September 17, 2025 • 46 mins
On a Wednesday edition of The Best Of The Doug Gottlieb Show: Doug reacts to comments made by the Bengals Offensive Coordinator about protecting Joe Burrow in the scheme as Doug thinks the Bengals failed Burrow.
On this installment of The Midway, Doug and the crew discuss Dabo Swinney's situation at Clemson.
Doug welcomes NFL Analyst Daniel Jeremiah onto the show to talk about the Chargers, Caleb Williams and the other major headlines around the NFL.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Thanks for listening to the best of The Doug Gottlieb
Show podcast. Be sure to catch us live every weekday
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Doug Gottlieb Show, Fox Sports Radio. I hope you're having
(00:30):
a great day. The Doug Gottlieb Show broadcast live every
single day from two places, sunny southern California and sunny beautiful,
absolutely stunning, Green Bay, Wisconsin. Eh, welcome in. So. Uh,
there's a lot of I don't want to say, little stories,
(00:53):
but interesting stories. You know, we run into this on
many Wednesdays here right where, you know, Monday is like
kind of story overload. Right, we had week two Tuesdays.
Generally we get to college football some on Tuesdays. Uh,
but because there was two Monday night football games, because
of the Tom Brady story, it felt like Tuesdays were
(01:16):
more kind of NFL focused. Wednesdays kind of the lull day.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Right.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
You got Thursday night football, you get baseball. I did
find myself watching some w NBA playoffs a little bit
as I got stuck on on watching Indiana. Part of
it is stylistically offensively, they kind of play the way
I'm trying to get my team to play. So there
there's some interesting stuff there. Right. I know that Dan
(01:41):
I mean assumed me that Jay Stu has his feelings
about his Dodgers and Dodgers bullpen for the second night
in a row. But I thought the topic of Joe
Burrow was an interesting one and I'd love Dan and
Jay your your input a little bit. I'll give you
my thoughts and the the The question is always were
the Bengals so focused on building for Joe Burrow with
(02:07):
skill position players that they didn't build well enough with
the offensive line, They not do enough with scheme and
with personnel to protect him. Dan Pitcher is their offense
coordinate with the Bengals, He said, quote, we have special
skill players. This is what he said to the Cincinnati Inquirer.
We want to accentuate those skilled players. We want to
try and do things. How do we accentuate their skill set?
(02:29):
How do we do it in a way in which
we're limiting the amount of the times that Joe's potentially gonna
get hit. There's no one decision that solves it. Everything
costs something. So we constantly think about these things, and again,
I hate that we're in the spot that we're in.
You always evaluate and reevaluate and do it over and
over again, but we can only make the decisions in
(02:51):
the moment that give us a chance to win. So,
you know, this is the old Hey, skills a players,
we'd like to get you paid, but if we pay
all of you, we don't have the money left over.
We don't have the money left over to build a
top level offensive line. Now, if you look back three
(03:12):
years or so ago, right that year or how many
was it four years ago that they went to the
Super Bowl, that was a year in which that this
coaching staff, front office called in the question and they
rebuilt the offensive line. And I kind of told people
they did, but it wasn't a good enough answer for people.
And then you know, they started slow and end up
closing hot and getting to a super Bowl. They went
(03:33):
back and got to an AFC Championship game. And only
now it's like a reoccurring theme that Joe Burrow is
getting hit so much. He's the new Andrew Luck. I
would tell you this that I don't know enough about
what they did financially, what they did with their offensive line.
(03:57):
I know that we have a tendency to overreact some
because it's a turf toe injury. And there's also the
video against the Cincinnati Bengals where he just got obliterated
as he released the football. And that one's a hard,
a jarring, one, hard one to get out of your
brain when you're thinking about Joe Burrow and then you
think about the injuries and now they've stacked up over
(04:18):
the years and how many injuries he's had, and you're like, man,
this guy's always hurt. But I think there's three different factors. One,
there's the ownership of Joe Burrow holds the ball a
long time. That's his Style's he's got some Ben Roethlisberger
to him where he has brass brass cajones and he'll
(04:41):
stand in there and take a hit because he wants
to deliver the football. So some of that is your
quarterback holds the ball a little bit longer. Some of
it is probably in their scheme. How is it that
he's getting hit that much? And you're talking about accentuating
the positives, right, You're putting guys out into routes and
not leaving enough guys in to have max protect. And
(05:01):
maybe that's also the bravado of Joe Burrow, like I
don't care, just get get guys open. I'll find it open.
I don't care if I get hit now and again,
even though those hits seem to be crushing in terms
of the ferocity of blows. But the last part is
probably the most important thing, which is how you're building
a team. You're gonna have to sacrifice something something, especially
(05:29):
when you have either a salary cap or limitations on funds.
And I can draw the direct parallel to my team
to college football teams to college basketball teams because they're
dealing with Hey, at some point, we just don't have
any money, so you gotta be judicious with it. I
said this about Alabama football, right, Alabama football, like they're
(05:52):
starting quarterback. He's played well since you know, playing okay
against Florida State. He was under a lot of pressure
against floors tape. But my guess is they didn't go
out and pay a couple million dollars. You had a
guy in house in his third year. He's super happy
to be the quarterback at Alabama. I don't think he's
making a million dollars now, he's probably making I don't know,
(06:17):
five hundred seven fifty or whatever. And then they'll keep
as if he's good enough, they'll keep him to stay.
And he wants to be there, wants to be the
quarterback of the Tide, unless you know he wants to
go elsewhere in cash in. Who knows if he can
cash in. But you do that because you know, if
you have let's say conservatively Alabama has twenty million dollars,
if you spend five million dollars in a quarterback, well
(06:37):
there's going to be a shortfall somewhere. Our scale is different,
but there's going to be a short fall somewhere. Talk
about this in the NBA, how the NBA has gone
from three stars to two stars, because if you have
three stars, you can't really have a team around him.
If you have two stars, you can do pretty well.
If you have one star, you can have an ensemble cast,
which is really really, really good. But you got to
(06:58):
manage those salaries. NFL's no different. You have a salary cap.
There's a limit to what you can spend and if
you spend more money than anybody on a wide receiver,
you spend a ton of money on a quarterback, You
spend a lot of money on a secondary wide receiver.
You spend a ton of money even for a one
year deal on on your best pass rusher. Something's got
(07:20):
to give, and there's things you can go cheap on.
You could even use the home building analogy. Right, you're
on a budget. You know you're going to go over
that budget, but how much you're going to go over
that budget? You know? With flooring, Like there's a floor
that I put into a couple of different houses and
(07:40):
it's man made, like man made wood, Like how's it
man made? Would I don't know, I don't know how
it works, but I know that generally you go back
fifteen years ago and I never would have either bought
a house or in a house put in anything other
than traditional hardwood floors. But one kind of like field too,
(08:01):
kind of like how it how much it costs, and
I like how it looks. But when am I giving up?
I'm giving up saying these are hard real hardwood floors.
Something's got to give. You get a budget on you're
redoing your kitchen. You know, do you use courts for countertops?
Do you use marble for countdops? Marble is great, it's
(08:23):
really expensive and make that much difference in the courts
because if you do, then all right, what is something's
got to give? Right? How big is the hood on
the on the at the stove and what level of
appliance you use? You only have a set budget, and
that's where the Bengals are. Bengals forever have been told
that they're cheap, and maybe they have been on some
(08:46):
ancillary things, but they've paid their players, especially their star players,
to stay. They like to keep their own But in
terms of building an offensive line and building a system
that protects their most prized asset, it seems like they failed.
But there's also some accountability there for Joe Burrow. And
my guess is that the reason that there's a shortfall
(09:08):
there is because they spent money not just on elite
wide receiver, but the secondary wide receiver and something's got
to give. Dan, what do you think?
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Gosh, it's such an interesting situation because I think a
lot of what you said is true, and I think
that there's some faults that you laid out correctly on
Joe Burrow of maybe holding the football a little too long.
I think Doug that everything that we would say about
Joe Burrow is what we would say about the Bengals
front office. It's what we say about Zach Taylor. The
(09:40):
team has tried to address their offensive line, used a
first round pick on a tackle in twenty twenty four.
A couple of years ago, they signed to Orlando Brown,
who was one of the top free agents at that point.
Brown manning the left tackle spot, so it's not like
they were completely negligent about it. However, for some reason
the players are developing, their interior line continues to be weak.
(10:03):
Zach Taylor continues to be criticized. No matter how good
the offense is, it's still about protecting Burrow, doing things
that could maybe make the defense react in a certain
way that could allow him time. There's blame to go
all around, but I think at the surface, when you
just invest the amount of money, specifically with t Higgins
(10:26):
because he had thought to be on the move for
so long, there's just no way to get out from
under it. And it's also why your team has to
score thirty eight points a game, because you don't even
have the resources to build a solid defense, let alone
an offensive line to protect Joe Burrow. So it is.
It is a the Bengals made the move that we
(10:46):
all thought, I think were the easiest move, and sometimes
those easiest moves aren't the right moves.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
That's totally fair. And then you get to the whole
discussion about how how the NFL quarterbacks. You know, we
will do this every year, and I'm sure it'll happen
this year. I don't recall it happening yet where there's
a really really soft personal foul call for roughing the
passer and you know everyone said, well, that's not football.
(11:14):
He not even heard, does it? Okay? But I don't
think in the moment, we're considering how big a drop
off it is, how big a buzz kill it is
when you lose these starting quarterbacks. It's like, do you
want guys to be called for these little penalties? And
(11:36):
you know it's real when they slide, you gotta let
up and you can't hit him in the head with
your hand, even when you're trying to deflect the football
and your hand naturally comes down. I get it. But
the flip side to it is flip side to it
is when those guys do get hit in the head
and get concussed, it becomes a house of cards. Very
(11:56):
few teams can afford a backup quarterback. The backup quarterback
generally hurts the quality of play, the watchability of a game.
And yeah, we're all kind of beholding to these starting quarterbacks.
Teams are as well, and that's why the game is
probably overficiated as such.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
You know Doug in their Super Bowl run. We look
at Joe Burrow and the contract that that he was on,
and Jamar Chase Ye in the rookie deal that he
was on, and the same thing with t Higgins. You
also had a secondary there was thought to be one
of the best, if not the best, in the NFL
at that time, and nobody's left. Everybody is gone for
(12:37):
one reason or another, Like you know, Jesse Bates left
to go to Atlanta, got paid there. But this is
the that's the trickle down effect of these contracts as well.
It's the same thing as a Seahawks fan that you
had to make a decision on. And I thought John
Schneider did a great job in getting guys on lesser
deals than others. But there are decisions that you have
to make, and sometimes it just kind of starts to
(13:00):
trickle down. And I think that's what we're seeing here
with the Bengals. Like their secondary in that Super Bowl
year was magnificent. They had a lot of pieces on defense.
Now most of those pieces are gone, let alone the
problems with the offensive line protecting Joe Burrow, which has
been an issue throughout his career.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
This is the best of the Don dot Leap Show
on Fox Sports Radio.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Hey, what up there, It's Doug Gottlieb Show, Fox Sports Radio.
You having a good day. You're gonna for the next
hour and oh yeah, by the way, after this hour,
you want to download the podcast. You can hear the
whole show plus the in the Bonus podcast, which is
a special hour edition you can't hear on radio. You
can only get when you download the podcast wherever you
download podcasts. Hour two is always awesome, right, always awesome.
(13:47):
R J. Young's gonna join us. He is the he
has the number one show, which is a huge college
football podcast. He's also gigantic Oklahoma Homer Big week this
week for the Sooners. They just demolish Temple. Now they
bring in Auburn right first SEC game and Auburn's quarterback
was Oklahoma's quarterback Jackson Arnold last year. Can't wait to
(14:09):
talk with R. J. Young, the guy who was the
next guy is now with Auburn, and then John Matteer.
Now maybe he's the next Oklahoma quarterback to win the
Heisman Trophy. As he is. I think the Empires said
yesterday he's the betting favorite to win the Heisman. Dan
can definitely correct me if I'm wrong. I'm right, Okay,
thanks Dan. Anyway, we'll get to some college football upcoming.
(14:33):
Also got to talk Tush Push. I saw something on
First Things First which I thought was absolutely brilliant, and
we'll we'll play that off versus something that an Eagles
offensive lineman said about the Tush push this past week.
That'll be upcoming in fifteen minutes. But it is the
middle of the week. It's a Wednesday. It is the
(14:54):
middle of the day, right, I mean one on the west,
three on the east. You're not going to bed at
seven in the night. It's the middle of your day,
and it's the middle of our show. We have two
hours of live radio, one hour of podcast, which which
lands in your queue at the top of the hour,
so we do something called the Midway. He's not getting.
Speaker 4 (15:17):
It's time for stuck in the middle. The Midway.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
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(15:42):
on the on the Midway, Jason.
Speaker 5 (15:44):
Henk you Doug, I'll take it from here. Dabo Swinney
made news. He went viral as he's protecting this turf.
I guess Dabo, and you guys can correct me if
I'm wrong. They lost a game on Saturday they that
most people thought they should have won, and they're one
and two on the season and the knives are out
(16:05):
and Dabbo took time yesterday to address this.
Speaker 6 (16:08):
If they want me gone, they if they tired of winning,
they can send me on the way, because that's all
we've done is win. So if they tired of winning,
we've had We've won this league eight out of the
last ten years.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Is that not good.
Speaker 6 (16:18):
I'm just asking is that good.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
I don't know if that's good or not.
Speaker 6 (16:21):
To win your league eight out of ten years, to
go to playoffs seven out of ten years, being four
national championships, went it twice. Yeah, we little down right.
Now take your shots. But I got a long memory case,
y'all don't know.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
We'll be all right. We'll bounce back.
Speaker 6 (16:33):
This is a program built to last, always has been,
always will be.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
And I would just say, if.
Speaker 6 (16:39):
You give up on us, if you don't believe on us,
because we've lost two games down to the last trade
and we're wanting. You didn't believe in us anyway, so
it don't matter. You wasn't all in anyway.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
If you all in, you burn the ships.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
Man.
Speaker 6 (16:51):
There ain't no exit strategy like you're freaking all in.
And hey listen, I mean Clempston's tired of winning. They
send me on my way, but I'm gonna go somewhere else,
and I ain't going.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
To the beach. Hell, I'm fifty five.
Speaker 6 (17:03):
I got a long way to go. Y'all gonna have
to deal with me for a while. I had a
long way to go. I'm just getting going. I'm just
now good enough to be a head coach.
Speaker 5 (17:11):
Now, you guys are the college football guys. Doug, you're
a head coach, Dan, you follow the sport closely from
a thirty thousand foot view on this. If I could
as just listening to that SoundBite, that sounds like a
guy who has made more money than he could spend,
who if you want to buy him out, would be
a tremendous amount of money that is grandkids probably couldn't spend.
(17:35):
And I'm going to say whatever I want, so get
rid of me and I'll probably get a really good
job next. That sounds like a guy that could kind
of take her leave things. But you guys might disagree.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
I love it. I don't think it has anything to
do with anybody buying him out. I think that was
really at the whether it's fine bombs or inner net
trolls of the world right understanding the reality of it.
And again, I have a lot to say on Clemson,
and I'll say it, but again my thing is, I
(18:13):
don't think that was Hey, he's spent too much money.
It's he knows that coaching football and coaching, and the
one thing the Playoff allows is for real coaching, which
is what do you look like at the end of
the season, and we can keep getting better. So I
think that was more at the Internet or at X
and social media than it was Clemson administration, Clemson boosters,
(18:36):
Chase Dan, what do you think?
Speaker 3 (18:37):
And it very it may well be that that could
be the case with Dabbo. And I actually will side
with Dabbo on this in the fact that Clemson, we
all know this, clemsoning used to be a verb when
you lost the game you should have won, or blew
(18:59):
it in some crazy fashion. That was clemsoning, and that
happened prior to Dabbo, and it happened years after the
year after year, season after season. Something that you think
could go right for the Tigers ultimately wouldn't and he
turned it around. And I understand that this new age
of college football is one that a lot of people
(19:20):
are adjusting to, and Dabbo may seem like a fossil
or an antique because of the new way of college football.
But I hate it when coaches get run out of
town for stuff that they shouldn't have And considering where
Clemson was prior, I think that Dabbo has at least
another two years of goodwill built up for the run
(19:44):
that he put them on. And that doesn't even include
Doug everything that you said about the current state of
college football and what is the real goal at the
end of the season. Their loss to LSU wasn't great,
but you know what, it's really not going to hurt
them in the law long run. And when you look
at the ACC seems to be there for the taking. Sure,
(20:05):
you lose a game at Georgia Tech, new squash, Georgia
Tech's pretty good football team. Yep, those things happen. So
for a fan base that now seems like they're spoiled,
it's those spoiled brats that I think Dabo is talking to.
And I may not agree with everything that he does
with with it coaching in how they build their team,
(20:25):
but I am one hundred percent behind him in what
he said in defending his record and what he has
done for that school.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Yeah, so let me get into the state of college
football thing. Their deal is they want to stay out
of the portal. They want all you know, hey, where
get our guys, keep our guys, grow our guys, and
go from there. And here's the thing that look, no
one actually knows what the best way to do it is,
and the best way to do it at one place
(20:52):
might not be the best way to do it it
somewhere else. Now, the one thing Dabo had going for
him that others did not was he had, you know,
eight nine years of excellence before you know, he had
a couple like five unbelievable years before the portal started,
before playing players really started. So he did have a culture,
(21:16):
he did have the backing of everybody. He could have
done it a bunch of different ways. We're all I'll
agree with Dabo is like, I don't think they have
the money of a Georgia. I don't think they have
the money of an SEC. And so if you want
to compete at the highest level when you're not at
(21:37):
that level financially, you got to find a different way
because you just can't load up. It's it's like, it's
the reason that moneyball exists in baseball.
Speaker 6 (21:45):
Right.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
The A's had no chance of outbidding the Yankees, just none,
or the Dodgers or any of these big market even
the Giants, right, they just don't have that much money.
So I just we're all trying to figure out what
the best avenue is for our university and it's a
(22:05):
trial and err thing. And again last year is a
perfect example. Didn't look great out of the gate, but
they end up coming around and winning the ACC right
and going to the playoffs and ultimately, you know, did
they live up to the Hey, can you have a
high retension rate and win a national championship?
Speaker 6 (22:24):
No?
Speaker 1 (22:24):
They were a notch below talent wise the elite elite teams,
but they had a level of consistency and that I
think he believes is their avenue. Yeah, he's absolutely earned
the right for more time. And I do think I
told you last year, I was cheering for him because
I like that way. I think that's I think you
(22:47):
can build the true college experience. I think you can
bring great culture. I think you're going to have more
consistent ten win years that way, even though you may
not have a national championship that way. That's the hard part, right,
like the going all in every year for new players
and new pieces. I think the highs and the lows.
It's Florida State. Two years ago, Florida State doesn't lose
(23:08):
a game. Last year, Floristate wins two games. This year.
I think they're back to being good. Could be next
year because you just year by year there's such volatility.
He's building for consistency. I think that's the smarter play.
It's the more consistent play. But again, like you have
to preserve the right, you might be wrong because no
(23:28):
one's ever experienced college sports in this era. It's new
to everybody. Everybody.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
I just wouldn't want to be the president or the
ad or the boosters or whoever, to be the one
to run Dabble out of town.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
But you know where he's gonna go, right, I mean,
everybody knows what happens. Well, he sits there and waits,
and if Calen Boy gets fired, he gets the job
at Alabama.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Yes, that seems to be a possible landing spot, but
it should never come to that.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
It really shouldn't add Clemson. He is Clemson football.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
And I would also say, Doug that, And I'll use
your sport as an example of someone like coach k
who transitioned and altered the way that they did things
because of a different landscape in college basketball. Sure that
Dabbo at least, if he's stuck in his ways now,
(24:21):
at least deserves the runway for the next couple of years.
To continue to really analyze if what he is doing
right now is correct or if he does need to
turn it around. And that's something that you shouldn't throw
away because of two losses in one score games to
(24:42):
one team that's three and nine again, Georgia Tech, I
think is a pretty good football team and LSU at home.
I know that LSU I'll played Clemson in that game,
but still one score game, Like, what are we doing
here if we're running someone out of town because they're
one and two with a combined loss of you know,
ten points on their two losses this year. I just know, Yeah,
(25:04):
I don't I don't like it. I don't like it either.
I understand that there's an ever changing world of college sports,
and I think a lot of schools are trying to
find out ways. We also don't know, Doug on how
much the new revenue sharing deal in the ACC is
going to affect the top schools because they are expected
to get more money because of their exposure and what happens,
(25:26):
So does that put the Miami's in Florida States and
Clemsons further down the road than the other schools Once
that really fully takes you know, goes into effect. I
don't know, but just for for Dabble to be dealing
with this, and I get it, and there's He's said
a lot of stuff previously which kind of makes him
an easy target for this. But I'm glad that he's
(25:47):
sticking up for himself because I just think it's absurd
to have this sort of conversation.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Look, I'd even I'd even link in Mike Gundy at
MI alma mater right where you know they get blasted
by ORG. And look, the whole deal is he shouldn't
have played the game. Shouldn't have played the game right.
That game was scheduled in twenty eighteen. Oregon was eight
and seven at the time, Oklahoma State was the top
ten team. The landscape of college ball has changed showed dramatically,
(26:14):
and I think Mike Gundy and obviously Dan Lanning picked
on it made it act to be some negative. I
think my Gundy was trying to be one trying to
set everybody up for what they were going to see,
like he knew. And two he's actually trying to give
them a company like look, they're really well coached and
they got way more money than we have, Like this,
this is what he should have said, was this is
what big time college. If you want to build a
(26:35):
program at a place like Oregon where you don't have
great instate recruits, this is what you do. They have
done it perfectly. That's all you have to say. Okay,
But the point is that, like, do we think that
in two years Mike Gundy has forgotten how to coach football?
Speaker 3 (26:50):
No?
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Right, Like he suddenly like completely lost track of how
to coach football. Last year they beat Arkansas and then
all of a sudden it fell apart. Why because Arkansas
beat him, they lost Like they only had three or
four difference makers. I think three or four of them
got hurt. The quarterback end up in a seventh year
stinking up to join the offensive line wasn't good enough.
But they lost their difference makers to injury because the
(27:11):
attrition of early in the season, and they don't have
the money to have the depth. Then he scraps it
and has to have a whole new staff. You have
a whole new staff and you have money for the
first time, and you go out and spend it. You
don't know what to like. People are gonna make mistakes,
make mistakes first time you have money when you haven't
had money, and you have a new staff, you don't
have an identity. How are we gonna play? We don't know.
Guys are showing up late. And then you go and
(27:33):
play a behemoth like organ and you get pumbled. Guess what.
Ninety percent of the teams get pumbled by Organ. So
you know again, My thing is, if you've shown that
you can win over a decade, which Dabo has, which
Mike Gundy has, you got to give him the benefit
of the doubt of give him a little bit of runway,
(27:54):
because this is a completely different era, completely different and
what your plan is until you see it play out.
And no, if your plan is, hey, we're gonna win
this year and you tell everybody we're going all in,
we're gonna win this year, and then you don't, that's different.
But you say, here's our plan, here's what we're gonna try.
You have to understand you might be wrong and things
(28:16):
might things might not go well. And that's what's happened
in Oakland State, and we'll see what's happening in Clemson.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Oh well, I will finish you with this. This would
be my last word. Just to jump back to dabble
for a second. There isn't a game on their schedule
outside of a home game against Florida State Number seven
Florida State that they shouldn't win, and that game against
Florida State is a game that is winnable for them,
so they could run the table as some people pick
Clemson to win the national title at the beginning of
(28:42):
the year, if they do go on a run, Doug,
you know what we're gonna hear two months from now
is the team I wouldn't want to face in the
bracket Clemson, just you know, like we would have any
other the team you don't want to face because they
would be hot at that time and it would be
funny on how two months difference would change the air.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
And that is the Midway.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
The Midway. Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk
lineup in the nation yet catch all of our shows
at foxsports Radio dot com and within the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
I want to talk about this quote and have a
true discussion about it. Tua and the Dolphins, obviously struggling,
they take on the Buffalo Bills now again, they've played
Buffalo at various times of the year. If there's a
time of year where he can be successful in Orchard Park.
This is the time. By the way, he's going to
(29:38):
have the pressure of playing in front of Dan Byer
and Jason Stewart. Right, that's that's a lot of pressure
for a young.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
Quot, big time pressure.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Yes, a lot of pressure. Our thanks, by the way
to the Buffalo Bills. They listened to the show. They
came through with the tickets for the guys. I believe
that Jason Stewart has committed to jumping off of a
chair or a platform onto one of those tables for
Bill's Mafia. Jason, can you confirm or deny?
Speaker 5 (30:11):
I can neither confirm nor deny. Okay, depends on the
how much beer I drink?
Speaker 1 (30:19):
Is beer is excessive amounts of beer, copious amounts of
beer in the pregame, in the pregame itinerary Dann Bier,
because I know Dan Bier is a big itinerary guy.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
Well, here's the good thing. I can drive, and since
I don't drink, Jason has carte blanche to do what
he needs to do so we can get there. We
land tomorrow at like eleven am local time, so maybe
we'll get a good nap in quick before the game.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
You guys doing Red Eye, Yes, Red Eye to wear Chicago.
Speaker 3 (30:51):
Yeah, Chicago to then Buffalo, so we will we will
get a little pregame. Nap game doesn't kick off till
eight fifteen Eastern, so that gives us a little time.
So we'll have plenty of time. But I can be
the d D designated driver if Jason wants to go
all out on Thursday night.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
You know the thing you've and I've only been to
Buffalo once in my life is during the NCAA tournament.
Probably we won both NCAA Tournament games there, and so
we proceeded to drink Canadian beer. And you know what's interesting,
there's a reason that nobody goes like when you go
to I get a beer, like, hey, do you have
anything Canadian? They just don't. Canadian whiskey, maybe, Canadian beer,
(31:33):
not so much. Mexican beer. Yes, Canadian beer yeah no,
yeah no.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
And I'm only doing carry on, so I don't know
how much I could bring back on Buffalo or Canadian things.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Yeah, well, let's up, let's do this. Let me bring
in Daniel Jeremiah NFL analysts. Of course, he's the color
voice color analyst for the LA Chargers. Radio network to
see him on the NFL network as well. DJ I'm
gonna play some for you. This is to a tongue
Byelo I believe it was earlier today and he said
(32:07):
this about comparing himself to Josh Allen.
Speaker 7 (32:10):
Dude, he's he's top tier.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
You know.
Speaker 7 (32:12):
If it's not with his arm, it's with his legs.
You know that dude can do nearly anything he wants.
So definitely different skill set for me. I can't do
half of what he does when it comes to running
the ball.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
And any of that.
Speaker 7 (32:25):
And then with how he can just chuck a ball
down the field, you know, with how far and the
arm strength that he has, you know, he's supreme when
when it comes to that.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
Okay, so these are all compliments to Josh Allen, But
what what you will have is people saying, Oh, you
can't run like him, you can't throw like him. How
can we possibly consider you a you know, an elite
level or even top level reasonable quarterback if you can't
do half of the things that he can do. What
(32:57):
did you hear when you when you heard that from Tua.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Look, there's the stuff about two of that you can
criticize in terms of you know, some of the decisions,
or you talk about cold weather, or you can talk
about some of the physical limitations. But like I think
we would all agree too, has always been a first
class kid and now a man. I think he's just
saying nice things about a guy in his division and
(33:21):
acknowledging how gifted and how talented he is. But I
don't think that's you know, he's also humble where he's
not gonna say what his strength is and his his
style of play and his strength is all in processing
and and you know, accuracy and quick decision making when
he's when he's going well, which he hasn't been, when
(33:41):
he's when he when he is going really well, that's
his strength. And we've seen numerous times, you know, over
the years where guys who had that strength you go
back to, you know, like Joe Montana's that was his strength,
or Breeze that was his strength, and new of those
guys are were the most athletic of their era or
the biggest or the strongest of their area. But there
you know their brand of football could work. So now
(34:03):
two is a much much lower version of that. But
I wouldn't read too much into that. I think he's
just a classy dude who's trying to say some really
nice things about Josh Allen.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Well Stut Gottlieb Show here on Fox Sports Radio. Okay,
now we have two weeks of tape. How fixable are
the Dolphins problems?
Speaker 2 (34:25):
Well, I mean, I don't know. To me, it's it's
not even just you know, what is it in terms
of player you know, the personnel that you're rolling out
there and those things. It's almost just watching it from
an energy standpoint and a body language standpoint and all
those things, it just isn't It isn't a great vibe
watching that group right now. So I don't know how
(34:48):
that gets turned around or how that changes. And I
think that's probably where you see some criticism, you know,
coming towards the head coach from that. From that standpoint,
but their offensive line from a physical standpoint is not good.
I don't really think they can run the football like
you need to run the ball to be balanced. I
think in the passing game they still do some good things,
(35:09):
but my biggest takeaways are just the energy, the body language,
the lack of physicality, the struggling offensive line like those
are those are definitely worrisome.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Yeah, I mean it does not feel like a well,
it feels like the ship is taking on a lot
of water and it's at some point we're going to
declare it's sunk, right, it just does.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Yeah. Well, it's not the team you want to be
playing when you're zero and two, and it's not where
you want to be playing them either.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Nope, nope, Let's get to the Chargers one a Monday night.
Khalil Mack look like a dislocated elbow. I don't know
what the other damage is. First, when you see this
Charger team win both of those games, both away from home,
you know you've seen them for years. Why is this
team different?
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Well, I think they're building off what they were last year.
And you know, let's start first of all. I mean,
the news that just came out on Khalil was, you know,
he's going to go on a short term I r
so four weeks, but thankfully the season's not over. It's
you know, dislocated elbow. He can brace it up and play,
So you know that was big news, not losing him
for the season, because it did not look good live
when it happened. But you know, why is this team different?
(36:21):
I think when you're you know, the foundation was last year,
which was a really good foundation. And let's start defensively.
This team was the number one defense in the NFL
and yards allowed last year. So you come back, they've
gotten some some more personnel to throw into that mix,
with some the defensive line depth with a lot of size.
Now you can build off of the uh, you know,
(36:42):
off the the baseline that you had last year, with
some really really smart players in the back end like
Derwin James and tar Heep Still Lowie Gilman's really really bright.
You know, Elijah Moulden's out right now, but he's another
incredibly intelligent guy. So you've got a stud defensive coordinator.
Enjoy him while you got him, because I can't imagine
Decimnorer isn't a head coach this time next year. But
(37:03):
you've got that foundation. Now you're building on that. You've
got incredibly smart team. They're not going to beat themselves.
They're going to make you methodically drive the ball. And
you know, you've seen it already with two good quarterbacks
who get frustrated trying to play that way against them.
And you know, so defensively, they're in a great spot
with a lot more depth than they had last year.
And then offensively, you know, you get more weapons for
(37:27):
Justin with Keenan Allen coming in there, Conflin's and upgrade
at the tight end position. You've got two backs who
I would argue were better than what they had last
year and bring a physicality to it. Joe Waltz just
taken the left tackle and it's hard for me to
see a better left tackle in the NFL right now
than the way he's playing. So yeah, there's a lot
(37:48):
of things going right. But I think it's a very
smart discipline team. And the smart thing is what I'd
love to get your thoughts on, because I was talking
to one of the coaches before the game and I said,
you know, I take a chance to visit all these players,
and I've done this for eight years with this team.
I said, this is the smartest collection of players. That's
going to mean something.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
I think it absolutely does mean something, you know, I
you know, we have some guys that are a little
bit slower learners or whatever, and you know, smart does win.
It's easier to coach, it's easier to retain. You know,
it's just all things are easier and sometimes they're too smart,
too smart for their own good. But and they're questioning
everything you do. But yeah, I smart. Smart definitely wins
(38:28):
in sports. Chiefs. Chiefs now they don't have their top
two wide receivers, right, but Kelsey dropping that ball around
the end zone, it it felt like kind of looked
old on that play. It just did. But when they
get Rice back, when they get Worthy back, how good?
(38:50):
Where is this team? What does this team look like that?
Speaker 2 (38:53):
I think they're dangerous once they get those guys back.
And one of the reasons I'll say that is I
do think the outside of their offensive line. With Josh Simmons,
I already think he's a really good player in his
rookie year, and I think he's only going to get
better as he plays more and gets more comfortable Sue
Mattia playing next to him is you know, he was
(39:13):
bad at tackle, but he's been better inside at guard,
and I think you'll see that left side get better
as the year goes along. I think eventually they're going
to come to the realization that, you know, Joan Taylor
is not good enough at right tackle and they're going
to have to get him out of there. But adding
those receivers to the mix will make a big, big difference.
You know. I think this division is very vulnerable and
(39:33):
and could slip out of their drafts for the first
time in forever. But it could be one of those
things where this is a team that you know, they
just need to get into the tournament and have all
their guys available. If they do that, if they make
the move that I think is necessary at right tackle.
I think the defense is very well coached. They've got
good pieces there. It's just going to be as dangerous
a team as anybody if they if they get into
(39:55):
the tournament. I know it sounds it's a seventeen game season.
We're only two games in and I'm talking like they
don't they aren't going to win the division. But I
think when you've been where they've been, they're just worried
about trying to get at Lombardi and they need to
get into the tournament. And if they're healthy and get
into the tournament, that's that's still a very very dangerous team.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
No question about it. Okay, you've seen the Raiders up
close calling the game this week. I just end of
the day, I think sometimes we fall in love with
the Geno story, right, because he was so maligned, especially
the early years in New York. He's had this resurgence,
but just he's not in the league quarterback. He's never
been in the league quarterback, and yet we act like
(40:37):
because he's been doing it so long, he should be
better than he is. I thought the turnovers were just
a sign of that's Geno Smith. He's just okay.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Yeah, I think there's you know, I think there's a
book that's out there now and you just you know,
not everybody reads it, I guess, but the you know,
if you want to blitz Gino, Gino is incredibly smart,
and Gino is a very gifted thrower. So what happens
when you send extra guys to go get him, is
you clear up the picture on the back end, and
(41:06):
he's going to find your vulnerability and he's going to
be able to process it quickly and he's going to
be able to cut you up. And that's what he
did against the Patriots the week before. The Patriots tried
to blitz him, and he destroyed him on the blitz.
The Chargers didn't do that. The Chargers were creative with
some of their four man pressures where they have some
sim pressures where they're dropping guys out and maybe bring
Derwin from depth, or maybe bring someone off off the nickel.
(41:29):
But they made him have to throw the ball through
the forest, you know, with a lot of bodies back there.
He nicked quite a few branches. There were fifteen path
breakups in that game. So to me, that's kind of
the book on him and how you play him. But
you know, inevitably, some some coaches, Hey, we're an aggressive team,
we're at blitzing team. This is what we do. Well,
good luck, that's not the that's not the formula against Gino.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
The Bengals, Well, we talked about this to start the show.
They have. It's not for lack of trying, right, They've
they've invested sources like draft picks in lineman. But now
in this offseason they put so much of their resources
into their skill positions. How much of this is Joe
Burrow holding the ball too long? How much of this
(42:13):
is the scheme that leaves him unprotected, and how much
of it is hey, they didn't do enough in terms
of giving the offense the resources to protect him.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
Yeah, I would probably start first of all with just
the I mean, we could say they've they've they've put
resources there, They've taken some guys high in the draft,
and some of them haven't necessarily panned out. I think
you just have to keep doubling down and going back
until you get that right, and that needs to be
your focus. So I think that's a that's a big
part of the problem. You know, Joe holding the ball.
(42:46):
You know, I see some of that, But to me,
I would put it more on the personnel that's in
front of him and just how they chose to invest
their dollars. I get what they were doing in the
offseason because the defense was historically bad last year. You
lose all these games where you're scoring over thirty points,
it stands to reason that hey, we need to we
need to take some guys on the defensive side of
(43:08):
the ball. But man, it's to me, I'd just much
rather air on the side of having way too many
offensive lineman, way too many good offensive lineman and trying
to plug some holes on the other side than to
put him in jeopardy. And he's proven that he's he's
not super durable, so even all the more reason to
double down and invest even more on that issue.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
Stut Gottlieb Show here on Fox Sports Radio. Okay, let's now,
what do we do with Russell Wilson where he plays
unbelievably well but did have a leg turnout.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
Yeah, I mean, I didn't know that was still in him,
to be honest, And I don't know what that says
about Russ or what that says about the Cowboys. I
guess we'll find out as we go through a few
more weeks. But I think that's, you know, for whatever
his limitations have been over the last few years, that's
still a guy he's had a lot of success in
this league, who has a lot of pride, and I
(44:04):
think you absolutely saw his best. So I'm not as
optimistic that that's who he is now and you're going
to see a lot more of that going forward. But
at least he bought himself a little more time here
with Jackson Dark kind of nipping in his heels. So
I'm hopeful for him and for their team that there's
more of that. I'm just you know, I wouldn't say that,
(44:24):
I'm confident we're going to see that. And if you
carry that over to Pittsburgh, you know, we saw Aaron
Aaron have a great week one, and it was like
he's you know, oh, it's all there. It's just gonna
expect that each and every week, and then you fast
forward a week and it doesn't quite look the same.
So we'll see what happens with some of these older quarterbacks.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
Update me on Kala Williams. What's going wrong there?
Speaker 2 (44:47):
Well, actually, you know, and I know a lot of
people have said this this week, but I went back
and went through it again today just as I want to,
you know, just watch it one more time and see
what I'm seeing. I thought for the first first half,
it wasn't just that strive. The first half of that game,
there was a lot of really good there where he
was playing within the pocket, he was connecting his feet
in his eyes, he was throwing the ball accurately. There
(45:08):
was a lot of good for a decent sample size there.
And then, uh, in the second half, it just kind
of started to get away from him a little bit,
you know where you know, he saw some kit balls
where he couldn't find a throwing lane. You know, that
was that was concerning. He had a couple other times
where there's guys around his feet, now keep them and
(45:29):
they're they're tackle stinkd ug. I mean, that's their offensive
tackles look terrible. So he got hit and then once
he got hit, had a lot of byes around his feet.
Then you started seeing the disconnect between his eyes and
his feet, and the accuracy took took off on him.
But I do get some optimism from that knowing you
know what he looked like for half of that game
and maybe a little bit into that third quarter, and
(45:52):
he didn't his his first impulse wasn't just to take off.
He didn't just drop his eyes and look to get
the heck out of there, which he did numerous times
first week. So yeah, I will say progress, progress made,
you know, still overall not not where it needs to be,
but you know, we'll see if it continues trending in
the right direction.
Speaker 1 (46:09):
He's Daniel Jeremiah. You can catch DJ on the Move
the Sticks podcast that that's the best. Of course, you
hear them called Chargers games and you see him on
the NFL Network. DJ, thanks so much for joining us.
Appreciate you being our guest.
Speaker 2 (46:21):
Thanks Doug
Thanks for listening to the best of The Doug Gottlieb
Show podcast. Be sure to catch us live every weekday
three to five Eastern twelve two Pacific on Fox Sports Radio.
Find your local station for The Doug Gottlieb Show at
boxsports Radio dot com, or stream us live every day
on the iHeartRadio app by searching fsr b'mbing up America
Doug Gottlieb Show, Fox Sports Radio. I hope you're having
(00:30):
a great day. The Doug Gottlieb Show broadcast live every
single day from two places, sunny southern California and sunny beautiful,
absolutely stunning, Green Bay, Wisconsin. Eh, welcome in. So. Uh,
there's a lot of I don't want to say, little stories,
(00:53):
but interesting stories. You know, we run into this on
many Wednesdays here right where, you know, Monday is like
kind of story overload. Right, we had week two Tuesdays.
Generally we get to college football some on Tuesdays. Uh,
but because there was two Monday night football games, because
of the Tom Brady story, it felt like Tuesdays were
(01:16):
more kind of NFL focused. Wednesdays kind of the lull day.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Right.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
You got Thursday night football, you get baseball. I did
find myself watching some w NBA playoffs a little bit
as I got stuck on on watching Indiana. Part of
it is stylistically offensively, they kind of play the way
I'm trying to get my team to play. So there
there's some interesting stuff there. Right. I know that Dan
(01:41):
I mean assumed me that Jay Stu has his feelings
about his Dodgers and Dodgers bullpen for the second night
in a row. But I thought the topic of Joe
Burrow was an interesting one and I'd love Dan and
Jay your your input a little bit. I'll give you
my thoughts and the the The question is always were
the Bengals so focused on building for Joe Burrow with
(02:07):
skill position players that they didn't build well enough with
the offensive line, They not do enough with scheme and
with personnel to protect him. Dan Pitcher is their offense
coordinate with the Bengals, He said, quote, we have special
skill players. This is what he said to the Cincinnati Inquirer.
We want to accentuate those skilled players. We want to
try and do things. How do we accentuate their skill set?
(02:29):
How do we do it in a way in which
we're limiting the amount of the times that Joe's potentially gonna
get hit. There's no one decision that solves it. Everything
costs something. So we constantly think about these things, and again,
I hate that we're in the spot that we're in.
You always evaluate and reevaluate and do it over and
over again, but we can only make the decisions in
(02:51):
the moment that give us a chance to win. So,
you know, this is the old Hey, skills a players,
we'd like to get you paid, but if we pay
all of you, we don't have the money left over.
We don't have the money left over to build a
top level offensive line. Now, if you look back three
(03:12):
years or so ago, right that year or how many
was it four years ago that they went to the
Super Bowl, that was a year in which that this
coaching staff, front office called in the question and they
rebuilt the offensive line. And I kind of told people
they did, but it wasn't a good enough answer for people.
And then you know, they started slow and end up
closing hot and getting to a super Bowl. They went
(03:33):
back and got to an AFC Championship game. And only
now it's like a reoccurring theme that Joe Burrow is
getting hit so much. He's the new Andrew Luck. I
would tell you this that I don't know enough about
what they did financially, what they did with their offensive line.
(03:57):
I know that we have a tendency to overreact some
because it's a turf toe injury. And there's also the
video against the Cincinnati Bengals where he just got obliterated
as he released the football. And that one's a hard,
a jarring, one, hard one to get out of your
brain when you're thinking about Joe Burrow and then you
think about the injuries and now they've stacked up over
(04:18):
the years and how many injuries he's had, and you're like, man,
this guy's always hurt. But I think there's three different factors. One,
there's the ownership of Joe Burrow holds the ball a
long time. That's his Style's he's got some Ben Roethlisberger
to him where he has brass brass cajones and he'll
(04:41):
stand in there and take a hit because he wants
to deliver the football. So some of that is your
quarterback holds the ball a little bit longer. Some of
it is probably in their scheme. How is it that
he's getting hit that much? And you're talking about accentuating
the positives, right, You're putting guys out into routes and
not leaving enough guys in to have max protect. And
(05:01):
maybe that's also the bravado of Joe Burrow, like I
don't care, just get get guys open. I'll find it open.
I don't care if I get hit now and again,
even though those hits seem to be crushing in terms
of the ferocity of blows. But the last part is
probably the most important thing, which is how you're building
a team. You're gonna have to sacrifice something something, especially
(05:29):
when you have either a salary cap or limitations on funds.
And I can draw the direct parallel to my team
to college football teams to college basketball teams because they're
dealing with Hey, at some point, we just don't have
any money, so you gotta be judicious with it. I
said this about Alabama football, right, Alabama football, like they're
(05:52):
starting quarterback. He's played well since you know, playing okay
against Florida State. He was under a lot of pressure
against floors tape. But my guess is they didn't go
out and pay a couple million dollars. You had a
guy in house in his third year. He's super happy
to be the quarterback at Alabama. I don't think he's
making a million dollars now, he's probably making I don't know,
(06:17):
five hundred seven fifty or whatever. And then they'll keep
as if he's good enough, they'll keep him to stay.
And he wants to be there, wants to be the
quarterback of the Tide, unless you know he wants to
go elsewhere in cash in. Who knows if he can
cash in. But you do that because you know, if
you have let's say conservatively Alabama has twenty million dollars,
if you spend five million dollars in a quarterback, well
(06:37):
there's going to be a shortfall somewhere. Our scale is different,
but there's going to be a short fall somewhere. Talk
about this in the NBA, how the NBA has gone
from three stars to two stars, because if you have
three stars, you can't really have a team around him.
If you have two stars, you can do pretty well.
If you have one star, you can have an ensemble cast,
which is really really, really good. But you got to
(06:58):
manage those salaries. NFL's no different. You have a salary cap.
There's a limit to what you can spend and if
you spend more money than anybody on a wide receiver,
you spend a ton of money on a quarterback, You
spend a lot of money on a secondary wide receiver.
You spend a ton of money even for a one
year deal on on your best pass rusher. Something's got
(07:20):
to give, and there's things you can go cheap on.
You could even use the home building analogy. Right, you're
on a budget. You know you're going to go over
that budget, but how much you're going to go over
that budget? You know? With flooring, Like there's a floor
that I put into a couple of different houses and
(07:40):
it's man made, like man made wood, Like how's it
man made? Would I don't know, I don't know how
it works, but I know that generally you go back
fifteen years ago and I never would have either bought
a house or in a house put in anything other
than traditional hardwood floors. But one kind of like field too,
(08:01):
kind of like how it how much it costs, and
I like how it looks. But when am I giving up?
I'm giving up saying these are hard real hardwood floors.
Something's got to give. You get a budget on you're
redoing your kitchen. You know, do you use courts for countertops?
Do you use marble for countdops? Marble is great, it's
(08:23):
really expensive and make that much difference in the courts
because if you do, then all right, what is something's
got to give? Right? How big is the hood on
the on the at the stove and what level of
appliance you use? You only have a set budget, and
that's where the Bengals are. Bengals forever have been told
that they're cheap, and maybe they have been on some
(08:46):
ancillary things, but they've paid their players, especially their star players,
to stay. They like to keep their own But in
terms of building an offensive line and building a system
that protects their most prized asset, it seems like they failed.
But there's also some accountability there for Joe Burrow. And
my guess is that the reason that there's a shortfall
(09:08):
there is because they spent money not just on elite
wide receiver, but the secondary wide receiver and something's got
to give. Dan, what do you think?
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Gosh, it's such an interesting situation because I think a
lot of what you said is true, and I think
that there's some faults that you laid out correctly on
Joe Burrow of maybe holding the football a little too long.
I think Doug that everything that we would say about
Joe Burrow is what we would say about the Bengals
front office. It's what we say about Zach Taylor. The
(09:40):
team has tried to address their offensive line, used a
first round pick on a tackle in twenty twenty four.
A couple of years ago, they signed to Orlando Brown,
who was one of the top free agents at that point.
Brown manning the left tackle spot, so it's not like
they were completely negligent about it. However, for some reason
the players are developing, their interior line continues to be weak.
(10:03):
Zach Taylor continues to be criticized. No matter how good
the offense is, it's still about protecting Burrow, doing things
that could maybe make the defense react in a certain
way that could allow him time. There's blame to go
all around, but I think at the surface, when you
just invest the amount of money, specifically with t Higgins
(10:26):
because he had thought to be on the move for
so long, there's just no way to get out from
under it. And it's also why your team has to
score thirty eight points a game, because you don't even
have the resources to build a solid defense, let alone
an offensive line to protect Joe Burrow. So it is.
It is a the Bengals made the move that we
(10:46):
all thought, I think were the easiest move, and sometimes
those easiest moves aren't the right moves.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
That's totally fair. And then you get to the whole
discussion about how how the NFL quarterbacks. You know, we
will do this every year, and I'm sure it'll happen
this year. I don't recall it happening yet where there's
a really really soft personal foul call for roughing the
passer and you know everyone said, well, that's not football.
(11:14):
He not even heard, does it? Okay? But I don't
think in the moment, we're considering how big a drop
off it is, how big a buzz kill it is
when you lose these starting quarterbacks. It's like, do you
want guys to be called for these little penalties? And
(11:36):
you know it's real when they slide, you gotta let
up and you can't hit him in the head with
your hand, even when you're trying to deflect the football
and your hand naturally comes down. I get it. But
the flip side to it is flip side to it
is when those guys do get hit in the head
and get concussed, it becomes a house of cards. Very
(11:56):
few teams can afford a backup quarterback. The backup quarterback
generally hurts the quality of play, the watchability of a game.
And yeah, we're all kind of beholding to these starting quarterbacks.
Teams are as well, and that's why the game is
probably overficiated as such.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
You know Doug in their Super Bowl run. We look
at Joe Burrow and the contract that that he was on,
and Jamar Chase Ye in the rookie deal that he
was on, and the same thing with t Higgins. You
also had a secondary there was thought to be one
of the best, if not the best, in the NFL
at that time, and nobody's left. Everybody is gone for
(12:37):
one reason or another, Like you know, Jesse Bates left
to go to Atlanta, got paid there. But this is
the that's the trickle down effect of these contracts as well.
It's the same thing as a Seahawks fan that you
had to make a decision on. And I thought John
Schneider did a great job in getting guys on lesser
deals than others. But there are decisions that you have
to make, and sometimes it just kind of starts to
(13:00):
trickle down. And I think that's what we're seeing here
with the Bengals. Like their secondary in that Super Bowl
year was magnificent. They had a lot of pieces on defense.
Now most of those pieces are gone, let alone the
problems with the offensive line protecting Joe Burrow, which has
been an issue throughout his career.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
This is the best of the Don dot Leap Show
on Fox Sports Radio.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Hey, what up there, It's Doug Gottlieb Show, Fox Sports Radio.
You having a good day. You're gonna for the next
hour and oh yeah, by the way, after this hour,
you want to download the podcast. You can hear the
whole show plus the in the Bonus podcast, which is
a special hour edition you can't hear on radio. You
can only get when you download the podcast wherever you
download podcasts. Hour two is always awesome, right, always awesome.
(13:47):
R J. Young's gonna join us. He is the he
has the number one show, which is a huge college
football podcast. He's also gigantic Oklahoma Homer Big week this
week for the Sooners. They just demolish Temple. Now they
bring in Auburn right first SEC game and Auburn's quarterback
was Oklahoma's quarterback Jackson Arnold last year. Can't wait to
(14:09):
talk with R. J. Young, the guy who was the
next guy is now with Auburn, and then John Matteer.
Now maybe he's the next Oklahoma quarterback to win the
Heisman Trophy. As he is. I think the Empires said
yesterday he's the betting favorite to win the Heisman. Dan
can definitely correct me if I'm wrong. I'm right, Okay,
thanks Dan. Anyway, we'll get to some college football upcoming.
(14:33):
Also got to talk Tush Push. I saw something on
First Things First which I thought was absolutely brilliant, and
we'll we'll play that off versus something that an Eagles
offensive lineman said about the Tush push this past week.
That'll be upcoming in fifteen minutes. But it is the
middle of the week. It's a Wednesday. It is the
(14:54):
middle of the day, right, I mean one on the west,
three on the east. You're not going to bed at
seven in the night. It's the middle of your day,
and it's the middle of our show. We have two
hours of live radio, one hour of podcast, which which
lands in your queue at the top of the hour,
so we do something called the Midway. He's not getting.
Speaker 4 (15:17):
It's time for stuck in the middle. The Midway.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
The Midway is brought to you by the LG X
Boom Bounce portable speaker that delivers game changing sound from
practice to open runs, power your play up thirty hours
of battery life and for the limited time safe twenty
five percent at LG dot com with the code fall
twenty five Bring the boom x Boom where we land
(15:42):
on the on the Midway, Jason.
Speaker 5 (15:44):
Henk you Doug, I'll take it from here. Dabo Swinney
made news. He went viral as he's protecting this turf.
I guess Dabo, and you guys can correct me if
I'm wrong. They lost a game on Saturday they that
most people thought they should have won, and they're one
and two on the season and the knives are out
(16:05):
and Dabbo took time yesterday to address this.
Speaker 6 (16:08):
If they want me gone, they if they tired of winning,
they can send me on the way, because that's all
we've done is win. So if they tired of winning,
we've had We've won this league eight out of the
last ten years.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Is that not good.
Speaker 6 (16:18):
I'm just asking is that good.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
I don't know if that's good or not.
Speaker 6 (16:21):
To win your league eight out of ten years, to
go to playoffs seven out of ten years, being four
national championships, went it twice. Yeah, we little down right.
Now take your shots. But I got a long memory case,
y'all don't know.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
We'll be all right. We'll bounce back.
Speaker 6 (16:33):
This is a program built to last, always has been,
always will be.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
And I would just say, if.
Speaker 6 (16:39):
You give up on us, if you don't believe on us,
because we've lost two games down to the last trade
and we're wanting. You didn't believe in us anyway, so
it don't matter. You wasn't all in anyway.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
If you all in, you burn the ships.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
Man.
Speaker 6 (16:51):
There ain't no exit strategy like you're freaking all in.
And hey listen, I mean Clempston's tired of winning. They
send me on my way, but I'm gonna go somewhere else,
and I ain't going.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
To the beach. Hell, I'm fifty five.
Speaker 6 (17:03):
I got a long way to go. Y'all gonna have
to deal with me for a while. I had a
long way to go. I'm just getting going. I'm just
now good enough to be a head coach.
Speaker 5 (17:11):
Now, you guys are the college football guys. Doug, you're
a head coach, Dan, you follow the sport closely from
a thirty thousand foot view on this. If I could
as just listening to that SoundBite, that sounds like a
guy who has made more money than he could spend,
who if you want to buy him out, would be
a tremendous amount of money that is grandkids probably couldn't spend.
(17:35):
And I'm going to say whatever I want, so get
rid of me and I'll probably get a really good
job next. That sounds like a guy that could kind
of take her leave things. But you guys might disagree.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
I love it. I don't think it has anything to
do with anybody buying him out. I think that was
really at the whether it's fine bombs or inner net
trolls of the world right understanding the reality of it.
And again, I have a lot to say on Clemson,
and I'll say it, but again my thing is, I
(18:13):
don't think that was Hey, he's spent too much money.
It's he knows that coaching football and coaching, and the
one thing the Playoff allows is for real coaching, which
is what do you look like at the end of
the season, and we can keep getting better. So I
think that was more at the Internet or at X
and social media than it was Clemson administration, Clemson boosters,
(18:36):
Chase Dan, what do you think?
Speaker 3 (18:37):
And it very it may well be that that could
be the case with Dabbo. And I actually will side
with Dabbo on this in the fact that Clemson, we
all know this, clemsoning used to be a verb when
you lost the game you should have won, or blew
(18:59):
it in some crazy fashion. That was clemsoning, and that
happened prior to Dabbo, and it happened years after the
year after year, season after season. Something that you think
could go right for the Tigers ultimately wouldn't and he
turned it around. And I understand that this new age
of college football is one that a lot of people
(19:20):
are adjusting to, and Dabbo may seem like a fossil
or an antique because of the new way of college football.
But I hate it when coaches get run out of
town for stuff that they shouldn't have And considering where
Clemson was prior, I think that Dabbo has at least
another two years of goodwill built up for the run
(19:44):
that he put them on. And that doesn't even include
Doug everything that you said about the current state of
college football and what is the real goal at the
end of the season. Their loss to LSU wasn't great,
but you know what, it's really not going to hurt
them in the law long run. And when you look
at the ACC seems to be there for the taking. Sure,
(20:05):
you lose a game at Georgia Tech, new squash, Georgia
Tech's pretty good football team. Yep, those things happen. So
for a fan base that now seems like they're spoiled,
it's those spoiled brats that I think Dabo is talking to.
And I may not agree with everything that he does
with with it coaching in how they build their team,
(20:25):
but I am one hundred percent behind him in what
he said in defending his record and what he has
done for that school.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Yeah, so let me get into the state of college
football thing. Their deal is they want to stay out
of the portal. They want all you know, hey, where
get our guys, keep our guys, grow our guys, and
go from there. And here's the thing that look, no
one actually knows what the best way to do it is,
and the best way to do it at one place
(20:52):
might not be the best way to do it it
somewhere else. Now, the one thing Dabo had going for
him that others did not was he had, you know,
eight nine years of excellence before you know, he had
a couple like five unbelievable years before the portal started,
before playing players really started. So he did have a culture,
(21:16):
he did have the backing of everybody. He could have
done it a bunch of different ways. We're all I'll
agree with Dabo is like, I don't think they have
the money of a Georgia. I don't think they have
the money of an SEC. And so if you want
to compete at the highest level when you're not at
(21:37):
that level financially, you got to find a different way
because you just can't load up. It's it's like, it's
the reason that moneyball exists in baseball.
Speaker 6 (21:45):
Right.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
The A's had no chance of outbidding the Yankees, just none,
or the Dodgers or any of these big market even
the Giants, right, they just don't have that much money.
So I just we're all trying to figure out what
the best avenue is for our university and it's a
(22:05):
trial and err thing. And again last year is a
perfect example. Didn't look great out of the gate, but
they end up coming around and winning the ACC right
and going to the playoffs and ultimately, you know, did
they live up to the Hey, can you have a
high retension rate and win a national championship?
Speaker 6 (22:24):
No?
Speaker 1 (22:24):
They were a notch below talent wise the elite elite teams,
but they had a level of consistency and that I
think he believes is their avenue. Yeah, he's absolutely earned
the right for more time. And I do think I
told you last year, I was cheering for him because
I like that way. I think that's I think you
(22:47):
can build the true college experience. I think you can
bring great culture. I think you're going to have more
consistent ten win years that way, even though you may
not have a national championship that way. That's the hard part, right,
like the going all in every year for new players
and new pieces. I think the highs and the lows.
It's Florida State. Two years ago, Florida State doesn't lose
(23:08):
a game. Last year, Floristate wins two games. This year.
I think they're back to being good. Could be next
year because you just year by year there's such volatility.
He's building for consistency. I think that's the smarter play.
It's the more consistent play. But again, like you have
to preserve the right, you might be wrong because no
(23:28):
one's ever experienced college sports in this era. It's new
to everybody. Everybody.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
I just wouldn't want to be the president or the
ad or the boosters or whoever, to be the one
to run Dabble out of town.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
But you know where he's gonna go, right, I mean,
everybody knows what happens. Well, he sits there and waits,
and if Calen Boy gets fired, he gets the job
at Alabama.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Yes, that seems to be a possible landing spot, but
it should never come to that.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
It really shouldn't add Clemson. He is Clemson football.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
And I would also say, Doug that, And I'll use
your sport as an example of someone like coach k
who transitioned and altered the way that they did things
because of a different landscape in college basketball. Sure that
Dabbo at least, if he's stuck in his ways now,
(24:21):
at least deserves the runway for the next couple of years.
To continue to really analyze if what he is doing
right now is correct or if he does need to
turn it around. And that's something that you shouldn't throw
away because of two losses in one score games to
(24:42):
one team that's three and nine again, Georgia Tech, I
think is a pretty good football team and LSU at home.
I know that LSU I'll played Clemson in that game,
but still one score game, Like, what are we doing
here if we're running someone out of town because they're
one and two with a combined loss of you know,
ten points on their two losses this year. I just know, Yeah,
(25:04):
I don't I don't like it. I don't like it either.
I understand that there's an ever changing world of college sports,
and I think a lot of schools are trying to
find out ways. We also don't know, Doug on how
much the new revenue sharing deal in the ACC is
going to affect the top schools because they are expected
to get more money because of their exposure and what happens,
(25:26):
So does that put the Miami's in Florida States and
Clemsons further down the road than the other schools Once
that really fully takes you know, goes into effect. I
don't know, but just for for Dabble to be dealing
with this, and I get it, and there's He's said
a lot of stuff previously which kind of makes him
an easy target for this. But I'm glad that he's
(25:47):
sticking up for himself because I just think it's absurd
to have this sort of conversation.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Look, I'd even I'd even link in Mike Gundy at
MI alma mater right where you know they get blasted
by ORG. And look, the whole deal is he shouldn't
have played the game. Shouldn't have played the game right.
That game was scheduled in twenty eighteen. Oregon was eight
and seven at the time, Oklahoma State was the top
ten team. The landscape of college ball has changed showed dramatically,
(26:14):
and I think Mike Gundy and obviously Dan Lanning picked
on it made it act to be some negative. I
think my Gundy was trying to be one trying to
set everybody up for what they were going to see,
like he knew. And two he's actually trying to give
them a company like look, they're really well coached and
they got way more money than we have, Like this,
this is what he should have said, was this is
what big time college. If you want to build a
(26:35):
program at a place like Oregon where you don't have
great instate recruits, this is what you do. They have
done it perfectly. That's all you have to say. Okay,
But the point is that, like, do we think that
in two years Mike Gundy has forgotten how to coach football?
Speaker 3 (26:50):
No?
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Right, Like he suddenly like completely lost track of how
to coach football. Last year they beat Arkansas and then
all of a sudden it fell apart. Why because Arkansas
beat him, they lost Like they only had three or
four difference makers. I think three or four of them
got hurt. The quarterback end up in a seventh year
stinking up to join the offensive line wasn't good enough.
But they lost their difference makers to injury because the
(27:11):
attrition of early in the season, and they don't have
the money to have the depth. Then he scraps it
and has to have a whole new staff. You have
a whole new staff and you have money for the
first time, and you go out and spend it. You
don't know what to like. People are gonna make mistakes,
make mistakes first time you have money when you haven't
had money, and you have a new staff, you don't
have an identity. How are we gonna play? We don't know.
Guys are showing up late. And then you go and
(27:33):
play a behemoth like organ and you get pumbled. Guess what.
Ninety percent of the teams get pumbled by Organ. So
you know again, My thing is, if you've shown that
you can win over a decade, which Dabo has, which
Mike Gundy has, you got to give him the benefit
of the doubt of give him a little bit of runway,
(27:54):
because this is a completely different era, completely different and
what your plan is until you see it play out.
And no, if your plan is, hey, we're gonna win
this year and you tell everybody we're going all in,
we're gonna win this year, and then you don't, that's different.
But you say, here's our plan, here's what we're gonna try.
You have to understand you might be wrong and things
(28:16):
might things might not go well. And that's what's happened
in Oakland State, and we'll see what's happening in Clemson.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Oh well, I will finish you with this. This would
be my last word. Just to jump back to dabble
for a second. There isn't a game on their schedule
outside of a home game against Florida State Number seven
Florida State that they shouldn't win, and that game against
Florida State is a game that is winnable for them,
so they could run the table as some people pick
Clemson to win the national title at the beginning of
(28:42):
the year, if they do go on a run, Doug,
you know what we're gonna hear two months from now
is the team I wouldn't want to face in the
bracket Clemson, just you know, like we would have any
other the team you don't want to face because they
would be hot at that time and it would be
funny on how two months difference would change the air.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
And that is the Midway.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
The Midway. Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk
lineup in the nation yet catch all of our shows
at foxsports Radio dot com and within the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
I want to talk about this quote and have a
true discussion about it. Tua and the Dolphins, obviously struggling,
they take on the Buffalo Bills now again, they've played
Buffalo at various times of the year. If there's a
time of year where he can be successful in Orchard Park.
This is the time. By the way, he's going to
(29:38):
have the pressure of playing in front of Dan Byer
and Jason Stewart. Right, that's that's a lot of pressure
for a young.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
Quot, big time pressure.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Yes, a lot of pressure. Our thanks, by the way
to the Buffalo Bills. They listened to the show. They
came through with the tickets for the guys. I believe
that Jason Stewart has committed to jumping off of a
chair or a platform onto one of those tables for
Bill's Mafia. Jason, can you confirm or deny?
Speaker 5 (30:11):
I can neither confirm nor deny. Okay, depends on the
how much beer I drink?
Speaker 1 (30:19):
Is beer is excessive amounts of beer, copious amounts of
beer in the pregame, in the pregame itinerary Dann Bier,
because I know Dan Bier is a big itinerary guy.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
Well, here's the good thing. I can drive, and since
I don't drink, Jason has carte blanche to do what
he needs to do so we can get there. We
land tomorrow at like eleven am local time, so maybe
we'll get a good nap in quick before the game.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
You guys doing Red Eye, Yes, Red Eye to wear Chicago.
Speaker 3 (30:51):
Yeah, Chicago to then Buffalo, so we will we will
get a little pregame. Nap game doesn't kick off till
eight fifteen Eastern, so that gives us a little time.
So we'll have plenty of time. But I can be
the d D designated driver if Jason wants to go
all out on Thursday night.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
You know the thing you've and I've only been to
Buffalo once in my life is during the NCAA tournament.
Probably we won both NCAA Tournament games there, and so
we proceeded to drink Canadian beer. And you know what's interesting,
there's a reason that nobody goes like when you go
to I get a beer, like, hey, do you have
anything Canadian? They just don't. Canadian whiskey, maybe, Canadian beer,
(31:33):
not so much. Mexican beer. Yes, Canadian beer yeah no,
yeah no.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
And I'm only doing carry on, so I don't know
how much I could bring back on Buffalo or Canadian things.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Yeah, well, let's up, let's do this. Let me bring
in Daniel Jeremiah NFL analysts. Of course, he's the color
voice color analyst for the LA Chargers. Radio network to
see him on the NFL network as well. DJ I'm
gonna play some for you. This is to a tongue
Byelo I believe it was earlier today and he said
(32:07):
this about comparing himself to Josh Allen.
Speaker 7 (32:10):
Dude, he's he's top tier.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
You know.
Speaker 7 (32:12):
If it's not with his arm, it's with his legs.
You know that dude can do nearly anything he wants.
So definitely different skill set for me. I can't do
half of what he does when it comes to running
the ball.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
And any of that.
Speaker 7 (32:25):
And then with how he can just chuck a ball
down the field, you know, with how far and the
arm strength that he has, you know, he's supreme when
when it comes to that.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
Okay, so these are all compliments to Josh Allen, But
what what you will have is people saying, Oh, you
can't run like him, you can't throw like him. How
can we possibly consider you a you know, an elite
level or even top level reasonable quarterback if you can't
do half of the things that he can do. What
(32:57):
did you hear when you when you heard that from Tua.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Look, there's the stuff about two of that you can
criticize in terms of you know, some of the decisions,
or you talk about cold weather, or you can talk
about some of the physical limitations. But like I think
we would all agree too, has always been a first
class kid and now a man. I think he's just
saying nice things about a guy in his division and
(33:21):
acknowledging how gifted and how talented he is. But I
don't think that's you know, he's also humble where he's
not gonna say what his strength is and his his
style of play and his strength is all in processing
and and you know, accuracy and quick decision making when
he's when he's going well, which he hasn't been, when
(33:41):
he's when he when he is going really well, that's
his strength. And we've seen numerous times, you know, over
the years where guys who had that strength you go
back to, you know, like Joe Montana's that was his strength,
or Breeze that was his strength, and new of those
guys are were the most athletic of their era or
the biggest or the strongest of their area. But there
you know their brand of football could work. So now
(34:03):
two is a much much lower version of that. But
I wouldn't read too much into that. I think he's
just a classy dude who's trying to say some really
nice things about Josh Allen.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Well Stut Gottlieb Show here on Fox Sports Radio. Okay,
now we have two weeks of tape. How fixable are
the Dolphins problems?
Speaker 2 (34:25):
Well, I mean, I don't know. To me, it's it's
not even just you know, what is it in terms
of player you know, the personnel that you're rolling out
there and those things. It's almost just watching it from
an energy standpoint and a body language standpoint and all
those things, it just isn't It isn't a great vibe
watching that group right now. So I don't know how
(34:48):
that gets turned around or how that changes. And I
think that's probably where you see some criticism, you know,
coming towards the head coach from that. From that standpoint,
but their offensive line from a physical standpoint is not good.
I don't really think they can run the football like
you need to run the ball to be balanced. I
think in the passing game they still do some good things,
(35:09):
but my biggest takeaways are just the energy, the body language,
the lack of physicality, the struggling offensive line like those
are those are definitely worrisome.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Yeah, I mean it does not feel like a well,
it feels like the ship is taking on a lot
of water and it's at some point we're going to
declare it's sunk, right, it just does.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Yeah. Well, it's not the team you want to be
playing when you're zero and two, and it's not where
you want to be playing them either.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Nope, nope, Let's get to the Chargers one a Monday night.
Khalil Mack look like a dislocated elbow. I don't know
what the other damage is. First, when you see this
Charger team win both of those games, both away from home,
you know you've seen them for years. Why is this
team different?
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Well, I think they're building off what they were last year.
And you know, let's start first of all. I mean,
the news that just came out on Khalil was, you know,
he's going to go on a short term I r
so four weeks, but thankfully the season's not over. It's
you know, dislocated elbow. He can brace it up and play,
So you know that was big news, not losing him
for the season, because it did not look good live
when it happened. But you know, why is this team different?
(36:21):
I think when you're you know, the foundation was last year,
which was a really good foundation. And let's start defensively.
This team was the number one defense in the NFL
and yards allowed last year. So you come back, they've
gotten some some more personnel to throw into that mix,
with some the defensive line depth with a lot of size.
Now you can build off of the uh, you know,
(36:42):
off the the baseline that you had last year, with
some really really smart players in the back end like
Derwin James and tar Heep Still Lowie Gilman's really really bright.
You know, Elijah Moulden's out right now, but he's another
incredibly intelligent guy. So you've got a stud defensive coordinator.
Enjoy him while you got him, because I can't imagine
Decimnorer isn't a head coach this time next year. But
(37:03):
you've got that foundation. Now you're building on that. You've
got incredibly smart team. They're not going to beat themselves.
They're going to make you methodically drive the ball. And
you know, you've seen it already with two good quarterbacks
who get frustrated trying to play that way against them.
And you know, so defensively, they're in a great spot
with a lot more depth than they had last year.
And then offensively, you know, you get more weapons for
(37:27):
Justin with Keenan Allen coming in there, Conflin's and upgrade
at the tight end position. You've got two backs who
I would argue were better than what they had last
year and bring a physicality to it. Joe Waltz just
taken the left tackle and it's hard for me to
see a better left tackle in the NFL right now
than the way he's playing. So yeah, there's a lot
(37:48):
of things going right. But I think it's a very
smart discipline team. And the smart thing is what I'd
love to get your thoughts on, because I was talking
to one of the coaches before the game and I said,
you know, I take a chance to visit all these players,
and I've done this for eight years with this team.
I said, this is the smartest collection of players. That's
going to mean something.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
I think it absolutely does mean something, you know, I
you know, we have some guys that are a little
bit slower learners or whatever, and you know, smart does win.
It's easier to coach, it's easier to retain. You know,
it's just all things are easier and sometimes they're too smart,
too smart for their own good. But and they're questioning
everything you do. But yeah, I smart. Smart definitely wins
(38:28):
in sports. Chiefs. Chiefs now they don't have their top
two wide receivers, right, but Kelsey dropping that ball around
the end zone, it it felt like kind of looked
old on that play. It just did. But when they
get Rice back, when they get Worthy back, how good?
(38:50):
Where is this team? What does this team look like that?
Speaker 2 (38:53):
I think they're dangerous once they get those guys back.
And one of the reasons I'll say that is I
do think the outside of their offensive line. With Josh Simmons,
I already think he's a really good player in his
rookie year, and I think he's only going to get
better as he plays more and gets more comfortable Sue
Mattia playing next to him is you know, he was
(39:13):
bad at tackle, but he's been better inside at guard,
and I think you'll see that left side get better
as the year goes along. I think eventually they're going
to come to the realization that, you know, Joan Taylor
is not good enough at right tackle and they're going
to have to get him out of there. But adding
those receivers to the mix will make a big, big difference.
You know. I think this division is very vulnerable and
(39:33):
and could slip out of their drafts for the first
time in forever. But it could be one of those
things where this is a team that you know, they
just need to get into the tournament and have all
their guys available. If they do that, if they make
the move that I think is necessary at right tackle.
I think the defense is very well coached. They've got
good pieces there. It's just going to be as dangerous
a team as anybody if they if they get into
(39:55):
the tournament. I know it sounds it's a seventeen game season.
We're only two games in and I'm talking like they
don't they aren't going to win the division. But I
think when you've been where they've been, they're just worried
about trying to get at Lombardi and they need to
get into the tournament. And if they're healthy and get
into the tournament, that's that's still a very very dangerous team.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
No question about it. Okay, you've seen the Raiders up
close calling the game this week. I just end of
the day, I think sometimes we fall in love with
the Geno story, right, because he was so maligned, especially
the early years in New York. He's had this resurgence,
but just he's not in the league quarterback. He's never
been in the league quarterback, and yet we act like
(40:37):
because he's been doing it so long, he should be
better than he is. I thought the turnovers were just
a sign of that's Geno Smith. He's just okay.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Yeah, I think there's you know, I think there's a
book that's out there now and you just you know,
not everybody reads it, I guess, but the you know,
if you want to blitz Gino, Gino is incredibly smart,
and Gino is a very gifted thrower. So what happens
when you send extra guys to go get him, is
you clear up the picture on the back end, and
(41:06):
he's going to find your vulnerability and he's going to
be able to process it quickly and he's going to
be able to cut you up. And that's what he
did against the Patriots the week before. The Patriots tried
to blitz him, and he destroyed him on the blitz.
The Chargers didn't do that. The Chargers were creative with
some of their four man pressures where they have some
sim pressures where they're dropping guys out and maybe bring
Derwin from depth, or maybe bring someone off off the nickel.
(41:29):
But they made him have to throw the ball through
the forest, you know, with a lot of bodies back there.
He nicked quite a few branches. There were fifteen path
breakups in that game. So to me, that's kind of
the book on him and how you play him. But
you know, inevitably, some some coaches, Hey, we're an aggressive team,
we're at blitzing team. This is what we do. Well,
good luck, that's not the that's not the formula against Gino.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
The Bengals, Well, we talked about this to start the show.
They have. It's not for lack of trying, right, They've
they've invested sources like draft picks in lineman. But now
in this offseason they put so much of their resources
into their skill positions. How much of this is Joe
Burrow holding the ball too long? How much of this
(42:13):
is the scheme that leaves him unprotected, and how much
of it is hey, they didn't do enough in terms
of giving the offense the resources to protect him.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
Yeah, I would probably start first of all with just
the I mean, we could say they've they've they've put
resources there, They've taken some guys high in the draft,
and some of them haven't necessarily panned out. I think
you just have to keep doubling down and going back
until you get that right, and that needs to be
your focus. So I think that's a that's a big
part of the problem. You know, Joe holding the ball.
(42:46):
You know, I see some of that, But to me,
I would put it more on the personnel that's in
front of him and just how they chose to invest
their dollars. I get what they were doing in the
offseason because the defense was historically bad last year. You
lose all these games where you're scoring over thirty points,
it stands to reason that hey, we need to we
need to take some guys on the defensive side of
(43:08):
the ball. But man, it's to me, I'd just much
rather air on the side of having way too many
offensive lineman, way too many good offensive lineman and trying
to plug some holes on the other side than to
put him in jeopardy. And he's proven that he's he's
not super durable, so even all the more reason to
double down and invest even more on that issue.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
Stut Gottlieb Show here on Fox Sports Radio. Okay, let's now,
what do we do with Russell Wilson where he plays
unbelievably well but did have a leg turnout.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
Yeah, I mean, I didn't know that was still in him,
to be honest, And I don't know what that says
about Russ or what that says about the Cowboys. I
guess we'll find out as we go through a few
more weeks. But I think that's, you know, for whatever
his limitations have been over the last few years, that's
still a guy he's had a lot of success in
this league, who has a lot of pride, and I
(44:04):
think you absolutely saw his best. So I'm not as
optimistic that that's who he is now and you're going
to see a lot more of that going forward. But
at least he bought himself a little more time here
with Jackson Dark kind of nipping in his heels. So
I'm hopeful for him and for their team that there's
more of that. I'm just you know, I wouldn't say that,
(44:24):
I'm confident we're going to see that. And if you
carry that over to Pittsburgh, you know, we saw Aaron
Aaron have a great week one, and it was like
he's you know, oh, it's all there. It's just gonna
expect that each and every week, and then you fast
forward a week and it doesn't quite look the same.
So we'll see what happens with some of these older quarterbacks.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
Update me on Kala Williams. What's going wrong there?
Speaker 2 (44:47):
Well, actually, you know, and I know a lot of
people have said this this week, but I went back
and went through it again today just as I want to,
you know, just watch it one more time and see
what I'm seeing. I thought for the first first half,
it wasn't just that strive. The first half of that game,
there was a lot of really good there where he
was playing within the pocket, he was connecting his feet
in his eyes, he was throwing the ball accurately. There
(45:08):
was a lot of good for a decent sample size there.
And then, uh, in the second half, it just kind
of started to get away from him a little bit,
you know where you know, he saw some kit balls
where he couldn't find a throwing lane. You know, that
was that was concerning. He had a couple other times
where there's guys around his feet, now keep them and
(45:29):
they're they're tackle stinkd ug. I mean, that's their offensive
tackles look terrible. So he got hit and then once
he got hit, had a lot of byes around his feet.
Then you started seeing the disconnect between his eyes and
his feet, and the accuracy took took off on him.
But I do get some optimism from that knowing you
know what he looked like for half of that game
and maybe a little bit into that third quarter, and
(45:52):
he didn't his his first impulse wasn't just to take off.
He didn't just drop his eyes and look to get
the heck out of there, which he did numerous times
first week. So yeah, I will say progress, progress made,
you know, still overall not not where it needs to be,
but you know, we'll see if it continues trending in
the right direction.
Speaker 1 (46:09):
He's Daniel Jeremiah. You can catch DJ on the Move
the Sticks podcast that that's the best. Of course, you
hear them called Chargers games and you see him on
the NFL Network. DJ, thanks so much for joining us.
Appreciate you being our guest.
Speaker 2 (46:21):
Thanks Doug
Host
Doug Gottlieb
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