Texans exercise 5th year options on C.J. Stroud & Will Anderson, Jr. (4/10 Hour 2)

If PFT Live Michael Holly is back, I got one final observation to make about this current situation with the NFL and it was inspired by something you said last segment about the chaos if the antitrust exemption goes away or if the NFL is found to have violated the antitrust laws by exceeding its scope and it's no longer allowed to sell games to cable satellite or streaming which would create its own brand of chaos. You made the point how is this going to help the consumers? There could be a thought that it hurts the consumers because it throws the NFL into this gross imbalance. The salary cap doesn't work anymore because it's set based upon all the dollars and for the teams that aren't bringing many dollars to the table, it's going to destroy their profit margin. We're going to have the same kind of griping and whining and complaining that we're hearing now about college football and how we have to save college sports. The irony, if that's the right word to use here, it's coming from the same business practices, decades of antitrust violations. That's why college football and college sports are currently in chaos. The chickens came home to roost for them and if it happens to the NFL, oh, we got to save the NFL now. Well, the NFL should have saved itself. The NFL should have not violated the law. That would be the argument. Save yourself. Stay away from the line of antitrust violation. Don't blatantly go beyond what Congress allowed you to do. Anyway, I hope it doesn't happen because I don't want the NFL to be plunged into chaos. But if it would ever happen, the final step would be, please, government, come save us from our own violations of the law. Yeah, and it's easy to say now, NFL could have made different decisions. I think what could have happened, what should have happened, with each innovation, there should be a check-in of, hey, does this still make sense? Now, I can understand why the NFL would not say, hey, does this still make sense because, hey, business was booming. They were doing great. So I don't want to keep checking in with you to just get approval. Hey, if you let that one go, maybe you'll let the next one go. And the next one go. And until someone tells us to stop, why should we make ourselves accountable? Why should we open ourselves up to hear and know when the answer has always been yes? So I can understand why the NFL wouldn't want to do that. But if you had done that along the way, you're not under, there's no threat of investigation in 2026 because you've already established the pattern of, hey, this is a little different. We didn't have this ESPN in the 60s. We didn't have Netflix. We didn't have Amazon Prime. So how does this make sense? This current landscape, how does this make sense with our agreement? Because if they had checked in at one point, somebody would have said, it no longer makes sense. It no longer makes sense. This is a massive agreement. So you got to do something different. Prime example of the reality that the most powerful law enforcement officer in town is not the judge. It's the prosecutor. The judge just gets whatever is put on the judge's docket. The judge can't go out and affirmatively do anything. Judge is constrained by what is teed up. The person who puts things on the tee is the prosecutor. The person who has the discretion to ignore this, pursue that, and turn someone's life upside down in the process. Doesn't matter if you don't get convicted. Doesn't matter if you don't even get indicted. We've seen that as the DOJ has been weaponized over the past couple of years. Oh, you can indict a ham sandwich. You're going to have to change that cliche. There have been a lot of ham sandwiches walking free after spending thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars defending themselves just to get to the point where they're not indicted. So, this has been something that the DOJ could have done all the way back to 1987. Here we are 40 years later and it's happening. And it is political, but when you're the most popular sports league in America by far, when you have global aspirations that would turn a billion-dollar business into a trillion-dollar business, you become a target. Robert Kraft saw this coming. And they hired their new general counsel last year. He made comments to Ben Fisher of Sports Business Journal about how we are a target. We're going to be a target for antitrust. And he was right. And I'm sure this morning he wishes he were wrong because it just feels like, it feels like the vultures are circling. And I don't mean that in a pejorative way to the folks who are circling. It just, you feel like they're under siege right now. Well, one of his best friends happens to be the president of the United States. So I'm sure maybe Roger Goodell is calling them up. Hey, I know everybody else calls you Robert. Can I call you Bob here? I'm going to need a Bob kind of favor. Hey, Bob, can you talk to him? Can you talk to him? And can we call him this thing now? Can we work something out? Can we work some back channels here? And it's not just Kraft. And Kraft and many NFL owners are friendly with the president. And they're going to have to, they're going to have to sue them. They're going to have to hang with him. You know, play some golf. Just tell them how great he is to get this thing, from having this thing turn into a full on S show. I'll call it an S show. Shout out London. Shout out Liverpool. To prevent it from being a full on S show, you need some help on this because it could get ugly. Well, but the other side of the coin could be that, you know, the response will be we can back down, but you're going to have to back off on all this pressure you're putting on the networks. You're going to have to do a reasonable deal. You can't assume that if CBS, which apparently isn't going to say no, but who knows, maybe they'll change their position now that they see what's going on. But if the networks are sufficiently threatened by this idea that you're just going to sell all your packages to streaming, you got to back off. You got to do reasonable deals. And you can't go back to the table and try to get billions more than what you were already supposed to get. Because how do those networks even begin to monetize? How do you generate revenue when you have? Because I mean, I know budgets are made one year at a time and this is quickly going to exceed my understanding of how the finances of a business work, even though I've owned it operated one for 25 years. But you know, you have as an idea of what your money is coming in, you have an idea of what your money is going out well into the future. All of a sudden, wait, we got to spend a billion more per year than we thought. Where the hell is that going to come from? So anyway, I think you're right. And maybe I don't know the new stadium in DC. Call it Donald J. Trump Stadium. Maybe that maybe that helps. Maybe that maybe that seals the deal. Gary's happy to hear that his commanders will be playing in Trump Stadium. So all right, I don't know how to make a pivot from what we said. We were talking about Robert Kraft. He's speaking of chaos. The story this week about that pivot involves speaking of chaos. Well, and look, we haven't talked about it much here. I did a PFT PM episode that dealt with it. I've written several stories about it at PFT. They've been the most read stories of the week because, you know, this brings all the elements together that will get people to rubber neck. This is. And I don't want to call it sex scandal, but it's I mean. Because there's no evidence that anything happened that anybody should even apologize for. But it's got that element to it. And then you've got the NFL and you've got photos and you've got people who are public figures and you've got all sorts of ethical questions that are raised on both sides. And you've got fans of certain teams thinking that the situation has been manipulated or hurt their teams. The Eagles fans have been up in an uproar because they think that something's been going on with AJ Brown and that the reporter involved has been has been putting things out there in an effort to grease the skids for a trade of AJ Brown to the Patriots on favorable terms. I mean, it has blown up and taken over the NFL media cycle. And that's why Chris and I kind of went there a little bit yesterday. Like Wednesday, it's like, I don't know what the hell to do with this. This isn't a topic that is suited for extemporaneous discussion because there's a lot of fact. There's rumor. There's supposition. There's speculation. And it's hard to be precise sometimes when you're just having a conversation. And you don't want to say something that you shouldn't say. Yeah. You know, let's start with the very beginning with this story. When it first came out, you're exactly right, Mike. When, you know, there was a producer here in Boston who said, hey, have you, have you seen page six? Now, the way he said it was to see page six. My first thought was, oh God, it's like page six TMZ 60 minutes back in a day. Have you seen it? And you go, oh no, I hope I'm not involved. I don't want it. I don't want to be in page six. I'll say I was in page six and my wife was so proud as a, as a fan of page six. She was so proud that was in page six one time. And it was talking about Tom Brady. It was Tom Brady and Giselle and, and somebody had just basically clipped what I said on TV and put it in page six. So I was like, okay, great. I made page six without any kind of scandal. I didn't do anything. That's the only way that you should aspire. Anyone kids, hey kids to do it. Yeah. That's the only way to be on page six. Yeah. So the producer says, have you seen page six? No, I haven't seen it. He said, Oh wow, you should check it out. I saw it. And my first thought was, well, I'm not sure how we're going to talk about this, especially if, if Mike Rabel doesn't comment on it, comment on it. If Diana Rossini doesn't comment on it. It's kind of tough to go in there. And then they both released statements. I said, okay, floodgates are open. If it were me, if this is my best friend, this is one of my best friends, I would say to my buddy, I said, Hey, look, don't, don't address it. Don't say anything. Don't say anything. If it's a totally, if it's as Rabel says, if it's a totally innocent interaction, that's what he said. If it's that, then you have, then it speaks for itself. But I think he knows that it doesn't really, if it speaks for itself, if the photos speak for themselves, it's not a great look. And so he's, I think he found himself in a tough position. He came out and he was definitive that there was nothing to see here. Diana Rossini's statement kind of opens up some possibilities. You can read between the lines where she says, Hey, that day, there were friends of mine that day, but she, but the post story didn't just mention the day. It mentioned midday and it mentioned the evening. So look, Mike, this is a, we talked earlier about how this is a different world than 1961, when we were talking about the antitrust exemption. Well, it's a different world than 1961. When it comes to public figures and the decisions that they make, everybody's got, not that this happened with a cell phone, but everybody's got a cell phone. Everybody's got social media. Everybody is always out there. There's somebody somewhere saying, Hey, guess who I saw? Hey, guess what? You won't, you won't believe this. And I just think even if it's an innocent interaction, the optics are horrendous. I think it was just a, I don't know if Mike Gray will think a lot of things through. I'm not sure he thought this through and, and really weighed the pros and cons of meeting with Diana Rossini in a hot tub poolside, a hotel that is known for romantic getaways hours away from where the NFL owners and meetings work. I just say, if I just say it like that, that's, that's exactly what happened. If I say it that way, you tell me if that makes sense for an NFL head coach and an NFL insider who's female. Well, we talked earlier about the NFL dancing up to the line, stepping on the line, jumping over the line with streaming. One of the things my dad always told me, there's some irony in that statement because my dad lived his life on the wrong side of the line as a bookie, but it was in a town at a time when the local prosecutor never exercised discretion to do anything about it until the boss got too close to a different kind of a line that brought the whole operation down because that was a, and I think that probably happened throughout the country. The boss gets involved in drugs, you know, it's one of the storylines from the Godfather. Boss gets a little too involved in that. It wakes people up, it puts too much heat on him, it brought the whole thing down. My dad was involved in a, of a miniature small gambling operation out of a bar in my hometown and nobody said boo about it. It became a problem when the boss got close to a different line. And here, and this is why I said it's ironic because my dad's advice for me always was, and I've always lived by it, you got to always figure out where the line is and anything you do is a line that if you cross it, you're going to be in trouble. You got to figure out where that line is and you stay as far away from it as you can. You know, my parents always had the mindset that if you were in anything, if you were accused of anything that in and of itself is your fault. Now I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear it. You allowed yourself to be put in a position where someone could say you were doing something that you should have done. It's your fault. Now, now again, I'm not saying anybody did anything wrong, but the mere fact that we're here, the mere fact that there are photos that may or may not mesh with the statements, the fact that reasonable minds may differ on whether or not the photos show, as Rabel said in his statement, a completely innocent interaction and any suggestion otherwise is laughable. Nobody's laughing. It's not. Nobody's laughing. And you're basically saying if you see this any way other than how I see it, you're stupid. That's kind of what he's saying. Right. That's not the way to get. That's not the way to get the air out of this balloon. Hey, Mike, here's the other thing. If you know, we were tongue in cheek, but you know, a lot of truth. And we were saying what we were saying about page six and TMZ and other sites, they kind of, they are, they're great at this stuff. Okay. They're great at this. And generally a denial, denials don't get them to stop digging. What gets them to stop digging is the truth. So when Mike Rabel came out with this statement, and we haven't heard anything in a couple of days, when he came out with this statement, my first thought was, Oh, he better be right. Because when, when page six has stuff and TMZ have stuff, they don't always give you everything they've got the first time around. And so if you want to be dismissive of what they're doing, they say, Oh, really? Oh, oh, you, oh, you think that's all we got? Here comes round two. Here comes round three. So if he, if it's totally innocent, as he said, if it's an innocent interaction, and there's nothing else to see here, he's got nothing to worry about. But if it's something else, sleep with one eye open, my brother, because these, these sites, they're not, they're not newbies at this. They got a lot of people feeding them information. They've got, it's a different level of, I think a lot of people look at like gossip sites and, and say they're not real reporters. Yeah, they are. They are real reporters. They're just reporting about things that it's not hard news. We're not talking about wars. We're not talking about budget deficits and, and school committees and crisis. It's not that, but they are still reporting and they have sources telling them things that other people don't want them to know. So they're very talented reporters, but they're reporting about gossip. I just think that that's one part of it. And the other part of it, and you tell me if you agree, whatever this interaction was, I think just the suggestion in the end you window is worse for the NFL insider than it is for the NFL head coach. Because Mike Gravel's job ultimately is to prepare a team to be at its best and make sure that all the strategies and all the resources are being put into making this team successful on the field. What's the job of an NFL insider? Part of it is getting information, but the other part is reputation and credibility. So when these people in Philadelphia are complaining, hey, this AJ Brown thing, it makes us wonder what's really going on. Well, you always wonder that even if there's no scandal, because every reporter has somebody who gives them information. Every reporter can, every insider, if, and you've, you've been great talking about this, Mike, they all have some, you know, main sources who help them kind of get to the scoop. They all have their guy or guys and you can kind of just trace it and say, oh, I know where this is coming from. Well, that happens normally. But now when you, when you throw things like this into the mix, now you question everything coming from a reporter because you're wondering, is this legitimate or is something else going on? I don't know if I could trust it. It's going to be a difficult, it's going to be a difficult, difficult few months for her. And I'm, I, I'm not rooting against her. I think she does good work, but it's going to be difficult. This will hover for a while and it will call some of her, it will call some of her work in the question. And, you know, the thing I've been saying lately is when you tell people how the sausage is made, the person with their hand on the meat grinder gets very upset. But Adam Schefter and I had a little back and forth several weeks ago when he was clearly doing a favor for his primary source and everybody knows it. Drew Rosenhaus feeds Adam Schefter, anything and everything regarding his clients before he sends it to anybody else. You know, a lot of the agents have a speed dial where they send the text and it goes to Schefter, rapper, pork, airfollow, yada, yada. Schefter gets the heads up typically for any Rosenhaus client before anyone else. And, you know, part of the quid pro quo is sometimes you use that Twitter fire hose with 11.9 million followers to say, Drew Rosenhaus has signed so and so as a new client or retweet a photo of Drew Rosenhaus with his new client or, you know, look the other way on something problematic involving a Drew Rosenhaus client or, and this wasn't a Rosenhaus client, this is a David Muligata client, but when all the Sean Watson stuff was happening, remember when Watson didn't get indicted, Schefter had this tweet that got him dragged, making it look like it's a full and complete exoneration simply because the prosecutor chose not to seek an indictment of the Sean Watson. There have been examples of that and there's been suspicion and that's how it usually happens. The reporters use their platform to do favors for their sources. This is a different manifestation of the same behavior at the end of the day. You're compromising your integrity and you're undermining your own credibility in order to protect the free flow of information. Now, where's the line? I don't know, but you can argue that people in that business, that race for the information that then becomes the, oh, gotta get this tweeted tweet, I've got to tweet it before the other person who got the same text tweets it, that that race requires people to do some unsavory things and there are different definitions of what may be unsavory. We don't know that anything unsavory is happening, but it's all relationship driven. How do you create and maintain the relationship? Even if everything that happened was completely innocent, there's obviously a friendship there and that friendship becomes a pipeline for information that allows the person to do their job. So it is an unsavory aspect of what we do and I'd like to think that people understand where the line is and stay away from it and still do their job to the best of their ability and not use methods that would cause people to say, really? And look, because the implications are a lot. The innuendo, salacious. It's worth a page. Nobody's ever gonna do a page six article on Adam Sheffield's Twitter page to promote the business interest of Drew Rosenhaus. That's not interesting to anybody. This other stuff is. That's the difference. This other stuff is gonna get talked about because it's got an element to it that's going to be titillating to people. It's gonna be interesting to people. It's going to be compelling and they're gonna be like, oh my god, it's gossipy. It's not gossipy that an insider is using their Twitter account to boost the business interest of the agent who feeds the insider information. You know, there are a lot of organizations that have a lot of respect for one of them is the Association of Women in Sports Media. That acronym is awesome, AWSN. And so, I wonder what the conversations are like with awesome, with this. Because the reason I say that, Mike, is there's a long history of reporters and subjects kind of being cozy. But the long history has been with males in a male dominated field. So, you know, go back to the 30s and 40s when baseball was really, baseball then is what the NFL is now, you know, baseball and boxing. And all these old sports writers would travel by train with the athletes and they would go out drinking with the athletes and they'd hang out and go to dinner together. It was a very cozy protective of relationship. But then if you go to, like you bring it to modern sports journalism, there's a coziness, but it's a much more inclusive field. And so, I could see some women looking at it and saying, hey, well, you, you golf, when you go golfing with the owner or general manager, nobody says anything. When you go to the owners or general managers or head coaches, guest house, or you do these things as a male reporter, nobody says anything. So, if I'm at this hotel with the head coach and we're in a hot tub, we're by the beach, if I'm a man, do you say anything? And it's an interesting question. I can say this, I don't think I've ever been in a hot tub with a source, male or female. I've never been poolside hanging out with the source, but hey, maybe that's why I'm not an NFL insider either. You know, is that something would, would other, in other words, would other, would we give it as much attention? Would it be some sort of line crossing, some kind of judgment? Well, we have judgment for it if we saw Rappaport or Shepter, poolside, both of these guys, poolside hanging out, Shepter and Mike Bravel. Now, I know it's not the, it's not a romantic thing, but is that crossing the line? If you just, if you are a NFL insider, you're hanging out with a coach by the pool, getting information. Is that weird? Some people would say yes. Some people would say yes. Some people would be surprised by it, but you know, it's like, I think for people in the business, it's the process of easing yourself into a hot tub. It's very, very slow. It's very gradual and you eventually accept that this is the way it is because everybody in this space is very competitive and the commodity is, and this is what drives me crazy about it, and this is why I basically tapped out of it. 95% of the stuff that gets reported is going to be announced anyway and sometimes it is announced minutes after the exclusive, best in the business. Yes, you got it first. All they just reported it, but who cares? You were first. You, you beat them by two minutes before they told the world and it's all engineered and manicured in many cases. The stuff that really matters is the stuff they don't want us to know about. That's the space that I choose to operate in. And look, some are in a hybrid space where it's getting the information before it's announced and allowing yourself to be used as a conduit to get stuff out there that somebody wants to get out there. And that's where this one becomes problematic. It's not just, it's not just the platform is being used and the information is being gotten because of this relationship. It's, is the platform being weaponized by the source. That's where this thing gets, that's where this thing gets even more interesting. So we need to take a break, but I do need to mention two things really quickly and you know, the show ends when the show ends. Let me say this. Number one, there was a report from front office sports yesterday that the photos themselves were shopped around TMZ, did not bite. The post did. The report was they were offered TMZ for four figures. The post declined comment to front office sports on whether it paid anything. Four figures was a good deal for the post if that's what they paid, given what that was. That was a good business transaction by one of Rupert Murdoch's companies. And secondly, you know, and I wish we had more time to talk about this, but I firmly believe that there was a trial balloon floated yesterday by Diana Rossini to return to Twitter after one day that she was absent just to kind of see what happens. It did not go well. And you raised this earlier, like this is going to linger. And I don't know that there's coming back from this, not on Twitter. I don't think Twitter is going to be forgiving. And I don't think this is one of those we're going to forget about it by Monday morning when everybody's talking about the final hole of the masters. I think this is something anytime she reports something, the floodgates are going to open and she's going to be harassed the way that she was in response to the very innocuous tweet that was posted yesterday. Yeah, it's going to take, it's going to take some time. I think she can come back from it, but perhaps since they already opened it up with the statements, there may have to be more statements. I don't think Vrable will get into it again, but she may have to do a podcast or something to kind of explain it, just to kind of get back to some version of normal. You can't just be like, Hey, I've given my statement and that's it. We're moving on. Well, not exactly. But it's got to be believable and it's got to be true. You could make it worse if it's a PR exercise. Yes, you could, you could keep, you could dig the hole even deeper. That's the problem. Listen, this is unprecedented. The 25 years that I've been doing this, isn't the first time something like this has happened. And I'm not sure that there's any way to come back from this. I'm not sure that disappearing for 12 to 18 months and then resurfacing in some new publication. I don't, I don't know. I don't know that there's any coming back from this because your credibility is your commodity when you're a reporter. And we understand the statements are what they are. The photos are what they are. The reaction is what it is. There may be no coming back from it. All right, we're going to take a break. Go ahead. There's a way to come back. Quickly, I'll say the way to come back. If you're a reporter, reporters report. So the way you come back is you have a, you have a story that has nothing to do that cannot be traced to Mike Vrable. You just show why you are a big time reporter and you get some information that nobody else has. That's how you come back. That's how you come back. Just like doing your job. And here's the problem. Here's the problem. At a high level. Here's the problem. Anytime that happens now, you're going to have a block of the, of the Twitter sphere that says, we know how you got your information. That's unavoidable. That's, that's, that's a ball and chain that I think is impossible to detach from a perception standpoint. I'm not, I'm not stating facts here. I'm saying that that specter is going to be there for a long time, if not permanently. It's just basically the idea. But all right, we got to take a break. Yeah, it'll be there, but then you still have to look, are you, are you giving them, even the skeptics, the setting, are you giving them valuable information? They doubt how you got the stuff, but is the stuff you're giving them valuable? All right, let's take a break. More PFT live right after this. Friday edition of PFT live. We're in hyperdrive over the course of the remainder of the program. The Houston Texans not in hyperdrive when it comes to getting their two first round picks from four years ago now signed three years ago. This will be their fourth season. So it was three years ago. Always got to get those numbers right. But they had CJ Stroud and Will Anderson in the top five of the draft back to back, back to back. They Stroud and then they traded up number three to get Will Anderson the fifth year optional. Both players has been exercised. The thinking is Anderson's getting a deal. Stroud, we got to wait and see. Stroud, year three, more bad than good, especially near the end, especially that playoff game in New England that was there to be one. The Texans could have gone to the Super Bowl. The Texans could have given the Seahawks a better game in the Super Bowl, but for deficiencies in quarterback play, are those deficiencies permanent or can it be turned around? So they're going to wait, I believe, on CJ Stroud until after this season to make a decision about an extension for Will Anderson. I think they're going to go ahead and get that done sooner than later, like they did with Derek Stingley. Yeah, Mike, Mike, tell me if you think this is fair, what I'm about to say. If I'm a Texans player and I, and I get win that they are going to wait on CJ Stroud and I'm a, I'm a player on the 2025 Texans. Mike, well, wait a minute. You're waiting on CJ Stroud. Well, okay. You made the decision during half time, half time of a divisional playoff game where he was awful. He was awful. He should have been pulled from that game. If you pull him from that game, then it makes sense to me that you're going to wait on CJ Stroud, but you let him play in that game. You let him continue. We had a chance to go to the conference championship. You put him out there. We could have gone to Davis Mills, who is not better than CJ Stroud, but he wasn't a disaster when he got in there. I think he was three and O was the starter when Stroud was hurt. So you let Stroud go out there, put our Super Bowl chances in jeopardy. If you did that, I'm thinking you're doing that because of the long term. You've committed to CJ Stroud, but you, you did that and you're not even committed to the guy. That would bother me. Is that unfair? That would really bother me that they, they acted like that day. They acted like this was a franchise quarterback who was untouchable. He could not be benched, even though he should have been. Now we, now we're, we're getting the sense that, oh, I don't know, he may not be their franchise quarterback. Committed to him at what level? That's the key. They want to keep him, but we don't want to pay him 50 million a year. We're trying to figure out where he's going to fit on this ever growing range of second contract quarterback pay. So I think that's how you thread that needle. We're still committed to him. We still want him. We just need to see what he does one more year before we affix a value. Oh, if you want to do it now, here's what we're paying, what we give you 30 million a year. If you're trying to get 50, we got to see more next year. And I think that coming out of that experience, CJ Stroud is probably like sufficiently humbled to know, yeah, I can't, I mean, I can't exp, like I'm not going to hold out. I'm not going to skip the offseason program. I'm not going to ask to be traded. They don't give me a contract. I'm happy that they've picked up my fifth year option and guaranteed that I'll make 25.9 million in 2027, if all else fails. It reminds me of when the Dolphins picked up two as 50 year option. To me, I remember when they did something and why, because it was like 20, 21 million, like, why are you doing that? Like, and then the next year, when they still had his fifth year, they gave him a market value contract. Like, who you've been against? What are you doing here? So I think the Texans still want CJ Stroud. I think they want the idea that CJ Stroud is going to become the guy that he was on track to becoming. And let's treat this as a blip on the radar screen. And let's focus on fixing him. And if we can iron out some of this stuff, he'll be fine. There's always a chance it's a Steve Blast situation. One of the only baseball references I'm capable of making. There's always a chance that the fastball is just gone and he just can't do it anymore. There's a chance. There's a chance. But for now, they're willing to invest the 26 million for 20, 27 on the idea that he'll get it back. And once we know he's gotten it back, that's when we'll figure out his value. Now, I like him. I like him as a quarterback. I thought he had a just unexcusable, inexcusable postseason with the turnovers because the game before we kind of glossed it over because they were so dominant against the Steelers. The Steelers couldn't do anything, but he was not great in that game with protecting the football. And then against the Patriots, it was terrible. Ball security. So I do like him, but I don't like him so much that I put him in the category of if you're going to have a first half like that, oh, you can't be replaced? Yes, you can be replaced. And so I think it is a fine line. It's one of the things I would love, if I ever had a chance to just sit down and talk candidly with D'Amico Ryan, I really want to know, I would like to know what his thoughts were. If he truly considered it, he did the right thing, I guess, if you're up that mind of standing up and saying, hey, we believe in CJ and he's our quarterback. But I wonder the day after and the day after that, if he kind of doubts himself and says, I should have made that decision, it would have given us a better chance to win. You have a dominant defense and these opportunities don't come around very often. At most, they come around once a year and you got a chance to advance. I say do whatever you have to do to advance. If it creates an issue, if it creates an issue, you deal with the issue later. And why should it create an issue? Everybody knew he was having an awful day. Why is the quarterback immune from the scrutiny that would go to any other player on the team? If you ever running back who fumbles the ball four times in the first half of a game and you put him back out there in the second half of the game, they're going to say, have you lost your mind? So I think they made a huge mistake. I think we all thought Davis Mills was going to play. And I don't know who makes that call in real time. I don't know if there's a conversation with Nick Casario at halftime. If the owner comes down and you know, there isn't a whole lot of time. The caucus, halftime of a, even a playoff game, it's not until you get to the Super Bowl where it's the ultra long halftime. But I think they made a mistake because they had a chance to get to the next level. They had a chance to punch it through the rest of the way to the Super Bowl. And they would have had a better chance than the Patriots of beating the Seahawks that day. Not that I'm saying the Texans would have beaten the Seahawks, but they at least had a chance. All right, we got to take a break or we have no chance of getting the show done by nine o'clock Eastern time today. We'll be back with more PFT Live right after this. Friday edition of PFT Live, the Jacksonville Jaguars last year made the bold move from five to two to get two players in one. Travis Hunter, cornerback and receiver. We're going to use him on both sides of the ball. Well, the extra physical demands, concerns that had been articulated by many. You're taking a guy who played both ways in college and you're going to put that on him at the pro level. Is it doable? Now they are, as he's getting healthier and healthier, there was a report yesterday from me and rapper board of NFL Network that he's going to be a full time corner in 2026 with maybe a little smattering. And it takes me all the way back to last April. The whole justification for moving up to number two was we're getting two players in one. Well, now we're getting one player with a little something extra. So would you have moved from five to two if you knew that the long term vision was just a corner? Are you going to go that high for just a corner who's only going to help you on one side of the ball? So that report to me is a concession by the Jaguars that they bit off more than they can chew with this idea that anyone is capable of being Chuck Bednarik in 2026. Look, look, Mike, I guess, I guess the positive thing is I'll give them credit for a quick pivot because if they really were just really proud of themselves and very arrogant, they try to keep it going. They try to justify moving up and all that extra draft capital just to make sure that we knew that they got a two way player. I'll give them credit. They realized it's just not going to work. And I think a lot of people said that going in. I was one of the people who thought that he'd be able to do it, but it's just too difficult. And today's NFL, the way the game is, it's just too difficult to expect any player to be out there for at a high level, 80, 90 snaps on defense and on offense for 17 game season. So it's the smart decision to make sure Travis Hunter is focused on one side of the ball, but they probably not probably they overpaid for Travis Hunter. They know that they overpaid for him. And I remember last year as the draft was approaching, John Harbaugh, Raven's coach at the time explained that from his perspective, the concern is having enough hours in the day to know both sides of the ball, to know your assignment, where you're going to line up, what you're supposed to do on this play. He, Jason Garrett would tell a story about when D on Sanders was playing receiver, like he needed to be told more than what the play is. He needed to be told what his assignment on the play is when they were in the huddle. I had the position last year, because look, I'm big in chasing your dream, even if your dream is unrealistic. I think the mere pursuit of an unfulfilled dream is still something that makes life worth living. Just the idea that there's something that you have that you want. And if you get it, great. But if you don't, there's still plenty of lessons to be learned in the pursuit. Let this guy dream. Let this guy try. Let's see what happens. And he's going to have to come to the conclusion himself that this isn't going to work. My guess is after his experience last year, he realized it's different. Trying to do this in the NFL than doing it in Colorado. So now he settles into one position and he maximizes his talents at that position. I think that's the way it had to happen. It's a shame he got injured, but I think that process was necessary to get a young man whose body and brain are still developing to come to the conclusion on his own that this isn't something I can do. And it's harder to get the guy to come to that conclusion when you draft him and you're out there bragging to the world. We got two players in one. Yeah, look, Mike, they were wrong that in their thought that he could do, he could play both positions, but this is where they were right. I think he could be a great corner. I think he will be a great corner. And I think if he had played receiver, they said, hey, you're not going to play corner, you'll be a receiver. I think he'd be a great receiver. He is that talented. He has the ability to play both positions at a high level. It's not at the same time in the same game. And so they picked the side form and I think it'll work out for the Jacksonville Jaguars. All right, we need to take a break. When we return, what message does new Giants offensive coordinator Matt Nagy have for his young quarterback, Jackson Dart? That's next on PFT Live. Friday edition of PFT Live, 13 days away from the draft, Jackson Dart finished fourth in offensive rookie of the year voting last year. He had some great moments, a lot of expectation and anticipation, new coaching staff led by John Harbaugh, Matt Nagy, the former Bears Head coach and two-time chiefs offensive coordinator. Now running the show, he's worked with Patrick Mahomes and said, Nagy, this week, I know how much respect that Jackson Dart has for Patrick Mahomes, but we've also made it clear you have to be Jackson Dart. He's going to do that. And this is, I think, the challenge, the overriding challenge. And every young quarterback goes through this, who has any degree of mobility that he uses, you have to do what you can to keep yourself healthy. You have to minimize the number of hits you take. It's a very simple mathematical exercise. Limit the number of hits you take to as close to zero as possible, because every one of those hits could be the one that gives you an injury, a concussion, whatever. And we saw how many times last year, Health of Giants got in trouble for Brian Tavo going into the blue tent. Camp Scataboo just walked right into the damn thing when they were checking on Jackson Dart. He's got to be smart, because if you're not available to play, the team has a reduced chance of winning. Give up that last blade of grass. Give up that last yard. Remember that hit he took against the Patriots on the sideline? Can't have that. Can't have that. Get out of bounds. Slide. Get down. Don't try to do too much. When you try to do too much, you end up getting yourself in a spot where you're missing too much time. Yeah, I think, you know, after that, remember after that hit, I think it was a Money Night game against the Patriots. And he was asked about it afterward. And I can understand why a rookie would say this. I hope second year Jackson Dart can tell rookie Jackson Dart, okay, we don't have to do that anymore. But after that hit, he said, oh yeah, I'm always going to do that. I'm going to fight for my team and it's football. You're going to get hit. All right. No, you can't live like that as a starting quarterback, who was the most important player, not just on office, maybe the most important player in the organization. So I think Matt Nagy will get that across to him. Mike, I think John Harbaugh will get that across to him. But I'm thinking this as well. This is not only is this a big year for Jackson Dart, it's a big year for Matt Nagy. He's the offensive coordinator. And he's coming off a time with being the coordinator for the Kansas City Chiefs with Patrick Mahomes. And before that, his special project was Mitchell Trebisky, when he was the head coach of the Bears. In other words, he's kind of unproven. If you look at it that way, you can give him credit for Mahomes, but would you? I mean, most people wouldn't. So he's got to prove that he can develop a young quarterback because he didn't really prove it with Trebisky. Trebisky was okay with the Bears. He made the playoffs. He didn't prove it with Mahomes, Jackson Dart, year two. Let's see what you can do with him. Matt Nagy arrived in Chicago a year after Trebisky was drafted. And remember, 2017, the Bears traded up from three to two. Patrick Mahomes was on the board. And they took Mitch Trebisky. Yeah. That was the year that the guys who knew that Mahomes was going to be special kept their mouths shut. Andy Reed, Sean Payton, and Mike McCarthy. Those are the three who knew that he was going to be special. And Andy Reed cut the line. One spot in front of... Sean Payton would still be the coach at the Saints right now. That's right. And the Saints would have more than just Mardi Gras parades going on in New Orleans, if that had happened. Can you imagine? Nothing against Drew Brees, but he was getting toward the end. You get Mahomes down there? Man. So anyway, now Nagy has the chance with another young quarterback. He arrived year two for Trebisky. He's arriving year two for Dart. He's hoping that Dart skews more toward Mahomes than Trebisky. No offense to Trebisky. Yeah. And Trebisky's not offended by that at all. He can't be. He knows. He's self-aware. And he's still in the NFL. He's still getting a paycheck. All right. We're going to take a break. When we return, oh, generic to break. It says generic to break. That means we don't know how much time we have left. We're going to figure out what we can talk about in the time we have left during the time we're away. We'll be right back. 16 players were or will be attending. I don't know how many were invited, but 16 will be present. Fernando Mendoza is not attending. Five Ohio State players out of the 16 Rvalry, Sonny Stiles, Cardinal Tate, Caleb Downs, and Caden MacDonald will be there. Ohio State could become the third school to have four players drafted in the top 10. The others were 1967 Michigan State and 1946 Notre Dame. So it's been good Lord, nearly 50 years, nearly 60 years. Do your math better, Florio. Nearly 60 years since a team has had four players taken in the top 10. Ohio State could join that list. Yeah, you know, Mike, as an Ohio State fan, I can tell you that's cute and everything, but why'd you? Why'd you lose to Miami? Why'd you lose to Indiana and the Big Tim Championship game? What happened? All this talent and they are talented, but should have been back to back national championships. I'm over it. I'm over it. It's fine. But you see all the, you see all the these names at the top of the draft and you reminded of the season that ended up, you know, you beat Michigan and there's some positives. You beat Michigan, but it's a little disappointing overall. I thought of the other day in a good way, in a good way. We have a wedding to go to in Columbus in early June. My niece is getting married and we're looking at accommodation options. You know, you can do the hotel, you can find an Airbnb and there were two finalists for the Airbnb and one of them was and is decorated in over the top Ohio State stuff. And it looks like it's a nicer house, but man, it's just too much. It's too much. You would love it there. But I said, I, and I just, I would refer to it as the, the Ohio State house. I don't know that I can do that for two days. Yeah, I get it. My, my uncle lives there and he told me a while ago, Hey, I got a new car. You need to check it out. I said, Oh, I know what this is going to be. Of course, it's a sports car, Scarlett and gray. You know, he's got like some Ohio State detailing on there. Yeah. I understand. It is, it is a bit much when you run into hardcore Ohio State fans. It's just it just never stops. Just go on and on. I'm surprised you didn't say it was gray with a red racing stripe right down the middle of the car. And like for everything that he does that's good, he puts a sticker on it and he's got the Buckeye stickers and they'll eventually be completely filling one side of the car. I always thought that was cool when I was a kid that they did that. I always thought that was cool because it's like you can immediately tell who the good players were because they had the one side of their helmet completely full. Exactly. And they were spilling over to the other. Yeah, it's like got no room, got no room for, for any other stuff. So yeah, that's not a bad idea. I may run that by and do that. Put some, put some Buckeye stickers on your, on your car. Well, I'll be staying at a house that probably has them so I can just like take some and run them by his house because this, it's just a highest and everywhere. And I got no problem. I was born in Ohio. I got family members that have lived there for years. They're very partial Ohio State, but it's just a little too much. It's a little too much scarlet and gray. Well, get ready. Probably it's not going to be so likely. You guys see a lot of, you gotta see a lot of scarlet and gray in the first round. I think, I think all those guys that you mentioned will go. McDonald probably will be the last one. He may be late first round, early second, but yeah, those, you're going to hear a lot of Ohio State announcements right, right up the street from you and Pittsburgh on draft day. Caden McDonald needs to get himself a big arch hookup. He's got the perfect name. And as far as I know, he is yet to mock the CEO. We still haven't done the big arch challenge. That's kind of faded now. All right, the show's fading. We're going to take a break. We'll wrap up this Friday edition of PFT live right after this. Wrap up this Friday edition of PFT live. It's master's weekend. How much of the masters will you watch between now and the final hole? Very, very little. Mike, I have a hard time watching golf on TV. How about you? I mean, do you enjoy just like getting into like watching golf? No. And I thought about choosing my words carefully because no, God, no. My son wants to take it up. I can't like, here's the problem. I've had two or three different periods in my life where I became very interested in golf and I would go to the driving range and I would go play and I was starting to get good relative to what my expectations were. And then once you start getting to a point where you can make good shots, I mean, I used to be able to hit like a four iron. I could and it would be straight and beautiful. But then when that doesn't happen every time, you get frustrated. And you know, I would go to the golf course. I'd be gone for six hours. I would have spent 50 bucks, which was a lot 30 years ago for me. It still is. I'm still a cheap ass. But and then I'd be pissed off and I got nothing done. Ultimately, I got away from golf because I think of all the other stuff that I could do while I'm golfing. And so now I'd rather just be productive and not pissed off at the end of the 18th hole. Hey, that's a good explanation. I'd buy that. I'd like to see, I'd like to see what my wife would say. I'll be gone for six hours. You deal with the three teenagers. Bye. All right. Enjoy the weekend, everybody. See you Monday.