Colin Cowherd Podcast - Kevin Clark on Fields Pressure, Diggs Trade Talk, Russ Weirdness, Surprise Playoff Pick

of expansion. And I absolutely agree. This is what I have proposed, and this is what I believe is the truth of the playoff structure. I think it needs to go to sixteen, eighteen to twenty four teams. I think there is so much money left on the table in college football because of so many of these dreary, small town bowls that nobody attends, nobody really wants to play in. It's just a way to get practices for some of these coaches that you know half of them. Nobody shows

up to the games. They're awful, they're optically bad, players could get hurt. Great players go into the NFL, don't want to play in them. Get rid of those things. I think we now have to consider, not just twelve teams, but sixteen to eighteen because I think college football needs to take a page from college basketball and have a dramatic, long playoff scenario to cap off the season. It's the icing to the cake. College Basketball's primary issue is the

cake isn't very good anymore. The best players don't want to play college basketball, and if they do, it's briefly one year and they're gone. College football will maintain a high level of integrity and competitiveness and quality because you have to stay in college football minimum three years. Most players stay four, some even five with red shirting. So I mean you see some of these quarterbacks coming out. They're twenty four to twenty five years old now, and

so the quality of college football will remain high. I've never bought into this argument that it'll kill college football rivalries. Really, Auburn Alabama both know they're getting into a twelve to sixteen team playoff. You're not going to watch the game in Alabama. That game won't mean anything. You'll just skip it and go to the Falcon Saints game in Atlanta the next day. That's so stupid. You love college football

or you don't. Rivalries will always matter Douke. Carolina is still a great rivalry, and we know they could meet again and again and again down the road. It doesn't matter. Great is great. So Greg Sankee, who is the most powerful person in college football, the SEC Commissioner, says, hey, we're expanding all these conferences. Let's reconsider the playoff structure. I'm all for it. What the SEC has done better than any conference. They've been willing to evolve, be aggressive annually.

And Greg's right. Secondly, Jim Harbaugh self imposed three game suspension at Michigan. We heard it was going to be four, right, and then Harbaugh and his guys couldn't agree with it. Right. Then it was none. Now it's back to three. The NCAA has always been fairly toothless. They depend on the reporting of newspapers and media to up end programs. They really don't have the ability, very rarely, the staffing or the ability to go into a program and monitor these closely.

And now with name, image and likeness, what's cheating. Harbaugh can be a difficult personality. He's strong willed, he's forceful, and he's not going to get pushed around by anybody. I think in the end, this is probably self imposed three game suspension is probably those are weak games. Michigan old roll. The big picture is it. Harbaugh's just not somebody you can push around. When his athletic director a couple of years ago asked him to take a pay cut,

what did he do to the staff? Interviewed with NFL teams and has had back to back great seasons. So big, willful personalities are not to be eft with. And Harbaugh is not going to go quietly into the night because you didn't like his answer. When you're the NC DOUBLEA, the toothless NCUBA, I will always defend these coaches. They have to run these programs, deal with nonsense from the NC DOUBLEA deal with boosters. Yes, they're highly compensated, but

there's a reason they're highly compensated. They create ninety one hundred million dollars in annual revenue to athletic departments. So Michigan's athletic department has been revamped due to Jim Harbaugh's recent success. There's a total momentum shift, there's a total cultural shift. It is a great day to be a Wolverine these days, not so much a Buckeye. That's because of Jim Harbaugh. I think the self imposed penalty is probably the way to go about it. But we're learning

time and time again. Don't try to push around Harbaugh. He's going to have a strong opinion. Another story, Jen Cohen, the highly capable athletic director at the University of Washington, has taken the job at USC. Several years ago, a trustee at USC asked me to write a list of people he thought were capable of being the athletic director at USC. I actually did not write down Mike Bone. I didn't know him. I wrote down six or seven athletic directors, two in the Big ten, two in the SEC.

One of them was Jen con at Washington, highly capable, and so now she finally gets the USC job. They have wanted Gen Cohen for years. The challenge Jen Cohen will face is one that Pete Carroll never had to face. LA is now the economy's never been bigger because of Silicon Valley. Pete Carroll did not face two NFL teams. The market wasn't nearly as distracted. The Lakers were great, The Clippers were a doormat. The Clippers are now viable.

The Lakers are still viable. The Dodgers have never been more popular lafc in town people now because of Silicon Valley and the net worth it has created to many people in southern California. People travel more, have second homes, some third It's harder to get people into the coliseum. That's why they shrunk the profile of it. They dropped off ninety thousand fans down to seventy five thousand. They

realized it they weren't going to fill it anymore. They also realized they had to go big on the coach. It wasn't just that Clay Hilton was struggling. They had to go big on the coach. So there's real challenges inside that building. La is not even a nice town like ann Arbor, Austin, Texas. California is the biggest economy in the country. It pulled away from the rest of the country New York State and Texas during COVID, and there's just a lot to do here ninety minute drive

north or south. I think Jen Cohen's struggles will be things that have culturally changed in the city. A more distracted fan base. You know, a lot of guys have to choose Saturday or Sundays. You know, if you're in a relationship and your big football fans and one of the other people are not as big a football fans. You don't get Saturday or Sunday, and so now you have, you know, justin Herbert Matt Stafford Rams Chargers games. There's

just more to do in Los Angeles. So I think you know UCLA is going through some of these struggles with name, image, likeness, money. Is that you're asking boosters for more and more money. USC is now building a three hundred million dollar football facility, getting rid of the old one, which was really nice, and it feels like they just built. But you know, Lincoln Riley needs a new facility. There's something contractually which allows him to ask

for that. So now you're asking people who have got a lot of distractions. This is not the biggest game in town. The Lakers and the Dodgers are bigger. This is not a small college town. It's not even a medium sized college town like ann Arbor. So I think I think Jen Cohen and anybody running USC. It's a challenge. Doesn't mean it can't be accomplished, but asking for money, even in rich city is not easy when there are

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Kevin Clark, senior football writer, analyst at The Ringer, host of the Slow News Day podcast, a friend of the Herd. So I'm gonna throw something at you. Years ago. I'm not sure who said this. It could have been Jerry Seinfeld. He talked about He called it the comedy jet Stream, Seattle, Minneapolis, Boston, like New York, this Northeast sort of maybe a little higher brow sort of a lot of times, you know

this educated understanding. We get the joke. And I think it was Seinfeld or somebody said people are funnier in places where the weather's lousy because life's too easy. It's life's too easy in Miami, Tampa and Phoenix, right, it's always sunny. And so I've always had a little bit of a theory that in the nor Northern football team, Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, even the Giants teams, the Parcels teams, you know that very successful Super Bowl, they were tough. Phil McConkey,

Mark Bavaro and Chicago. I always think about this. It's almost hard to explain how Chicago can never have had a great quarterback. It doesn't mean it's ridiculous, and you think to yourself why. And my theory is that some of these kind of cold weather towns they have romanticized

defense and toughness, and it's not that. And I think Chicago's had multiple options in their franchise history to draft a quarterback, and they went for the rush end or the mike linebacker, and that it's a somewhat explainable why Chicago I can't even name their best receiver ever al Sean Jeffrey like it's it's you know. So my takeaway is when I look at Chicago this year, we may finally have a dynamic quarterback for the Bears. I'm hoping so. But that's my theory on the Bears inability to land

one great quarterback. Ever, is it horseshit? Do you buy it?

done it is stunning. Dustin Fields, by the way, came out and said he will be the first four thousand yard quarterback over the season on a podcast. Maybe that was tongue in cheek. I don't know, but I would hope. So there is a high floor here. I interviewed Justin Fields a couple of months ago. I said, does it put more pressure on you the fact that there have been these big misses and they passed on Patrick Mahomes, Deshaun Watson, all these guys who could have been quote

unquote franchise saviors. And he said, it's not my fault that this happened. And I thought that was exactly the way to do it. And I think he liked those expectations. He said to me that, however high the fans expectations are his or higher, which I think is the exact way to do it. And there's a floor here that I think that people say, oh, well, Luke gets you in the offensive staff, they've got a lot of work to do, And I say, no, it's just the opposite.

There was a stat last year Colin that blew my mind, which is his consecutive games with fifty yards and a touchdown of rushing was the most sense. Gail Sayers, Okay, Gail Sayers. There's a name that actually was good in their past, and when you have that kind of production on the rushing side, it doesn't take much to open up those passing ways. I think we're going to see a massive step forward. I think that we're going to

see an improved team. And I was I was joking with you a couple of weeks ago where some people saying, oh, in the first preseason game, he just gave the bald to Herbert and to DJ more than they did the work.

the Al Golden Era. But I remember just some random Bears fan at the concession stand just arguing about whether or not the eighty five Bears defense was the best of all time. That's their identity. That's what Bears fans want to do. They never want to talk about the quarterback. They always want to talk as you said, they want Khalil Mack in the first round. They want that kind of guy, the big beefer. They want Mike Didka calling into local radio shows and saying, here's what we're going

to do. When you have those sort of voices, they never really go away. That's you see that all the time. In the opposite I grew up in when the Dolphins have a good quarterback, they immediately get Compton Marino. That's, in a weird way, held them back. So I just think a team can get buried under its own history, and I think that's when you get in trouble sometimes.

He was viewed as a complete liability. Now it's the ground ball. And in the NFL, if you look at the top spending teams on defense, it's Buffalo, it's Pittsburgh, it's the Chargers, it's you know, it's these defensive coaches. And I've said this before, is you'd have to really convince me to hire a defensive coach in the NFL. So you recently did an article coming out on the Bengals,

and it's interesting. When everybody was bailing initially on Zach Taylor, my takeaway was, no, no, no, it's the right side of the ball. You just can't win in this league with an old Andy Dalton, whoever it is. And the minute he gets Burrow, he completely embraces him. Flores struggled with Tua, Simmer with Kirk Cousins, Pete a little with Russell Belichick with Mac. I find when the coach is offensive, there

is a happier, more joyful experience. Offense is celebrated, mistakes are tolerated, Like I feel, the locker room feels different. What was your vibe from Cincinnati?

offense in myriad ways. I mean, at one point twenty nineteen, some of the coaches are saying they're trying to run the McVeigh outside the own stuff. They were terrible at it. They gave up on it. Joe Burrow comes in and says, you know what, we're going to do this, this, this, I want to get five guys into routes. They said, great, And what the piece that I did that I reported on. I spent a long time talking to the coaches and Tyler Boyd and Tigg into some of these guys down

in Cincinnati. Basically the angle was they've mastered the easy play because last year NFL defense has sold out to take away the deep ball, and basically his deep ball numbers were halved last year, went from thirteen touchdowns to seven. Guess what, he was a great quarterback anyway, because there's no football ego on that staff or even from Joe Burrow. And I think that what's interesting is that modern defense dares you to be uncool. They say, you know what,

go ahead and do whatever you want to do. But it's going to be a checkdown to Pee Ryan, it's going to be a checkdown to Joe Mixon, it's going to be a checkdown to Hayden Hurst, and it's not going to be a fifty yard bomb to Jamar Chase and Joe Burrow said, deal, great, We're going to do it, and that's why they were able to win last year, especially after Week five. I basically had halftime of a Week five game against Baltimore and they started to make

those changes. But that's not normal. Mahomes said. It took him a couple of months to figure out to just have that patience, have that foresight. And what Taylor told me was basically, he'll check, Burrow will check down and say, you know what, I know, Jamar might be open fifty yards down the field doesn't matter, because ten yards wide open is great he gashed Buffalo like that with Hayden Hurst and some of the backs out of the backfield.

They doubled their targets to running backs last year. And I think what we're seeing is I thought, Brian Callahan, the OC, said something really interesting. He said, it's a type of football maturity unfolding in front of our eyes. It's just him saying, this is what I have in front of me this year. I'm not going to force it. Even though I have the three I have the best receiving core in football, doesn't matter. I'm going to let those guys run down field open up the rest of

the defense for me. I think it's really astounding because Colin, as you know, like when a young quarterback, young quarterbacks almost like a boxer, right, their career changes so much from year to year style. You know, one fight can change your entire trajectory, all of this stuff. And so to go through a year where you're not doing the things that you're used to and you're not going and the chemistry between Jamar Chase and Joe Burrow is as good as any two young players have ever seen in

my entire life. And the stories that that Chase told me last year about how Burrow will underthrow a deep ball because he knows he can throw in a double coverage and all of this stuff. It's crazy, and they said, you know what, I'm just not going to do that this year. That to me is the sign of a guy who's going to adapt every single year of his career. And by the way, now that he's successful for it, the deep ball opens back up and that's the most

amazing thing that they can do it again. So the fact that Burrow's on the cutting edge of this chess match shows me that not only is Zach Taylor a good coach, not as Brian Brian Calla and a good oc but the Joe Burrow is capable of anything on the football field.

Prescott was just loud. Now he was. Jason Garrett once told me he fought like hell to keep him because he gave you eight to ten touchdowns. And then there's the Randy Moss Stefon Diggs, which is they're highly productive for three years and then it's their personality they want more. Diggs has been targeted a lot, highly productive, it's just his personality. And I've said I would go make the move for Randy Moss in his peak, and I'd make

it for Stefan Diggs. I don't feel they're problematic. You get three years of productivity and then their personality comes out. I can live with that. In this league, three years is forever legacy's are formed and so let's just play the game. Stephen A. Smith says he's unhappy wants out.

If that's true. Is there a team or two that you just think of off the top of your head where you're like, gosh, they just I mean, I obviously New England's clear, but I think they're trying to get value on every offensive player and there's not a lot of those with cap space, so you'd have to make it work via some trade. Is there any place Digs would work to you.

to be unhappy in a lot of the places. A couple other teams, like the Miami Dolphins, they love making aggressive moves. Well they're full and wide receiver. They can't add another piece, and so you get to kind of the dregs a little bit, and he's going to go to a place. Does a team with a bad quarterback when a trade for us to Diggs. I don't think they do. So it ends up being, you know, a couple of different places, but I just don't I don't see a place where he'd be happy. You know, does

he want to go and play? You know, would he have taken the Chicago Bears slot you know, to be their star guy and try to resurrect that. I don't know, I mean, and if it's if it's a quarterback you can't get in the ball, does that make the expiration date on his happiness that much shorter. And maybe it's a place like Carolina if he wants to reboot and

play with the quarterback. I don't know. But when you're going out of a winning situation, there aren't a lot of options for you, and the NFL is going to set your market pretty quickly. And I think that, you know, Buffalo in general has a lot of blow up potential, but they could also win the Super Bowl, and I think I think there are real questions. I was just listening to some of their beat guys at the Athletic talk about how there's still questions on the offensive line.

Kyer Elam, who's the first round pick from a year ago, is just not taking the job the way the coaches want. There's some real holes in that roster. But then there's top, top time ben talent, and that's why he need Stefon Diggs there. If I'm Brandon Bean, I'm doing nothing to move Stefan Diggs. I'm not going to ask for a trade.

I'm gonna try to do a last dant situation because you need that top, top end talent because you've missed on a handful of big roster decisions in the last couple of years and you went all in maybe on guys like Bond Millwerre we shouldn't have. And so if I'm the Bills, I'm standing pat. I'm doing everything I can. I'm putting in it on Josh Allen to make it work. Everybody needs to be happy because Stefon Diggs is a type of talent you have to have if they're gonna win.

a lot. He's like, yeah, GoF so let's talk about them. Because you know, I was saying to Jason McIntyre today, I said, one of the things I have such great sympathy for young people is I was very lucky in my career. I got a couple of great first bosses. Let me make mistakes, let me grow. Jared Goff was a bust with Fisher and then got to a Super Bowl. His career was over like it was done with Fisher. He didn't know east from west, where the sun set.

It was like embarrassing when he was on hard knocks. And I always think to myself in basketball, in soccer or basketball, talent is talent. Kobe would have found a home if he stayed in Charlotte. They didn't trade him right like he was too good international soccer, there's not many messies you'd find a club. So I look at Goff and I think to myself, we're undervaluing him. He was a number one pick. He throws one of the

best deep balls in the league. At the end is he got two hundred and forty throws without a pick. It's something absurd, like where do you land with golf?

they want to add quarterback last. They'd rather be like a Philadelphia Eagles type team where they build the stacked roster and let the quarterback developed kind of later, and then they're ready to go in year two of the quarterback in three or four years. I really like Jared Goff. And I think you know you mentioned, you know, situation matters.

I've always said that's about the quarterack position. Geography is destiny man like Drew Brees ending up in New Orleans, that was written in the stars, Patrick Mahomes ending up in Kansas City like that. This stuff matters. This stuff matters, Patrick Mahomes Andy Reid solved each other's problem. Andy Reid couldn't finish the big game because of clock management. Patrick Mahomes said, I will put you on my back and make sure that never happens again. I win two Super

Bowls late in the fourth quarter. It does not matter right for me. Jared Goff executes the offense. That's the one thing we always overlook. When I was on my camp trars talking to guys, and you hear things about like Desmond Ritter, You, I don't think that highly desnim Ritterer. But guess what he can do. He can run on the Smith's offense and then that's a pretty good floor. He can hit these blind throws. He can just fire it in there. Coaches love Kirk Cousins. They just love

Kirk Cousins. And when Kirk Cousins is available after this year, there's going to be a lot of Shanahan treated guys spending a lot of money to get him in that building. Okay. Ryan Tannehill is another one where coaches just love the effect. He can just fire a ball and they can run

the offense. Jared Goff ran Ben Johnson's offense. Ben Johnson is one of the best young offensive coordinators of football, one of the best play callers, and he will be one of the best head coaching candidates this time next year if he wants to leave, and the fact he can do that, the fact he can take advantage of the talent there. Brad Holmes is very quickly a very good roster. I didn't love the draft, but it's funny. Someone the other day in the NFL coumped Dan Campbell

to somebody thought was funny. They said, he's got the chance to be Midwest poor Man's Mike Tombin, which is tough team every single year, always competing. Maybe in Dan Campbell's case, especially with the quarterback, there's a ceiling. They're probably not gonna win fourteen games, but you know what else they're again not gonna do going forward. They're not gonna win four they're gonna win a bunch of games not supposed to. They're always going to be competitive. They're

not gonna quit. They're gonna have an identity. And I think that's the most interesting thing about this Lions team. And Jared Goff is a part of that. There are guys in this Lions team who were not wanted elsewhere and they turned that into something. Jared Goff is that I think one day, yeah, like if they're able to get trade up and get a Drake may somebody like that. Maybe you know someone like Riley Leonard, you know, with pick twenty or something. Next year, maybe we're talking about that.

But I don't think they're in any rush. I mean, it was interesting because last year when I started to Brad Holmes, he said that the rebuild and the teardown in the first year was almost accidental. And he called the first year of the HVAC year and the second year of the chandelier here okay, and the third year now is okay. We've got the house. We've got the house, and now they're going to try to figure out what that is. I guess what. Jared Golf still in the house because he belongs in the house.

all across the country. Game Time has your tickets, download the game Time app and the redeem code is Colin. That's me cl I n twenty dollars off your first purchase twenty bucks no matter where you live, go out in the summer, in style, comedy, baseball, concerts. It's the game Time app, last minute deals, lowest prices, guaranteed twenty dollars off your first purchase twenty bucks. Terms apply. So for years and years I defended Russell Wilson, and I

was hard on Pete Carroll. I said Pete's tone, deaf, let's run on first and second, throwing third and five, that he never gave Russell Wilson credit, but to his credit, he moved off him, elevated, kind of resurrected Geno Smith's career, and they've hit home run after home run the last two drafts. What I think is interesting about Russell Wilson is like the whole Let's Ride thing. I'm not religious.

I'm agnostic. Okay, I've always been agnostic. I didn't grow up in a traditional church, and so not that I'm turned off by religion. I try to be open minded, but it can be a tad cringe e and judgmental to me. But when I hear that Russell Wilson is inauthentic, I think, hold On Kirk Cousins, Derek Carr, and Russell Wilson have deep religious conviction, and I think they're all authentic to who they are. I think they've given their

life up they believe to religion. I find Cousins incredibly likable on that Netflix special, and I really do think this is who Russell is. He's just he's just insanely optimistic. And I think there's so much snark media people see it as inauthentic, and it's like, no good people who are highly optimistic they still exist and one quarterbacks the Broncos. That's really who he is. How do you how?

room or whatever. But I will say this, first of all, outside interests are frowned upon and in a lot of locker rooms to begin with, right, if you're that's that's the thing, and the one thing you should overemphasize is

weight room, study, habits, all that stuff. And from what I understand, Russell Wilson does emphasize those things, and he works his ass off and he always has and I from from what I understand, he's always put ball first, okay, And so I think a lot of the criticisms outside noise that then becomes inside noise or I mean, first of all, obviously there is some tension with the legion

of Boom, which has been well documented. But this offensive versus defensive tension on a lot of teams, especially after you go to something as traumatic as that line thing that's just going to linger. I've said this a million times. The amount of fractured locker rooms, the amount of quote unquote distractions in every building that never leak would shock you.

You know. Somebody was talking to me the other day actually about the DIGS thing, and I said that, you know, the only teams that really get distract there bad teams, right, good teams. You know, the Seahawks I think had two fist fights the week they won the Super Bowl, and

everybody just kept it. The only time that matters is when you have a bunch of bad players and they start playing bad and people start to point bitter distractions, right, And somebody from a NFL team called me and said, you are so right, And with somebody from a good team and they said, the amount of times it'll be, oh my god, you won't believe what happened to four in the morning with these three players, and then they

win about forty points. Happens all the time, never comes out, never comes out, And so your problems and your distractions only become an issue once you become bad. And that's bad for Russell Wilson over the past twelve twelve months, because he doesn't have the legs hold onto the ball anymore. He doesn't have the athleticism that he used to, can't go downfield, and so now it becomes, oh, Russell Wilson doesn't fit in the locker room because he has an

extra office. Or Russell Wilson is going through his own walkthroughs without the coaches, and that's why he's bad. No, no, no, no. He was doing all sorts of weird crap in Seattle. He just got away with it because he played well. That's all that matters. As you've said many times, it's the great winning is the great deodorant quarterbacks, the great deodoran. You play well, everything gets solved and so your voidbles come out more. In Denver, people don't know him, Munia

doesn't know him. They're not going to protect him, and so it just comes out now that he's a weirder guy because there's not a fan base that's ready to defend him. I believe Sean Payton is going to help that team. I was looking at some of the numbers. The false start penalties were just ridiculous last year. The pre snaps, the crazy Like, all Sean Payton needs to do is run the offensive more tempo. Get whoever was doing the false starts, get them out of there, or

teach them to snap count. One of those two things and you'll be able to win a couple more games. Clock management, decision making. I really do think Sean Payton's gonna be able to fix the Broncos really easily. And then the assumption then is that Russell Wilson at least gets fixed at alongside.

That's better than you think.

said earlier, can execute the offense. There's talent everywhere. They took their medicine with dead cap charges, which a lot of good teams will been able to do. In the last couple of years. They basically flushed the entire roster and all the cap problems. So I'm expecting a huge jump forward. I think Arthur Smith and his schemes won't talk about a floor. His schemes and the stuff that he's able to do with his offense that should get

you seven to eight wins by itself. The way he runs the offense kind of what we're talking about Zach Taylor like, he just understands how this goes, and so now there's confidence there. I like them. I like them more. I think, you know, the track record for rookie quarterbacks going with winning seasons is actually quite low. I was looking to some gambling numbers over the past couple of days. It's not a great track record. Des Murder being in his second year, maybe I like that a little bit more.

Bryce Young, I love the guy, but him just adjusting to the league, the offensive line, all of that stuff. I just have more questions there, and I think it's gonna take an extra year.