00:00Patriots are in Minnesota, joint practices with the Minnesota Vikings.
00:03The Vikings were a playoff team last year.
00:04The Patriots weren't.
00:06Lots of connections, familiar connections.
00:08Kevin O'Connell drafted by the Patriots.
00:10Brian Flores was a scout with the Patriots, was a coach with the Patriots.
00:14A lot of connections.
00:16Stephon Diggs going back to Minnesota.
00:17Stephon Diggs, the Minnesota miracle.
00:20Okay, lots of good feelings.
00:23But, Paul, you said something before the break.
00:25Uh-oh.
00:26And you are on the right track.
00:28You can just keep going.
00:30You talk about Kyle Duggar signing a contract with the Patriots before Vrabel got here.
00:35And they're not quite happy with the way Duggar is playing right now.
00:40Michael Winnow, I don't think they're very happy with Michael Winnow signing a big contract.
00:47You could go to Cole Strange.
00:50It's not like Elliott Wolfe drafted Cole Strange, but that's a Bill Belichick draftee.
00:54You haven't heard a lot about Cole Strange.
00:58Godshaw, gone.
00:59Cardona, gone.
01:01David Andrews, great leader for this team, gone.
01:05Jawan Bentley.
01:06Jawan Bentley, captain for this team, gone.
01:09I don't know if Ramondre...
01:10Are they going to keep Ramondre Stevenson?
01:12I don't know.
01:13It's clear to me.
01:16Mike Vrabel...
01:16Let me just say it.
01:17Let me just make it plain.
01:19Mike Vrabel doesn't like the roster.
01:20He certainly didn't like the roster he inherited.
01:23Mike Vrabel doesn't like the roster.
01:26And so, the roster he inherited, he couldn't get rid of everything.
01:30I think he likes, clearly, all the signings that he made and all the draft picks that they made.
01:37I think he likes those.
01:38But think about signings and draft picks versus who was here last year.
01:43Like, you can't turn the whole thing over.
01:45And I do think he's done a nice job of, you know, giving an infusion of talent that they didn't have.
01:52And the line I keep saying over and over again is, they brought in a handful of guys, call it a half dozen, eight guys,
01:59whatever it's going to end up being, that are going to start in place of players that they're better than.
02:05You know, you can go to Milton Williams, god job.
02:08Milton Williams is a better player.
02:09Right, better player.
02:10You know, better all-around player.
02:11And maybe he's not as good a run-stopper as...
02:13But better, but yeah, clearly.
02:15Better all-around player.
02:15More impact player.
02:16And the league agrees.
02:18Carlton Davis, better than Jonathan Jones.
02:20Yes.
02:21Robert Spillane is probably better than Jawan Bentley.
02:25That one's stylistic to me.
02:27It's totally stylistic.
02:28For what they want to do, he's better.
02:29Yeah, I'm not sure.
02:30I'm not sure on that one.
02:31This might be a me thing on Spillane.
02:34Spillane, I kind of like the way that Mike Vrabel wants to play defense.
02:38I like attacking.
02:40I like trying to force mistakes, getting after the passer as opposed...
02:44And it's going to sound silly.
02:45I know for 20 years, we did two-gapping and reading-reacting, reading keys, and won all kinds of championships doing it.
02:53I just...
02:53I prefer this style, and I prefer the style of linebacker that Spillane is to what Bentley was.
03:00I would say, for the most part, this is what the Patriots did.
03:02This is the anti-bill defense, except for one year.
03:06And the guy didn't get any credit for it.
03:08I just mentioned Brian Flores.
03:10So, the year 2017, they lose the Super Bowl.
03:13Don't play Malcolm Butler, the whole thing.
03:15We got it.
03:16But that is Matt Patricia.
03:18Matt Patricia coordinating that defense.
03:19He leaves after the Super Bowl, goes to Detroit.
03:21I know where you're going with this, and I agree.
03:23Brian Flores takes over.
03:25They become much more of an attacking, aggressive defense.
03:28And I think that's the outlier from the Bill Belichick years.
03:34They've never played like that before.
03:36I think the Brian Flores year probably stands alone as far as schematically what they were trying to do,
03:43and just the aggressiveness.
03:44Look, you're still working for Bill, so he couldn't...
03:48It wasn't the full Flores package.
03:49They didn't change the personnel.
03:51Yeah, but he was still bringing the aggressiveness.
03:54Was that the year that they started doing the Amoeba defense?
03:56No, I think they had done that.
03:59I think they had done that early.
04:01That goes back a long way.
04:02Yeah, they would remember that game at Buffalo.
04:04I was going to say...
04:05My boy Drew.
04:05Yeah.
04:06Drew was like, wait a minute, wait a minute.
04:08There's nobody down.
04:11What's going on here?
04:12Who do I account for?
04:13Who's the mic?
04:14What's going on?
04:15I think Vrabel has so much work to do with the defense.
04:21And I've alluded to this, and not just the defense.
04:25He's got so much work to do with the roster.
04:29That's why I disagree with you all.
04:32You keep saying, oh, they could turn it around.
04:36Yeah, they could turn it around.
04:38But damn it, they got so much work to do to turn it around to get to 9 or 10.
04:45Oh, okay.
04:45I didn't know exactly what you were talking about.
04:47I disagree with you.
04:48I was like, who are you calling new people?
04:49No, well, we had a whole debate yesterday with Felger and Murray.
04:54And Felger is saying, wait a minute, what are you talking about?
04:57Teams go from bad to good all the time.
05:00And he had examples of teams over the years that have turned it around.
05:06And so why can't the Patriots be that team?
05:08And I'm saying the Patriots probably are coming from a deeper place than most teams.
05:13But I understand.
05:14It's not impossible.
05:16But here's my problem.
05:18With people like Andrew Callahan.
05:20I've mentioned this.
05:21Poor man.
05:23I'm going to pay off the sound.
05:25James, last night I almost jumped out of my chair and through the camera.
05:30Through.
05:31Not through the camera, but I was going to do that too.
05:33Going through the camera when I heard Andrew Callahan say this about Mike Rabel last night.
05:37Michael Hawley saying that maybe, maybe we're overrating the impact that Mike Rabel can have on this team.
05:45That's right, that's not even a heat check.
05:47Damn it, that's not even a heat check, Gasper.
05:49You tell me.
05:50You tell me, Callahan.
05:52Is that a heat check or is that just facts?
05:54Is that facts?
05:55I don't agree with you.
05:56I think Mike Rabel did more with less better than any coach in the NFL when he was a head coach in Tennessee.
06:02Because he had the second highest winning percentage, listen to me, second highest winning percentage as an underdog of any coach in the league from 2018 to 2023.
06:12That's doing more with less.
06:13The problem was he had nothing, not less, not little.
06:17He had nothing at the end.
06:18It was him and Derrick Henry looking at no quarterback, no receivers, an old bad offensive line.
06:23And the defense that was like, okay, we'll spot you 23 at the start and hopefully we can score more than that.
06:28That's what they had.
06:29So this is a good coach who's going to fix their clock management.
06:32He's brought in better assistance.
06:33He's got everything going better than Gerard Mayo did at the peak of his powers.
06:38And that is going to make this football team much better in addition to everything else they've got going on for them.
06:44Okay.
06:46I told Callahan last night, you're the problem.
06:50I said, Callahan, you're the problem.
06:52You're the problem because now you expect, it's like that old Saturday Night Live skit.
06:57Who would you take?
06:59George Hallis or Ditka?
07:02Ditka.
07:03Who would you take?
07:04Bill Walsh or Ditka?
07:06And like anybody, the Empire State Building or Ditka.
07:08And it was always Ditka.
07:10Yeah.
07:10Like, stop.
07:11He can't cover every weakness, can he?
07:14So this is a couple of things.
07:16You know, and I think your larger point is expectations for this current Patriots team.
07:21But I mean, I would take great exception to his characterization of Rabel's tenure in Tennessee.
07:27Now, first of all, you pointed out in the email chain what Rabel actually inherited was a 9-7 playoff team.
07:35And went 9-7 with it.
07:39When he first got there, he tried to stick with, they signed Deion Lewis from, you know, the Patriots.
07:47They tried to stick with him as the lead back.
07:50And it wasn't until they turned it over to, I don't know, arguably the greatest running back of our generation in Derrick Henry.
07:56Rob Gronkowski at running back.
07:57That they turned into, you know, sort of a pedestrian playoff team to a threat to go to the, you know, they went to the AFC Championship game, you know, the following year.
08:08Ryan Tannehill had a couple of really good years.
08:12Ryan Tannehill, by the way, his skill set is eerily similar to a quarterback that you guys are pretty familiar with.
08:18A very athletic guy who can make throws, move around.
08:22Nobody wants to hear that, Paul.
08:23No, I know because it didn't work out.
08:26Yeah.
08:26So, here's what I would say about the whole expectation thing.
08:30Again, I'm not going to litigate the whole Titans roster.
08:34I think he had much more to work with than Andrew is sort of leading on.
08:39And the reason why he had nothing at the end is because they drafted guys like Isaiah Wilson with first-round picks.
08:45I saw a chart today that had the top ten busts of all time, first-round busts.
08:51Two of them were Mike Vrabel draft picks.
08:53Traylon Burks was the other one.
08:54But he didn't want Burks, though.
08:56But he didn't want Burks.
08:57Right.
08:57So, he was against that.
08:58Because Burks was the replacement for A.J. Brown.
09:01Yeah.
09:01So, he didn't want to lose A.J. Brown.
09:02Yeah, I know the narrative, too.
09:04Oh, oh!
09:04Oh, it's a narrative?
09:05Oh!
09:06But anyway...
09:06Oh, wait a minute!
09:08Wait a minute!
09:09Again, I don't want to relitigate the Titans roster because I think the Titans were pretty
09:13good.
09:13I think there was a year that they got absolutely decimated by injuries and went 12-5 and were
09:18the number one seed that I think Mike Vrabel was the best coach in football.
09:23I think it was 21.
09:2421, yeah.
09:25The job that Mike Vrabel did with that particular team was unbelievably good.
09:30That team came here with about 20 guys on the COVID list that year, and he found a way
09:36to be competitive and win 12 games.
09:39That was a tremendous coaching job.
09:41So, I'm not telling you Mike Vrabel is not a good coach.
09:43I think this is a major upgrade at coach for the Patriots.
09:46Yeah, there's no question.
09:46But in terms of the expectations, the whole bad team gets good right away thing, it's a
09:54case-by-case, right?
09:54You can go back and look at all the different teams and what the characteristics were.
09:58But anecdotally, to me, the number one characteristic for being really bad to really good is quarterback.
10:06Houston sucked, drafted C.J. Stroud, and all of a sudden was good.
10:10Washington sucked, drafted Jaden Daniels, and all of a sudden was good.
10:15The more traditional ascension from bad to good is like what Detroit did.
10:20You know, we're 3-13.
10:21We're going to get competitive.
10:23We're going to win a few more games the next year.
10:26We're going to go 9-8.
10:27And then all of a sudden, it's all going to click in as we get all our talent around our
10:31quarterback, and we're going to be better, and we're going to be one of the better teams.
10:34The terrible to really good is quarterback-driven.
10:39And if Drake May is that guy, the Patriots can be the next one of those teams.
10:42Excellent points.
10:43And I would say even with Detroit, Paul, yeah, they inherited the quarterback.
10:49They took on the quarterback.
10:50That was part of the deal.
10:51You know, get Matthew Stafford out of here.
10:52Hey, give us some draft picks, and we'll take Jared Goff off your hands.
10:57And they developed him.
10:58Right.
10:59Like, you know, Jared Goff had been to a Super Bowl already, but they kind of broke him
11:03down to build him back up.
11:05So it was the more traditional bad to good story.
11:10But still at the center of it was they thought they were getting a throw in a quarterback,
11:14and they wound up with the top 10 quarterback in the process in Jared Goff.
