Colin Cowherd Podcast - Patriots “Dynasty”, Baseball’s Decline, NY Jets Circus, Aaron Rodgers “The Contrarian”

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for twenty dollars off your first purchase. Terms apply Create an account. The redeem code is colin. Download the game Time app today. It takes ninety seconds. Last minute tickets, lowest price is guaranteed. Well, we bring them on a couple times a year. Ian O'Connor four time New York Times Bestseller, twenty time first place winner, National Writing Contest, New York Post. He's written The Captain. You know, I loved The Rise and Rain of Mike Krzyzewski, author of Belichick.

I was thinking of you flying back from Boston the other day. So I was flying from Boston on vacation. I came back to LA and I watched a couple episodes of Dynasty. Now that's Jeff Benedict's book, and that is you know, it's understood in the industry that that's a very craft favorable interpretation of Dynasty. Yours was not. It was and this is not a criticism of Jeff. But everybody needs sources. Everybody needs windows. Are you at

all bothered in all your years? I mean to get access to coach k You know, there's certain places you got to go. Is it a hard line for you when you want because you write these long, one hundred and fifty sourced books minimum, do you ever have a problem a balance of Okay, this is starting to feel like a little too Belichick a little too craft a little too brady. Is that something you struggle with?

that book that Jeff wrote, and he's really good. I have not seen these episodes yet. I'd plan to at some point when I get a chance. But yeah, that's it's a struggle with something you always have to be aware of. But again, I think if you are contacting a lot of sources on both sides of the aisle, it will happen organically where you're not favoring one party over the other too much.

to a lot of people. And frankly, I've heard this directly from him, and managing Belichick all these years was very difficult, and not many owners could have pulled it off for as long as he did. And Craft would say he would walk by him in the hallway and Bill wouldn't even say hello to This is a guy He's paying a lot of money too, and so he does deserve credit. I think that he has not gotten for managing Belichick all these years behind the scenes. That

was not an easy task. He also deserves credit for hiring the guy. A lot of people, myself included infamously wrote and other people told him directly in the league office, not hire this guy, and he did, and so that was the birth of the dynasty. Really right, there was that higher and then of course the drafting and Brady.

But yeah, they Robert can be petty, he can be needy, and he's certainly desirous of your affections, and he wants your Hall of Fame support, and ultimately I do think he'll get in, and I do think he deserves to get in.

I know what you do. If you tape us with the Jets, I'm turning you in and Bill perhaps arrogantly said go for it. There's sort of an o maret to feel to Belichick, like, you know, it's part of the club. We got you a job. You don't get this without us. But I was told years ago that Mangini warned him, Bill, I know what's up. I know what you do. Don't tape us. How do you think that spygate as you look at Belichick's dynasty has run, Where does it fall? First, paragraph, third, fifth, or at all?

it up, and he was warned. And I know the Giants always thought going up there for preseason game games or regular season games, they always sort of knew. And I remember Ernie A. Corsey told me he was flattered that Belichick might try to cheat against them and so, but the old school guys in the league sort of shrugged their shoulders and moved on. And so I think he was the last holdout from that culture and that era in the NFL, like I said, the Al Davis era,

when a lot of that was going on. And so I do not think it ruins his legacy. I think it is a stain on the legacy, but not a giant one. And of course, after Spygate, Bill ended up with probably not probably definitely his best team and his best season. He just lost the super Bowl. And I have this scene in my book. It's one of my favorite scenes. It's after they lost that super Bowl and the chance to go down is the greatest team ever. I thought he had maybe his finest moment in front

of his team. That locker room was absolutely devastated. These were broken, crying men because they knew if one of seventeen things broke their way instead of the Giants way, they would go down as the greatest team of all time. And unfortunately that didn't happen, and Bill faced that team. And I got this from three guys in the locker room, and he only spoke for about a minute, but he blamed only himself because he knew he had to coach

that team through one more possession of their pain. And a lot of times when guys like him take responsibility in subtle ways, they'll also deflect it. And what we could have made more plays, or maybe even deflected a little bit to assistant coaches, or just we didn't execute. It was none of that, and I got that from a number of people. It was all about him. I did not prepare you to win this game. This is

my fault, and I'm sorry. And when he walked out of the locker room, I believe it was Dante Stalworth who told me it was like he just faded the black and I ended a chapter that way, and I thought that was a powerful scene. But after Spygate, after they were discovered, he wanted to and that team wanted to punish the rest of the league and prove to everyone just how great we are. And if you look at that season, I think it's clearly the best team he ever had. Yeah, and they just couldn't get it

done in the end. Yeah.

that they ran out of gas. They were starting leaking oil in the playoffs or even that last game against the Giants, and it just caught up to them that week. But Belichick told them the Giants have now moved ahead of us this week in practice, and he was right. Ian.

You also have a great understanding intellect with baseball, but you also cover football, And I said, and I thought about this so when I was when I was a kid, I wanted to be I remember listening to Vin Scully at seven eight years old and a transistor radio at the coast of Washington. My mom bought me a radio. It was like my friend, you know, as my dad

was a workaholic, so that radio. I would listen to baseball and radio, and I wanted to be a baseball announcer until he was about twenty three twenty four, and then I kind of did local sports and over some time I became a football guy. But the scarcity argument can't just be it because you can go back one

hundred years. Football has always had fewer games. There is something that happened somewhere in the seventies or eighties, and perhaps it was institutional arrogance where football just became more and more and more popular, and it is now really made everything else in sports niche. Everything the NBA feels tiny. March madness is a blip. Baseball last week the big

story was see through Pants. I mean, I mean, it's really remarkable how insignificant other sports feel in this solar system now compared to the Sun, which is in our solar system. The NFL, I think a lot of it is Football's always had a feeling. Baseball always had this sort of arrogance, almost like cricket in England, that we're the national pastime, and soccer has this rabid sort of tribal belief that we're always playing catchup, and the NFL

operates like that, always adapting, always fighting, always moving. They build a business like an underdog even though they're an overwhelming favorite. Baseball has become a massive underdog and sees itself almost a of the fray. And I just think institutionally, over thirty or forty years, those decisions and reluctance to adapt has hurt baseball and elevated football. Do you have any long winded question what has happened over thirty forty years?

The separation between the two social currency television ratings is the Grand Canyon? Is there just one or two things that is a guy who's covering one of the last American cities that lives for baseball in New York.

for baseball. But yeah, I love football, and I say Thursday nights. I don't think if I were commissioner, I would want to get rid of Thursday night football because I don't get fair to the players. But I have to admit colin it, I love watching Thursday night football too, And a lot of times you get those bad matchups and it's two teams you don't care that much about, but it's still it's the NFL. It's Thursday night. It gets you closer to Sunday. It's a bridge, and I

love watching it any chance I get. It's the closest thing. I hate to say this too, but to simulated combat, and I think that is that kind of action and the package violence is attractive to people, and it's a great visual sport, particularly if it's snowing, if guys are cold, their breath, their chilled breath coming out of their face masks, and it's it's a great visual sport. It's a lot

of action. Every game matters, and in the other sports, particularly baseball, where you're playing one sixty two so many games. A Tuesday night in May just doesn't matter in the big picture. There is no small picture moments or games in the NFL. And you put all that together, and that's why the NFL has become an absolute monster, you know.

reading stories for the next day show. But I find myself more distracted and in order to grab my attention it's much harder now. I'm not one of these headline readers. I like reading columnists. I grew up with that. But I find myself having to put my phone down, like I find myself Okay, this is a five part Netflix series. Do I have the ambition to sit there with my wife for back to back nights? And I do think as society has become more distracted, and there's more options.

Baseball is a harder It's a harder watch for.

And so really, for her, I watch it. If she were not there, I just don't know. I check in on the Yankees and watch a few innings and flip over to the Mets for an inning. And I can't watch nine innings of a regular season game on a Tuesday or Thursday night in May. I just can't do it. But I do it for her because she loves the Mets, which is a terrible thing to do, but you can't

help herself. And so I don't know. My son is twenty seven and they grew up or he grew up with his friends gathering to watch soccer and NFL game soccer on Saturday mornings from the Premier League in the UK. And they don't watch baseball. Not one of those kids that he's friends with or grew up with as teenagers watched baseball really at all. And they didn't gather for the World Series, but they would gather for a big

Man you man city game on a Saturday morning. And also the NFL and fantasy football has been huge that generation. I saw my son grow up with it, and his love for the NFL grew and grew and grew through fantasy football.

of soccer. Clive Charles University of Portland, the Sounders, the Timbers Northwest has sort of a European feel a little bit. They always it's just always been like Giorgiocanalia in New York. You know the Sounders NASL, New York, Minnesota Kicks. You remember that was Seattle and Portland always been big. And I remember watching her oldest son and going, they don't watch baseball. And I was starting to find myself because I still covered baseball at ESPN. I found myself spruggling

outside of a Yankee Red Sox series. I would watch that and I would go to Fenway once a year, Yankee Stadium twice. I found myself saying, I gotta watch this stuff, so i'd watch it when I was working out. I would watch, you know, Mike and the Mad Dog or Maz and Felger in the workout room at my house. I'm like, I got to give a bit, well forty five minutes. I gotta hear discussions on this stuff. But to your point, you know, my kids are much more soccer driven. Now, this is interesting.

I don't know any kids who are doing that anymore, right and again, they might catch a few innings here and there, but it's become an older person sport, which is a dangerous thing.

I've been on something for two years. Hard that the world's changed, that Belichick is allergic to offense, tone deaf, to it, and it's the last ten to twelve Super Bowl coaches I've all been offense is that overwhelmingly offensive coaches. Seventy five to eighty percent of playoff teams have offensive coaches. So if an offensive coach loses a great offensive coordinator, there's no chaos. They're fine. Mcvay's can run through them, Shanahan can run through them, Andy Reid can run through them,

Sean Payton. But if a defense coach loses a sharp oc it's a problem. And so you have Robert Sala, who I like, and he did play some I think he coached a little bit of offense at some point in his career, but it was really damning. They asked Mikole Hardman about his Jet experience, and I read this and I went.

who was hired because of Aaron Rodgers. And I think there was a belief when the Jets got Aarin that this was kind of can be a better version of Farv. And I actually think it's a worse version because I think the Achilles surgery changes everything. They're locked in for another year, and Farv didn't. You didn't have to bring in people to appease Farv, like a Hacket or a

cob or an alanlizard. It didn't feel It felt like, you know, Farv wanted to get out and the Jets landed him, whereas Aaron kind of accompanied the Jets and brought people with him. I look at the offensive line. I look at Breese Hall hopefully across his fingers he's healthy. I look at the offensive pivot by the league and a defensive coach on the hot seat, the impulsiveness of the Johnsons' owners, Like, I don't think it's going to

end well for Aaron Rodgers. I think it's false. Hope that Micole Hardman bite was just an eye opener to the circus inside the building. Do you have optimism with the Jets at all.

Coach k broke John Wooden's record with his thirteenth Final Four appearance. So listen at some point, and everything you said is true. Aaron Rodgers as a GM, he was not going to be voted Executive of the Year off that performance, and even if he played, but I do think if he played some of those guys Lazarre, it certainly would have been better. And Cobb, I think would have been more useful, and Hackett would have been better. He couldn't be any worse. So that was just being

in that building that night when he got hurt. I've just never been in a building where there was that sort of heartbreak in a crowd. I just it was unfathomable, But only the Jets. That was an only New York Jet moment. And so here's the thing. The Red Sox fans before two thousand and four thought they could never ever win another World Series, particularly after what happened in two thousand and three when Aaron Boone walked them off in Game seven. The franchise that had tormented them for

decades did it again in two thousand and three. They come back their downh three in two thousand and four, and they win the whole thing, the end the Curse of the Bambino the Cubs in twenty sixteen. Those fans thought it's never going to happen, and it did happen. So at some point, haunted franchises usually will break through. So is it possible that the Jets had to bottom out with this horrific season? Seven to ten doesn't sound terrible,

but that was a terrible season. The only saving grace was beating Belichick, breaking that fifteen game winning streak he had against the Jets and sending him out of Foxboro with a loss. Other than that, it was a disaster. And it felt more like four and thirteen. So is it possible they bought them out and they come back and they have the season that they were supposed to have last year This coming season, maybe go eleven and six with an easier schedule and lower expectations and win

a game or two in the tournament. I think that's feasible winning the whole thing. It's going to happen at some point, hopefully. I think you and I are about the same age. Hopefully when we're alive that that will happen.

I really want to see that happen. It doesn't have to be this coming season, and it probably won't be, But the New York Jets winning a Super Bowl again for the first time since January sixty nine, for the first time since Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon, would be the biggest sports story in my forty plus years of covering sports in New York. I think I think

it's bigger than Messia in ninety four. I think it would become bigger than Nameath in Super Bowl three, although that change professional football just because of the media age we live in. Just think of how big if they wanted this coming season with Aaron Rodgers at age forty one. In December, he turns forty one, coming off in Achilles. That would be I think that would be the biggest story in my thirty eighth to forty years of doing sports in New York.

That was the spirit of it. And I was grateful that he did and he certainly didn't owe me anything. So I recently did that, and so I think it will be a definitive and fair and honest and accurate account of who he is, why he is, the way he is, and I had so many people, Peter King one of them, the best ever. I think Peter is the best ever at what he does. So he knows

Aaron Rodgers, but I don't know him. And I think there's so many really smart football people who told me they don't feel like they've got a firm grasp on who he is. So that was my objective was to try to explain who he is and hopefully I pulled it off.

That maybe he is, you know, he's our modern day rebel. Is that if you look at his personality, what he does is constantly push back on conventional mandates, conventional wisdom, conventional authority. That's my interpretation. He just pushes back on groupings. Now, sometimes group think is correct. I think people should have taken the vaccine if they were older, right, kids, maybe not as much. Is that a fair or reasonable interpretation

of what you're discovering? Is that, you know, he's never married, No kids, may not. You know, I don't know if his pet situation. He's really an independent guy. He's wealthy, good looking, older, He's got his worldview. It's a lot like Joe Rogan's. They're both talented. But he basically just pushes back an authority. Maybe one of the reasons he's not married. He doesn't want to conform, and that's his personality, that's his id.

town overwhelmingly white, and so I think you start to see it, maybe a cal cal Berkeley, and I think he starts pushing back, maybe against the religious upbringing, and that leads to other pushback. I think that's a reasonable interpretation of the journey of his life and where he is right now. And I think that's, you know, the one thing about him that I admire, even though I don't agree with with everything he says, is he's he

is pretty fearless. He's not afraid to confront opposition and to say unpopular things and to deal with the consequences of those things. And I think that's an admirable trade. I don't think that he's doing it just for that reason,

just to push back. I do think he believes in what he says, but I think that's a it's a good read on the Journey of Aaron Rodgers, and I did ask him some QUI for instance, when he said I'd been immunized, and then he got killed for that later on, of course, when it came out that he did not get the vaccine, and he explained why he said what he said, and he was allergic to an ingredient in Maderna and Pfizer and also concerned about the side effects, the reported alleged side effects of the Johnson

and Johnson shot. Is why didn't you just say that in August of that year when he gave that press conference instead of saying I've been immunized and sort of misleading people. And I thought his answer to that, which I'd like to say for the book, was very interesting, And because if I were sitting there as a columnist,

I don't know how you feel Colin about vaccines. And I got vaccinated, but I put myself sort of in the middle on it, because I do think it was not quite as effective as it was advertised, and I got COVID twice. And so I said, if you gave that explanation about being allergic and also being concerned about side effects, I actually I think that's a reasonable explanation, I would have accepted it. Unlike Kyrie Irving, who could not play because of the mandate of New York. You

could play with that position. And my biggest problem with Kyrie Irving is what he was doing to his teammates and particularly Kevin Durant, but also to middle and bottom of the roster players whose careers were being affected and could be elevated by winning a championship that they had no chance of winning with him not playing. So Aaron Rodgers didn't have to deal with that. He was eligible to play with the position of not taking the vaccine.

But I think if I were sitting there as a columnist and he gave the explanation he gave months later, I would have thought that was reasonable.

Freddie Freeman. You can go down the line. We've done this a couple of times. We have a Bosa pass rusher in LA and they got one in San Francisco, Steph Curry, Draymond Green. The state of California and specifically Los Angeles. We go about twenty deep. I mean, Cooper Cup doesn't make the top eighteen. Like it's insane. New York right now has Aaron Judge, Aaron Rodgers, kind of Jalen Brunson, and it's weird. It's a moneyed city, it's

a major market. It's well capitalized, like California, it's heavily there's a heavy burden on taxing.

trustable athlete in the city. Like I know his personality Villanova, he plays DFA. I love Jalen Brunson. I think he's terrific. I think he's the heart of that city. He's a hard working kid, second rounder. But there has been in your time in New York. Has there been a six or seven year period where it just feels like everything is off the rails a little?

Yankee so it wasn't like they got him. Aaron Rodgers was interesting because there weren't a lot of suitors, and he looked at it. Okay, I think he looked at it this way. Where could I go? Where if I win a championship, my legacy could explode and I could get back into that Brady stratosphere. And that was the Jets. And so unlike far who didn't want to go to the Jets got there late, so they really couldn't do a whole lot for him, even if he demanded pieces

to be added. They got him late in that preseason, and he wanted to go to Minnesota anyway, Rogers absolutely wanted New York. So he's the rare superstar of elte in sports who thought New York was a really good idea. I think Weather's part of it, no question about it. Taxes also the I largely believe the New York media thing is a myth, but a lot of athletes still look at that as a factor. And also Colin the world is so small now because of the social media

age that you don't need New York anymore. You could be a global superstar in Oklahoma City, in Cleveland, wherever. So I think years ago New York was more appealing to superstar athletes in that context. But you just don't need the Big Apple anymore to sell your brand and to grow your brand, and that's a part of it as well.

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Are you turned off by a lot of the information that's often hijacked from you ends up on blogs. Nobody gets credit is for somebody that's been doing this for forty years at a high level. How do you view your industry.

to become a columnist. Now columnists really don't exist. Any general commists anyway, There are very few left. And so when I talk to kids coming out of college and I say, now, if you want the most visibility and the most money, and you're in the print game, it's about being a twenty four to seven insider. Now, if you are a feature writer slash calmness journalist at heart, you can still do it and you can make a living. But obviously, when you look at where the business is

right now, it's well, what you do. You're one of the all time greats at what you do, Colin, and so very few people are going to do it at that level. But I'm talking about sort of more rank and file and writers, calmness who become TV personalities. The way to get there, to get to the top, to get the most visibility, to get on TV is really to break news and just be a twenty four to seven all consuming insider. And as you look at woes, you look at chapter, you look at rapaport and charms

and others and so. But if you don't want to do that, you can still make a good living. But that is the best way to get become an expert in something. And like me, I think I'm known as somebody who knows a little bit about everything. But maybe I'm known years ago as a basketball guy and then a golf guy later and then an NFL guy. But bouncing around is not going to get you to the to the top. It's becoming an expert at something. And that's us it the advice I give.

I am. Topic matters, and right now I can't wait to read the Aaron Rodgers book.

And so that's why that title was picked. And so you're not really you're not a huge fan of his as a as a figure right as a personality.

have to be great leaders. Manning certainly was. He was very confrontational with Jeff Saturday, Brady with a coordinator Mahomes with a coach that's not Aaron. But I do think he's a fascinating personality. He's a content machine. He's a contrarian, and I appreciate him. I think he suffers from a little bit of that smartest guy in the room disease. Rich single doesn't really have to sacrifice for kids, a family, you know what I mean, Like you when you're married

it's a series of sacrifices. I'm willing to do all of them. But it's a different lifestyle than Aaron and I think, you know, Bill Simmons and I have talked about this older richer, handsome, never married. You know, you kind of get into your own You get into your mirror a lot. You are the son the galaxy and the stars, and I think there's a bit of that that's a little over the top. But I respect the hell out of him.

but I'll give it to you now. I didn't name the person because he said, listen, I can't stand Aaron Rodgers and everything he stands for, particularly on the vaccine. And this is somebody who's done a lot of business with the Packers and the Jets, prominent NFL figure, and he said, but I have to admit I've never met an NFL player who doesn't like so in the locker room. He's loved in a lot corners and so Hard Knocks

was very good for him. I think it became an Aaron Rodgers infomercial really in terms of how he connected with players, older players, younger players, and how they responded to him. So we'll see, we'll see how the season plays out. I just want him to be healthy. I just want to see the season. I just want to see him make fifteen starts. And I've never I've covered some of his games here and there, but I've never seen a full Aaron Rodgers season. I'd love to see

it in my backyard with the Jets. And if he could win a championship with the Jets, which is unlikely, that would do a tremendous amount for his legacy. I think right now i'd have him fifth all time on the quarterback list. I think he could probably move up to two or three, and with a Super Bowl victory with the Jets, i'd probably putt Well, Brady's won Mahomes two, Montana three, Manning four, and I'd have Rogers five. But I think he can move up a step or two if he went on with the Jets.

very outdated way to play football. So Ian O'Connor is one of my favorite and I've told him this many times, one of my favorite sports writers, A dogged reporter, exceptional writer. So am I reading this right? I know this is personal, but you put it out there A bomb scare on a plane you were recently on. When did this happen?

possible we're going to crash? And as we're landing at O'Hare, we were coming in pretty hot, so we had no information, and we saw the emergency vehicles with their lights flashing. So that's not good. You don't want to see that when you're coming in pretty hot. And so we landed. It was bouncy, but okay, we parked the plane and we're far away from the terminal. They did not want our plane near that terminal. And then we found out. The senior crew member gets on the intercom and says,

now we can tell you what the situation is. And we had somebody go in the bathroom and leave a message that there's a bomb on this plane, and so we're going to get you off and law enforcement will come on and inspect the plane and we'll see what where we go from here. Meanwhile, they didn't rush us off, so we're thinking that it's possible there's a bomb on the plane. We'd like to get off as quickly as possible. They finally got us off, They loaded us onto buses.

They eventually took us to the terminal. We sat there, or I did, anyway, for seven hours. They checked the plane head to toe and that was it. The interesting thing is I ended up taking the same plane from O'Hare to Lax seven hours later, and it might have been the safest plane in the air because of the way it was checked. But that was odd to me that I ended up back on that plane and it was covered to some degree nationally and locally. But as

far as they know, nobody was ever arrested. And if it was just a hoax, that's a fello in these notes in mid air, Okay. So I don't know if that's a statement on news outlets and all the cutbacks and layoffs in these newsrooms have been completely slashed, and there's been I keep checking, How could they're not be an arrest, How could there not be any follow up? Nothing?

Now I understand it. Maybe it's so embarrassing that United Airlines or the FAA doesn't want this to get out whatever the result was, if it was just a total hoax, but I can't believe that. If I weren't so busy with my book and I have to get this thing done, I would probably turn it into a personal crusade to find out what exactly happened. But there's been no follow

up whatsoever, and it just went away. And I guess the bottom line is, I'm happy that everybody's safe, but somebody did something on that plane to cause that, and as far as I know, nothing's coming it.