September 21, 2017 • 36 mins
Doug gives his thoughts on why the NFL ratings are down, because like many things in life, too much of anything can become a bad thing. He tells you why Andrew Luck might sit out the remainder of the season and what that means for the Colts going forward. Enes Kanter from the Thunder joins the show to talk about Kevin Durant's twitter comments explaining why he left in free agency.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is the best of the Doug Gottlieb Show on
Fox Sports Radio Boom, What Up America, Doug Gottlieb Show,
Fox Sports Radio, Live and Direct from the hearts of
the City of Angels. Welcome in. I hope you're doing well,
getting ready for oh days, Today, days, Tuesday, just to
(00:23):
day seems off, you know it's missing today? Well. John
Romis is here from the ones and two is our
technical director. Ryan Music's here. Our producer of course, Dan
Buyers here. You'll hear him with updates. You can hear
him on the weekends here on Fox Sports Radio. They're
all you're what, what is what is missing? What's off?
What's what's going on today? There's no football. That's it.
(00:48):
That's what's gotta be missing. There's no football. So you
feel kind of off. When it's something you love the
most and you don't get a chance to see it,
you just don't quite feel right, right, h I think
that's the way i'd express it. I mean in life,
where there's somebody, some a person you love and you
don't see them or don't talk to them, you feel off.
(01:12):
If not, maybe you haven't experienced that in your life.
I generally think that's part of it. But we have
that off feeling less and less. That's because football has
become all consuming. And I don't think it's just the
NFL's doing. I think it's frankly, everyone's doing college football,
high school football, etcetera, etcetera. But there's a there's a
(01:34):
little bit of a freak out from the major broadcast networks,
and that's because NFL numbers are down. Scoring is down.
But is that why viewershippers down? Because you wouldn't have
tuned not tuning in, you wouldn't have known. You wouldn't
(01:55):
have known that the scoring was down. Right, here's my theory,
maybe not theory, hypotheses, right. A theory is something that's
proven out over time to be uh, some sort of
scientific fact. Is that a fair way of would put
it right? So this is more hypotheses. This is an
educated guess. I don't believe there's just one factor in
(02:17):
why NFL numbers are down. I think there's a lot.
Like I read, did anybody read the book The Tipping Point?
You guys read that book The Tipping Point. Um, they're
supposed to be one moment in which something tips, something changes,
something swings, pop culture to all of a sudden want
to wear stubby shorts or Jimmy Z shorts, or to
(02:39):
peg their genes or whatever we did when we were kids.
But in reading the tipping Point, I realized that there's
a bunch of things that cause something to tip to
sway and then fall into that favor. So, look, we
have the ability now to watch any show we want,
any almost any time we want, with the exception of
(03:01):
live sporting events. And what was different about the NFL forever,
or at least about sports forever, is sports you can't
DVR storts. You have to watch as live. And so
that's what drove up the value of sports. It wasn't
that sports was killing it in terms of numbers. It's
that sports numbers hadn't gone down because sports was impervious,
(03:25):
or at least we were told to the Hey, if
I don't catch it, I'll just DVRT and watch it later.
All right, I like this is us, But I gotta
be honest that this is us. I watched the whole
first season. I watched it on demand. Breaking Bad. I
didn't watch Breaking Bad until like a year and a
half ago. I binged watched every episode, Game of Thrones.
(03:45):
I know some of you guys are Game of Thrones
guys haven't watched the episode. At some point I will.
It'll be like a month, probably when I'm traveling. I'll
download every episode and I'll catch up and I'll be
like like, oh, this is really cool. Why did somebody
tell me about this? I know you all told me
about this. But sports you can't do that. You can't
go up to somebody in the street and go, hey, man,
how about that Week one NFL hah ha? How about
(04:08):
the Packers? You see the Packers and the Seahawks, and man,
I'm really concerned about the Seahawks. Packers are all some
best team in the NFL. People like, uh, they just
lost the Falcons. Like, no, they didn't. I just saw
the game when they lost to the when they when
they beat the Seahawks. I can't do it with sports.
So what happened was all the TV networks are like, no,
(04:30):
these are the tooth live events. That's why there's so
many award shows. Think about how many music award shows
there are, and even quasi award shows. That's the same
reason that there's so many of these variety shows. America's
got talent which looks peculiar and almost interesting like America's Idol,
kind of on steroids, like why is that again? Live
(04:52):
events end up drawing more viewership, But what's happened even
with those shows? America American Idol is big, and so
the voices created, America's got talent is created, so you
think you can dances created, etcetera, etcetera. We've done that
in the NFL. People want to know why the NFL
(05:13):
numbers are down, that's because football is on too much.
When I was a kid, I grew up in southern California,
and Rick D's was the big DJ on Kiss FM.
Now it's a Now it's Ryan Sea Christ I was,
and in addition to d Slee's, which was like all
the low down on what was going on in Hollywood.
(05:34):
It's great right by the way, you see Billy Bush
at his wife for twenty years, they're splitting up. I
guarantee Trump cost another marriage, There's no question there, Tony Um.
But in addition to the fact he had some other
kind of quirky things. I remember in second grade the
(05:55):
first time I've ever heard Madonna, it was borderline, and
I felt like I heard it three, five minutes on
one or two seven, right. And there's something that I
didn't know then that I do know now being in
the radio industry for mind, almost my entire professional life.
It's the what do they tell us ramos when they
tell you in FM radio, they tell you in sports
(06:16):
talk radio as well, what's what's what's the what's the expression?
The always play the hits, always play the hits. Well, look,
we all grew up being taught play the hits. Worked
for Rick D's play Borderline every thirty minutes, because if
you hear Borderline being played twice, they got you, they
got their talents in you. You're hooked. You listen for
(06:38):
dirty straight minutes and you heard it twice, right, That's
an advertiser's dream. Meanwhile, the rest of the world listens
for five, six, seven, eight minutes and then they move on.
And so the idea is it's a totally due audience
every fifteen or twenty minutes anyway, So if you replay
the song, at least you're giving them what they want. Well,
that's what we've done with sports, and that's what we've
(06:58):
done with the NFL. It's on Thursday, it's on Sunday. No, wait,
it's on Sunday morning online this week as the Jaguars
go to London and play the Baltimore Ravens. Then it's
on Sunday night. Then it's on Monday night. What used
to be I could only watch my team play on
(07:19):
a Sunday and then watch one Monday night football game
is now Sunday night is the new Monday night. Monday
night is one game too many, And and Thursday night
we discussed last week, is bad football. So the more
we play the hits, the more we get worn down
by it and things get played out right, Like even
(07:43):
my kids use that term. I I cannot hear that
Bieber song again. It's played out. I kind of think
that's what's happened in the NFL. I play fantasy football,
so does everybody. So footballs on everywhere, on every channel.
(08:03):
We discuss it at nauseam. It's on Thursday, it's on
Sunday morning, it's on Sunday afternoon, it's on Sunday night,
it's on Monday night, to which you're like, wait a second,
that's just too much. Everyone always uses the less is more,
less is more, or less is more or less is more.
(08:23):
But when you're making money, you do more is more, right,
And I kind of think that the NFL isn't less popular.
It's just as popular, if not even more popular, even
more mainstream than it's ever been. But our incessant need
to play the hits has caused everybody to play the
exact same hit toever. Like there's nothing special about a
(08:48):
Thursday night came, there's nothing special about a Monday night came.
Sunday night is usually the best game. Ah, that's my hypotheses.
Do we think music? I'm I don't watch NFL football
any less. I watched it the exact same amount, but
the numbers are telling you that people are watching it less.
(09:10):
I have one other hype addition to the hypothesis, as
one of the kind of the litany of things, we've
taken away a lot of the big hits, right. This
is a lot like when you took when Wayne Gretzky
and the guys tried to take fighting out of hockey.
NASCAR has tried to take out some of those horrific
crashes out of NASCAR restrictor plate racing, trying to keep
(09:31):
those cars from getting too fast and elevating and getting
too dangerous, right, But the truth is that we watch
hockey for fights, we watched NASCAR for crashes, and we
watched the NFL for those ridiculous hits games. Kind of boring. Alright,
go ahead, music, what do you think? Yeah? I just
think that for most people now, they don't they don't
(09:54):
devote an entire day to just watching football because it's
so readily available to them. So when you look at
things like well, Football Night in America, the ratings are down, like, well,
that's likely because maybe they watched the game. You know,
if you're on the West Coast, you you've been watching
football since tenant in the morning, and you don't necessarily
want to be doing it until ten at nights, So
your total viewership is going to be down, which is
(10:16):
sort of what people have talked about, and I know,
like people at like Fox Sports have talked about this,
is that it's not necessarily the total amount of people
watching is down. It's more that people aren't watching for
as long anymore, and that's why the ratings are down.
People are tuning in, but as soon as they tune
in there then tuning out. Would you say, I couldn't
(10:36):
hear you. I tuned in for a little bit and
then I tuned out. Ramos, What about you, Obviously it's different.
You've got two kids, you're uh, you're a bottom dwelling
soccer coach on the weekend. That does take up some
of your time. What would you like to offer up
um some some statement as to why you believe some
(10:57):
of the numbers are down in in NFL viewership. I
think that people just want to watch their team, and
if their team's not on TV, they don't want to
watch the games. They don't really care about what other
teams are doing. It's kind of like in fantasy football,
like you said earlier, you watch your team, your players,
and you don't care about what other players are doing.
But see, I think that's that's what fantasy football has
(11:19):
helped the NFL, and that you watch teams you would
never watch before. Like I would never, ever, ever care
about half of these teams in the NFL if I'm
the mainstream fan, unless I have money on the game,
or unless I have a fantasy football player. I think
it's made rivalries less vicious as well, because you're like, well,
I don't like the guy Buddy scored a touchdown. He
(11:39):
helped my fantasy team win. Be sure to catch live
editions of The Doug gott Leaps Show weekdays at three
p m. Easter noon Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and
the I Heart Radio app. Kevin Clark Twins the show
he writes for The Ringer. He wrote wrote an article
that we discussed a little bit yesterday, and it starts
to delve into what's really missing in the national football again.
(12:00):
It's kind of the maybe the untold part of it. Kevin,
how are you. I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. Um.
You said the title of the article. I don't know
if you wrote the title was how football stopped being fun.
You talked about completion percentage being an all time high,
and you're going to Chris Simms, which just a great quote.
You show me a team with a great completion percentage,
I'll automatically think your offense probably sucks. What is it
(12:22):
about the actual game play that has that, by your estimation,
has caused football to be a tougher watch than it
used to be. Well, all the quarterbacks are generally competent now,
and what ended up happening maybe in the last five
five to six years, is that they could complete passes
really easily. And I think there were a lot of coordinators,
a lot of quarterbacks, a lot of head coaches who said,
(12:45):
you know what, if we can complete a pass, if
we can have a sixty completion percentage instead of throwing
a lot of incompletions are going down field, that is
a win for us. And so since to what happened is,
with the exception of the top top quarterbacks in the NFL,
the vast majority are now going for order completions, take
less criticism, um, take less risks, you know, and and
(13:05):
live to live another down basically. And so essentially what
happened is, uh, you know, five years of that and
all of a sudden, every quarterbacks doing it's Sam Bradford
completion percentage last year and it was one of the
worst offenses we've ever seen. And as far as you know, uh,
aesthetics and so it's it's trending towards an ugly place
where there's not a lot of downfield passing. And that's
(13:26):
the stuff people like it is, and it's it's now
part of the rules have also helped that too, as
you point out, you know, past interference is so tight,
right you can't touch a quarterback. Everything they do is
to protect the passing game and to protect the wide
receivers to that plays. Main it's almost like we so
badly want the great quarterback to make the great past,
to have the great catch, when we artificially trying to
(13:47):
create that with the rules, we actually end up getting
a super boring catch right over the middle, where instead
of a hard hit, now a guys just kind of
corralled and brought down exactly. And that's one of the
things I've talked to see fees about this for the
past three or four years. Teams game plan because they
know defensive backs are scared of fine stug and what
ends up happening is they basically will throw a drag
(14:10):
route to a tight end, or they'll float throw to
a slot receiver and they'll say, you can just catch
this and get six yards, and we'd rather have that
than throw to a you know, an outside guy. If
Randy Moss played now, he wouldn't get as money passes
because they wouldn't want to go outside the hash marks
like that. So NFL offenses are taking vantage of the rules,
and it's probably not in the way the NFL intended.
(14:30):
They want those sort of uh down the field, you know,
eight yard bomb type things like we saw ten years ago.
And it's just not gonna happen because the lack of
quarterback talent. You just mentioned lack of quarterback talent. It
seems it should be the opposite, right Like, And I
don't know how old you are, Like, I'm I'm how
old am I think I'm forty one? I don't know, Um,
(14:50):
But like when we were growing up, teams, high school
teams never throw a football, right Like Brett Farve never
throw a football in high school and his dad was
his coach, um. And then you know, college teams very
rarely did teams throw. Now everybody throws like high school
teams are running spread. College teams obviously throw it all
the time. If there's so much more development of quarterbacks
(15:12):
throwing a football at a younger age, wouldn't we have
a greater dearth of both quarterbacks and wide receivers to
throw the ball and throw the ball down field. Well,
there's there's a couple of things at play here, Doug,
And it's a very complicated question. I've written a lot
about this and talked a lot of gms and coaches
about it. The throwing is helping. Andy Reid has talked
about this. You know, fifteen years ago it used to
(15:33):
be oh, they're not throwing enough. Now they're throwing almost
too much. The concepts are very simple. UH. Schools like
Baylor have produced some of the let's say, less knowledgeable
quarterbacks as far as at the NFL level, um that
than than the NFL has ever seen. Guys who couldn't
identify a cover two, who couldn't identify the mic linebacker,
stuff like that. And so they're getting Yes, they're getting
(15:53):
reps as far as throwing at the lower levels, but
they're not getting the knowledge. And the problem is once
they get to the NFL level, the def are so
complex that you've got to be able to check into plays.
You've got to be able to audible with the line.
You know. I do a story in the two thousand
seven Patriots a couple of months ago, and they told
me they had twelve plays they could check into when
they went when they went to the line. UH. And
NFL offenses now can't do that because the quarterbacks just
(16:14):
don't grow up in that environment. They the spread system
is very simple, and once it gets complicated, those guys
tend to struggle. Um, I thought, there's there's some similarities
there in terms of watchability to I don't know if
you pay attention to this. In Major League Baseball baseball
this year home runs they just at the all time
mark for single season home runs in the sport. That
just happened last night. And if you for people in
(16:37):
the game told me like, hey, there's kind of a
problem here in terms of the watchability. Um, thirty four
percent of the time, all you need on a baseball
field is the picture the catcher and the hitter because
either strikeout, walk or hit a home right at thirty
four percent of the time. And while it seems like
that would make for more home runs and we all
grew up in the chicks dig the long ball because
(16:59):
there's such lulls in between it that baseball can be
quite tedious and quite boring, even even by baseball standards
to watch. Is that is there some similarities there to
that in football? Absolutely. I had a discussion with one
of our baseball writers, Ben Lindbergh, last night. We were
talking about this, and we were just saying, every sport
is changing dramatically. I mean, you know exactly, and but
(17:23):
but The problem with baseball and football is that efficiency
in those sports is not as exciting as maybe ten
or fifteen years ago. Whereas basketball, who doesn't want to
see Steph Curry drain threes? That's really exciting? Uh? In soccer?
You know, who doesn't want to see Leono messie. I
mean it's just the problem now is that is that
the smartphone generation, the Instagram generation, they want to see
(17:46):
really cool plays. And if baseball is just the three
trough outcomes like you talked about strikeouts, home runs, you know,
I mean that that's not as exciting as basketball, as soccer,
and the football is having the same problem. If it's
only six yard passes and then it comes onto whether
or not the linebacker can make a tackle, that's a
problem for the younger generation. There's a reason football and
baseball are not as popular with the younger generations as
(18:08):
as young sports. It's not fascinating. Um okay, So Kevin
Clark joining us from the Ringer, you should we'll tweet
out again the article, but you should go to the
Ringer and check it out. How football stop being funny?
Joins us here on the Doug Out Lip Show, Fox
Sports Tradio Okay, you've done a great job identifying the problem.
How do you fix it? I think it's a coaching
problem at one At one level, I think that you
(18:29):
have to get coaches and look, chip Kelly had a
lot of problems, and not all of them were scheme,
but chip Kelly had an outside the box idea of
how an NFL offense should be run. The quarterbacks are
not going to change. High school and college coaches are
winning and putting up a lot of points with the
spread system, and they're not going to go the opposite
way just to make NFL coaches feel warm and flossy.
(18:51):
So you have to get coaches who understand everything. I'm
not saying that that Bill Laser and Cincinnati is going
to be you know a great reason that Andy Dalton,
you know, has it read direction this year. What I
am saying is he he's the offensive coordinator. Now he
coached under Chip Kelly, He's going to at least be
able to incorporate some spread principles. You have to hire
guys who have understanding of the spread principles because for
(19:11):
too long now. I did the story a couple of
weeks ago. Stephen Jones of the Dallas Cowboys. Jerry's son
said that they had Connor Cook above Dak Prescott on
their draft board because Connor Cook played the pro offense
in college and Dak played in the spread. You cannot
think that way. And so I think the biggest thing
is taking these quarterbacks and just developing them, identifying them better,
(19:32):
and just getting to a point where they can throw downfield. Again,
It's not that hard. It just requires a little more
creative thinking, haven't it has Isn't that what Arizona has
tried to do. I mean, isn't that the Bruce Arians
thing and trying to get get chunk plays and it
it hasn't It worked for in the short term, but
it hasn't worked in a long term. Yeah, I mean
it certainly worked in Atlanta. It worked in Arizona for
for basically two and a half years. Carson Palmer probably
(19:54):
is playing out of his era at this point. I mean,
he's a little bit washed, it looks like. But you know, Arizona,
excuse me, Atlanta was one of the most efficient offenses
in history. They went, they went downfield to Julio all
the time, they went five wide all the time. I mean,
I think that Matt Ryan uh was one of the
best quarterbacks in history statistically when throwing at five five
receivers going out for a route, and so it does
(20:15):
have success. It just depends on the quarterback. You're not
gonna be able to do with Joe Flacco in that's
just not going to happen. So it starts with the
next generation. This generation, the Sam Bradford generation, that even
the Alex Smith generation, even though we saw them do
okay in Week one, they're done. We got to ignore them.
We got to work on the next generation of quarterbacks
and get them to play an exciting brand of football.
(20:36):
Last thing, Um, we're just talking about today a little
bit about the numbers being down, some of the viewership
numbers being down. How much do you think this plays
a part in it? Like, I don't think it's all
or nothing for any of these factors, But what percentage
do you think this is a factor of some of
the viewership changing. I think it's a small percentage. I
think it's as you said, it's a lot of things
combining to make a big problem. I don't think politics
(20:59):
has much to do with it. I just I think
there's just a lot of stuff I think people started
watching the election last year and it got people trained
a little bit off of football. This year you had
the hurricane. So I think that it's just the NFL
is not going to have the monopoly used to on eyeballs,
and that's something they needed to grab with. But they
still have a lot a lot of fans, specially compared
to the other sports. The ringers a great side. Kevin
Clark has this incredible article. Go check it out. We'll
(21:21):
tweet it out. Man. I really appreciate you. Join us.
We'll talk soon. Okay. Fox Sports Radio has the best
sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of our
shows at Fox sports Radio dot com and within the
I Heart Radio app. The question is this, there have
been reports out of Indie that Andrew Luck in his
camp whatever not terribly happy. How could you be happy?
(21:43):
Granted he's been playing hurt. I will grant you wasn't
great last year, and when he's out it gives them
no chance to compete in the NFL. But you're getting
towards the prime years of his career and the team
is getting worse, not better. So here is the choice.
Do you keep the first round pick when you have
(22:05):
a team that does not have that's missing in so
many important positions. You need a volume of talents. One
of the things that San Francisco has done they got
a bunch of picks next year. One of thing the
Browns have done this year they got a bunch of
picks next year as well, they get two first round
draft picks next year, is they put themselves in position.
Football is a numbers game, right. The more numbers of
(22:27):
athletes you get, the better shot you have to rebuild things.
One guy here, one guy there. You only do that
if you're feel like you're close to winning a championship.
When you have at a talent disparity, you gotta add
numbers of guys. Because even the draft, even the first round,
is at best the culture. You have two choices, right,
(22:51):
your trade luck and get a pirate's bounty, or your
trade the pick and you get a pretty good bounty.
If you trade the pick you could get and we
don't know what the pick ends up becoming, you have
the Jets whatever to compete with. It probably becomes more
valuable because there are quarterbacks in this draft. You know,
(23:13):
it's better than um last year or the year before.
Early picks, assuming that Rosen, assuming that Donald, assuming Josh Allen,
assuming those, all of them are available early in the
first round. Pretty valuable top three selection if you're the Colts,
especially if you shut locked down. But Luck would be
(23:34):
more valuable. A proven veteran top ten quarterback under contract
for however long you want to keep him. Is it
a lot of money? Sure, but remember the Colts will
pay have paid him a healthy amount in his first
year of that first two years of that contract was
redone before last year. Right then the first say you
pay a bunch early on. Everything else can be reworked
(23:54):
like it's not a money deal. It's not like the
NBA where you have to have dollar for dollar And
there's like fifteen teams that would take Andrew Luck in
a heartbeat. So you could have competitive bidding against one another.
And you could say, well, the Colts, you would never
trade away Andrew Luck. Would you say you would never
trade away Peyton Manning? And they did, or at least
(24:17):
Peyton many they did so the fastest. The reason the
Colts are fascinating is they have an asset that everybody
believes to be a prime asset. They are going nowhere.
They are home dogs, to a rookie quarterback lead Cleveland
Brown's team Vegas, the NFL fans, everybody's telling you the
(24:41):
Colts just don't have the players, don't have the horses,
and what's next is interesting in order? Do you play
luck at all? And once you get you're gonna get
a good pick. When you get the good pick, do
you trade Luck? What do you trade to pick? I
mean personally, they depend where you can get for Luck,
but I would, I would absolutely at least consider trading Luck. Consider.
(25:08):
Don't get my words misconstrued. I like, you consider trading
anybody on a football team because you got fifty three guys, anybody.
You can consider trading anybody in baseball team or a
basketball team. What am I going to get back in return?
I'm gonna get a huge amount and return, Like, all right,
I gotta consider it. I don't want to trade Andrew Luck.
I do think he's as good as advertised. I do
think you can rebuild. But I also understand an Indie
(25:30):
is tough because they have so many holes that if
you simply plugged the quarterback hole, that doesn't make up
for all the other holes in the dike. Be sure
to catch live editions of the Doug gott Leaps Show
weekdays at three pm Easter noon Pacific on Fox Sports
Radio and the I Heart Radio app. The tweets heard
around the world were apparently truly authored by Kevin Durant,
(25:53):
and yesterday Kevin Durant offered up some form of apology
when he was at a conference, a tech conference in
um in northern California. Remember he tweeted about you know,
he tweeted, basically in third person, even though it was
on his own Twitter handle, that he couldn't win with
(26:14):
those cats. Cats being teammates in Oklahoma City. He was
the organization. It was Billy Donovan. It had nothing new
with him and Russ. Take Russ off that team and
look at how bad they were. This was Kevin Durant's
apology yesterday. I lose Twitter to engage with the fans,
but I happened to take it a little too far,
and that's what happened. Sometimes when I get into these
(26:36):
basketball debates, and I don't regret clapping back at anybody
or talking to my fans on Twitter, I do regret
I'm using my former coach's name and the former organization
that I played for that was childish, all right, So
he he didn't say he was. He said he shouldn't
use their name. That was childish. He didn't say that
it wasn't true or that it wasn't him. So I
don't know. Let's let's catch up with Annis Cantre, a
(26:58):
former teammates of of Kevin Durance in Oklahoma City, granted
only for I think the second half of that last season.
He had his own tweet out there and you guys
just got done at the zoo, right, Yeah, Actually we
came up from the zoo. We had a thunder chair
event and it was awesome, all right, So it was awesome. Um,
when when the tweets first came out, before Kevin Durant
(27:21):
owned up to yeah, those are my tweets, did you
think it was him? Uh? No, I did not think
it was him. I thought somebody just made that up,
made that picture and put his real Acciana stuff. I
didn't think, uh, he was gonna do such a thing
like that. But after I learned that it was him,
the first thing, I was just really really sad. I mean,
(27:44):
I wasn't angry, I wasn't mad whatever. Before before I
was just really sad. Did you. I'm sure you've texted
with other teammates. What was everybody else's reaction? Actually I
did not, because I mean, we are getting ready for
for the season. We don't want this kind of distraction
and affect us. So I don't really want to tax so, um,
you know, I just say anything. But when I get
(28:06):
in a lock room today, I told my son, what's
up cats, and every was just a lot of people
just start laughing. Okay, so here's I'll read your to
your tweet. I don't care what anyone says. Oklahma City
Thunder the best or most professional organizations, the NBA got
the craziest fans. Well, we win, we lose, but most important,
we stick together because we are one. And those Cats
I call them family. Um, so like, why did you
(28:29):
previous to this? Why do you think that Katie left? Oh?
I mean he he left. I feel like you wanted to.
I mean he wanted to. He don't get him wrong, man,
I'm not telling no shades or anything. He's obviously one
of the top five play in the league. So but
he was getting too much. She said, Oh he got
(28:50):
no rings, He's not gonna play. But you got no rings?
So I feel like you got sight of all this talking,
So I just wanted to I don't take the easy way,
but um, you gotta understand, in the end, it's a business.
You can do nothing about him. Actually, you know, he left.
He left. I mean, we're just gonna keep going. We
cannot stop. And then of course, you guys, there was
a lot of a lot of trash talk this year,
(29:11):
especially when he came back to Ocloma City. The fans were,
we're showing up in cupcakes. Uh, and then you know,
even he has the cupcake sneakers, like did you know
did you know that he was was this bothered by
what people said about him? Means yeah, because because I mean,
if you look at this organism, like basketball Oklahoma City
(29:33):
Founded is the only major sport in this state. So
this state loved him when he was here. This state
give him everything. They picked him the state of Hall
of Fame, and he got every he got everything what
he asked for, so like all this thing everything whatever.
But when he and that was his franchise, and when
(29:53):
he left, I feel like he just you know, broke broke.
A lot of people's heard a lot of people sa
and a lot of kids hearts. So that's why we're
just really sad for me and as cancer joining us
on the doug Otlip Show. Obviously, most I would say
hurtful is he basically says, hey, outside of Russell Westbrook,
(30:14):
they don't have that's the Cats. They don't have good
enough players. Um, did you ever think that he thought
that when he was a member of the Thunder No,
we never. I mean we never thought because like every
time we were trying to you know, just trying to
protect him. I mean he asked for the ball almost
every time. You wanted to touch the ball every time,
(30:35):
and then and everybody has passed the ball, and you know,
he shouted he missed, and then we said a good shot.
Just keep going because I mean, if you look at
our team, we took good shots. Be two bad shots.
Everything does it. But we don't blame each other. We
don't point fingers to each other. And that's that's our thing.
When I said, we win, we lose, but we stick together.
(30:57):
I mean you look, you look at our you know
of games last year. We know we lost a lot
of games. We want lots of games, you know, but
we never you know, just point fingers and say that
was your fault, your fault. We never blame each other.
That was the most important thing. And then the second one.
If you look at us, he could say the same
thing people say, oh, I'm the only best player in
(31:20):
the team and if I leave, this team is going down.
But he never said anything like that. He said, this
is my team. I'm gonna take care of my team.
And we know that he's a leader. We know that's
his job to lead us. But he never said, Okay,
I'm the good I'm the only good player on this team,
and if I leave you guys, you guys are not
going to make the playoffs. And he never say something
(31:40):
like that. He always try to give us confidence and
that's what what makes us really special. One day have it.
He has added Paul George via trade in the off season.
But but now you get like, look, you have a
lot of big guys on the roster. I know you
have a great amount of affection for Oklahoma City since
coming over from Utah. Would you feel the same though,
if they end up trade in you right, Like, let's
(32:01):
say they go like, hey, we got we got Doma Sabonis.
You know, we got Steven Adams. We're gonna trade, you
would you still feel the same amount of affection for
for for the organization. Let me tell you something, man,
I mean from the day one. I'm not just talking
about the organization, the whole fans, whole state open their
arms from the first day, and I felt like, you know,
what's all the craziest craziness going on in Turkey whatever.
(32:24):
But when I come back, all these people were texting
me welcome, welcome to your home. They didn't say welcome America,
they said welcome home. So I mean, from the first day,
they open their arms, they give everything. They always supporded us.
We wan, we lose. They were always there. But if
they trade me, like you say, you know, you gotta
understand it's a business, but I got no. I wouldn't
(32:46):
have no, you know, hard feelings. I would not, you know,
saying nothing crazy about the organization, nothing crazy about the coaches,
the players, because I mean, they're my family, man, because
we are in the world together right now. If I leave,
I cannot just say, oh, you guys are like this,
you guys are bad because at this whatever. All right,
So I'm looking at you, guys. Schedule November. Do you
(33:09):
know November two is yep, yeah, I mean November, Golden
State comes to town. Uh, comes to the Peak and
takes out in the Oakland. The game's nationally televised. Last
year was last year was and look, I played college
ball in Oklahoma. I have the same amount of affection
for people in Oklahoma as well. Um, what do you
(33:30):
think that? But last year it was vicious? What's this
year gonna be? Like? I feel like it's going to
be more crazy. Man. Now we've got all these you know,
new pieces. We got the you know a Paula George,
you know Patterson and Raymond Felson, and I feel like
it's gonna be a you know, crazy game. I feel
like it's going to change. They might start wearing some
you know cats T shirts, cats, you know, all this,
(33:53):
all this look, it might be a new look at
the tundra this year. Amazing cat. So, so you got
back from the zoo. What was your favorite animal at
the zoo? I've been the Oklama City Zoo. It's pretty nice.
What was your favorite animal? Man? Probably see I'm opposed
to video and a little Probably the sea line, sea lion,
you line, yeah, give me a chiss. It was amazing.
(34:18):
It was experienced anything like that before. All right, well
listen love it. It was love at first sight and
it's great stuff. Thanks so much for joining us. Stay
healthy and get ready for the season. We'll talk to
you soon. Man. All right, that's and it's Cantor joining
us on the Doug Gottlieb Show. Fox Sports Radio has
the best sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all
of our shows at Fox sports Radio dot com and
within the I Heart Radio app. Richard Sherman had some
(34:41):
non critical critical comments of his offense, so like, look,
I kind of feel like this is borderline Lebron James
passive aggressive. So once you listen to let me read
you the comments and then you guys tell me. Remember
this is an events with Earl Thomas, Richard Sherman, Michael Bennett,
camp Chance or Bobby Wagner kJ right now, Sheldon Richardson
(35:06):
and they're one on one now, they're not owing two,
and they do play at Tennessee, a team who lost
Week one of the season to the Raiders at home.
But you know, the issue has been their offense isn't great.
So here's the quote. We've got a lot of highly
paid guys on our side of the ball, a lot
of guys who played the game at a high level.
There's a certain standard that's expected. We expected of ourselves.
(35:30):
We expect that regardless of what happens on the other
side of the ball. At the end of the day,
it's really on us, he went on. It's not any
tougher for us um or anything different. We think about,
we've got to hold ourselves to a high standard. You've
got guys like Mike Bennett and Cliff Avroel, Bobby Wagner,
(35:52):
Cam kJ et cetera, et cetera. Down the line. Earl myself,
rookie is playing lights out football. We've got to get
stops like that. I mean, I understand that he's not
actually calling out the offense. Like he did not say
the offense has to be better. But he also did
not say, hey, we're one team. He didn't say like, hey,
it's the offense, it's us. We're together. We play well,
(36:15):
and we win the game. That's all that matters. Like
we play well, they don't play. Whatever whatever happened, they score,
they don't score. We just gotta keep playing, play together,
stick together. Kind of like what and as Candre just said,
right when we together we lose together. Whatever, we stick together.
That's not what he said. Like, we got a bunch
of big name dudes, highly paid dudes. We gotta play
hold ourselves to a high standard. We can't worry about
over there. In other words, over there sucks. But now
(36:41):
am you? Guys? Am I taking too big? My taking
too big a leap? With that? Dan, you're a Seahawks fan. Like,
I'm not saying he'd be wrong if he said it,
but is the way in which he said it purposeful
This is the best of the Doug Gottlieb Show on
Fox Sports Radio Boom, What Up America, Doug Gottlieb Show,
Fox Sports Radio, Live and Direct from the hearts of
the City of Angels. Welcome in. I hope you're doing well,
getting ready for oh days, Today, days, Tuesday, just to
(00:23):
day seems off, you know it's missing today? Well. John
Romis is here from the ones and two is our
technical director. Ryan Music's here. Our producer of course, Dan
Buyers here. You'll hear him with updates. You can hear
him on the weekends here on Fox Sports Radio. They're
all you're what, what is what is missing? What's off?
What's what's going on today? There's no football. That's it.
(00:48):
That's what's gotta be missing. There's no football. So you
feel kind of off. When it's something you love the
most and you don't get a chance to see it,
you just don't quite feel right, right, h I think
that's the way i'd express it. I mean in life,
where there's somebody, some a person you love and you
don't see them or don't talk to them, you feel off.
(01:12):
If not, maybe you haven't experienced that in your life.
I generally think that's part of it. But we have
that off feeling less and less. That's because football has
become all consuming. And I don't think it's just the
NFL's doing. I think it's frankly, everyone's doing college football,
high school football, etcetera, etcetera. But there's a there's a
(01:34):
little bit of a freak out from the major broadcast networks,
and that's because NFL numbers are down. Scoring is down.
But is that why viewershippers down? Because you wouldn't have
tuned not tuning in, you wouldn't have known. You wouldn't
(01:55):
have known that the scoring was down. Right, here's my theory,
maybe not theory, hypotheses, right. A theory is something that's
proven out over time to be uh, some sort of
scientific fact. Is that a fair way of would put
it right? So this is more hypotheses. This is an
educated guess. I don't believe there's just one factor in
(02:17):
why NFL numbers are down. I think there's a lot.
Like I read, did anybody read the book The Tipping Point?
You guys read that book The Tipping Point. Um, they're
supposed to be one moment in which something tips, something changes,
something swings, pop culture to all of a sudden want
to wear stubby shorts or Jimmy Z shorts, or to
(02:39):
peg their genes or whatever we did when we were kids.
But in reading the tipping Point, I realized that there's
a bunch of things that cause something to tip to
sway and then fall into that favor. So, look, we
have the ability now to watch any show we want,
any almost any time we want, with the exception of
(03:01):
live sporting events. And what was different about the NFL forever,
or at least about sports forever, is sports you can't
DVR storts. You have to watch as live. And so
that's what drove up the value of sports. It wasn't
that sports was killing it in terms of numbers. It's
that sports numbers hadn't gone down because sports was impervious,
(03:25):
or at least we were told to the Hey, if
I don't catch it, I'll just DVRT and watch it later.
All right, I like this is us, But I gotta
be honest that this is us. I watched the whole
first season. I watched it on demand. Breaking Bad. I
didn't watch Breaking Bad until like a year and a
half ago. I binged watched every episode, Game of Thrones.
(03:45):
I know some of you guys are Game of Thrones
guys haven't watched the episode. At some point I will.
It'll be like a month, probably when I'm traveling. I'll
download every episode and I'll catch up and I'll be
like like, oh, this is really cool. Why did somebody
tell me about this? I know you all told me
about this. But sports you can't do that. You can't
go up to somebody in the street and go, hey, man,
how about that Week one NFL hah ha? How about
(04:08):
the Packers? You see the Packers and the Seahawks, and man,
I'm really concerned about the Seahawks. Packers are all some
best team in the NFL. People like, uh, they just
lost the Falcons. Like, no, they didn't. I just saw
the game when they lost to the when they when
they beat the Seahawks. I can't do it with sports.
So what happened was all the TV networks are like, no,
(04:30):
these are the tooth live events. That's why there's so
many award shows. Think about how many music award shows
there are, and even quasi award shows. That's the same
reason that there's so many of these variety shows. America's
got talent which looks peculiar and almost interesting like America's Idol,
kind of on steroids, like why is that again? Live
(04:52):
events end up drawing more viewership, But what's happened even
with those shows? America American Idol is big, and so
the voices created, America's got talent is created, so you
think you can dances created, etcetera, etcetera. We've done that
in the NFL. People want to know why the NFL
(05:13):
numbers are down, that's because football is on too much.
When I was a kid, I grew up in southern California,
and Rick D's was the big DJ on Kiss FM.
Now it's a Now it's Ryan Sea Christ I was,
and in addition to d Slee's, which was like all
the low down on what was going on in Hollywood.
(05:34):
It's great right by the way, you see Billy Bush
at his wife for twenty years, they're splitting up. I
guarantee Trump cost another marriage, There's no question there, Tony Um.
But in addition to the fact he had some other
kind of quirky things. I remember in second grade the
(05:55):
first time I've ever heard Madonna, it was borderline, and
I felt like I heard it three, five minutes on
one or two seven, right. And there's something that I
didn't know then that I do know now being in
the radio industry for mind, almost my entire professional life.
It's the what do they tell us ramos when they
tell you in FM radio, they tell you in sports
(06:16):
talk radio as well, what's what's what's the what's the expression?
The always play the hits, always play the hits. Well, look,
we all grew up being taught play the hits. Worked
for Rick D's play Borderline every thirty minutes, because if
you hear Borderline being played twice, they got you, they
got their talents in you. You're hooked. You listen for
(06:38):
dirty straight minutes and you heard it twice, right, That's
an advertiser's dream. Meanwhile, the rest of the world listens
for five, six, seven, eight minutes and then they move on.
And so the idea is it's a totally due audience
every fifteen or twenty minutes anyway, So if you replay
the song, at least you're giving them what they want. Well,
that's what we've done with sports, and that's what we've
(06:58):
done with the NFL. It's on Thursday, it's on Sunday. No, wait,
it's on Sunday morning online this week as the Jaguars
go to London and play the Baltimore Ravens. Then it's
on Sunday night. Then it's on Monday night. What used
to be I could only watch my team play on
(07:19):
a Sunday and then watch one Monday night football game
is now Sunday night is the new Monday night. Monday
night is one game too many, And and Thursday night
we discussed last week, is bad football. So the more
we play the hits, the more we get worn down
by it and things get played out right, Like even
(07:43):
my kids use that term. I I cannot hear that
Bieber song again. It's played out. I kind of think
that's what's happened in the NFL. I play fantasy football,
so does everybody. So footballs on everywhere, on every channel.
(08:03):
We discuss it at nauseam. It's on Thursday, it's on
Sunday morning, it's on Sunday afternoon, it's on Sunday night,
it's on Monday night, to which you're like, wait a second,
that's just too much. Everyone always uses the less is more,
less is more, or less is more or less is more.
(08:23):
But when you're making money, you do more is more, right,
And I kind of think that the NFL isn't less popular.
It's just as popular, if not even more popular, even
more mainstream than it's ever been. But our incessant need
to play the hits has caused everybody to play the
exact same hit toever. Like there's nothing special about a
(08:48):
Thursday night came, there's nothing special about a Monday night came.
Sunday night is usually the best game. Ah, that's my hypotheses.
Do we think music? I'm I don't watch NFL football
any less. I watched it the exact same amount, but
the numbers are telling you that people are watching it less.
(09:10):
I have one other hype addition to the hypothesis, as
one of the kind of the litany of things, we've
taken away a lot of the big hits, right. This
is a lot like when you took when Wayne Gretzky
and the guys tried to take fighting out of hockey.
NASCAR has tried to take out some of those horrific
crashes out of NASCAR restrictor plate racing, trying to keep
(09:31):
those cars from getting too fast and elevating and getting
too dangerous, right, But the truth is that we watch
hockey for fights, we watched NASCAR for crashes, and we
watched the NFL for those ridiculous hits games. Kind of boring. Alright,
go ahead, music, what do you think? Yeah? I just
think that for most people now, they don't they don't
(09:54):
devote an entire day to just watching football because it's
so readily available to them. So when you look at
things like well, Football Night in America, the ratings are down, like, well,
that's likely because maybe they watched the game. You know,
if you're on the West Coast, you you've been watching
football since tenant in the morning, and you don't necessarily
want to be doing it until ten at nights, So
your total viewership is going to be down, which is
(10:16):
sort of what people have talked about, and I know,
like people at like Fox Sports have talked about this,
is that it's not necessarily the total amount of people
watching is down. It's more that people aren't watching for
as long anymore, and that's why the ratings are down.
People are tuning in, but as soon as they tune
in there then tuning out. Would you say, I couldn't
(10:36):
hear you. I tuned in for a little bit and
then I tuned out. Ramos, What about you, Obviously it's different.
You've got two kids, you're uh, you're a bottom dwelling
soccer coach on the weekend. That does take up some
of your time. What would you like to offer up
um some some statement as to why you believe some
(10:57):
of the numbers are down in in NFL viewership. I
think that people just want to watch their team, and
if their team's not on TV, they don't want to
watch the games. They don't really care about what other
teams are doing. It's kind of like in fantasy football,
like you said earlier, you watch your team, your players,
and you don't care about what other players are doing.
But see, I think that's that's what fantasy football has
(11:19):
helped the NFL, and that you watch teams you would
never watch before. Like I would never, ever, ever care
about half of these teams in the NFL if I'm
the mainstream fan, unless I have money on the game,
or unless I have a fantasy football player. I think
it's made rivalries less vicious as well, because you're like, well,
I don't like the guy Buddy scored a touchdown. He
(11:39):
helped my fantasy team win. Be sure to catch live
editions of The Doug gott Leaps Show weekdays at three
p m. Easter noon Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and
the I Heart Radio app. Kevin Clark Twins the show
he writes for The Ringer. He wrote wrote an article
that we discussed a little bit yesterday, and it starts
to delve into what's really missing in the national football again.
(12:00):
It's kind of the maybe the untold part of it. Kevin,
how are you. I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. Um.
You said the title of the article. I don't know
if you wrote the title was how football stopped being fun.
You talked about completion percentage being an all time high,
and you're going to Chris Simms, which just a great quote.
You show me a team with a great completion percentage,
I'll automatically think your offense probably sucks. What is it
(12:22):
about the actual game play that has that, by your estimation,
has caused football to be a tougher watch than it
used to be. Well, all the quarterbacks are generally competent now,
and what ended up happening maybe in the last five
five to six years, is that they could complete passes
really easily. And I think there were a lot of coordinators,
a lot of quarterbacks, a lot of head coaches who said,
(12:45):
you know what, if we can complete a pass, if
we can have a sixty completion percentage instead of throwing
a lot of incompletions are going down field, that is
a win for us. And so since to what happened is,
with the exception of the top top quarterbacks in the NFL,
the vast majority are now going for order completions, take
less criticism, um, take less risks, you know, and and
(13:05):
live to live another down basically. And so essentially what
happened is, uh, you know, five years of that and
all of a sudden, every quarterbacks doing it's Sam Bradford
completion percentage last year and it was one of the
worst offenses we've ever seen. And as far as you know, uh,
aesthetics and so it's it's trending towards an ugly place
where there's not a lot of downfield passing. And that's
(13:26):
the stuff people like it is, and it's it's now
part of the rules have also helped that too, as
you point out, you know, past interference is so tight,
right you can't touch a quarterback. Everything they do is
to protect the passing game and to protect the wide
receivers to that plays. Main it's almost like we so
badly want the great quarterback to make the great past,
to have the great catch, when we artificially trying to
(13:47):
create that with the rules, we actually end up getting
a super boring catch right over the middle, where instead
of a hard hit, now a guys just kind of
corralled and brought down exactly. And that's one of the
things I've talked to see fees about this for the
past three or four years. Teams game plan because they
know defensive backs are scared of fine stug and what
ends up happening is they basically will throw a drag
(14:10):
route to a tight end, or they'll float throw to
a slot receiver and they'll say, you can just catch
this and get six yards, and we'd rather have that
than throw to a you know, an outside guy. If
Randy Moss played now, he wouldn't get as money passes
because they wouldn't want to go outside the hash marks
like that. So NFL offenses are taking vantage of the rules,
and it's probably not in the way the NFL intended.
(14:30):
They want those sort of uh down the field, you know,
eight yard bomb type things like we saw ten years ago.
And it's just not gonna happen because the lack of
quarterback talent. You just mentioned lack of quarterback talent. It
seems it should be the opposite, right Like, And I
don't know how old you are, Like, I'm I'm how
old am I think I'm forty one? I don't know, Um,
(14:50):
But like when we were growing up, teams, high school
teams never throw a football, right Like Brett Farve never
throw a football in high school and his dad was
his coach, um. And then you know, college teams very
rarely did teams throw. Now everybody throws like high school
teams are running spread. College teams obviously throw it all
the time. If there's so much more development of quarterbacks
(15:12):
throwing a football at a younger age, wouldn't we have
a greater dearth of both quarterbacks and wide receivers to
throw the ball and throw the ball down field. Well,
there's there's a couple of things at play here, Doug,
And it's a very complicated question. I've written a lot
about this and talked a lot of gms and coaches
about it. The throwing is helping. Andy Reid has talked
about this. You know, fifteen years ago it used to
(15:33):
be oh, they're not throwing enough. Now they're throwing almost
too much. The concepts are very simple. UH. Schools like
Baylor have produced some of the let's say, less knowledgeable
quarterbacks as far as at the NFL level, um that
than than the NFL has ever seen. Guys who couldn't
identify a cover two, who couldn't identify the mic linebacker,
stuff like that. And so they're getting Yes, they're getting
(15:53):
reps as far as throwing at the lower levels, but
they're not getting the knowledge. And the problem is once
they get to the NFL level, the def are so
complex that you've got to be able to check into plays.
You've got to be able to audible with the line.
You know. I do a story in the two thousand
seven Patriots a couple of months ago, and they told
me they had twelve plays they could check into when
they went when they went to the line. UH. And
NFL offenses now can't do that because the quarterbacks just
(16:14):
don't grow up in that environment. They the spread system
is very simple, and once it gets complicated, those guys
tend to struggle. Um, I thought, there's there's some similarities
there in terms of watchability to I don't know if
you pay attention to this. In Major League Baseball baseball
this year home runs they just at the all time
mark for single season home runs in the sport. That
just happened last night. And if you for people in
(16:37):
the game told me like, hey, there's kind of a
problem here in terms of the watchability. Um, thirty four
percent of the time, all you need on a baseball
field is the picture the catcher and the hitter because
either strikeout, walk or hit a home right at thirty
four percent of the time. And while it seems like
that would make for more home runs and we all
grew up in the chicks dig the long ball because
(16:59):
there's such lulls in between it that baseball can be
quite tedious and quite boring, even even by baseball standards
to watch. Is that is there some similarities there to
that in football? Absolutely. I had a discussion with one
of our baseball writers, Ben Lindbergh, last night. We were
talking about this, and we were just saying, every sport
is changing dramatically. I mean, you know exactly, and but
(17:23):
but The problem with baseball and football is that efficiency
in those sports is not as exciting as maybe ten
or fifteen years ago. Whereas basketball, who doesn't want to
see Steph Curry drain threes? That's really exciting? Uh? In soccer?
You know, who doesn't want to see Leono messie. I
mean it's just the problem now is that is that
the smartphone generation, the Instagram generation, they want to see
(17:46):
really cool plays. And if baseball is just the three
trough outcomes like you talked about strikeouts, home runs, you know,
I mean that that's not as exciting as basketball, as soccer,
and the football is having the same problem. If it's
only six yard passes and then it comes onto whether
or not the linebacker can make a tackle, that's a
problem for the younger generation. There's a reason football and
baseball are not as popular with the younger generations as
(18:08):
as young sports. It's not fascinating. Um okay, So Kevin
Clark joining us from the Ringer, you should we'll tweet
out again the article, but you should go to the
Ringer and check it out. How football stop being funny?
Joins us here on the Doug Out Lip Show, Fox
Sports Tradio Okay, you've done a great job identifying the problem.
How do you fix it? I think it's a coaching
problem at one At one level, I think that you
(18:29):
have to get coaches and look, chip Kelly had a
lot of problems, and not all of them were scheme,
but chip Kelly had an outside the box idea of
how an NFL offense should be run. The quarterbacks are
not going to change. High school and college coaches are
winning and putting up a lot of points with the
spread system, and they're not going to go the opposite
way just to make NFL coaches feel warm and flossy.
(18:51):
So you have to get coaches who understand everything. I'm
not saying that that Bill Laser and Cincinnati is going
to be you know a great reason that Andy Dalton,
you know, has it read direction this year. What I
am saying is he he's the offensive coordinator. Now he
coached under Chip Kelly, He's going to at least be
able to incorporate some spread principles. You have to hire
guys who have understanding of the spread principles because for
(19:11):
too long now. I did the story a couple of
weeks ago. Stephen Jones of the Dallas Cowboys. Jerry's son
said that they had Connor Cook above Dak Prescott on
their draft board because Connor Cook played the pro offense
in college and Dak played in the spread. You cannot
think that way. And so I think the biggest thing
is taking these quarterbacks and just developing them, identifying them better,
(19:32):
and just getting to a point where they can throw downfield. Again,
It's not that hard. It just requires a little more
creative thinking, haven't it has Isn't that what Arizona has
tried to do. I mean, isn't that the Bruce Arians
thing and trying to get get chunk plays and it
it hasn't It worked for in the short term, but
it hasn't worked in a long term. Yeah, I mean
it certainly worked in Atlanta. It worked in Arizona for
for basically two and a half years. Carson Palmer probably
(19:54):
is playing out of his era at this point. I mean,
he's a little bit washed, it looks like. But you know, Arizona,
excuse me, Atlanta was one of the most efficient offenses
in history. They went, they went downfield to Julio all
the time, they went five wide all the time. I mean,
I think that Matt Ryan uh was one of the
best quarterbacks in history statistically when throwing at five five
receivers going out for a route, and so it does
(20:15):
have success. It just depends on the quarterback. You're not
gonna be able to do with Joe Flacco in that's
just not going to happen. So it starts with the
next generation. This generation, the Sam Bradford generation, that even
the Alex Smith generation, even though we saw them do
okay in Week one, they're done. We got to ignore them.
We got to work on the next generation of quarterbacks
and get them to play an exciting brand of football.
(20:36):
Last thing, Um, we're just talking about today a little
bit about the numbers being down, some of the viewership
numbers being down. How much do you think this plays
a part in it? Like, I don't think it's all
or nothing for any of these factors, But what percentage
do you think this is a factor of some of
the viewership changing. I think it's a small percentage. I
think it's as you said, it's a lot of things
combining to make a big problem. I don't think politics
(20:59):
has much to do with it. I just I think
there's just a lot of stuff I think people started
watching the election last year and it got people trained
a little bit off of football. This year you had
the hurricane. So I think that it's just the NFL
is not going to have the monopoly used to on eyeballs,
and that's something they needed to grab with. But they
still have a lot a lot of fans, specially compared
to the other sports. The ringers a great side. Kevin
Clark has this incredible article. Go check it out. We'll
(21:21):
tweet it out. Man. I really appreciate you. Join us.
We'll talk soon. Okay. Fox Sports Radio has the best
sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of our
shows at Fox sports Radio dot com and within the
I Heart Radio app. The question is this, there have
been reports out of Indie that Andrew Luck in his
camp whatever not terribly happy. How could you be happy?
(21:43):
Granted he's been playing hurt. I will grant you wasn't
great last year, and when he's out it gives them
no chance to compete in the NFL. But you're getting
towards the prime years of his career and the team
is getting worse, not better. So here is the choice.
Do you keep the first round pick when you have
(22:05):
a team that does not have that's missing in so
many important positions. You need a volume of talents. One
of the things that San Francisco has done they got
a bunch of picks next year. One of thing the
Browns have done this year they got a bunch of
picks next year as well, they get two first round
draft picks next year, is they put themselves in position.
Football is a numbers game, right. The more numbers of
(22:27):
athletes you get, the better shot you have to rebuild things.
One guy here, one guy there. You only do that
if you're feel like you're close to winning a championship.
When you have at a talent disparity, you gotta add
numbers of guys. Because even the draft, even the first round,
is at best the culture. You have two choices, right,
(22:51):
your trade luck and get a pirate's bounty, or your
trade the pick and you get a pretty good bounty.
If you trade the pick you could get and we
don't know what the pick ends up becoming, you have
the Jets whatever to compete with. It probably becomes more
valuable because there are quarterbacks in this draft. You know,
(23:13):
it's better than um last year or the year before.
Early picks, assuming that Rosen, assuming that Donald, assuming Josh Allen,
assuming those, all of them are available early in the
first round. Pretty valuable top three selection if you're the Colts,
especially if you shut locked down. But Luck would be
(23:34):
more valuable. A proven veteran top ten quarterback under contract
for however long you want to keep him. Is it
a lot of money? Sure, but remember the Colts will
pay have paid him a healthy amount in his first
year of that first two years of that contract was
redone before last year. Right then the first say you
pay a bunch early on. Everything else can be reworked
(23:54):
like it's not a money deal. It's not like the
NBA where you have to have dollar for dollar And
there's like fifteen teams that would take Andrew Luck in
a heartbeat. So you could have competitive bidding against one another.
And you could say, well, the Colts, you would never
trade away Andrew Luck. Would you say you would never
trade away Peyton Manning? And they did, or at least
(24:17):
Peyton many they did so the fastest. The reason the
Colts are fascinating is they have an asset that everybody
believes to be a prime asset. They are going nowhere.
They are home dogs, to a rookie quarterback lead Cleveland
Brown's team Vegas, the NFL fans, everybody's telling you the
(24:41):
Colts just don't have the players, don't have the horses,
and what's next is interesting in order? Do you play
luck at all? And once you get you're gonna get
a good pick. When you get the good pick, do
you trade Luck? What do you trade to pick? I
mean personally, they depend where you can get for Luck,
but I would, I would absolutely at least consider trading Luck. Consider.
(25:08):
Don't get my words misconstrued. I like, you consider trading
anybody on a football team because you got fifty three guys, anybody.
You can consider trading anybody in baseball team or a
basketball team. What am I going to get back in return?
I'm gonna get a huge amount and return, Like, all right,
I gotta consider it. I don't want to trade Andrew Luck.
I do think he's as good as advertised. I do
think you can rebuild. But I also understand an Indie
(25:30):
is tough because they have so many holes that if
you simply plugged the quarterback hole, that doesn't make up
for all the other holes in the dike. Be sure
to catch live editions of the Doug gott Leaps Show
weekdays at three pm Easter noon Pacific on Fox Sports
Radio and the I Heart Radio app. The tweets heard
around the world were apparently truly authored by Kevin Durant,
(25:53):
and yesterday Kevin Durant offered up some form of apology
when he was at a conference, a tech conference in
um in northern California. Remember he tweeted about you know,
he tweeted, basically in third person, even though it was
on his own Twitter handle, that he couldn't win with
(26:14):
those cats. Cats being teammates in Oklahoma City. He was
the organization. It was Billy Donovan. It had nothing new
with him and Russ. Take Russ off that team and
look at how bad they were. This was Kevin Durant's
apology yesterday. I lose Twitter to engage with the fans,
but I happened to take it a little too far,
and that's what happened. Sometimes when I get into these
(26:36):
basketball debates, and I don't regret clapping back at anybody
or talking to my fans on Twitter, I do regret
I'm using my former coach's name and the former organization
that I played for that was childish, all right, So
he he didn't say he was. He said he shouldn't
use their name. That was childish. He didn't say that
it wasn't true or that it wasn't him. So I
don't know. Let's let's catch up with Annis Cantre, a
(26:58):
former teammates of of Kevin Durance in Oklahoma City, granted
only for I think the second half of that last season.
He had his own tweet out there and you guys
just got done at the zoo, right, Yeah, Actually we
came up from the zoo. We had a thunder chair
event and it was awesome, all right, So it was awesome. Um,
when when the tweets first came out, before Kevin Durant
(27:21):
owned up to yeah, those are my tweets, did you
think it was him? Uh? No, I did not think
it was him. I thought somebody just made that up,
made that picture and put his real Acciana stuff. I
didn't think, uh, he was gonna do such a thing
like that. But after I learned that it was him,
the first thing, I was just really really sad. I mean,
(27:44):
I wasn't angry, I wasn't mad whatever. Before before I
was just really sad. Did you. I'm sure you've texted
with other teammates. What was everybody else's reaction? Actually I
did not, because I mean, we are getting ready for
for the season. We don't want this kind of distraction
and affect us. So I don't really want to tax so, um,
you know, I just say anything. But when I get
(28:06):
in a lock room today, I told my son, what's
up cats, and every was just a lot of people
just start laughing. Okay, so here's I'll read your to
your tweet. I don't care what anyone says. Oklahma City
Thunder the best or most professional organizations, the NBA got
the craziest fans. Well, we win, we lose, but most important,
we stick together because we are one. And those Cats
I call them family. Um, so like, why did you
(28:29):
previous to this? Why do you think that Katie left? Oh?
I mean he he left. I feel like you wanted to.
I mean he wanted to. He don't get him wrong, man,
I'm not telling no shades or anything. He's obviously one
of the top five play in the league. So but
he was getting too much. She said, Oh he got
(28:50):
no rings, He's not gonna play. But you got no rings?
So I feel like you got sight of all this talking,
So I just wanted to I don't take the easy way,
but um, you gotta understand, in the end, it's a business.
You can do nothing about him. Actually, you know, he left.
He left. I mean, we're just gonna keep going. We
cannot stop. And then of course, you guys, there was
a lot of a lot of trash talk this year,
(29:11):
especially when he came back to Ocloma City. The fans were,
we're showing up in cupcakes. Uh, and then you know,
even he has the cupcake sneakers, like did you know
did you know that he was was this bothered by
what people said about him? Means yeah, because because I mean,
if you look at this organism, like basketball Oklahoma City
(29:33):
Founded is the only major sport in this state. So
this state loved him when he was here. This state
give him everything. They picked him the state of Hall
of Fame, and he got every he got everything what
he asked for, so like all this thing everything whatever.
But when he and that was his franchise, and when
(29:53):
he left, I feel like he just you know, broke broke.
A lot of people's heard a lot of people sa
and a lot of kids hearts. So that's why we're
just really sad for me and as cancer joining us
on the doug Otlip Show. Obviously, most I would say
hurtful is he basically says, hey, outside of Russell Westbrook,
(30:14):
they don't have that's the Cats. They don't have good
enough players. Um, did you ever think that he thought
that when he was a member of the Thunder No,
we never. I mean we never thought because like every
time we were trying to you know, just trying to
protect him. I mean he asked for the ball almost
every time. You wanted to touch the ball every time,
(30:35):
and then and everybody has passed the ball, and you know,
he shouted he missed, and then we said a good shot.
Just keep going because I mean, if you look at
our team, we took good shots. Be two bad shots.
Everything does it. But we don't blame each other. We
don't point fingers to each other. And that's that's our thing.
When I said, we win, we lose, but we stick together.
(30:57):
I mean you look, you look at our you know
of games last year. We know we lost a lot
of games. We want lots of games, you know, but
we never you know, just point fingers and say that
was your fault, your fault. We never blame each other.
That was the most important thing. And then the second one.
If you look at us, he could say the same
thing people say, oh, I'm the only best player in
(31:20):
the team and if I leave, this team is going down.
But he never said anything like that. He said, this
is my team. I'm gonna take care of my team.
And we know that he's a leader. We know that's
his job to lead us. But he never said, Okay,
I'm the good I'm the only good player on this team,
and if I leave you guys, you guys are not
going to make the playoffs. And he never say something
(31:40):
like that. He always try to give us confidence and
that's what what makes us really special. One day have it.
He has added Paul George via trade in the off season.
But but now you get like, look, you have a
lot of big guys on the roster. I know you
have a great amount of affection for Oklahoma City since
coming over from Utah. Would you feel the same though,
if they end up trade in you right, Like, let's
(32:01):
say they go like, hey, we got we got Doma Sabonis.
You know, we got Steven Adams. We're gonna trade, you
would you still feel the same amount of affection for
for for the organization. Let me tell you something, man,
I mean from the day one. I'm not just talking
about the organization, the whole fans, whole state open their
arms from the first day, and I felt like, you know,
what's all the craziest craziness going on in Turkey whatever.
(32:24):
But when I come back, all these people were texting
me welcome, welcome to your home. They didn't say welcome America,
they said welcome home. So I mean, from the first day,
they open their arms, they give everything. They always supporded us.
We wan, we lose. They were always there. But if
they trade me, like you say, you know, you gotta
understand it's a business, but I got no. I wouldn't
(32:46):
have no, you know, hard feelings. I would not, you know,
saying nothing crazy about the organization, nothing crazy about the coaches,
the players, because I mean, they're my family, man, because
we are in the world together right now. If I leave,
I cannot just say, oh, you guys are like this,
you guys are bad because at this whatever. All right,
So I'm looking at you, guys. Schedule November. Do you
(33:09):
know November two is yep, yeah, I mean November, Golden
State comes to town. Uh, comes to the Peak and
takes out in the Oakland. The game's nationally televised. Last
year was last year was and look, I played college
ball in Oklahoma. I have the same amount of affection
for people in Oklahoma as well. Um, what do you
(33:30):
think that? But last year it was vicious? What's this
year gonna be? Like? I feel like it's going to
be more crazy. Man. Now we've got all these you know,
new pieces. We got the you know a Paula George,
you know Patterson and Raymond Felson, and I feel like
it's gonna be a you know, crazy game. I feel
like it's going to change. They might start wearing some
you know cats T shirts, cats, you know, all this,
(33:53):
all this look, it might be a new look at
the tundra this year. Amazing cat. So, so you got
back from the zoo. What was your favorite animal at
the zoo? I've been the Oklama City Zoo. It's pretty nice.
What was your favorite animal? Man? Probably see I'm opposed
to video and a little Probably the sea line, sea lion,
you line, yeah, give me a chiss. It was amazing.
(34:18):
It was experienced anything like that before. All right, well
listen love it. It was love at first sight and
it's great stuff. Thanks so much for joining us. Stay
healthy and get ready for the season. We'll talk to
you soon. Man. All right, that's and it's Cantor joining
us on the Doug Gottlieb Show. Fox Sports Radio has
the best sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all
of our shows at Fox sports Radio dot com and
within the I Heart Radio app. Richard Sherman had some
(34:41):
non critical critical comments of his offense, so like, look,
I kind of feel like this is borderline Lebron James
passive aggressive. So once you listen to let me read
you the comments and then you guys tell me. Remember
this is an events with Earl Thomas, Richard Sherman, Michael Bennett,
camp Chance or Bobby Wagner kJ right now, Sheldon Richardson
(35:06):
and they're one on one now, they're not owing two,
and they do play at Tennessee, a team who lost
Week one of the season to the Raiders at home.
But you know, the issue has been their offense isn't great.
So here's the quote. We've got a lot of highly
paid guys on our side of the ball, a lot
of guys who played the game at a high level.
There's a certain standard that's expected. We expected of ourselves.
(35:30):
We expect that regardless of what happens on the other
side of the ball. At the end of the day,
it's really on us, he went on. It's not any
tougher for us um or anything different. We think about,
we've got to hold ourselves to a high standard. You've
got guys like Mike Bennett and Cliff Avroel, Bobby Wagner,
(35:52):
Cam kJ et cetera, et cetera. Down the line. Earl myself,
rookie is playing lights out football. We've got to get
stops like that. I mean, I understand that he's not
actually calling out the offense. Like he did not say
the offense has to be better. But he also did
not say, hey, we're one team. He didn't say like, hey,
it's the offense, it's us. We're together. We play well,
(36:15):
and we win the game. That's all that matters. Like
we play well, they don't play. Whatever whatever happened, they score,
they don't score. We just gotta keep playing, play together,
stick together. Kind of like what and as Candre just said,
right when we together we lose together. Whatever, we stick together.
That's not what he said. Like, we got a bunch
of big name dudes, highly paid dudes. We gotta play
hold ourselves to a high standard. We can't worry about
over there. In other words, over there sucks. But now
(36:41):
am you? Guys? Am I taking too big? My taking
too big a leap? With that? Dan, you're a Seahawks fan. Like,
I'm not saying he'd be wrong if he said it,
but is the way in which he said it purposeful
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