray depression anxiety. So now I'm coming out with a new podcast, Unbreakable, a mental health podcast with Jay Glazer, where each week, well we talk about mental health. I hope to describe it, give it words. Listen to Unbreakable with Jay Glazer on the iHeartRadio app, Apple p podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know. The old saying I use on this show is it's one thing if a couple are fighting and they can keep it private. It's another thing if you go to a party and see them fighting publicly. If they if they can't don't have the discipline, or if it's so bad in a relationship that it's got to be public. They can't even hide their animosity toward each other. You got a problem. What has happened to Arizona this offseason? The quarterback and the agent are mad. They go public, The team's unhappy. They go public with an addendum that our quarterback doesn't work hard enough and plays video games. These two aren't even hiding it. So, you know, if if that's what we're seeing publicly between the coach, the GM, the owner, and the player and the agent, that's it's they can't even hide their disdain and their disagreements. So I think right now there's a cultural issue with Arizona. And by the way, Cliff Kingsbury yesterday after the blowout loss at home, went public again, just practice habits, you know, having a sense vergency. We gotta practice better. There's no doubt. You can't say you're gonna do it on game day and not do it in practice. So if that's not a coach calling out Kyler Murray individually, it's a coach calling out Kyler Murray's inability to get the team in line. So once again, the quarterback take shots, the agent take shots, the coach, the owner. This is a cultural issue. And listen, Arizona needs a quarterback because they were a tire fire without one. But they don't obviously they don't like a lot of the things that Kyler Murray brings to the table. Maybe an attitude, he's not really verbal, he doesn't put the time in with game film, whatever it is, it's out. Everybody can see it. And my takeaway is Arizona because of this, is going to be really talented. Kyler's a great player, They've got a lot of weapons. When they're healthy, they're gonna win a lot of games. But when they play a team that has their talent is buttoned up like Kansas City, it's gonna get ugly. They're gonna be a wildly inconsistent team. Because in any business, if you start skipping steps, you start skipping steps. Well, I'm not gonna put in the time here. We're not gonna practice is hard. You can beat a lot of bad teams. They're gonna beat Seattle twice. You can beat a lot of average people, a lot of average businesses, a lot of average teams that way. But you're gonna get exposed against Kansas City. You're gonna get exposed against a really good team. A coach, a culture in a locker room. And so I guess my point in Arizona is I think they have a cultural issue. I don't think the owner loves the quarterback but is trapped. I think the coach is frustrated, the GM's frustrated with a quarterback. But they're trapped, and I think Kider doesn't necessarily love everybody with the Cardinals, but he got he got the bag, so he's gonna do what he wants to do. And there's not much you can do. But when it starts going public like this, and I've never heard of coach, well, we gotta practice better. Our practice habits are better after what I just witnessed in the offseason. That's just a shot at the quarterback again. The other thing I like is that, you know, it's funny Michael, Jordan and Brady had this thing where they didn't know his make it public, but Jordan was so competitive he wanted to be the guy over Magic Johnson. They'd smile for a photo shoot. They get along in public. Michael wanted to beat Magic and Birds so bad. So bad, Isaiah Thomas so bad. Brady's the same way, buddies with Peyton Manning. Then you see his phone during the flake Gate. I think Mahomes has a lot of this that he can partmentalizes it. He's a smart enough kid. He keeps it to himself. But all he heard in the offseason was Joe Burrow, Burrows the new King Josh Allen AFC. That's the guy with the talent. By the way, I'm guilty because Allen is amazing. And oh, there was a list of top one hundred players. Remember the quotes in the article. Mahome saw those the quote in the article, Oh, Aaron rod jers on a different level. By the way, what do we hear about Tuah from Tyreek Hill? Oh, Tuah two is the most accurate quarterback I have ever played with. So two has taken a shot at him. Media has taken a shot at him. Patrick Mahomes after yesterday is five and oh week one eighteen touchdowns, no pick and a passer rating of one thirty seven. And I just think despite his greatness, the great ones do this is that even though they're dominating and winning trophies, for some reason, it still burns them at their core. Now, by the way, Baker Mayfield got a chip on his shoulder, but he's not discipline enough to hide it. Mahomes has a chip on his shoulder, obviously, but he keeps it away from you and he uses it. He channels that emotion over the course of a season. And so the media is gushing about Burrow and Josh Allen and Aaron Rodgers is a different level, and two is the most accurate guy. And here is Mahomes, a bunch of new pieces, a rebuilt offensive line in year two, and he just rolled on the road over the Cardinals. Here was Patrick After always like I have something to prove. I mean, I'm just this guy from Texas tech man that they said they couldn't play in the NFL. So I always had that mindset of going out there and improving that that we're the Kansas City Chiefs and that we still have a chance to go out there and win the SC Championship and then win the FC West and win the Super Bowl. He is really good. And you know there was this question about Tyreek Hill left. Sometimes in this league, it's really hard that you really really like a player like I know this. The Rams really liked von Miller, like they really liked him. They really wanted von millerback, and Buffalo just just you know, they won a Super Bowl, so that gives you grace, period. And you know they're they're paying Stafford and they're paying Jalen Ramsay and you're paying Darnold and they really wanted von millerback. But see Addol Russell Wilson's gone, Arizona's kind of noisy. You kind of talk yourself into we'd have to move too many pieces, and you have to make tough choices like the Rams. Really it hurt inside the building to lose von Miller. They really wanted him back, and he knows it. That's why he kept saying all these things once he signed with Buffalo, how much he missed La La. The Rams were heartbroken to lose him. They really want and I think it really hurt the Chiefs. Tyreek Hill, I think Andy Reid saw him is the ultimate bubble screen drag rout those guys. It was hard to lose Tyreek Hill. But they said to themselves five draft picks. We can't pay Kelsey, Mahomes, Chris Joe. I mean, you get to a point sometimes in this league where it breaks your heart, but you just can't pay everybody. And so I think the Chiefs said to themselves, Okay, let's go to work. They got a speed guy from Green Bay, they got a possession guy from Pittsburgh. They draft a couple of guys in the draft, and you make it work. Of course, Andy Reid's gonna make it work, Holmes, but this is a tough league. You lose people you love one more Herd. The Herd streams twenty four hours a day, seven days a week within the iHeartRadio app. Search Herd to listen live or on demand whenever you like. I've seen Sean Payton multiple times. I think I may have had him on the air a few times, never in studio. He's now with Fox Sports. Sean Payton, the Super Bowl winning coach, is joining us in the Herd on a Monday. How lucky are we You're here right seeing you? So I just spent six minutes, you know, kind of chastising Aaron for listen, man, you got small school receivers Minnesota is impossible to hear. You gotta be more patient. You know this. For years, that first game for rookies, oh listen, breath the first game for especially for first year players. So much is going on, and they may have played a bunch in the preseason, they may have played very little. Generally, the rookies get a lot of reps. But the thing that I don't like, I don't like looking at that game the way I did yesterday, and then all I've seen today is the first pass that was dropped by the rookie receiver. There were so many things that contributed to Green Bay losing that game. That's sure, it'd have been nice if he caught that pass on the first play, But do we think the outcome of that game is different if he caught that first play. They still haven't covered Jefferson on a spear route yet, Like there were three of those into some five man rush pressures. And I think the one thing I noticed watching if you just watched the old line and d line play on both sides. I think Green Bay suffered with some of the injuries in their offensive line, but the team at home played better on both sides of the ball upfront, and then all the other problems came after the pressure on one quarterback versus the lack of pressure on the other. The running game on either side it all. I saw it in the trenches, and I didn't think Aaron played well. Honestly, I thought he held the ball and this by the way, in this carreer. Absolutely it's been a knock. He holds the ball well. But it's third and one late in the game. We're still pressing first score two downs to get a first down and we throw one of these built in RPOs on third down and we end up throwing a deep seam incomplete on fourth down. Games over, and you want to see that first down converted, keep the drive going. Yeah, I was disappointed, not because and here's the other thing this used to I was used to get a kick out of this when I'm in a position now where I pick a game and so here's my first day Fox Sports NFL Game Day, both shows. I'm picking green Bay to win by four, and so when that doesn't happen, obviously, when you cover those things the next day, you're like, it's everyone else's fault. I didn't see that coming. And I think the good news for Minnesota is they look good. They look good, And so there's always that back and forth. Was it green Bay looked bad or Minnesota looked good and prepared green Bay struggle. You know. The other thing, and I've been on this now, Jason just started on the show. I've been on this for about a year and a half to two years, is that sometimes you're in a business and there's new legislation, new tax codes, new cultural changes like basketball three point shot used to be you and I grew up with back to the basket. Centers got shoot. If you can't shoot, you're off the floor, right right. So it's a different world. Nfls different. The NFL for safety reasons is the middle of the field is now the offense. You can't touch a quarterback, you can't grab a receiver. So offensive coaches, I mean the fact that you're not coaching and you're still in your prime. Forget players, you're the number one free agent. So my takeaway is I would hire offensive coaches if I had a young quarterback that said, I like Mike Zimmer, but there are certain personalities and I think Kirk's one of them. He needs a little love, and I think, I think it happens. I think, and we saw this yesterday, and this is Mike Zimmer is a close friend of mine. And a number of these coaches that turned over, there were ten last year. We talked about it yesterday on the show. But I saw a few locker rooms yesterday that looked like orphanages that just got a new nanny. They just looked, they looked. He can't change a roster, and unfortunately it's much easier to just change a staff. And but man New York looked like they were having fun after the game. Oh wow, was that something? The only thing I didn't know was the rap song Dabo was singing. But that looked fun. In Minnesota looked fun. And Miami, I mean I saw, you know those postgame locker room scenes of the of the new program. You know, hope springs eternal and everyone's optimists stick and until we hit some adversity. But that was what was I thought it was pretty cool yesterday. There were some there were some first time head coaches win some games. And when you have ten changes like you had last year, that's a lot. Five of the new coaches last year were former coaches and it went well for a number of them yesterday and a few others. You know, they'll get their first win later on. But but I would agree with you when when you when you go back and you look at how Minnesota looked offensively, Um, that was that was impressive. Yeah, that was impressive. But I would say, man, their front defensively, well, they went and got Zadarius Smith and they got him off the team they played, And there's nothing worse as a coach when you lose one of your key players and then he actually contributes to beating you now rushing, not the next season, the next game, the very first game you play him in. The networks are silly, they so Von Miller was a perfect example. He looked like he was twenty two. Yeah, played really great. So let's talk one of the things that jumped out to me in week one. We don't want to overreact, but now, nobody plays in the preseason, and of all the units, I could argue you would know it better than me. But offensive line tends to be a chemistry. Un offensive line play was awful all weekend? Awful. Agree, how do you solve it? Well? I don't get it, um, and I say this, Look, there's a balance. We've studied the science with injuries and data. But I do feel the trend of younger gms and younger head coaches is let's just keep him healthy. Let's just keep so there's a balance there. At some point, you have to practice football. Um, how do we do that? Well, we've learned how to practice better. You know, we ramp up, we ramp down, We ramp up, we ramp down. You know, we don't just continue to have two a day practices anymore. But you need to play and you need playing games, and any team I'm coaching will be involved in playing in the preseason. Now there's three games now, not four. We used to play a quarter in week one. The starters we'd get into the second quarter in week two, and then maybe in week three we'd get them into the third and pull them out right away, and then week four we'd set them down. There's a buy now, and the buy is put in place to help any soft tissue injury that might occur. You still have them for week one, but the idea of they're just not going to play at all in those three preseason games and then you get what you have yesterday and Thursday night, you just see it. Obviously, I agree with you, and I heard your point earlier. It's much easier to create the timing in space with receivers and quarterbacks. You don't need all eleven to do that. You don't need a game necessarily to do that. But but the old line play and in our league forever in week one and week two in week three has been tilted def pensively because they the offenses tend to need a little bit more time to get their time. But I agree one hundred percent when when you watch some of the protection issues, the free rushers, UM, the Emmys, you can see them, and I think it's Um. I just think you got to work that balance. And we're down to three preseason games. If you're not going to play any of your starters, then then then why are we having the preseason games to begin with? Are you we just looking at the rookies. There's the time in the off season has changed dramatically, so you still need to get pads as much as you used to. You don't get pads period, and they don't play for you. You don't get pads. You don't get dessert, you don't get pads. So listen, UM, there are like I watched Justin Fields and Trey Lands, and there's always been to me whenever we guess if a college guy is going to make it in the NFL, then the line I go to is sixty percent completions. Matt Ryan was right on it. It's if you're not completing this is I was very skeptical on Daniel Jones. If your completion percentage in college isn't like sixty one sixty two, good point. I don't trust in the NFL. So and my takeaway in the NFL is you can be if you give me some ceiling. Matt Stafford's about sixty two percent, but I get some big throws and Trey Lance got a big arm and can move. But boy, he's in the I've seen three starts. Now he's in the fifty percent area, and I'm like, it's at some point, Sean, you got to get first downs. What do you do? Because I think you know, Kyle's a schemer like you. He can create some openings, he can he can draw some stuff open. But I got three NFL starts over two years, and I'm concerned about the accuracy. How much better can it get with like a Trey Yeah, look, well it can improve some. I said this yesterday. I think there's seven or eight teams that we're gonna see, not because of injury, We're going to see more than one quarterback play. I think in I believe this, don't kid yourself. I think at some point we're gonna see Garoppolo back in that lineup. I think we're gonna see two in Seattle. All right, So who starts tonight, We're gonna see the other one by week six or seven. Geno Smith tonight. At some point we'll see the other one, Drew Locke. We're gonna see two in Carolina. At some point, we're probably gonna see two in Cleveland, you know, barring this suspension, we're gonna see two. We're gonna see two at a few places more than our league is used to. And I think at some point we'll see two in Miami, I think at some point. And they played well yesterday with two of but Teddy Bridgewater I've had before. He's an outstanding player, and I think that's one of the unique things this year. I counted eight teams where where I believe we're gonna see multiple quarterbacks play, not relative to injury, but just a controversy, if you will. And so here's the pickle. If you're John and if you're Kyle, you drafted this kid so high, three first round picks, right, and man, it's hard to sell the the guy upstairs right in the check that, well, we're and so our little binky or blanket is Garoppolo. Yeah right, And but we're we're we're going to start this guy. We were committed to starting him. But at some point, if we're not having the rest of the rosters sitting there ready to win, ready to win, and uh, that was a tough one yesterday though for any quarterback. I mean that. Yeah, Well, it was funny to watch. I've never seen a kicker bring like a bath towel. It wasn't just a he didn't bring a washcloth out or a wristband out to dry the spot. He brought a bath towel and thought he was going to get away with it. And I've never seen that. Foul called and I'm glad I watched it because I thought, well, you can't dry a spot. We've seen the remember the snowplow that came out. Yeah, and so when he tried to like damp in the water area and then they had to punt out as a result of it, I'd never seen that. So we have, Um, you know, you look at the Kyler Murray situations. Interesting. So I said this earlier, when stuff gets public, if you have a problem with a player, you keep it out of the press. Yeah, okay, yeah, I got the I got the team questioning Kyler Murray's work ethic and it makes the press. I got. I got Cliff Kingsbury yesterday saying our practice habits aren't he good? It's like, okay, this is this has gone public. Now there's obviously some lack of trust here and some real frustration. Not good, it's not good. And so when the addendum came out in the contract, you can't you have to go home and watch it. I thought, okay, you're trying to make him look bad. The agent comes out. So here's my thing. Not every player is Drew Brees. Not every player is going to go Russell Wilson and watch film all day. But if we're going to give a guy a franchise contract, what would you say to Kyler? Well, it still starts with let me start this way. When when Sundays come, the plane pulls up, we get in the line, owners, coaches, and all the players go up the staircase and we go right and the quarterback goes left and flies the plane. And so when you're paying a franchise quarterback and you're making that commitment, but oh, by the way, we want you to work a little bit more on your takeoffs and landings. Right. We don't like how you're flying at thirty thousand feet. We don't, well, do you have a franchise quarterback if you're writing those addendums in the contract. That's the question. A lot of people ask that same question, and it's a good question, and so look, and then it became public and then back and forth and you know, whether it was ownership or Steve or all of it's sloppy. I don't like it. And I think, you know, in some cases, you know, does he need tough coaching? You know what I mean. I want to be able to turn a game on when I'm watching a guy, a franchise quarterback, and not know what the score is. And when you turn the game on and watch Manning Brady breathe, he's rogers. To some you don't know what the score is until the network shows you the score. I feel like I can turn the game on with Arizona and watch their offense and not see the score until you if they're a header behind body language. And so I saw cliffs press conference, I saw the comments afterwards in look practice better than you know. Kansas City looked really good, and Arizona to me, looked like the team that we saw at the end of the season that was sliding, not advancing. Yeah, and coaches disagree with this, but I'm always a believer. Let's see. So my takeaway as the game has changed, so there's no huddle, So you get about eight more snaps now a game. And if you told me my quarterback throws the ball thirty two times and he throws a pick every weekend, I'm like, I can live with that. Throw the ball down the field. I loved Andrew Luck he had no memory. Yeah, I saw him a play at college game. Joe Burrow, Yes, today made two early horrible throws. What I love about Burrow is I can't tell. And so what is that that's a good trait? What is that line of I want you to take risks because my thing is I want a guy throwing the ball down the field. Yeah, I do too, but I want to huddle. I'm not interested in getting the Chip Kelly one hundred and five snaps a game. I'm not interested in that. I want to play a complimentary football game that helps my defense. We saw it with Brady last night. We saw it with Tampa Bay and Todd Bowles. We saw it a winning formula that still holds true today. And I want to take the quarterback off the high dive because I know he's going to have to climb up there four or five times during the game on third and eight in the red zone, third and six, and I want him get him down to the three foot end. I want to get him jumping off the side of the pool and not make his job. One hundred percent have to go through him for the team to be sick successful, It's gonna have to go through him. But I want to find completions and find runs and find touches for other players that allow him to go. I can take a breather on this play. I'm throwing a quick screen out to debot, or I'm handing off on a reverse or so they need more They needed more layups, in your opinion, we got to find those layups. And I get the RP scheme, all right. I get the RPO scheme. But if the defense tells me in the RPO scheme, I need a pass not a run, then we're passing, all right. I want to run when the defense is trying to take the run away, and then how do you how do you not block the last defender and still run the ball for seven yards? Kyle's done that well in San Francisco. Every time you play San Francisco, you're defending the run, and yet they still manage to run the ball well. And you saw the same thing with McDaniel yesterday. In my so everything about the offense is hurry up, shotgun, quarterback driven. Then you're going to have more quarterback driven mistakes. Good point. And and I don't know on the other side of the ball defensively if that's necessarily benefiting me either. So Mahomes is interesting. Um, Mechanically, when I watched Justin Herbert, every throw looks the same. He's just beautiful. He's like a logo. I mean, it's just destroyed. It's beautiful. Mahomes mechanically can go a little sideways every year, and you can see Andy kind of reels him back in. Yeah, he's obviously a very coachable player because he'll admit I'm off. My foot works off. Um, when you watch Mahomes from afar us the best. Okay. So, so like there's all these arguments, what's no arguments, no argument, it's I remember doing him in college. Um, you liked him in college. Yeah, we we watched the tape. Um, we watched all the tape. Obviously in a tougher setting for him because he didn't have the personnel some of these other teams did. And then after that we send him two days of installation for like a playbook install study it. We're going to be in Lubbock tomorrow. We'll meet with you. Met with Cliff Cliff briefly, took him into a room, spent half a day, and he was outstanding. He was outstanding. Then we go out on the field, we throw, we work out. You know, it's windy down there. If you're throwing well in Lubbock, you can probably throw well a lot of places, right, I mean it's windy, and he did. He reminded me of Farv because he had that not just gunslinger, but he could torque his body and he could create speed on the ball without the feet having to be set or perfectly set. So some of these off schedule throws he was very good at. And I remember when we finished, I said, Pete Carmichael Joe Lombardi, who's now with the Rams or with the Chargers, said look, we're going right to the plane. We're not stopping anywhere. No one knows we were here. That's our next quarterback. And we got on a plane. We flew to Tennessee, and had dinner with the group of Tennessee players and then continued our trip, our journey. If you will, flash forward to the draft and we're sitting in that room. We're picking at eleven, and gradually the draft is unfolding and Marshawn Lattimore is dropping also, and we really had good grades on him. And the rule of thumb is if you pick eleven, you got to have eleven players you like. And pretty soon the ninth pick is up and those two are still available, and we just need to survive nine. And so nine takes someone else and here we go tens on the clock, and those two players, we know we're going to get Mahomes or Lattimore. Buffalo's at ten. There's been a trade. The Chiefs climb into ten and I turned to the room and I said, here goes Mahomes and we took Marshawn Latimer. All right, so both sides win. But he was the best that I've ever evaluated coming out of college. Wow. And and there's a gap before the next one. You know he was that he was that good. And and so to watch him, to watch him play is I think he does so many things well. The other thing I think he does well that none of us can realize is we can move parts with him, all right, and the mic id changes in his mind can keep up with it. Like Drew had that trait where Mike id, what do you mean we're going to set the protection off of one player? You see Tom do it last night that you got the four known rushers and then let's put fifty five down. Let's make he's the fifth guy we're going to identify for the center and the four and so we're setting the protection. Well, a lot of guys are good with that from stagnant formations, right, But watch Mahome Homes and watch you know, the tight end shift over gets set and we watch a double shift, and then he'll change it. No, no, no, no, over here, over here, fifty fifty. His mind operates very quickly. We said that earlier today, very quickly. See it at the line, you can see it. I wrote on my report, the only thing I don't like with this player is the squeaky voice. That was it. That's a true story. That's the only thing I didn't like. Wow, I don't know if I can top that. Okay, so how often because that story that you can't top that story. So how often you're going to be in LA. I'll be in LA every weekend. You understand. I'm like a music critic and you're Elvis. Yeah, this was the best thirty minutes. I mean not that I don't love Jason. He's fantastic. I finished thirty minutes. Yet are we are? We already done thirty minutes? How many minutes we've done twenty seven? We didn't talk about Saints or Winston or Okay, well, I don't know. That's very personal to you. No, I thought, real quick, I thought it was the tale of two halfs. Mike Thomas's back clearly, and I knew he was. They said the practices were going great. I thought they struggled in the first half, but until they went to their no huddle offense, which happened really late in the third early fourth. New Orleans went to a no huddle offense, and then there came the offense and they did enough to win. I think as a coach after the first weekend, your perfect scenario is you get the win, but there's so much you get to It's so much easier to come in and correct on a winning Monday, you know, The challenge in this league is coming in after a loss and correcting and changing so to get the win and then be able to come in and watch the film and say, look, we won the game, but there are a ton of things we didn't do. Well. That's an easier message. That's the best for the coach. Yeah, when you fly home and you know, we've got a lot of stuff to correct. Now, I'd love I'd love to be the Bills or the Chiefs or not much. And now you've got are you know, create stuff to correct? But but you know, winning a game and maybe a game you shouldn't win, or you know you didn't play your best and there's enough meat on the bone where the players can see the tape and say, you know, you're right. That's a good scenario on Monday. Okay, I want to ask a Sean Payton question. Yeah, you've done football? Yeah? Is that? And very rarely it happens. It happened with Bob Stoops in college, where a guy that's got ten years on the tarmac, ten years on the runway said undone, And but college is NC double A and recruiting. Sure for you, you got to do football and you're you got a big brain, and you got ten years of like elite upstairs stuff ten to twelve to fifteen, and you step aside. And my takeaway was always this was my takeaway when you weren't sitting here, was Sean is really intense and really driven. And guys like Sean, whether they're on Wall Street, Main Street, or football, sometimes can burn themselves out a little. Yeah, they got to come out and just take a deep breath, spend time with their wife, their kid, go golf. And so my takeaway as you did what you could do, You're really intense. I got I gotta exhale. So is that true? Now? You just you just hit it um. And some people will say you don't need to stay up till two in the morning doing football. Well, no, no, I get that some people don't have to and do it well, but for me, I need to, right not because I just you know, and enough you know, Mountain Dews and Coca Cola's at night and music and Red Bull and but it's kind of cool, you know, And people say, well, what's your job like in the evening? I don't know. I don't know what a coder does. But there's a ton of film work dark rooms and stop the film, turn the lights on, put four plays up, third down in two to three. Each night has a different night of install, so that the Tuesday for coaches is getting ready for day one install, which is Wednesday. That's the first practice day and we're getting first and second down it in and then we're going to practice it on Wednesday, and then Wednesday night we're gonna work strictly on third down. But we're gonna spend you know, six hours on third down, third and two to three third and four to six third and seven to ten third and eleven plus we're gonna watch early in the season. We're gonna watch yesterday's games. We're gonna watch their whole set of games last year. And if it's a new defensive coordinator, we're gonna find out where he was and watch and create really a bio on what they do on these down and distances and then try to get to the best place. So you're you're right though that you get tired, and so you know, I Parcels is a mentor of mine, someone that I you know, really helps me. And he had a break every four or five years. That's just that was his thing and The hardest part for me is the GM at the Saints is one of my best friends, Mickey Loomis. So you lose your friendship, like the people pool, the coaches in that locker room, the ownership group. We just sat and cried for about a half an hour. We were together for sixteen years and we just laughed, and then we golfed that afternoon, and then Missus b who's been wonderful to me, and Dennis Lausha. It's it's the change in like that's been home. Like you know every day when you go to work that often you see these people and all of a sudden, you know, it just that changed. So that's that's the cavity as much as anything that you miss more than actual football. I mean I missed the draft and then training camp comes, yeah a little bit, not so much, playing a lot of golf and uh and I'll do it again. I mean I'll coach again at some point. Yeah. Um. But those are the things in that first year that you that you look at and you're like, man, I missed talking to Mickey. We talked every day and it was football fund smart well we talk a lot, like sixteen years. We never argued once over a draft pick or a cut really, but we would fight like dogs over like what we were putting in the weight room from a sign or floor standpoint, or when the cafeteria was going to be remodeled or why it wasn't, or or like the towels that we put in the stadium on a fan giveaway day. I would get upset because you couldn't wave them. They were like wash cloths. And I give make you a hard time. I said, is today the day of the terrible tissue? Like we would fight over that kind of stuff, honest to gosh, Like it would be over stuff like that travel but we never had. We might have disagreements, but those were easily solved. Um, yeah, we had but discussion all the time. Yeah, what a gift, Thank you so much. Yeah, absolutely, Sean Payton, he will coach again. Not last words, first words, great seeing you