John dives into the Patriots retiring Tom Brady's numbers and how what Tom did by playing in New England for 20 years is almost as impressive as all of his Super Bowls. He later reacts to the punishment the NFL handed down on the Falcons for tampering with Kirk Cousins, and finally, are the Commanders making the wrong decision by not naming Jayden Daniels the starter.
Lastly, John discusses his biggest Fugazi in this week's Fugazi Friday segment.
6:51 - Tom Brady has his number retired
14:56 - Falcons and tampering
20:49 - Jayden Daniels not the starter
23:41 - Sam Darnold is the starter
28:05 - Fugazi Friday
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (01:48):
What is going on? Everybody? John Middlecoff three and out podcast.
How are we doing? My people? Hopefully everyone is having
a good, good Friday, potentially good weekend ahead and enjoying
a little summer heat. Just watching a little US Open.
I thought i'd fire up the old podcast and talk
a little Tom Brady because he got his number retired,
(02:09):
and I thought it was just a powerful event, and
I thought it was just I watched a little of it,
watched a bunch of clips, and it was just cool
to It was cool to see. So we'll dive into
Brady Belichick got a big standing o the tampering investigation,
which has to be the dumbest thing in the history
of the NFL. Some other NFL news and notes that
the commanders just refuse to name Jaden Daniels the starting quarterback.
(02:36):
Don't quite get that one, but you know, some coaches
just a little old school. And then obviously it's Fugazi Friday,
and I got one of the great fugazis of all
time I think is sports Curses and McCaffrey on the
cover of Madden and we'll dive into that. So good
(02:56):
little show here today to get you into the weekend.
And no mail bag today, we'll probably do We'll do
a big mail bag next week. So fire in those
dms at John middlecoff is the Instagram and we'll do
a big, big mail bag. I'm gonna need mailbag questions
because I don't know if you've noticed, but football is
now paused because everyone goes on summer break till training camp.
(03:19):
So fire in those dms more than welcome. This is
the people's show. So we like interacting with you guys
through Instagram. Well I do because you're slide into my dms.
But you guys get it, and I think the game
plan will be I'll do a reaction to the US
Open for Monday, and we got some guests in the
(03:43):
we're efforting for the next couple of weeks and we'll
figure out the schedule here headiting to early July. But
make sure you subscribe to the podcast. We also got
a little thing called a YouTube page, little YouTube page
where we put all of our videos up of this podcast,
so go subscribe to that as well. And other than that,
(04:04):
I think that's it. But first I was watching the
US Open, I was like, God, I would love to
be there, and maybe someone listening right now went on
Thursday or maybe earlier this week in a practice round
if you live out there, and I love going to
a golf tournament just it's a unique event. You get
to have some beers, eat some food, watch a little
(04:25):
golf doesn't even really matter that much, and get a
little workout because you take a lot of steps. If
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thing I've always thought was really cool in pro sports
when a guy spends his entire career with one organization
(05:30):
and football, unlike the NBA, for example, you get cut
the moment you start slipping, they get rid of you.
I mean, before Tom Brady existed, the best quarterback of
all time was traded and Bill Walsh had been trying
to replace him for like half a decade. So football,
the meritocracy that's involved regardless of your stature, your status,
(05:54):
your previous accomplishments. It's very, very cutthroat, but we still
have a long line of examples. I mean, Peyton Manning
was once cut right now. He had a bad neck
and we didn't know at the time if he could
play again. He's even gone on records. It was a
scary time for his career. But they got him. Now
they were getting Andrew Locke, but still Peyton Manning was
available on the open market. Tom Brady played his last
(06:18):
three years for another team. But it wasn't because he
wanted to leave. It was because Bill was like, yeah,
I'm short in a forty two year old. I don't
think he'll be I think he's gonna fall off a cliff.
And he didn't. He won an MVP, he won a
Super Bowl and obviously cemented his lay. I mean, took
it to another level. But as Tom said, and I
(06:38):
didn't quite understand. I saw a lot of posts about
it over the last couple of weeks that there was
like a Tom Brady number retirement. I guess I had
assumed it was more of like Craft Patriot people former players,
kind of an in house thing. It was like a
football game. I mean they did a panorama around the
(07:01):
stadium and that place was packed. It was like the
freaking Rolling Stones were there. And as Tom Brady said
last night, I'm Tom Brady and I'm a Patriot, and
I think a lot like Michael Jordan, who played two
years for the Wizards. Now, unlike Tom, he won a
championship into the Bucks. Tom means a lot. But I
think it's very very powerful when a guy and I
(07:24):
think it's cool for fans because you root for that
human being until the day he dies. He means everything
to you. And I know as a fan of the
San Fransco Giants, like Buster Posey's Hall of Fame career,
every single at bat was with the San Francisco Giant uniform.
The reason Lebron James would never sniff Kobe Bryant is
(07:45):
because he's a mercenary. He just jumps from team to
team Kobe's entire career. And I don't mean like on
the all time list we could argue Lebron's a better player.
I just mean with Laker fans because Kobe's their guy.
Kobe was their guy from the start till the finish,
and the NBA player empowerment era, which got so much
credit with the media. Was cool for Twitter, not great
(08:08):
for fans, like who's how's Kevin Durant. Ever, having that
moment and the powerful thing about the NFL is look
at some of the young guys now and listen, Tom,
it was like a religious experience. He took the Patriots
to nine Super Bowls. He won six of them that career.
Even Patrick Mahomes more than likely a high probability, will
(08:31):
not replicate that. So it's an outlier career. We got
twenty years with this guy, this California kid who brought
us to greatness, and he's our guy, no matter how
weird his face may look with botox and plastic surgery,
or how his hair has changed over the years with
hair plugs and listen, I'm not hating. I lost my
hair and I just chose probably at the time I
(08:53):
lost that, I definitely could have afforded hair plugs, and
now it's just too late. I'm just rocking with it.
But it doesn't matter how things get. He's our guy,
and growing up I saw the power of it with
forty nine er guys in the Walsh in the in
the nineties era. How passionate people that support those guys,
and I think it's really cool when someone can spend
(09:15):
the majority, if not their entire career. Now, obviously in
pro sports, you've gotta be good to even have an
opportunity to do that. But like Aaron Donald just retired,
played for one franchise, Like that's that's a powerful thing. Now.
I don't know, you know, the Rams franchise fan base.
It's not exactly like playing, you know, for the Cowboys
or the Eagles. But Jason Kelcey recently right retired. He's
(09:40):
a Philly guy. He's not from Philly's from Ohio. He
went to Cincinnati. Yet the rest of his life he's
gonna live in Philadelphia, I would imagine, and that's his
home and those are now his people, And I think
that's the cool part about sports. I was taking my
little dog on a walk last night and the end
NBA Finals, I bet on the Mavericks obviously to win
(10:02):
the series not going well. That was dumb, And I
swear to God, probably I don't know half the homes
that I could kind of see in, especially in the
backyard as we're kind of roaming around. I could see
in their backyards. I just saw sports on the NBA
Finals on and it's still one of the last things
that we all agree that, like we kind of just
(10:22):
watch when it matters, when big events happen. Football's kind
of an outlier because we watched the regular season in
the playoffs, but when the baseball playoffs come, it'll just
be on people's TVs. Obviously, the NBA Finals is just
on people's TVs. March madness, and we all kind of
gravitate toward that, and it's a conversation starter obviously for
(10:43):
me in what I do. When I'm just out and
about and I meet someone, you can always talk about sports.
And I think when you get to Tom Brady, obviously
he's been in our life for a long time, but
like that moment as a sports fan, it couldn't have
gone any better. But whenever you get a great player
and you get to live through it, his youth, his marriages,
(11:04):
his children, his ups and downs, his struggles, his greatness,
it just bonds you to that person for a long
long time. And I'm not trying to be sappy here,
but I thought some of the videos I saw were
just really really cool, and the Belichick thing clearly the
Crafts tried to destroy his name in that Apple documentary.
(11:25):
I've said that I stopped watching it after like episode five.
I just thought it was stupid. It wasn't for me.
I don't know if it did well or didn't do
well in terms of like retention on an episode to
episode basis, but I just thought the treatment of a
guy who was a big part of and as Tom
Brady said last night, it wasn't you, it wasn't me,
(11:45):
it was us, and it just completely shit on him
was stupid. Patriots fans knows, and they gave him a
standing Oh I swore to God for like five minutes,
and it was cool. And those are the type things
like you don't get in the rest of society. You
don't get something like not everyone in that stadium sees eyed.
I has the same thoughts on society that has the
(12:08):
same beliefs on the tax system. But like everyone's bonded
over the Patriots, over tom over Bill, what they all
got to experience from two thousand and one to twenty
eighteen or nineteen, Like, you can never take that away
from all those people. And obviously Boston, like Philly, like
New York, I mean passionate place, but it's it's no
different than people in Alabama they got to bond over
(12:31):
Nick Saban for the last fifteen years, or people now
in Georgia with Kirby Smart right, or a lot of
people in my life that are forty nine er fans
that have had this run for five years of doing
a lot of winning. It's cool, it's fun, it's powerful.
It's what makes I think this stuff more than interesting.
(12:51):
It's just a connectivity of kind of our world. And
Tom obviously, you know, given that region, no one ever
did for them. I guess Bill Russell way back in
the day, but in the modern day era, and to
really just embrace the place. And it was just it
was cool to watch so cool moment, cool thing by
(13:13):
the crafts. Robert showed up with a girl. Maybe it's
his wife girlfriend. I can't keep track of his love life.
Who had to be forty five years younger than him.
Shows you man, would she be with him if he
was a plumber? Pays to be rich. I guess the
tampering investigation, this to me is so dumb, like before
(13:35):
we even dive into any of it, talking about tampering
in the NFL or in the NBA or any of
these sports. When the commissioner in the league office gets
involved when it's around free agency time is laughable. It
really is. It's like Jerry Tarkanian used to say, Kentucky
(13:55):
cheated so hard they busted Cleveland's state. Like everybody's talking
to everybody wants the combine starts now. If you legitimately
break a rule, the equivalent of like reaching out to
a player during the season who's gonna be a free agent,
or doing that to an assistant coach that you might
be interested in hiring, Like there are obviously lines that
(14:16):
you can't cross. But if it comes to setting up
Kirk Cousins travel five days before free agency hits when
he knows he's gonna sign with you, or Howie Roseman
and the Eagles talking with Saquon Barkley or James Franklin
a week before and the Eagles got off, nothing happened,
(14:36):
Atlanta got fined a quarter million dollars and a fifth
round pick removed. What are we doing, honest to get
what's the point of this. You can't have a legal
tampering period and expect people not to contact people they
shouldn't contact I said this the other day about Jerry
(14:59):
w what the cool part about his executive career. He
was just one of those guys that got things done.
And I would imagine many people listening to this work
in different industries, work in different businesses, work with different
people to just kind of get stuff done, and there's
a blurry line between like this is like legitimately illegal
and this is probably not right, but we're gonna do
(15:21):
it because we want to make this happen. And that's business,
and anyone that's not doing that is getting lapped circles
run around them. So for the league to act like
this is a big deal to me is kind of embarrassing.
And every other year it seems like something like this
(15:41):
happens and it's like, what's the point of all this?
I mean, seriously, last year or a couple of years ago,
I guess it was last year when Jonathan Gannon in
the Arizona Cardinals and the Eagles, and that became an issue,
like there are legitimate set out rules of when you
can interview you and when you can interview But the
(16:02):
only reason the Eagles were really mad is because they
wanted Vic Fangio and because Arizona didn't quite follow the
timeline of what you should have been doing. Vic Fangio.
They lost out on him for a year. If they
vic Fangio had still been around, it wouldn't have been
a problem. This was a victimist crime. Who is having
(16:22):
an issue with anything? Kirk Cousins was going nowhere else?
Like what other team was mad about this? Saquon Barkley
wanted to go to the Eagles and no one was
giving them that much money. So when you get people
in trouble, like I understand the slippery slope that is
gambling with the players of listen. Obviously you can't bet
(16:42):
on your own team, and you shouldn't betting on football.
But guys getting in trouble for betting on college football
from the facility, like it's I get it, it's murky waters.
This one, to me is not at all, Like who cares?
Move on? This is stupid. But the league office love
every once in a while like kind of flexing their
muscles like yeah, we're gonna investigate. We want your phones,
(17:04):
we want your emails, we want to interview with you guys,
Like come on, Roch, shut up, what are you doing?
You break rules? All the time. You sign this television
contract with these partners. All of a sudden, you're like, yeah,
we're gonna do Christmas Day games. Fox and CBS and
NBC are like, oh, can we get them? No, we're
actually I know we already have a signed contract, but
we're gonna bid this thing out to read Hastings and Netflix.
(17:27):
They're gonna pay seventy five million dollars. Like, hey, we'll
pay the money for the game. Now we're gonna do
it with someone else. It's like, well, don't we have
a contract. So I just these tampering investigations are so dumb.
(17:49):
A couple other NFL news and notes, I call me
a new progressive when it comes to naming starters. But
when you draft Jade and Daniels number one overall and
unlike JJ McCarthy and definitely Drake May who's a legitimate project,
why don't you just name him the starter right away? Now.
(18:11):
I'm not here to act like I know more than
Dan Quinn or know their locker room dynamics currently, but
Marcus Mariota is currently the other quarterback, So to act
like this is anything more than just like old school football,
Like you gotta earn it. It's Marcus Maryoda. We've seen
(18:33):
him play for a while. Great guy, marry or sister
type human. Probably very below average at this point starting
quarterback in the NFL, and you could argue average to
below backup in twenty twenty four, just name Jane Daniels
the quarterback. Now you could argue it was easy for
(18:55):
the Bears. You look at their quarterback roster. It's a
bunch of guys you've never heard of. There isn't a
Marcus Mariota or a Jacoby Burssett or Sam Donald. But
the moment he had his first press conference in OTAs,
he just ended it immediately. This guy's our starting quarterback.
He's getting all the reps. Jaden Daniels is going to
start for you week one. I promise you that. So
(19:20):
why not just name him that? Now? Put the pressure
of life. This is serious, buddy. It's like, yeah, guys,
I know I've just been the starting quarterback. I don't
know if you ever heard of it. The LSU Tigers
kind of an important job as well. Like I'm used
to this, but let everyone else know, this guy's are
starting quarterback. This is the standard. Let's roll. Why wouldn't
you want to give him all the reps in training
(19:41):
camp when he's gonna start week one. So I just
I think sometimes these defensive coaches and these old school guys,
what are we doing like this? This makes no This
is not a JJ McCarthy situation where Kevin O'Connell said
that Sam Donald is gonna be the quarterback, starting quarterback
heading into training camp. He didn't say he's our starting
(20:04):
quarterback for twenty twenty four. He said heading into training camp.
At least if you want to do that, be like, hey, listen,
Marcus Mariota's currently our starting quarterback heading into training camp.
So maybe you want to put a little fire in Jaden.
We need a little more out of you. But again
I'm not saying that they think that. But what's the
point of just yeah, we'll see. We just keep competing.
(20:25):
We just love competing, which I like at the guard position,
at linebacker, at quarterback. I think it's stupid and I
think in this modern day football, even with young players,
it's unnecessary just name him the fucking quarterback. Like I said,
Sam Donald is the starting quarterback going into training camp.
(20:45):
I would imagine Sam Donald is the starting quarterback week one,
and depending on how things go through the season, they're
a chance we don't see JJ McCarthy right, which I
think a lot of people thought that, you know, red
shirt type year for the player. Now who knows, like,
I don't care how bad your team is. The Patriots
are a good example. If you have a bridge quarterback
(21:08):
like Jacoby or Sam Darnold and things don't go well,
there is not a soul in this world that wants
to watch the bridge quarterback. I say it all the time.
The fans in the league have a lot of juice.
Why because these owners listen to sports stock radio podcasts,
maybe not podcasts because they're all like ninety years old,
(21:28):
read the newspapers like they they hear this stuff. So
if you start two and seven, like, I don't need
to see Jacoby Brissette anymore. And that's why in a
perfect world, Drake may would be the ideal redshirt guy.
There is no chance he doesn't play a game this year. None,
because their team's not gonna be good enough. Sam little
(21:50):
bit of a wild card because if I tell you
they're just four and four, six and six and they're
just in the wildcard mix, you could just play it out. Now,
I'm a huge believer all he's inexperience. You know, I
come from cal Paly learned by doing, But I truly
I learned by doing, Like that's how I learned is
by actually experiencing things. Metal reps For me, maybe it's
(22:12):
because I'm kind of dumb. I don't know, only get
me so far. And I think a lot of players
and I think it's definitely true for quarterback that you
learn on the field through reps how to play. I
listened to Mike Lombardi's podcast and he had on Wink Martindale,
the longtime Ravens defensive coordinators now at Michigan, who's just
with the Giants? And Wink said, early on in Patrick
(22:36):
Mahomes's career, we used to blitz them. We used to
hit him. Well, the last couple of years we no
longer could do that. Why because he was so good
at getting rid of the ball and identifying the blitz.
So it was a waste. It was like playing Peyton
Manning or Tom Brady. You didn't want to blitz a
guy that would destroy your blitz. Well, how do you
think Patrick Mahomes got better at that? By seeing it
(22:59):
in games over the years and then using that muscle
memory metal memory to adapt and change and improve. So
every young quarterback is going to be swimming no matter what.
And I understand Mahomes got a red shirt year, but
if that team hadn't been as good, he would have played.
(23:21):
But they were just having Alex was having the best
year of his career and they won eleven twelve games.
So other than that, I do think this new CBA
has just helped expediate all Remember fifteen twenty years ago,
all these rookies, no one signed contracts. There was this
back and forth and the contract structure was all out
(23:42):
of whack. And now everyone is just on this structure.
This guy gets paid this, the next guy gets paid
couples percent more, and it just kind of works its
way down. You just see constant first rounders, second rounders
signed pretty early in OTAs and it's a much more
seamless transition now. For all the back and forth over
(24:04):
the new CBA agreements, over the practice times, over you know,
the the double days taken out and the off days,
and the back and forth with the players and the management,
one thing that is not debatable that has worked very,
very well and benefited everyone fans players, definitely the league
(24:28):
is this rookie contract structure and how there's basically no
negotiation anymore. Just sign the contract and let's move on.
And you know, I would imagine there are some radicals
in the media like these players are getting screwed. Well,
we know half of them can't play. So half these
guys in the first round get a four year guaranteed
contract are essentially stealing, you know, they would never make
(24:51):
that on the open market. And then the other half,
I would imagine fifty percent of the other half are
underpaid within a couple of years. But that's the nature
of doing business. Okay, let's end on this fo ghazy Friday.
I've had a lot of people that work behind the
(25:11):
scenes on this show, my guy Daniel James, sending me
articles about the Madden Curse, like we should do a
segment on the Madden Curse because Christian McCaffrey is on
the cover, and there's a long, long history of it
derailing people's careers, some having significant injuries and never being
(25:34):
the same. And I want to state this because I
believe this to my core, with with with every ounce
of energy I have, there is no such thing as
a sports curse. I truly believe any other curse outside
of the sports world does not exist. Now, I'm a
(25:55):
god fearing man, I believe in karma. I believe there
are certain things that you can convince me on. But
when it comes to curses, let's use the most famous
one in the history of sports, the Curse of the Bambino.
The Red Sox traded Babe Ruth and they didn't win forever.
(26:17):
Maybe they didn't win because they weren't that good. Maybe
Bill Buckner should have gotten a little lower on the
ground ball. Maybe Grady Little should have pulled Pedro Martinez
out of the game. Because after they hired Terry Francona.
Last time I checked, they won four championships. So did
the curse of the Bambino? Like, oh, it's over now?
(26:39):
What about the Cubs, the Lovable Losers? They didn't win forever.
Steve Bartman, maybe he's just a moron. Maybe he just
put his glove up and caught the ball. I don't
believe the Lovable Losers couldn't win in the playoffs because
of some curse. And this Madden curse. If Christian McCaffrey
(27:03):
happens to get hurt this upcoming season, it will have
absolutely nothing to do literally zero percent with taking a
picture of him and putting it on the cover of
a video game. Plus, I looked at like the last
four or five people that have been on the game.
It's like Patrick Mahomes multiple times, Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen.
(27:30):
It's like, well, what about Antonio Brown in twenty nineteen.
Well maybe he's just the craziest SOB that's ever played
in the NFL. So I just this Madden curse topic
to me is like I get it. It's a thing,
but I think can we all acknowledge that curses do
(27:52):
not exist? If you take one of those little dolls
and start poking it with needles like that doesn't exist,
it's not possible. Like middle COFFI, you're naive. You need
to be more open minded. Listen, I don't think for
a second. Because even Christian McCaffrey, as I was on
an NFL network and they asked him about it, are
(28:13):
you worried? Said no, I'm not worried whether I get injured,
whether I'm healthy, whether I have an MVP season, or
whether I have a down season, which is basically impossible
unless he's injured, because it's such a good player has
nothing to do with being on the cover of a
video game. And like I said, with the Red Sox,
(28:35):
there was no curse. They just weren't that well run.
Do you know, for most of my life the Golden
State Warriors were an absolute joke. I mean, a complete
dog just they were diarrhea. I'm trying not to swear
(28:56):
as much anymore. They were an embarrassment to professional sports.
Do you know the reason why their owner sucked? And
then do you know what happened? He sold the team
to a guy named Joe Lacob and they drafted Steph Curry.
Then Jerry West said, if you trade Klay Thompson for
(29:18):
Kevin Love, I will quit. And then they went on
a run over about eight years and they won four championships.
Was the franchise cursed or was it just poorly run?
Look at the Washington Commander's Redskins football team, who looked
like they might even have a new name coming. They
(29:38):
had awful ownership. When you hired the right people, good
things happened. Christian McCaffrey had a great season last year.
Why because he stayed healthy, he's a great player. Patrick Mahomes,
Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen. All these guys were on the
cover whether they had a good season or a bad season.
I mean, obviously Lamar had the one because he got injured,
but they all just good players on the field. They're
(30:00):
gonna be good. Some of these guys in the previous
iterations of the game, like Peyton HILLI yeah, he's kind
of a one year wonder. We've seen that before. Sean
Alexander like short shelf life, decent play, I mean, obviously
had some really good gears. But Ian Christian McCaffrey. I
just think this this Madden curse thing, that do people
honestly believe curses exist? Am I sounding like I'm a
(30:25):
crazy man? Because I truly believe that it's just impossible
to happen. Maybe it happened way back in the day
with witches and dragons and all that stuff. It's really
why I'm not into those type shows. Game of Thrones
everyone loved it's the greatest show of all time. Now,
don't get me wrong, I watched. I'm a sucker for
(30:46):
nudity and killing, Like, if you put that in a show,
I'm in pretty basic formula for my entertainment, but it
didn't do that much for me. Why I don't believe
in dragons, I don't believe in sorcery. I don't believe
in all that stuff. And that to me is kind
of under the umbrella of like what this Madden curse is?
Why would there be a curse on the video game?
(31:08):
John Madden is one of the most revered figures in
the history of football. Wouldn't it be a positive thing
or just random because some of the guys they've put
on the game happened to get injured that year or
their careers happened to kind of be derailed after that.
Isn't that part of like statistics? If we just flipped
a coin and you gave me ten names every single
(31:30):
year and I just picked it from a hat really
good players. Some guys might not have great years in
the next year. Some guys might break a leg, some
guys might tear a pack. Is that because I put
them on a video game cover? So I do believe
that sports curses and arguably curses in general, are one
of the great fugazis in the history of fugazis. The
(31:55):
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Speaker 1 (01:48):
What is going on? Everybody? John Middlecoff three and out podcast.
How are we doing? My people? Hopefully everyone is having
a good, good Friday, potentially good weekend ahead and enjoying
a little summer heat. Just watching a little US Open.
I thought i'd fire up the old podcast and talk
a little Tom Brady because he got his number retired,
(02:09):
and I thought it was just a powerful event, and
I thought it was just I watched a little of it,
watched a bunch of clips, and it was just cool
to It was cool to see. So we'll dive into
Brady Belichick got a big standing o the tampering investigation,
which has to be the dumbest thing in the history
of the NFL. Some other NFL news and notes that
the commanders just refuse to name Jaden Daniels the starting quarterback.
(02:36):
Don't quite get that one, but you know, some coaches
just a little old school. And then obviously it's Fugazi Friday,
and I got one of the great fugazis of all
time I think is sports Curses and McCaffrey on the
cover of Madden and we'll dive into that. So good
(02:56):
little show here today to get you into the weekend.
And no mail bag today, we'll probably do We'll do
a big mail bag next week. So fire in those
dms at John middlecoff is the Instagram and we'll do
a big, big mail bag. I'm gonna need mailbag questions
because I don't know if you've noticed, but football is
now paused because everyone goes on summer break till training camp.
(03:19):
So fire in those dms more than welcome. This is
the people's show. So we like interacting with you guys
through Instagram. Well I do because you're slide into my dms.
But you guys get it, and I think the game
plan will be I'll do a reaction to the US
Open for Monday, and we got some guests in the
(03:43):
we're efforting for the next couple of weeks and we'll
figure out the schedule here headiting to early July. But
make sure you subscribe to the podcast. We also got
a little thing called a YouTube page, little YouTube page
where we put all of our videos up of this podcast,
so go subscribe to that as well. And other than that,
(04:04):
I think that's it. But first I was watching the
US Open, I was like, God, I would love to
be there, and maybe someone listening right now went on
Thursday or maybe earlier this week in a practice round
if you live out there, and I love going to
a golf tournament just it's a unique event. You get
to have some beers, eat some food, watch a little
(04:25):
golf doesn't even really matter that much, and get a
little workout because you take a lot of steps. If
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thing I've always thought was really cool in pro sports
when a guy spends his entire career with one organization
(05:30):
and football, unlike the NBA, for example, you get cut
the moment you start slipping, they get rid of you.
I mean, before Tom Brady existed, the best quarterback of
all time was traded and Bill Walsh had been trying
to replace him for like half a decade. So football,
the meritocracy that's involved regardless of your stature, your status,
(05:54):
your previous accomplishments. It's very, very cutthroat, but we still
have a long line of examples. I mean, Peyton Manning
was once cut right now. He had a bad neck
and we didn't know at the time if he could
play again. He's even gone on records. It was a
scary time for his career. But they got him. Now
they were getting Andrew Locke, but still Peyton Manning was
available on the open market. Tom Brady played his last
(06:18):
three years for another team. But it wasn't because he
wanted to leave. It was because Bill was like, yeah,
I'm short in a forty two year old. I don't
think he'll be I think he's gonna fall off a cliff.
And he didn't. He won an MVP, he won a
Super Bowl and obviously cemented his lay. I mean, took
it to another level. But as Tom said, and I
(06:38):
didn't quite understand. I saw a lot of posts about
it over the last couple of weeks that there was
like a Tom Brady number retirement. I guess I had
assumed it was more of like Craft Patriot people former players,
kind of an in house thing. It was like a
football game. I mean they did a panorama around the
(07:01):
stadium and that place was packed. It was like the
freaking Rolling Stones were there. And as Tom Brady said
last night, I'm Tom Brady and I'm a Patriot, and
I think a lot like Michael Jordan, who played two
years for the Wizards. Now, unlike Tom, he won a
championship into the Bucks. Tom means a lot. But I
think it's very very powerful when a guy and I
(07:24):
think it's cool for fans because you root for that
human being until the day he dies. He means everything
to you. And I know as a fan of the
San Fransco Giants, like Buster Posey's Hall of Fame career,
every single at bat was with the San Francisco Giant uniform.
The reason Lebron James would never sniff Kobe Bryant is
(07:45):
because he's a mercenary. He just jumps from team to
team Kobe's entire career. And I don't mean like on
the all time list we could argue Lebron's a better player.
I just mean with Laker fans because Kobe's their guy.
Kobe was their guy from the start till the finish,
and the NBA player empowerment era, which got so much
credit with the media. Was cool for Twitter, not great
(08:08):
for fans, like who's how's Kevin Durant. Ever, having that
moment and the powerful thing about the NFL is look
at some of the young guys now and listen, Tom,
it was like a religious experience. He took the Patriots
to nine Super Bowls. He won six of them that career.
Even Patrick Mahomes more than likely a high probability, will
(08:31):
not replicate that. So it's an outlier career. We got
twenty years with this guy, this California kid who brought
us to greatness, and he's our guy, no matter how
weird his face may look with botox and plastic surgery,
or how his hair has changed over the years with
hair plugs and listen, I'm not hating. I lost my
hair and I just chose probably at the time I
(08:53):
lost that, I definitely could have afforded hair plugs, and
now it's just too late. I'm just rocking with it.
But it doesn't matter how things get. He's our guy,
and growing up I saw the power of it with
forty nine er guys in the Walsh in the in
the nineties era. How passionate people that support those guys,
and I think it's really cool when someone can spend
(09:15):
the majority, if not their entire career. Now, obviously in
pro sports, you've gotta be good to even have an
opportunity to do that. But like Aaron Donald just retired,
played for one franchise, Like that's that's a powerful thing. Now.
I don't know, you know, the Rams franchise fan base.
It's not exactly like playing, you know, for the Cowboys
or the Eagles. But Jason Kelcey recently right retired. He's
(09:40):
a Philly guy. He's not from Philly's from Ohio. He
went to Cincinnati. Yet the rest of his life he's
gonna live in Philadelphia, I would imagine, and that's his
home and those are now his people, And I think
that's the cool part about sports. I was taking my
little dog on a walk last night and the end
NBA Finals, I bet on the Mavericks obviously to win
(10:02):
the series not going well. That was dumb, And I
swear to God, probably I don't know half the homes
that I could kind of see in, especially in the
backyard as we're kind of roaming around. I could see
in their backyards. I just saw sports on the NBA
Finals on and it's still one of the last things
that we all agree that, like we kind of just
(10:22):
watch when it matters, when big events happen. Football's kind
of an outlier because we watched the regular season in
the playoffs, but when the baseball playoffs come, it'll just
be on people's TVs. Obviously, the NBA Finals is just
on people's TVs. March madness, and we all kind of
gravitate toward that, and it's a conversation starter obviously for
(10:43):
me in what I do. When I'm just out and
about and I meet someone, you can always talk about sports.
And I think when you get to Tom Brady, obviously
he's been in our life for a long time, but
like that moment as a sports fan, it couldn't have
gone any better. But whenever you get a great player
and you get to live through it, his youth, his marriages,
(11:04):
his children, his ups and downs, his struggles, his greatness,
it just bonds you to that person for a long
long time. And I'm not trying to be sappy here,
but I thought some of the videos I saw were
just really really cool, and the Belichick thing clearly the
Crafts tried to destroy his name in that Apple documentary.
(11:25):
I've said that I stopped watching it after like episode five.
I just thought it was stupid. It wasn't for me.
I don't know if it did well or didn't do
well in terms of like retention on an episode to
episode basis, but I just thought the treatment of a
guy who was a big part of and as Tom
Brady said last night, it wasn't you, it wasn't me,
(11:45):
it was us, and it just completely shit on him
was stupid. Patriots fans knows, and they gave him a
standing Oh I swore to God for like five minutes,
and it was cool. And those are the type things
like you don't get in the rest of society. You
don't get something like not everyone in that stadium sees eyed.
I has the same thoughts on society that has the
(12:08):
same beliefs on the tax system. But like everyone's bonded
over the Patriots, over tom over Bill, what they all
got to experience from two thousand and one to twenty
eighteen or nineteen, Like, you can never take that away
from all those people. And obviously Boston, like Philly, like
New York, I mean passionate place, but it's it's no
different than people in Alabama they got to bond over
(12:31):
Nick Saban for the last fifteen years, or people now
in Georgia with Kirby Smart right, or a lot of
people in my life that are forty nine er fans
that have had this run for five years of doing
a lot of winning. It's cool, it's fun, it's powerful.
It's what makes I think this stuff more than interesting.
(12:51):
It's just a connectivity of kind of our world. And
Tom obviously, you know, given that region, no one ever
did for them. I guess Bill Russell way back in
the day, but in the modern day era, and to
really just embrace the place. And it was just it
was cool to watch so cool moment, cool thing by
(13:13):
the crafts. Robert showed up with a girl. Maybe it's
his wife girlfriend. I can't keep track of his love life.
Who had to be forty five years younger than him.
Shows you man, would she be with him if he
was a plumber? Pays to be rich. I guess the
tampering investigation, this to me is so dumb, like before
(13:35):
we even dive into any of it, talking about tampering
in the NFL or in the NBA or any of
these sports. When the commissioner in the league office gets
involved when it's around free agency time is laughable. It
really is. It's like Jerry Tarkanian used to say, Kentucky
(13:55):
cheated so hard they busted Cleveland's state. Like everybody's talking
to everybody wants the combine starts now. If you legitimately
break a rule, the equivalent of like reaching out to
a player during the season who's gonna be a free agent,
or doing that to an assistant coach that you might
be interested in hiring, Like there are obviously lines that
(14:16):
you can't cross. But if it comes to setting up
Kirk Cousins travel five days before free agency hits when
he knows he's gonna sign with you, or Howie Roseman
and the Eagles talking with Saquon Barkley or James Franklin
a week before and the Eagles got off, nothing happened,
(14:36):
Atlanta got fined a quarter million dollars and a fifth
round pick removed. What are we doing, honest to get
what's the point of this. You can't have a legal
tampering period and expect people not to contact people they
shouldn't contact I said this the other day about Jerry
(14:59):
w what the cool part about his executive career. He
was just one of those guys that got things done.
And I would imagine many people listening to this work
in different industries, work in different businesses, work with different
people to just kind of get stuff done, and there's
a blurry line between like this is like legitimately illegal
and this is probably not right, but we're gonna do
(15:21):
it because we want to make this happen. And that's business,
and anyone that's not doing that is getting lapped circles
run around them. So for the league to act like
this is a big deal to me is kind of embarrassing.
And every other year it seems like something like this
(15:41):
happens and it's like, what's the point of all this?
I mean, seriously, last year or a couple of years ago,
I guess it was last year when Jonathan Gannon in
the Arizona Cardinals and the Eagles, and that became an issue,
like there are legitimate set out rules of when you
can interview you and when you can interview But the
(16:02):
only reason the Eagles were really mad is because they
wanted Vic Fangio and because Arizona didn't quite follow the
timeline of what you should have been doing. Vic Fangio.
They lost out on him for a year. If they
vic Fangio had still been around, it wouldn't have been
a problem. This was a victimist crime. Who is having
(16:22):
an issue with anything? Kirk Cousins was going nowhere else?
Like what other team was mad about this? Saquon Barkley
wanted to go to the Eagles and no one was
giving them that much money. So when you get people
in trouble, like I understand the slippery slope that is
gambling with the players of listen. Obviously you can't bet
(16:42):
on your own team, and you shouldn't betting on football.
But guys getting in trouble for betting on college football
from the facility, like it's I get it, it's murky waters.
This one, to me is not at all, Like who cares?
Move on? This is stupid. But the league office love
every once in a while like kind of flexing their
muscles like yeah, we're gonna investigate. We want your phones,
(17:04):
we want your emails, we want to interview with you guys,
Like come on, Roch, shut up, what are you doing?
You break rules? All the time. You sign this television
contract with these partners. All of a sudden, you're like, yeah,
we're gonna do Christmas Day games. Fox and CBS and
NBC are like, oh, can we get them? No, we're
actually I know we already have a signed contract, but
we're gonna bid this thing out to read Hastings and Netflix.
(17:27):
They're gonna pay seventy five million dollars. Like, hey, we'll
pay the money for the game. Now we're gonna do
it with someone else. It's like, well, don't we have
a contract. So I just these tampering investigations are so dumb.
(17:49):
A couple other NFL news and notes, I call me
a new progressive when it comes to naming starters. But
when you draft Jade and Daniels number one overall and
unlike JJ McCarthy and definitely Drake May who's a legitimate project,
why don't you just name him the starter right away? Now.
(18:11):
I'm not here to act like I know more than
Dan Quinn or know their locker room dynamics currently, but
Marcus Mariota is currently the other quarterback, So to act
like this is anything more than just like old school football,
Like you gotta earn it. It's Marcus Maryoda. We've seen
(18:33):
him play for a while. Great guy, marry or sister
type human. Probably very below average at this point starting
quarterback in the NFL, and you could argue average to
below backup in twenty twenty four, just name Jane Daniels
the quarterback. Now you could argue it was easy for
(18:55):
the Bears. You look at their quarterback roster. It's a
bunch of guys you've never heard of. There isn't a
Marcus Mariota or a Jacoby Burssett or Sam Donald. But
the moment he had his first press conference in OTAs,
he just ended it immediately. This guy's our starting quarterback.
He's getting all the reps. Jaden Daniels is going to
start for you week one. I promise you that. So
(19:20):
why not just name him that? Now? Put the pressure
of life. This is serious, buddy. It's like, yeah, guys,
I know I've just been the starting quarterback. I don't
know if you ever heard of it. The LSU Tigers
kind of an important job as well. Like I'm used
to this, but let everyone else know, this guy's are
starting quarterback. This is the standard. Let's roll. Why wouldn't
you want to give him all the reps in training
(19:41):
camp when he's gonna start week one. So I just
I think sometimes these defensive coaches and these old school guys,
what are we doing like this? This makes no This
is not a JJ McCarthy situation where Kevin O'Connell said
that Sam Donald is gonna be the quarterback, starting quarterback
heading into training camp. He didn't say he's our starting
(20:04):
quarterback for twenty twenty four. He said heading into training camp.
At least if you want to do that, be like, hey, listen,
Marcus Mariota's currently our starting quarterback heading into training camp.
So maybe you want to put a little fire in Jaden.
We need a little more out of you. But again
I'm not saying that they think that. But what's the
point of just yeah, we'll see. We just keep competing.
(20:25):
We just love competing, which I like at the guard position,
at linebacker, at quarterback. I think it's stupid and I
think in this modern day football, even with young players,
it's unnecessary just name him the fucking quarterback. Like I said,
Sam Donald is the starting quarterback going into training camp.
(20:45):
I would imagine Sam Donald is the starting quarterback week one,
and depending on how things go through the season, they're
a chance we don't see JJ McCarthy right, which I
think a lot of people thought that, you know, red
shirt type year for the player. Now who knows, like,
I don't care how bad your team is. The Patriots
are a good example. If you have a bridge quarterback
(21:08):
like Jacoby or Sam Darnold and things don't go well,
there is not a soul in this world that wants
to watch the bridge quarterback. I say it all the time.
The fans in the league have a lot of juice.
Why because these owners listen to sports stock radio podcasts,
maybe not podcasts because they're all like ninety years old,
(21:28):
read the newspapers like they they hear this stuff. So
if you start two and seven, like, I don't need
to see Jacoby Brissette anymore. And that's why in a
perfect world, Drake may would be the ideal redshirt guy.
There is no chance he doesn't play a game this year. None,
because their team's not gonna be good enough. Sam little
(21:50):
bit of a wild card because if I tell you
they're just four and four, six and six and they're
just in the wildcard mix, you could just play it out. Now,
I'm a huge believer all he's inexperience. You know, I
come from cal Paly learned by doing, But I truly
I learned by doing, Like that's how I learned is
by actually experiencing things. Metal reps For me, maybe it's
(22:12):
because I'm kind of dumb. I don't know, only get
me so far. And I think a lot of players
and I think it's definitely true for quarterback that you
learn on the field through reps how to play. I
listened to Mike Lombardi's podcast and he had on Wink Martindale,
the longtime Ravens defensive coordinators now at Michigan, who's just
with the Giants? And Wink said, early on in Patrick
(22:36):
Mahomes's career, we used to blitz them. We used to
hit him. Well, the last couple of years we no
longer could do that. Why because he was so good
at getting rid of the ball and identifying the blitz.
So it was a waste. It was like playing Peyton
Manning or Tom Brady. You didn't want to blitz a
guy that would destroy your blitz. Well, how do you
think Patrick Mahomes got better at that? By seeing it
(22:59):
in games over the years and then using that muscle
memory metal memory to adapt and change and improve. So
every young quarterback is going to be swimming no matter what.
And I understand Mahomes got a red shirt year, but
if that team hadn't been as good, he would have played.
(23:21):
But they were just having Alex was having the best
year of his career and they won eleven twelve games.
So other than that, I do think this new CBA
has just helped expediate all Remember fifteen twenty years ago,
all these rookies, no one signed contracts. There was this
back and forth and the contract structure was all out
(23:42):
of whack. And now everyone is just on this structure.
This guy gets paid this, the next guy gets paid
couples percent more, and it just kind of works its
way down. You just see constant first rounders, second rounders
signed pretty early in OTAs and it's a much more
seamless transition now. For all the back and forth over
(24:04):
the new CBA agreements, over the practice times, over you know,
the the double days taken out and the off days,
and the back and forth with the players and the management,
one thing that is not debatable that has worked very,
very well and benefited everyone fans players, definitely the league
(24:28):
is this rookie contract structure and how there's basically no
negotiation anymore. Just sign the contract and let's move on.
And you know, I would imagine there are some radicals
in the media like these players are getting screwed. Well,
we know half of them can't play. So half these
guys in the first round get a four year guaranteed
contract are essentially stealing, you know, they would never make
(24:51):
that on the open market. And then the other half,
I would imagine fifty percent of the other half are
underpaid within a couple of years. But that's the nature
of doing business. Okay, let's end on this fo ghazy Friday.
I've had a lot of people that work behind the
(25:11):
scenes on this show, my guy Daniel James, sending me
articles about the Madden Curse, like we should do a
segment on the Madden Curse because Christian McCaffrey is on
the cover, and there's a long, long history of it
derailing people's careers, some having significant injuries and never being
(25:34):
the same. And I want to state this because I
believe this to my core, with with with every ounce
of energy I have, there is no such thing as
a sports curse. I truly believe any other curse outside
of the sports world does not exist. Now, I'm a
(25:55):
god fearing man, I believe in karma. I believe there
are certain things that you can convince me on. But
when it comes to curses, let's use the most famous
one in the history of sports, the Curse of the Bambino.
The Red Sox traded Babe Ruth and they didn't win forever.
(26:17):
Maybe they didn't win because they weren't that good. Maybe
Bill Buckner should have gotten a little lower on the
ground ball. Maybe Grady Little should have pulled Pedro Martinez
out of the game. Because after they hired Terry Francona.
Last time I checked, they won four championships. So did
the curse of the Bambino? Like, oh, it's over now?
(26:39):
What about the Cubs, the Lovable Losers? They didn't win forever.
Steve Bartman, maybe he's just a moron. Maybe he just
put his glove up and caught the ball. I don't
believe the Lovable Losers couldn't win in the playoffs because
of some curse. And this Madden curse. If Christian McCaffrey
(27:03):
happens to get hurt this upcoming season, it will have
absolutely nothing to do literally zero percent with taking a
picture of him and putting it on the cover of
a video game. Plus, I looked at like the last
four or five people that have been on the game.
It's like Patrick Mahomes multiple times, Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen.
(27:30):
It's like, well, what about Antonio Brown in twenty nineteen.
Well maybe he's just the craziest SOB that's ever played
in the NFL. So I just this Madden curse topic
to me is like I get it. It's a thing,
but I think can we all acknowledge that curses do
(27:52):
not exist? If you take one of those little dolls
and start poking it with needles like that doesn't exist,
it's not possible. Like middle COFFI, you're naive. You need
to be more open minded. Listen, I don't think for
a second. Because even Christian McCaffrey, as I was on
an NFL network and they asked him about it, are
(28:13):
you worried? Said no, I'm not worried whether I get injured,
whether I'm healthy, whether I have an MVP season, or
whether I have a down season, which is basically impossible
unless he's injured, because it's such a good player has
nothing to do with being on the cover of a
video game. And like I said, with the Red Sox,
(28:35):
there was no curse. They just weren't that well run.
Do you know, for most of my life the Golden
State Warriors were an absolute joke. I mean, a complete
dog just they were diarrhea. I'm trying not to swear
(28:56):
as much anymore. They were an embarrassment to professional sports.
Do you know the reason why their owner sucked? And
then do you know what happened? He sold the team
to a guy named Joe Lacob and they drafted Steph Curry.
Then Jerry West said, if you trade Klay Thompson for
(29:18):
Kevin Love, I will quit. And then they went on
a run over about eight years and they won four championships.
Was the franchise cursed or was it just poorly run?
Look at the Washington Commander's Redskins football team, who looked
like they might even have a new name coming. They
(29:38):
had awful ownership. When you hired the right people, good
things happened. Christian McCaffrey had a great season last year.
Why because he stayed healthy, he's a great player. Patrick Mahomes,
Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen. All these guys were on the
cover whether they had a good season or a bad season.
I mean, obviously Lamar had the one because he got injured,
but they all just good players on the field. They're
(30:00):
gonna be good. Some of these guys in the previous
iterations of the game, like Peyton HILLI yeah, he's kind
of a one year wonder. We've seen that before. Sean
Alexander like short shelf life, decent play, I mean, obviously
had some really good gears. But Ian Christian McCaffrey. I
just think this this Madden curse thing, that do people
honestly believe curses exist? Am I sounding like I'm a
(30:25):
crazy man? Because I truly believe that it's just impossible
to happen. Maybe it happened way back in the day
with witches and dragons and all that stuff. It's really
why I'm not into those type shows. Game of Thrones
everyone loved it's the greatest show of all time. Now,
don't get me wrong, I watched. I'm a sucker for
(30:46):
nudity and killing, Like, if you put that in a show,
I'm in pretty basic formula for my entertainment, but it
didn't do that much for me. Why I don't believe
in dragons, I don't believe in sorcery. I don't believe
in all that stuff. And that to me is kind
of under the umbrella of like what this Madden curse is?
Why would there be a curse on the video game?
(31:08):
John Madden is one of the most revered figures in
the history of football. Wouldn't it be a positive thing
or just random because some of the guys they've put
on the game happened to get injured that year or
their careers happened to kind of be derailed after that.
Isn't that part of like statistics? If we just flipped
a coin and you gave me ten names every single
(31:30):
year and I just picked it from a hat really
good players. Some guys might not have great years in
the next year. Some guys might break a leg, some
guys might tear a pack. Is that because I put
them on a video game cover? So I do believe
that sports curses and arguably curses in general, are one
of the great fugazis in the history of fugazis. The
(31:55):
volume
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