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PFT Live with Mike Florio

Josh Allen rushed back after head injury + Is it time for Russell Wilson to be Steelers starting QB? (Hour 2)

Hour 2: Mike Florio (@ProFootballTalk) discusses the latest news in the NFL including Josh Allen returning to the field after a head injury, Buccaneers evacuate Florida amid Hurricane Milton, Steelers QB decision, and Deshaun Watson says he does not hear people saying he should be benched.

Broadcast on:
10 Oct 2024
Audio Format:
other

0:00  Did Josh Allen receive proper medical attention after injury?

3:08  Buccaneers evacuation

9:06  Tony Dungy on Robert Saleh firing

13:54  Is it time for Steelers to turn to Russell Wilson?

18:07  Steelers at Raiders preview

23:41  Deshaun Watson says he doesn’t hear criticism

33:26  Aaron Rodgers denies having involvement in Saleh firing

42:34  Jayden Daniels is a fan of Lamar Jackson, but doesn’t like comparison

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Be terms at discover.com/creditcard. How is your head? A lot of people still have its best concern that maybe something went wrong on how is your head? Yeah, I obviously went into the tent and I can only control what I can control, and what we talked about there, they deemed me clear to play, and that's kind of what happens, so it's as deep as I'll get into it. See, this gets back to the tension that exists in football between getting the best players on the field and engaging in actual healthcare. And there's a point where the rubber meets the road, and we've seen some potholes from time to time. We've seen some hubcaps go flying off. Remember when Russell Wilson just basically circumvented whoever was on the sidelines and came back on to the field? We've seen the TJ Watt Tin Advisor, oh, he doesn't have a concussion, well, is he just trying to make a fashion statement by putting on a Tin Advisor in the middle of a game after he got blown up and took what was a clear shot to the head. We saw the, to a talk about lower back injury a couple of years ago, the back injury when he was wobbly and woozy, and anyone with any sense knew that something was a miss, and it wasn't a back injury, what we saw on Sunday, and I know that few of us are medical professionals, and even if you're a medical professional, you have to treat the patient to know what's going on. The head hits the ground, and there's distress in the aftermath as teammates and trainers come to him. He explained, he rolled his ankle, they were testing him out in the tent, they found out while he was in the tent that he needed a concussion evaluation, 6 minutes and 6 seconds of actual clock time, 2 minutes and 30 seconds of game time, he was back with smelling salts on the way back to the field, which is not exactly an ideal look in this situation. Check the boxes to get the guy back versus health care, and we're talking about real time health care, and the point that Dr. Julian Bales made to me years ago, and I was talking to somebody else recently and this came up again, you can't properly do a concussion evaluation in a nylon blue tent, amid 70,000 people with the noise, with the activity. You got to take him into the locker room, take the shorter pads off, sit down and rest, gather yourself and then we'll do it. The one thing they want to avoid, I believe, 10 minutes of time passes and you find out that the guy was fine all along and his team has had to play the game without him. That's where, as I said, the rubber meets the road. Alright, we have Coach Dungy, are we bringing Coach Dungy on, Peter, are we taking a break? I think we're just bringing, oh we're going to take a break, okay, we will take a break. So we'll continue to monitor this story and it's going to continue to happen. And that's the question you want to ask yourself, are they checking boxes to get the player back on the field or are they giving the player health care that the player might not want? Because the player wants to get back on the field as badly as his team wants him back on the field and depending upon how important he is to the sport, the league might want him back on the field as well. Coach Dungy on the other side of this break, we'll be right back. I think overall everything went smoothly, we got the team out, we got their families out, we got their pets out and everything else, you know, family is the most important thing right now. You can replace material things and you want everybody to be okay and you hope everybody evacuate it if not hunkered down safely, but the family is the most important thing if you can get your family out and keep them safe, everything else can be replaced. Great perspective from Buccaneers coach Todd Ball is family number one, photo albums is always number two, but we carry around our photo albums nowadays so you don't have to go get the photo albums when it's time to get out. Here's a guy who did not get out, he's been in Tampa for 28 years, North Tampa avoided the worst of it. Coach Tony Dungy joining us now, we appreciate, under the circumstances, given that you just wrote out a storm, we appreciate you making time for us and we're glad everything's going well. Thank you Mike, great to be here with you and I can appreciate what coach Bowles was going through because you're sitting here in Tampa leading up to everything happening, you get different reports and you should go if you live in this area A or B you need to evacuate, but if you're in C or B you're okay and so I think the Bucks did the right thing, just took everybody got their families squared away, my family decided to stay, we had some trees and limbs that blew, but overall nothing really to bed in our house was just fine. From a personal standpoint though, I mean you mentioned you've been there 28 years and all week long my wife was asking me, how's coach Dungy, he's got that big family, are they moving, are they standing, I don't know, he's probably hearing from a thousand people, he doesn't need to hear from me, just try, he's been through this before, they'll make a good decision and they'll do whatever they have to do, you decided to stay put just as it approaches, that's what would be so stressful for me, what do we do, when do we go, how do we know, now you stay calm in all circumstances, but what is it like for you to be monitoring and you make a decision, you change a decision, you make a new decision, give us an idea of what that's like just from an inner turmoil standpoint. Yeah, the first time it happened for us was 1996, we did everything they said, we boarded up, we left and came back and everything was fine in our area and a gentleman told me because of the geography of Tampa that we rarely get hit, he'd been here a long time, they tend to beer off and so we watched that and over the years that's what we've tended to do, we've left two other times, three times in 28 years, we came back, everything was always fine. So you understand and you understand really the police and the health officials telling everybody to be careful and you want to respect that, but you just really feel over the years that these storms are going to beer off and they generally do and that's what happened here, you were sitting there and a couple of days ago, Tuesday, people are saying, hey, you need to evacuate certain areas, now our area, we were never told to evacuate. So my son lives in B, which they were told to evacuate, so he came up and stayed with us, we went to his house yesterday and seemed to be fine too, but you just have to make those decisions to what you think is best and I tend to once I make a decision not to worry about it. Well, I guess going through it multiple times over 28 years gets you to the point where you get used to it, I couldn't imagine going through it once, but it's good that it all worked out and it's also good that it reduced to a three because it's still made landfall somewhere, you're good fortune means somewhere else gets hit, but at least it was a three and not a five, there was a point where it looked like a mammoth storm, there's Tropicana field where the roof was ripped off and Tampa, but obviously it sounds like overall it could have been a lot worse and maybe should have been a lot worse, so there was some good news, some silver lining in that dark cloud. Now from a football standpoint, Buccaneers relocate early to Tampa, it creates issues, you've got family moving, family pets, et cetera, how is a head coach do you balance the real life part of this with getting a team ready to win a game that it needs to win on Sunday against the Saints? Yeah, and I think coach Bowles hit it there correctly and they've had some experience with this and I know in the past they have taken the team other places and didn't move the families, and that is not going to help you that much either because as your team is practicing their word and calling back and what's going on and looking at the news, so getting everybody safe I think is really the key and a big help and it's a tough situation because you want to win, you want to prepare, you know what your job is, but you still have these men who are concerned about their area, concerned about their community, so you're never 100% focused on your job, but these guys are professionals and I think they're going to be okay, but I can tell you it is a difficult situation to keep your team focused in this time. Yeah, and I guess in some way the game becomes the distraction from the things you're dealing with the refuge from the uncertainty and you can maybe, I don't know, be more focused because it's a break from all the other things that you've been doing, I guess it's a matter of personal perspective, but I could see some players welcoming three hours of football where they don't have to think about all the other things that have been going on. I only went through something similar to this one time is with 9/11 and that's what we talked about with our guys, let's go out and let's give the country a chance to get away, let's be the entertainment for people that need some relief and let's do a great job of being the best we can be for our fans. That's a great point. Now you had given us an excellent quote earlier in the week in the aftermath of the firing of Jets coach Robert Salah, we've had two days to digest it. What are your current views on the decision, the timing, just everything that we know, everything we've heard, what's your current thought on why the Jets did what they did and whether they did the right thing? Yeah, I don't know if there are any behind the scenes things, if the owner had some conversations with Robert Salah that he didn't like, what happened, but to me I'm just baffled that you could let go of a coach after five weeks at all. But especially in this situation, the Jets are two and three, a little disappointed in their record, but Rodney Harrison and I were on the podcast yesterday and we're trying to rank the top five teams in the AFC and the bottom five teams. Well, the Jets certainly weren't in the bottom five teams. There was some talk that maybe it could be five, six or seven, they're playing a game this week and on Monday if they win their first place in their division. So as an owner, you're trying to make decisions, what's going to be the best for our team? So do you really think this gives you the best chance to win that game and get into first place that's fire your coach that a lot of your team loves and is going to go out there and play so hard for, it just makes very little sense to me. And coming from a place where I worked in Pittsburgh, we were there last week, Mike talking to Art Rooney, the third who's now the president and owner and realized that in his life, they're not fired a coach to have someone coach, a fire coach after five weeks, it's just baffling to me. And then I go back to my year with the Buccaneers in 1999, we were the same way. Two and three to start the season had a couple of disappointing losses. Our quarterback was banged up a little bit. I don't know what our ownership was thinking, but we went on a nine game win streak, ended up winning 12 games, went to the playoffs, were that close to going to the Super Bowl. And if they'd have fired me at two and three, it would have been a mistake. You know, and when we hear about the Steelers never firing a coach, at least not for 55 years, people will react and say, well, they're always good. It's easy to not fire a coach. Listen, anytime they lose two or three games, I'm flooded with Steelers fans saying they got to get rid of Tom, they got to get rid of Tom. And Art Rooney has never wavered. There was a time coach and I think it was, it was after one of the postseason losses. I was told reliably that some of the limited partners were trying to get art to make a change and art continued to stay the course, to not waver there's value and continuity. You're going to have some short term challenges, but you create bigger challenges for yourself if you start changing coaches on a whim and you start listening to fans and listening to media and listening to outsiders who want a quick fix. And I'm sure there's plenty of Jets fans that were happy to get a pound of flesh. But now what? You lost your best defensive mind and your defensive coordinator has to run the team. Your defensive brain power has been depleted by this. Good luck winning that game on Monday night. No, no question about it. And you're right. You can react and respond to anything. I can remember I was a young person, young coach, on coach knows coach instead. Now he's won four Super Bowls and we lose a couple of games and people are calling into the talk shows. The game has passed Chuck nobody. It's time to make a change and he's sitting there thinking, are you guys nuts? But this is what you deal with as an owner. And you have to think what is going to be the best for us? How are we going to get better? And you're right. Okay. You make this change. You elevate. Maybe you got a young guy that you feel good about. Maybe he's going to be a potential head coach. But now he's up with no experience. He's running things. Somebody else has to take his spot. The next guy in line is that going to make the defense better? I don't think so. It just doesn't make sense at this point in time. I really don't understand it. And look, if they win some games and Woody Johnson is going to look like a genius, but they've got two prime time stand alone. He's going to be paying attention to everything they do and talking about why they did what they did. They've got the Monday night game against the bills. And then you'll be in Pittsburgh again for the Sunday night game week seven when the Jets play the Steelers. And that's not going to be easy either because the Steelers obviously are going to show up and play even though it didn't work out on Sunday night, they're going to do everything they can to win. Let's pivot to the Steelers. What does access mean? Access means a quinceanera for Lupita and most account. Access means an extra room for Labuela. Access means going from dreaming to achieving. 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Because look, my theory is Russell Wilson was never anything but QB1. Justin Fields has played five games. The offense was not crisp to say the least on Sunday night. They still felt like the kind of game the Steelers have won in the past where the stats look horrible, but the one stat that matters is how many points did we score and how many points did they score. I felt like they were still going to win the game, but it feels like to me, it's time. And I don't want to say to go back to Russell Wilson because it never got started, but he's QB1 and he fully participated in practice on Wednesday. That to me is the cue. That's the sign. Real participation, QB1 is ready, no time like now to let Russell Wilson do what they thought he was going to do week one. Mike, when they got these two guys, I thought it would really, really be a plus for Pittsburgh. They played some good ball last year. They didn't have a consistent quarterback play. And knowing Mike Tom on the way I do, I know what he was looking for it. Let me get somebody who is going to be the field general who's going to make good decisions out there who's going to keep us out of trouble and who the team believes in. And that was Russell Wilson in my mind. Now they also got Justin Fields. Hey, here's a guy I can put in. If we need a spark, we can do some different things. Maybe I can put him in in the red zone and give people what they have to deal with. Justin Fields makes some great plays, but he is not the consistent player at this moment that Russell Wilson is. I was at practice on Thursday and Russell was not going full speed. He was running the scout team. He was throwing with the backup receivers against Pittsburgh's number one defense. And he was lighting it up. Those balls were on the money. People were on the sidelines scratching their head. The defensive guys that were out there who were saying, "Oh wow, how did he get that ball in?" And I thought to myself, "When Russell's ready to go, I'm sure he's going to be back in there." Yes, Coach Tomlin about it, he said, "I love both of my quarterbacks. Justin's been great for us. We'll see what happens when Russell gets ready. Right now he's not 100 percent." Well, as you mentioned, he went through practice full go. I would not be surprised at all to see Russell Wilson in the lineup. Yeah, first time in five weeks, he was a full participant. And if they can get a running game, that's when Russell Wilson did his best. That play action, and he fires that beautiful deep ball and they've got George Pickens who can go get it now. I don't know. Should they be in the Devontae Adams mix? That may be the next question. But I think Russell Wilson, if he's healthy, he's still got it. The Bronco situation was an aberration because he was being used in a way that didn't fit his skill set with a team. It didn't fit his skill set. The Steelers are closer to what the Seahawks were. I'd like more of a running game like I said, but I think it can work well. What do you think about the possibility of Devontae Adams to Pittsburgh? They're reportedly still one of the few teams in the mix to make that trade. I think Devontae Adams would help the Steelers if they don't have to give up too much to get him. George Pickens is a tremendous talent. They've got some other young receivers, but a veteran guy who knows what he's doing to work in this lineup would be good. And Russell, I'll tell you, with what they're doing now, and Arthur Smith's offense, you mentioned what he did in Pittsburgh. This is exactly what Arthur Smith wants to do. And I think with a quarterback who kind of scares the defense in a different way, that'll help the running game as well. I've been a big believer in Mike Tomlin all the way back to when he was defensive coordinator of the Vikings for one year in 2006. I was banging the drum for the Steelers to hire him. And I heard last year that the Vikings actually were thinking about moving on from Brad Childress and making Mike Tomlin the head coach, which left me very disappointed to learn that. That thought was at least rocketing around the front offices of the Vikings, and Tomlin could have been the head coach there for the last 18 years. But one of the things that I've heard from other coaches about Tomlin, his ability to kind of speak to the better angels of players, to get them to conform, to get them to comply, what is it about him that allows him to just craft the right message, to keep a guy that under another coach would be a problem from being a problem under Mike Tomlin. I think he just has a sense of how to communicate with people, and they trust him and they believe in him. And when I hired him, he was 29 years old, and he's just coming in to coach our defensive backs, replacing her medwards. So the first meeting, we've got a veteran defensive back to a room at that time, Rhonda Barber, John Lynch, Donnie Abraham. We've got some high-powered guys. So I said in the back of the room, "I'm going to check on this guy if he needs some help in his first couple of meetings, I'll be there." Five minutes into the meeting, Mike, I left and went to the mother room. And he had a totally under control, I had those guys in the rise. And at that moment, I said, "Yeah, this guy is going to really be something." But he talks to players' language, he thinks like a player, he understands what they're going through. He's honest, he's tough with them, but he does it in a way that they can relate to. Michael Holly and I have been talking about plans to put together a book of all of the Mike Tomlin's sayings, and he keeps coming up with more of them. He said recently there's a fine line between drinking wine and squishing grapes, I mean, and it's always something you've never heard before. It's not somebody else's grandpa always used to say this, it's some brand new thing you've never heard before that is perfect. Has he always been that way? Always been that way, and those are classics, but he was that way as a young guy, and yes, you want to eat the hot dog, the hot dog's good. You don't want to see how the hot dog's made. Well that takes us to the Raiders. I don't think we want to see how that hot dog's made. What do you think of their plan to basically let the two quarterbacks, eight no kano and Gardner Minschoo, initially it was compete and practice. Now it's going to be out no kano. How do you navigate this as a coach where you just get to a point where you pick a guy and you're almost like an owner with a coach, a coach with a quarterback. At what point do you just pick a guy and let him do his thing? I really believe you have to do that, Mike. You have to let the quarterback know that he's the guy. You have to let the team know that he's the guy so he can go out there and play free. And you can't play quarterback thinking, boy, if I don't have a good game, I'm going to be out of the lineup next week. If I don't make this third down throw, they might replace me. That is no way to play quarterback, and so do they get a longer leash? Should they get a longer leash than players with other positions? I think you have to, and you've got to show them the lead. It's tough if you don't have a guy you believe in, then how do you do it? And I think that's where the Raiders are right now. We want to have that process, but I really don't know what type of quarterback I have. You know, I remember hearing Roger Warsky make the point years ago when you're in that position as a quarterback, you squeeze the ball a little bit tighter after every play that doesn't work out as designed. You spend a little more time looking over at the sideline, and yeah, you have to not let that get into your head. You know, we're conditioned to watch these games and think that it's almost robotic. It's not. They're human beings in those uniforms and different factors can cause them to just not have the confidence they need. And in my perspective, coach confidence is critical. And if you don't have it as a quarterback, you have no chance. It is and you have to instill that in your quarterback as well. Mike, I go back to 1992 with your Minnesota Vikings. I'm a first year coordinator with Denny Green. I'm running the defense. We are seven and two with Rich Ganon, and Denny comes into my office and he sits down. He says, hey, you got to get the defense ready. I'm going to make a quarterback change. I'm not happy with the way things are going. And I'm thinking we're seven and two. Rich is playing pretty good. We're rolling. Why is he going to make a change? Whatever reason he wanted to. But he told me something that day I never forgot. He said, when you change quarterbacks, you really can't go back to the other guy because you told the team that you don't believe in him. You have crushed his confidence. So you're going to be a head coach someday. You've got to ride it out with your quarterback, living them, support him because that's what he needs. Now, when you decide it's not going to work, then you make the change you let everybody know. One back and forth is not the way to go. And you've got to be decisive in that decision. Great stuff is always coach. Good to know that things worked out well. We're thinking about the entire region as another cleanup and recovery. Homenses. And we hope to talk to you again soon safe safe travels this weekend, up to MetLife Stadium for Bengals Giants. And again, we hope to talk to you real soon. Thanks a lot, Mike. Always great being with you and we'll talk soon. There he is. Hall of Fame head coach Tony Dungy. Let's take a break. When we return, Charles Robinson is going to join us. We're going to continue to unpack the psychology of the Jets and the things that Aaron Rodgers had to say yesterday and whether or not we believe much or any of it, plus where the Jets go from here, especially on the offensive side of the ball, that and more with Charles Robinson next on this Thursday edition of PFT Law. It's getting pretty loud, you know, national guys criticizing you. So how do you go about taking the block that up? You know, I just continue to, first off, I don't hear it, I don't see it, so I'm not on Twitter. You know, I'm not on any social media or things like that. So anytime that stuff comes up, all the time I first hear is you guys are bringing it up or, you know, somebody else outside and I just don't know who it's coming from. So that's one thing and then also it's just, it's a new opportunity, it's a new, it's a new week, you know what I'm saying? Like those guys are saying it from a different perspective. We know what we need to do internally and that's the, that's the difference. All they never listen to anything that we have to say, did anything the fans have to say, they never hear any of it. They hear all of it, but DeShawn Watson isn't going to acknowledge that widespread calls for his benching in Cleveland. We welcome in Charles Robinson and we're going to start with the Browns. There isn't a single person I've heard say they need to stick with Sean Watson. Statistically, it's not working. Any other team he'd be benched by now, they couldn't keep Joe Flacco because of this very moment. How do the Browns get out of this maze? Wow, that's a great question. So when I was kind of walking through this after this weekend's game, and I think you and I both know that this is really, it's an ownership decision. I think Jimmy Haslam did that deal, the fully guaranteed deal that DeShawn Watson has. I think if Jimmy had not done that deal, but had been done in a traditional manner, first off, they probably wouldn't have gotten him, right? That trade wouldn't have occurred to the Cleveland Browns, but had it been done in a traditional manner, I had an executive and we were talking and he said, look, if Andrew Barry, the general manager, they're Kevin Stafansky, if they weigh in on that contract and he gets done the way it typically gets done, DeShawn might have $60 million and guaranteed money right now, 70, that's cuttable. That's you post June, you designate as a post June cut, and he's no longer Cleveland Brown after the 2024 season. Obviously, that's not what happened and money got moved around so that they can continue to make roster decisions and so any kind of a cut at this point, it's an extension level of it. It's an asteroid strike that destroys the entire roster, so it's not possible, you can't get rid of DeShawn Watson. Are there creative ways? Could DeShawn say, well, I really want out of here, I hate this, I've soured on this, so let's rework the deal in some kind of a manner where it makes it possible to open the door and get me out of there. That's one aspect, I wonder if there's another aspect of strapping him with draft picks and basically just saying, we're going to add draft picks to him. You're basically buying your way out of the salary by strapping draft picks on him to get him out there. There's a Brock Osweiler situation when Denver did that. I don't really think that's even possible because of the financial implications of this. I highly doubt, I don't see any world where DeShawn Watson goes, let me give up any of the guaranteed money that I already have. You have the Browns that are in a scenario where you can't bench him because of the financial implications of it, the optics of it and once you do it, how do you ever come back from that? Secondly, as you said about Flacco, I think that's the exact reason why Flacco is not on the roster because they know that the offense changed, there was a wholesale change in how the offense operated once Flacco stepped onto the field last year, became a vertical offense, David Injoku, Amari Cooper, it unlocked a number of players from a performance standpoint and they won games and they went to the post season. If you keep him on the roster and you have all these players right now that are like, this is terrible, this is awful, and oh by the way, we have a guy who's a backup who led us last year to the playoffs and changed what we were offensively, that would potentially fracture the locker room right now and I think that's part of why Flacco is not there. I would love to hear you tell me how at this point this gets changed. I do think the one thing that really needs to happen at some point is I think Jimmy Haslam has to either sit down with someone there in the local media or nationally or something and say, I want everybody to understand that part of the reason we're in this situation is because that contract exists because I was the one who green lit it. I was the one who knew this is what we needed to do to ultimately land to Sean Watson because unless he does that, I think what ultimately happens is people look at Andrew Berry, they look at Kevin Stafansky and it gets focused through them being the problem, why they're in this moment right now and not the wider scope of it, it's the deal that has painted them in this corner as much as anything else. Yeah, but the owners like to hide behind the curtain and blame others for the decisions that they make. Even if you have to blame the homeless guy who said draft Johnny Manziel, it was clearly something that Jimmy Haslam wanted 10 years ago. I think it would be important though for them to come out and call it what it is because my guess is there's plenty of casual fans that don't follow the sport like we do and don't even understand that their hands are tied by that contract, they just see players on the field. Why is this guy on the field? They have other quarterbacks, why are we sticking with this guy? They may not even know how to frame the question or seek the information that would let them understand this got off a contract with 92 million guarantees, full guarantees beyond this year have tied the Browns hands and I noticed yesterday on the hellscape formerly known as Twitter, some of the bot accounts thrown out the idea that the Sean Watson would welcome a trade out of Cleveland. Of course he would, nobody's going to want him and there's no way to connect these dots that works unless he's willing to dramatically reduce his salary. That's the only way. I remember when Colin Kaepernick was possibly going to be traded to the Broncos before any of the other stuff happened. There was a possible trade to the Broncos, John Elway wanted him to take less money, he had like $12 million guarantee that year and I remember saying, why? You've negotiated that, you're owed that, don't give up a penny and I would say the same thing to the Sean Watson, he got 92 million dollars but at some point Charles, if you want a new start, that's the only way he's going to get it and even then, even then, it creates not quite an extinction level event, they're looking at a 72 million dollar cap number four and if he's on the team next year, if they trade him before June 1 of next year, it's an 80 million dollar cap charge for money they've already paid him that hits the books next year. So, but that's the only way it happens and I'm not an advocate of players giving up the money they've already negotiated but if you really want to go somewhere else, the only way to do it is dramatically reduce the 92 million you're due to still make. But Mike as you said, you have to have a willing host who wants to Sean Watson right now, he's not, so I talked to an AFC executive, I think it was Tuesday and we got to Watson as being part of the subject and he recounted to me at one point, he was watching, I gotta be careful how I say this because I make it obvious who it was, he had an ability at one point to watch Deshawn in a Texans practice, right. And he said it shocked him and this was the year that Deshawn, it was his last big year in Houston when they went for him, he put up massive statistics, right. So he said what shocked me was I'm standing there and I'm watching him and during the course of practice, I see him continually looking at the sideline and he's looking at Bill O'Brien and he's like and I'm realizing that there's a multitude of decisions that he's got to make in practice but he's looking to the head coach to make these decisions and this executive said to me, I was stunned because we were at the point in his career where that should not happen at all anymore and he said in that moment I thought to myself like, this is not a fully developed situation, like there's still, there's something still missing and yeah, he's putting up big stats, they're losing games but there's, there's something not completely right and he said that's something that he has thought about as he's watched Watson later in his career was that Bill O'Brien, you know, might have been covering for some missing, you know, some craters, some missing pieces in that development for Deshawn Watson and maybe how the scheme was running and some other things and that's sort of what we're now seeing is that he was not as, he wasn't a fully baked cake at that point in Houston, we thought he was because of the numbers but we weren't seeing everything that was going on behind the scenes. Well you know what's happened to the cake now is the thing my mother always told me was going to happen if I ran up and down the steps while she had a cake in the oven, the cake has gone flat. I don't know that I ever actually flattened a cake but I was informed anytime a cake was in the oven do not run up and down the steps, but I hadn't thought of that one in a long time. The last point before, because I want to get to Rogers and I know we don't want to monopolize your time, you got something else coming up. I think the Browns need to just go back to, remember they had that strategic plan that was essentially a fancy way of tanking, they need to come up on the fly, they need to put Paul de Podesta to work because sell off assets, maximize draft picks, embrace the suck, as Jared Allen once said, get the most picks you can because the only way you're going to have a team is to have young players who are cheap while you have this 92 million dollar ball and chain around your neck for the next two years. Okay, so the Jets, now you're up on the story. Maybe you were watching earlier, you probably weren't. I alluded to the fact that they're selling us on the idea that Aaron Rodgers had no input, no notice, no idea that Woody Johnson was doing this. That's the apparently official version that they haven't articulated, but that's the vibe. I had no idea what was happening. Woody Johnson can run the team as he see fits, he's got no obligation to tell me anything. And I mentioned that again, because there's a little Aaron Rodgers from July of 2021 with a somewhat different vibe about his opinions on how he should be involved in big decisions. Have a listen. The other part in February was wanting to be a part of conversations involving four agents, which has never happened in my career. You know, I've trained with a number of NFL guys, most of my career in the off seasons. My agency at least first has had a number of high draft picks over the years. I've tried to pass along information hasn't really been used, shall we say, and the fact that I haven't been using those discussions was when I wanted to change moving forward. And I felt like based on my years, the way I can still play that that should be a natural part of the conversation. How dare you? How dare you. The context was created. How dare we use words that he used in the past? Yeah, I've been immunized. But the other thing too, man, it's been, and I don't know, I try not to look back at videos of me from three years ago, but man, is that Aaron Rodgers? I don't know if that's Aaron Rodgers. I think we made a check that doesn't look like the Aaron Rodgers that I see now. But setting that aside, I always can do that to you. I'm not, I'm not being a smartass here, apparently, I always can do that to you. But regardless, he wanted to sit at the table and it was free agents then. But I remember him arguing when Matt LaFor put in the offense with very limited ability of the quarterback to call audibles and his attitude was, I've been doing this 15 years. Why don't you trust me to have a broader range of plays available? This is the same thing. I've been around for 20 years. You're not going to talk to me before you just fire the coach. You're not going to give me a heads up. That's why I reject this idea that he had no input and he had no notice. Because if you do that to Aaron Rodgers, what you get is a press conference like the one that we saw in July of 2021. Yeah, I mean, come on, Mike, he's a de facto executive there. Like why I don't even understand why anyone at this point would really believe this, you know, storyline that, oh, I'm surprised that people think I have this much power in the organization. Really? Are you serious? You've got players that you wanted them to get. Al Lazard is there because of you. Randall Cobb was there because of you. Nathaniel Hackett got two jobs. He got a job with the Broncos because they thought they were going to get you. Okay. That's true. And then he got an OC job with the Jets because they wanted to pair him with you. I'll give you another story. Okay. And I think to me, this underscores precisely how much power he has. When I go through there in the summer, and I'm a training camp tour, and I'm talking to someone there in the brain trust about his son, right, right? What this person said to me was, well, there's not a lot of pressure, you know, internally in our organization to force this and get this done. It's not like Aaron Rodgers has stepped up and said, hey, you need to get that finish. You're like, we need this guy in there. And this person said to me, like, you know, Aaron doesn't even really have a relationship with this guy. But there's not that kind of internal pressure point for us to get this done. And I'm like, okay. So that's pretty suggestive that if Aaron had spoken up and said, why isn't the son retic in here right now, you know, we need this player in here, that it could have changed whether or not a son retic added, you are, you're an executive at that point. You are part of the decision making tree there. So I just, it's absurd to me that it's number one, it's interesting that you don't see Joe Douglass's name, the general manager there, inside 100 miles of this decision, right? You don't, he's not brought up. He's not on any statement. He's not talking to anyone completely absent of this, right? Rodgers, same deal. They've completely made sure that Rodgers is outside of the blast radius of any of this. All there is is the one phone call that, you know, got made where supposedly Woody Johnson's calling just to say, hey, how you doing? In no world given Aaron Rodgers history, as you said, the tape you played, how he likes to be involved, and then how they've operated since they brought him in, does an owner make that decision and not, at the very least, make sure Rodgers is going to be okay with it or not put up some kind of a fight. I'm not saying that Rodgers fired Robert Salah, but the idea that Rodgers had no clue whatsoever that Robert Salah could be out and that Woody Johnson would make this unilaterally and not have any discussion at all with Aaron Rodgers about it. I do not find that believable. The problem is only two individuals could know about that conversation. That's Aaron and Woody. And if Aaron Woody said it didn't happen, then that's the story, it didn't happen. The only way that makes sense is if Woody Johnson, Mr. Magood, his way into it, completely mishandled it, didn't run it by Aaron, but it just coincidentally happened to be the thing Aaron wanted anyway. That's the only way, the only way that what they're telling us is true. I know I got to let you run. Before you go, though, I'll give you as much time as you want to take, given the confines that you got to run, is Nathaniel Hackett in trouble despite the fact that it looks like he was saved this week? Okay. So my conversations with individuals who knew kind of, I don't want to even say kind of, they knew what Woody Johnson's thought process was going through this. What I was told was that I said, look, did Nathaniel Hackett potentially being demoted? Was this the thing that ultimately caused the delay? Why wasn't he fired on? Why wasn't Robert Sol fired on Monday? Why was he fired on Tuesday? Why was Sol allowed into the building and then had to be let out by security? Why was this so messy? Is this because all of a sudden it's like, Nathaniel Hackett's going to get demoted. Aaron's upset. We just got to hurry. We just got to fire Sol. We got to get out from under this. Actually, I had someone who said to me, and I'm going to paraphrase it here, but it was like, look, there's not a lot of belief in terms of Woody Johnson and what he's seen on the field. There's not a ton of belief from Woody Johnson's standpoint that Nathaniel Hackett is a good coach, that he's doing a great job. And this person said to me, frankly, if Robert Sol had gone to Woody Johnson say a week earlier and said, I'm thinking about demoting Nathaniel Hackett, I'm thinking about taking play calling duties away from him, this person said to me, Woody Johnson might have taken that as a positive that, oh, okay, look at Robert Sol is stepping up and he's making this decision. He sees the lack of cohesion and he's actually doing something about it, that that could potentially have been a positive for Woody Johnson. And I do think that Jeff Ulbrich, the interim head coach, that clearly inside that organization you talk to people, Woody Johnson has had an affinity for a while, I do think it's realistic that Ulbrich is going to have Hackett on a short leash and I had someone tell me, look, if he retains play calling duties, I would watch the Buffalo game on Monday night. And if the offense is absolutely terrible, I think that might be the end of his play calling duties, him having ownership of that offense after the Buffalo game, which, so the signal to me is he's on the clock there, there's, there's, it's not just a Robert Sol if thing, it actually is an Nathaniel Hackett thing. And if this continues the way it's going, he would not be surprised at all if Hackett gets demoted regardless. And whatever happens, Aaron Rodgers will have had no input, no advanced notice, no power whatsoever. All right, you can check out Charles quarterback room article every Tuesday at yahoo.com/nfl Charles. Thanks again for some of your time. We'll do it again. All right, there he is, Charles Robinson, we're going to take a break where we return. I think we actually are up to the final segment of the show, and I might have more than 60 seconds to talk. I have to come up with something to talk about. Find out what that is when PFC Live continues right after this. One of the biggest matchups in college football this year, we'll be right here on Peacock and NBC Saturday night, number two Ohio State at number three Oregon. It begins at seven o'clock Eastern, there might be a Kristen Sasquatch sighting in the studio show, big 10 Saturday night presented by Discover. You know, when the schedule comes out in May, there's always those games that we can't wait to find when they're going to be because we know going in that's going to be a pretty big game. Well, ensuing events can take what was going to be a big game and make it not a big game. Injuries, ineffectiveness of the teams, et cetera. The flip side is there will be games that we would have looked at in May and said, okay, that's nice. They were going to play at some point this year, that's the week they play. But then when one of the teams is unexpectedly four in one and has the best rookie quarterback seemingly by far, commanders at the Ravens becomes the game of the day. Frankly, I'll do respect to Sunday night football, Bengals, Giants. I think we can be candid and say, commanders, Ravens is the game of the day as we see Jaden Daniels, arguably the best running quarterback in football up against Lamar Jackson, who has been that guy for several years. Here's a little Jaden Daniels talking about Lamar Jackson and the comparisons he's already drawing to the two-time MVP. It goes back some time, it's kind of like a big bro, little bro type of thing, but it's mutual respect between both. You get tired of some of those questions where people try to compare you to other guys? Um, yeah, I think it's go out there and just appreciate each individual for who they are. So I don't like when people really try to compare me to Lamar and vice versa. You know, we're two different players and just go out there just, you know, just appreciate what the quarterback player is being played. So that's what I'll try to do is just appreciate everybody for who they are. One of the compelling storylines for me last week was it was Jaden Daniels against DeShawn Watson because seven years ago, DeShawn Watson was what Jaden Daniels is. And we've seen that fall off. Now it's Jaden Daniels against Lamar Jackson who hasn't fallen off. I mean, if the Ravens end up a one seed in the AFC, Lamar Jackson could be back to back MVP. So one of the big issues here, we're up to week number six, game number six for Jaden Daniels. So I'm going to explain to me long ago, when you have a quarterback who is doing great things early in his career, you get to a point where there's enough film out there. So the defenses can figure out what it is he's doing. And you know, the Bill Belichick approach, take away the best thing that an offense does, take away the best thing that Jaden Daniels does, force him into situations where he has to do something, he's really not comfortable doing, confuse him with your looks about what it is you're going to do. The more film you have on the guy, the easier it is to figure out what he's doing. And then the question becomes, is he still so good that it doesn't matter? This could be kind of at the point where the Ravens have full opportunity to figure out exactly what Jaden Daniels is doing and to try to stop it and will they and I think they might have a hard time. Number one, the defense isn't great. He brought in Dean Pease to be a senior advisor to Zach or the new defensive coordinator. But Daniel told me after the win over the Browns, because I said, when you run it looks like you still have a higher gear and he said he does. Plus that story about the Diami, a Diami Brown touchdown where he was at the sideline after the prior play and he said to Cliff Kingsbury, if they're going to single cover this guy, we got to take a shot and Kingsbury is like, sounds good to me. So the trust, the empowerment, the confidence, there's that word again. We talked about it with Tony Dungy. How important it is for a quarterback to be confident. I can't think of a quarterback right now that is losing confidence more than Jaden Daniels. Maybe Patrick Mahomes because he's been losing it for six years. But this is going to be, I think, a potentially great game, especially because we know the Ravens have a history at home every once in a while, they'll step in that pothole, they'll blow a lead in the fourth quarter and it's going to be very interesting. One o'clock Eastern on Sunday must see TV as you watch all the games, watch Red Zone, whatever. Keep a close eye on Commander's Ravens. That very well might be the best game of the day. We are running out of time here. The count is coming in and out. I hear it now. Heat's telling me when to shut up. I have to shut up soon. Enjoy the game tonight. We'll see you tomorrow morning with Rodney Harrison and the Pics Podcast. Have a great day. What does access mean? Access means a quinceanera for Lupita and those to come. Access means an extra room for La Boella. Access means going from dreaming to achieving. 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