Today we’re welcoming our first guest on the story, senior reporter Albert Breer.
He joins us to share what he heard at the NFL owners meetings.
Plus we want to know what’s going on with the Eagles and Cowboys because they play Monday Night Football tonight.
I just want to get to it, Albert.
You’ve got two teams.
I don’t even want to say at a crossroads because the road is very sad and dry and dusty, but the NFC East is so barren.
We heard Jerry Jones last week saying, I’m going to be a buyer at the trade deadline, even though their record going into this game is the kind of record we would never consider being buyers, but that’s because nobody in the NFC East seems like they have any mobility.
Right?
And I think with Dallas, it’s interesting because I think you can trace a lot of this back to What is it now 14 months ago and the trade of Micah Parsons and the feeling that like, OK, like we’re reloading now and this is gonna be a retooling and Jerry went the other way altogether and you know as part of that trade he got Kenny Clarke from the Packers.
Then in mid-season, he traded for Quentin Williams.
Then in the offseason, he trades for Sean Garry from the Packers.
Obviously, over the last couple of weeks, he trades for Joey Porter from the Steelers, and it’s just this continued pushing chips into the middle of the table.
And then you start to hear the narratives that are coming out of there, and it’s not just Jerry, like if you talk to Dak, And I’ve talked to Dak a couple of times about this, like Dak’s putting pressure on people in the building, like, this is, for now, we’re trying to win now.
They obviously have had an offense the last year and a half that’s ranked near the top of the league and, and you look at the weapons that they’ve got there now and the investment that they’ve made in CD Lamb and bringing George Pickens aboard.
Now he’s in the franchise tag.
And in another contract year, everything, everything that they’ve done has, has since the Parsons trade has been pointing to winning with the group that they have right now, the real life like human piece of it, it’s gotta be Jerry’s age, you know, and it’s been 30 years since they last won a championship and I think he’s feeling that too, is I’m only gonna have so many more swings at this, and so I’m gonna swing hard.
Gotta say we see it in all sports.
Pat Riley has come out and say, I’m not going to be around much longer.
I need to win another title.
So I understand that with guys who are sort of lifers in the sport and have been such a big part of the sport like Jerry Jones has, but it is hard to get everything, you know, going at the same time, both offensively and defensively.
And Jerry has been not.
Just obviously with his own franchise, but he’s been such a voice in league matters.
I know you talked to him quite a bit last week when the owners’ meetings were going on.
What do you feel sort of came out of those meetings or what was the buzzy discussion during those meetings for you?
Well, Jerry certainly made news by saying like he’s still open to trading from war, right?
Like, so it seems like every time Jerry says his mouth, it winds up in a headline, and this was another one of those cases.
Um, so soon after the Joey Porter trade, so that’s, that, that was definitely one piece of it.
I’d say like from an overarching perspective, Rachel, um, in that meeting, the fall meeting is usually an update on where the, the, the, the play on the field is.
It’s an update on fan engagement.
It’s an update on viewership and all of those different things, you know, less than halfway into the season.
And so one of the big box topics, I, you know, within those rooms was sportsmanship in general.
So you have $250,000 fines going to three coaches for their behavior around and towards officials, right?
So that’s Nick Siriani in Philly.
That’s Mike Vrabel in New England, and that’s Aaron Glenn with the Jets, you know.
And then we have the potential for Replay being broadcast.
The replay reviews being broadcast the same way they’re broadcast in college football in the ACC and now in the Big 10 after the whole Western Michigan debacle.
And so I think so much of this is to try to take the temperature down.
So you sanction the official in the Trey McBride situation.
You sanction the players, um, in the Bills Raider situation.
You sanction the coaches.
And the whole idea here as, as I see it anyway, is to try to create deterrence towards this sort of behavior, because I do think that they feel like it’s getting to a boiling point.
In a really interesting way, I think the idea of televising the replay review process is gonna, gonna do that too, and I, and I don’t know what your experience is watching it, Rachel, Rachel, my, my experience when I, when I watch it like in an ACC game or a Big 10 game now, like I may be mad about a call or what was that, and, and then you watch the actual human beings like going through the process, you’re like, oh, that kind of makes sense.
You know, so I do think like if they were broadcasting some of those, those reviews , more people would probably walk away from it saying like, yeah, like, uh, you know, I may not like the call, but it makes sense why they came to the conclusion that they did, which, you know, again, we’ll take down the, I think the temperature a little bit from a public standpoint on what’s going on on the fields and maybe some of those, you know, arguments that we’re having on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday.
Um, over how the officiating, you know, went down over the course of the weekend, maybe those wind up not even making it past Sunday.
Yeah, and players too.
I mean, obviously they’re not listening into that in real time during the game, but in general, when I talk to players about these kinds of things, they like knowing what the thought process was, and they also like knowing when the league admits they got it wrong, because I think even though you can’t go back and replay part of the game.
Game, they at least want sort of the satisfaction of knowing like, OK, like, at least we’re being straight with each other.
And I think this process could kind of rise that as well.
In the NBA they have the final 2 minute report.
And again, they don’t go back and replay the game because the official got the call wrong at the 32nd mark.
But at least I think some players feel like, OK, I know how to operate here because we’re on the same page .
You know what it comes back down to, Rachel?
To, like, I just think it’s like having the humility to admit you were wrong, you know, and the humility to like, hey, we’re, we’re, we’re subject to the same sort of public scrutiny that you guys are as players or you guys are as coaches, right?
Like I, I think about the Rams situation, um, from the Denver game a few weeks ago when I think it was clear to all of us watching that Josh Wallace did not interfere on that play when the interception was overturned that basically would have won the game for the Rams.
And the league did wind up quietly admitting it, but then Sean McVeigh says it publicly, oh yeah, like they conceded that that was wrong, and now the league’s turning around and slapping him down for that.
And I think those sort of things erode public trust, you know, it’s like, why are you so mad that it’s out there that you guys were wrong about something?
There’s a human element to all of that.
If you have humility about it, like the way I see it is it becomes a little bit more understandable.
It’s kind of like the same thing as the Jalen Hurts situation, right?
Like I, I, I think like in these cases it’s if you can admit that you were wrong instead of pounding your chest and slapping people down for saying anything about it, I think the general public would have.
It would give you a lot more grace in these situations where clearly things didn’t go the way that anyone would have planned.
Yeah, I think that is completely true.
And since you brought Jalen Hurts up, let’s talk about it.
I mean, when you see the TikTok of what’s been reported so far, it seems insane.
And I know that there’s legal issues, you know, about what they admit publicly that they did or didn’t do.
But still, this comes back to the NFL is playing 9 international games this year, right?
I mean, they’re talking about moving up to.
next year.
What effect do you think that has had on the players, especially as like safety has been such an issue because they had field problems in a couple of places and of course the Jalen Hurts issue flying him overseas twice while he has blood clots.
This goes back to, I mean, if you remember, there was that game in, I believe it was 2018 or 2019 between the Chiefs and Rams, the shootout, Mahomes and Goff, and Everybody remembers that night.
That game was supposed to be in Mexico City, and the field conditions in Mexico were so poor that they wound up having to move it out of Mexico back to Los Angeles.
The Rams have been designated as the home team.
Obviously, another unique circumstance comes up here with Jalen Hurts, and um the, the, the fact that he had to get on an international flight as he was dealing with blood clots.
There’s a lot that the league can learn from that.
But there’s no question, it’s full steam ahead when it comes to this stuff.
This is really, really important to the owners .
They do, like you said, they want to add another game and go to 10 next year.
And ultimately, the goal would be to get to 16.
Um, and whether or not they do that in 5 years, 10 years, I’m not sure.
But the goal, you know, when they go to an 18-game schedule, if that were to happen, would be for every team to be playing an international game every single year.
You’d have a full slate of 16 international games, which then they could sell as a television package.
They’re obviously looking at new frontiers.
I think Japan probably comes in 2028, you know, Roger Goodell has been public and talking about Tokyo as a potential landing spot.
Now they’ve been to Australia.
They’ve learned some, some things about taking that long a trip.
And Italy is on the radar too when new stadiums in Rome and Milan open up um in the next few years as well.
You know, the, the popularity of the game domestically has gotten to the point where it’s hard for them to grow domestically, um, very much in any way anymore, and that’s when they start adding inventory.
18 games is adding inventory and continuing to grow the game internationally is, is adding inventory as well.
Yeah, I’m interested to see what happens with that because once you get past 10, you need the players association to sign off.
OK, I do want to ask you about the Eagles specifically because of the Jalen Hurts issue.
How do they get their confidence back for this season or can they?
You know, there are a lot of big picture questions, and I think their approach, you know, ahead of the November 10th trade deadline, probably be marked on how, you know, the next few weeks go, how the game, you know, tonight against the Cowboys goes, and we’ll see how all of that plays out, you know, like, I, I, you know, I, what I can tell you is they’ve, they’ve built up a lot of cap debt and that’s part of their strategy, um, allowing them to spend year over year, have a lot of flexibility to add players and they want to add players, so they added Jalen Phillips last year.
Um, you know, and that $1 today is more valuable than a $1 tomorrow.
Um, so they’ve always been very aggressive with that approach, and sometimes that approach can mean that you have to go through, um, resets in, in single seasons.
It happened about 5 or 6 years ago.
Um, you know, in, in, in Nick Siriani’s first year, and that could be coming.
They got some young pieces that they can build around there, Quinon Mitchell, Cooper Dejean, Jalen Carter, Devonta Smith, but there are some older players in that roster as well that they’re gonna have to make decisions on, guys like Saquan Barkley.
Again, how they go forward with guys like that, I think is determined by what the team shows the rest of the year.
And that could, of course, you know, from a big picture perspective, affect the future of guys like Hurts and, and Siriani as well.
All right , before we go, rapid fire, Albert, who wins the NFC East this season, or do they just decide not to have a division champion?
Well, they crowned one in the NFC South last year, so I don’t think.
That there’s, yeah, I, I, I don’t think that they can just hand that playoff spot to somebody else after, after, uh, what we saw with the Panthers making the playoffs at 8 and 9 last year.
I’m gonna pick Dallas.
I still think Dallas has the highest ceiling of the teams in the division.
Um, there’s a lot of pressure on their defensive coordinator, Christian Parker to figure it out with the amount of pieces that they’ve added on that side of the ball.
You know, it’s one of the best offenses in the NFL when it’s really humming.
And I, I just think that they’re going to find a way to figure it out, not to be a great defense, but to be a middle of the road defense, whether that’s Christian Parker, Mike Petton, whoever it is calling it, um, and I think that’ll be enough to, to, to win the division.
All right, well, we’ll see how all those predictions bear out, and Albert, I will see you here in LA for the Super Bowl.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
Anytime, Rachel.
And thank all of you out there for joining us.
After all, the games may end, but the stories don’t.
I’m Rachel Nichols, and we’ll see you next time.
