September 19, 2017 • 49 mins
Doug gives praise to Kevin Durant for finally telling the truth about why he left Oklahoma City. He talks about the Giants loss to the Lions on Monday Night Football and why people are lying to you if the say "Ben MacAdoo called out Eli Manning!". Plus 3-time Super Bowl Champion and NFL on FOX Analyst Mark Schlereth stops by to give his thoughts on Ezekiel Elliott's lack of effort against the Broncos.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is the best of the Doug Gottlieb Show on
Fox Sports Radio. Boom, What Up America, Doug Gottlieb Show,
Fox Sports Radio, coming to you live and direct from
the city of Angels. Well, we have two football teams
that no one cares about, at least one baseball team
headed to the playoffs, another one maybe maybe that nobody
(00:24):
cares about, and of course, uh, two NBA teams that
people assume. One next year we'll get a player that
makes people care about. L A is a crazy city.
Will cover some of that, some of the new Lebron
discussions upcoming, plus last night's Monday night football game which
is a snoozer, and why you can call out your
(00:45):
quarterback without actually calling out your quarterback. Lots to get to.
Jerry Jones defendses Zeke Elliott. Not a shocker if you
follow Jerry Jones before. But what I want to start
with is Kevin Durant admitting that he's sorry, not sorry. Right, So,
(01:05):
Kevin Durant yesterday we we covered and has been discussed
and even joked about that he had, uh he had
a burner Twitter account that he was tweeting back and forth,
and of course then that Twitter account. Uh, somehow morphed
into his regular Twitter account where he let it be known,
or at least we assumed it was him let it
(01:26):
be known. The real reason he left Oklahoma City for
Golden State was he didn't love the organization. He didn't
love playing for Billy Donovan. And it wasn't anything to
do with Russell Westbrook. It was more there just wasn't
enough talent around them. If you take Russ off that team,
then what's left. Kevin Durant has addressed the situation. He
(01:49):
was at the Tech Crunch in San Francisco. This was
earlier today. Take a listen. I do have other Instagram account,
but that's just for my friends and family, so I
wouldn't I was using that to clapp back at anybody.
But I used Twitter to engage with the fans. I
think it's a great way to engage with, you know,
basketball fans. But I happened to take it a little
(02:11):
too far, and that's what happened sometimes when I get
into these basketball debates or you know, what I really
love is just to play basketball. I went a little
too far. And I don't regret clapping back at anybody
or talking to my fans on Twitter. I do regret
um using my former coach's name and the formal organization
that I played for. That was childish, that was idiotic,
(02:33):
all those type of words. I regret doing that, and
I apologize to him for doing that. But um, I
don't think I'll ever stopped engaging with my fans. I
think they, you know, really enjoy it now. I think
it's a good way to connect us all. But um,
I was I was scaled back a little bit right
now and just focus on playing basketball. So I want
to move on from that. It was tough to deal
(02:53):
with yesterday. I was really upset with myself. But I
definitely want to move on and then keep playing basketball.
So but I still want to interact with my fans. Alright,
let me explain it. First thing, Kevin Durant not once
did he deny what was tweeted. And most people asked
for a pass saying they were hacked. Right, we didn't
hear that from Kevin Durant. So he did say you
(03:14):
got me, it was me. He didn't say it was
my boy. He didn't do that. Chris Carter, I got
to have a fall guy, right, There was no fall
guy he in fact is the fall guy. Now, look,
he said I regret using my former coaches name and
talking about my former organization. He didn't say that he
regretted what he said about his former coach or what
(03:36):
he said about his former organization. That's because he's sorry,
not really sorry. Now. I don't know if you guys
ever studied Sigmund Freud, and there's a there there is.
There's a bit of a split in the UH psychological community,
(03:58):
in the psychologist community, and that there are some that
believe in Freud's uh Freud's belief, you know, the ID
and the the ego and the ID that there's a
sense of guilt that exists before the crime. In other words,
that somebody wants to get caught. That's sure what it
feels like. It may be subconscious from Kevin Durant that
(04:21):
he wanted to get caught, But there's a lot of
people sitting out there going like dude, he was tweeting
just left and right from two different accounts. It's really
easy to track the two. At some point this they
had to merge people. He had to know what was
gonna happen. He wanted to get caught, right It's like
the guy who is so out there with how he
cheats on his girl eventually gets caught. Like, you know what,
(04:42):
I I didn't I didn't like her anyway. I want
her to break up with me. This is the easiest
reason why. I don't know if you believe in that
Sigmund Freud theory, right, that that that guilt exists before
the before the crime is actually committed, and that somebody
wants to get and that's why they that's one of
the reasons they commit a crime that's easy to catch
(05:04):
them on. But it sure feels that way. But let's
give Kevin Urrant credit. He got caught and he didn't
do the fall guy thing. He didn't say he was hacked.
He didn't say somebody else took his phone. He just
said it was childish, in idiotic, and I shouldn't have
named my coach's name or my former team's name. But
(05:26):
you know what, else, He's probably he felt really bad yesterday.
He'll probably start to feel really good from this point forward,
because there isn't anything that was said on Twitter that,
from his perspective, is a lie. And it also gives
us a much clear, more honest sense of why he
left Oklahoma City. It's Scotty Brooks is his guy. They
(05:50):
fired his guy. Billy Donovan was not his coach. He
didn't jibe with him. He hadn't coached in the pros before.
There was a learning curve. He didn't necessarily dig it.
And the team doesn't have that much talent. I was
screaming to the hilltops, and maybe some of you were too.
When people say we look at how talented this team is.
(06:12):
I'm not saying that Steven Adams isn't talented, but how
easy useful. In two thousand seventeen in the NBA, I
go through that roster. Andre Robertson can't shoot, couldn't shoot
a lick right, And so wherever he was, that guy's
man was guarding Kevin Durant. You tell me where all this,
(06:34):
all this talent is littered on the roster. You had
Russell Westbrook, you had Kevin Durant, and then you didn't
have a single other player that was worthy of All
Star consideration. And so the way it feels when you
get caught, but you're speaking the truth, when you get caught,
is you feel really bad about the way it comes out.
You feel really bad that. I'm sure Kevin Durant feels
(06:57):
really bad that he made somebody else feel bad, because
that's who he is as a person. But in a
couple of days, this too shall pass, and now at
least it's out there. The real reason he left had
nothing to do with Russell Westbrook. The real reason he
left had nothing to do with Oklahoma City. The real
reason he left was this team is better, this coach
(07:18):
is better. He's surrounded by better team, better coach, better talent,
better organization, and that's why he's out. It stings, but
the truth shall set you free, and Kevin Durant is
a free man today. That's why he's sorry, not sorry,
(07:38):
all right. Mark Lao will join the show up coming
next I'll ask him get his thoughts on last night's game,
Lions any good? Or is this more about the Giants
and their inability to protect Eli Manning? Eli Manning's inability
to deliver the ball on time in rhythm, although there
were some path like Look, there's just a litany of problems. Right.
Eli has never been fleet of foot, Plus he's older,
(07:59):
so makes some longer to get back and even hand
the ball off. They don't have a good running game.
They don't have a good offensive line. Brandon Marshall's washed up.
They didn't have Genora's Jenkins last night. But the defense
is okay, that's not why they got beat. And then
some of their decision making end of first half? What
what was what was Macadoo doing allowing the clock to
run down end of the first half before that made
(08:19):
fifty six yard field goal by the Detroit lines. You
call the time out, kicked the field goal, You still
got a minute left to go get a field goal back?
What a what a mess it is with the New
York Giants, all New York NFL football that said that
it was a game that could be won, could have
been won in spite of the fact they couldn't protect
(08:41):
Eli Manning, they can't establish the running game. Be sure
to catch live editions of The Doug gott Leap Show
weekdays at three pm Eastern noon Pacific on Fox Sports
Radio and the I Heart Radio app. Let's work in
Mark schlaire at three times Super Bowl champion who joins
the show? Mark? All right, So, how much of the
Giants offensive dysfunction is on Eli? How much of it
(09:04):
is on on other stuff? Well? I think the majority
of it's on other stuff. You know, I'm watching a
play last night after Eli has gotten his brains beat in.
I mean, he got planted in the turf so hard.
One time, I thought he was gonna go through the
turf and see where they buried Jimmy Hoppa. It was like,
that was frightening, how hard he got hit last night,
(09:26):
and so late in that game, and still a very
close and and winnable game. I see him redirect protection.
I see him reclaimed, reassigned the mic from the middle
linebacker forty to a different linebacker, changed the protection, so
the offensive line goes to lat linebacker, which allows the
running back go to the slot corner. Blitz right, So
(09:46):
you pick up the four week he makes the change,
He's still under pressure. He throws a dime down the
sideline to Ingram, and you know the play gets broken up.
But this is late in the game. That's advanced quarterbacking
stuff right there. And we're gonna sit there and say, all,
Eli has lost it. I don't know anybody, especially a
dropping back pocket passer, they can sustain that kind of
(10:07):
beating and play well. And I would look at it
from a coaching standpoint, like Ben McAdoo is gonna call
him out for the mismanagement of the clock and not
getting the ball snapped on a fourth down play. How
about you mismanaging the entire game And I don't understanding
that your last tackle couldn't block his way out of
a wet paper sack and you're still gonna leave him
(10:28):
one on one of bus times was Bianza? Yeah more?
Why did they chipping more? I mean Ansa was just
dominating Eric Flower's I mean, you have to give that
guy help every time, don't you? Every single time? And
you're gonna have to give up. I know you, you
know you want to spread the ball around, and you've
got all these new toys on the outside. The bottom line,
(10:50):
I don't care how much talent you have on the outside.
Receiver is probably the most dependent position in football. And
if you can't block guys and your quarterback can execute
and throw the all, I don't care how much money
you spend. I don't care how flashy they are. I
don't care how much blonde errors out there. They're not
gonna They're not gonna affect the game at all. I
look at oh b J is like the only way
(11:11):
he could affected that game. He could play left tackle.
That's it. And the fact that you're a coach and
you're gonna sell your quarterback out there for clock management,
not getting the ball snap and you don't essentially completely
change the way you protest like Ben Macado, how about
been Maca do do? Because that's about what your game
in game adjustments for WARS. I don't know, man. I mean,
(11:33):
you could sit there and blame Eli all day long,
but you know that he's not mobile, so we know
that it's not gonna be like, hey, let's change his
launching point. Let's get him outside the pocket like we
can with Matthew Stafford. But for crying out, allowed to
sit there and blame it on Eli Manning like Eli
Manning is. The problem to me is it just doesn't
(11:54):
give him the proper amount of respect that he deserves
for what he was. What he was doing was last
night March Layris joining us in the Doug Gotlib show.
All right, what about the Lions. They're sitting there at
two and oh, but it wasn't like they as ineffective.
It's kind of similar to the Cowboys, where the Cowboys
defense was effective, but their offense was relatively ineffective at home.
Was the win kind of same thing last night where
(12:17):
they allowed the Giants to kind of hang around to
get a special teams touchdown, which would seemed to put
it away. Um, I guess the question is. I mean,
I think we'd all agree the Lions are good, but
are they like best team in that division? Good? Seeing
as the Packers flaws also because of injury not having
their tackles. But the Packers flaws have been exposed, give
(12:38):
me your thoughts on the Lions now that we've seen them.
I think the Lions are outstanding football team, and I
think anytime you look at where they are offensively, I
think you always have to put it in context. Like
the Dallas Cowboys. We know how good they are running
the football, and then all of a sudden they have
to play against Devia Broncos in that environment, in that
crowd noise, with the no flop zone. And it was
(13:00):
probably the first time that I have ever watched Dak
Prescott looked like a young player, like he came into
the league. And he didn't look young. I mean, he
looked like a seasoned veteran, like an old soul guy.
And all of a sudden you put him in a
position where he looked shell shocked, like he looked totally
(13:21):
beside himself, And the Broncos will do that to you.
You know, it's the first time I've ever seen that
guy look like like a young second year, you know,
second game of his second season quarterback. And that says
a lot about the Denver Broncos. And they are defense,
and I look at I look at the Lions, and
I think you're playing against one of the supremely gifted
(13:43):
defenses in football. I think there are Frank four is exceptional.
I think with JP Jpp on one edge and Olivia
Berne who's a phenomenal football player on the other edge,
with Snacks in the middle, line mag and corps, they've got,
in my mind, the best secondary in an NFC, A
second best secondary in all of football behind the Broncos.
(14:03):
I mean the fact that you have some sustained drives
and you put up the points you didn't. I understand
one of them was a special team such but I'm
saying you did a pretty damn good job against that
team in New York. So I think that I think
the lines are legit, and I think they're gonna give
I don't think they're gonna give the Green Bay Pactors
a run for their money for that division ground. That's
(14:25):
the voice of Mark Schlarrat, three times Super Bowl champion
Fox Sports NFL analyst, joining us on the Doug Gottlib
Show here on Fox Sports Radio. All Right, let's let's
kind of peruse around a couple of other things I
gotta pick your brain about in the league. So you
mentioned Dak Prescott. I saw him being rattled as well.
And I understand that you're playing in Denver and that
(14:46):
that pass rush and the crowd noise and the no
fly zone and all of that. I felt like Ezeki
Elliott Quentin on interception and I know, yeah, by the way,
and he wasn't the only des Brian also quit on
the play on the interception as well. But Zeke quitting
on it, to me, that was more about his disgust
at at DAC than it was him quitting on his team.
(15:07):
What's your take on when you see a star, young
star running back not give any effort after interception? Well,
I think it's I think it's the same thing that
we've talked about in regards to Dez Bryant in the past.
I think it's the same thing we talked about in
regards to Oh b J. I think it's the same
thing we've been talking about all off season in regards
(15:28):
to Ezekiel Elliott emotional maturity and the lack there of
emotional maturity. And I understand you're getting your ass whipped.
And trust me, I've had mine whip plenty, all right.
The bottom line is you're gonna turn that You're going
to turn that film on on Monday after that, but
(15:49):
whipping that you took, and you're gonna watch that film
and you're gonna say, who is still fighting, who is
still giving great effort, Who is still you know, tooth
and nail clawing their way and trying to make something
big happen. And who has just been, you know, just
exhausted and just thrown under the towel and throwing their
hands up. Because that's a bad look. And that comes
(16:12):
with the maturity and having grown ups on your football team.
We need some grown ups. Where are the grown ups?
And you know, the issues that you have had off
the field, those were those to me, are are the
emotional lack of emotional maturity that you have shown off
the field was shown on Sunday in Denver. I understand
(16:34):
it's not fun to get your pup with been there
man done it, both physically, mentally, everything else. That's not
a fun thing to do. But you need to be
grown up enough and mature enough and adult enough to
handle your business like a professional. And I always say,
just because you play a pro sport doesn't make you
a professional, And there was a lack of professionalism in
(16:54):
the effort that was given by Zeke Elliott on Sunday. Um, Look,
every Chargers game seems to end the same way, right
with some sort of disappointment, and like, look, I get
that they were lucky to even be in that Denver game.
And it wasn't the young kicker's fault that the that
the field goal was blocked, but it was in fact blocked.
(17:16):
And then they have a rookie kicker who misses two
field goals, including what should have been a game winner
and the home opener in Carson. How do you how
do you change that? How do you change that kind
of culture of losing the expectation that that that something
bad is going to happen into the expectation you know
that good teams have where they always expect something good
to happen, right, And that is a mentality. And you know,
(17:40):
we always see teams take over or new coaches come
into an organizations that we have to change the culture.
And it's always an easy thing to talk about change
the culture. It's a really hard thing to do. And
you know, teams that are in that situation, Doug, expect
that bad things to happen. They're just looking for I
always used to say this when when I was a
(18:00):
member of really good football teams, the Redskins in one
that won eleven in a row right off the bat
of the season, the Broncos in that want to back
championships and one thirteen in a row to start the season.
You always get people's best shot. But I always said this,
you know, when you played the bad teams in this league,
(18:22):
their coaches are preaching, hey, we gotta play a perfect game.
You know, we've got to really be sharp. And my
thought to that was, there's never been a perfect game played,
and something bad is going to happen. There is going
to be a mistake. How do you as a football
team react to that mistake? Do you embrace the state's
(18:43):
all right, man, we're just gonna keep falling over or
is it the tipping point that you said, I'll shoot
here we go. We didn't play a perfect game. We
made a mistake, and the teams that culturally are looking
for that one bad thing to happen, because to me,
that's the excuse, the excuse us to roll over. Um,
they'll never get out of that swamp. The winning is
(19:04):
as it stow is losing. And when you've had that
kind of cultural experience and you almost are just waiting
for the other shoe to drop, You're waiting for that
bad thing to happen to you. When it does happen
to you, mentally, you just flat going to take. And
that's the San Diego Chargers. They just feel stinkid, whether
it's injuries, whether it's bad things happening at the end
of the games. Go back to last year. They dominate
(19:25):
the Kansas City Chiefs to open up the season last
year and somehow give up a huge, a huge lead
at the end of that game and lose the football game.
And that's just kind of who they are and that's
their culture. And at some point you just got to realize, hey,
some bad things you're gonna They're gonna happen to it,
and we're just gonna find a way to overcome it. Um,
the Saints are owing to no other team their division
(19:47):
even has a loss. That's because Tampa has only played
one game. And I'll granted they played Carolina this week
and Carolina's suffered through a litany of really tough injuries,
including Greg Olsen out with a broken foot. But at
owen two and it's not easy to start at Minnesota
and then home to the Patriots. But they are owing
two and the defense does not appeared to have been fixed.
The offense has good running backs, and yet it's a
(20:09):
past it's really a passing offense mismatch parts. I guess
that the question becomes like, at some point do you say, look,
Drew Brees is the most is the best quarterback we've
ever had, but we might need to move on. And
Sean Payton is the best coach we've ever had, but
he keeps trying to redo this thing and it's not
being rebuilt the right way. What do you do if
(20:30):
you're in New Orleans? Yeah, there comes a time when
you have to really, you know, make heart evaluations and
really assess kind of where you're at, and you're right.
I mean, this is a past happy offense with a
past happy quarterback, with you know, with with your best
player now playing in New England in Brandon Cooks. Um,
(20:54):
you just really you're really strapped, like you mentioned, and
I think at some point, you know, you you look
at Drew Brees and you look at the money that
you've tied into that, the mismanagement of the cap, the
fact that you have not been able to put pieces
around him. You want a championship, and you were really
good for a lot of years and you could win
games just by outscoring people. Now you still can't play defense,
(21:17):
so you still haven't been able to address that issue.
And oh, by the way, now you don't have the
pieces in place for Drew Brees to be successful. So
now you can't outscore anybody either. And let's face it,
based on Week one, it's not like you faced each
other or not defense in the New England Patriots. So
I'm I'm with you, and I'm a big Sean Payton
fan and I'm a big Drew Breese fan. But these
(21:39):
are the tough decisions you have to make as an
NFL franchise and there comes day time when you have
to look at your franchise and and as much as
you love your players, um there comes a time when
you have to blow that thing up and start over
from scratch. And that goes you know, throughout that whole organization,
whether it's Mickey Loomis in the front office or whatever,
they have not done a good job of managing the cap.
(22:01):
They have not done a good job of of, in
my mind, of putting players in place to you know,
to sustain kind of that offensive juggernaut or at least
fix that defense. And at some point, um, you know,
you've got to reevaluate, say maybe maybe the best thing
for both of us is a fresh start. And doesn't
mean that I think that Sean Pagne is great, and
(22:22):
I think you can coach his butt off, but I
just don't think they have the personnel to get that done.
Or maybe it's maybe it's the front office and you
change the front office and you say we're gonna give
you the pieces that actually will help you kind of
get back on top. But I think sometimes change is
a really good thing, and I think within an organization
it needs to happen occasionally. Mark Hlaire three times the
(22:42):
Bowl Champion. You can of course see him on Fox
and Fox Sports One. You can hear him on Fox
Sports Radio. Sank, thanks so much for joining us man anytime. Brother.
Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in
the nation. Catch all of our shows at Fox Sports
Radio dot com and within the Hard Radio app. This
is written from perspective of Dwight Howard. And he's sitting
(23:06):
in his apartment in Buckhead in Atlanta. And so immediately
I was like, oh, well, he's back in Atlanta. And
then I was like, wait a second, no, wait, where
where's he played out? That's right, he plays in Charlotte.
Like they gave him away after just one year with
his hometown Hawks gave him away. I'll take it through
(23:27):
the kind of the bullet points. He talks about his
rookie year. He's an eighteen year old virgin, and he
talked to them about the time God spoke to him
in the bathroom. Steve Francis and Tony Pattilla Tita invited
the invited him out to a club once, never again
for fear they corrupt him. That's it. We're not letting
you go out anymore. Howard's first all Star Weekend in
(23:49):
two thousand five players in Denver Hotel UH compared partymentations.
We know you are about to do nothing except read
your Bible, and of course he started going out. And
how he has five kids, five different women, none of
them who he's with, and of course he owes them
massive amounts of child support. Like my takeaway for Dwight
(24:09):
Howard is he's he's basically the poster child for why
guys should go to college. We we do. We talk
in circles all the time, and like, look, I respect
j Billis. I think he's He's always been really good
as a basketball analyst. He just is I'm I'm, I'm
I take and he has a perspective to which he
thinks guys should get paid. And he also believes that
(24:31):
guy shouldn't be people shouldn't be forced to go to college.
I think it's ludicrous. There has to be a bridge
between AU and high school basketball and the NBA, because
that's that's a man's world there, and you're just not
ready for it. And here's the guy, Yes, has Lebron
James managed to steer clear of trouble and he's married
to his high school sweetheart, Like sure, uh, And he
(24:54):
surrounds himself with his friends and they've all gotten to
have like legitimate jobs, and they, you know, the champions
of business. But like, that's the exception, that's the exception.
On the other spectrum, you have Robert Swift. And Robert
Swift he's from Bakersfield, he's the one who's drafted by
the SuperSonics, and you know then he was bankrupt and
(25:16):
and had all these guns and drugs and tattoos and whatever.
Like that's the other side of it. And what falls
in the middle is guys like Dwight Howard who financially
and professionally are pretty successful. But it's like the arrested development.
You need that space in between. He comes from a
two parent home, he was super religious, went to a
(25:37):
small private high school. They like they tried to protect
him from the rest of the real world. But you
can't go from zero to a hundred, right, you gotta
have kind of the ramp up. And that's what college is. Like.
The college thing works, I swear to god it works.
It works in basketball because you learned how to become
a teammate. You learn about sacrificing, you learn about playing
(25:59):
team defense, and team offense. And no, it's not a
perfect snapshot of what you're gonna look like in the NBA,
but you get better, and you're working with coaches who
have worked with eighteen and twenty two year olds for
their entire professional lives. What we do is we look
at a kid and we're like, oh, he's got water
wings on. I'll bet he's a great swimmer, and then
(26:20):
we taken we throw him in the deep end. Be
sure to catch live editions of the Doug gott Leaps
Show weekdays at three pm Eastern noon Pacific on Fox
Sports Radio and the I Heart Radio app. Kevin Clark
wrote this article Whether was this from I saw this
on Twitter? It's from The Ringer, right? Kevin Clark writes
for The Ringer, which is Bill Simmons site, and the
(26:41):
title of it is perfect how football stopped being fun?
He starts with the we are living in the Golden
Age of failed completions, a statistic as grim as it sounds,
tracked by football outsiders. Failed completions occur when a team
doesn't get of the yards it needs to get the
first down on second down, on third or fourth down.
(27:05):
The stat goes back to nine and last season Joe
Flacco set the record with a hundred and forty four.
Nothing encapsulates this era of football as well as failed completion,
allegedly a success but ultimately oblique disappointment. In the past
five years of the NFL, offenses have reached unprecedented levels
of scoring, quarterbacks have become more accurate than ever, turnovers
(27:28):
have plummeted, and yet it's not fun. If you simply
reads the statistical markers, it would seem that every offense
was as exciting as the pub scene from inglorious bastards,
sacks and interceptions at all time lows last year. But
that just means that quarterbacks are getting rid of the
ball quick or operating for shorter, safer targets, and we
(27:49):
have reached the most frustrating era in football history. Everything
is fine and it doesn't look good. Through two weeks.
Scoring is down two point four points a game. That's
That isn't a statistical argument. This is about aesthetics. The
critical massive fans agree the game is ugly. It's ugly,
as listed in the thirteen and nine Bengals Texans game.
(28:09):
It goes on Chris Sims with a great quote. If
you show me a team with a great completion percentage,
I automatically think your offense probably sucks. And it's it's
interesting because, first, I don't know how many people watch
whole NFL games, but last night's game because it's the
only game on. I watched Sunday night's game because the
(28:30):
only game on. I watched Thursday night game because it's
the only game on. I watched Sunday. I usually watch
on red zone and then have another TV on the
regular and red zone you can't tell as much because
teams around the goal line. But but one of the
logical reasons behind people pick in Atlanta was there like, oh,
that place is gonna be so hype, so on fire.
(28:52):
Did you watch the Atlanta Green Bay game? It was
like a library in there. Part of it is the
building is really big, but part of it is football.
NFL football can be super super boring. Now, like, yeah,
you run the ball, but he also these very short
passing routes. I mean, even the New England Patriots style
(29:13):
is crazy crazy boring, crazy boring dank and dunk and
matriculate the ball down the field. Do you know what
this reminds me of? It reminds me of Major League Baseball.
Dan Buyer was talking about this earlier. Um, Dan, what
was this the statu you're using on baseball with the
number of home runs being up this year? Yeah, with tonight,
(29:36):
if seventeen home runs are hit tonight, that would set
a new record for the most home runs hit in
a season. And the other stat that I put was
last year is actually now third where this was a
stattuck that I had never heard before because passed it.
But heading into this year, sixteen was actually at the
second most home runs. So now two out of the
three years where the most home runs were hit were
(29:57):
in seventeen. But then I could set record. Yeah. Look,
I think it's fascinating because what's happened is major League
teams and their organizations. They've they've figured out the analytics
to it, much like they figured out NBA basketball, And
many times is not a great watch, right high ball
(30:18):
screen drive kicks, shoot at three? Highball screen drive kick,
shoot at three? It ain't a great watch. And this
is the analytics field. And this the same goes at
the NFL. Why would you run the football when it
takes years off your running backs to life? They haven't
changed the rules at all within the tackles. All the
(30:41):
rules are set up so you can't touch the quarterback
below the knee, above the neck, can't touch the wide
receiver after five yards, and they allow for pick plays
with the exception the Green Bay Packers and they run
one against Atlanta Falcons. Like everything is telling you, everything
is telling you to throw the football and to be
as accurate as possible and just have short, short, dink
(31:04):
and dunk, matriculate the ball down the field and end
up with the field goal. I mean, NFL games are boring.
We don't watch them because they're super exciting right about now.
We watched them because we are fantasy game. Our fantasy
team depends upon it, and we bet on the games.
That's it. But NFL is not the only one that's boring.
Baseball is boring. In basketball is boring, and they're boring
(31:26):
because the sports are getting smarter. They understand how to
protect their players, how to score more points, and how
to do so more often based upon the rules and
based upon the rules of the game. Fox Sports Radio
has the best sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch
all of our shows at Fox sports radio dot com
and within the I Heart radio app Lee Jenkins joins
(31:47):
us in the Doug Gottlieb Show, writer for Sports Illustrated,
does an outstanding job. You occasionally see him on the
jump as well. Um, you've got a chance to sit
down with Dwight Howard and like, the first thing that
jumped out of me was here he is in Atlanta,
which is his hometown. He was he signed with last year,
And for about a minute and a half, I had
forgotten that they had bailed on him and he was
(32:10):
a Charlotte Cornet, right like that whole thing, Like, oh
my god, I forgot even they gave up on him.
What we there. There's kind of a symbolic nature to
him looking out at a city that was his hometown
that they even they don't want him anymore. Yeah, as
a salary dump. It was they getting the richest contract
ministry of the franchise. They traded him for Bell and
(32:33):
Elly and Plumbling. You have two backups, so you know, partying,
I'll tell you this. So he you know, he led
the Eastern Conference in field goal percentage. He was Havink
thirteen and thirteen last year. Obviously was a badge it there,
you know, and so many of these teams. Now it's
five out offense. There's there's not a great place for him,
and a lot of in a lot of spots. But
(32:54):
I do sin. I was wondering with him, if he's
one of these guys who was overrated for a long
time and now is underrated. I mean, if you can
give it, if you can give a team, you know,
fifteen and twelves and shoot, you know, I know it's
not the Dwight Howard of old, but there's still value there.
So yeah, I was surprised, like you were, that they
gave up on him after a year. You know, I
(33:14):
read the Hard Again. I thought it was outstanding. I
retweeted as as soon as I finished it. Um, but
I didn't notice any hint of true accountability. Right. It
was the Hey, I was young, and you know, I
was a little bit lost, and I went out with
these guys and then I got a couple of I
got five girls pregnant, and hey, you know, like I
(33:36):
wasn't a good fit in l A. And I played
with a bad back when I shouldn't love, and I
played with a bad shoulder when I shouldn't have. But
there was never there was There's never any you know,
some of this was me. I don't feel that I
got any of that. But but again that's me reading
into it. How much of that is realist is how
it really is. I mean, that's funny. I finally beat
(33:58):
himself up a lot, and I don't know that I've
ever actually talked to a guy and like you don't
get remember an NBA players, you know, general big egos
and you know, not a real kind of a real
reluctance to blame themselves. I actually thought he beat himself
up as well as much as any player i've you know,
I've ever talked to when it comes talking about you know,
(34:20):
religion and the way he was like a hypocrite after
you know, pregnating the first girl he was with, and uh,
you know, the shame he felt and sort of getting
in this cycle and feeling as if he didn't communicate
well with teammates in l A and Houston. He you know,
he criticized himself for that. Um So, I mean I
(34:42):
think he basically talked about sort of going through these legs,
espential crises in his head where it was everybody would say,
oh he laughs too much, smiles too much, that he
kind of adopted these different personas. That weren't him trying
to be like Kobe, trying to be like Shack, you know,
going back and forth. Um, So I thought those were
admissions that I don't usually see your fear professional athletes,
(35:04):
that that's snatch or make um. So, you know, I guess,
you know, I might take what the interview was a
little different, but you know I might have bungled. That's
it's it's a great it's a great point, especially because
you conducted. Now you start walking me through him like, yeah,
that there was that the you know, there was more
of that. Then I give him credibly. Jenkins, our guest sports,
a sinner. You know, he kind of said that he
(35:25):
got in this cycle where he felt like, you know,
I mean his someoney was so religious. I mean you
remember when he came out of high school. That was
the whole thing right across on the logo he was
he was kind of this his own evangelical star. And
I think what happened was he you know, he slipped obviously,
and then I think that he kind of got caught
(35:45):
in this cycle. He felt like, well, I'm not going
to pull out of it anyway. I'm sort of I'm
sort of done as far as that phase of my life.
And yeah, I think his life sort of spun out
of control on him. Um, but look, there's still excuses.
I mean, clearly, there's still a lot of excuses to
go along with I think some of the accountability. Okay,
So one of the things I thought you did a
(36:07):
great job of portraying is here he is a sheltered
kid from a two parent home, a very religious two
parent home, and a small school in Atlanta where they
try to keep him away from any sin, and he's
thrust into the man's world of the n b A
and and like, look, I understand that there, here's a
here's a young guy whose body changed rapidly, and he
(36:30):
was able to play and compete in very short or
in the NBA. But the the emotional toll of skipping
kind of the normal progression of a man right high
school into college, you know, three or four years to
figure stuff out and then go out into the real world.
One of my big takeaways is, man, I wonder how
(36:50):
that Dwight Howard tail would have been as not financially
and not statistically, but in terms of the type of
person in life. He will have for the next fifty
years had he gone to college. Remember, and this was
the last this was the big class thing. It was
eight or nine first round draft picks and oh three
when he went when he went to Orlando. Uh, what
(37:12):
is was your takeaway any different from the boy? He
could sure have used time to grow and mature before
he got to Orlando. Yeah. I think it's just it's
such a sudden difference, right, I mean, you're I mean,
that's so many of these guys were that that level
when they're probably sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, they're already sort of
living with stardom even in their high schools. For him,
(37:35):
because he went to such a small school, because he
was sheltered to such an extreme extent, I think that
it was even more of probably a culture shock when
he reached the NBA than it would be for your
standard you know, prep to pro guy, where it's already
a bit of a culture shock. So no doubt I
think that, you know, when you talk about just sort
of an experience to bridge that gap a little bit,
(37:57):
to kind of be in between, to be to learn
and how to be famous but not have money, or
to be on your own but still have some sort
of oversight. I mean, he clearly could have benefited from
from any of that, because I mean, is the guy
who's living with his guys, with his friends from home,
which is basically what all NBA players do, you know,
(38:18):
And he and none of them had had any of
these experiences. And when they did, I think you know,
the phrase he used was it was like getting a
taste of candies. You've never had candy before. So it's
it's a great point. It's one of those things that
as parents, like, as a parent like I can totally
relate to that, right, Um, if you want to shelter him, right,
I mean to me, I don't blame his parents for
(38:38):
the attack they took. I mean to me, it's the
right appro is it's the right approach and theory. But
in this case, somebody like Lebron, who probably didn't have
that kind of structure, maybe benefits from it because when
he got to the NBA, well he'd already figure it
out sort of how to live being Lebron. James Dwight
Howard I don't think had that. Yeah, And and Lebron
(39:00):
is the exception to like every rule, right, like, you
can't you can't base what you want to do based
upon a once in a generation uh player, once in
a generation person and a guy who was, you know,
emotionally different because of his upbringing than nent of the
of the players out there. Lee Jenkins joining us on
the Doug Gottlieb Show. Um, I can't see a way
(39:23):
in which he's not a Hall of Fame player. But
I also can't recall a Hall of Fame player having
this sort of uh mercurial end to his career. I mean,
I guess like Shack bounced around at the end, but
but but but not like this, and it was not
as despised and like he's one of those guys which
you say, Dwight Howard be like, I hate Dwight Howard,
(39:45):
Like why do you hate Dwight Howard? Right, it's a
weird this is for a guy who I mean has
that those first ten was first I don't know, nine
ten years were incredible to be here is a weird place.
And he's not an old man. He went from three
point one million All Star boats, the most ever, the
most any NBA player ever in a season till last
(40:08):
year had a hundred and fifty thousand. I mean, he
had more endorsement deals than Lebron in two thousand eight.
It's staggering. I mean when you think about that kind
of a fall from grace and that happens in other sports,
but in the NBA usually there's more staying power. He
was only thirty one years old. Yeah, the injuries were
part of it. Continue when you talk about how people
recoil at his name, it's more about the teammates that
(40:31):
clashing with Kobe. The clashing was hard, and at some
point I think people sort of threw up their hands
with Dwight Howard that you know enough, I'm not going
to be fooled again. Um, And I understand that. I do.
I think part of it too is his you know
so much he made a body language with players and
the fact that he had that that sort of goofball
expression all the time and the big smile. I don't
(40:53):
think that's what a lot of people want to see
from the players. They want to see. They like that
kind of teeth gritted uh at core and more killer
mentality that Kobe Bryant persona. But I also think that
that really hurt how Is because trying to do that,
trying to be more like that. I think in some
ways took him out of the persona that gave him
success in the first place. Where is he? Where is
(41:15):
he mentally? Do you think he's in a good place?
I do. I'm I'm hesitant to say it because he
says this every year, this kind of storyline has come
out about him before. But I do think he has
the right people around him. I think that his body.
I mean I watched him work out and he just
looked springier. I mean, he looked so stiff when you
(41:36):
watched in the last few years. You just wonder kind
of where that athleticism went. And I do think that
that there were after effects from that back surgery that
we're lasting that I think he's finally starting to get past.
Now will he get caught in a trap of because
let's be honest, he was stuck between arras right If
he came along right now, somebody drafted the White Howard
(41:56):
right now, they would let him do a bunch of
different things, and they developed in I'm not saying he'd
be honest, but they make him into a more dynamic player.
But because he came out when he did, it was like, no,
you sit under the rim and you just rim protect
and he always felt he was Kate were doing more
and that sort of ruined him in some ways. He
was kind of caught between eras. So will he be
(42:18):
okay kind of doing what he does best in the
Steve Clifford system, blocking shots, setting screens. I think it's
gonna work because I think Clifford knows him, knows what
they did in Orlando, and will feed him enough offensively
to keep him engaged with all the other things that
he does well, because at heart he's a great defender.
I mean, he was DeAndre Jordan before DeAndre Jordan's and
(42:39):
I think that he can get back to some of
those things and listen it he just spikes, let's think
him five more points a game. He's an eighteen and
twelve guy, and we're all saying, oh, he's most improved
player of the year. So I don't think it's such
a huge leap to think he could have that kind
of piece. Lie, I'm sure you're next sit downs with
Kevin Durant and talking Twitter or maybe Instagram. It's the
(43:00):
The NBA soap opera is the best. But the article
today was great. It was really insightful. I felt like
I felt like Dwight Howard, and you took me kind
of through a journey of where he was and where
he is. Thanks so much for joining us, and we'll
we'll tweet it out make sure everybody reads it. I
appreciate all kind. Be sure to catch live editions of
The Doug gott Leap Show weekdays at three pm Eastern
(43:22):
noon Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the I Heart
Radio app. We do a bad job in the media
sometimes we just do. We do a bad job of
the media because we don't understand, like, we don't understand
what people are we whether we try and portray a
story in which in the light in which we want
to portrayed, or maybe we some of my brethren haven't
been in the locker room enough. Um, whatever the logic
(43:46):
behind it is, we can do. We can do a
bad job sometimes in the media, all of us. Uh.
I take you to last night and to today the
discussion about the New York Giants, right, And have you
heard that Ben McAdoo called out Eli Manning. You heard that, like,
(44:10):
I think it's a Dan buyer. Have you heard people say, oh,
Ben McAdoo called out Eli Manning? Yes, yes, have you
said that? Okay, I know you haven't. I hadn't heard
that from you. Rama said you heard that coming in
that Oh yes, that's all I heard in the morning.
Radio called him out. He called him out. He plays
the blame on eli Manning. Okay, want you to listen.
(44:32):
This is the this is the answer that everybody's talking about.
Take a listen to the question that was posed. That's
what happened on the game. Sloppy quarterback play quarterback in
a center. Need to be on the same page there.
We gotta get the ball snapped. We have a veteran
quarterback who's played a lot of football. Expect us to
get the ball snapped. Usually the clock goes from three
(44:55):
to one zero. Once they hit zero, they look at
the ball, look at the clock. Usually we have a
tick once it hit zero to get the ball snapped.
Without being a lay game, I thought we had it.
We had a chance to get it off. So, um, look,
did he put the blame there at least partially on Elias.
Remember he also said like, hey, look, usually you get
a little you get a little extra leeway if it's
(45:16):
right the last second, and they didn't get that leeway. Sure,
but He also like the first thing was he wasn't
blamed the ref skuy when like the rev screwed us
on that one like some parent. He said, like usually
you get a little half tick, which is accurate because
oftentimes you look at the clock he goes to zero,
like wait, hey, was that snap late? And they let
him get away with it. But he wasn't putting all
(45:38):
of the blame of the offense on Eli Manning. He
was asked a specific question about a specific play. The
specific play was it was weird, like fourth in goal
from the two yard line. They're down ten points at
the time. Math will tell you, dude, kick the field goal.
You're only down one possession. Just kick the field goal,
because if you do, you go for it, you don't
(45:59):
get at the reward. Getting it to within three points
is not worth the risk. It's like aer on the
field goal as opposed to if you run the play,
especially when you have no running game like the Giants.
So that's not calling out your quarterback. That's answering a question.
(46:23):
And yes, he put the issue on that particular play
almost squarely on the shoulders of the quarterback because he's right,
like Eli may has been a quarterback for fifteen years.
You can't get a delay a game on fourth and
goal from the two yard line. You can't do it. Now.
Eli might have gotten a delay a game on purpose
(46:43):
because he didn't agree with the idea of going for it,
and maybe that's why McAdoo was ticked. But that's not
calling out your quarterback. You asked the question, you answer
the question based upon the context of that play. I
think there's a difference. Buyer, you agree there's a difference,
or do you think that's calling out your quarterback? No,
(47:06):
I do think that there's a difference. And I also
think that if on a night where there are so
many issues that maybe and maybe this may be a stretch,
but it's also could be protecting some of the other
issues that the Giants have by putting it on the
guy who is likely to still keep his position on
the field, you know what I mean. Like their offensive
(47:26):
line stakes, they're awful. Eric Flowers probably shouldn't be playing.
You're not gonna bench Eli manning for Geno Smith. So
when you're calling out issues on the offense. He's a
big boy. He can tell you know, he he's not
gonna lose his job. Yeah, like if you were to
call out, man, Eric Flowers need some work. Now you're
wondering why Eric Flowers weekend and week out. It's a
common thing. Eli safe in his job because they have
(47:47):
no backup really to challenge him for the gig. So
put it on Eli. Put it on the quarterback shoulders.
He's a big boys, he said, veteran. He can handle it. Yeah,
I can see that. I just I think that athletes
take criticism a lot different than people take criticism somewhere
like the regular guys Like, well, he called him out,
like we pointed out he made a mistake there, Like
you're not gonna And I've run into this in uh
(48:09):
in when I call basketball games where I'll show you
like who made the mistake defensively, You're like, well, there's
not always a mistake, Like okay, not always like NBA,
you can play really good defense and it doesn't matter
they just jump up and make a shot over you.
But a lot of times there's a mistakement that's how
that's how coaches and athletes and people who know sports,
that's how they watched film and they that's how you
correct mistakes. And this case, Eli was like, look, it's
(48:32):
your job as a quarterback to get that snap off,
and and the other thing I taken and I wondered
why they were running a play there. And my guess
is that they thought that they had, uh, their their
personnel grouping was such that they had the right call
for the right down and distance, for the right play,
that they were going to score a touchdown. And that's
why Ben mcadow's pissed, like, Hey, we hadn't scored a touchdown,
(48:54):
we're down at the two yard line. We choose to
go for it. We got the right call, the right
personnel grouping versus their personnel grouping. Eli's job to get
the snap off.
This is the best of the Doug Gottlieb Show on
Fox Sports Radio. Boom, What Up America, Doug Gottlieb Show,
Fox Sports Radio, coming to you live and direct from
the city of Angels. Well, we have two football teams
that no one cares about, at least one baseball team
headed to the playoffs, another one maybe maybe that nobody
(00:24):
cares about, and of course, uh, two NBA teams that
people assume. One next year we'll get a player that
makes people care about. L A is a crazy city.
Will cover some of that, some of the new Lebron
discussions upcoming, plus last night's Monday night football game which
is a snoozer, and why you can call out your
(00:45):
quarterback without actually calling out your quarterback. Lots to get to.
Jerry Jones defendses Zeke Elliott. Not a shocker if you
follow Jerry Jones before. But what I want to start
with is Kevin Durant admitting that he's sorry, not sorry. Right, So,
(01:05):
Kevin Durant yesterday we we covered and has been discussed
and even joked about that he had, uh he had
a burner Twitter account that he was tweeting back and forth,
and of course then that Twitter account. Uh, somehow morphed
into his regular Twitter account where he let it be known,
or at least we assumed it was him let it
(01:26):
be known. The real reason he left Oklahoma City for
Golden State was he didn't love the organization. He didn't
love playing for Billy Donovan. And it wasn't anything to
do with Russell Westbrook. It was more there just wasn't
enough talent around them. If you take Russ off that team,
then what's left. Kevin Durant has addressed the situation. He
(01:49):
was at the Tech Crunch in San Francisco. This was
earlier today. Take a listen. I do have other Instagram account,
but that's just for my friends and family, so I
wouldn't I was using that to clapp back at anybody.
But I used Twitter to engage with the fans. I
think it's a great way to engage with, you know,
basketball fans. But I happened to take it a little
(02:11):
too far, and that's what happened sometimes when I get
into these basketball debates or you know, what I really
love is just to play basketball. I went a little
too far. And I don't regret clapping back at anybody
or talking to my fans on Twitter. I do regret
um using my former coach's name and the formal organization
that I played for. That was childish, that was idiotic,
(02:33):
all those type of words. I regret doing that, and
I apologize to him for doing that. But um, I
don't think I'll ever stopped engaging with my fans. I
think they, you know, really enjoy it now. I think
it's a good way to connect us all. But um,
I was I was scaled back a little bit right
now and just focus on playing basketball. So I want
to move on from that. It was tough to deal
(02:53):
with yesterday. I was really upset with myself. But I
definitely want to move on and then keep playing basketball.
So but I still want to interact with my fans. Alright,
let me explain it. First thing, Kevin Durant not once
did he deny what was tweeted. And most people asked
for a pass saying they were hacked. Right, we didn't
hear that from Kevin Durant. So he did say you
(03:14):
got me, it was me. He didn't say it was
my boy. He didn't do that. Chris Carter, I got
to have a fall guy, right, There was no fall
guy he in fact is the fall guy. Now, look,
he said I regret using my former coaches name and
talking about my former organization. He didn't say that he
regretted what he said about his former coach or what
(03:36):
he said about his former organization. That's because he's sorry,
not really sorry. Now. I don't know if you guys
ever studied Sigmund Freud, and there's a there there is.
There's a bit of a split in the UH psychological community,
(03:58):
in the psychologist community, and that there are some that
believe in Freud's uh Freud's belief, you know, the ID
and the the ego and the ID that there's a
sense of guilt that exists before the crime. In other words,
that somebody wants to get caught. That's sure what it
feels like. It may be subconscious from Kevin Durant that
(04:21):
he wanted to get caught, But there's a lot of
people sitting out there going like dude, he was tweeting
just left and right from two different accounts. It's really
easy to track the two. At some point this they
had to merge people. He had to know what was
gonna happen. He wanted to get caught, right It's like
the guy who is so out there with how he
cheats on his girl eventually gets caught. Like, you know what,
(04:42):
I I didn't I didn't like her anyway. I want
her to break up with me. This is the easiest
reason why. I don't know if you believe in that
Sigmund Freud theory, right, that that that guilt exists before
the before the crime is actually committed, and that somebody
wants to get and that's why they that's one of
the reasons they commit a crime that's easy to catch
(05:04):
them on. But it sure feels that way. But let's
give Kevin Urrant credit. He got caught and he didn't
do the fall guy thing. He didn't say he was hacked.
He didn't say somebody else took his phone. He just
said it was childish, in idiotic, and I shouldn't have
named my coach's name or my former team's name. But
(05:26):
you know what, else, He's probably he felt really bad yesterday.
He'll probably start to feel really good from this point forward,
because there isn't anything that was said on Twitter that,
from his perspective, is a lie. And it also gives
us a much clear, more honest sense of why he
left Oklahoma City. It's Scotty Brooks is his guy. They
(05:50):
fired his guy. Billy Donovan was not his coach. He
didn't jibe with him. He hadn't coached in the pros before.
There was a learning curve. He didn't necessarily dig it.
And the team doesn't have that much talent. I was
screaming to the hilltops, and maybe some of you were too.
When people say we look at how talented this team is.
(06:12):
I'm not saying that Steven Adams isn't talented, but how
easy useful. In two thousand seventeen in the NBA, I
go through that roster. Andre Robertson can't shoot, couldn't shoot
a lick right, And so wherever he was, that guy's
man was guarding Kevin Durant. You tell me where all this,
(06:34):
all this talent is littered on the roster. You had
Russell Westbrook, you had Kevin Durant, and then you didn't
have a single other player that was worthy of All
Star consideration. And so the way it feels when you
get caught, but you're speaking the truth, when you get caught,
is you feel really bad about the way it comes out.
You feel really bad that. I'm sure Kevin Durant feels
(06:57):
really bad that he made somebody else feel bad, because
that's who he is as a person. But in a
couple of days, this too shall pass, and now at
least it's out there. The real reason he left had
nothing to do with Russell Westbrook. The real reason he
left had nothing to do with Oklahoma City. The real
reason he left was this team is better, this coach
(07:18):
is better. He's surrounded by better team, better coach, better talent,
better organization, and that's why he's out. It stings, but
the truth shall set you free, and Kevin Durant is
a free man today. That's why he's sorry, not sorry,
(07:38):
all right. Mark Lao will join the show up coming
next I'll ask him get his thoughts on last night's game,
Lions any good? Or is this more about the Giants
and their inability to protect Eli Manning? Eli Manning's inability
to deliver the ball on time in rhythm, although there
were some path like Look, there's just a litany of problems. Right.
Eli has never been fleet of foot, Plus he's older,
(07:59):
so makes some longer to get back and even hand
the ball off. They don't have a good running game.
They don't have a good offensive line. Brandon Marshall's washed up.
They didn't have Genora's Jenkins last night. But the defense
is okay, that's not why they got beat. And then
some of their decision making end of first half? What
what was what was Macadoo doing allowing the clock to
run down end of the first half before that made
(08:19):
fifty six yard field goal by the Detroit lines. You
call the time out, kicked the field goal, You still
got a minute left to go get a field goal back?
What a what a mess it is with the New
York Giants, all New York NFL football that said that
it was a game that could be won, could have
been won in spite of the fact they couldn't protect
(08:41):
Eli Manning, they can't establish the running game. Be sure
to catch live editions of The Doug gott Leap Show
weekdays at three pm Eastern noon Pacific on Fox Sports
Radio and the I Heart Radio app. Let's work in
Mark schlaire at three times Super Bowl champion who joins
the show? Mark? All right, So, how much of the
Giants offensive dysfunction is on Eli? How much of it
(09:04):
is on on other stuff? Well? I think the majority
of it's on other stuff. You know, I'm watching a
play last night after Eli has gotten his brains beat in.
I mean, he got planted in the turf so hard.
One time, I thought he was gonna go through the
turf and see where they buried Jimmy Hoppa. It was like,
that was frightening, how hard he got hit last night,
(09:26):
and so late in that game, and still a very
close and and winnable game. I see him redirect protection.
I see him reclaimed, reassigned the mic from the middle
linebacker forty to a different linebacker, changed the protection, so
the offensive line goes to lat linebacker, which allows the
running back go to the slot corner. Blitz right, So
(09:46):
you pick up the four week he makes the change,
He's still under pressure. He throws a dime down the
sideline to Ingram, and you know the play gets broken up.
But this is late in the game. That's advanced quarterbacking
stuff right there. And we're gonna sit there and say, all,
Eli has lost it. I don't know anybody, especially a
dropping back pocket passer, they can sustain that kind of
(10:07):
beating and play well. And I would look at it
from a coaching standpoint, like Ben McAdoo is gonna call
him out for the mismanagement of the clock and not
getting the ball snapped on a fourth down play. How
about you mismanaging the entire game And I don't understanding
that your last tackle couldn't block his way out of
a wet paper sack and you're still gonna leave him
(10:28):
one on one of bus times was Bianza? Yeah more?
Why did they chipping more? I mean Ansa was just
dominating Eric Flower's I mean, you have to give that
guy help every time, don't you? Every single time? And
you're gonna have to give up. I know you, you
know you want to spread the ball around, and you've
got all these new toys on the outside. The bottom line,
(10:50):
I don't care how much talent you have on the outside.
Receiver is probably the most dependent position in football. And
if you can't block guys and your quarterback can execute
and throw the all, I don't care how much money
you spend. I don't care how flashy they are. I
don't care how much blonde errors out there. They're not
gonna They're not gonna affect the game at all. I
look at oh b J is like the only way
(11:11):
he could affected that game. He could play left tackle.
That's it. And the fact that you're a coach and
you're gonna sell your quarterback out there for clock management,
not getting the ball snap and you don't essentially completely
change the way you protest like Ben Macado, how about
been Maca do do? Because that's about what your game
in game adjustments for WARS. I don't know, man. I mean,
(11:33):
you could sit there and blame Eli all day long,
but you know that he's not mobile, so we know
that it's not gonna be like, hey, let's change his
launching point. Let's get him outside the pocket like we
can with Matthew Stafford. But for crying out, allowed to
sit there and blame it on Eli Manning like Eli
Manning is. The problem to me is it just doesn't
(11:54):
give him the proper amount of respect that he deserves
for what he was. What he was doing was last
night March Layris joining us in the Doug Gotlib show.
All right, what about the Lions. They're sitting there at
two and oh, but it wasn't like they as ineffective.
It's kind of similar to the Cowboys, where the Cowboys
defense was effective, but their offense was relatively ineffective at home.
Was the win kind of same thing last night where
(12:17):
they allowed the Giants to kind of hang around to
get a special teams touchdown, which would seemed to put
it away. Um, I guess the question is. I mean,
I think we'd all agree the Lions are good, but
are they like best team in that division? Good? Seeing
as the Packers flaws also because of injury not having
their tackles. But the Packers flaws have been exposed, give
(12:38):
me your thoughts on the Lions now that we've seen them.
I think the Lions are outstanding football team, and I
think anytime you look at where they are offensively, I
think you always have to put it in context. Like
the Dallas Cowboys. We know how good they are running
the football, and then all of a sudden they have
to play against Devia Broncos in that environment, in that
crowd noise, with the no flop zone. And it was
(13:00):
probably the first time that I have ever watched Dak
Prescott looked like a young player, like he came into
the league. And he didn't look young. I mean, he
looked like a seasoned veteran, like an old soul guy.
And all of a sudden you put him in a
position where he looked shell shocked, like he looked totally
(13:21):
beside himself, And the Broncos will do that to you.
You know, it's the first time I've ever seen that
guy look like like a young second year, you know,
second game of his second season quarterback. And that says
a lot about the Denver Broncos. And they are defense,
and I look at I look at the Lions, and
I think you're playing against one of the supremely gifted
(13:43):
defenses in football. I think there are Frank four is exceptional.
I think with JP Jpp on one edge and Olivia
Berne who's a phenomenal football player on the other edge,
with Snacks in the middle, line mag and corps, they've got,
in my mind, the best secondary in an NFC, A
second best secondary in all of football behind the Broncos.
(14:03):
I mean the fact that you have some sustained drives
and you put up the points you didn't. I understand
one of them was a special team such but I'm
saying you did a pretty damn good job against that
team in New York. So I think that I think
the lines are legit, and I think they're gonna give
I don't think they're gonna give the Green Bay Pactors
a run for their money for that division ground. That's
(14:25):
the voice of Mark Schlarrat, three times Super Bowl champion
Fox Sports NFL analyst, joining us on the Doug Gottlib
Show here on Fox Sports Radio. All Right, let's let's
kind of peruse around a couple of other things I
gotta pick your brain about in the league. So you
mentioned Dak Prescott. I saw him being rattled as well.
And I understand that you're playing in Denver and that
(14:46):
that pass rush and the crowd noise and the no
fly zone and all of that. I felt like Ezeki
Elliott Quentin on interception and I know, yeah, by the way,
and he wasn't the only des Brian also quit on
the play on the interception as well. But Zeke quitting
on it, to me, that was more about his disgust
at at DAC than it was him quitting on his team.
(15:07):
What's your take on when you see a star, young
star running back not give any effort after interception? Well,
I think it's I think it's the same thing that
we've talked about in regards to Dez Bryant in the past.
I think it's the same thing we talked about in
regards to Oh b J. I think it's the same
thing we've been talking about all off season in regards
(15:28):
to Ezekiel Elliott emotional maturity and the lack there of
emotional maturity. And I understand you're getting your ass whipped.
And trust me, I've had mine whip plenty, all right.
The bottom line is you're gonna turn that You're going
to turn that film on on Monday after that, but
(15:49):
whipping that you took, and you're gonna watch that film
and you're gonna say, who is still fighting, who is
still giving great effort, Who is still you know, tooth
and nail clawing their way and trying to make something
big happen. And who has just been, you know, just
exhausted and just thrown under the towel and throwing their
hands up. Because that's a bad look. And that comes
(16:12):
with the maturity and having grown ups on your football team.
We need some grown ups. Where are the grown ups?
And you know, the issues that you have had off
the field, those were those to me, are are the
emotional lack of emotional maturity that you have shown off
the field was shown on Sunday in Denver. I understand
(16:34):
it's not fun to get your pup with been there
man done it, both physically, mentally, everything else. That's not
a fun thing to do. But you need to be
grown up enough and mature enough and adult enough to
handle your business like a professional. And I always say,
just because you play a pro sport doesn't make you
a professional, And there was a lack of professionalism in
(16:54):
the effort that was given by Zeke Elliott on Sunday. Um, Look,
every Chargers game seems to end the same way, right
with some sort of disappointment, and like, look, I get
that they were lucky to even be in that Denver game.
And it wasn't the young kicker's fault that the that
the field goal was blocked, but it was in fact blocked.
(17:16):
And then they have a rookie kicker who misses two
field goals, including what should have been a game winner
and the home opener in Carson. How do you how
do you change that? How do you change that kind
of culture of losing the expectation that that that something
bad is going to happen into the expectation you know
that good teams have where they always expect something good
to happen, right, And that is a mentality. And you know,
(17:40):
we always see teams take over or new coaches come
into an organizations that we have to change the culture.
And it's always an easy thing to talk about change
the culture. It's a really hard thing to do. And
you know, teams that are in that situation, Doug, expect
that bad things to happen. They're just looking for I
always used to say this when when I was a
(18:00):
member of really good football teams, the Redskins in one
that won eleven in a row right off the bat
of the season, the Broncos in that want to back
championships and one thirteen in a row to start the season.
You always get people's best shot. But I always said this,
you know, when you played the bad teams in this league,
(18:22):
their coaches are preaching, hey, we gotta play a perfect game.
You know, we've got to really be sharp. And my
thought to that was, there's never been a perfect game played,
and something bad is going to happen. There is going
to be a mistake. How do you as a football
team react to that mistake? Do you embrace the state's
(18:43):
all right, man, we're just gonna keep falling over or
is it the tipping point that you said, I'll shoot
here we go. We didn't play a perfect game. We
made a mistake, and the teams that culturally are looking
for that one bad thing to happen, because to me,
that's the excuse, the excuse us to roll over. Um,
they'll never get out of that swamp. The winning is
(19:04):
as it stow is losing. And when you've had that
kind of cultural experience and you almost are just waiting
for the other shoe to drop, You're waiting for that
bad thing to happen to you. When it does happen
to you, mentally, you just flat going to take. And
that's the San Diego Chargers. They just feel stinkid, whether
it's injuries, whether it's bad things happening at the end
of the games. Go back to last year. They dominate
(19:25):
the Kansas City Chiefs to open up the season last
year and somehow give up a huge, a huge lead
at the end of that game and lose the football game.
And that's just kind of who they are and that's
their culture. And at some point you just got to realize, hey,
some bad things you're gonna They're gonna happen to it,
and we're just gonna find a way to overcome it. Um,
the Saints are owing to no other team their division
(19:47):
even has a loss. That's because Tampa has only played
one game. And I'll granted they played Carolina this week
and Carolina's suffered through a litany of really tough injuries,
including Greg Olsen out with a broken foot. But at
owen two and it's not easy to start at Minnesota
and then home to the Patriots. But they are owing
two and the defense does not appeared to have been fixed.
The offense has good running backs, and yet it's a
(20:09):
past it's really a passing offense mismatch parts. I guess
that the question becomes like, at some point do you say, look,
Drew Brees is the most is the best quarterback we've
ever had, but we might need to move on. And
Sean Payton is the best coach we've ever had, but
he keeps trying to redo this thing and it's not
being rebuilt the right way. What do you do if
(20:30):
you're in New Orleans? Yeah, there comes a time when
you have to really, you know, make heart evaluations and
really assess kind of where you're at, and you're right.
I mean, this is a past happy offense with a
past happy quarterback, with you know, with with your best
player now playing in New England in Brandon Cooks. Um,
(20:54):
you just really you're really strapped, like you mentioned, and
I think at some point, you know, you you look
at Drew Brees and you look at the money that
you've tied into that, the mismanagement of the cap, the
fact that you have not been able to put pieces
around him. You want a championship, and you were really
good for a lot of years and you could win
games just by outscoring people. Now you still can't play defense,
(21:17):
so you still haven't been able to address that issue.
And oh, by the way, now you don't have the
pieces in place for Drew Brees to be successful. So
now you can't outscore anybody either. And let's face it,
based on Week one, it's not like you faced each
other or not defense in the New England Patriots. So
I'm I'm with you, and I'm a big Sean Payton
fan and I'm a big Drew Breese fan. But these
(21:39):
are the tough decisions you have to make as an
NFL franchise and there comes day time when you have
to look at your franchise and and as much as
you love your players, um there comes a time when
you have to blow that thing up and start over
from scratch. And that goes you know, throughout that whole organization,
whether it's Mickey Loomis in the front office or whatever,
they have not done a good job of managing the cap.
(22:01):
They have not done a good job of of, in
my mind, of putting players in place to you know,
to sustain kind of that offensive juggernaut or at least
fix that defense. And at some point, um, you know,
you've got to reevaluate, say maybe maybe the best thing
for both of us is a fresh start. And doesn't
mean that I think that Sean Pagne is great, and
(22:22):
I think you can coach his butt off, but I
just don't think they have the personnel to get that done.
Or maybe it's maybe it's the front office and you
change the front office and you say we're gonna give
you the pieces that actually will help you kind of
get back on top. But I think sometimes change is
a really good thing, and I think within an organization
it needs to happen occasionally. Mark Hlaire three times the
(22:42):
Bowl Champion. You can of course see him on Fox
and Fox Sports One. You can hear him on Fox
Sports Radio. Sank, thanks so much for joining us man anytime. Brother.
Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in
the nation. Catch all of our shows at Fox Sports
Radio dot com and within the Hard Radio app. This
is written from perspective of Dwight Howard. And he's sitting
(23:06):
in his apartment in Buckhead in Atlanta. And so immediately
I was like, oh, well, he's back in Atlanta. And
then I was like, wait a second, no, wait, where
where's he played out? That's right, he plays in Charlotte.
Like they gave him away after just one year with
his hometown Hawks gave him away. I'll take it through
(23:27):
the kind of the bullet points. He talks about his
rookie year. He's an eighteen year old virgin, and he
talked to them about the time God spoke to him
in the bathroom. Steve Francis and Tony Pattilla Tita invited
the invited him out to a club once, never again
for fear they corrupt him. That's it. We're not letting
you go out anymore. Howard's first all Star Weekend in
(23:49):
two thousand five players in Denver Hotel UH compared partymentations.
We know you are about to do nothing except read
your Bible, and of course he started going out. And
how he has five kids, five different women, none of
them who he's with, and of course he owes them
massive amounts of child support. Like my takeaway for Dwight
(24:09):
Howard is he's he's basically the poster child for why
guys should go to college. We we do. We talk
in circles all the time, and like, look, I respect
j Billis. I think he's He's always been really good
as a basketball analyst. He just is I'm I'm, I'm
I take and he has a perspective to which he
thinks guys should get paid. And he also believes that
(24:31):
guy shouldn't be people shouldn't be forced to go to college.
I think it's ludicrous. There has to be a bridge
between AU and high school basketball and the NBA, because
that's that's a man's world there, and you're just not
ready for it. And here's the guy, Yes, has Lebron
James managed to steer clear of trouble and he's married
to his high school sweetheart, Like sure, uh, And he
(24:54):
surrounds himself with his friends and they've all gotten to
have like legitimate jobs, and they, you know, the champions
of business. But like, that's the exception, that's the exception.
On the other spectrum, you have Robert Swift. And Robert
Swift he's from Bakersfield, he's the one who's drafted by
the SuperSonics, and you know then he was bankrupt and
(25:16):
and had all these guns and drugs and tattoos and whatever.
Like that's the other side of it. And what falls
in the middle is guys like Dwight Howard who financially
and professionally are pretty successful. But it's like the arrested development.
You need that space in between. He comes from a
two parent home, he was super religious, went to a
(25:37):
small private high school. They like they tried to protect
him from the rest of the real world. But you
can't go from zero to a hundred, right, you gotta
have kind of the ramp up. And that's what college is. Like.
The college thing works, I swear to god it works.
It works in basketball because you learned how to become
a teammate. You learn about sacrificing, you learn about playing
(25:59):
team defense, and team offense. And no, it's not a
perfect snapshot of what you're gonna look like in the NBA,
but you get better, and you're working with coaches who
have worked with eighteen and twenty two year olds for
their entire professional lives. What we do is we look
at a kid and we're like, oh, he's got water
wings on. I'll bet he's a great swimmer, and then
(26:20):
we taken we throw him in the deep end. Be
sure to catch live editions of the Doug gott Leaps
Show weekdays at three pm Eastern noon Pacific on Fox
Sports Radio and the I Heart Radio app. Kevin Clark
wrote this article Whether was this from I saw this
on Twitter? It's from The Ringer, right? Kevin Clark writes
for The Ringer, which is Bill Simmons site, and the
(26:41):
title of it is perfect how football stopped being fun?
He starts with the we are living in the Golden
Age of failed completions, a statistic as grim as it sounds,
tracked by football outsiders. Failed completions occur when a team
doesn't get of the yards it needs to get the
first down on second down, on third or fourth down.
(27:05):
The stat goes back to nine and last season Joe
Flacco set the record with a hundred and forty four.
Nothing encapsulates this era of football as well as failed completion,
allegedly a success but ultimately oblique disappointment. In the past
five years of the NFL, offenses have reached unprecedented levels
of scoring, quarterbacks have become more accurate than ever, turnovers
(27:28):
have plummeted, and yet it's not fun. If you simply
reads the statistical markers, it would seem that every offense
was as exciting as the pub scene from inglorious bastards,
sacks and interceptions at all time lows last year. But
that just means that quarterbacks are getting rid of the
ball quick or operating for shorter, safer targets, and we
(27:49):
have reached the most frustrating era in football history. Everything
is fine and it doesn't look good. Through two weeks.
Scoring is down two point four points a game. That's
That isn't a statistical argument. This is about aesthetics. The
critical massive fans agree the game is ugly. It's ugly,
as listed in the thirteen and nine Bengals Texans game.
(28:09):
It goes on Chris Sims with a great quote. If
you show me a team with a great completion percentage,
I automatically think your offense probably sucks. And it's it's
interesting because, first, I don't know how many people watch
whole NFL games, but last night's game because it's the
only game on. I watched Sunday night's game because the
(28:30):
only game on. I watched Thursday night game because it's
the only game on. I watched Sunday. I usually watch
on red zone and then have another TV on the
regular and red zone you can't tell as much because
teams around the goal line. But but one of the
logical reasons behind people pick in Atlanta was there like, oh,
that place is gonna be so hype, so on fire.
(28:52):
Did you watch the Atlanta Green Bay game? It was
like a library in there. Part of it is the
building is really big, but part of it is football.
NFL football can be super super boring. Now, like, yeah,
you run the ball, but he also these very short
passing routes. I mean, even the New England Patriots style
(29:13):
is crazy crazy boring, crazy boring dank and dunk and
matriculate the ball down the field. Do you know what
this reminds me of? It reminds me of Major League Baseball.
Dan Buyer was talking about this earlier. Um, Dan, what
was this the statu you're using on baseball with the
number of home runs being up this year? Yeah, with tonight,
(29:36):
if seventeen home runs are hit tonight, that would set
a new record for the most home runs hit in
a season. And the other stat that I put was
last year is actually now third where this was a
stattuck that I had never heard before because passed it.
But heading into this year, sixteen was actually at the
second most home runs. So now two out of the
three years where the most home runs were hit were
(29:57):
in seventeen. But then I could set record. Yeah. Look,
I think it's fascinating because what's happened is major League
teams and their organizations. They've they've figured out the analytics
to it, much like they figured out NBA basketball, And
many times is not a great watch, right high ball
(30:18):
screen drive kicks, shoot at three? Highball screen drive kick,
shoot at three? It ain't a great watch. And this
is the analytics field. And this the same goes at
the NFL. Why would you run the football when it
takes years off your running backs to life? They haven't
changed the rules at all within the tackles. All the
(30:41):
rules are set up so you can't touch the quarterback
below the knee, above the neck, can't touch the wide
receiver after five yards, and they allow for pick plays
with the exception the Green Bay Packers and they run
one against Atlanta Falcons. Like everything is telling you, everything
is telling you to throw the football and to be
as accurate as possible and just have short, short, dink
(31:04):
and dunk, matriculate the ball down the field and end
up with the field goal. I mean, NFL games are boring.
We don't watch them because they're super exciting right about now.
We watched them because we are fantasy game. Our fantasy
team depends upon it, and we bet on the games.
That's it. But NFL is not the only one that's boring.
Baseball is boring. In basketball is boring, and they're boring
(31:26):
because the sports are getting smarter. They understand how to
protect their players, how to score more points, and how
to do so more often based upon the rules and
based upon the rules of the game. Fox Sports Radio
has the best sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch
all of our shows at Fox sports radio dot com
and within the I Heart radio app Lee Jenkins joins
(31:47):
us in the Doug Gottlieb Show, writer for Sports Illustrated,
does an outstanding job. You occasionally see him on the
jump as well. Um, you've got a chance to sit
down with Dwight Howard and like, the first thing that
jumped out of me was here he is in Atlanta,
which is his hometown. He was he signed with last year,
And for about a minute and a half, I had
forgotten that they had bailed on him and he was
(32:10):
a Charlotte Cornet, right like that whole thing, Like, oh
my god, I forgot even they gave up on him.
What we there. There's kind of a symbolic nature to
him looking out at a city that was his hometown
that they even they don't want him anymore. Yeah, as
a salary dump. It was they getting the richest contract
ministry of the franchise. They traded him for Bell and
(32:33):
Elly and Plumbling. You have two backups, so you know, partying,
I'll tell you this. So he you know, he led
the Eastern Conference in field goal percentage. He was Havink
thirteen and thirteen last year. Obviously was a badge it there,
you know, and so many of these teams. Now it's
five out offense. There's there's not a great place for him,
and a lot of in a lot of spots. But
(32:54):
I do sin. I was wondering with him, if he's
one of these guys who was overrated for a long
time and now is underrated. I mean, if you can
give it, if you can give a team, you know,
fifteen and twelves and shoot, you know, I know it's
not the Dwight Howard of old, but there's still value there.
So yeah, I was surprised, like you were, that they
gave up on him after a year. You know, I
(33:14):
read the Hard Again. I thought it was outstanding. I
retweeted as as soon as I finished it. Um, but
I didn't notice any hint of true accountability. Right. It
was the Hey, I was young, and you know, I
was a little bit lost, and I went out with
these guys and then I got a couple of I
got five girls pregnant, and hey, you know, like I
(33:36):
wasn't a good fit in l A. And I played
with a bad back when I shouldn't love, and I
played with a bad shoulder when I shouldn't have. But
there was never there was There's never any you know,
some of this was me. I don't feel that I
got any of that. But but again that's me reading
into it. How much of that is realist is how
it really is. I mean, that's funny. I finally beat
(33:58):
himself up a lot, and I don't know that I've
ever actually talked to a guy and like you don't
get remember an NBA players, you know, general big egos
and you know, not a real kind of a real
reluctance to blame themselves. I actually thought he beat himself
up as well as much as any player i've you know,
I've ever talked to when it comes talking about you know,
(34:20):
religion and the way he was like a hypocrite after
you know, pregnating the first girl he was with, and uh,
you know, the shame he felt and sort of getting
in this cycle and feeling as if he didn't communicate
well with teammates in l A and Houston. He you know,
he criticized himself for that. Um So, I mean I
(34:42):
think he basically talked about sort of going through these legs,
espential crises in his head where it was everybody would say,
oh he laughs too much, smiles too much, that he
kind of adopted these different personas. That weren't him trying
to be like Kobe, trying to be like Shack, you know,
going back and forth. Um, So I thought those were
admissions that I don't usually see your fear professional athletes,
(35:04):
that that's snatch or make um. So, you know, I guess,
you know, I might take what the interview was a
little different, but you know I might have bungled. That's
it's it's a great it's a great point, especially because
you conducted. Now you start walking me through him like, yeah,
that there was that the you know, there was more
of that. Then I give him credibly. Jenkins, our guest sports,
a sinner. You know, he kind of said that he
(35:25):
got in this cycle where he felt like, you know,
I mean his someoney was so religious. I mean you
remember when he came out of high school. That was
the whole thing right across on the logo he was
he was kind of this his own evangelical star. And
I think what happened was he you know, he slipped obviously,
and then I think that he kind of got caught
(35:45):
in this cycle. He felt like, well, I'm not going
to pull out of it anyway. I'm sort of I'm
sort of done as far as that phase of my life.
And yeah, I think his life sort of spun out
of control on him. Um, but look, there's still excuses.
I mean, clearly, there's still a lot of excuses to
go along with I think some of the accountability. Okay,
So one of the things I thought you did a
(36:07):
great job of portraying is here he is a sheltered
kid from a two parent home, a very religious two
parent home, and a small school in Atlanta where they
try to keep him away from any sin, and he's
thrust into the man's world of the n b A
and and like, look, I understand that there, here's a
here's a young guy whose body changed rapidly, and he
(36:30):
was able to play and compete in very short or
in the NBA. But the the emotional toll of skipping
kind of the normal progression of a man right high
school into college, you know, three or four years to
figure stuff out and then go out into the real world.
One of my big takeaways is, man, I wonder how
(36:50):
that Dwight Howard tail would have been as not financially
and not statistically, but in terms of the type of
person in life. He will have for the next fifty
years had he gone to college. Remember, and this was
the last this was the big class thing. It was
eight or nine first round draft picks and oh three
when he went when he went to Orlando. Uh, what
(37:12):
is was your takeaway any different from the boy? He
could sure have used time to grow and mature before
he got to Orlando. Yeah. I think it's just it's
such a sudden difference, right, I mean, you're I mean,
that's so many of these guys were that that level
when they're probably sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, they're already sort of
living with stardom even in their high schools. For him,
(37:35):
because he went to such a small school, because he
was sheltered to such an extreme extent, I think that
it was even more of probably a culture shock when
he reached the NBA than it would be for your
standard you know, prep to pro guy, where it's already
a bit of a culture shock. So no doubt I
think that, you know, when you talk about just sort
of an experience to bridge that gap a little bit,
(37:57):
to kind of be in between, to be to learn
and how to be famous but not have money, or
to be on your own but still have some sort
of oversight. I mean, he clearly could have benefited from
from any of that, because I mean, is the guy
who's living with his guys, with his friends from home,
which is basically what all NBA players do, you know,
(38:18):
And he and none of them had had any of
these experiences. And when they did, I think you know,
the phrase he used was it was like getting a
taste of candies. You've never had candy before. So it's
it's a great point. It's one of those things that
as parents, like, as a parent like I can totally
relate to that, right, Um, if you want to shelter him, right,
I mean to me, I don't blame his parents for
(38:38):
the attack they took. I mean to me, it's the
right appro is it's the right approach and theory. But
in this case, somebody like Lebron, who probably didn't have
that kind of structure, maybe benefits from it because when
he got to the NBA, well he'd already figure it
out sort of how to live being Lebron. James Dwight
Howard I don't think had that. Yeah, And and Lebron
(39:00):
is the exception to like every rule, right, like, you
can't you can't base what you want to do based
upon a once in a generation uh player, once in
a generation person and a guy who was, you know,
emotionally different because of his upbringing than nent of the
of the players out there. Lee Jenkins joining us on
the Doug Gottlieb Show. Um, I can't see a way
(39:23):
in which he's not a Hall of Fame player. But
I also can't recall a Hall of Fame player having
this sort of uh mercurial end to his career. I mean,
I guess like Shack bounced around at the end, but
but but but not like this, and it was not
as despised and like he's one of those guys which
you say, Dwight Howard be like, I hate Dwight Howard,
(39:45):
Like why do you hate Dwight Howard? Right, it's a
weird this is for a guy who I mean has
that those first ten was first I don't know, nine
ten years were incredible to be here is a weird place.
And he's not an old man. He went from three
point one million All Star boats, the most ever, the
most any NBA player ever in a season till last
(40:08):
year had a hundred and fifty thousand. I mean, he
had more endorsement deals than Lebron in two thousand eight.
It's staggering. I mean when you think about that kind
of a fall from grace and that happens in other sports,
but in the NBA usually there's more staying power. He
was only thirty one years old. Yeah, the injuries were
part of it. Continue when you talk about how people
recoil at his name, it's more about the teammates that
(40:31):
clashing with Kobe. The clashing was hard, and at some
point I think people sort of threw up their hands
with Dwight Howard that you know enough, I'm not going
to be fooled again. Um, And I understand that. I do.
I think part of it too is his you know
so much he made a body language with players and
the fact that he had that that sort of goofball
expression all the time and the big smile. I don't
(40:53):
think that's what a lot of people want to see
from the players. They want to see. They like that
kind of teeth gritted uh at core and more killer
mentality that Kobe Bryant persona. But I also think that
that really hurt how Is because trying to do that,
trying to be more like that. I think in some
ways took him out of the persona that gave him
success in the first place. Where is he? Where is
(41:15):
he mentally? Do you think he's in a good place?
I do. I'm I'm hesitant to say it because he
says this every year, this kind of storyline has come
out about him before. But I do think he has
the right people around him. I think that his body.
I mean I watched him work out and he just
looked springier. I mean, he looked so stiff when you
(41:36):
watched in the last few years. You just wonder kind
of where that athleticism went. And I do think that
that there were after effects from that back surgery that
we're lasting that I think he's finally starting to get past.
Now will he get caught in a trap of because
let's be honest, he was stuck between arras right If
he came along right now, somebody drafted the White Howard
(41:56):
right now, they would let him do a bunch of
different things, and they developed in I'm not saying he'd
be honest, but they make him into a more dynamic player.
But because he came out when he did, it was like, no,
you sit under the rim and you just rim protect
and he always felt he was Kate were doing more
and that sort of ruined him in some ways. He
was kind of caught between eras. So will he be
(42:18):
okay kind of doing what he does best in the
Steve Clifford system, blocking shots, setting screens. I think it's
gonna work because I think Clifford knows him, knows what
they did in Orlando, and will feed him enough offensively
to keep him engaged with all the other things that
he does well, because at heart he's a great defender.
I mean, he was DeAndre Jordan before DeAndre Jordan's and
(42:39):
I think that he can get back to some of
those things and listen it he just spikes, let's think
him five more points a game. He's an eighteen and
twelve guy, and we're all saying, oh, he's most improved
player of the year. So I don't think it's such
a huge leap to think he could have that kind
of piece. Lie, I'm sure you're next sit downs with
Kevin Durant and talking Twitter or maybe Instagram. It's the
(43:00):
The NBA soap opera is the best. But the article
today was great. It was really insightful. I felt like
I felt like Dwight Howard, and you took me kind
of through a journey of where he was and where
he is. Thanks so much for joining us, and we'll
we'll tweet it out make sure everybody reads it. I
appreciate all kind. Be sure to catch live editions of
The Doug gott Leap Show weekdays at three pm Eastern
(43:22):
noon Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the I Heart
Radio app. We do a bad job in the media
sometimes we just do. We do a bad job of
the media because we don't understand, like, we don't understand
what people are we whether we try and portray a
story in which in the light in which we want
to portrayed, or maybe we some of my brethren haven't
been in the locker room enough. Um, whatever the logic
(43:46):
behind it is, we can do. We can do a
bad job sometimes in the media, all of us. Uh.
I take you to last night and to today the
discussion about the New York Giants, right, And have you
heard that Ben McAdoo called out Eli Manning. You heard that, like,
(44:10):
I think it's a Dan buyer. Have you heard people say, oh,
Ben McAdoo called out Eli Manning? Yes, yes, have you
said that? Okay, I know you haven't. I hadn't heard
that from you. Rama said you heard that coming in
that Oh yes, that's all I heard in the morning.
Radio called him out. He called him out. He plays
the blame on eli Manning. Okay, want you to listen.
(44:32):
This is the this is the answer that everybody's talking about.
Take a listen to the question that was posed. That's
what happened on the game. Sloppy quarterback play quarterback in
a center. Need to be on the same page there.
We gotta get the ball snapped. We have a veteran
quarterback who's played a lot of football. Expect us to
get the ball snapped. Usually the clock goes from three
(44:55):
to one zero. Once they hit zero, they look at
the ball, look at the clock. Usually we have a
tick once it hit zero to get the ball snapped.
Without being a lay game, I thought we had it.
We had a chance to get it off. So, um, look,
did he put the blame there at least partially on Elias.
Remember he also said like, hey, look, usually you get
a little you get a little extra leeway if it's
(45:16):
right the last second, and they didn't get that leeway. Sure,
but He also like the first thing was he wasn't
blamed the ref skuy when like the rev screwed us
on that one like some parent. He said, like usually
you get a little half tick, which is accurate because
oftentimes you look at the clock he goes to zero,
like wait, hey, was that snap late? And they let
him get away with it. But he wasn't putting all
(45:38):
of the blame of the offense on Eli Manning. He
was asked a specific question about a specific play. The
specific play was it was weird, like fourth in goal
from the two yard line. They're down ten points at
the time. Math will tell you, dude, kick the field goal.
You're only down one possession. Just kick the field goal,
because if you do, you go for it, you don't
(45:59):
get at the reward. Getting it to within three points
is not worth the risk. It's like aer on the
field goal as opposed to if you run the play,
especially when you have no running game like the Giants.
So that's not calling out your quarterback. That's answering a question.
(46:23):
And yes, he put the issue on that particular play
almost squarely on the shoulders of the quarterback because he's right,
like Eli may has been a quarterback for fifteen years.
You can't get a delay a game on fourth and
goal from the two yard line. You can't do it. Now.
Eli might have gotten a delay a game on purpose
(46:43):
because he didn't agree with the idea of going for it,
and maybe that's why McAdoo was ticked. But that's not
calling out your quarterback. You asked the question, you answer
the question based upon the context of that play. I
think there's a difference. Buyer, you agree there's a difference,
or do you think that's calling out your quarterback? No,
(47:06):
I do think that there's a difference. And I also
think that if on a night where there are so
many issues that maybe and maybe this may be a stretch,
but it's also could be protecting some of the other
issues that the Giants have by putting it on the
guy who is likely to still keep his position on
the field, you know what I mean. Like their offensive
(47:26):
line stakes, they're awful. Eric Flowers probably shouldn't be playing.
You're not gonna bench Eli manning for Geno Smith. So
when you're calling out issues on the offense. He's a
big boy. He can tell you know, he he's not
gonna lose his job. Yeah, like if you were to
call out, man, Eric Flowers need some work. Now you're
wondering why Eric Flowers weekend and week out. It's a
common thing. Eli safe in his job because they have
(47:47):
no backup really to challenge him for the gig. So
put it on Eli. Put it on the quarterback shoulders.
He's a big boys, he said, veteran. He can handle it. Yeah,
I can see that. I just I think that athletes
take criticism a lot different than people take criticism somewhere
like the regular guys Like, well, he called him out,
like we pointed out he made a mistake there, Like
you're not gonna And I've run into this in uh
(48:09):
in when I call basketball games where I'll show you
like who made the mistake defensively, You're like, well, there's
not always a mistake, Like okay, not always like NBA,
you can play really good defense and it doesn't matter
they just jump up and make a shot over you.
But a lot of times there's a mistakement that's how
that's how coaches and athletes and people who know sports,
that's how they watched film and they that's how you
correct mistakes. And this case, Eli was like, look, it's
(48:32):
your job as a quarterback to get that snap off,
and and the other thing I taken and I wondered
why they were running a play there. And my guess
is that they thought that they had, uh, their their
personnel grouping was such that they had the right call
for the right down and distance, for the right play,
that they were going to score a touchdown. And that's
why Ben mcadow's pissed, like, Hey, we hadn't scored a touchdown,
(48:54):
we're down at the two yard line. We choose to
go for it. We got the right call, the right
personnel grouping versus their personnel grouping. Eli's job to get
the snap off.
Host
Doug Gottlieb
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