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Drivers you save by switching save nearly $750 on average and auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts. So multitask right now. Get your quote now at progressive.com. Progressive cash with the insurance company and affiliates, national average 12 months savings of $744 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Social savings will vary, discounts not available in all states and situations. I think I just need to have you give me the wake up call on Tuesday. The wake up call pep talk that will get me going that will get me out of bed that will get me moving because challenge one is get out of bed. Challenge two is move quickly enough. So I actually get up here in time for the show to start. I still have not shown up late. There's about 20, 25 people in this room and none of them is Mike Florio because he has overslept. Now see, there's an asterisk that applies to that, Devin, let me tell you this real quickly. That was at the scouting combine more than five years ago. That was tardy to the first hour that used to be just radio. I was never late for the TV show. And in my defense, Rob Statt's Carrera, who knew how far I was away by foot from the Indiana Convention Center didn't call me to make sure I was awake until like 15 minutes to air. It's like, I'm probably not going to make it by then and I still don't know what happened. I don't know what happened. When I was a kid, I perfected the art of turning off my alarm and going back to sleep. So I had to put the alarm clock on the other side of the room because I had to figure it literally, not figuratively, but literally get out of bed and walk over there to turn it off. So I wouldn't go right back to sleep. So anyway, that's the one time one time I was late and it was just for the radio side, not for the TV side. I have yet to be late for the TV side. It's been close. It hasn't happened. That's a couple of thousand dollars fine. So like, yeah, we get we get all the excuses and you know, Stas Guerrero should have called you earlier and all of that nonsense, but you said you were never late. Great job by the production team to say, hey, you're lying. You said late. You didn't say I was never late for only TV all that. You were late. Late is late. And you know, it's not the great jar that we have to give money to, but this should go into something. Somebody sell money. Well, with interest, too, it's probably a lot of money now because it's nearly six years old. Let me add this, I don't think it's a fine in New England. If you're late, I think Bill tells you get your ass in your car and go home. I at least remember one time when some guys showed up late because it was snowing and they got sent home. You get hit with both. You get sent home and you get fine. So you miss a game plan for the day and he still hits your pockets. Shout out bears. Bears comes around, bills bills go to guy in New England. He would just hand you the white envelope and you would know what that means. I never got one of those. I'm a guy that's punctual. Were you there the day that happened? Because that was Randy Moss and a couple of other days before after you. Was that you? No, that was a year before I got there. So the legends still have it sends them. What a message it sends guys get there late on a day when they have a perfectly good excuse. I'm driving in the snow at still not good enough. Get your ass home right after you deposit your fine money in Burgess pocket and off you go. But it you know what it does it's night before it's going to snow tomorrow. I better leave a half hour before I was going to leave and I know we'll move on after this. But that's what it would be. We would end the day and we usually would go home and we have a random squad meeting at the end of the day. I'm like, what the hell is this about? And Bill will come in and he go, I'm telling you guys. It's going to can snow tomorrow. Don't call and say, my car is this, it's going to have been snow be here on time. Oh, that's awesome. All right. Snow was an issue for the 49ers on Sunday night. I mean, you know, every once in a while, you'll see one of these snow games where it's clear that one team is comfortable in the snow and the other one is not. What is this stuff? What's going on? Can't we run? The 49ers had a rough time in making it rougher, Christian McCaffrey and Jordan Mason, top two options at tailback, both heading to injured reserve. McCaffrey has a PCL injury that is expected to keep him out up to six weeks and that likely means that likely means we're not going to see him again because they're going to have to really make something happen to have a chance to get to the playoffs at five and seven and without their best player, arguably a Christian McCaffrey. There it is. That's the play that a couple of snaps after he hit the knee hard when he was tripped up on what looked like it was going to be a touchdown. He gets tripped up just as he's about to break free knee hits. He gets the ball a couple of snaps later and what we didn't know what it was like. Did he blow out? Is it killing? Like what caused him to go down when he jogged off the field afterwards? It's like, well, it's probably not that, but something wasn't right in the knee. And now he's going to be gone at least for the next four games by virtue of being placed on injured reserve, but I don't think we're going to see him again this year unless they catch fire and, you know, yeah, there are two games behind first place in the NFC West, but Sims and I were talking about this yesterday. You got to climb over two other teams to get there and those teams are going to be playing each other. So it's not like all three of the teams in front of you are just going to fall apart. If one of them loses, the other one's going to win. We've got these divisional games down the stretch. So it's going to be hard to jump over two guys and catch the Seahawks at first place in the division. Especially when you look at their last two games, you know, you play against the green bay Packers and you play against the Buffalo Bills. I know those are good teams, but now you're going to be playing against your division opponents who are looking at that spot and saying it's ours. So it just doesn't get any easier. This has been a tough season for them. You know, I think for Christian McCaffrey, no one really talks about that. When a guy's hurt, I think the thought is all like, well, they'll be good when they get back. They'll be when you miss so much time, it's just, it's hard. Your body doesn't get to go through the normal things you go through of preparing your body to go play a football season. And I think when you look at Christian McCaff when it came back, it seems like he did everything he possibly could to have his body ready to go, but it just, it reminds us that nothing gets you prepared for playing football quite like playing football. You have to do that. And I know we see cases of guys who sit out and they come back and they do well. But that that's, that's usually anomaly. It doesn't happen often. And for this team, they've had so many guys banged up throughout the season. It just feels like they have a big game. They win. Then another game goes by and it's like, oh, another long, it's just they can't kind of get out of this thing this year for them as a team, whereas injuries and deal with different things. And like you said, the make matters worse. You feel like you're getting going and you get a Sunday night in Buffalo, where it's snow. It's like the worst conditions you can possibly play in. And it's the conditions that Buffalo strives in. So just a tough break for this 49ers team. Kelly Shannon made that point last week when he was getting some questions about Christian McCaffrey's performance in his three games back, no touchdowns, 150 rushing yards in three games. Like when you miss pretty much all the training camp, when you don't play it all in the preseason, when you've missed eight weeks to start the season, you're not going to be in MVP form. He was the offensive player of the year last year with 21 touchdowns. He finishes 2024, unless he does make it back for the last game of the regular season. He finishes 2024 with zero touchdowns. You know, Devin, I feel like it's some level for the 49ers. It's a combination of all the stuff that goes into playing deep into January as often as they have dating all the way back to 2019. Now that that team has turned over significantly since then, but the nucleus, the veteran nucleus, the guys who kind of came of agents here for just going, it feels like it's coming to an end for them. It's just too much to keep banging your head and having the door not fall down. You can't win a Super Bowl. You're having extra wear and tear on your body. And this year is just like 2020, the year after they lost to the Chiefs and the Super Bowl the first time around too many injuries, it reaches a critical mass and you can never get your guys healthy at the same time to go out and really get on a run. And they're up against it now. And they've got, I don't even know that they can lose one more. When you look at what's going on in the NFC with the Vikings and the Packers behind the Lions in the NFC North, the only spot they could really have a shot at is the seven seed and their three games behind the commanders at this point, two and a half games behind the commanders because the commanders have played 13 and the 49ers played 12. That's two and a half games is a lot to make up with five games left. And it's a reminder too of how hard it is to be good and at the top of the league year in and year out, how we're watching Kansas City do that now. Like that's not an easy task to be able to avoid injuries every year to your key players, to be able to turn it on and be ready to play every single year when you know you're not finishing until the end of January or February year after year. So your off season program comes faster like all of these things, your off season is totally different. When you do that year after year after year after year and you're always in that spot, teams get used to it. I mean, people get used to seeing you there, but they don't realize how hard that is. And in New England, we were able to do that. And every season kind of flowed a little differently, but it just wasn't easy. I remember the first time we in 19 when we lost in the wild car round feeling lost like they were like, we haven't ended a season in beginning of January and forever. It had been, I think for me since 2010 was the first time that was the other time that I lost in the division around compared to being in the AFC's championship or the Super Bowl. Like that break as much as it sucked of not being there and felt like, man, like, I didn't know how good this felt to have more time to get ready for the season. So for San Fran, I'm hoping I don't think they're going to make the playoffs this year. Maybe this year is a year where they kind of get to reset everybody's bodies, get to get back. And you can still have this nucleus of guys make one last run or maybe a few years of run into the playoffs maybe, but they had a good run. And it seems like for this year, definitely it's just not going to happen. We need to take a break, but that is a testament to the greatness of the organization that the Patriots continued every year to turn the page, to forget about last year, to find a way to get everybody ready to go. There was never any carryover. And that was the Belichick attitude. I don't want to talk about last year. We're not talking about last year. Last year is over. I suspect it drove him crazy that it took so long to do the ring ceremony. Let's get this in the rear view mirror. As soon as the last piece of confetti falls, it's on to next year, because if you spend any of your time thinking about last year, you make it harder to do it. And that's got to be one of the ingredients. He would talk about, he would talk to you as an up and coming free agent at the Super Bowl party. I remember he came up to me, he was like, you know, I'm looking at Bill, like, I'm not talking about free agency, we just want to Super Bowl. That's how fast this is. Yeah. And that's what we got to do. That's as Nick Saban do the same thing. When the national championship and the very next day, you're on the road recruiting. All right. Let's take a break. One return. Now, Maddie, we flew to the Bears coach, did a press conference on Friday morning. He was fired about 90 minutes later. Yesterday, Kevin Warren, the team CEO, did a press conference. He wasn't fired 90 minutes later. You never know in Chicago, we're going to talk to you about some of the things that Warren had to say when we have to live continues right after this. Next item I want to make sure we're clear about is Ryan Poe's is the general manager of the Chicago Bears. And he will remain the general manager of the Chicago Bears. Ryan is young, he's talented, he's bright, he's hardworking, is done everything in his power on a daily basis to bring a winner to Chicago. And I'm confident in Ryan. My faith remains strong in Ryan. And as leader of our football operations department and as our general manager, Ryan will serve as the point person on our coach for for our upcoming search for permanent head football coach. Having some of Kevin Warren yesterday with general manager Ryan Paul's regarding how the Bears will go forward. There are people around the league and I'm not accusing Kevin Warren of this, but there are people around the league who would listen to that quote and say is Kevin Warren trying to have it both ways here where and there are folks in organizations that do this. When things are going well, I get part of the credit. When things are going poorly, he hired the coach, not me. And I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt, but there's there's that suspicion from the hardcore football crowd, the general managers out there that there's that kind of shape shifter in the organization that can always avoid accountability because I'm not part of the football operation. Because I think this is a higher than everybody has to make. It has to run all the way up to ownership. Everybody has to feel good about this. I think this is a critical hire for the Bears because they need somebody that they can join at the hip with Caleb Williams and get the most out of that player over the next 10 years, Devin. Yeah, I agree with you. And I think it's important too, because who's going to make the ultimate decision if it doesn't go well? That's why it's so important that everybody be all in to this head coach that is going to come next. Because for one, when the head coach takes over, everyone zooms in and you're locked in on an introductory press conference. What's going to be said, we think about a couple of years ago, Dan Campbell gets out there and Dan Campbell starts talking about biting knee caps off and everything. If right away, the general manager brings in that head coach and the owner's not fully on board. When you hear that press conference, like that could push you one way or another of never really liking the head coach. So I think it is so important that everybody be involved in these meetings. Everybody being part of the interview process of when you decide, hey, we're going to go with a guy. And I understand of somebody being pointed, Ryan pulls being that. But I think it has to be a decision that everyone's all in so that if it doesn't work out, hey, I get it as the point person. I might not be here, but let's not just throw me under the bus. Let's all be involved in this so that we're thinking about being successful, not thinking about what happens if it doesn't work out, but just having a mindset of we're going to pick the leader of our franchise. We found the quarterback. We found the thing that everybody says is so hard to find. Now let's pair him up with the head coach that's going to bring us success. And I again, I agree with you 100% it has to be top down that is fully involved in on that because if not, it just creates dysfunction and it won't take long to see that dysfunction show up on the football field. Brian polls said during yesterday's press conference, the Bears haven't decided whether to use a search firm to find the next head coach. The big news last week was the Jets have retained the 33rd team led by former Jets GM Mike Tanenbaum to help them. I'm not a big believer in football operations using a search firm to do anything because if you have in-house expertise, you know who the candidates are. You know who's out there. You should know if you're really plugged in, if you really take it all very seriously, you don't need somebody else to tell you what to do because that's what you end up hiring. Anytime you hire a search firm, you're abdicating your responsibility to someone else and you're getting who they would hire. And it's usually their cronies, their friends, their family members, and definitely not the people they don't like subjectively. Might be a perfectly fine candidate, but the person who's got the keys to the search firm doesn't like that person so they're never on the list. And that happens. So I would never do it. I'll do respect all the search firms out there. I would never ever do it. I would try to build the internal ability that I can go out and fill these jobs without somebody telling me what to do. Yeah, I see what you're saying. The thing that I would say is if you don't feel like you have the ability to put together a search firm right within your building, if you kind of feel like, hey, maybe they feel like even in our building, we're only going to be able to reach out and bring in the people we know and only friends and all those different things. I think then in that situation, getting a search firm. And I think the biggest thing is that search firm is find out who's a leader. Find out who are the people who can come in and lead my organization. Not just the guy who's really good on offense or really good on defensive call and calls and different things like that, but find in the person who that when we bring them in, it's going to lead our organization. It's going to bring the right culture because again, as we look at all the recent hires, Dan Campbell continues to stick out and it's not because he's this great mind on offense or defense. It's because it seems like he's built a culture. He's done something that he's leading men the right way. And I think that's the thing whenever I look at these coaching hires of, do they end up with a guy who can lead a group of men? When you sit down in that team meeting and that guy comes in, do we feel right away like, man, I want to follow this guy? Do we see it day to day? So to me, if a search firm can help you narrow down who those people are, then shoot, go ahead and do it. But the best bet to me is like you said, having the people in the building that can be your search firm, but you have to know again, like we said, you ought to be honest with yourself and you have to know as a team and as an organization if you have that or if you don't have it. And I agree with you. There's a middle ground there where you use the search firm to help you set the table, but you don't let their biases, prejudices, their likes, their dislikes, their network of family members and friends. And I owe this person a favor or I want to have a voice. I want to have relevance. Usually it's a lot of retired general managers who just want to have relevance. So they know if I got this guy, the job, he's going to take my call and he's going to listen to me and maybe do some of the things I'm telling him to do. Okay. Friday, I mentioned this earlier, Matt Eber Flus does his day after press conference following the coaching debacle that kept the Bears from going to overtime against the Detroit Lions. He did the press conference and he was fired after it was a bad look for the Bears. Kevin Warren, CEO of the team yesterday, addressing that dynamic of Eber Flus talking before he found out he was fired. I can tell you this, uh, when coach Eber Flus had his press conference, we had not made a final decision. And I think you know me. I think you know Ryan. I think you know, George McCasky. I think you know the McCasky family. If one thing we stand for his family and integrity in doing it the right way, um, in retrospect, could we have done it better? Absolutely. And I'll be the first one to raise my hand. Yes. But during his press conference and even a couple hours later, we hadn't, we didn't, we had not reached a decision. And but on the flip side of it, something that was important to us is that once we reached the decision, we wanted to make sure to talk with Matt about that so he could have the respect to be able to call his family. And I'll say this one thing that happened. This is the first time and it happens around the league a lot where a head coach will find out he's terminated and he finds out before he's told from the organization. And that's something that we promise that we weren't going to do. So in retrospect, could we have done better? Yes. But we were trying to be respectful. And we did not know our decision when he started his press conference. Now, look, there are other ways they could have avoided the situation. You expedite the decision-making process. Treating the start of the press conference is a hard deadline. We know this guy's talking to the media. We got, if we have to stay up late, so be it. We got to brew some coffee, right? We get, brew some coffee, get a red bull, get a red bull. Whatever you got to do, stay up late and make the decision or get in early. You know, it's going to snow tomorrow, get to work early and make the decision, right, Devin? That's what they should have done. But I get his point because here's what's going on. We talked about the dysfunction in Cleveland earlier. There's been dysfunction in Chicago forever since 1985. That's all they got. That's it. 40 years since then, they kind of stumbled their way into the Super Bowl in 2006. It's flashes of contention wrapped around just bad football. And hey, who owns the team? George Hallis was my grandpa. There's no test that you pass to be the owner of the Chicago Bears. It's a family business. And George McCasky, very nice person, means well. And the good news for the Bears, the fact that they made the decision and implemented it quickly. That is a break from the past. They never fired a coach during the season before. It wasn't because they hadn't decided during the season. They were going to fire the coach when the season ended. Then you have five weeks of dysfunction where people are finding out and yeah, it's awkward. The moment you make the decision, you're moving on, you implement it. The only fault for the Bears is they made the decision about 90 minutes too late. But the moment they made the decision, they went forward. They didn't wait until Monday. They didn't wait until after the season. They didn't wait until next week. They did it right now. And internally, that's viewed as progress because they got ownership on board with doing something that they've never done before. Yeah. And I can respect what Kevin Warren said to thought of doing it the right way and trying to make sure, because I think that is important. For people who take these jobs, I think it's brutal when you can get a call or a text from an insider that says, hey, just checking, I'm hearing your fire. That has to be a terrible feeling to get. So I respect that. But like you said, just get it done when you need to get it done. You don't come to this decision after watching just that one game where you kind of blow it at the end. It's not like if you thought you were going to keep him that one game would have just been like, hey, this was kind of brewing for a while and you knew, all right, this is close. We're taking this week by week. So like, once you decide you're taking a week by week and the game ends, the way it ended against Detroit, everyone needs to get together. Less front line is, let's get in front of it. Let's make a decision. But again, this is the right decision. I think you said it. People playing mad and would have called time out. And we saw it with Cleveland actually last night. They had enough time to get to the line, but James was taken too long. He was trying to move somebody over. It was like 40 seconds left. They had three time outs. And so fast, he was like, hold on, like, time out. Like this is taken too long. We don't want to lose 20 seconds on just getting set. So yeah, once that decision happens, I agree, make the decision move on. And Thomas Brown sounded awesome. And his press conference yesterday of God jumping out in front of and being a leader of this team going forward for this season. He gets the chance the on the job audition. Everybody else gets an interview. He gets five games, six games to show what he can do. And this went off the rails for eberfluce with the Hail Mary debacle. And when when that happened after they'd won several games in a row, they came out of their buy four and two. I said then, eberfluce had better get things buttoned up because this is the time of year where owners start to think, am I going to make a change after the season? They don't roll out of bed the day after the final game and say, I think I'll fire my coach. They they know by then the difference this time around the bears in the past, they've known and they waited the moment they knew they did it. And that allows the coach to move on with his life. And it allows you to move on with your search. You don't have to tip toe around. Well, remember when Mike McCarthy got fired by the Packers? A lot of people were pissed. Oh, he deserves to be treated better than that. He won a super well. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. What would you prefer that that everybody's whispering when he walks out of the room about or bastard? You know, like, if you know he's going to be fired and you're making him go through the motions and you're lining up candidates while he's still coaching the team, that's more disrespectful than just saying, Hey, you're out or or firing him 90 minutes after a press conference. I mean, I'm I was hard on the bears when they did what they did because it's just a bad look. But at the end of the day, the fact that they moved as soon as they knew you always should do that. And I've said that before. The moment you know you're done, that's the moment you need to implement it. Anything after that is just going to be a mess for you. No doubt about it. And it gives, like you just said, it gives your team a chance to build going forward. Yes, they still might get a new coach, but you're going to still keep a lot of those guys in the locker room. So why make them suffer through the last five, six games of something that you already Dean, not going to work done, give them somebody in there, give them Thomas Brown, whether it was Antonio Pierce before that, Rich Baschati before that, like give them a guy in front of them that can lead. You get to even see like, Hey, maybe the next head coach you bring in. Maybe you don't mind. It's a defensive guy. If you think it can work with Thomas Brown, if you really like him and I know that gets iffy of you putting your imprint in saying you got to keep this guy on that guy, but I just think it allows you to see exactly what you have there and you can make a better decision going forward for your team. Their main focus is Caleb Williams. They believe he's the guy and they want to make a higher aimed at maximizing him. And I assume that means an offensive guy because I said this about the Bears. I said it about the commanders. You get your franchise quarterback. If things go well, your offense coordinator is gone and then you got to break in a new one. I want Sean Payton and Drew Brees or Sean Payton and bow next that the case may be. I want two guys tied together well into the future. And no matter how well it goes, you know that you don't have to worry about the primary person who's dealing with the quarterback suddenly being gone for a promotion somewhere else. All right, let's take a break. Who should the Bears hire next? You don't need to. Hey, hey, George, you don't need a search firm. Kevin, you got the firm of McCordian Florio. We're going to set the table for the Bears with a PFT live draft right after this. Give sport with gifts from Nike from the retro Romero 5 sneaker designed with zoom air conditioning to fleece engineered with lightweight warmth and next level comfort. We have the perfect gift for any athlete on your list. Shop now at your nearest Nike store. 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From worn out components to everyday necessities, call clickranger.com or just stop by, Ranger, for the ones who get it done. This is a PFT live draft presented by our friends at Sky Rizzi. Devin McCordy and I are going to set the table for the Chicago Bears. They will be getting their money's worth, but the search firm that they have not yet realized they've hired to give them their candidates. Devin, I'll give you the first pick. Ideal next coach for the Chicago Bears. You know what? I'm going to go coach Bellachette. Like, why wouldn't I go coach Bellachette? I think he's the top guy, no matter what the situation I get it. You got a young quarterback and didn't work with Matt Jones in the win, but to me, you got the best guy in the market. You got it. You got to see what's there. You got to bring him in. See if he wants to come there. Now, again, you got to have the right office of God there for Caleb Williams. And, you know, you got to figure it out. Maybe maybe it's Josh McDales as an office coordinator and he might not be leaving anytime soon. So, I would definitely go coach Bellachette. Yeah, you know, it's funny. He's on my list. I figured he'd be your number one, but the guy is the best game day coach in NFL history. He's the best at preparing players to play. All the things we talk about. That's why I love having you and Rodney twice a week. You on Tuesday, Rodney, on Friday, because when these coaching decisions happen on a Monday or a Thursday night, I always like to run it through the prism of what would Bellachette have done. Bellachette would not have allowed 32 seconds to transpire down to six seconds before a snap and a desperation throw to the end zone when you're in position to force over time with a field goal. So, so many of the things that happen. Bellachette wouldn't have done it. Master of situational football. Rodney and I talked about that last week when we were breaking down the Bears thing. Every situation, and your players understand the situation. It's drilled into your head. So, I agree with you. Bellachette, I don't know that he would have my first choice, but he's a proven commodity. He's ready to go and it would make sense. Now, Ben Johnson is the guy who's regarded as the hot coordinator. He's going to have multiple different options. I would want Ben Johnson to Chicago because number one, I'm taking him from the Lions and number two, look at what he's done with Jared Goff. So, and I'll do respect to Jared Goff. The Rams had to attach a first round pick to the Matthew Stafford package to get the Lions to take Goff. That was the perception. And when he arrived in Detroit, we got to get through a couple of years and then we'll move on. That was the vibe. Hey, they got something in Jared Goff now. And Ben Johnson's had a lot to do with it. I'd want Ben Johnson tied to Kayla Williams for the next 10 years. That's what I'm thinking. Offensive guru, young franchise quarterback, slapping together, that's my future. Give me Ben Johnson. And I agree with you. I think Ben Johnson is the one offensive guy out there from me that sticks out of what he's done with Jared Goff, what he's done in Detroit as phenomenal. But I'm going to sound biased because I'm a defensive guy. The next day I will go, I will go Mike Vrable. I will go with a guy that to me, you get your first time in Tennessee. You have some success, but it seemed like the reason he didn't work out in Tennessee was couldn't really get along with the front office and just make those decisions. And I think sometimes for guys that are good coaches, you go through that the first time of figuring things out, you better know how to handle, you know how to handle those situations better going forward. And I think Vrable could be a guy like that, very similar to Bill, Bill disciple, played under Bill, not exactly the same as Bill, but a lot of similarities. I think he's a guy that can lead a franchise. And again, to me, that's the most important thing leading the overall franchise. And Vrable is going to get a job in this cycle. People think it's going to be the Raiders because he's close with Tom Brady and they're likely going to be looking. But Vrable is another one that understands all the situations. He's not going to, he's not going to make the mistake that we saw last week. And if somebody makes that mistake on his watch, they're going to hear it about it from him for the rest of their lives. I'm going to go Thomas Brown with an asterisk. He's getting a better opportunity than anyone else will to prove that he can do the job because he's going to do the job for the rest of the season. My asterisk is this. Sometimes we see a boost in a team's play when you go to an interim coach when it's late in the year because I think guys get nervous. They're like, we better play hard for this guy because it's going to be somebody else who comes in and who knows what offense we're going to run. Who knows what defense we're going to run? Caleb's the only one who's going to be safe. Jalen Johnson, a handful of guys are going to be safe. Everybody else, who knows if there's a new coach that comes in here. So let's go play hard to get Thomas Brown the job. And then we can go back to sucking next year. And I'm not as concerned about it now because it's not because the Bears aren't talented. That's what Jalen Johnson said yesterday. One of the reasons he confronted Matt Eberfluce after the game. Hey, I've been here when the team's bad. The team's not bad. We shouldn't be losing these games. So the talents there. So if Thomas Brown can turn them into a winner and look at what he did with the offense after they fired Shane Waldron, if he can carry that out, then then he's a candidate because he's already there. They already know him and he's getting a chance to prove he can do it. I like that too, because I think if you want to stay in that offensive mindset, like this guy's there. He's already had some success with Caleb Williams. And I don't know if there's another guy other than Ben Johnson that has been just amazing this year from an offensive coordinator standpoint, you would want to bring in to take over that. The last guy I have is is Aaron Glenn. I think Aaron Glenn alongside of what Ben Johnson doing with the offense, to me, he's been a guy. They've had injuries on his defense. They've gone through so many different things. They continue to play well defensively with so many different guys stepping up. I think Aaron Glenn is another guy that I think he gets his shot this cycle and could possibly go down there in Chicago and be the leader they need. So just so we're clear on this defensive guy has picked three defensive candidates for a team that needs someone to guide its franchise quarterback. Okay, last one for me. And this is a curve ball just because I'm stunned this doesn't happen. And I don't know whether there's gentlemen's agreement or collusion or whatever. But I always want to prove and coach over a coordinator because you never know if a coordinator is going to be able to do the next job. And I don't think the NFL engages enough in looking at the teams that are out there and saying, I know that this coach is on this team. Maybe it's time for a change. Maybe it's maybe it's time for a new start. And I'm tempted to say Kyle Shanahan they should call the 49ers and say, hey, would you like to trade his Kyle Shannon? They almost traded Jim Harbaugh to the Browns a decade ago. Maybe you do call the 49ers and ask about Kyle Shanahan. My first thought was you call the Ravens and talk and talk to them about John Harbaugh depending upon how the rest of this season goes. Because there's been moments where it's kind of flashed like maybe it's time for a fresh start. If the Ravens are one and done in the playoffs this year, I don't know. Maybe you make a phone call and you see what the Ravens would want for the ability to talk to Harbaugh about becoming the head coach of the Bears. But I just think just like with Belichick and Vable, you need a proven coach. And sometimes the best proven coaches are employed. And they just don't do it enough. It happened with John Gruden, having with Herm Edwards, almost happened with Harbaugh. It doesn't happen nearly enough, Devin. That's interesting. But if I'm San Francisco or if I'm Baltimore, I just I just checked out on what you started with. Look at what Pittsburgh still is doing. Everybody last year thought maybe it was a time for a new beginning for Mike Tomlin. Maybe he'll be similar else. And now you fast forward. And the Pittsburgh Steelers look really good going in for another playoff run. So if I'm Chicago, yes, if you can make a call to a couple of different guys, Kyle Shanahan probably would be my first option over Harbaugh just because younger guy, coaches quarterbacks has had different quarterbacks in their half success. Why not call him up? So for Chicago, no doubt about it. But if I'm these other teams, I'm San Fran of Baltimore. I don't think twice about ever sending a guy who's a proven coach who's brought us a ton of success. I'm not shipping him anywhere else. There's no amount of draft picks that's going to make me change that decision. By the way, by the way, Kyle's dad, Mike, born and raised in Illinois. Maybe a little bit of a magnetic pool there if the opportunity would arise. But it's just something that should happen more often because sometimes a guy just needs a change of scenery. He needs a fresh start. The team needs it and he needs it. And we got a couple of guys out there that may be inching toward that. And it all also above all else, whoever they get has to be a firm 100% believer in Caleb Williams. You can't act like you want Caleb Williams and then get there and come up with your plan to get some other quarterback. You've got to want Caleb Williams because that's who the Bears want to build around in the future. Let's take a break. More PFT Live right after this. Welcome back to PFT Live presented by Accenture on Sunday. Texans linebacker Aziz al Shire applied a vicious hit to Trevor Lawrence. The Jaguars quarterback Lawrence was concussed. Al Shire was ejected. We're awaiting what many expect will be a suspension from the NFL. Yesterday DeMico Ryan's Texans head coach addressed the situation with reporters. Here's some of what he had to say. With the entire Aziz situation, we stand behind Aziz and everything that came from there. Of course, he unfortunately hit on the quarterback. But it's also it's twofold, right? I mean, a lot of the quarterbacks in this day and age, they try to take advantage of the rule where they slide late and they try to get an extra yard. And now your defender, a lot of onus is on the defender, right? Whether it's on the sideline or where it's on the quarterback, you don't know what a guy is thinking. You don't know if a guy is standing up and he's continuing to run. You don't know. And then you get a late slide and you're you know, you hit the guy. I'm fortunate that Trevor got hurt. We want hope Trevor is okay. But it's also if we're sliding, we have to get down. If we're getting out of bounds, we get out of bounds. And that rule is there to protect the quarterbacks and we want our quarterbacks to be safe in the league. So we just have to be safe and we're sliding. Make sure we're keeping our heads down. So and the entire thing is, you know, Aziz is the guy with their sideline over reacts and it turns out in turns into a melee. It wasn't our guys. It's their team overreacted pushed our guy dragging our guy to the sideline. So that's uncalled for on that side. We have to be better on the sidelines as well with both teams. I don't disagree with the last part, but they didn't unreasonably react. They reacted to one of the most vicious hits we've ever seen in the post safety era of the NFL last 15 years when they realized they better take this concussion situation seriously and enforce their rules and expand their rules accordingly. But Devin, it's it's a minefield for D'Amico Ryan's to try to tiptoe through. This isn't the sideline okey-doke that quarterbacks used to do where they act like they're going to walk out of bounds. The defensive player pulls up and they run 15 extra yards. This isn't the Patrick Mahomes. Everyone's afraid to touch him when he's on the sideline because they think he's about to step out of bounds and they're going to give up 15 yards. And this is definitely isn't Kenny Pickett fake slide. Remember he did that at pit his last year. This was a real slide. There was no hesitation. It was a textbook routine play and Al Shire came in hot forearm first to the head and the head off the ground. I think I think Lawrence got two concussions there formed the head head to the ground. This was not an effort by Lawrence to get any extra yardage. It was a standard quarterback running the slide. I agree. I think and there's a lot to address in this situation. I think I think the way Jacksonville reacted was how you should react. This is your quarterback who just took a vicious hit. I think you would have to be worried a lot as a team if your guys don't react to your quarterback getting hit like that. I think D'Amico Ryan's is addressing an issue in the league overall. I think more than that play that play to me was clear. The guy slides. You got to break down as a defensive guy. You got to see the quarterback coming. You got to buzz your feet and be ready to wrap your rolls and get them on the ground. It's not back in the day where the quarterback rolls and the eyes get big because you're going to take the quarterback out. You can't think that way. You can't go in there thinking I'm going to kill this quarterback because you have to give him time to slide. To me right there, he didn't give him time to slide. He just ran in there and no matter what, he was going out of angle to take out Trevor Lawrence. If he stayed up, he was going to take him out at his legs midsection area. If he slid, we saw exactly what was going to happen. To me, he had time to change as he's in the air and he sees the slide. He could have opened his hands. He could have tried forearm in front to me. You can't do. But I think what Demigo Rines is talking about is when they set and film this week, Trevor Lawrence is a runner. He's a guy that doesn't always slide. He can run. He can make plays. I think defenses are, they're getting kind of angry because now when this guy decides to run and we watch film and we watch these guys have big runs. You watch Drake May in New England. You watch Lamar Jackson. You watch Josh. You watch these different quarterbacks. Have these runs where they're running over guys. They're making plays. And then we get out there. And as a defender, I'm told, I got to always make this situation correct. And that's a lot of pressure. And I think they probably talked about it during the week. Hey, we got to be ready when Lawrence runs. He can run. We got to, we got to be ready to get him on the ground. And again, the play was played wrong. I think Demigo Rines is addressing that overall situation of how am I supposed to teach these guys to be ready to tackle some big strong guys. If I'm telling them they got to be careful because they might slide. They might not slide. And I think that's what he's trying to address. Is this the right timing and kind of blaming Trevor Lawrence? No, like you can't do that. But I do. I think fake sliding should be a penalty. I don't think you should be able to fake slide or kind of tip toe to the sideline. I just, I think that makes it impossible for defenders. I think God should be penalized the same way guys are penalized for hitting these guys when they shouldn't. But see, that's the difference. This was not a situation of any attempt by Trevor Lawrence to pull a fast one. He ran and he slid and you said it, you know, like we hear the argument all the time when a defenseless receiver is hidden ahead by a corner who's coming in and oh, you have to, you have to adjust your target while you've committed to hitting a guy like in mid body movement, you've got to go from here to here. Like that's not realistic, but it's realistic to expect Al Shire when he's coming in with that forearm. Like he knows exactly what he's doing. He can drop that forearm. He can throw his body away from making that contact. He committed to that and he didn't let go. And I think that's the problem. So yes, I agree. There are quarterbacks out there who take liberties with that protection. They take advantage of it. That's a problem. That wasn't what happened here. And Ryan said Sunday, we don't coach what Al Shire did. But in coaching them up, as you're suggesting, this is a guy who runs, you got to be ready to go hit him. When he becomes a runner, he's no different than a tailback. You hear that kind of stuff. There's an obligation on the coaching staff to say, but if he goes into a slide, all bets are off. If he goes out of bounds, all bets are off because number one, it's the right thing to do. And number two, they are going to flag you more quickly if you hit a quarterback than if you do that to a running back. And we know a running backs never going to slide. We know the one guy that's going to slide is the quarterback. And you have to be ready to back off the moment that he goes into his slide. And I don't know whether or not the Texans were coached on that point as they got ready for Trevor Lawrence. If they were, Al Shire must have been asleep or absent or just defiant because he clearly didn't take the coaching. Yeah, I mean, and this league, you got guys and we watch every Sunday and we watch and we're sitting there and I'm like, man, that guy, that guy's a headhunter. He's knocking people's heads off. He's running full speed. He's attacked. I think, I think Shire, I think that's the type of player he is. So legit, all other 10 guys on the field could have been in that situation and played it 10 times better. He's a guy that likes running full speed and we makes tackles. He's trying to hit you and he's not trying to knock you out and go out, but he's trying to make you feel that he hit you. And there's guys like that who have made a career in the NFL because they played that style. And I think I think Shire, here's one of those guys. That's how he plays. He plays that way. And I think Al Shire is coming. He has to adjust and he doesn't adjust. And I think that's his style of play. It's wrong. You can't do it. But again, I think the hardest thing is exactly what you said. You don't know if the quarterback is going to do that. Like Trevor Lawrence could easily be one of those guys that don't do it. But in that situation, he decides I'm going to fake slide. Like you have Sam Donald did it against Denver Broncos a couple of years ago. He kind of fake slides, Justin Simmons misses a tackle. He continues to run. And I would say overall, Sam Donald's a guy who slides, but Justin Simmons didn't know. So he kind of breaks down. He was and then he fakes it and he goes. And I think that's one of those issues and it wasn't the full complete faith. But it's that little hesitation about a quarterback where you hesitate. And again, I want to say this, this situation was not that. But I think it sparks the conversation of how exactly do we help these defenders play in this situation? Obviously you have to be better than Al Shire here. But I think there's a there's some gray area in this situation that I'm surprised we don't see bad hits. Not as bad as that, but that we don't see this happen more often. It's accredited defenders really understanding how to play it. But it's a hard situation because we do see like my homes has done it over and over again, big plays and games because guys aren't 100% sure what's about to happen with him. All right, let's take a break. When we return, will the Jets be making a quarterback change? That's next tier on PFT live presented by Central. We have great beliefs and we really do. And we think he gives us the best opportunity to win after assessing yesterday's game. I thought there was moments in the first half where you saw Aaron Rodgers. I thought there was moments even in the second half where he's sorry, Rodgers. And then there's moments that he didn't play to his standard. And he tells you the same. So we think he gives us, we believe that he gives us the best opportunity to win. So he's our quarterback. That's Jeff Overick. Today after Overick kind of left the door open to the possibility of Rodgers being benched. He said he'd have to look at the film. He did look at the film. He's decided not to bench him best chance to win. I don't know at this point where the winning is winning. I know, look, I'm not, I'm not a fan of putting lesser players on the field and hoping you lose to improve your draft position. Sean Payton is a firm believer. It's hard to have a winning culture when you do that. When you put lesser guys on the field, look at what he's doing to the Giants. But I don't know. I feel like at this point of the season, you know, you got to make some plans for the future. Let's see what Tyrod Taylor can do. Let's see what he can do. We know Aaron Rodgers isn't going to be here next year is Tyrod a guy we want to keep around for next year. I just think at some point, at some point, you just have to pull the plug on the experiment. I feel like we're getting closer and closer to that. They're not there yet. But if they can't turn around and start winning, Devin, I feel like they have to do it. My only thing is if Jordan Travis was healthy and you can see what a young guy could do, then I think that's the guy you would want to put in the game. And I don't know where they're at with him coming off the injury from Florida State. But to take out Aaron Rodgers and put in another old quarterback and Tyrod Taylor, I just don't see the point of that. You might as well, Aaron Rodgers finished what he started this season with because you don't have a young guy that you want to watch and see what he can do. See, and Tyrod Taylor to me doesn't really do anything for the Jets. He's 35. He's spry in comparison, Aaron Rodgers. He's young. And at some point, at some point, you go to Rodgers and you say, what do you want to do? Because if he just wants to tap out, let him tap out, put him on his reserve and let this thing end. All right. Quick break. We'll wrap things up right after this. I still have not shown up late. There's about 20, 25 people in this room and none of them is Mike Florio because he has overs left. That's the one time, one time I was late. You said you were never late. Great job by the production team to say, hey, you're live. I'm a goddess, functional. Devon, what's up, Florio, cutting it close. But he wasn't late. He wasn't late. He's just, it's went and wrong, right? You figured it out. Week 13, I show up at 659. You show up at 659. That's right. See, I'm not one of these, you're late if you're not five minutes early. No, you're late if you're late. If you're on time, you're on time. All right, we're out of time. Boy, I tell you, you're more and more like bullet check every day, Florio. Let's see you tomorrow, everybody. Carry on is an edge of your seat action thriller that follows a young TSA agent who's blackmailed into an impossible situation at the height of Christmas Eve travel pandemonium. 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Hour 2: Mike Florio (@ProFootballTalk) and Devin McCourty (@devinmccourty) discuss the latest news in the NFL including Christian McCaffrey heading to the IR again, the Bears president showing faith in GM Ryan Poles, and DeMeco Ryans defending Azeez Al-Shaair after his dangerous hit on Trevor Lawrence.
