NFL teams who win - or lose - nearly always have to do special things in the NFL Draft to stand out. This week, it’s Part I of our look back at the squads who did what they had to do - or didn’t do - to get there. You know about the famous John Elway trade following the 1983 draft - but there’s all kinds of dramatic twists and turns (especially from the Colts side) you won’t believe happened for this deal to finally go down. We also spotlight a team who could’ve made a draft-day trade that would’ve changed the course of NFL history, but instead backed away. And fifteen years later, we re-examine the Packers Aaron Rodgers draft-day slide, how shocking it was, and why that won’t ever happen ever again.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hi, this is Jason Smith. You're about to hear an
episode of the Special Teams podcast, which is a ton
of fun from Mike Harmon and I to record and
release every week. If you're new to the program, welcome,
If you've been a fan, welcome back. If you like
what you hear, please do us a favor, give us
a quick review and rate us on Apple or wherever
you're listening to this. It helps us, it helps the show,
(00:23):
and it helps us continue to bring you this content.
And if you want, you can let us know in
your review if you have an idea for a future
episode as well. Thanks ahead of time for your support.
And now it's showtime. Welcome to Special Teams, a production
(00:46):
of I Heart Radio. Greetings and Welcome Inside the Lands.
Edition of Special Teams with Jason Smith and Mike Harmon,
(01:07):
our podcast that spotlights a different team every week, very relevant,
very memorable in sports history. What made them so Maybe
because they won, maybe because they came so close to winning,
maybe because they couldn't win at all. And then once
in a while we get to play with the format
a little bit, and this is one of those weeks
as we have the NFL Draft on its way where
(01:28):
we're gonna look back at what some special teams did
in some specific years in the NFL draft drama, intrigue, chaos.
I mean, we all do our mock drafts iterations one
through as you and I sit together. I've got my
big board unfurled on the wall behind, and you're just
amazed by the level of detail and arrows I've got
(01:49):
pointing everywhere. They're all old Bears players. Well, I'm drafting
old Bears and has to create the ultimate team. Where
do I draft Gary Fens? Where do where do I
draft dougla wa draft? Well, Doug Plank would go higher
than fencing for me, just because well, let's just say
he got astered a little bit. And Wilber Marshall's still
better than Singletary. Go ahead, and that whoa can't do it,
(02:13):
can't do it? Yeah, I can't play with it. Look
at you. So this is what we're gonna do. We're
gonna look back at three separate years where a special
team did something in the draft and maybe it was special. Great,
maybe it was special. Oh my goodness, I'm gonna have
another episode next week. Is what we did this? Uh
A couple of weeks ago in the n c A tournament,
(02:34):
where we looked at two different episodes where we had cinderellatives,
we spotlight and this kind of what we're gonna do here.
We took Cinderella and it stretched that term a little
bit and had some fun with a lot of history.
I mean, there's some great players that rose up and
game came to prominence in the n c Double A Tournament. Likewise,
draft day, sometimes guys are remembered for all the wrong reasons.
(02:57):
We're gonna begin with the Bronco was trading for John
Elway a week after the nineteen eighty three NFL Draft.
Didn't look. Everybody knows that Elway didn't want to play
for the Colts, and he wound up getting traded to
the Denver Broncos, where he had his Hall of Fame
career and won a couple of Super Bowls. But looking
(03:17):
back at this, because of what transpired to make this
draft happen. Look, it was so long ago. We talked
about the quarterback class of eighty three lay at the
top of it. But the circumstances surrounding this Lway trade,
I like it because it would never happen now, nothing
would ever unfold like this did the Broncos trading for
Lway the way it did in you also wouldn't get
(03:39):
the free pass that John Elway has gotten through his
crest now he had a fantastic run in Denver. Nobody
questions at both as a player and then now as
an executive, but you try pulling this power play at
this point in the NFL, with social media and where
we're at at this day in age twenty four hours
(04:00):
a day, this would be the Tom Brady's free free
pendent free agency was the talk for months. Think about
this and how this would stick with a player forever.
This is mainly about the Colts and neckness and not
being able to pull off a better deal for Lway,
but this is how it broke down. Elway was having
(04:20):
the season of seasons his his final year at Stanford.
He told the Colts, who are then playing in Baltimore,
before the draft, he wouldn't play for them. In December,
he told the Colts, they listen, I'm not gonna come
play for you. He wanted to play on the West
Coast or Dallas or Miami, so much so he said
he continued to play professional baseball for the Yankees if
(04:42):
the Colts dressed them. And that was Elway's leverage because
he was a good basic played pretty well. In eighty two,
he was in the minor leagues three a team, batting average,
twelve extra base hits, had a bit of speed, something
you really don't. I mean, your other John Elway making
plays with his legs. But you never said he's fast, right,
He's the guy that was found his his creases and
(05:04):
and found and found his way. And of course some
big highlights helped that. The third team stolen basis only
played in forty two games, but the Yankees finished sixteen
games behind the Brewers back when the Brewers were in
that division all those years ago. Two and so a
shot in the arm of hey, you got this kid
who had this huge college career and it was big
(05:25):
Stein looking to make a splash. Yeah. This was the
Yankees after their big run of the late seventies early
eighties where they would go a long time without winning.
They thought Elway could maybe be a guy, even though
he didn't project to be a star player. But this
is what the Yankees did. The Colts still picked Elway
number one anyway, even though he told I'm not playing
for you. I'll go play baseball. I want to go
(05:47):
to the team. They still picked him number one in
a quarterback rich draft that had Ken O'Brien, Like said
con O'Brian, first he had to get him into Kelly.
You had Dan Marino, you had Hall of famers getting
draft it. That would never have happened. Now if you
got that no no, no, no no from a from
a team, they wouldn't draft him. But still the cult
(06:08):
said we're drafting you, so they did. They would find
a way to trade the pick or pick somebody else
if somebody else was dictating the terms of this. And
even though Elway was that great prospect, there were so
many things the cults could have done, and instead they
sat where they were, didn't trade the pick even though
they had offers, and they took him anyway and found
(06:30):
themselves stuck stubbornness into a degree saying, hey, by far
he's our number one guy. He'll come around, right, because
it's the same leverage play that a lot of players
intimate near the top of drafts. Pick sport here that hey,
I don't want to go play for them, and they're
a dysfunctional organization. And as we would find out. Yea,
(06:52):
they had some other things going on as they were
getting ready to make this not yet yet, not one
more year involved, Yes, but you and a dysfunctional organization.
They were terrible, Yes they were. They did over. They
were over the year before. They were right here two
and two and one the prior to season. And just
think about this. In eight two, so the year before
(07:13):
this draft, they had drafted Art s lee Ster number
four overall quarterback out of our house, I worked out well,
who became much more famous for going to prison for gambling.
He couldn't stay out of trouble. He gambled right when
he came into the league. And in nine three, which
was supposed to be arch Lester, no, he winds up
getting a one year gambling suspension because his name came
(07:35):
to light in the big investigation. Couldn't stay away from
it for the rest of his life. Round up washing
out of the NFL. This is something else the Colts
that you can't believe. They went number four overall for
a quarterback in eighty two and now they're ready to
go number one overall for a quarterback again in can
you imagine a team right now going okay, we took
a quarterback at number four. What are you doing next year?
(07:56):
We're going number one overall? A quarterback again, Well you
kind of have to. Dude's going to jail. It's true,
so like, hey, we don't like this guy. It was
just at that point it wasn't quite prison. Yeah, he's suspended,
he's out of the league. Prison coming. No, no, no.
You could see the bad path that this was going down.
Many books and articles have later been written, and the
(08:19):
redemption the long road for Arch least. But you look
at this. I mean, I think the only other place
that we would have seen it in in recent history.
And it wasn't back to back. Here. It was the
same draft when the Redskins went and took r G
three and then later took her cousins right where it's
all right, what are we doing here? We decided we
(08:39):
like a both and we'll just stock up for later.
That was confusing as could be. But here you had
the guy who was the obvious number one, and you
just decided, all right, I guess we'll be able to
do the cell job that us against the Yankees, that
we can sell them that football is the better path,
This is the easier path. Towards greatness and later he
(09:03):
would be great. But they, I guess didn't count on
the fact that that leverage would be pushed to the hill.
So there's your first level and that this the Colts,
the arch Leaster drafting and they got draft somebody else.
The fact that they couldn't trade the pick and kept
it and drafted him anyway. And this is what fails
to pass muster is that Elway was so sought after
(09:24):
everybody wanted. They had offers from the Rams, the Chargers,
the Patriots, the Dolphins. Their GM was Ernie of Coursey,
went on to be a very well respected front office
member for a long time. The head coach was Frank Cush,
who you know had a Star Cross career as a
head They were not fans of his, uh the way
of doing business, so they couldn't find a way to
make a deal for him. How do you not find
(09:45):
a way to make a deal for a guy where
there's a bidding war for and you can't get a
good enough training right, But that's how Davis says there
was a conspiracy that prevented him from training for John Elway,
which you go, okay, really, come on, Al Davis but
now you look back and go, yeah, why wasn't anybody
able to make a big deal for it? Why? Because
it should have been You take a number one overall prospect,
like l Way with the teams he wanted to go
(10:07):
to saying we want to trade for him. He said
he wanted West Coast, Dallas, Miami. You got West Coast,
you got Raiders, you got San Diego, you got Miami.
You had all kinds of teams you had, and you
still couldn't make a deal. You still took them number
one overall. Well, but that's the other question though. I mean,
you had all these people and teams coming to the
table with offers. But as we talk about, this is
(10:28):
one of those classes, those rare QB classes that go
down in history. So you had other people and other
names to go and get. Now, Jim Kelly ended up
becoming a bigger issue because he goes and does the
the USFL route. But you know Tom Flores and company,
they're in with the Raiders trying to figure out exactly
(10:51):
what their path was gonna be. You look at he
went bad for the Raiders, No, obviously, but you know,
if you could get richer, you get rich where you can,
but just the idea of all right, kick the tires.
But Al Davis there was enough lawsuits. I'll always wait
for the definitive word. I mean, there's gotta be some
(11:12):
pages there somewhere, right, Bit by bit you find out
little bits of the L. Davis legacy and what he
was truly into for all those many years in the league.
I'd love to see the books written about this from
his point of view, as told to whomever. I mean,
there's gotta be some tales. Now Here's where things get
really crazy is because Elway is drafted by the Colts
(11:34):
and then all right, he gets traded to the Broncos,
who eventually come up with an offer for him. But
this wasn't during the draft. This wasn't a twenty minutes.
A half hour later, Philip rivers for Eli Manning works
out this was a week after the draft. The draft ends,
and a week goes by and still lay as a cult,
and still he's not gonna go there, and still they
(11:56):
gotta figure out a way. And at this point, what
are you gonna do? You have the guy, and now
the offers are not gonna be as good because they
know you have to give up lesson for the price
that we all know by now, which was Chris Hinton,
offensive lineman, Mark Herman, a quarterback in a first round
pick in and you don't just miss Chris Hinton. That
gets you laughed out of the room right now. If
(12:17):
that's your deal for number one overall pick in the
drey Hey fourth pick out of Northwestern tight end offensive lineman.
Seven Pro Bowls, he was good. He was good, three
time first team, all three times second. Yeah, but this
is John Ellie, buddy, I'm just selling my guy. I
know you did have a great career, but this is
(12:38):
and Hermann still works for the Cold so so that work.
He said the broadcast booth. He had an eleven year
career and one in the first round. And just yeah
in the first step, not seven first but that's just
the first round. I mean think about and as we
go through the podcast, and and just in the NFL
draft history in general, you talk about being having to
(12:59):
pick and give up five six picks to three veteran players,
expiring contracts, all of those fun things that we go
through in the NFL, in the NBA, everything else. Here,
it's a pittance for a guy that everybody believed was
going to be that generational talent. Right, it's always the
best prospect, and that was even before he became John Elway.
(13:22):
Super Bowl winner, right, super Bowl participant, got you to
the yeah, he's the best prospects since John Elway tag
for a lot of guys, and now it's etched in
stone forever. Of all right, it was him, that was him,
that was him, and his name gets brought up because
of that great finish to his collegiate career. And so
while the Broncos go on to all kinds of fame
(13:43):
and el Way becomes the quarterback he does, the Colts
actually have a pretty decent season and eight three they
go seven and nine, seven and nine, awful. Jeff Fisher
was not the head coach now, but he spoken into
exist and Chris Hinton is a pro bowler, and so
all right, they did get a pro bowler act from it.
But this was not nearly what they could have had.
(14:04):
They could have had so many other players in that
they could have gotten a much better parcel of package
for John Elway, and instead they just kind of butcher
their way all along through it. It's amazing, No, it's
the curiosity though you go back to a coursi and
and what the agendas were behind the scenes. And you've
(14:25):
got always people and their hardline stance, you got styber
and guts, so many big egos mixed into this. But
of course he who later became a pretty good deal maker,
and they you know, one of those guys, one of
the few front office names that lives on right. A
lot of guys come and go from front offices and
(14:46):
unless they're disastrous, they kind of move on. It's a
guy he was okay, this guy had some great runs,
but he's also the architect of this. Now Cush becomes
gets into this a little bit too, because Cush is
not someone that players like that like he was too.
He was a big, hard ass of a coach. And
part of the story at the time was Elway didn't
want to play for Frank Cush at that point. If
(15:08):
the Colts don't you go. He just presided over an
O eight in one season, So why don't we get
a new coach? In sounds like yeah, with the new guy.
And this is Cush who also was upset when they
moved to Indianapolis in the off season because that was
the they finished seven and nine and they moved to Indianapolis.
He wanted the team to move to Phoenix. You know,
let's let's go here instead. And this is the guy
(15:28):
that signed up. We'll stick with you. Elway doesn't like you,
doesn't matter. We like Frank Cush And oh, by the way,
after just four wins and eighty four he quit just
before the final game of the regular season. So you
had Frank Cush for another year plus after that, and
then he was gone, right, And then they started bouncing
between coaches quite a bit before bringing back Ted Marcha
(15:49):
Brota to be stabilizer in the early nineties. I mean,
just kind of crazy the way this all gets unpacked. Yes,
the move gets in the middle of all of this
and you create chaos. So it's almost like a Vegas misdirection.
All right, forget about the Lway thing. I mean, look,
we moved, we we moved the franchise. It's there's all
(16:12):
sorts of other stuff going on. It's not just happy
we have football. It doesn't matter who let it go.
So think of that mismanagement by the Cults when it
came to John Elway's situation. As we move on our
next team, we spot light a team that could have
made a trade that might have changed the course of
NFL history, but when it came time to it during
(16:33):
the draft, they decided not to. That's next right now
on the Special Team with Jason Smith and Mike Harmon podcast,
(16:58):
as we continue on our special NFL Draft version of
special Teams, as we look back at some special teams
and what they did during the NFL drafting. Broncos did
something special, we talked about them. The Cults did not. Now,
definitely we get to a team that could have done
something special during the NFL Draft, but became special for
that draft for all the wrong reasons. In Mike Ditka,
(17:22):
then head coach the New Orleans Saints, traded his entire
draft for Ricky Williams plus a first round and a
second round pick the next year. The Dicka trade is
very famous. He went up to the press conference introductory
with Ricky Williams wearing dreadlocks. Ricky Williams was the missing
piece for the New Orleans Saints. Now we know it
didn't work out for the Saints just a little bit,
and also didn't work out for the Redskins, who they
(17:44):
wound up making that trade with. Redskins got a couple
of decent players, but you would think getting an entire
draft worth of players plus the first and second round
pick the next year, it would be great, but they didn't,
thinking it would launch you into some great strate experiment.
It did allow them to make a pit a trade
with the Bears, a lot of draft picks that allowed
them to get to Champ Bailey and so they win
(18:06):
ten games in in to win the NFC East. So
at least for the moment you say, yeah, we won.
And that's also the first year of Daniel Snyder's owning
of the team, So yes, there's a at least a
short term win. But you go back to that trade
with New Orleans, me being the Chicago boy, and as
you and I sit and talk wearing well, Jake Cutler,
(18:29):
there's where that that that a lot. Well, you know,
I'm still trying to coax him out of retirement, either
that or get an invite to his you know, his
butcher shop so we could cut some meat together. But
you know, Mike Dick going out of Chicago and then
taking the job in New Orleans, certainly a lot of
people were weren't thrilled. Al Right, here he is, what's
(18:52):
the second act, because if it went well, I see,
he should have still been the coach. Here. All you
did was hire another guy with a mustache, and and
you moved on. No, just for spect gave Wance proud
member of the Fox family. But you had the trade
for and giving up all those assets to bring in
Ricky Williams, no matter how much you loved Ricky Williams
in college. You're looking around, right, we just talked about
(19:15):
John Elway quarterback. You mortgage your your future, right, you
mortgage you know draft picks, and you say, Okay, this
is the guy we need. This is the guy that's
putting us over running back. Even in nine, this is
where you had to say, Mike, I need the car
keys someone. Even in ninety, this is like all the
times we joke about Jerry Jones getting put in the
(19:36):
closet instead of making a draft pick. This is where
someone should have said, hey, coach, coach, we're we're out
of our depths here, we're going a little far. I
remember when they asked him, what are you gonna do now?
You traded away your draft You got Ricky Williams because
I'm going golfing. That's what he said, And he walked off. Yea,
this is not about the Bengals. Well, it will be
about the Banals, but it's not about the Redskins who
(19:57):
made the trade. It's about the team that could have
made even a better trade, because before this was offered
to the Redskins, the Saints made an even better offer
to the Bengals. They called the Bengals who were sitting
at number three, and they offered all their picks in
a first rounder in two thousand, a first rounder in
(20:19):
two thousand one, and a first rounder in two thousand two.
So you're talking about first round picks in entire draft
in and first round picks the next three years. I
don't get how that wasn't snapped up right away. I
don't get it because the Bengals had been a pretty
decent franchise up until that. Look, the Bungles didn't come
(20:42):
around until now because they had a pretty good nineteen nine.
They went to the Super Bowl early in the decade,
and they had a pretty good team. The middle of
the nineties, you're basically talking about average team, and they
had three straight years. Now they were at the back
end of the division. But that's fine. You're still at
least in striking range. This remakes your team. If you
(21:03):
are the Bengals who needed a quarterback, right you need
a quarterback, I get it, but this remakes your team.
You leave Jeff Blake along. You're talking about an entire
draft and three more first round picks, and the Bengals say, no,
I mean, I I don't that should have been Let's
get whatever we need to sign right now before somebody
grabs Mike Dickens says, coach, we're not doing this. I mean,
(21:24):
we're really not doing that. I mean, this is just
an amazing on a team that, as as you point out,
is solid. And here's where you shore up a couple
of deficiencies. You get your your quarterback of the future
doesn't have to be Achilles Smith uh who they eventually draft.
It's it's the opportunity to really make this into a
(21:45):
whole new new squad. And maybe, as we always joked
with Marvin Lewis, forget about the A to B. Maybe
you got right back into title contention. And I miss book.
It was the three first round picks would have gotten
would have been the year in first round picks in
two thousand, two thousands, one and a second round pick
in two thousand and two, so it been the three
Fried just had the year. It was the three first
(22:07):
round picks plus two thousand and two. So why did
they say no? Why did they say no to this?
Because they really wanted to take Achille Smith at number three. Now,
I vividly remember first hearing Achille Smith going this high
in mock drafts. And this is right around the time
when I started doing sports talk radio for a living.
(22:28):
Remember even back then when I was at Newbie and
I'm sitting there going, boy, this is pretty good work
by Lee Steinberg, who was Achille Smith's agent. Because I look,
he was good at Oregon. He had one good year
at Oregon. He played pretty well, but there was I
did not hear any buzz until suddenly, oh, yeah, a
Keille Smith could go on the top five. And I'm
really Achille Smith in the top five. I I didn't
(22:51):
know that he had the right mechanics. I didn't know
that he yet, but it was it was shocking to me.
And back then I'm thinking, Okay, well, obviously people know
something I don't know because for him going to the
top three. Then I realized, oh, this is a really
good job. By an agent to get Achille Smith's name
up there so much that the Bengals had to have
him at number three. Well, you got into the old
gold rush at quarterback, right. I think that was one
(23:12):
of the things that played in on a big level.
And you you look at these stats that he was
able to put up in that big year you mentioned
al Right, he plays at eleven games, fifty four completion
percentage and the yards pertends only six point nine thirteen touchdowns,
seven interception. Okay, just a guy, but blows up. The
(23:35):
completion percentage is only fifty percent, which now gets your
laughed out of but was good. Yeah, again, you're throwing
more deep passes. You're not as as careful with the
ball in these, you know, quick strike, let's swing it
to the back, out of the backfield, everything else that
we use now here. Thirty two and eight is your
touchdown to interception ratio. But you're talking about over ten
(23:58):
yards per attempt. That's gonna get people's eye eyebrows to raise.
And what when we see out of Oregon, you saw
a number of quarterbacks get over value. Right. It was
just a couple of years later we saw Joey Arrington
go third overall, right off the same kind of premise
of all right, look at what he can do with
this offense. Well, you gotta have the players to run it.
(24:18):
We always joke about guys leaving New England to go
coach somewhere else. You can't implement the same system. You
don't have the same mentality, the same buy in the
same fifty three man locker room. Same thing with quarterbacks.
You can't just plug it. But hey, he was great
here for whatever reason, Oregon quarterbacks there was a nice
spell where you know, balladi and those guys were able
(24:39):
to do it pretty even up to Marcus Mariotta, who
you know that lost his job in Tennessee. And it
was the Oregon quarterbacks never really lit the world on fire.
We had to do it a whole deep dive on
the pack twelve. Dan Fouts was good and then then
you have to move up from there. Here you go.
But Achille Smith was was really a one year wonder
and he come is into the league and he just
(25:01):
doesn't play well. He doesn't start many games. And one
of the big thoughts about him was that he didn't
study the playbook and know the playbook like he should have.
But he doesn't stay healthy. He doesn't play. In four
years for the Bengals, who took him number three overall,
he started seventeen games. How many touchdowns did he throw?
In four years? He threw five touchdowns five touchdowns. His
(25:25):
best year was when he started twelve games in two
thousand one. He threw three touchdowns. In twelve games he started,
he threw three touchdowns, three of them. I feel really
crappy if I'm a dB and I got beat four
of those touching But oh man, really, yeah, he was
the third overall pick. I could say, you know he
was do but do you think what the Bengals could
(25:47):
have done? And maybe they would have mismanaged their picks,
you know who knows. But instead of Achille Smith, which
set the franchise back. If you take a quarterback that
early who doesn't pan out, that sets your franchise back years.
You're talking about a treasure off of an extra draft,
two more first round picks, a second round pick. Likely
they get a quarterback at some point there and you
know what happens. Then they don't draft Carson Palmer. Carson
(26:09):
Palmer goes someplace else. Maybe he has just as good
a carew maybe he doesn't get hurt like he did,
retire and then he played a little bit longer. That
would have changed had the Bengals just said, oh my god, yes, yes,
we'll do this, instead of saying you no, no, we
gotta have Achille Smith. It's like I mean, sometimes irrationality
(26:29):
wins the day. Well, and that's the thing is you
as you go through that draft, for Couch goes number one,
your guy out of syraccuse my Chicago guy Downovan McNabb
goes number two, Smith to number three. We already talked
about Ricky Williams in that five slot. Go on down
Washington with Champ Bailey at seven. Fine, but then you
have another couple of quarterbacks come off at eleven and
(26:50):
twelve and Dante Colepepper and Kaye mcdown. Yeah, your guy,
my guy. I once watched him not get past the
fifty line. That was the Tara Owens twenty catch game
and last home game. Don't ask Jerry Rice about that.
He's done too, please. Uh. I got a nice flipbook
(27:13):
at the catch out of that. It was nice and
nice souvenir for the people as you go through. But
right there you're you're talking about quarterback heavy draft. There
were other guys maybe you didn't like them and they're
upside as much as you thought you had and Achille Smith,
but certainly other names that were on the board for you,
and you then had a would have had a bevy
(27:33):
of picks to go do some other things right and
then and that's really what it comes down to. Now
you're playing with value and you can move back into
whatever position you need to to go get your guy
or guys as it were in this case, you picked
and chose poorly out of our Indiana Jones movie reference
(27:54):
for this moment, and uh, well that's that's the end
of it. Mike Ditka would have been saved. They wouldn't
have ruined the career and made him a mockery. No,
but Mike Dick, who went on to win four Super
Bowls in a rowa's head coach of the Jets. I mean,
he really was lucky to get out of that situation.
And then you would have been able to claim Dick
as a jet. If it's a jet named Dick against
(28:16):
the bear, the jet beats the bear, I think the
bear would take down head jet. So no, I completely
disagree the jet would just anyway. He would mullet like
those gremlins in that old Twilight Zone with Shatner. One
more special team to get to and a team that
did something incredibly special in the draft by watching a
guy fall all the way to then that's coming up next.
(28:38):
Jason Smith and Mike harmon Special Team Podcast as we
look back NFL Draft Special The Final Team were Spotlighting
(29:02):
and Special Teams with Jason Smith and Mike Carment. As
we look back at teams that did special things in
the draft, Let's go back to two thousand and five
April when the Green Bay Packers wound up with their
successor to Brett Farve, who went on to bring them
Super Bowl glory, all because other teams didn't need a quarterback.
(29:23):
After Alex Smith went number one overall and Aaron Rodgers
falls all the way twenty three picks later to the Packers.
This draft coming into it, I remember the debate between
Alex Smith versus Aaron Rodgers for who was gonna go
number one overall. Alex Smith was the finished product. He
(29:44):
had a great senior year in Utah. There were no
red flags Aaron Rodgers coming out of Cow There was
a little bit more criticism. Remember it was he looked
a little bit robotic. And I remember interviewing him mel
kyper Jr. And I on Game Day back when I
was doing radio for ESPN, and we talked about how
you deal with the criticisms of being robotic, and he
didn't seem very happy, like it wasn't one of those
(30:05):
oh hey, you know, I just deal with it, let
it roll off. No, he didn't seem too happy about it.
Generally he doesn't see him let a lot of things,
that's true, But so when he was a young kid,
you know her, but he remember, I remember him not
being too happy about it then, and it was a
big debate what was gonna happen. It was the finished
product of Alex Smith versus the potential of what you
(30:28):
could get with Aaron Rodgers. And there were quarterback needy
teams all over the place. In the first couple of
picks of the draft, most of the mock drafts had
Alex Smith and Aaron Rodgers to the forty Niners at
number one, or the Dolphins at number two, or even
Rodgers at number five to Tampa Bay because John Gruden
potentially won, So whoever went number one. The other guy
(30:50):
likely wasn't gonna get past number five. So after the
first two, after those picks were well after that, there's
not that many quarterback needy teams, right. Can you imagine
twenty plus teams right now saying we're not gonna draft
a quarterback. We're not. We don't need a quarterback. Half
the lead needs a quarterball. But that's the thing, right,
And this is why it's such an outlier, not just
because what Aaron Rodgers became, but just the way this
(31:12):
draft played out, with the number of running backs taken
so early, the number of cornerbacks, and we see that
a bit more, you'll see that more frequently than you will.
But running backs three of your first five picks out
of a draft. You don't see it, you know you don't.
We've had drafts where you don't see a running back
(31:34):
selected in the first round at all. So to have
those guys all go off the board, Ronnie Brown, Cedric Benson,
Cadillac Williams, just like that, your your five picks in
looking at around, going all right, what this is a
weird draft. Remember that draft night, watching the Aaron Rodgers
camera after every pick, Right, it didn't start lay as
(31:56):
late as people want to try to claim it did. No, no, no,
they were on him pretty early. So the first pick
goes and it's Alex Smith and have their quarterback, and
then the fall starts for Aaron Rodgers and he goes
all the way until the Packers get him twenty three
picks later. What happened? Why did Aaron Rodgers not get picked?
(32:17):
A couple of things happened. Many teams in the previous
couple of years had drafted young quarterbacks and it didn't
work out. Right, you had Baltimore getting Kyle Bohler that
didn't work out Byron left, which to Jacksonville. Plus there
were stories that Rodgers didn't nail his interviews, like Alex
Smith did you know even now Rodgers a little weird.
(32:38):
You know that's so I can see coming out, Yeah,
we don't know. We like Alex like I said, Alex
Smith was. There were no red flags for him, right,
Everything was great for Alex Smith coming out. He did
great during his interviews and Aaron Rodgers there were questions.
So when you have questions about Aaron rodd and these
are questions now that aren't something that would preclude you
from taking him. It's not like he tanked his interviews.
(32:59):
But you have many teams seeing young quarterbacks being taken
in the previous couple of drafts and it didn't work out.
You know, you're still looking back at Joey Harrington, who
was supposed to be great and he didn't work out.
Team's got afraid is this next young guy that's not
Alex Smith gonna work out for me? No, let me
go to another position. So this is one reason why
(33:21):
Aaron Rodgers fell down the draft to all the way
to four. You look at what some of the other
teams did. Alright, Miami at number two, we needed a quarterback.
They stuck with Gus far Rott, who was thirty four
years old. Okay Cleveland, who was always needing a quarterback.
They took Braylon Edwards number three. They had Charlie Fry
in the third round. All right, now we don't want
(33:41):
Aaron Rodgers. Let's take Charlie Fry in the third round.
Your Bears took Cedric Benson fourth. Who did they draft
in the fourth round lat that year to replace Rex Grossman?
Kyle Again, the Lions passed on it, right, sticking with
Harrington's first season number four. Right, Washington traded up to
dre have Jason Campbell one pick after Rogers finally got drafted.
(34:04):
So all these teams because they had gotten burg because
they didn't think, well, you know what, we're gonna go
with sure things, and something happened, then that will never
happen again. If you have two guys who are so
neck and neck for the number one overall pick and
one of them goes, you would never see that second
guy fall. It would be we're moving up to get him.
If he doesn't go to three four, someone's going crazy
(34:25):
and jumping up and gambling getting up into that top
five to get Aaron Rodgers. No, and that's the craziness, right,
And we watch it each and every year quarterbacks that
when the silly season begins after we're done with bowl season.
In the banquet circuit, it's all right, that guy's the
third round pick, and then all of a sudden he's rising.
It's like, well, no, it all becomes need and go
(34:48):
get another quarterback because you you want you want to
have the cheap option at your disposal, right, go back
to the Russell Wilson year, even though they just spent
a bunch of money on Mats Flynn. They I said,
all right, we'll take you again in third round. Oh wait,
he beat him out right, signing bonus has gone. This
guy is now the starter. I mean, that's that's the
model you're trying to build. So you're not waiting for
(35:10):
that guy. You you may talk yourself into him a
bit more than you should, but you're gonna take that
shot at a quarterback. You're not sitting around waiting. I
mean you to go back to some of those other drafts.
I mean, go back to the two thousand three draft.
Even if you didn't like a lot of those quarterbacks,
very few guys came off the board and he only
talking like ten quarterbacks drafted overall. When again, and then
(35:30):
two thousand four obviously a fantastic year that kind of
changed the NFL in a lot of ways. But to
see how this draft unfolded the loyalty to older options
and say, all right, taking a chance like I mean,
like Charlie Fry. I remember when the Browns really tried
to make Charlie local guy right from Acre. Yeah, Charlie Fry,
(35:53):
he's our guy, you know. And and even the Bears trying,
Oh Kyle Lorton. I'll purdue watch what he does. He's
gonna come in, he's gonna light the world on fire.
And you know, he had a couple of games that
he won, but he's not like he was throwing four
touchdowns in those games. Well, but it's also goes back way,
but it goes back to the if you're gonna bring
a guy and that was the Pac ten pack twelve
(36:14):
right high fly or whatever, or you're gonna bring a
guy in from the Joe Tiller Perdue offense, you gotta
have receivers that could do that. And the Bears for many,
many years and I think it's still continues oftentimes today.
It's the you go there to die if you're a receiver.
Allen Robinson doing different things in the season, but in general,
(36:34):
and Brandon Marshall former Bear, former Jet, see how we're
tied together forever. Uh had some great years there as well.
But for for Kyle Wharton, if you're not gonna run
the offense that is conducive to what he did, well,
what's the difference. And Alex Smith is never gonna be
given his just due as to how good a quarterback
he was is could have been because what did they do?
(36:58):
They rotated co choos and coordinators out of him every year.
It's like at moving on next, next, But to your point,
just the quarterback position that year, waiting on a guy
to again, you don't think he's necessarily going to become
the hero that he did. Three guys going round one,
(37:19):
then you have three quarterbacks in round three. Orton goes
round four, Stefan la Four's he gets drafted by Carolina
dan Orlovsky now a great media member and running out
of the back of the yet sorry, no, I mean
he's look, he's gonna have to wear that forever, that's true.
Baltimore takes Derek Anderson in the sixth round, right, going
(37:41):
to the Kyle Bowler experiment, and Anderson had a couple
of moments. Ironically, his best moments came as a member
of the Cleveland Browns, which is very strange, uh, fantasy
hero for a bit. And then you have seventh rounders
Matt Castle and Ryan Fitzpatrick about that he'd be the
last guy standing Ryan, but that's just it. He's gonna
(38:01):
dance on all their NFL graves when it's all said done, right,
and he was a the compensatory pick at the end
of the seventh round. You got him and you got
Matt Castle, the last two guys, last two quarterbacks off
the board. Castle obviously got himself a nice pay day
after subbing for Tom Brady for a year, again owing
(38:22):
to the you can find a little bit of love.
But for a guy like Aaron Rodgers to fall twenty
three swats and there's a lot of guys that washed
out of the league pretty fast, Maybe even Mike Williams,
who came in looking like a tight end after that
bogus n C double a ruling against him as he
tried to leave USC. He goes tenth to the lines,
(38:43):
why hey, we can still fix Joey Harrington. So you've
got so much drama that goes through. So if I
were Aaron Rodgers, maybe I have that trip chip on
my shoulder all these years too. Oh it's it really
is incredible to see the list of those guys the
teams stuck with or decided to go out on a
limb to get instead of Aaron Rodgers. I mean, it's
(39:04):
it's laughable now to think a guy like because look,
it's not that every time there's two quarterbacks mentioned that
they're both gonna be stars, but one of them. They're
both gonna be taken, but they're gonna taken that high.
It's not like, okay, well now he slides through. I mean,
that was a perfect storm of teams going yeah, no, okay,
And if these teams don't want him, there's gotta be
(39:26):
a reason why we're gonna move on. We need a linebacker,
we need a defensive back, we need a defensive end,
we need offensive tackle. And that's how it goes. Let
think about the leash you used to get, not only
as a quarterback, but as a head coach, front office
guy that you don't get in the NFL anymore. You
don't get many respects anymore. You get you're very rarely
getting a situation where it's all right, you're a guy,
(39:47):
and we're gonna build from scratch with you. Right conceivably,
as you and I sit here, we're watching the beginning
of year two of the Brian Flores era in Miami.
But there were no expectations, and then they actually ended
up being a lot better, ironically because of Ryan Fitzpatrick.
But it's just the idea of all right, you're gonna
get to build a program like you would an old
(40:09):
college program, and quarterbacks don't get that longer. All right,
it's year four, we're still waiting, right, May we we
watch as some guys went into free agency eighteen nine?
It's they all right, you're towards the back end of
your would be option year on your rookie deal. Do
(40:30):
we bother picking it up? Like that's where we're at.
Regardless of what you may have seen in glimpses, you
have to make that hard decision of whether he's the
guy you're going with. Bat's here, it was all right
at another piece, at another piece of the defense. Let's
see if we can't coax out what we saw when
we drafted him early. And as a result, Aaron Rodgers
is in the green room all alone. Well, and also,
(40:52):
and lastly on Aaron Rodgers, is that this is why
teams go through all the top prospects now, because you
get to a point where if you're drafting twelve, four, seventeen,
you're never thinking Aaron Rodgers available to you. So how
much how much research did you really put into him?
We're looking at the players available here, what's our biggest need?
So for a few teams I'm sure it was. Boy
(41:13):
Rogers looks great, but we really didn't do any due
diligence on him. So can we really pick him? And
clock has tick and we got eight more minutes, let's
go get our guy. Now you won't see that, it'll
be oh, hey, yes, we spent some time with him
at the Senior Bowl and yeah he's I don't know
why he's dropping, but let's go get him. You can
make that decision a little bit better than you could
years ago. Yeah, we mean, it's everything's changed, right, the
(41:35):
age of the instant information, the ability to find either
via the the web or just the connections. You have
to so many personnel people across the leagues that you're
gonna be able to ferret out that information pretty fast.
But yeah, just an amazing study in it's it's hard
(41:55):
to believe it's that long that that Aaron Ross just
has been toting around it because he had then sat
for several years waiting for his chance again, three years
that would never happen, to know, I guess you forcing
like they'd be fighting on the sideline for who got
to get under center. So there it is. The special teams.
(42:16):
What teams did during the NFL Draft coming up next week,
we have another Special Teams NFL Draft version in a
spotlight three more teams who did special things during specific
NFL Draft. You have an idea for a future episode
of Special Teams, hit us up on Twitter at how
About a Fresca? Mike is at Swollen Dome Jason Smith
(42:36):
and Mike Harmon our show. Radio show has heard every
night Monday through Friday, seven to eleven Pacific time to
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(43:00):
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(43:24):
Special Teams is a production of I Heart Radio. For
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favorite shows.
Hi, this is Jason Smith. You're about to hear an
episode of the Special Teams podcast, which is a ton
of fun from Mike Harmon and I to record and
release every week. If you're new to the program, welcome,
If you've been a fan, welcome back. If you like
what you hear, please do us a favor, give us
a quick review and rate us on Apple or wherever
you're listening to this. It helps us, it helps the show,
(00:23):
and it helps us continue to bring you this content.
And if you want, you can let us know in
your review if you have an idea for a future
episode as well. Thanks ahead of time for your support.
And now it's showtime. Welcome to Special Teams, a production
(00:46):
of I Heart Radio. Greetings and Welcome Inside the Lands.
Edition of Special Teams with Jason Smith and Mike Harmon,
(01:07):
our podcast that spotlights a different team every week, very relevant,
very memorable in sports history. What made them so Maybe
because they won, maybe because they came so close to winning,
maybe because they couldn't win at all. And then once
in a while we get to play with the format
a little bit, and this is one of those weeks
as we have the NFL Draft on its way where
(01:28):
we're gonna look back at what some special teams did
in some specific years in the NFL draft drama, intrigue, chaos.
I mean, we all do our mock drafts iterations one
through as you and I sit together. I've got my
big board unfurled on the wall behind, and you're just
amazed by the level of detail and arrows I've got
(01:49):
pointing everywhere. They're all old Bears players. Well, I'm drafting
old Bears and has to create the ultimate team. Where
do I draft Gary Fens? Where do where do I
draft dougla wa draft? Well, Doug Plank would go higher
than fencing for me, just because well, let's just say
he got astered a little bit. And Wilber Marshall's still
better than Singletary. Go ahead, and that whoa can't do it,
(02:13):
can't do it? Yeah, I can't play with it. Look
at you. So this is what we're gonna do. We're
gonna look back at three separate years where a special
team did something in the draft and maybe it was special. Great,
maybe it was special. Oh my goodness, I'm gonna have
another episode next week. Is what we did this? Uh
A couple of weeks ago in the n c A tournament,
(02:34):
where we looked at two different episodes where we had cinderellatives,
we spotlight and this kind of what we're gonna do here.
We took Cinderella and it stretched that term a little
bit and had some fun with a lot of history.
I mean, there's some great players that rose up and
game came to prominence in the n c Double A Tournament. Likewise,
draft day, sometimes guys are remembered for all the wrong reasons.
(02:57):
We're gonna begin with the Bronco was trading for John
Elway a week after the nineteen eighty three NFL Draft.
Didn't look. Everybody knows that Elway didn't want to play
for the Colts, and he wound up getting traded to
the Denver Broncos, where he had his Hall of Fame
career and won a couple of Super Bowls. But looking
(03:17):
back at this, because of what transpired to make this
draft happen. Look, it was so long ago. We talked
about the quarterback class of eighty three lay at the
top of it. But the circumstances surrounding this Lway trade,
I like it because it would never happen now, nothing
would ever unfold like this did the Broncos trading for
Lway the way it did in you also wouldn't get
(03:39):
the free pass that John Elway has gotten through his
crest now he had a fantastic run in Denver. Nobody
questions at both as a player and then now as
an executive, but you try pulling this power play at
this point in the NFL, with social media and where
we're at at this day in age twenty four hours
(04:00):
a day, this would be the Tom Brady's free free
pendent free agency was the talk for months. Think about
this and how this would stick with a player forever.
This is mainly about the Colts and neckness and not
being able to pull off a better deal for Lway,
but this is how it broke down. Elway was having
(04:20):
the season of seasons his his final year at Stanford.
He told the Colts, who are then playing in Baltimore,
before the draft, he wouldn't play for them. In December,
he told the Colts, they listen, I'm not gonna come
play for you. He wanted to play on the West
Coast or Dallas or Miami, so much so he said
he continued to play professional baseball for the Yankees if
(04:42):
the Colts dressed them. And that was Elway's leverage because
he was a good basic played pretty well. In eighty two,
he was in the minor leagues three a team, batting average,
twelve extra base hits, had a bit of speed, something
you really don't. I mean, your other John Elway making
plays with his legs. But you never said he's fast, right,
He's the guy that was found his his creases and
(05:04):
and found and found his way. And of course some
big highlights helped that. The third team stolen basis only
played in forty two games, but the Yankees finished sixteen
games behind the Brewers back when the Brewers were in
that division all those years ago. Two and so a
shot in the arm of hey, you got this kid
who had this huge college career and it was big
(05:25):
Stein looking to make a splash. Yeah. This was the
Yankees after their big run of the late seventies early
eighties where they would go a long time without winning.
They thought Elway could maybe be a guy, even though
he didn't project to be a star player. But this
is what the Yankees did. The Colts still picked Elway
number one anyway, even though he told I'm not playing
for you. I'll go play baseball. I want to go
(05:47):
to the team. They still picked him number one in
a quarterback rich draft that had Ken O'Brien, Like said
con O'Brian, first he had to get him into Kelly.
You had Dan Marino, you had Hall of famers getting
draft it. That would never have happened. Now if you
got that no no, no, no no from a from
a team, they wouldn't draft him. But still the cult
(06:08):
said we're drafting you, so they did. They would find
a way to trade the pick or pick somebody else
if somebody else was dictating the terms of this. And
even though Elway was that great prospect, there were so
many things the cults could have done, and instead they
sat where they were, didn't trade the pick even though
they had offers, and they took him anyway and found
(06:30):
themselves stuck stubbornness into a degree saying, hey, by far
he's our number one guy. He'll come around, right, because
it's the same leverage play that a lot of players
intimate near the top of drafts. Pick sport here that hey,
I don't want to go play for them, and they're
a dysfunctional organization. And as we would find out. Yea,
(06:52):
they had some other things going on as they were
getting ready to make this not yet yet, not one
more year involved, Yes, but you and a dysfunctional organization.
They were terrible, Yes they were. They did over. They
were over the year before. They were right here two
and two and one the prior to season. And just
think about this. In eight two, so the year before
(07:13):
this draft, they had drafted Art s lee Ster number
four overall quarterback out of our house, I worked out well,
who became much more famous for going to prison for gambling.
He couldn't stay out of trouble. He gambled right when
he came into the league. And in nine three, which
was supposed to be arch Lester, no, he winds up
getting a one year gambling suspension because his name came
(07:35):
to light in the big investigation. Couldn't stay away from
it for the rest of his life. Round up washing
out of the NFL. This is something else the Colts
that you can't believe. They went number four overall for
a quarterback in eighty two and now they're ready to
go number one overall for a quarterback again in can
you imagine a team right now going okay, we took
a quarterback at number four. What are you doing next year?
(07:56):
We're going number one overall? A quarterback again, Well you
kind of have to. Dude's going to jail. It's true,
so like, hey, we don't like this guy. It was
just at that point it wasn't quite prison. Yeah, he's suspended,
he's out of the league. Prison coming. No, no, no.
You could see the bad path that this was going down.
Many books and articles have later been written, and the
(08:19):
redemption the long road for Arch least. But you look
at this. I mean, I think the only other place
that we would have seen it in in recent history.
And it wasn't back to back. Here. It was the
same draft when the Redskins went and took r G
three and then later took her cousins right where it's
all right, what are we doing here? We decided we
(08:39):
like a both and we'll just stock up for later.
That was confusing as could be. But here you had
the guy who was the obvious number one, and you
just decided, all right, I guess we'll be able to
do the cell job that us against the Yankees, that
we can sell them that football is the better path,
This is the easier path. Towards greatness and later he
(09:03):
would be great. But they, I guess didn't count on
the fact that that leverage would be pushed to the hill.
So there's your first level and that this the Colts,
the arch Leaster drafting and they got draft somebody else.
The fact that they couldn't trade the pick and kept
it and drafted him anyway. And this is what fails
to pass muster is that Elway was so sought after
(09:24):
everybody wanted. They had offers from the Rams, the Chargers,
the Patriots, the Dolphins. Their GM was Ernie of Coursey,
went on to be a very well respected front office
member for a long time. The head coach was Frank Cush,
who you know had a Star Cross career as a
head They were not fans of his, uh the way
of doing business, so they couldn't find a way to
make a deal for him. How do you not find
(09:45):
a way to make a deal for a guy where
there's a bidding war for and you can't get a
good enough training right, But that's how Davis says there
was a conspiracy that prevented him from training for John Elway,
which you go, okay, really, come on, Al Davis but
now you look back and go, yeah, why wasn't anybody
able to make a big deal for it? Why? Because
it should have been You take a number one overall prospect,
like l Way with the teams he wanted to go
(10:07):
to saying we want to trade for him. He said
he wanted West Coast, Dallas, Miami. You got West Coast,
you got Raiders, you got San Diego, you got Miami.
You had all kinds of teams you had, and you
still couldn't make a deal. You still took them number
one overall. Well, but that's the other question though. I mean,
you had all these people and teams coming to the
table with offers. But as we talk about, this is
(10:28):
one of those classes, those rare QB classes that go
down in history. So you had other people and other
names to go and get. Now, Jim Kelly ended up
becoming a bigger issue because he goes and does the
the USFL route. But you know Tom Flores and company,
they're in with the Raiders trying to figure out exactly
(10:51):
what their path was gonna be. You look at he
went bad for the Raiders, No, obviously, but you know,
if you could get richer, you get rich where you can,
but just the idea of all right, kick the tires.
But Al Davis there was enough lawsuits. I'll always wait
for the definitive word. I mean, there's gotta be some
(11:12):
pages there somewhere, right, Bit by bit you find out
little bits of the L. Davis legacy and what he
was truly into for all those many years in the league.
I'd love to see the books written about this from
his point of view, as told to whomever. I mean,
there's gotta be some tales. Now Here's where things get
really crazy is because Elway is drafted by the Colts
(11:34):
and then all right, he gets traded to the Broncos,
who eventually come up with an offer for him. But
this wasn't during the draft. This wasn't a twenty minutes.
A half hour later, Philip rivers for Eli Manning works
out this was a week after the draft. The draft ends,
and a week goes by and still lay as a cult,
and still he's not gonna go there, and still they
(11:56):
gotta figure out a way. And at this point, what
are you gonna do? You have the guy, and now
the offers are not gonna be as good because they
know you have to give up lesson for the price
that we all know by now, which was Chris Hinton,
offensive lineman, Mark Herman, a quarterback in a first round
pick in and you don't just miss Chris Hinton. That
gets you laughed out of the room right now. If
(12:17):
that's your deal for number one overall pick in the
drey Hey fourth pick out of Northwestern tight end offensive lineman.
Seven Pro Bowls, he was good. He was good, three
time first team, all three times second. Yeah, but this
is John Ellie, buddy, I'm just selling my guy. I
know you did have a great career, but this is
(12:38):
and Hermann still works for the Cold so so that work.
He said the broadcast booth. He had an eleven year
career and one in the first round. And just yeah
in the first step, not seven first but that's just
the first round. I mean think about and as we
go through the podcast, and and just in the NFL
draft history in general, you talk about being having to
(12:59):
pick and give up five six picks to three veteran players,
expiring contracts, all of those fun things that we go
through in the NFL, in the NBA, everything else. Here,
it's a pittance for a guy that everybody believed was
going to be that generational talent. Right, it's always the
best prospect, and that was even before he became John Elway.
(13:22):
Super Bowl winner, right, super Bowl participant, got you to
the yeah, he's the best prospects since John Elway tag
for a lot of guys, and now it's etched in
stone forever. Of all right, it was him, that was him,
that was him, and his name gets brought up because
of that great finish to his collegiate career. And so
while the Broncos go on to all kinds of fame
(13:43):
and el Way becomes the quarterback he does, the Colts
actually have a pretty decent season and eight three they
go seven and nine, seven and nine, awful. Jeff Fisher
was not the head coach now, but he spoken into
exist and Chris Hinton is a pro bowler, and so
all right, they did get a pro bowler act from it.
But this was not nearly what they could have had.
(14:04):
They could have had so many other players in that
they could have gotten a much better parcel of package
for John Elway, and instead they just kind of butcher
their way all along through it. It's amazing, No, it's
the curiosity though you go back to a coursi and
and what the agendas were behind the scenes. And you've
(14:25):
got always people and their hardline stance, you got styber
and guts, so many big egos mixed into this. But
of course he who later became a pretty good deal maker,
and they you know, one of those guys, one of
the few front office names that lives on right. A
lot of guys come and go from front offices and
(14:46):
unless they're disastrous, they kind of move on. It's a
guy he was okay, this guy had some great runs,
but he's also the architect of this. Now Cush becomes
gets into this a little bit too, because Cush is
not someone that players like that like he was too.
He was a big, hard ass of a coach. And
part of the story at the time was Elway didn't
want to play for Frank Cush at that point. If
(15:08):
the Colts don't you go. He just presided over an
O eight in one season, So why don't we get
a new coach? In sounds like yeah, with the new guy.
And this is Cush who also was upset when they
moved to Indianapolis in the off season because that was
the they finished seven and nine and they moved to Indianapolis.
He wanted the team to move to Phoenix. You know,
let's let's go here instead. And this is the guy
(15:28):
that signed up. We'll stick with you. Elway doesn't like you,
doesn't matter. We like Frank Cush And oh, by the way,
after just four wins and eighty four he quit just
before the final game of the regular season. So you
had Frank Cush for another year plus after that, and
then he was gone, right, And then they started bouncing
between coaches quite a bit before bringing back Ted Marcha
(15:49):
Brota to be stabilizer in the early nineties. I mean,
just kind of crazy the way this all gets unpacked. Yes,
the move gets in the middle of all of this
and you create chaos. So it's almost like a Vegas misdirection.
All right, forget about the Lway thing. I mean, look,
we moved, we we moved the franchise. It's there's all
(16:12):
sorts of other stuff going on. It's not just happy
we have football. It doesn't matter who let it go.
So think of that mismanagement by the Cults when it
came to John Elway's situation. As we move on our
next team, we spot light a team that could have
made a trade that might have changed the course of
NFL history, but when it came time to it during
(16:33):
the draft, they decided not to. That's next right now
on the Special Team with Jason Smith and Mike Harmon podcast,
(16:58):
as we continue on our special NFL Draft version of
special Teams, as we look back at some special teams
and what they did during the NFL drafting. Broncos did
something special, we talked about them. The Cults did not. Now,
definitely we get to a team that could have done
something special during the NFL Draft, but became special for
that draft for all the wrong reasons. In Mike Ditka,
(17:22):
then head coach the New Orleans Saints, traded his entire
draft for Ricky Williams plus a first round and a
second round pick the next year. The Dicka trade is
very famous. He went up to the press conference introductory
with Ricky Williams wearing dreadlocks. Ricky Williams was the missing
piece for the New Orleans Saints. Now we know it
didn't work out for the Saints just a little bit,
and also didn't work out for the Redskins, who they
(17:44):
wound up making that trade with. Redskins got a couple
of decent players, but you would think getting an entire
draft worth of players plus the first and second round
pick the next year, it would be great, but they didn't,
thinking it would launch you into some great strate experiment.
It did allow them to make a pit a trade
with the Bears, a lot of draft picks that allowed
them to get to Champ Bailey and so they win
(18:06):
ten games in in to win the NFC East. So
at least for the moment you say, yeah, we won.
And that's also the first year of Daniel Snyder's owning
of the team, So yes, there's a at least a
short term win. But you go back to that trade
with New Orleans, me being the Chicago boy, and as
you and I sit and talk wearing well, Jake Cutler,
(18:29):
there's where that that that a lot. Well, you know,
I'm still trying to coax him out of retirement, either
that or get an invite to his you know, his
butcher shop so we could cut some meat together. But
you know, Mike Dick going out of Chicago and then
taking the job in New Orleans, certainly a lot of
people were weren't thrilled. Al Right, here he is, what's
(18:52):
the second act, because if it went well, I see,
he should have still been the coach. Here. All you
did was hire another guy with a mustache, and and
you moved on. No, just for spect gave Wance proud
member of the Fox family. But you had the trade
for and giving up all those assets to bring in
Ricky Williams, no matter how much you loved Ricky Williams
in college. You're looking around, right, we just talked about
(19:15):
John Elway quarterback. You mortgage your your future, right, you
mortgage you know draft picks, and you say, Okay, this
is the guy we need. This is the guy that's
putting us over running back. Even in nine, this is
where you had to say, Mike, I need the car
keys someone. Even in ninety, this is like all the
times we joke about Jerry Jones getting put in the
(19:36):
closet instead of making a draft pick. This is where
someone should have said, hey, coach, coach, we're we're out
of our depths here, we're going a little far. I
remember when they asked him, what are you gonna do now?
You traded away your draft You got Ricky Williams because
I'm going golfing. That's what he said, And he walked off. Yea,
this is not about the Bengals. Well, it will be
about the Banals, but it's not about the Redskins who
(19:57):
made the trade. It's about the team that could have
made even a better trade, because before this was offered
to the Redskins, the Saints made an even better offer
to the Bengals. They called the Bengals who were sitting
at number three, and they offered all their picks in
a first rounder in two thousand, a first rounder in
(20:19):
two thousand one, and a first rounder in two thousand two.
So you're talking about first round picks in entire draft
in and first round picks the next three years. I
don't get how that wasn't snapped up right away. I
don't get it because the Bengals had been a pretty
decent franchise up until that. Look, the Bungles didn't come
(20:42):
around until now because they had a pretty good nineteen nine.
They went to the Super Bowl early in the decade,
and they had a pretty good team. The middle of
the nineties, you're basically talking about average team, and they
had three straight years. Now they were at the back
end of the division. But that's fine. You're still at
least in striking range. This remakes your team. If you
(21:03):
are the Bengals who needed a quarterback, right you need
a quarterback, I get it, but this remakes your team.
You leave Jeff Blake along. You're talking about an entire
draft and three more first round picks, and the Bengals say, no,
I mean, I I don't that should have been Let's
get whatever we need to sign right now before somebody
grabs Mike Dickens says, coach, we're not doing this. I mean,
(21:24):
we're really not doing that. I mean, this is just
an amazing on a team that, as as you point out,
is solid. And here's where you shore up a couple
of deficiencies. You get your your quarterback of the future
doesn't have to be Achilles Smith uh who they eventually draft.
It's it's the opportunity to really make this into a
(21:45):
whole new new squad. And maybe, as we always joked
with Marvin Lewis, forget about the A to B. Maybe
you got right back into title contention. And I miss book.
It was the three first round picks would have gotten
would have been the year in first round picks in
two thousand, two thousands, one and a second round pick
in two thousand and two, so it been the three
Fried just had the year. It was the three first
(22:07):
round picks plus two thousand and two. So why did
they say no? Why did they say no to this?
Because they really wanted to take Achille Smith at number three. Now,
I vividly remember first hearing Achille Smith going this high
in mock drafts. And this is right around the time
when I started doing sports talk radio for a living.
(22:28):
Remember even back then when I was at Newbie and
I'm sitting there going, boy, this is pretty good work
by Lee Steinberg, who was Achille Smith's agent. Because I look,
he was good at Oregon. He had one good year
at Oregon. He played pretty well, but there was I
did not hear any buzz until suddenly, oh, yeah, a
Keille Smith could go on the top five. And I'm
really Achille Smith in the top five. I I didn't
(22:51):
know that he had the right mechanics. I didn't know
that he yet, but it was it was shocking to me.
And back then I'm thinking, Okay, well, obviously people know
something I don't know because for him going to the
top three. Then I realized, oh, this is a really
good job. By an agent to get Achille Smith's name
up there so much that the Bengals had to have
him at number three. Well, you got into the old
gold rush at quarterback, right. I think that was one
(23:12):
of the things that played in on a big level.
And you you look at these stats that he was
able to put up in that big year you mentioned
al Right, he plays at eleven games, fifty four completion
percentage and the yards pertends only six point nine thirteen touchdowns,
seven interception. Okay, just a guy, but blows up. The
(23:35):
completion percentage is only fifty percent, which now gets your
laughed out of but was good. Yeah, again, you're throwing
more deep passes. You're not as as careful with the
ball in these, you know, quick strike, let's swing it
to the back, out of the backfield, everything else that
we use now here. Thirty two and eight is your
touchdown to interception ratio. But you're talking about over ten
(23:58):
yards per attempt. That's gonna get people's eye eyebrows to raise.
And what when we see out of Oregon, you saw
a number of quarterbacks get over value. Right. It was
just a couple of years later we saw Joey Arrington
go third overall, right off the same kind of premise
of all right, look at what he can do with
this offense. Well, you gotta have the players to run it.
(24:18):
We always joke about guys leaving New England to go
coach somewhere else. You can't implement the same system. You
don't have the same mentality, the same buy in the
same fifty three man locker room. Same thing with quarterbacks.
You can't just plug it. But hey, he was great
here for whatever reason, Oregon quarterbacks there was a nice
spell where you know, balladi and those guys were able
(24:39):
to do it pretty even up to Marcus Mariotta, who
you know that lost his job in Tennessee. And it
was the Oregon quarterbacks never really lit the world on fire.
We had to do it a whole deep dive on
the pack twelve. Dan Fouts was good and then then
you have to move up from there. Here you go.
But Achille Smith was was really a one year wonder
and he come is into the league and he just
(25:01):
doesn't play well. He doesn't start many games. And one
of the big thoughts about him was that he didn't
study the playbook and know the playbook like he should have.
But he doesn't stay healthy. He doesn't play. In four
years for the Bengals, who took him number three overall,
he started seventeen games. How many touchdowns did he throw?
In four years? He threw five touchdowns five touchdowns. His
(25:25):
best year was when he started twelve games in two
thousand one. He threw three touchdowns. In twelve games he started,
he threw three touchdowns, three of them. I feel really
crappy if I'm a dB and I got beat four
of those touching But oh man, really, yeah, he was
the third overall pick. I could say, you know he
was do but do you think what the Bengals could
(25:47):
have done? And maybe they would have mismanaged their picks,
you know who knows. But instead of Achille Smith, which
set the franchise back. If you take a quarterback that
early who doesn't pan out, that sets your franchise back years.
You're talking about a treasure off of an extra draft,
two more first round picks, a second round pick. Likely
they get a quarterback at some point there and you
know what happens. Then they don't draft Carson Palmer. Carson
(26:09):
Palmer goes someplace else. Maybe he has just as good
a carew maybe he doesn't get hurt like he did,
retire and then he played a little bit longer. That
would have changed had the Bengals just said, oh my god, yes, yes,
we'll do this, instead of saying you no, no, we
gotta have Achille Smith. It's like I mean, sometimes irrationality
(26:29):
wins the day. Well, and that's the thing is you
as you go through that draft, for Couch goes number one,
your guy out of syraccuse my Chicago guy Downovan McNabb
goes number two, Smith to number three. We already talked
about Ricky Williams in that five slot. Go on down
Washington with Champ Bailey at seven. Fine, but then you
have another couple of quarterbacks come off at eleven and
(26:50):
twelve and Dante Colepepper and Kaye mcdown. Yeah, your guy,
my guy. I once watched him not get past the
fifty line. That was the Tara Owens twenty catch game
and last home game. Don't ask Jerry Rice about that.
He's done too, please. Uh. I got a nice flipbook
(27:13):
at the catch out of that. It was nice and
nice souvenir for the people as you go through. But
right there you're you're talking about quarterback heavy draft. There
were other guys maybe you didn't like them and they're
upside as much as you thought you had and Achille Smith,
but certainly other names that were on the board for you,
and you then had a would have had a bevy
(27:33):
of picks to go do some other things right and
then and that's really what it comes down to. Now
you're playing with value and you can move back into
whatever position you need to to go get your guy
or guys as it were in this case, you picked
and chose poorly out of our Indiana Jones movie reference
(27:54):
for this moment, and uh, well that's that's the end
of it. Mike Ditka would have been saved. They wouldn't
have ruined the career and made him a mockery. No,
but Mike Dick, who went on to win four Super
Bowls in a rowa's head coach of the Jets. I mean,
he really was lucky to get out of that situation.
And then you would have been able to claim Dick
as a jet. If it's a jet named Dick against
(28:16):
the bear, the jet beats the bear, I think the
bear would take down head jet. So no, I completely
disagree the jet would just anyway. He would mullet like
those gremlins in that old Twilight Zone with Shatner. One
more special team to get to and a team that
did something incredibly special in the draft by watching a
guy fall all the way to then that's coming up next.
(28:38):
Jason Smith and Mike harmon Special Team Podcast as we
look back NFL Draft Special The Final Team were Spotlighting
(29:02):
and Special Teams with Jason Smith and Mike Carment. As
we look back at teams that did special things in
the draft, Let's go back to two thousand and five
April when the Green Bay Packers wound up with their
successor to Brett Farve, who went on to bring them
Super Bowl glory, all because other teams didn't need a quarterback.
(29:23):
After Alex Smith went number one overall and Aaron Rodgers
falls all the way twenty three picks later to the Packers.
This draft coming into it, I remember the debate between
Alex Smith versus Aaron Rodgers for who was gonna go
number one overall. Alex Smith was the finished product. He
(29:44):
had a great senior year in Utah. There were no
red flags Aaron Rodgers coming out of Cow There was
a little bit more criticism. Remember it was he looked
a little bit robotic. And I remember interviewing him mel
kyper Jr. And I on Game Day back when I
was doing radio for ESPN, and we talked about how
you deal with the criticisms of being robotic, and he
didn't seem very happy, like it wasn't one of those
(30:05):
oh hey, you know, I just deal with it, let
it roll off. No, he didn't seem too happy about it.
Generally he doesn't see him let a lot of things,
that's true, But so when he was a young kid,
you know her, but he remember, I remember him not
being too happy about it then, and it was a
big debate what was gonna happen. It was the finished
product of Alex Smith versus the potential of what you
(30:28):
could get with Aaron Rodgers. And there were quarterback needy
teams all over the place. In the first couple of
picks of the draft, most of the mock drafts had
Alex Smith and Aaron Rodgers to the forty Niners at
number one, or the Dolphins at number two, or even
Rodgers at number five to Tampa Bay because John Gruden
potentially won, So whoever went number one. The other guy
(30:50):
likely wasn't gonna get past number five. So after the
first two, after those picks were well after that, there's
not that many quarterback needy teams, right. Can you imagine
twenty plus teams right now saying we're not gonna draft
a quarterback. We're not. We don't need a quarterback. Half
the lead needs a quarterball. But that's the thing, right,
And this is why it's such an outlier, not just
because what Aaron Rodgers became, but just the way this
(31:12):
draft played out, with the number of running backs taken
so early, the number of cornerbacks, and we see that
a bit more, you'll see that more frequently than you will.
But running backs three of your first five picks out
of a draft. You don't see it, you know you don't.
We've had drafts where you don't see a running back
(31:34):
selected in the first round at all. So to have
those guys all go off the board, Ronnie Brown, Cedric Benson,
Cadillac Williams, just like that, your your five picks in
looking at around, going all right, what this is a
weird draft. Remember that draft night, watching the Aaron Rodgers
camera after every pick, Right, it didn't start lay as
(31:56):
late as people want to try to claim it did. No, no, no,
they were on him pretty early. So the first pick
goes and it's Alex Smith and have their quarterback, and
then the fall starts for Aaron Rodgers and he goes
all the way until the Packers get him twenty three
picks later. What happened? Why did Aaron Rodgers not get picked?
(32:17):
A couple of things happened. Many teams in the previous
couple of years had drafted young quarterbacks and it didn't
work out. Right, you had Baltimore getting Kyle Bohler that
didn't work out Byron left, which to Jacksonville. Plus there
were stories that Rodgers didn't nail his interviews, like Alex
Smith did you know even now Rodgers a little weird.
(32:38):
You know that's so I can see coming out, Yeah,
we don't know. We like Alex like I said, Alex
Smith was. There were no red flags for him, right,
Everything was great for Alex Smith coming out. He did
great during his interviews and Aaron Rodgers there were questions.
So when you have questions about Aaron rodd and these
are questions now that aren't something that would preclude you
from taking him. It's not like he tanked his interviews.
(32:59):
But you have many teams seeing young quarterbacks being taken
in the previous couple of drafts and it didn't work out.
You know, you're still looking back at Joey Harrington, who
was supposed to be great and he didn't work out.
Team's got afraid is this next young guy that's not
Alex Smith gonna work out for me? No, let me
go to another position. So this is one reason why
(33:21):
Aaron Rodgers fell down the draft to all the way
to four. You look at what some of the other
teams did. Alright, Miami at number two, we needed a quarterback.
They stuck with Gus far Rott, who was thirty four
years old. Okay Cleveland, who was always needing a quarterback.
They took Braylon Edwards number three. They had Charlie Fry
in the third round. All right, now we don't want
(33:41):
Aaron Rodgers. Let's take Charlie Fry in the third round.
Your Bears took Cedric Benson fourth. Who did they draft
in the fourth round lat that year to replace Rex Grossman?
Kyle Again, the Lions passed on it, right, sticking with
Harrington's first season number four. Right, Washington traded up to
dre have Jason Campbell one pick after Rogers finally got drafted.
(34:04):
So all these teams because they had gotten burg because
they didn't think, well, you know what, we're gonna go
with sure things, and something happened, then that will never
happen again. If you have two guys who are so
neck and neck for the number one overall pick and
one of them goes, you would never see that second
guy fall. It would be we're moving up to get him.
If he doesn't go to three four, someone's going crazy
(34:25):
and jumping up and gambling getting up into that top
five to get Aaron Rodgers. No, and that's the craziness, right,
And we watch it each and every year quarterbacks that
when the silly season begins after we're done with bowl season.
In the banquet circuit, it's all right, that guy's the
third round pick, and then all of a sudden he's rising.
It's like, well, no, it all becomes need and go
(34:48):
get another quarterback because you you want you want to
have the cheap option at your disposal, right, go back
to the Russell Wilson year, even though they just spent
a bunch of money on Mats Flynn. They I said,
all right, we'll take you again in third round. Oh wait,
he beat him out right, signing bonus has gone. This
guy is now the starter. I mean, that's that's the
model you're trying to build. So you're not waiting for
(35:10):
that guy. You you may talk yourself into him a
bit more than you should, but you're gonna take that
shot at a quarterback. You're not sitting around waiting. I
mean you to go back to some of those other drafts.
I mean, go back to the two thousand three draft.
Even if you didn't like a lot of those quarterbacks,
very few guys came off the board and he only
talking like ten quarterbacks drafted overall. When again, and then
(35:30):
two thousand four obviously a fantastic year that kind of
changed the NFL in a lot of ways. But to
see how this draft unfolded the loyalty to older options
and say, all right, taking a chance like I mean,
like Charlie Fry. I remember when the Browns really tried
to make Charlie local guy right from Acre. Yeah, Charlie Fry,
(35:53):
he's our guy, you know. And and even the Bears trying,
Oh Kyle Lorton. I'll purdue watch what he does. He's
gonna come in, he's gonna light the world on fire.
And you know, he had a couple of games that
he won, but he's not like he was throwing four
touchdowns in those games. Well, but it's also goes back way,
but it goes back to the if you're gonna bring
a guy and that was the Pac ten pack twelve
(36:14):
right high fly or whatever, or you're gonna bring a
guy in from the Joe Tiller Perdue offense, you gotta
have receivers that could do that. And the Bears for many,
many years and I think it's still continues oftentimes today.
It's the you go there to die if you're a receiver.
Allen Robinson doing different things in the season, but in general,
(36:34):
and Brandon Marshall former Bear, former Jet, see how we're
tied together forever. Uh had some great years there as well.
But for for Kyle Wharton, if you're not gonna run
the offense that is conducive to what he did, well,
what's the difference. And Alex Smith is never gonna be
given his just due as to how good a quarterback
he was is could have been because what did they do?
(36:58):
They rotated co choos and coordinators out of him every year.
It's like at moving on next, next, But to your point,
just the quarterback position that year, waiting on a guy
to again, you don't think he's necessarily going to become
the hero that he did. Three guys going round one,
(37:19):
then you have three quarterbacks in round three. Orton goes
round four, Stefan la Four's he gets drafted by Carolina
dan Orlovsky now a great media member and running out
of the back of the yet sorry, no, I mean
he's look, he's gonna have to wear that forever, that's true.
Baltimore takes Derek Anderson in the sixth round, right, going
(37:41):
to the Kyle Bowler experiment, and Anderson had a couple
of moments. Ironically, his best moments came as a member
of the Cleveland Browns, which is very strange, uh, fantasy
hero for a bit. And then you have seventh rounders
Matt Castle and Ryan Fitzpatrick about that he'd be the
last guy standing Ryan, but that's just it. He's gonna
(38:01):
dance on all their NFL graves when it's all said done, right,
and he was a the compensatory pick at the end
of the seventh round. You got him and you got
Matt Castle, the last two guys, last two quarterbacks off
the board. Castle obviously got himself a nice pay day
after subbing for Tom Brady for a year, again owing
(38:22):
to the you can find a little bit of love.
But for a guy like Aaron Rodgers to fall twenty
three swats and there's a lot of guys that washed
out of the league pretty fast, Maybe even Mike Williams,
who came in looking like a tight end after that
bogus n C double a ruling against him as he
tried to leave USC. He goes tenth to the lines,
(38:43):
why hey, we can still fix Joey Harrington. So you've
got so much drama that goes through. So if I
were Aaron Rodgers, maybe I have that trip chip on
my shoulder all these years too. Oh it's it really
is incredible to see the list of those guys the
teams stuck with or decided to go out on a
limb to get instead of Aaron Rodgers. I mean, it's
(39:04):
it's laughable now to think a guy like because look,
it's not that every time there's two quarterbacks mentioned that
they're both gonna be stars, but one of them. They're
both gonna be taken, but they're gonna taken that high.
It's not like, okay, well now he slides through. I mean,
that was a perfect storm of teams going yeah, no, okay,
And if these teams don't want him, there's gotta be
(39:26):
a reason why we're gonna move on. We need a linebacker,
we need a defensive back, we need a defensive end,
we need offensive tackle. And that's how it goes. Let
think about the leash you used to get, not only
as a quarterback, but as a head coach, front office
guy that you don't get in the NFL anymore. You
don't get many respects anymore. You get you're very rarely
getting a situation where it's all right, you're a guy,
(39:47):
and we're gonna build from scratch with you. Right conceivably,
as you and I sit here, we're watching the beginning
of year two of the Brian Flores era in Miami.
But there were no expectations, and then they actually ended
up being a lot better, ironically because of Ryan Fitzpatrick.
But it's just the idea of all right, you're gonna
get to build a program like you would an old
(40:09):
college program, and quarterbacks don't get that longer. All right,
it's year four, we're still waiting, right, May we we
watch as some guys went into free agency eighteen nine?
It's they all right, you're towards the back end of
your would be option year on your rookie deal. Do
(40:30):
we bother picking it up? Like that's where we're at.
Regardless of what you may have seen in glimpses, you
have to make that hard decision of whether he's the
guy you're going with. Bat's here, it was all right
at another piece, at another piece of the defense. Let's
see if we can't coax out what we saw when
we drafted him early. And as a result, Aaron Rodgers
is in the green room all alone. Well, and also,
(40:52):
and lastly on Aaron Rodgers, is that this is why
teams go through all the top prospects now, because you
get to a point where if you're drafting twelve, four, seventeen,
you're never thinking Aaron Rodgers available to you. So how
much how much research did you really put into him?
We're looking at the players available here, what's our biggest need?
So for a few teams I'm sure it was. Boy
(41:13):
Rogers looks great, but we really didn't do any due
diligence on him. So can we really pick him? And
clock has tick and we got eight more minutes, let's
go get our guy. Now you won't see that, it'll
be oh, hey, yes, we spent some time with him
at the Senior Bowl and yeah he's I don't know
why he's dropping, but let's go get him. You can
make that decision a little bit better than you could
years ago. Yeah, we mean, it's everything's changed, right, the
(41:35):
age of the instant information, the ability to find either
via the the web or just the connections. You have
to so many personnel people across the leagues that you're
gonna be able to ferret out that information pretty fast.
But yeah, just an amazing study in it's it's hard
(41:55):
to believe it's that long that that Aaron Ross just
has been toting around it because he had then sat
for several years waiting for his chance again, three years
that would never happen, to know, I guess you forcing
like they'd be fighting on the sideline for who got
to get under center. So there it is. The special teams.
(42:16):
What teams did during the NFL Draft coming up next week,
we have another Special Teams NFL Draft version in a
spotlight three more teams who did special things during specific
NFL Draft. You have an idea for a future episode
of Special Teams, hit us up on Twitter at how
About a Fresca? Mike is at Swollen Dome Jason Smith
(42:36):
and Mike Harmon our show. Radio show has heard every
night Monday through Friday, seven to eleven Pacific time to
at the end of two am on the East Coast
on Fox Sports Radio. Check your local listings for the
station in your area. We'll talk to you next week
(43:00):
before you go, rate and review the show. Whether you're
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whatever it is, give us a rate, tell us you
like it. We will love you forever and ever and ever.
(43:24):
Special Teams is a production of I Heart Radio. For
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