Thanks for listening to The Herd podcast. Be 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 you're listening to Fox Sports Radio. Is the Herd wherever you may be and however you make you listen to the show. Thanks so much. I've done gottli In for Colin Radio only they don't let this point them on TV. Huh du no, No, that means, as Colin tells you, when we go radio only, things get crazy. Um. Well, we'll get to some of the latest with Aaron Rodgers, maybe some of the latest with Lamar Jackson. Antonio Daniels to join us as the stretch under the NBA season begins tonight the new look Lakers part of Lebron's twenty three most important games of his career. That's him, That's what Lebron said. That's not us saying it. We'll get to all that, plus we'll continue to cover this what I think is a fascinating story in college sports and college basketball so let's start there, okay, And you know, I understand what happens when you know, you get closer to March and I guest host for People, and I've covered college basketball and covered the Final Four and work for Westwood One and all that. That's all you're talking about college basketball, because that's you're like, no, dude, I daily do the Dug Outlip Show, which follows Colin Show on many of these Fox Sports radio affiliates in the iHeartRadio app, and generally it's football, football, football, maybe spring football, and some NBA hoops. But in this story, which is kid named brand In Miller, I think most people now finally know his name. Brandon Miller is the number one NBA prospect in college basketball. Like, wait, why do you have to contextualize it that way? Well, it's important, you know, because you have the overtime elite, which is you have you have overtime, which is you know, overtime has been this digital property making a ton of money. And now they have their own like league, almost like a prep school league where kids get paid and all they do is hoop all day and they continue their education as well. They have they have a pair of twins or not a pair of They have twins, Thompson twins, one of which will one of whom will likely be a top five pick. There's the G League ignite. They have a kid, Scoot Henderson who will be probably the number two pick. And then there's Victor who's now we're told, seven foot five from France, who's going to be the number one overall pick. So college basketball takes kind of a back seat. And there's a player named Brandon Miller who's only a freshman having a great year in Alabama shockingly is the number one team in the country. And a story that came out that I mean something that had happened well over a month ago, was one of the Alabama players who was injured, Darius Miles, was charged with capitol murder in a shooting just off the campus and the strip strips where all the tusks and all the big bars are. There was a shooting late at night, so he had been removed from the team. The team had the school had, by all accounts, handled everything as well as could possibly be handled, supporting his family while still supporting the family of the victim, and completely erasing any sort of existence from the team's website activities, whatever, really had done a quality job handling. So the preliminary trial started this week and we found out that the handgun which belonged to the now former player Darius Miles, had been given to him or given back to him. Again, this is from the actual testimony of a detective by Brandon Miller, the school's best player. So of course people lost their mind. And then nat Oates, who's the head coach of Alabama, said basically like, hey, look it's it's wrong place, wrong time. You know, we can't control everything college kids do. He then later, and this is going back two days ago, came out with a statement after that press conference like I had poor choice of words. We're trying to be sensitive here, but it's the Brandon had done nothing wrong, had been charged with nothing, and as a full fledged member of the team. They have many people in my position like, ooh, you gotta take him out the floor. How could they do this? How could he be a part of it? He can never Clay Travis Natotes Willever coach another game. Brandon Miller would never play another game. Well, the details have started to come out, and what I said two days ago holds true. Today and two days ago. It was a more of a guess, knowing how these processes work, having done this for over twenty years, that hey, Natotes isn't playing Brandon Miller because he just wants to win games and he doesn't care about all this other stuff. Like that's not the way it works when you work for the University of Alabama, right, a land grant institution with you know, over a billion dollars in their um and there in their endowment, you know, an incredible institution not just of athletic glory but of higher learning. Like you're just going and playing a guy because you got to play a guy because you want to win some games. And it turns out to be true that he in order to play Brandon Miller, the ad the president, everybody has to sign off on it. In order them to sign off on it, they have to know unequivocally he had nothing to do with it. So Miller's attorney came out yesterday and they didn't have to, but they released kind of a statement showing like, look, Brendan Miller was drove a car, you know, went to dinner after a game. Darius Miles wanted to ride to a club, he took him to the club. The line was too long, he didn't want to wait in the line. And it still doesn't say whether he knew that that Miller had left a firearm in the back of his car, but it left the firearm in the back of his car, likely you know, covered up by some sort of clothing, and went about his business. Was at home to text message, hey dude, you gotta bring my my joint back, meaning I guess that's my gun. He comes back, drops somebody off, brings him back the gun. Never actually alleged to have touched the gun. They go into the back of the car, they get and then he's sitting in He's sitting on the street when all of a sudden shots ring out and he was actually part of the shooting and not part of the shooting. Having so the context does matter? Does matter. The attorney also said he doesn't own a gun, has never owned a gun, not comfortable in gun culture. This strikes me as as believable. But as Jason Stewart is my esteem producer, he's been doing this long time, said as well, if this basically comes down to, do you believe that Brendan Miller is a good person or somehow involved in this crime or involved in Hey here's the gun, and now look they're supported by video evidence where he had no part in it, didn't touch the gun, wasn't sitting there when the shots rang out and pointing at the victim, and like none of it. So I actually think that you don't have to look inside his head, look inside his heart, but you can point to all of the other things and the text message and the fact that there was But this, this is the point I want to get to, the most important Do you remember do you remember when Dez Bryant, Okay, when Dez Bryant, when it was it leaked out that Jeff Ireland, who is then the general manager of the Miami Dolphins, was alleged to have asked inappropriate questions to Dez Bryant during an interview in the pre JAFT process. Do you even remember that? Because what came out was Jeff Ireland asked Dez Bryant if his mom was a prostitute. And you're sitting there going like what who asked the man if his mom is a woman of the night, Like who does that? But that's where context matters, right, The conversation which later came out was supposedly something like this where he asked his, he asked his, he asked Jeff Ireland asked as Bryant, what's your dad do? Answer? My dad's a pimp. What's your mom do? My mom works for my dad? Follow up question, Hey, is your mom a prostitute? Right? That's a reasonable line of questioning when you're when you're trying to break bread with a young player, when you're trying to get to know him and he sits on your couch and he's at your facility and you're trying to figure out if you draft him. Hey, man, what's your dad do for a living? My dad's a pimp? Okay, what's your mom do? My mom works from my dad. Okay, I gotta ask here, right, Maybe you don't have to ask. That's where context matters. If the allegations or the video showed that Brandon Miller grabbed the gun, hands it to Darius Miles, Darius Miles hands it to this other character who ends up shooting up the car, and they're all sitting there and it's like, uh, karate kid, you know that other kid and Karate Kid that's like, yeah, Ken putting in the body bag. Right, If that's you, well then you're never going to play sports ever again your life. But if somebody leaves something in your car and they'd say, hey, man, come back, come back over here, bring that, bring that over to me. You're bringing over they grab it. Like again, if you're not a gun guy, you don't think in any way, like why would anybody shoot up a car? Like? Why would why would you do that? Who does that? Thinking? Looking your side, your own heart, can you do you have that in you? Of course not, of course not. You don't have that in you. Okay, Now, the next part of the story is, so Brandy Miller played last night, which, as I said on my show, as I've said on the college basketball show I do on Stadium, Alabama signed off on all of this stuff. They had all of this information previously. So if they would have held out Brandon Miller yesterday, they would have said that everything we did and investigated and cleared him up previously, well it turns out it wasn't good enough because of social media pressure. They played him. Oh he had forty one points and the game winner NADOs. His head coach was asked how Miller's situation affected the team. Here's his answer. It's hard to say we've been you know, the Vanderbilt game came after that, and it may have been. I mean, if I want to make an excuse for him, we can use it. But I'm not really a guy that makes too many excuses. We gotta played better. Some of those other guys didn't play up to their typical performance, so I'm I'm not sure. It Obviously could have been a distraction, but you know, Brandon showed up, played pretty well, so I think, you know, it may have just been coincidental. I don't know what will Hopefully we play a lot better Saturday. We need everybody play a little bit better Saturday for us. South Carolina's not a great team, But I mean, I don't know. You look at it, honestly, You're a nineteen year old kid, and suddenly the world thinks you're involved in a murderer that you, by all accounts, had no knowledge was going to occur, had nothing to do with. Right, you already have to carry a substantial amount of guilt. Right, that's if you're a normal, thoughtful human being, which my interaction with Brandon Miller and everybody else's is that's who he is. And when I'm sure you're every people are yelling and snickering and looking at you side eyed, you go out and drop forty one on the road and the game winner. It see incredibly impressive stuff, He asked me. What are your thoughts at Gottlieb Show Twitter, Instagram, however you want to communicate of the Doug got Leap Show fan page on Facebook. Here's sitting in for callin all right? Coming up next, Aaron Rodgers has reportedly completed his Darkness Retreat. So what next? What next? We'll discuss in The Herd. Be sure to catch live editions of The Herd weekdays and noon Easter nine am Pacific on Fox Sports Radio FS one and the iHeartRadio app Doug Gotli even for Collins The Herd Fox Sports Radio iHeartRadio app. There are so many things that are like little stories to get to. We can't diminish the importance this time of year of what it does for next year's football season. Right, the owner of the Darkness Retreat. Right, the owner of the Darkness Retreat has said that Aaron Rodgers has left his Darkness Retreat. So now we get to the business of Aaron Rodgers making some sort of decision. Sam Munson joins us here in the Herd on Fox Sports trade of the iHeartRadio appro Football because his lead NFL analyst, and Sam helped me out right. On one hand, you have Bob McGinn, who had covered the Packers for thirty years, saying like, I think they're done with him, and then Jeff Darlington, worked for ESPN yesterday says, hey, I talked to really important people and he's coming back. Does anybody have any real sense for what Aaron Rodgers is going to decide coming out of this darkness retreat? Well, first, can we just take a beat and think that this is what the world is in twenty twenty three. We're analyzing what Aaron Rodgers is deciding in the middle of a dark cave in four days of rest and recuperation. The world is as crazy. But I think the reality is nobody knows, Like I don't think that. I think what we're seeing is all these different reports are just a reflection of guesswork on various people's behalf and really we are all waiting for Aaron Rodgers to actually declare to somebody what he thinks he's going to do at the end of all this, Okay, what about in terms of what you guys do at Pro Football Focus, how big a decline was it last year in his performance? It was a big decline. His PF grading mark dropped by twenty points something like that. But it's the kind of decline we've seen from him before in similar circumstances. We kind of predicted something like this heading into the season, which is the last time he had a wide receiver room this bad was twenty fifteen. I think when Jordy Nelson went down before the season, they didn't really have a chance to find another alternative, and they had just this wide receiver room that really didn't have anybody capable of making the kind of plays he's been accustomed to. So his PFF grade went from ninety plus that kind of elite range either side of that year, and it dropped into the mid seventies that season when he didn't have that number one one wide receiver. So I think that's kind of what we expected it to be like this year, that if you don't have any kind of high end receiver. And I know Christian Watson came on late in the year and made some plays, but without that true number one guy, you're not going to get that MVP caliber Rogers that we know is still in there. Okay, Lamar Jackson another guy in the news, And one of the things that's interesting about Lamar is he won the MVP and people want to just kind of stick on, well, he won the MVP. He did, But in the seasons since again, and I'm not talking the advanced metrics that you guys break down, but the basic metrics in the old school stats hasn't been nearly as good. Now. Two years ago, they had so many injuries, like you couldn't even list them, right, I mean everyone in their backfield. But you know, like, look, he's there. He's always been their best running back. And he only played ten games in both the past two seasons. That's missing fourteen games. And again, the raw production hasn't been as good. Okay, Obviously Baltimore or whomever wants him to be a quarterback, but in terms of elite level quarterback play, how did he actually play last season when healthy? I think last season was the closest we've seen to that MVP year in terms of his ability passing the football. Obviously, we know what he is as a runner. It's special. It's pretty much maintained that incredible level every single year. But that MVP season was by far the best passing season we've seen from him. And generally speaking, his big plays, the kind of exciting, highly graded throws, those are stayed fairly constant in his career. Where it's fluctuated has been the mistakes and the really bad plays and the kind of what we call turnover worthy plays, so we grade plays like dropped interceptions that should have been interceptions even if they didn't actually end up being caught by the defender in question. Last year was the lowest number of turnover worthy plays that he's had since that MVP season, and I think it was his best passing performance since that year. I'm interested in Derek Carr. The Jets reportedly told Derek Carr, hey man, come play for the Jets. You'll be a Hall of Famer. There was a lot wrong with the Raiders this year. Heck, there's a lot wrong with the Raiders last year. You go back to two years he got the playoff here two years ago, he was His leadership was obvious considering all the other things going on, coaching change, arrest of the star wide receiver of Henry Ruggs, etc. Where do you guys, Where do you guys view Derek Carr in terms of the landscape of quarterbacks in the National Football League. I think he's a good starting quarterback. The problem that he has, and that maybe the Jets are facing right now, is that good might not get you anywhere anymore. And there's basically nothing in his career to suggest that he is all a fame quarterback or whatever it is they're selling him in this visit to try and get him over here. The league has changed, and if you don't have an elite quarterback right now, you better have a guy on a rookie contract earning not much money so that you can offset the difference that that is going to make. Derek you need. He's middle He's the middle class, right, He's the literally, yeah, he's the middle class. Like he's he's not mahomes Day, He's not any of these super league guys. He's good, But like, Okay, would you do you spend thirty five million on a guy when if you have a rookie on a rookie deal, you can use that thirty five million to fill out your roster exactly, and he's earning that kind of money and then is going to have to go toe to toe with those guys, not just within the division against Josh Allen if he goes to the Jets, but in the AFC, in the playoffs, he's gonna have to knock off a sequence of Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert Trevor, Lawrence, Patrick Mahomes. You're gonna need to beat three or four those guys in a row. And it just seems very very hard to imagine Derek Carr putting that kind of run together. I agree with you. Any idea, like, what's the actual data say about Sean Payton and his quarterbacks? Right? I know that that breeze aged his last couple of years in New Orleans. They got it okay, And maybe there's some of that with Russell. Maybe he was carrying too much weight, Maybe it was the system, maybe it was the change, maybe it was a lot of things. But most people believe, like, hey, if there's one guy who can fix one guy who can fix Russell Wilson, it's got to be Sean Payton. How good we're Sean Payton's offense, most specifically, quarterback played the last couple of years in New Orleans. Yeah, and I think you know, obviously people tie in to Drew Brees and say try and diminish Sean Payton, sometimes by saying, look at any any coach with Drew Brees as their quarterback would look great. And it's probably true. But his resume before Drew Brees was outstanding. Like the reason he got the Saints job in the first place, he had done really good work in multiple different places with some quarterbacks that were not Hall of Fame caliber Drew Brees type players. And his record with non Drew Brees quarterbacks in New Orleans is outstanding as well. Maybe not in terms of production the kind of numbers they put out relative to Breeze, but he won games with guys that were not great quarterbacks. I think his track record is a very good one in terms of building an offense, in terms of doing what works. And I would have as much confidence in Sean Payton fixing Russell Wilson as anybody. The question, though, still remains, is that possible Now? I don't know, right It's like it's like one of those once it goes, it goes, doesn't it. I just it's really it's going to be very hard to tell what the reasonable expectations are for the Broncos and more specifically for Russell Wilson. I think the big question this year's upcoming NFL draft is Bryce Young, Right, And Bryce Young is one of these guys that if you watch him play, and heck, I've seen him play in high school, watch him play in college, Like he just makes plays. There's there's zero negatives with exception of well, the one glaring tangible in that he's not just small in stature. He's not a big human being, right, Like, he's not He's not built. Even Russell's kind of built low and wide and you know, like thicker, long arms, big hands like Bryce Young's like one hundred and seventy pounds one hundred and seventy five pounds. Is there a what is the truth about smaller quarterbacks and their their level of production? Well, the first thing is, so there's a bunch of reasons teams are scared as small quarterbacks. Um Number one is they think they're going to get hurt more often than bigger quarterbacks. The data actually says the opposite. It says big quarterbacks get hurt more often than small quarterbacks small quarterbacks because it's not about your size, it's about how you play the game and what kind of hits you expose yourself too. So you can be a small quarterback and if you're smart about it, if you avoid hits, if you get rid of the football, if you don't expose yourself to those shots, you're probably not going to get injured as much as other guys that do put themselves in harm's way. The second reason teams are scared of it is there is an issue with those guys seeing the middle of the field. You know, if you're five to eleven, if you're five ten, you just don't have the kind of view of the middle of the field twenty yards down field that guys are six foot six too. It's obvious, right, you're never going to have that kind of ability. So you need to be something, you need to be good at something else that lets you offset that. And for Russell Wilson, for years, he was able to run around behind the line of scrimmage, open up new throwing lanes, new sort of vision windows, and make big plays down the field. And he was arguably the best deep ball thrower in the NFL. But the big point about Bryce Young is he's extreme, even by the standard of small quarterbacks. Like he said, Russell Wilson probably outweighs him by forty pounds something like that. Bryce Young is going to be the smallest quarterback that has come along since offensive lineman weighed like two hundred and thirty pounds in the sixties. Like he is, he's unprecedented small. But if he wasn't, if we were talking about a guy that was six to two hundred and ten pounds, he would be easily the best quarterback in this draft class. And I think we'd probably be talking about him as a generational talent. But he's not. And so it's really it's a it's a hard call, Like he'll obviously naturally add some weight, but will it be enough way to truly truly make it, truly make a difference, be gonna be interesting? Yeah, I mean, he really makes you appreciate just how big NFL quarterbacks are generally, you know, when you see I mean, he's a normal size guy, Bryce Young. I'm I'm five eleven one eighty and I'm a little bit bigger and a little bit taller than he is. But NFL quarters or six four, two hundred and twenty pounds. Like it's a different world, completely different worlds. Sam, great stuff, everybody pro Football focused for the good work. We'll talk to you soon. Appreciate you, Thanks for having me take it at Sam Munson. Pro Football focuses, lead NFL analyst, getting ready for the draft and obviously would you know, like like NFL free agency has been a bonanza the past couple of years. No reason to think this you will be any different. Let's get to Herd Line News with Jason Stewart. No, no turn on the news. This is the Herd Line News. What do you got, Jay stew Well, Hello, Doug Um, Eric b Enemy maybe you've heard of him. The new offensive coordinator for the Washington Commanders was introduced to the media today and he talked about it not being fair to talk about the head coaching possibilities as he has a job to do right Omni the offensive coordinator of the Washington Commanders. Okay, being a head coach, that's something if that's to happen, and to take care of itself. We've had a great deal of success. We've went what five straight AFC Championship games, three out of four super Bowls. Two out of those we won. So being a head coach right now, it hasn't happened. It's not anything that's gonna impact me moving forward because the only thing I need to concern be concerned with it's what's important today. Today. I got to be the best person that I can be. I gotta be the best coach that I can be. And on top of that, I got to get these guys in this building and learn to trust me, to get to know me, but also understanding what the term accountability means. I have to be accountable to these men. All right. So all that stuff about being a head coach, we could talk about that next year sometime. Right now, I'm focused on the job at hand. What do you think, Duck, I think, having watched most of all the press conferences exactly as Eric bi enemy was sold to me, which is likable. You know, once the whole dude's accountable, says the right things, not a ton of details into the actual plan of attack. But now you get a chance to see now it's completely his baby, and and we'll see. Um. My opinion didn't change because my opinion was based has always been based upon the thoughts of others and nothing was said or done to change that, if that makes any sense. Yeah, and more. For more of Doug's opinion, I encourage you to go to the iHeartRadio app and download an episode of the Dan Patrick Show on I Think Tuesday with with Rob Parker. Doug will make his points clear in many ways. Moving on, I don't know if you saw this, Doug, but Caleb Williams did an interview recently. Now, Caleb Williams is a usc quarterback who isn't even eligible for the draft until next year, but he actually said that the Miami Dolphins would probably be his number one spot. Now that's interesting, interesting onto itself, but making it more interesting, Tyreek Hill liked a story of Caleb Williams saying that the Dolphins would likely be his number one spot. Um, doesn't Tyreek Hill have a quarterback here, Doug? Yeah, I mean it's like one of those this is who Tyreek Hill is though. But yeah, man, I mean the the the blind loyalty to to a tongue of ioloa just I guess disappeared. Um, But but you know what a lot of it is. Do you know how to take a compliment? Question? Jo? That's a question. I thought it was rhetorical. Don't know how to take one? Do you know how to take Probably not as well, not as gracefully as I should. I think everyone could. I think that's a That's a big thing for a lot of people, is they just struggle with implements, right like, where like you want to say thank you, but you want to actually mean something more, and so you kind of try to put together a Schmoga's boards of words and it doesn't really work out. I think part of this is Tyreek Hill. It's just a compliment, like Caleb Bullian saying, like, man, I'd love to play with those dudes. They're so like, who would love to play with with Tyreek Hill? Tyreek Hill just makes you look better because you throw him up, you know, you throw him a slant and he goes to the house. You know, you a jet sweep can go to the house. Any sort of ball you put up to him, he can just go get. He can literally can win you a game on his own. I went to that Charger Dolphins game, and if you remember the game, at halftime, I don't think the Dolphins had not been on the Chargers side of the field. They had zero successful drives per se. But they had a fumble that Tyreek Hill picked up and ran to the house, and I I think they had one other catch and run to the house was like seventy eighty yards. Like the disparity in the quarterback play between Justin Herbert and to a Tongue of Iola was so start. One guy looked like a JV quarterback, the other guy looked like a superstar, and yet the score was not indicative why because of Tyreek Hill. So I think a lot of this is Caleb Williams just given a compliment to be like, man, I'd love to play with those guys, and Tyreek Hill not knowing what to do with themselves. Guys just don't know how to handle compliments. So that's what I think. It's more about that Dolphin Chargers game, by the way, will forever be known as the game or Emmanuel Acho saw in person that he was wrong about Tah for the rest of the season anyways, as he says, And by the way, learning how to take a compliment is one of those social graces that's very underrated. And I didn't even think about that until you brought it up. So so what what's your what's your go to when somebody gives you a couple? If I say, Jason, when you were on blind Date, and by the way, if you guys, ever you want to have some fun during a break, google Jason. Google Jason Stewart blind Date. And it was outstanding. I mean it was super entertaining. Okay, so what is your go to? Somebody goes Jason, let me tell you, I'm blind date. You were hilarious. You should be in movies, you should do stand up comedy. You were incredible. What's your Somebody you don't know and they just throw out somebody you respect, says Paul Paul. Paul Rudd gives you that compliment, What do you say? I say, thank you. I appreciate that. I don't know if I agree with all that, but thank you, Paul Um. And I loved you in forty year Old Virgionum, but as my as my good friend in that movie, I hated that as my good friend and they still haven't been paid for that movie. My good friend and radio con Victor Brick jacobs his retort, I think his response is the best. When someone compliments Vic, he says, flattery will get you everywhere. Victor Brick feeling I am feeling you. Last note, Russell Westbrook was introduced to the media yesterday as a member of the Clippers, and this is how he sees himself fitting in. For me, He's just finding my way to be able to help other guys is something I truly embracing, you know. That's what I would do and make sure I can make the game easy for all these guys that are here, find out their spots, what they like, what they don't like. Um, and that's gonna be a process of me. But I'm ready for the challenge and looking forward to it. And head coach Tylu added later that he just wants Russ to be Russ, the old cliche, Russ to be Russ. How do you think this works out there, Doug not, Well, it doesn't. I get that. On paper, it all makes sense. Tylu wanted to be the Lakers coach. They only offered him a three year deal. He walked, He balked at it. Right now, he's still employed with the Clippers, whereas the man who was hired instead, who won a championship, is not. I get it. Russell Westbrook was you know, recruited by Lebron, then Lebron, I'm sure by his estimation turned his back on him. Right, there's the energy of hey across the hall. You know, they don't like us, yet we keep kicking their ass or whatever. But the Clippers are put together to win a championship. And I love the idea of a chip on your shoulder. So I did Clippers chip shoulder? And anyway, but like what leads us to believe that this will work? It didn't work in Houston, it didn't work with the Lakers. Why would it work with the Clippers? And he's had no time to remake him to make to have a makeover, right, you had no time to gather your thought like why did it not work? Why was my personality grading? You know, statistically he was better this year than last year, Yet they couldn't wait to get him out the door. Why is that? So? I mean, he still can't shoot, He's still not a great defender. He's used to playing with the ball in his hands, and it's just hard to find a spot with him unless you have four other really good shooters. And so it's lineup dependent. I don't know, I just I like the Clippers, you know they but they traded off Reggie Jackson and John Wall for Russell Westbrook and Bones Highland. I think Bones Highlands a better score than Russell Westbrook. At this point in his career. Russ just is gonna get can you can you play Russ five ten minutes a game and him be happy to be a positive influence on the team. I don't think that's the case. I don't see it working out great. And that's Jason Stewart with the news. Well, that's the news. We have more details emerging from Baltimore and the end of the season and why Lamar Jackson didn't play. Cover those details and what it means for the future of the relationship between team and player. That's next time. Doug Gottlieb, This is the Herd. Be sure to catch live editions of The Herd week dayson noon Easter ninety Empacific. Palli Fusco here with Tony Fusco. Of course, you know us as the host of the number one rated Polly and Tony Fusco show the world Right now, We all know you sick and tired of these stupid sports shows where the host say stupid things like Tom Brady's the Goat or Lebron James is good at basketball, which he is clearly not. See. We give you smart takes and we also bring on so called famous guests from across the sports world and show them why we know much more than they do. The show. Listen to the Folly and Tony Fusco Show on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Doug Doug gott Leaving for Colin, It's The Herd on Fox Sports Rader, the iHeart Radio app. The article out and Jeremy Fowler is the author of it, along with Jameson Hensley, who covers the Baltimore Ravens on this past season and kind of the weird end to it where Lamar Jackson And for people who haven't been aware, he's actually missed ten of the last twenty two games regular season in postseason games the Ravens have played. Okay, so almost half of their last twenty two games he's missed, and there was times of frustration this year. There's obviously been some social media moments where people have supported him and he's liked their support or pushed back on them with the you know, if you don't love Lamar Jackson a two hundred fifty million dollars. You don't love Lamar. There's this classic disconnect I think even some players, but definitely in the media and with fans. Whereas this idea that the Ravens don't want to pay him, right, you either do or don't want to pay him. And again, this is a lot like what we talked about to start the show, talking about that context actually matters. Yeah, we want to pay him, Yeah, I want to be our quarterback, but we want to have reasonable cost certainty for the years in which he's our quarterback. We also got to protect ourselves, Like, here's a dude who's played ten games each of the past two years, missed ten of the last twenty two games we've played overall, and this is in the prime of his athletic career. One would think the older you get, the more you slow down, the more prone to injury you are. And the more you slow down, the more you can get hit. The more you get a hit, the more you can get a hurt. Right, And why are we comparing contracts to the Deshaun Watson contract, which is an outlier where the Ravens are just they're handling as such, we're just comparing it to Russell Wilson's contract, to Kyler Murray's contract, and how much better a contract it is. But there is a lot of and the Ravens seem to have handled it perfectly in the media. And the reason that Lamar's injury was tweeted out by Lamar is well, if you don't have an agent, that's part of what agents do. They leak things to the schefters of the world so that so that people know your side. It's just weird when it comes from you. It's like Lebron calling himself the greatest player ever. It doesn't mean that he doesn't think it's true if he doesn't say it, but it's something that other people should say, not you. People I've talked to in the NFL said this deal would have been done if he had an agent. If he had an agent. I think so much of it, So much of it is the trappings of, honestly a social media and people saying like, hey, bet on yourself, Like okay, not every time you bet on yourself doesn't actually work, and oh yeah, by the way, you're not actually a free agent. The idea of being able to move wherever you want to move and do whatever you want to do, Like that's not a reality. Some teams will will have acquiesced is. You know you don't you don't want to do the franchise tag, you don't want to play here, We'll move you. But if you're a franchise quarterback Ravens are under they do not they absolutely do not have to negotiate anything can handy the franchise tag. Then do it again next year. Heck, they get into it a third year if they want, which ends up being about the same amount in guarantees, right, because the third year is a transition tag they do not have. Now it hurts them against the cap because it's dollar for dollar against the cap and hurts your ability to put a team around you. And there's no question they want to sign him, sign him to a long term deal and put off some of the cap hit for later years. The cap continues to grow. But you have, you know, you have supporters of Lamar and sycophants in the media and in social media saying hey pay him, and the Ravens in there going like we want to pay him, We just I don't want to equal up to a ridiculous contract. Think about your street you live on. Now. Okay, let's say the street you live on. Now, every home is worth four hundred thousand dollars, right, every home. And then at the end of the street, there's this home that was bought for nine hundred thousand dollars and it's got a big yard, it's got a big lot, it's all redone or whatever. Nine hundred thousand dollars. And you know, it usually happens. Somebody moves in from out of the market and they don't know the prices, and they massively overpaid for the house, right because they moved in, they got a bunch of kids, they're trying to get a job. First, they did let a relocation company do it. They just did it. So the other houses on the street had started to become worth more five hundred thousand or soft, but still that one was nine. So now the market sorts of starts to settle, and a house pops up on the market and a guy a couple doors down from the nine hundred thousand dollar house puts it on the market for nine hundred thousand. Hey man, this is a comp I should get the same amount. And it just sits there because the rest of the There's the reason when you get comps, you get five comps, you don't get one. It doesn't allow thee for the outlier high or low. That's what Lamar's dealing with. That's what he's dealing with. And the same trying to sell a house without an agent. It seems easy, but sometimes you need a real estate Sometimes you need a real agent to sit in there and have hard conversations and then soften the blow when they talk to you. Instead, you get the hey, dude, we'd love to pay you, but we're not going to give you five years guaranteed. You've been hurt the past two years. And while there's nothing wrong with you, it's not we can't field the team around you if you're taking up this much of the pie. You know, most of the players thought he would be back for the playoffs. He wasn't. He was supposedly sick, and then all of a sudden he comes up with the kneesdille injuring him. They didn't question it, but boy, it does look like if he had the contract, would he have played against the Bengals. And if he's playing against the Bengals, don't they beat the Bengals. All right, Aaron Rodgers has emerged. What's it mean, Where's he play or does he play? Give me my thoughts. Next in the Hurt

Thanks for listening to The Herd podcast. Be 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 you're listening to Fox Sports Radio. Is the Herd wherever you may be and however you make you listen to the show. Thanks so much. I've done gottli In for Colin Radio only they don't let this point them on TV. Huh du no, No, that means, as Colin tells you, when we go radio only, things get crazy. Um. Well, we'll get to some of the latest with Aaron Rodgers, maybe some of the latest with Lamar Jackson. Antonio Daniels to join us as the stretch under the NBA season begins tonight the new look Lakers part of Lebron's twenty three most important games of his career. That's him, That's what Lebron said. That's not us saying it. We'll get to all that, plus we'll continue to cover this what I think is a fascinating story in college sports and college basketball so let's start there, okay, And you know, I understand what happens when you know, you get closer to March and I guest host for People, and I've covered college basketball and covered the Final Four and work for Westwood One and all that. That's all you're talking about college basketball, because that's you're like, no, dude, I daily do the Dug Outlip Show, which follows Colin Show on many of these Fox Sports radio affiliates in the iHeartRadio app, and generally it's football, football, football, maybe spring football, and some NBA hoops. But in this story, which is kid named brand In Miller, I think most people now finally know his name. Brandon Miller is the number one NBA prospect in college basketball. Like, wait, why do you have to contextualize it that way? Well, it's important, you know, because you have the overtime elite, which is you have you have overtime, which is you know, overtime has been this digital property making a ton of money. And now they have their own like league, almost like a prep school league where kids get paid and all they do is hoop all day and they continue their education as well. They have they have a pair of twins or not a pair of They have twins, Thompson twins, one of which will one of whom will likely be a top five pick. There's the G League ignite. They have a kid, Scoot Henderson who will be probably the number two pick. And then there's Victor who's now we're told, seven foot five from France, who's going to be the number one overall pick. So college basketball takes kind of a back seat. And there's a player named Brandon Miller who's only a freshman having a great year in Alabama shockingly is the number one team in the country. And a story that came out that I mean something that had happened well over a month ago, was one of the Alabama players who was injured, Darius Miles, was charged with capitol murder in a shooting just off the campus and the strip strips where all the tusks and all the big bars are. There was a shooting late at night, so he had been removed from the team. The team had the school had, by all accounts, handled everything as well as could possibly be handled, supporting his family while still supporting the family of the victim, and completely erasing any sort of existence from the team's website activities, whatever, really had done a quality job handling. So the preliminary trial started this week and we found out that the handgun which belonged to the now former player Darius Miles, had been given to him or given back to him. Again, this is from the actual testimony of a detective by Brandon Miller, the school's best player. So of course people lost their mind. And then nat Oates, who's the head coach of Alabama, said basically like, hey, look it's it's wrong place, wrong time. You know, we can't control everything college kids do. He then later, and this is going back two days ago, came out with a statement after that press conference like I had poor choice of words. We're trying to be sensitive here, but it's the Brandon had done nothing wrong, had been charged with nothing, and as a full fledged member of the team. They have many people in my position like, ooh, you gotta take him out the floor. How could they do this? How could he be a part of it? He can never Clay Travis Natotes Willever coach another game. Brandon Miller would never play another game. Well, the details have started to come out, and what I said two days ago holds true. Today and two days ago. It was a more of a guess, knowing how these processes work, having done this for over twenty years, that hey, Natotes isn't playing Brandon Miller because he just wants to win games and he doesn't care about all this other stuff. Like that's not the way it works when you work for the University of Alabama, right, a land grant institution with you know, over a billion dollars in their um and there in their endowment, you know, an incredible institution not just of athletic glory but of higher learning. Like you're just going and playing a guy because you got to play a guy because you want to win some games. And it turns out to be true that he in order to play Brandon Miller, the ad the president, everybody has to sign off on it. In order them to sign off on it, they have to know unequivocally he had nothing to do with it. So Miller's attorney came out yesterday and they didn't have to, but they released kind of a statement showing like, look, Brendan Miller was drove a car, you know, went to dinner after a game. Darius Miles wanted to ride to a club, he took him to the club. The line was too long, he didn't want to wait in the line. And it still doesn't say whether he knew that that Miller had left a firearm in the back of his car, but it left the firearm in the back of his car, likely you know, covered up by some sort of clothing, and went about his business. Was at home to text message, hey dude, you gotta bring my my joint back, meaning I guess that's my gun. He comes back, drops somebody off, brings him back the gun. Never actually alleged to have touched the gun. They go into the back of the car, they get and then he's sitting in He's sitting on the street when all of a sudden shots ring out and he was actually part of the shooting and not part of the shooting. Having so the context does matter? Does matter. The attorney also said he doesn't own a gun, has never owned a gun, not comfortable in gun culture. This strikes me as as believable. But as Jason Stewart is my esteem producer, he's been doing this long time, said as well, if this basically comes down to, do you believe that Brendan Miller is a good person or somehow involved in this crime or involved in Hey here's the gun, and now look they're supported by video evidence where he had no part in it, didn't touch the gun, wasn't sitting there when the shots rang out and pointing at the victim, and like none of it. So I actually think that you don't have to look inside his head, look inside his heart, but you can point to all of the other things and the text message and the fact that there was But this, this is the point I want to get to, the most important Do you remember do you remember when Dez Bryant, Okay, when Dez Bryant, when it was it leaked out that Jeff Ireland, who is then the general manager of the Miami Dolphins, was alleged to have asked inappropriate questions to Dez Bryant during an interview in the pre JAFT process. Do you even remember that? Because what came out was Jeff Ireland asked Dez Bryant if his mom was a prostitute. And you're sitting there going like what who asked the man if his mom is a woman of the night, Like who does that? But that's where context matters, right, The conversation which later came out was supposedly something like this where he asked his, he asked his, he asked Jeff Ireland asked as Bryant, what's your dad do? Answer? My dad's a pimp. What's your mom do? My mom works for my dad? Follow up question, Hey, is your mom a prostitute? Right? That's a reasonable line of questioning when you're when you're trying to break bread with a young player, when you're trying to get to know him and he sits on your couch and he's at your facility and you're trying to figure out if you draft him. Hey, man, what's your dad do for a living? My dad's a pimp? Okay, what's your mom do? My mom works from my dad. Okay, I gotta ask here, right, Maybe you don't have to ask. That's where context matters. If the allegations or the video showed that Brandon Miller grabbed the gun, hands it to Darius Miles, Darius Miles hands it to this other character who ends up shooting up the car, and they're all sitting there and it's like, uh, karate kid, you know that other kid and Karate Kid that's like, yeah, Ken putting in the body bag. Right, If that's you, well then you're never going to play sports ever again your life. But if somebody leaves something in your car and they'd say, hey, man, come back, come back over here, bring that, bring that over to me. You're bringing over they grab it. Like again, if you're not a gun guy, you don't think in any way, like why would anybody shoot up a car? Like? Why would why would you do that? Who does that? Thinking? Looking your side, your own heart, can you do you have that in you? Of course not, of course not. You don't have that in you. Okay, Now, the next part of the story is, so Brandy Miller played last night, which, as I said on my show, as I've said on the college basketball show I do on Stadium, Alabama signed off on all of this stuff. They had all of this information previously. So if they would have held out Brandon Miller yesterday, they would have said that everything we did and investigated and cleared him up previously, well it turns out it wasn't good enough because of social media pressure. They played him. Oh he had forty one points and the game winner NADOs. His head coach was asked how Miller's situation affected the team. Here's his answer. It's hard to say we've been you know, the Vanderbilt game came after that, and it may have been. I mean, if I want to make an excuse for him, we can use it. But I'm not really a guy that makes too many excuses. We gotta played better. Some of those other guys didn't play up to their typical performance, so I'm I'm not sure. It Obviously could have been a distraction, but you know, Brandon showed up, played pretty well, so I think, you know, it may have just been coincidental. I don't know what will Hopefully we play a lot better Saturday. We need everybody play a little bit better Saturday for us. South Carolina's not a great team, But I mean, I don't know. You look at it, honestly, You're a nineteen year old kid, and suddenly the world thinks you're involved in a murderer that you, by all accounts, had no knowledge was going to occur, had nothing to do with. Right, you already have to carry a substantial amount of guilt. Right, that's if you're a normal, thoughtful human being, which my interaction with Brandon Miller and everybody else's is that's who he is. And when I'm sure you're every people are yelling and snickering and looking at you side eyed, you go out and drop forty one on the road and the game winner. It see incredibly impressive stuff, He asked me. What are your thoughts at Gottlieb Show Twitter, Instagram, however you want to communicate of the Doug got Leap Show fan page on Facebook. Here's sitting in for callin all right? Coming up next, Aaron Rodgers has reportedly completed his Darkness Retreat. So what next? What next? We'll discuss in The Herd. Be sure to catch live editions of The Herd weekdays and noon Easter nine am Pacific on Fox Sports Radio FS one and the iHeartRadio app Doug Gotli even for Collins The Herd Fox Sports Radio iHeartRadio app. There are so many things that are like little stories to get to. We can't diminish the importance this time of year of what it does for next year's football season. Right, the owner of the Darkness Retreat. Right, the owner of the Darkness Retreat has said that Aaron Rodgers has left his Darkness Retreat. So now we get to the business of Aaron Rodgers making some sort of decision. Sam Munson joins us here in the Herd on Fox Sports trade of the iHeartRadio appro Football because his lead NFL analyst, and Sam helped me out right. On one hand, you have Bob McGinn, who had covered the Packers for thirty years, saying like, I think they're done with him, and then Jeff Darlington, worked for ESPN yesterday says, hey, I talked to really important people and he's coming back. Does anybody have any real sense for what Aaron Rodgers is going to decide coming out of this darkness retreat? Well, first, can we just take a beat and think that this is what the world is in twenty twenty three. We're analyzing what Aaron Rodgers is deciding in the middle of a dark cave in four days of rest and recuperation. The world is as crazy. But I think the reality is nobody knows, Like I don't think that. I think what we're seeing is all these different reports are just a reflection of guesswork on various people's behalf and really we are all waiting for Aaron Rodgers to actually declare to somebody what he thinks he's going to do at the end of all this, Okay, what about in terms of what you guys do at Pro Football Focus, how big a decline was it last year in his performance? It was a big decline. His PF grading mark dropped by twenty points something like that. But it's the kind of decline we've seen from him before in similar circumstances. We kind of predicted something like this heading into the season, which is the last time he had a wide receiver room this bad was twenty fifteen. I think when Jordy Nelson went down before the season, they didn't really have a chance to find another alternative, and they had just this wide receiver room that really didn't have anybody capable of making the kind of plays he's been accustomed to. So his PFF grade went from ninety plus that kind of elite range either side of that year, and it dropped into the mid seventies that season when he didn't have that number one one wide receiver. So I think that's kind of what we expected it to be like this year, that if you don't have any kind of high end receiver. And I know Christian Watson came on late in the year and made some plays, but without that true number one guy, you're not going to get that MVP caliber Rogers that we know is still in there. Okay, Lamar Jackson another guy in the news, And one of the things that's interesting about Lamar is he won the MVP and people want to just kind of stick on, well, he won the MVP. He did, But in the seasons since again, and I'm not talking the advanced metrics that you guys break down, but the basic metrics in the old school stats hasn't been nearly as good. Now. Two years ago, they had so many injuries, like you couldn't even list them, right, I mean everyone in their backfield. But you know, like, look, he's there. He's always been their best running back. And he only played ten games in both the past two seasons. That's missing fourteen games. And again, the raw production hasn't been as good. Okay, Obviously Baltimore or whomever wants him to be a quarterback, but in terms of elite level quarterback play, how did he actually play last season when healthy? I think last season was the closest we've seen to that MVP year in terms of his ability passing the football. Obviously, we know what he is as a runner. It's special. It's pretty much maintained that incredible level every single year. But that MVP season was by far the best passing season we've seen from him. And generally speaking, his big plays, the kind of exciting, highly graded throws, those are stayed fairly constant in his career. Where it's fluctuated has been the mistakes and the really bad plays and the kind of what we call turnover worthy plays, so we grade plays like dropped interceptions that should have been interceptions even if they didn't actually end up being caught by the defender in question. Last year was the lowest number of turnover worthy plays that he's had since that MVP season, and I think it was his best passing performance since that year. I'm interested in Derek Carr. The Jets reportedly told Derek Carr, hey man, come play for the Jets. You'll be a Hall of Famer. There was a lot wrong with the Raiders this year. Heck, there's a lot wrong with the Raiders last year. You go back to two years he got the playoff here two years ago, he was His leadership was obvious considering all the other things going on, coaching change, arrest of the star wide receiver of Henry Ruggs, etc. Where do you guys, Where do you guys view Derek Carr in terms of the landscape of quarterbacks in the National Football League. I think he's a good starting quarterback. The problem that he has, and that maybe the Jets are facing right now, is that good might not get you anywhere anymore. And there's basically nothing in his career to suggest that he is all a fame quarterback or whatever it is they're selling him in this visit to try and get him over here. The league has changed, and if you don't have an elite quarterback right now, you better have a guy on a rookie contract earning not much money so that you can offset the difference that that is going to make. Derek you need. He's middle He's the middle class, right, He's the literally, yeah, he's the middle class. Like he's he's not mahomes Day, He's not any of these super league guys. He's good, But like, Okay, would you do you spend thirty five million on a guy when if you have a rookie on a rookie deal, you can use that thirty five million to fill out your roster exactly, and he's earning that kind of money and then is going to have to go toe to toe with those guys, not just within the division against Josh Allen if he goes to the Jets, but in the AFC, in the playoffs, he's gonna have to knock off a sequence of Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert Trevor, Lawrence, Patrick Mahomes. You're gonna need to beat three or four those guys in a row. And it just seems very very hard to imagine Derek Carr putting that kind of run together. I agree with you. Any idea, like, what's the actual data say about Sean Payton and his quarterbacks? Right? I know that that breeze aged his last couple of years in New Orleans. They got it okay, And maybe there's some of that with Russell. Maybe he was carrying too much weight, Maybe it was the system, maybe it was the change, maybe it was a lot of things. But most people believe, like, hey, if there's one guy who can fix one guy who can fix Russell Wilson, it's got to be Sean Payton. How good we're Sean Payton's offense, most specifically, quarterback played the last couple of years in New Orleans. Yeah, and I think you know, obviously people tie in to Drew Brees and say try and diminish Sean Payton, sometimes by saying, look at any any coach with Drew Brees as their quarterback would look great. And it's probably true. But his resume before Drew Brees was outstanding. Like the reason he got the Saints job in the first place, he had done really good work in multiple different places with some quarterbacks that were not Hall of Fame caliber Drew Brees type players. And his record with non Drew Brees quarterbacks in New Orleans is outstanding as well. Maybe not in terms of production the kind of numbers they put out relative to Breeze, but he won games with guys that were not great quarterbacks. I think his track record is a very good one in terms of building an offense, in terms of doing what works. And I would have as much confidence in Sean Payton fixing Russell Wilson as anybody. The question, though, still remains, is that possible Now? I don't know, right It's like it's like one of those once it goes, it goes, doesn't it. I just it's really it's going to be very hard to tell what the reasonable expectations are for the Broncos and more specifically for Russell Wilson. I think the big question this year's upcoming NFL draft is Bryce Young, Right, And Bryce Young is one of these guys that if you watch him play, and heck, I've seen him play in high school, watch him play in college, Like he just makes plays. There's there's zero negatives with exception of well, the one glaring tangible in that he's not just small in stature. He's not a big human being, right, Like, he's not He's not built. Even Russell's kind of built low and wide and you know, like thicker, long arms, big hands like Bryce Young's like one hundred and seventy pounds one hundred and seventy five pounds. Is there a what is the truth about smaller quarterbacks and their their level of production? Well, the first thing is, so there's a bunch of reasons teams are scared as small quarterbacks. Um Number one is they think they're going to get hurt more often than bigger quarterbacks. The data actually says the opposite. It says big quarterbacks get hurt more often than small quarterbacks small quarterbacks because it's not about your size, it's about how you play the game and what kind of hits you expose yourself too. So you can be a small quarterback and if you're smart about it, if you avoid hits, if you get rid of the football, if you don't expose yourself to those shots, you're probably not going to get injured as much as other guys that do put themselves in harm's way. The second reason teams are scared of it is there is an issue with those guys seeing the middle of the field. You know, if you're five to eleven, if you're five ten, you just don't have the kind of view of the middle of the field twenty yards down field that guys are six foot six too. It's obvious, right, you're never going to have that kind of ability. So you need to be something, you need to be good at something else that lets you offset that. And for Russell Wilson, for years, he was able to run around behind the line of scrimmage, open up new throwing lanes, new sort of vision windows, and make big plays down the field. And he was arguably the best deep ball thrower in the NFL. But the big point about Bryce Young is he's extreme, even by the standard of small quarterbacks. Like he said, Russell Wilson probably outweighs him by forty pounds something like that. Bryce Young is going to be the smallest quarterback that has come along since offensive lineman weighed like two hundred and thirty pounds in the sixties. Like he is, he's unprecedented small. But if he wasn't, if we were talking about a guy that was six to two hundred and ten pounds, he would be easily the best quarterback in this draft class. And I think we'd probably be talking about him as a generational talent. But he's not. And so it's really it's a it's a hard call, Like he'll obviously naturally add some weight, but will it be enough way to truly truly make it, truly make a difference, be gonna be interesting? Yeah, I mean, he really makes you appreciate just how big NFL quarterbacks are generally, you know, when you see I mean, he's a normal size guy, Bryce Young. I'm I'm five eleven one eighty and I'm a little bit bigger and a little bit taller than he is. But NFL quarters or six four, two hundred and twenty pounds. Like it's a different world, completely different worlds. Sam, great stuff, everybody pro Football focused for the good work. We'll talk to you soon. Appreciate you, Thanks for having me take it at Sam Munson. Pro Football focuses, lead NFL analyst, getting ready for the draft and obviously would you know, like like NFL free agency has been a bonanza the past couple of years. No reason to think this you will be any different. Let's get to Herd Line News with Jason Stewart. No, no turn on the news. This is the Herd Line News. What do you got, Jay stew Well, Hello, Doug Um, Eric b Enemy maybe you've heard of him. The new offensive coordinator for the Washington Commanders was introduced to the media today and he talked about it not being fair to talk about the head coaching possibilities as he has a job to do right Omni the offensive coordinator of the Washington Commanders. Okay, being a head coach, that's something if that's to happen, and to take care of itself. We've had a great deal of success. We've went what five straight AFC Championship games, three out of four super Bowls. Two out of those we won. So being a head coach right now, it hasn't happened. It's not anything that's gonna impact me moving forward because the only thing I need to concern be concerned with it's what's important today. Today. I got to be the best person that I can be. I gotta be the best coach that I can be. And on top of that, I got to get these guys in this building and learn to trust me, to get to know me, but also understanding what the term accountability means. I have to be accountable to these men. All right. So all that stuff about being a head coach, we could talk about that next year sometime. Right now, I'm focused on the job at hand. What do you think, Duck, I think, having watched most of all the press conferences exactly as Eric bi enemy was sold to me, which is likable. You know, once the whole dude's accountable, says the right things, not a ton of details into the actual plan of attack. But now you get a chance to see now it's completely his baby, and and we'll see. Um. My opinion didn't change because my opinion was based has always been based upon the thoughts of others and nothing was said or done to change that, if that makes any sense. Yeah, and more. For more of Doug's opinion, I encourage you to go to the iHeartRadio app and download an episode of the Dan Patrick Show on I Think Tuesday with with Rob Parker. Doug will make his points clear in many ways. Moving on, I don't know if you saw this, Doug, but Caleb Williams did an interview recently. Now, Caleb Williams is a usc quarterback who isn't even eligible for the draft until next year, but he actually said that the Miami Dolphins would probably be his number one spot. Now that's interesting, interesting onto itself, but making it more interesting, Tyreek Hill liked a story of Caleb Williams saying that the Dolphins would likely be his number one spot. Um, doesn't Tyreek Hill have a quarterback here, Doug? Yeah, I mean it's like one of those this is who Tyreek Hill is though. But yeah, man, I mean the the the blind loyalty to to a tongue of ioloa just I guess disappeared. Um, But but you know what a lot of it is. Do you know how to take a compliment? Question? Jo? That's a question. I thought it was rhetorical. Don't know how to take one? Do you know how to take Probably not as well, not as gracefully as I should. I think everyone could. I think that's a That's a big thing for a lot of people, is they just struggle with implements, right like, where like you want to say thank you, but you want to actually mean something more, and so you kind of try to put together a Schmoga's boards of words and it doesn't really work out. I think part of this is Tyreek Hill. It's just a compliment, like Caleb Bullian saying, like, man, I'd love to play with those dudes. They're so like, who would love to play with with Tyreek Hill? Tyreek Hill just makes you look better because you throw him up, you know, you throw him a slant and he goes to the house. You know, you a jet sweep can go to the house. Any sort of ball you put up to him, he can just go get. He can literally can win you a game on his own. I went to that Charger Dolphins game, and if you remember the game, at halftime, I don't think the Dolphins had not been on the Chargers side of the field. They had zero successful drives per se. But they had a fumble that Tyreek Hill picked up and ran to the house, and I I think they had one other catch and run to the house was like seventy eighty yards. Like the disparity in the quarterback play between Justin Herbert and to a Tongue of Iola was so start. One guy looked like a JV quarterback, the other guy looked like a superstar, and yet the score was not indicative why because of Tyreek Hill. So I think a lot of this is Caleb Williams just given a compliment to be like, man, I'd love to play with those guys, and Tyreek Hill not knowing what to do with themselves. Guys just don't know how to handle compliments. So that's what I think. It's more about that Dolphin Chargers game, by the way, will forever be known as the game or Emmanuel Acho saw in person that he was wrong about Tah for the rest of the season anyways, as he says, And by the way, learning how to take a compliment is one of those social graces that's very underrated. And I didn't even think about that until you brought it up. So so what what's your what's your go to when somebody gives you a couple? If I say, Jason, when you were on blind Date, and by the way, if you guys, ever you want to have some fun during a break, google Jason. Google Jason Stewart blind Date. And it was outstanding. I mean it was super entertaining. Okay, so what is your go to? Somebody goes Jason, let me tell you, I'm blind date. You were hilarious. You should be in movies, you should do stand up comedy. You were incredible. What's your Somebody you don't know and they just throw out somebody you respect, says Paul Paul. Paul Rudd gives you that compliment, What do you say? I say, thank you. I appreciate that. I don't know if I agree with all that, but thank you, Paul Um. And I loved you in forty year Old Virgionum, but as my as my good friend in that movie, I hated that as my good friend and they still haven't been paid for that movie. My good friend and radio con Victor Brick jacobs his retort, I think his response is the best. When someone compliments Vic, he says, flattery will get you everywhere. Victor Brick feeling I am feeling you. Last note, Russell Westbrook was introduced to the media yesterday as a member of the Clippers, and this is how he sees himself fitting in. For me, He's just finding my way to be able to help other guys is something I truly embracing, you know. That's what I would do and make sure I can make the game easy for all these guys that are here, find out their spots, what they like, what they don't like. Um, and that's gonna be a process of me. But I'm ready for the challenge and looking forward to it. And head coach Tylu added later that he just wants Russ to be Russ, the old cliche, Russ to be Russ. How do you think this works out there, Doug not, Well, it doesn't. I get that. On paper, it all makes sense. Tylu wanted to be the Lakers coach. They only offered him a three year deal. He walked, He balked at it. Right now, he's still employed with the Clippers, whereas the man who was hired instead, who won a championship, is not. I get it. Russell Westbrook was you know, recruited by Lebron, then Lebron, I'm sure by his estimation turned his back on him. Right, there's the energy of hey across the hall. You know, they don't like us, yet we keep kicking their ass or whatever. But the Clippers are put together to win a championship. And I love the idea of a chip on your shoulder. So I did Clippers chip shoulder? And anyway, but like what leads us to believe that this will work? It didn't work in Houston, it didn't work with the Lakers. Why would it work with the Clippers? And he's had no time to remake him to make to have a makeover, right, you had no time to gather your thought like why did it not work? Why was my personality grading? You know, statistically he was better this year than last year, Yet they couldn't wait to get him out the door. Why is that? So? I mean, he still can't shoot, He's still not a great defender. He's used to playing with the ball in his hands, and it's just hard to find a spot with him unless you have four other really good shooters. And so it's lineup dependent. I don't know, I just I like the Clippers, you know they but they traded off Reggie Jackson and John Wall for Russell Westbrook and Bones Highland. I think Bones Highlands a better score than Russell Westbrook. At this point in his career. Russ just is gonna get can you can you play Russ five ten minutes a game and him be happy to be a positive influence on the team. I don't think that's the case. I don't see it working out great. And that's Jason Stewart with the news. Well, that's the news. We have more details emerging from Baltimore and the end of the season and why Lamar Jackson didn't play. Cover those details and what it means for the future of the relationship between team and player. That's next time. Doug Gottlieb, This is the Herd. Be sure to catch live editions of The Herd week dayson noon Easter ninety Empacific. Palli Fusco here with Tony Fusco. Of course, you know us as the host of the number one rated Polly and Tony Fusco show the world Right now, We all know you sick and tired of these stupid sports shows where the host say stupid things like Tom Brady's the Goat or Lebron James is good at basketball, which he is clearly not. See. We give you smart takes and we also bring on so called famous guests from across the sports world and show them why we know much more than they do. The show. Listen to the Folly and Tony Fusco Show on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Doug Doug gott Leaving for Colin, It's The Herd on Fox Sports Rader, the iHeart Radio app. The article out and Jeremy Fowler is the author of it, along with Jameson Hensley, who covers the Baltimore Ravens on this past season and kind of the weird end to it where Lamar Jackson And for people who haven't been aware, he's actually missed ten of the last twenty two games regular season in postseason games the Ravens have played. Okay, so almost half of their last twenty two games he's missed, and there was times of frustration this year. There's obviously been some social media moments where people have supported him and he's liked their support or pushed back on them with the you know, if you don't love Lamar Jackson a two hundred fifty million dollars. You don't love Lamar. There's this classic disconnect I think even some players, but definitely in the media and with fans. Whereas this idea that the Ravens don't want to pay him, right, you either do or don't want to pay him. And again, this is a lot like what we talked about to start the show, talking about that context actually matters. Yeah, we want to pay him, Yeah, I want to be our quarterback, but we want to have reasonable cost certainty for the years in which he's our quarterback. We also got to protect ourselves, Like, here's a dude who's played ten games each of the past two years, missed ten of the last twenty two games we've played overall, and this is in the prime of his athletic career. One would think the older you get, the more you slow down, the more prone to injury you are. And the more you slow down, the more you can get hit. The more you get a hit, the more you can get a hurt. Right, And why are we comparing contracts to the Deshaun Watson contract, which is an outlier where the Ravens are just they're handling as such, we're just comparing it to Russell Wilson's contract, to Kyler Murray's contract, and how much better a contract it is. But there is a lot of and the Ravens seem to have handled it perfectly in the media. And the reason that Lamar's injury was tweeted out by Lamar is well, if you don't have an agent, that's part of what agents do. They leak things to the schefters of the world so that so that people know your side. It's just weird when it comes from you. It's like Lebron calling himself the greatest player ever. It doesn't mean that he doesn't think it's true if he doesn't say it, but it's something that other people should say, not you. People I've talked to in the NFL said this deal would have been done if he had an agent. If he had an agent. I think so much of it, So much of it is the trappings of, honestly a social media and people saying like, hey, bet on yourself, Like okay, not every time you bet on yourself doesn't actually work, and oh yeah, by the way, you're not actually a free agent. The idea of being able to move wherever you want to move and do whatever you want to do, Like that's not a reality. Some teams will will have acquiesced is. You know you don't you don't want to do the franchise tag, you don't want to play here, We'll move you. But if you're a franchise quarterback Ravens are under they do not they absolutely do not have to negotiate anything can handy the franchise tag. Then do it again next year. Heck, they get into it a third year if they want, which ends up being about the same amount in guarantees, right, because the third year is a transition tag they do not have. Now it hurts them against the cap because it's dollar for dollar against the cap and hurts your ability to put a team around you. And there's no question they want to sign him, sign him to a long term deal and put off some of the cap hit for later years. The cap continues to grow. But you have, you know, you have supporters of Lamar and sycophants in the media and in social media saying hey pay him, and the Ravens in there going like we want to pay him, We just I don't want to equal up to a ridiculous contract. Think about your street you live on. Now. Okay, let's say the street you live on. Now, every home is worth four hundred thousand dollars, right, every home. And then at the end of the street, there's this home that was bought for nine hundred thousand dollars and it's got a big yard, it's got a big lot, it's all redone or whatever. Nine hundred thousand dollars. And you know, it usually happens. Somebody moves in from out of the market and they don't know the prices, and they massively overpaid for the house, right because they moved in, they got a bunch of kids, they're trying to get a job. First, they did let a relocation company do it. They just did it. So the other houses on the street had started to become worth more five hundred thousand or soft, but still that one was nine. So now the market sorts of starts to settle, and a house pops up on the market and a guy a couple doors down from the nine hundred thousand dollar house puts it on the market for nine hundred thousand. Hey man, this is a comp I should get the same amount. And it just sits there because the rest of the There's the reason when you get comps, you get five comps, you don't get one. It doesn't allow thee for the outlier high or low. That's what Lamar's dealing with. That's what he's dealing with. And the same trying to sell a house without an agent. It seems easy, but sometimes you need a real estate Sometimes you need a real agent to sit in there and have hard conversations and then soften the blow when they talk to you. Instead, you get the hey, dude, we'd love to pay you, but we're not going to give you five years guaranteed. You've been hurt the past two years. And while there's nothing wrong with you, it's not we can't field the team around you if you're taking up this much of the pie. You know, most of the players thought he would be back for the playoffs. He wasn't. He was supposedly sick, and then all of a sudden he comes up with the kneesdille injuring him. They didn't question it, but boy, it does look like if he had the contract, would he have played against the Bengals. And if he's playing against the Bengals, don't they beat the Bengals. All right, Aaron Rodgers has emerged. What's it mean, Where's he play or does he play? Give me my thoughts. Next in the Hurt