GBag Nation
NFL Insider Mike Golic Jr. joins the Nation to talk Cowboys contracts; NFL Week 1 Reactions
Football guy Mike Golic Jr. joined the GBag Nation to talk about the last weekend of football, including the NFL's first week and the Cowboys' big win in Cleveland, how Texas went into Ann Arbor and dominated the Wolverines, how he coped with his Notre Dame Fighting Irish's loss to Northern Illinois and more!
- Broadcast on:
- 10 Sep 2024
- Audio Format:
- other
This podcast is brought to you by Men's T clinic. Men's T clinic is the team I trust with my total wellness optimization. And so should you five DFW locations with North Frisco, El Dorado Parkway at Dallas North Tolway now open call 972 go men's T or visit men's T clinic calm. Yes, sir. Hour two of the G back nation on 105 three the fan. Hope you're having a great day. We have Travis Jankowski World Series hero coming up at four o'clock Rangers player show. But joining us now here is one of our favorite football guests. It's Mike Golick Jr. here on your home of the Cowboys in a good afternoon, sir. How are you? Good afternoon. Appreciate you have me. I'm doing well. Dak deal. Don Big News Sunday morning. Does he have what it takes to lead this team to a Super Bowl is the big conversation here? Mike, how do you take that one? Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think that's a good reminder that not all of quarterback conversation actually is just about the quarterback. But in terms of especially, and I think the quarterback payment conversation is kind of a good proxy for this. If your quarterback is good enough to pay, generally they're good enough to be the quarterback on a Super Bowl winning team. Now, whether they're good enough to be the quarterback that drags you to a Super Bowl above and beyond the capabilities or roster, that's a different conversation, but you could absolutely win a Super Bowl with Dak. How important is the run game for getting a Super Bowl? That's the big weakness that I think a lot of us saw in Cleveland on Sunday. How important is that? And how much can you fix it while you're in progress during a season? I got a ton while you're in season. I mean, there's things you can obviously do schematically, but I don't think there's there's things that the Dallas offense generally does or has shown us under Mike McCarthy's play calling. They're willing to do so. But it is important. I mean, that's the big weakness that didn't get addressed this off season with Dallas. And I think we see especially in the NFC in 2022, 2023, 2024 with teams like Philadelphia, teams like Detroit, teams like San Francisco, all of whom lay claim to a ground game that can be considered one of the strengths, if not the strength of their team. And we see in general, I think the way the league is gone right now, so many teams focusing on playing deep safety shells to take away big plays, so many linebackers that are coming in smaller, faster, lighter in the league. There's a market in efficiency that plenty of people have started to capitalize on right now. And I think just above and be all when it comes to winning a Super Bowl, you've got to be able to do multiple things. Maybe not great, but at least well enough to when you get to the postseason and team start game planning, even more particularly for your skill set and try and take away the Belichick model, those one or two things you do great. You've got to have enough for an off speed pitch. And I think that's the worry for Dallas that they won't have enough work in that. So you're seeing the run game is that that big of a weakness for them that it would prevent them from having significant postseason success this time around. Yeah, I think that's the concern. And I mean, again, it's mostly, I mean, we're one game sample size into this season. So it's hard to say it's based off this year, but based off what we saw last year in the fact that nothing about them demonstrably improved, like, hey, maybe with the young guys that you brought in along the offensive line, you know, maybe at the tail end of his career, Tyron Smith being healthy at left tackle would have been too much to count on it. You know, maybe you consider Beatrice or Walsh if all of a sudden Cooper BB pops in the way that he might be capable of. But other than that, I don't look at any part of their team and go, well, why would I expect a run game to improve beyond what we saw last year based on the moves that were made? I think that that was something we talked with you last time Gojo about the two rookies starting along the offensive line Cooper BB playing pretty well in his debut SOTED Guide. But across the league, how impressed were you with these rookies? I mean, your guy Joel, outstanding performance with Max Ross be for Wagga in New Orleans. It seemed like these young offensive lineman really hit the ground running week one. It wore my fat heart, man. Because I'll tell you what you look around at the wide receivers that were coming in as rookie that the numbers weren't quite as fun. Even though that was the position group that was named constantly throughout the draft alongside offensive tackle. But, you know, I think it's great to see the day and age where I think so much of the conversation and about, well, we have an online problem in the NFL. And what's the course that's causing this epidemic? Is it spread off? Is it college? Is it CBA? What have you? And you're still seeing now? All right, there are plenty of places you can go on college football that have pedigree that care about value that position or developing it at a highlight to do with some of the COVID year stuff. I don't know. I mean, guys like Joel, we're three and out guys. So it's still, I think, about the programs looking for offensive line coaches you can trust. But the bottom line is this draft class we knew was full of talented guys in the spot. And it's nice to see that already paying dividends in the game that one did it. Gojo, you've done plenty of color analysis during games. In your time, I'm curious. What did you think of Brady in the booth? I'm like a guy doing it for the first time. Like, I was thinking back to like when I got started doing games and it, you know, it's all so much at a lower level than what Tom's walking into right now. But I think that's kind of the point. Like, when I got started, I got to start in a three man booth and be a guy that added in. I didn't have to drive the situation. I want to even know you guys remember when Greg Olson started calling games and he was a player was he a part of a three man booth when he did that? Because I think that goes a long way in helping you figure out how to go in and fill the space tightly without feeling like you've got to carry the conversation. Tom just felt like a guy that wasn't comfortable with the space yet. But I'm still confident given his background, his resume, and who he's been as a player, a guy that's not afraid of doing the work that he can get there. But yeah, it sounded awkward and clunky and like a guy whose first time calling a game in front of an audience came as the best crew on the big network that called the best game of the weekend. Mike, give us your assessment of the Texas Longhorn school into the big house and getting a victory. Is this a team that we're going to have to see in the end will be there with the Georges and the others a fine for this national championship. They want me right now. I mean, what a and you could say that Texas has the best win of the two. I think overall Clemson might prove to be a better team than Michigan this year just because the quarterback situation for Michigan. But going on the road against that defense in the big house with a whole new skill group the way Texas has been breaking in this year. I think Steve Sarkisian in the culture he's built around that program where hey, offensive and defensive line depths now are out of place where you replace a couple of premier defense attacks from last year and can still go out and get the job done. You're such a gifted play caller is Sark that hey, that new group of guys who portal into the skill spots to go with a deep running back group already operating at a level that most of your peers around the sport can't match yet. I've been really impressed at what Sark has built there. And I think built is really the operative term now. That's a healthy team. And Quinn, yours, by the way, you know, Heisman conversation conversation about the next level of the NFL. He's looked phenomenal, flinging the football around and moving around in the pocket, keeping his eyes down field. All the NFL caliber stuff we ask you to do as a college quarterback that had that rare thing where he's gotten to stick around now for a few years and actually get to know his such surroundings. My goal a junior here with you on the fan. After Sunday, I thought, man, maybe Detroit's going to catch San Francisco. But watching the Niners last night, they looked pretty dang good. Are the Niners still the, you know, clearly the best team in the conference? Yep, they check that box. I think pretty resoundingly. And, you know, part of it was, hey, you're going up against the jet team that is nowhere close to who they're going to be at the end of the season. We knew all the parts about this Jets roster that were coming together in a hurry and trying to microwave that against a team that's so sure of its identity and its personnel the way the 49ers is. That was always going to be a tough ask. But I think seeing Leonard Floyd pop and I believe lead that team and pressures this last game huge for them as having an off, you know, a Russia opposite Nick Bosa to help on that defense, but offensively losing what you could argue is your best player on the team and still being able to default to just the normal Shanahan offensive run game principles and have that be more than good enough was a really impressive reminder of one, why that team got so much Super Bowl pressure in addition to the Brock Purdy final year of his rookie contract, but also how capable they are of going out and being able to pull that off. Go, Joe, you're a man that will try a variety of different foods. And I have a reason why I'm going to ask this. But have you ever tried pickled pigs feet? I have not yet gone down the pickled pig feet path. Okay, so we do survivor picks on our show every week on Fridays and so he picked my schmuck self pick the Cincinnati Bengals to beat the Patriots. So now on Friday, I've got to do a bet payoff. And that's on the board. Do you think that I should go with the pickles pickled pigs feet or do you have another suggestion of something I should rock with? You know what? I'm kind of curious about anything pickled kind of does that for me. That's just a flavor profile I tend to enjoy. And so I think it's one of those. You just got to sort of put it out of your mind. And I've tried to do this more as an adult because growing up I had a very limited palette. I was a fat kid that liked the simple things. But growing older, I'm like, you know what, I need to go in if I'm going to be at a restaurant that's got a good chef, let that chef do their thing and do what they do. Well, just put it out of your mind, take a bite and try and just consider it without thinking about what it actually is. Were you a t-shirt on in the pool guy? Oh, big time. Oh, God, I fell in. I can't want to wear it. Oh, trust me, that song and dance was a very, very familiar one for your boy. Well, I know you love the mashups. I love your food reviews. Is there anything you've had recently here that just absolutely hit it out of the park? Let me tell you what, I know it's not available everywhere. It's a bit of a regional delicacy, but you could order online. I don't know if they've got it down by y'all, but greater ice cream on a Cincinnati, Ohio. Does a key lime pie and a lemon meringue pie flavor that have absolutely rocked my world. The bits of pie crust inside the ice cream itself sent me to another plane of existence. I didn't know as possible. So if you've got the ability, if you're out somewhere that has it, I would say walk, don't run and try and get yourself. So did you just consume like a tub of that after the Notre Dame game on Saturday? Man, I needed, I needed that. I needed, you know, the power of prayer. I was in a dark place, though, and I had allowed myself to fly really high coming off that and then when like everyone else was start to believe everything was possible. And listen, like I, when I was at Notre Dame, lost a lot of games like this, like I lost to Syracuse on my freshman year senior day, lost to Yukon the next year being from Connecticut, lost to Tulsa BK's first year in South Bend. I know exactly how this goes. But man, I thought we were past this and it sucked to see again. Hey, well, Mike, did it with this Notre Dame a team that would be, are they, will they be patient with the coach? Or is this something that we kind of need to keep an eye on now? I would say that patience is still going to be the virtue. And they have a chance right now to still write the ship. Right. Well, Notre Dame is going to have to go and prove to me on the field that they are actually a playoff caliber team. Like we talked about the talent on the roster. We talked about the schedule that lined up for them. But the way they've executed so far, especially most recently, like, yeah, they did enough to go on the road and get away to get to the Texas A&M team that is talented and a hostile environment. But we still haven't seen them, especially offensively, play anything close to their best football, their transfer quarterback and Riley Leonard, who's coming off an injury last year, but it showed promise that Duke hasn't looked yet enough like the player that Notre Dame believe they got in the portal for me to say, hey, they're a playoff caliber team, but they got a chance. So yes, I think they will be patient Marcus Freeman has done an overwhelming amount of good for that program at a time where, hey, in the name image, you like this era, I didn't know what it was going to look like for Notre Dame and him alongside their new AD have navigated those waters really well and had them contending and playing ball in that pool. So he's got to eliminate this from his game though, the lost to Marshall two years ago in his first season. And now this are going to loom large because that was the one thing Brian Kelly at the end of his tenure had done away with yet Notre Dame might have had a big game problem, but Notre Dame had rid themselves from losing to the teams on their schedule. They absolutely could not lose to it. I believe Marcus Freeman's capable of getting to that point, but he's got to execute that now consistently. Now I am curious to what you thought of Aaron Rodgers last night as well. Aaron Rodgers looked his age last night, which was jarring for me. I said this morning on our show, he was Patrick Mahomes before we had Patrick Mahomes, he was the quarterback that could buy time could do all those things. And you saw Aaron Rodgers last night when it looked like he was close to getting hit, he made good damn sure that ball was out of his hand. Fast majority of his passes were out in under two and a half seconds according to next gen stats. Like he looked like a guy that really didn't want to get hit and tests the durability of that Achilles or the rest of his body. I'm sure he'll get more comfortable as the year goes along, but first rattle out of the box as they were trying to get a bunch of those things to come together quickly. He looked like a quarterback that really this year, especially you're going to need to make sure and find ways if you're, you know, Nate and Nathaniel Hackett in that offense that keep him upright and keep that pressure away from him as best as possible until he gets the seat back under. He might never be feeling like his old self. He's a 40 year old coming off into killing. I doubt we're going to see the same level of acrobatics, but he looked uncomfortable in the pocket, especially when pressure started to get close last night. Speaking of quarterbacks, it used to be able to evade the pressure and make something happen. Are we ever going to see DeShawn Watson be a good player again? No, I don't think so. And I mean, quite honestly, him as a player is going to fade to the background again here pretty quickly with another allegation of sexual assault popping up from 2020 when he was still in Houston. And what the NFL is going to do with that right now, the most severe, you could argue in terms of the actual nature of the allegation. And if you read the reports, it's pretty grisly stuff that he's accused of here that all of a sudden again for the NFL from the same guy where you had to weather the storm during the regular season with one of the starting quarterbacks in your league being publicly accused of this is a really brutal place for the NFL to be. And they've got no one to blame but themselves and the teams that have continued to employ DeShawn Watson despite everything we know associated with him. But on a football level, he's given us no reason to believe between the injuries he sustained and just the level of play in general that we are ever going to get to see the football player that we saw once before everything else took control of the DeShawn Watson story. You're the man, Mike. Thank you so much for your time in a enjoy the week and do the fall season. There he goes. Mike Golick Jr. You can watch him on draft Kings every day during your sports year. Yeah, this is a DeShawn Watson story. More of the same date in a gal over at her house. Next thing you know, he's allegedly naked on her bed asking for a massage. So I don't even know what to make of, you know, the allegations now. Fred had a really interesting Houston perspective on it yesterday in cross talk. Maybe we'll chat with him more about it tonight as I believe you're going to have a one hour get right before we get to the Arizona game. Okay. It is the G back nation here on 105 through the fan. Travis Jankowski Rangers player show was coming up at four o'clock. Little sports hodgepodge next chief were you taking it? Yeah, we had a business idea in the sports world go wrong over the weekend. I'll tell you about it next year in the nation.