The Fumblerooski Podcast
Weighing Options -Ep 289 The Fumblerooski Podcast
Quarterback controversy and Foxborough and CD Lamb has been extended to a massive deal. I'm Adam Wright and you're listening to the Fumble Rooskey Podcast. It may not have always showed it in the stat sheet, but you can see him making throws when he needs to make the throws. Back-to-back games where he has three touchdowns. Someone's got to get that six or seven spot. He's an elite wide receiver at the rookie. Truly a lose-lose scenario for both sides. Welcome to the Fumble Rooskey Podcast by Power88 and Secret Weapon Consulting. I'm Adam Wright with CJ Madeeros and Chris Costich. This is probably one of the few times this summer that we've had three co-hosts on the show at once. It's always a good time to have multiple minds on the show, and we have more preseason coverage in our last week without regular season football in 2024, up until February of '25. We're going to have a good few months coming up and lots to talk about a lot of good stuff coming out of the NFL, particularly some interesting stuff in Foxborough. Charod Mayo is very, very -- he's their new head coach currently, Successing Bill Belichick, and he has shared a lot of information about what he feels about the quarterback competition between Drake May and Jacobi Brissette. Obviously this quarterback room has also featured Joe Milton, who was also drafted, and up until today, Bailey Zappi, who was just waived by the team, then again, who was waived last year too at this time, and he was back on the roster a couple minutes later. But sharing a lot of information, some of it contradicting each other. One time he said that Drake May is the second best quarterback on this roster. Another time he said that Drake May is outplaying Jacobi Brissette, and listen, if it takes you a certain amount of time to come to a decision, that's fine. I think if you go ahead and say that Drake May is the second best quarterback on this roster, okay, fine, maybe he's not far enough along. When you say Drake May is outplaying Jacobi Brissette, forget the contradicting reports, forget those two statements kind of contradicting each other. I think if you say that one player is better than the other, and then start the player who was not as good, why should those players in the locker room follow him? What kind of confidence are they going to have in their leadership if they're not starting the guy who could give them the best chance to win? I understand this is a bridge here, but you can't really, you can't be upfront about that. You have to sort of, you have to send the best message to the, to your locker room in order to kind of, let's say, give your team the, to have your guys motivated rather. We know what they're trying to do. You can't say the quiet part out loud. And I think sharing a little bit too much information, all these conflicting reports from Gerard Mayo, I think it's going to get Mayo into some trouble this year. But I don't know what you guys thought. I would agree. I think that's been the biggest problem is the contradicting reports and everything that you just said. It's one thing that I think that at the same time, Mayo also said a lot of this stuff regarding May being the second best quarterback at the beginning of training camp. And then it's kind of slowly progressed into, oh, well, he's actually outplayed Jacoby Percet. And these preseason games have shown that Drake may has been outplaying Jacoby Percet as well. It's just a matter of we don't want, Mayo also doesn't want to jump headfirst into throwing the rookie out there right away and like the plan all along really was to have Percet as that bridge QB and have May potentially start maybe sit out the year or start halfway through the year, whatever it may be. And now the reports are that you could potentially start a little earlier on in the season, maybe like that first home game and whatnot or maybe like week four, they figure out the defense, figure out the offensive line and then they throw Drake May in there. See, I don't have too much of a problem with that, but he also has to make sure that he doesn't do this too consistently. And you know, the whole thing with, you know, Belichick didn't provide too much information. And we now kind of appreciate that a little bit more kind of adds a little bit more mystery to what's going on behind the scenes, but with Mayo's case, maybe you do need to add a little bit more mystery of like, you don't want to play your car or show your hand this early on, but at the same time, maybe it doesn't really matter. Yeah, CJ, I know you had some conflicting thoughts about that. Why don't, what are you thinking? Part of me feels like it's overblown, you know, rookie head coach. These are the kind of things that happen. And honestly, it's not even the first time it happened. Remember how Mayo said they were ready to burn some cash before having another modest free agency? And look, we all know why because he said out right, it's about, you know, building a floor for the team and getting a foundation and I get that. But on the end, I get it. You know, I understand why we don't want to say it, but I, and I get not saying the quiet part out loud, but is it really the quiet part? If it's blatantly obvious because our eyes are not deceiving us, Drake May has outperformed Jacobi Bursett in the preseason. The way I see it, he's saying things literally that we already know. And I know good and damn well that the players feel that way too. Everyone and their mother can see it. So like, he's literally not telling us anything that we don't know. Furthermore, I feel like everybody in the locker room also knew that May was going to say, and it's not out of necessity. It's not like they have to groom and more pause it. It's just that they have to, it's for preservation because you saw what happened with that offensive line, especially against Washington. What was it? Three illegal formation penalties? Yeah, one of them literally killed a touchdown. I mean, that's not something you want to put May through. It was a rookie. And even if he did outplay him, we know that May is going to sit. And I'll tell you how we know because, like I said, he hasn't even started a preseason game. And on top of that, I'm going to tell you something. So it's not just that they want to keep May safe, it's that they have to lick their wounds from the fail, Matt Jones experiment. Because I mean, why would you start May with this team? Do you want another Matt Jones? Because that's how you get another Matt Jones. And I guess the reason, like I said, I don't have an issue with any of this. Okay, well, look, I kind of do, but on the flip side, once again, he's literally just stating the obvious. And a note on Belichick, I don't know many people that have a new appreciation for how he handled it because it was just frustrating when he did it. And he still made head scratching moves. And the secrecy just really rubbed most people the wrong way. Because literally, what's the point of having secrecy if you continually make stupid decision after stupid decision? But then again, I guess another reason why Mayo gets the pass is because he's also not the GM, which Bill Belichick was, so there's an extra layer to add there. That's kind of why I was saying like maybe at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. Because as you mentioned, Mayo is a new coach. This is first year and he's kind of, everyone knows that this is a long term plan. This is not a Super Bowl winning plan in year one. And everyone knows that Drake May is not expected to be the week one starter, much like Mac Jones was in 2021. And I will say that it wouldn't be like in Mac Jones's case, it wasn't like him starting week one ended up working great. He had a good rookie season. It's just over time, all the bad roster management kind of finally caught up to the team. And this is where we are now. It wasn't like starting Mac Jones day one was a bad decision. It was the roster management and how they developed him over time, which was very poorly done. Yeah. And I will say that the secrecy of Bill Belichick got old in the last two years because of how poorly he ran the team at the end of his tenure. Whereas in 2014, him saying we're on to Cincinnati was kind of like a that's bill, you know, whereas last two years just were seconding and tiring to hear. Yeah. And I will add that the secrecy, we liked it for our time, then it got old. And the thing is, when you have that unorthodox secret, very somewhat authoritarian style, it only works when you're winning. And we saw in the locker room, too, players like actively showing signs of pleasure, you know, fighting with coaches and stuff, that was rare when they went. And I just think that's what it is, is about like establishing a culture. And I'm going to speak the truth at the last two years of Belichick's tenure, players captains even blatantly did not trust him, you know, and a lot of it started with the hiring of Matt Patricia. You know, you had people like Hunter, Henry, David Andrews, you know, going to him and saying, you know, this is not a great idea. And Bill's like, okay, well, after you on the coach. And that's why I think Mayo is Mayo has to build a new culture. He has to build one fast. There's a lot of pressure on him. And I get wanting to be open because at this point, it's about building trust. Yeah. I was so looking at the, I will say that the situation with Mac Jones was handled fairly well in year one, year one, I thought it was a lot better than people would say it would be, at least looking back before back then, everyone thought it was it went really well because he was the runner up for offensive rookie of the year. But looking back, a lot of people say they should have started Cam Newton first. Maybe you could say that they could have, that they could have started Cam Newton, but I think as long as you have a functional offensive line, that you can start whoever you want and not have to worry about them ruining the player because you won't have a defender in your face every other play. This year, it's very different. They don't have that offensive line that's going to keep Drake May safe. They're going to get him hurt. Now, the psych, the psychological issue is, is a little bit, you, you meet a lot of disagreement there because a lot of people might say, well, if he's really the guy, then he can, then he'll have the mental toughness to get through it. On the other side, he's just a kid and he's trying to learn how to be an NFL quarterback. It's hard to do that when you're always looking out for a defender on your blind side and on the other side as well. So looking at that, like, I just, I don't see a scenario where I believe that, that Drake May should be the starting quarterback at any point in 2024. I don't care too much about the psychological issue. I get it. If they, if they have it, then they have it, right? So a lot of quarterbacks have actually made it work while getting their, getting their faces kicked in. But I also don't want them to get hurt. And there's no development that that's, that there's going to be had with him always avoiding the rush. He's supposed to be learning how to find the open receiver, learning how to roll out when to throw it away. And if you always, if you're always on your ass all the time, you're just, you're not, there's nothing, there's nothing good that will come out of this year if Drake May is starting. This, this roster is as bad as I've seen it in recent years. Well said, I mean, I agree, like you hit the no right on the head. In fact, in the words of, well, you, I think we agree on more than you realize, which happens like every single time that we have a disagreement, it's that we agree, but we end up disagreeing with our agreement because we're so passionate about what we're so passionate about, what we disagree, the opinions that we disagree on that we end up disagreeing because we just argue about things that we agree on. That's the whole thing. And CJ mentioned this five minutes ago, like this whole thing or how long ago it was at this point that we've been recording that this whole thing is probably just overblown. And I'll say it again, maybe at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter because someone knows Drake May is outplaying to Kobe per set. It's just a matter of when they decide they want to throw him into the fire. Yeah, I'll, I'll end with this before we move on. Almost every single time a car, a starting quarterback is enters the league as a rookie. When they start year one, it's usually because they have a good offensive line. And in the times that they don't, then that's when you see things go, go south pretty fast. The bills with Josh Allen, they had a decent offensive line when he first entered the league. CJ Stroud had a, had a very good offensive line. Got hurt a little bit towards the end of the season, but Jalen Hurts had one of the best offensive lines in the league with, with the Eagles. So I mean, they just don't have the line to start them this year, that's, and I put that on the Patriots on for this past off season. They had a modest off season where they should have signed more for that offensive line or at least made some trades did something. They didn't do any of that. So they kind of tied themselves down to this being a bridge year because let's say Drake May was ahead of schedule and we decide to start him. We can't do that now because they don't have the pieces on the offensive line to keep them upright. If they actually got some players this off season through free agency or through trades, maybe they would have been able to do that. Maybe they would have been able to start May and he would have been ahead of schedule and we get, I don't know, we don't, maybe we don't get a CJ Stroud type season, but we get a good season out of them, a good start, then you get them a weapon over the off season and then you're back in business, you're ready to contend eventually. They can't do that this year. They can't do either of those things. So that's what I'll lead off. That's what I'll lead with, rather finish with to transition into our next segment, which is CD-LAM being extended by the Cowboys, second highest paid non-quarterback in NFL history. We're going to get to that next. This is the Fumbleruski podcast. It may not have always showed it in the stat sheet, but you can see him making throws when he needs to make the throws. He needs to make the back games where he has three touchdowns. Someone's got to get that six or seven spot. He's an elite wide receiver at the rookie. Truly a loose, loose scenario for both sides. Welcome back to the Fumbleruski podcast by Power88 and Secret Weapon Consulting. I'm Adam Wright with CJ Madeeros and Chris Costich. So after a very long standoff this offseason, CD-LAM has officially been extended by the Dallas Cowboys. It is 40 years, $136 million. Now they still have two other players that they need to sign to long-term contracts, including Michael Parsons, the guy who throws the ball to CD-LAM, Dak Prescott. And I'm just wondering, because we touched on this situation between the Cowboys and the Eagles, which team is under the most pressure to win the division, potentially win a Super Bowl. That's obviously the goal here. But which of these teams, now that the dynamic has changed a little bit, the Eagles just traded for Johan Daughts and they got Jalen Hurts, another weapon after a very down year. And the Cowboys did have contract issues with their top three players and that was going to be their motivating factor in order to have a very good year, that their players, they had a fire lit under them. CD-LAM doesn't quite have that anymore. What kind of dynamic sort of changes in this rivalry, guys? I don't think anything really changes because your fact of the matter is that the Eagles are looking to take the throne from the Cowboys again and the Cowboys are trying to not actually make it to the NFC Championship game. And like Jerry Jones signing CD-LAM, he had to get this done. CD-LAM is a top two receiver in the league, potentially not two. And Johan Daughts and going to the Eagles, that's great in all, he didn't do a ton over in Washington, they didn't use them correctly and he didn't do all that well and it shows with the pick that they ended up getting for him, especially with Daughts and being a first round pick. So Johan Daughts is going to be a wide receiver three or a wide receiver four, it's going to be one of those two. So we'll see if that even, we'll see if Johan Daughts even makes a splash in Philly to begin with, but I don't think anything really changes besides the fact that everyone hates each other. Yeah, so the thing with Chris is that I wholeheartedly agree and when you look at his numbers from two years in Washington, he's very okay. The fact that I'd say he's aggressively okay with just over 1000 yards at 1041, he's got 11 touchdowns, again, just over two years and 84 grabs average in 12, four yards a catch, that's good, but I will call this a non factor in their relationship between Philly and Dallas. And the reason I call it a non factor is because let's be real, he's the wide receiver three. There is no conceivable reality where he is considered better than AJ Brown or Devontae Smith, and as for Dallas, that is interesting, but not for any divisional reason. I still think CD Land is going to have some kind of fire under him, so there's that. But he ideally in the minds of Dallas fans is the first domino to fall because Parsons and Prescott is Adam mentioned still need their extensions. And unless you are willing to chuck your team down the canyon to the depths of cap Hell, you probably can't sign them all. So now is it going to be Dak or is it going to be Parsons? On one hand, you need a quarterback like an upper tier guy to win the Super Bowl, but Prescott's never even been to the NFC Championship game. And Parsons on the other hand is literally like a top five minimum, top three probably defender, at least Ed Druscher in the league. And I just don't know how much money there is to go around. And what CD Land just went through, I think is going to have a ripple effect because there are grumblings from northward of Dallas in Cincinnati, Ohio that Jamard Chase may or may not be unhappy. And after he saw CD get paid, there might be a growing hunger on Chase's side. Great. I don't know how true that is, but former bangles wide out Chad Ocho Cinco outright said he would not be shot if there was a holdout at some point, which were two years. That's pretty weird, but who might have judged, but at the end of the day, it's just for Dallas, they're just reinforcing these big mega deals for receivers. And if you're new to the show, then we specifically Adam have a good point about these upper echelon receivers when they're hogging up all this money, how often do they win? And if they do win the Super Bowl, look at who's throwing them the ball. So if I had to hedge my bets, I genuinely think Parsons is going to be the odd man out here, because I think it is the least likely scenario that they retain all three. And if they do, they're going to be Saints levels of cap screwed. You know, I might actually disagree slightly on that in this scenario. And I'll tell you why. So in most scenarios, we've already talked about this, when an elite court and when an elite wide receiver wins a Super Bowl, it's all it's always not almost it's always because they had a future Hall of Fame quarterback throwing to them. But is Dak Prescott a future Hall of Famer? No, right at the moment. And defense does help win championships, not defense itself, but balance. So I don't want to make any predictions here. But I wonder if they're lighting a fire under Dak Prescott here and hoping that he can come through with something, because I wonder if I mean, a lot of the league has lost trust in Dak Prescott to actually win a team of Super Bowl, especially when it matters most. I mean, in regular season, he plays as good ball as good of ball as any quarterback in the league, but then he turns into a pumpkin in the postseason. And I think they're getting a little sick of that. I'm not saying Dak can't play, but I'm saying when it comes to the postseason, it is really night and day to see how the how these teams play. Now, I I've always believed it was the coaching that really screwed him over their execution of the talent that they have, but you can't excuse Dak either. I'm not again, I'm not calling for anything. I'm not calling for a trade. I'm not predicting anything. I'm saying maybe, maybe they're prioritizing the right guy in this scenario because yes, the elite quarterback doesn't win the Super Bowl without the, the elite wide receiver doesn't win the Super Bowl without the elite quarterback, but the elite wide receiver definitely isn't doing it with the guy who can't play in the postseason at all, the above average quarterback, the guy who, who you're just overpaying through the teeth and ends up screwing you over. Do you really want more of what we've got in the last few years, or do you want to mix things up a bit and maybe again, not calling for anything. Maybe you're going to the draft and going and getting somebody else and trying to find the guy for CD lambs for CD land to receive the balls from. Yeah, I mean, at the same time, you could also see. So to Adam's point at that point, maybe Michael Parsons isn't going to be the odd man out. But that's the tough decision that Dallas is going to have to come up with at this point is do they see, because Dak, Dak is their franchise quarterback. We can all agree to that right now. He's been right now. Yeah. Yeah. He's been their quarterback for about being eighth year since 2016 when he took over for Roma. So he's been their franchise guy this entire time. So they now have to come up with the tough decision of do they stick with their franchise guy, which many organizations will just stick with their franchise guy. Look at the Steelers. They stuck with Ben Rothelsberger for all these years, Aaron Rodgers, the same thing, Tom Brady, Joe Montana was the franchise guy for San Francisco until until it was finally time to move on. And that's the, that's going to be a tough decision for Dallas. Are they going to decide that they need to move on so they can actually get to where they need to go? But the other problem is they move on from Dak. You got CD lamb for another three years. Are you going to come up with another Super Bowl contender in three years after that, Mm. So it would be five years after, so it would, it would be five years, including this year because he's still under his last contract for, so excuse me. So are you still going to be a Super Bowl contender by the time the next rotation of CDs contract comes up or maybe the next big guy that you have coming around for the team? Because if you do go through the draft or you do make a big splash on a trade or big splash in the off season in a free agency, are you going to be able to contend for a Super Bowl title for the next four years after that? Because CD lambs get, CD lambs top two, potentially not number two. And you want to make sure you keep them happy. And if you want to have the best receiver on your team for a very long time, then you got to keep them happy with something. Yeah, that's, that's a pretty fair point that you make, which is that, you know, they, you still have to develop that quarterback and that's in, at best, the best case scenario is you find them next year and you still have to develop them for two, three years. That's usually the, that's usually the threshold. It's two to three seasons. They usually, they rarely succeed within their, in their rookie year. That's the best case scenario, which means at best, you'll have two years left of CDs contract. So you also have to, so you have to wonder, maybe they do extend a DAC, but it's to a shorter term deal. And do they even want you to accept it? Yeah. Yeah. They'll never move on from the, they'll never try invest in head coaching and think that's the problem because that's what, because that's what Jerry Jones does. He has two, he has too large of an ego to just, to give the reins to a competent head coach, or at least one that is more, more than just a body to throw in there. He just, he's, he has too big of an ego for that. So you have to look, think that maybe they're looking at the talent there with DAC and maybe trying to reevaluate if he can win them a Super Bowl. I think he's a good quarterback. I'm not disputing that whatsoever. But is he winning you a Super Bowl? That's the question you've got to ask yourself. The only way he does is with a good coach. And once again, if how long they're holding on to Mike McCarthy and how long they held on to Jason Garrett, literally serves as any indication than I, highly, and I do mean highly doubt that they're gonna, and Dallas also has to prove that they can even be the team over 500 to begin with. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think they will. They have a good enough offensive line. They have C-LAM now. We know that. They, as far as they know that DAC isn't, DAC and Parsons aren't planning on holding out, but their team is good enough for them to at least be a playoff team this year. The question is, do Jerry Jones think that's enough? And if they hesitate this much on giving DAC this much money, the amount of money that he wants, then it makes me wonder if maybe, maybe they are trying to reevaluate what DAC really brings to the table. I think, again, good quarterback. I'm not saying that he sucks. I'm not saying that they are going to do anything. And this is just, I'm thinking out loud here. What if that, what if they are looking at things and saying, maybe we made a mistake committing to DAC for this long? I don't think Jerry Jones is humanly capable of admitting that. I'm not even joking. I genuinely don't believe that. So it, so do you think that he'll just end up letting him go? And then it'll just be an abrupt thing? No, I think they're probably going to keep him if I'm being real. Yeah. Probably I could be just shooting things out. They'll probably keep them the way that they kept aromo and then the cycle is going to continue. They're going to find their next guy that takes over when when DAC gets injured by some freak injury. And the next guy is going to take over for him and the cycle is going to continue. Yeah, that's a good chance to happen too. Honestly, yeah. Happened twice to Dallas already. Yeah. Bledsoe, Romo. Yeah, but that's very hard to happen. That's there's a reason it very rarely happens. And you don't you just you just don't find at least with Bledsoe and Brady, they found a Super Bowl winner. They found a guy who can who can actually take you all the way, which is very hard to find, which is very hard to find in the later rounds of an NFL draft. But you're never like what it's just fair. It's very hard to do in general, like what you found with Romo to DAC. It's not a plan is that's the way I would put it. It's not a plan for money to it's definitely not a plan. But you know, I mean, look at the Cowboys drafting DAC in the first place in 2016, they knew that he was going to end up being Ramos replacement at some point, or potentially Ramos replacement in areas. He's not a franchise guy. And that that's the thing at the end of the day is, you know, these teams are going to find a quarterback that they can lie on to be their franchise guy and be competitive at the very least. Like Kirk Cousins was able to make the Vikings competitive for the last hour, many years. DAX been able to at least like the cow, like the Cowboys for all it is worth have been competitive and have made playoff appearances. They just haven't been able to get over the hump to make it to the NFC Championship. You see other teams like the, like the Packers, they only won one ring under Rogers, but they were able to maintain being competitive and Rogers was their franchise guy. I'm blanking on other examples right now, Josh Allen, Josh Allen. The bills have been able to be competitive since 2019 with or without Josh Allen being able to lead him to a Super Bowl appearance. Stuff like that. It's true. Yeah. So we'll see what they end up doing. My money's obviously on them. They end up biting the bullet and signing their, signing the remaining players of that big three, but I mean, well, we'll see what happens. Yeah. All right. Yeah. That's all the schedule. What's that? They got Zeke. So it's all right. Yeah. We're eight years late to the Zeke hype, but all right. That's all the scheduled content we have for today, but you guys have any other thoughts before we end the show? No, cut down day in America to all those who celebrate. Yeah. We do have some, uh, do us some break down news, breaking you in it. Cadaria's Tony. What's up? Uh, it's nothing crazy. Rams finalizing a trade to service, Jonas Jones, the fourth to the Titans. The Titans just got another guy. Holy crap. The Titans are taking over the new, they're taking over the world. This is home here. Well, let's see if they can live up to the hype. It's literally on Levis, but we've been over this. We're going to find out very fast if Levis can play or not. That's, that's the whole, that's the whole gif with this guy. I mean, what this Titans team is, um, they're doing what they need to do in order to surround Levis with some weapons. And we'll see if he ends up turning into something as a possibility here. That's my sleeper for this year. Yeah. He's not too bad. I mean, he looked, he looked nice. Just, we'll see. Even if he's average, we're going to see a competitive Titans team. Yeah. All right. Well, that'll do it for us tonight. Thank you for listening to us. We have new episodes out on Tuesdays at 730 PM Eastern Standard Time. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel. We have all our episodes available on Spotify, Spreaker, Apple podcast, iHeartRadio, Google podcast, and so much more. Also be sure to follow our Instagram at Fumble Ruski underscore podcast and our tick talk at Fumble Ruski pod to keep up with our podcast and the latest coverage on the NFL. Otherwise, we'll see you next week over and out. [BLANK_AUDIO]