Sean McVay Could Unlock Another Level in Myles Garrett

You had been hinting for weeks that the Rams had another swing in them.

I did not, in my wildest imagination, think that that swing was Miles Garrett, and those are the traits, Albert.

Teams going for it.

Teams making it happen, uh , with June 1st being now really like an exciting another part of this deadline.

I mean , We'll start with the Rams.

Uh, I mean, what a move.

I, I think this puts them squarely in Super Bowl, uh, or bust territory.

I, I mean, the amazing thing about it is you think about it, right?

And like, let's go back to last year.

I think we'd agree that the NFC title game was the de facto Super Bowl, and had it not been for that whole thing with the two-point conversion and Zach Charbonnet on that Thursday night in December, maybe we're talking about the Super Bowl champions here, right?

And they're bringing that team back basically intact minus Jared Verse plus Miles Garrett and Trent McDuffie, right?

I mean, and it's like I , I, I know Matthew Stafford is 1 year older, Devonte Adams is 1 year old, it's not perfect, right, but I, I just like it, it's such an interesting thing, and I, I think.

For the Rams to do this, and I go back to just like March, and when they didn't wind up doing an AJ Brown deal and how that opened up thinking for them on where is our big swing and what can we do.

And they'd already had at that point, Trent McDuffie in their back pocket and, uh, you know, to, to spin that into, let's go circle back on Miles Garrett.

And at the draft, for them, and they're thinking to be if we get our quarterback now, and I've said this a few times, right?

Like, I, I, I told everyone that would listen, like, like, don't look at this as a move that isn't win now.

It, it, it is a, it is a win now move, you know, it is a move that opens them up to use those picks as capital going forward.

And, you know, it's interesting cause for me, this goes back to Um, the Rams investing, and, and I think this is a great piece, there's a couple of great pieces of this story for, from a Rams perspective, right?

I, I think you can go all the way back, um, to, like, even before Sean McVeigh was there with Kevin Demoff and, and Les Snead and Tony Pasteurs, and all those guys that have been there, um, you know, going back to 20, and, and 2012.

And It's fascinating to me because they invested in a running back.

They invested in an off-ball linebacker in Alec Ogletree, and this isn't gonna mean a lot to a lot of people, but some of the mistakes they made.

Change their thinking in that if we're gonna swing big we are gonna swing for the freaking fences and that's and and and it took them steps to get there right like they traded for Sammy Watkins they traded for Brandon Cooks and those deals were OK but like how do we like where is the really, really big swing.

And so that's what led them to swing on Jalen Ramsey.

That's what led them to swing on Matthew Stafford.

And you know, like that's the thing that I think people don't realize about it is they aren't just wildly swinging on players.

They're slow, they're swinging on generational talents and premium positions.

So that's number 1.

And then number 2, what facilitates this is hitting on all those 2nd and 3rd and 4th and 5th round picks exactly.

OK, so consider this.

In 2021, they trade two first-round picks for Matthew Stafford, right?

Um, Jared Goff is part of that deal as well.

I'm not forgetting him, but just consider that you're giving up a draft pick in 2022 and a draft pick in 2023 because you don't have your 2021 pick because that was gone for Jalen Ramsey, right?

So, Your 19th pick, your 20 or your 20 pick, your 21 pick went for Ramsey, your 22 pick, your 23 pick went for, for Matthew Stafford.

The 23 pick, by the way, winds up, I believe, being a top 10 pick, right?

OK, because the Rams had that year with all the injuries, right.

Yet Right now, after not having a first-round pick for all of those years, right?

They have one of the best young rosters in football.

This is facilitated not by saying F them picks.

It's by hitting on 2nd and 3rd and 4th and 5th rounders.

That's what facilitates this.

That's why they've got a good enough team to take a swing like this.

And that's the part that I think everyone misses.

This is a huge organizational triumph.

Yeah, I, Jarrett versus a first-round pick, but you know who else you have on the defensive line?

Byron Young, Kobe Turner, Braden Fisk, all drafted outside the first round, right?

You have on in, in your receiver group, Puka Nakua in your running back room, Kyron Williams all taken outside of the first round.

And so, you know, you look at all of the, you look at like the, the, the, the, the aggregation of all of this.

And what enables this is a philosophy that we, when we swing, we're swinging huge.

Like it's not gonna be for just a really good player, it has to be for a great player and Trent McDuffie, a captain of the Super Bowl champion, uh, a captain of a Super Bowl champion, you know, I think a 2 or a 3-time All-Pro, right?

And then I think you'd argue maybe the best player in all of football in Miles Garrett.

So, I, I think that there's a piece of this that's a massive organizational triumph.

So anyway, this goes back to the draft for them.

They've been working on it for a long time.

It didn't just pop up out of nowhere.

And I think it's enabled by a, like, a philosophical piece of it, which is like we, We have learned our lessons from like overspending on non-premium positions or swinging on really good but not great players.

So you learn your lesson there, and that you, you, you, when you swing, you swing with, with, with premium players at premium positions.

And then you enable a move like this by hitting on so many other draft picks to fill out the rest of your, your roster.

So you have a roster that is ready to compete for a championship, which justifies a move like this.

I, uh, one of my favorite parts about this was talking to, and, and I love when seismic things happen in the league and you talk to coaches around the league and they're just as blown away and, you know, they think about things almost from a fan perspective in a while for, for the moment, but obviously they're coaches, so they have smart takes on it and One of the things that I wanna uh kind of clear the runway for and explain, cause I got a lot of pushback when I wrote this yesterday, but I want people to understand this, uh, and, and I'm gonna try to explain it, um, as best we can.

Um, I think that Miles Garrett in the hands of Sean McVeigh and Chris Shula is a weapon unlike anything we've really seen.

In the NFL over the last decade.

And the pushback is, is simple, right?

It's like, well, OK, the Browns only won 5 games with him all the time.

Uh, so why, what, why does that make him a weapon?

Here's what one defensive coach said, and I thought this was brilliant, right?

Miles Garrett.

Will determine what direction.

The other team runs the ball about 75% of the time.

You know they're running where?

Away from him, right?

Miles Garrett will determine which direction the offensive line is sliding in pass protection, where?

Towards him, about 75 or 80% of the time.

Miles Garrett's gonna determine how many wide receivers another team is able to let go to send out into passing routes.

Why?

Because you need another one to block him at all times, right?

Another body.

So, when you put that in the hands of the Browns or who always kind of had a mishmash coach and coordinator and whatever, whatever, it, it's a weapon cause it's a good player.

He's one of the best players in NFL history.

But if you put it in the hands of somebody who has already taken little statistical advantages like that and broken the NFL in different ways, you're handing McVeigh and Chris Shula.

Essentially like the passwords to every computer in the NFL because you're giving them.

An incredible advantage over the opponent.

You're allowing them to dictate terms now on both sides of the ball, cause the Rams with their 13 personnel, with their wide receivers who can play tight end, essentially, they already dictate terms on offense.

Now they're dictating terms on defense.

That sucks.

Like, if you play the Rams, you are not allowed to, you are on your heels on both sides of the ball.

All at all times.

That is a nightmare for an opposing coach.

Like, right?

I mean, that is a straight-up nightmare.

And again, the difference between the Rams and the Browns, like, guys, do I need to get into this, or, or , or can we all nod our heads and accept that these are two very different organizations with like different track records of success.

The Rams are gonna use him and weaponize him in a way that Cleveland never could, and I'm very excited to see that.

Yep, and I, and, you know, now I, I think you.

You look at where they are, and like I think, again, it's amazing how You know, 5 years ago, they were going into a Super Bowl season, what would be a Super Bowl season built around, you know, the group of Matthew Stafford and Andrew Whitworth, and, uh, and Aaron Donald, of course, and Cooper Cupp and Jalen Ramsey, and all those guys are gone except for Stafford.

And now they have a core of Stafford, Pukunakua, Miles Garrett, Trent McDuffie, I, I, it's.

It's pretty, it's pretty mind-blowing.

And again, like I think they get credit for continuing to be ahead of the curve.

I'd even argue like, you know, so it was interesting.

I, you know, I've had some conversations with people over the last couple of years and they have really, I would say, Like overinvested.

They, they, they, they philosophically went to a place where they were overinvesting in two areas, offensive skill, defensive front, right?

And so, that was like, you know, going and, and, and, and, and, and, and investing in, you know, in Devonte Adams when you already had Pukaakua there.

That's what you're doing with all the tight ends.

It's drafting Blake Coorum.

Um, when you already have Kyron Williams, it's, they took Josiah Stewart last year, I believe in the 2nd round from Michigan, right?

When they already had Byron Young and Jarred Verse on the roster.

So they were investing and investing and investing and they've gotten really good in those areas, but they slipped to a point last year where it cost them a corner, right?

So what do they do?

Trent McDuffie, Jalen Watson, come on over from Kansas City, right?

They felt like maybe they slipped a little bit on the offensive line.

OK, we're gonna draft Steve Avila in the top 40.

We're gonna pay Kevin Dodson.

They struck out on Jonah Jackson, but still works out because they get two of those 3 right.

And oh, by the way, they find Alaric Jackson on the, like as an undrafted free agent, right, to be their left tackle.

So again, it's just, it's.

It's so many of these things going right for them, and, you know, I, I think they deserve a ton of credit for always thinking outside the box.

I think always being ahead of other teams in the way that they think and always pushing the limits of what they can do.

And it was funny, like I was writing my winners and losers of the trade yesterday, and I thought an immediate winner is the Ty Simpson of right now because You know, he was kind of, he was sort of the battering or the pinata for Rams fans for being like, well, if we don't win a Super Bowl, it's because we didn't spend an immediate impact pick on someone and instead we got this guy.

Well, Miles Garrett kind of clears that up.

But I think one of the, like, in my mind at the beginning, I was like, one of the losers is probably the Ty Simpson of.

Tomorrow because he inherits a roster that, you know, we, we, we just don't know what Pukaiua is going to be.

We don't know how he's going to turn out.

That's a story that's, that's up to him.

But no, no, but let me finish because I know, I know, I know what you're going to say.

OK.

All right.

And, and I came around on this, OK.

At first, I'm like, OK, Ty Simpson's gonna come, probably starting year 3 of his rookie deal, um, and he's not going to have, you know, they're not gonna have, they're gonna clear out some of the picks in between now and then, um, you know, all that kind of stuff.

But then in my head, I'm thinking, oh yeah.

Matt Stafford's off the books, um, you know, he'll still be on his rookie contract and even if he signs like that Jordan Love bridge, it'll be under that amount of money that Matt Stafford's making now.

And then Sean McVeigh and Les Snead are gonna have all this money to spend on good players again.

It's like, it starts again.

And so any moment of doubt, like , I, I think you're gonna have to check yourself because the Rams have done this time and time again.

They've rebuilt time and time again.

Now, I will say this, and I do wanna play devil's advocate, OK?

Cause I can tell you're ready for this fight.

Um.

Them rebuilding again for Ty Simpson.

Would put them on, not on par, but in the same realm as the New England Patriots of the Belichick era in terms of the number of times that they've had to successfully reinvent themselves and maintain a consistent presence in the playoffs.

So, My question to you is, and, and I guess it doesn't matter right now, right, because they're going to, I mean, if they don't win the Super Bowl with Miles Garrett, I'm gonna be surprised.

And again, there's a lot of things can happen, injuries, all that kind of stuff, but Do you think that They will ultimately be able to run this all back with Ty Simpson in, in 3 years, you know, or do you think that the now is, it will cost them, because I do, it's worth having a discussion.

I, I have faith because they've done it.

They've already done it with 2 different quarterbacks.

So why can't they do it with a 3rd?

However, this is a different, I think, I think Sean McVeigh, Dave Ragone, Cliff Kingsbury.

The guys that are there, um, Nate Shieldhaas, the guys that are there, their vision for Ty Simpson is very different than what the vision was for Matthew Stafford, um, in that they believe that Ty Simpson can be a point guard type of quarterback.

And like a Drew Brees type of quarterback.

Now, that's a big name to put on him, right?

Like, and I, and I do feel like you hear that name a lot, but like that's the idea is that he can play quarterback that way, which means they're gonna have to build a little bit of a different way, but it can be done.

And, you know, I, I, I hate to make this, this like to, to oversimplify it, but McConnor, like, this comes back to what everything comes back to in the NFL.

It's about drafting well, and people look at the Rams and say this isn't about the draft, and yes, it is.

It's about the draft.

It's about getting so many of the lower-round picks right, which means you've got cost control talent on your roster, which gives You freedom to spend at the top of your roster.

And I mean, we can go through their draft history.

I mean, without a first-round pick, and the misnomer, of course, is that you, like, like the FM picks thing, right?

If you look at volume, they've had more draft picks than anybody over the last 10 years because of how they play the comp pick formula.

And I, I just, you know, I'll go, you go down the list, Braden Fisk in the 2nd, Blake Coorum in the 3rd, Cam Knchin's in the 3rd.

Um, you know, Jordan Whittington became a useful player for them in the 6th.

This is just the last couple of years .

Steve Avila in the 2nd, Byron Young in the 3rd, Kobe Turner in the 3rd, um, you know, Puga Nua in the 5th.

Uh, Quentin Lake's become a good player from, he was a 6th-round pick.

Kyron Williams was a 5th-round pick.

Kobe Durant, they got good years out of, he's gone now, but he was a 4th, like, uh, What other team has this sort of track record?

Now, it's really hard to maintain that, right?

Like Jordan Fuller was a captain for them, and he was a sixth-round pick.

He's not there anymore.

Van Jefferson was valuable, Cam Akers was valuable, all guys, Taylor Rapp, uh like these are all guys that were drafted outside of the 1st round, you know.

And so, like, I hate to oversimplify it, but if it's gonna work for Ty Simpson, this is how it's gonna have to work, is that you're gonna have to keep hitting on your draft picks and maybe you have to hit on picks outside of the first round, um, to do it.

And you know what this does, of course, is it, it does hurt your margin for error, you know, because I, I know everybody's focused on the first round pick next year, but this also means Um, you know, minus what they get with whatever comp picks come in the next couple of years, and they could wind up getting 3rd-round comp picks if they let guys like Kobe Turner, Byron Young go.

We'll see what happens there.

But, um, they, they basically signed up over the next 3 years for only having 2 top 100 picks in each of those years, which means something because Like you do want to have some margin for error built in, but you're gonna have to hit on picks to, to keep this going the way that you've had it rolling, and that's what's gonna determine where they're at with Ty Simpson.

Um, I think Puga Nua.

That's the biggest question mark, and I think he'll be fine to be their number one receiver for the foreseeable future because between the lines he's done everything the way they've needed him to do it, right?

So let's start from the Browns side of it, and, and I kind of went with the roller coaster along with the Browns fans who I think immediately were like, hold on, that's all we got for that.

Um, because when you look at the Micah Parsons deal, for example, you know, you think, OK, 2 1s and a player, like, wow, OK, that's, that's what we got that, and, but, but I want to kind of stress that I think that's effectively what Cleveland got and it just looks different if you just piece everything together, right?

Because Jared Verse is worth like a first and a, a mid-round pick and then, You know, you combine the, the mid-round picks together, the 2nd and the 3rd, and then whatever you would else you would have received from verse, that's another pick, and then you get the 1st-round pick.

And so in my, you know, there's a way that you can shimmy this, which I'm sure Andrew Barry will, that it probably slightly outpaced the comp for the Micah Parsons deal despite the fact that Miles Garrett is, 4.5 years older and so I do think they did well in terms of the comp there yeah, so like I, when they were discussing this and obviously they've had a lot of time to discuss it, um, you know, and I'll take you, I'll take everybody inside like they're thinking internally was, OK, so we have a player and they view him like Bruce Smith, Reggie White, like a guy who's gonna be able to produce into his thirties and I, I think Reggie White was first-team All-Pro at like 37 and Bruce Smith made 7 All-Pro teams in his 30s.

Like they, they're just in, like, the sort of like production deep into a career that we rarely see ever, right?

Those two guys.

So, this deal is gonna have to be different.

And so, what does that mean?

Well, that means the, the normal two first structure for a premium non-quarterback was not gonna work, right?

So, the way they looked at it was, we need to make a move that is going to serve us in a very big way, both in the short term and the long-term, right?

And so, the short-term piece of that was, we need to find a player at a premium position that's on, that's under cost control.

Um, that we feel like is a star already and can come, become a bigger star for us.

And uh like it's easy to just dismiss Jared Burse here.

You should not be doing that.

Like the Rams viewed him as this is Terrell Suggs, and they were very, very reluctant to give him up.

They fought till the end not to give him up.

And, um, you know, I, I think in the end you, you, you make the decision because again you're getting a You're, you're bringing Lawrence Taylor in, you know, so you do what you gotta do, but they really tried to find a way not to give up Jared Burse.

So, like that serves the short term and the long-term because he's young, under cost control.

They, you know, like, this is a player that they can build around and he fits very nicely into the young court they built with last year's draft class and now this year's draft class with the 3 picks in the top 40.

And then the other piece was they wanted premium draft capital in multiple years.

And I think they accomplished that, going a 1 in 27, a 2 and 28, and a 3 and 29.

That basically sets them up in 3 straight draft cycles to really build on what they have now.

And here's the reality of it, Connor, right?

I mean, I think you'd agree with this, and we've talked about this a little bit.

How I think there was probably some of it in the deleted episode yesterday, right, um, which had a lot of good insight in it, by the way, we're not deleting it, but like I, I was very happy with the episode, especially when everything happened because it did foretell a lot of things, um, but I would say like the, I, I would say like this is about timelines, you know, and as much as the Browns thought that Garrett had left in the tank.

His value wasn't gonna be the same two years from now.

So if he did fall off for some reason, or there was some sort of decline in play, um, it was gonna be harder to get the sort of return that they wound up getting on Monday.

And I think for the, the example of that, the best way to describe that is look at what the Raiders got for Kh Khalil Mack from the Bears in 2018, and then look at what Kh Khalil Mack.

Um , was, was traded for from the Bears to the Chargers four years later.

It was still a, it was still a good haul, but it was nothing close to what, what Mack went for in 18.

And so, I think if you're the Browns, you look at it and say, all right, chances are we probably don't have our quarterback of the future on the roster right now.

We need capital to go, to capital to go get that guy.

And we have all of these young players, Carson Schlesinger, Mason Graham, Quinshaw Judkins, Dylan Sampson Harold Fan that we drafted last year.

Now we've got Casey Concepcion, Denzel Boston, Spencerfano coming in.

We like where we're going with this young group.

Do the timelines match up?

And when that group gets really good, and when we find our new quarterback, how much is Garrett gonna have left?

And if we want to trade him, then what can we trade him for?

Are we better off rolling the dice and keeping Garrett around or Do we get a star who can fit into from an age standpoint that group better and really like goose our rebuild here by adding draft picks?

Goo means something different for me and you.

Goose means something different for me and you.

I, I was, I've, I've, I've explained this so many times over the last week and a half.

I've used supercharged.

I've used, put a jet pack on the rebuild.

I didn't want to go.

I'm sort of running out of, out of terms.

So goose, there you go, goose, uh, in my friend's lexicon and like this could be like a regional term, but whenever we took photos together, um, one of my friends would always just like jokingly kind of.

Jam his hand into your butt, you know, and he called that goosing because then you, uh, you would make a weird face in the photo.

And so all the nice photos like at our weddings, at, you know, the first time we met each other's children, there's just a picture of us being goosed.

Uh, so that just has like that word has like a special, uh, meaning in my, uh , in my heart.

I, I, so again, like I did with the Rams, there's two things I want to push back on on the Browns just a little bit and The, the one is that the verse situation is interesting to me because if you're the Browns, you've made him the centerpiece of the trade and it would look ludicrous if he didn't make it to a second contract with you.

Verse knows this.

His agent knows this.

After this ton of leverage, but he has a ton of leverage.

So after this season.

Which he would go into the final season of his rookie contract, which means they have the option for, just to be clear, they have the option and then the, yeah, but I mean, my guess is knowing the mechanisms of this, the agent is probably not going to let it get to the point where he's playing under a 5th-year option, right.

So verse will sign a contract extension that will in effect pay him more than the Rams are paying Miles Garrett, right, because that's assuming that Miles Garrett doesn't go back to the table, which I think he probably will at some point.

You think he'll go and re up when he goes, what I mean, Will Anderson just got 50, you know, so, so and Miles Garrett's at 40, OK, yeah.

So if he has, if he has a monster year, I mean, I would assume he'll go back.

So the other thing I want to push back on and, and, and I think it's just like.

And I think this is what's so great about the Rams, and it's not that the Rams, cause you illustrated this perfectly.

It's not that the Rams are not utilizing the draft, it's just that they're maximizing the picks that they do have, OK?

But what I think bothers me generally, and we'll get to this a little bit more too with what Howie Roseman said.

In the return for the AJ Brown deal, is this sort of that some teams, I think are treating these mass quantities of picks, almost like a, like a Ponzi scheme or like a, or like a weight loss scheme where it's like, oh, you're gonna accumulate all this stuff and it's gonna be great and it'll help you, but like, when?

So, like, Cleveland, Since 1999, I think it's had something like 20 top 15 picks, 10 top 5 picks.

The Andrew Barry regime , really, I mean, since Miles Garrett, the start of, and not necessarily just in, you know, Andrew Barry wasn't in charge at that point in time, but like, since they got Miles Garrett, it was, let's get picks, picks, picks, picks, picks, picks, picks, picks, picks, picks.

It really, you know, like, where has he gotten them?

And, you know, and you could say that Andrew Berry nailed last year's draft, which he did, um, and I think he wisely passed up on Travis Hunter, um, and, and got better players as a result of that.

But if you're Cleveland, it's like, OK, like we, we kind of have done this whole thing where even throughout the entire era of Miles Garrett, we're playing around with this idea of more picks, more picks, more picks, and we missed the window to build around Miles Garrett, you know what I mean?

Like, it, it, it passed.

It's gone.

I mean, let's call it what it is though.

I mean, it's, it's a Deshaun Watson issue, right?

I mean if they hit on Watson and Watson is who he was in Houston, then we're probably not having this conversation.

Garrett's not traded.

The Browns, I mean the Browns could be a Super Bowl contender like, you know, that, that 22 team that won 11 games.

Did it with like just a steaming mess until Joe Flacco cleaned things up a little bit at quarterback, you know, like, I, I don't know, like, they, they win their first playoff game in forever since Bill Belichick was the coach with Baker Mayfield in 2020.

They have some injuries in 2021, they come back in 2022, and like, if Deshaun Watson, and uh was that the, the season he was, no, he was suspended in 21, right?

So he was supposed to, yeah, he was supposed to play in 22 and he got hurt and like the whole thing kind of devolved into a mess at quarterback, but like it actually looked like that team, that team was ready to win, you know what I mean?

Like that team was.

And so like if you wanna talk about the plan and where Andrew Barry and that franchise were like were like 2022 to me is the perfect example of like if Deshaun Watson hits or even if they just hold on to Baker Mayfield, like they're a real contender in 2022, you know, and I'm not gonna say that they would have toppled the Chiefs or anything like that like, but um.

You know, the Bengals and Chiefs played in the AFC championship game that year.

Do I think they could have been like competitive with better quarterback play, um, in those playoffs?

I do.

Yeah, yeah, um, and, and it, a lot of it like, it, it's, I, I, I go back and forth on it, right, because I think that Andrew Barry is getting better at his job.

And I think that some GMs don't get the runway to make mistakes and correct.

Well Les Snead got that runaway in LA, right?

And so the difference with Andrew Barry that I think flips a lot of fans out is he literally orchestrated like the worst trade in the history of the NFL, right, but You know, and that's a hard but to get rid of.

But is it worth allowing to see what he does in terms of altering those mistakes, changing his processes, and does something good come of it instead of throwing out all that institutional knowledge and then just bringing someone else in and mishmashing like you've been doing for 26 years.

I, I don't have the answer to that.

I think that there's a lot of good GMs and GM candidates in football that haven't gotten a shot.

But at the same time, like Andrew Berry is now traded for Deshaun Watson and traded Miles Garrett, and he better hope that, you know, like he's got, well, look, there's like there's no, there's no question now there's no pressure on that 2025 class.

There's pressure on the 26 class.

There's pressure on the front office to hit on picks to be right on Concepcion and Boston and Fanno.

Um, and to use the draft capital they've now acquired in the most sensible way possible.

And the interesting thing about it is, like, I mean, the best thing for them might not, might be to be, might be to not be very good this year based on the quarterback class coming out and everything else so that's another element to all of this, you know, um, it's, so I mean like then you're taking like a pretty massive PR hit if you know.

Miles Garrett is on a float in, in February in downtown LA and you're preparing to have a top 5 pick, you know.

You're gonna have, you, you, I mean, if you're Jimmy Haslam, you're gonna have to be willing, you're gonna have to have a, a pretty square jaw to withstand some of the criticism that's gonna come then, um, and real conviction in your plan to stick with it through that because that might be what winds up happening over the course of the next year.

But the light at the end of the tunnel does have a chance to be pretty bright.

And here's the last part of this, and I mentioned this in my winners and losers column, and Albert's got his columns up from yesterday, which are just packed.

I mean, he saw this stuff come.

He was ready for it.

If you read it, you'll understand what I'm talking about, um.

You know, the big loser in all this is, is Arch Manning, and I'll tell you why, because.

Just wait, I'm gonna stick the landing gear.

Um.

Which 3 teams got absolutely hosed yesterday by this?

The Jets, because the Patriots got AJ Brown.

The Cardinals because the Rams got Miles Garrett and the Cardinal Browns like an absurdly difficult schedule and the Cardinals already have an absurdly difficult schedule and for last place, Steve, I think we said, didn't we say it on the schedule release show that's like the toughest last place schedule we've ever seen.

Probably the, like, I, I'm not being hyperbolic when I say that like if they win 3 games, I would be absolutely amazed, and that's no offense to anybody there .

I mean, you can read my, uh, uh, coaching.

Uh, uh, list over the years, all of those guys are on it.

I mean, I've, I really like that staff they put together.

That is a jigsaw house of horrors, OK.

Um.

And the Browns, and that's gonna be the thicket at the top.

Those are gonna be the top 3 teams picking in next year's NFL draft, likely.

I mean, things happen.

I think we're shit gets weird.

Yeah, I think we're presuming.

I, I think presuming Archer is gonna be the first pick.

He might be, you know, but I think it's, it's a little early for that.

But yeah, if he winds up having a monster year and that winds up being the result of all of this, he's gonna have to really work hard to get to the Vikings at 11.

Well, his dad's got some experience with that, so.

Uh, but I thought it was Eli.

Oh no.

Anyway, although, although upon, upon further inspection, I don't blame them for being really upset.

I think we went over this, right, about eating at the Marriott in New Orleans.

Like, Eli, Eli sat down with the Chargers and Marty Schottenheimer and the GM at the time, uh, A, AJ Smith, yeah, were fighting over not eating at a historic New Orleans, uh, restaurant, which like Marty Schottenheimer is 100% right on that.

You could have gone to NA.

You could have gone to Emeralds.

You could have gone.

I mean, there's a million places that you could have gone to that are epic, incredible, epic, epics.

The commander's house , I think, is the name of one of them.

Like that was awesome.

Like I've got a million.

I could, I could run them all down here.

We don't have time for that, but yeah.