05-09-24 Randy Mueller with Broncos Country Tonight

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
On former NFL Executive of the Yearfrom the show, Randy Mueller. Randy,
how you doing this evening? Greatguys, what's going on? Lee?
We're doing pretty well out here.It's been an interesting now off season
for the Denver Broncos. Before Iget to the Broncos, though, I
want to ask you about the situationthat happens with the Atlanta Falcons, Michael
penningks Kirk Cousins. What you thinkof that and if that is something that

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as a general manager you would havedone and or condoned. Oh boy,
how much time do we have?I feel like I should lay down on
the couch before I even go intoany explanation here. I need some therapy.
I struggle with it. I understandeverybody has kind of made up their
mind. I've even heard a coupletop ranking analysts make sense of it to

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them. Here's why I struggle withit, and it has nothing to do
with Michael Pennix, who I thinkis a really good prospect and might have
been the best peer passer of thewhole crew this year coming out. I
get it. I think he'll bean NFL player. But here's the problem
I have as a GM. Theonly people I really care about that judge
what I do are the players inthe locker room. And I think that's

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a struggle for Terry Fontino. They'reGM now in Atlanta, when he has
to walk through that locker room andsay, hey, I did good for
us today, Guys, I reallygot it's better. I just don't know.
I mean, he might be bettertwo or three years from now,
but I just think they needed somany other things to make them competitive for
this year, especially on the defensiveside, that it's a struggle. And

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I get the fact that they've saidwe're not going to be up here to
draft a quarterback again. Well nothingsays you have to pick one in the
top ten to be successful either.So I just think they need to do
a better job of identifying and thenobviously evaluating the pool of players. They've
swung and missed at quarterback many times. And maybe this was their answer to
just throwing up their hands and givingKirk Cousins a hundred million and then drafting

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Fenix in the top ten. SoI don't know, but I struggle with
the whole concept of just that,given somebody two months earlier one hundred million
guarantees and then spending the eighth pickon his heir apparent before he's even taken
a snap. Well, ran listday right there with the quarterback position,
because obviously that was something that hasbeen in flux with the Denver Broncos for
several years. But there's this ideathat when you have a quarterback, veteran

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or young quarterback, you got ussurround that quarterback with talent. Where do
you come down on either the talenthelping to elevate the quarterback level play or
vice versa. Well, I thinkit depends on where you're talking about a
team build. I think a quarterback, no matter how talented or how good
he is, has no chance thathe can't keep him upright, So I

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think you need an offensive line thatcan do that, or the quarterback doesn't
matter. Having said that, Ithink the quarterback makes the perimeter players better.
I'm not one that subscribes to that, Well, we get him all
these receivers, he's going to haveall these options. I get it.
I'm all for it in good players, but I think the quarterback himself will
make those receivers, not the otherway around. So I guess it depends

(03:07):
on where you are with your teambuild. Bo Nicks is a guy that
I know Sean has seen flashes ofbrilliance, and we all saw that.
I think the consistency is probably thething that put him the sixth on the
list of quarterbacks that ended up comingoff the board. But that doesn't mean
that he doesn't have the talent toascend in a system like Sean runs,

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where they give the quarterback a lotof answers. So I'm sure he sees
a good fit there. You know, I'm sticking with bo Nicks. You're
talking about a guy who had sixtyone starts in college football. Do you
view that as a positive, asin he has all this experience coming into
the league, or do you viewthat as man he you know, he
languished in college football for a longtime before he finally found his way or

(03:51):
was forced to find his way tothe league to continue playing football. Yeah,
I think it can be a detrimenthaving that much experience. I think
boat case and this is just myopinion. I struggled with what happened at
Auburn and couldn't get that out ofmy mind. So I think there probably
are other NFL evaluators and team builderswho may have seen that the same.

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But having said that, these schemematters, the offense matters. Obviously,
he found his niche at Oregon andwas a productive player there. So it's
kind of a mixed bag. Thatseems like a cop out of an answer.
But I do think players who havethat much experience, you'd like to
see them further ahead in the learningcurve. But maybe the system at Auburn

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just didn't fit his skill set,and that's why it's just taken a little
longer. We've heard a lot ofconversation over the past couple of years about
the expanding of the NFL season.We've seen them move from sixteen games to
seventeen games, and I know coRoger Goodell kind of floated the idea that
we could see even eighteen games,And now there's some fans that are thinking,

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Okay, well why stop at eighteenwhen I go tonight. In order
for that to happen, what doyou think the league would have to do
in conjunction with the players' association inorder to get them to accept these I
guess changes that could be coming downthe pipe. Well, the short answer
is, hey, the players moreand we all know that will dictate at

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the end of the day. I'llsay this, if Roger has alluded to
that which we all have heard thesame narrative, it means it's going to
happen. It's not if it's justwhen. So he's one that has been
in that role a long time,and I think I know how he operates.
He's not going to let that catout unless he knows the answer to
the question already. So it's goingto happen. My guess is it'll be

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an international game. Everybody will playone international game. They'll pool that money,
and eventually the cap will go upand players will see a benefit to
them financially. I'm not sure thatmakes it the best thing for the game.
That's what I think sometimes gets lostnowadays in these decisions that are made
at the highest level. I knowthis for years. I always said Gene
Upshawn, Paul Taglibou when they ranthe NFL, they did have the good

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of the game at heart. SometimesI wonder with some of these revenue based
decisions, if this is the rightthing for the game, And I'm not
sure eighteen games is. For obviouslythe safety reasons and some of the other
things the quality of play, butit's going to drive more revenue. And
as we found out Money Talks intwenty twenty four that it does. Talk

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with Randy Mueller, former NFL executivethe year, I want to circle back
to that a minute, but Iwant to talk. I want to go
back to quarterbacks real quick. Here. You know, Jayden Daniels taking number
two overall we got on this show. We got some good friends on that
staff, dan Quinnjohn Pagone over therewith the with the Commanders. You know,
Jayden Daniels was a guy that hadbeen I don't know if he'd been
talked about as just a top prospectof whatever he comes in. He is

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a great season down there at lhwit's the Heisman and all that kind of
stuff, and all sudden gets vaultedup there. He's probably going to be
starting for that Commander's team. Guy'sready to start day one. From your
film evaluation, well, I thinkhe progressed further from startup season to the
end, as you mentioned, withouta doubt. When you watch the convolution

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of all the tape this year,I'll say this, halfway through the year,
I would say has said, no, he did advance at a fairly
rapid race rate the last month orso. I think the big thing with
Jayden is I think he is capablenow of running Cliff Kingsbury's stuff and that
system. We saw Kyler Murray runit right off the bat as well,

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so he has to have some ofthat in his background for them to think
that. I think with all thesequarterbacks now is once you acquire them,
it's really I think a shifting ofthe baton to Cliff Kingsbury or in Chicago
to Shane Waldron and or Drake Mayin New England. For Alex van Pelt.
It's really on the system, thecoordinators and the people developing these players

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now to get the best out ofthem. So we'll see. I think
the pressure is probably on more ofthe coaches now to get these guys ready
to go to run the system thatthey choose, and that sometimes comes with
giving them a lot of answers tothe test, and we'll see who can
study it and have the answers comefirst to September. I want to go
back real quickly. We're talking aboutrevenue streams and whether or not it's beneficial

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for football, and we've seen whatgambling revenue has done, but at the
same time, we've seen some ofthe problems that that has caused for players.
What do you think about sports wageringand the NFL getting into bed with
that. I'm not necessarily opposed toit, but I do think they can
do a better job of educating theplayers, and I think initially they assumed

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that all players would know what theycould and couldn't do. We figured out
that that's not the case. Thesekids don't know the rules like some of
us who grew up in the business, so they need to do a better
job of educating them, and Ithink they are starting to do that.
I also think that the penalties againstthese kids who do some of these things
have to be severe enough that itdecus future actions, and maybe we'll see

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that at some point, but it'sat a little bit in the NBA,
with a lifetime ban for a playerwho made some bets. I think that
probably has to carry over into theseother sports, especially in the NFL,
because it does challenge the integrity ofthe game, just the fact that it's
out there and the perception is thatsomeone could do things that aren't above board.

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So I think the penalties that wewill see over the next year,
So are going to be so stringentor they need to be so stringent that
it removes all doubts from what thesekids think they can do and realize they
can't. There's a lot of pressurefor any player coming into the league,
more so for those guys who aredrafted in the first round, regardless of
whether you're a quarterback or not.But the title that comes along with that

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is always bust potential. So aswe look at this year's first round draft
class, and let's talk about quarterbacksonce again, what's some of your leading
things. When you start to lookat a guy and evaluate his career a
couple of years after he's been drafted, it's okay, yes he fits the
criteria for bus potential. Well,I think bus potential sometimes is when we

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put our head in the sand initially, when we evaluate these kids and run
a guy up the pole based onour own needs. Sometimes it's not these
kids' fault that they aren't what everybodyperceives them to be. So I would
caution against the thinking these guys arethe end all be all just because they
do get drafted in the top tenor twelve. There's desperation and teams are

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guilty of it as much as anybody. I think you've got to find and
some teams do this better than others. They've got to find a way to
be critical of these kids before youdraft them and understand their weaknesses so that
you can then accentuate strengths once youget them. And I think that's the
disconnect, and sometimes that's regardless ofany positions. You've got to find what

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they do well and cater to thatand hope that's enough so that they can
produce play in and play out.At the NFL level, we saw a
record setting first round in terms ofoffensive players selected. In fact, the
first defensive player didn't even come offthe board until the Colts out to a
lot to one of my favorites inthis draft, is this a byproduct of
the NFL's emphasis on offense or simplya product of what players were available in

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this as we still even out,I guess from the post COVID era.
Yeah, I think that's a greatpoint. I think in this case,
it's just where we were as apool of draft. I don't think it
was a great draft or quality Ithink that dwindled outside the top fifteen.
I mean that could be as simpleas why these quarterbacks were all ran up
a poll to be drafted, sixof them in the top you know whatever,

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twelve picks in the first round.That never has happened. So I
do think this pool was a littlebit lacking, and from a depth stamp,
I felt like teams after the thirdmaybe halfway through the fourth round were
all drafting you know, I don'twant to say free agents, but later
round picks in normal drafts. SoI just think the quality wasn't there.
I loved what Philadelphia did and thenthey turned some of these late round picks

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into picks for next year. Lookingahead, the projections are that that is
a better group, a higher qualitypool of players, and I like teams
that were able to do that.This draft was interesting, though. It
had a lot of numbers that whenyou sit back and really recognize, and
this is oversimplifying it, but I'vealways said, just draft big guys and
fast guys and you'll be in goodshape. Well, guess what in this

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draft. There were thirty five receiversdrafted, only to be outdone by thirty
six corners, and the next groupwas offensive and defensive linement. So they
still run the draft, there justseemed like there were fewer at other positions
this year. Well, if youlook at teams as they started to build
through the draft, it's all aboutokay, well, getting those draft picks

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signed and getting them into camps withoutany guys holding out for more money.
When you look at the Panthers andI know they're the first team to sign
their entire draft class, first answer, how difficult is that to happen?
And is this something that other teamscan look forward to as far as being
able to get their players signed withoutanyone actually deciding that they're going to sit

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out. Yeah, I think thatthe dynamics have changed for those rookie deals,
And really, I don't know howbig a deal it is because they're
all eventually going to sign and it'snot like we're going to have holdouts the
ones that we do. It's overlanguage of repayment of contract money that shifts
from another team on the release,and that's really about the only thing you're

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negotiating really is language for those backend of those contracts, and I don't
think they play the role the negotiationsdid for many years in this busines.
I think it's more about really positioningyourself in the draft to draft a positional
priority player who you might be ableto get a second contract on. So

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you're looking ahead, taking for grantedthat initial deal will be signed sooner than
later. Last one for me,Randy talking about Randy Mueller fromer NFL Exec
of the Year. I liked whatArizona did in the draft. I like
what they've been building over. Thereis Money Austin for maybe underrated or a
hidden gem as a general manager.I think he's really good. I think

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he's very level headed. I've knownMoney for a long time. I think
he's a good evaluator. But Idon't think he's afraid to make a decision.
That is a lot of teams arerun by a narrative and run a
little bit too much by public perception. I don't think Money cares. I
think he's going to do what's rightfor their team, and I think that's
a good thing. Even though hisexperience is young as a GM, he's

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been around and been in some systemsthat allow him to really have conviction for
his process, and he does that, and I don't I think he really
cares. The narrative that the mediamight drive after the fact. Well,
Brandy, we always appreciated time alwaysruns out too fast. I hope you
find that couch so you can sitdown and and get over the pedick stuff

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like the rest of us. Man, but we appreciate your time. See
me. Thanks guy, thanks time, Take care. It's Randy Mueller.