- 7 hours ago
Shan and Bobby took a look at all of the latest details from Mike Florio’s report on George Pickens, like how he might be utilizing the same "bet on yourself" strategy that Dak used. They also went inside Caleb Downs’ draft night with behind-the-scenes audio, discussed how Drew Shelton fit into the Cowboys' draft plans, and more.
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00:00Why did Pickens accept the franchise tag, Mike Florio? It's not complicated.
00:05He could have stayed away for all the offseason programs, all of training camp, all the preseason.
00:10He could have waited until the days preceding the start of the regular season to show up,
00:13take the tender, and make every penny of his 27 mil.
00:17He also could have skipped the first 10 weeks of the season before showing up,
00:21making $12 million, and getting credit for the contract year.
00:25He could have demanded a trade. He could have insisted on better terms.
00:29Then the franchise tender offered.
00:31Whether it be more money or a commitment to not tag him again in 2027, he did none.
00:37He's under contract now.
00:39He can still skip the mandatory minicamp, but he'll be fined.
00:42He can skip days of training camp again. He'll be fined.
00:45He could have done that without accepting the franchise tag, but the inescapable message is this.
00:51He's handling the situation like Dak did in 2020.
00:55Accept the circumstances, show up, work hard, and see what happens in 2027.
01:02Given George's reputation, right or wrong, during his three years in Pittsburgh,
01:07he needs to keep putting distance between his time with the Steelers and his time with the Cowboys.
01:13He needs to have another season like the one he had last year.
01:16And even though the tag for the receiver position falls $15 million short of the new money APY for the
01:25top of the receiver market,
01:27George will make more than anyone ever would have thought he'd make before he was traded to the Cowboys last
01:33May.
01:34And so the play is simple.
01:36Play well enough this year to put the Cowboys in a bind next year.
01:39They can sign him to a long-term deal or tag Pickens again at a 20% bump and he'll
01:46make $32 million.
01:47They surely would not tag him for a third year.
01:49That'd be $47 million.
01:51So he bookends three up and down years in Pittsburgh with three strong seasons in Dallas and he hits the
01:57market.
01:58He will have just turned 27.
02:00He'll have gas in the tank and more than 60 mil in the bank before hitting the open market.
02:06That, Mike Florio writes, is why he signed the tender.
02:10That's the best play.
02:11Given the way his career began, it's the only play.
02:14I think I'm going to end up and maybe already am wrong about what his value would have been perceived
02:23to be on the market this year,
02:26given the lack of teams that called.
02:29And I would have thought someone else would have signed up to pay him the $30, $32, $33 million per
02:36season.
02:37And that's probably, I guess, not the case.
02:39Well, it's like we talked about with RJ the other day, where when RJ was, I was trying to say,
02:44the reservations are exactly the same as they were last year.
02:47Right or wrong, they're the same.
02:48Yeah.
02:48And that's where I'm wrong because I'm like, no.
02:50Like, he had a year of pretty good behavior with a quarterback, so he didn't see the on and off
02:57the field tantrums.
02:58So, and that's the thing is...
02:59Choppy and I were trying to write probably too much off to no quarterback in Pittsburgh.
03:04And Choppy probably still is.
03:06Yeah.
03:07I wouldn't...
03:07Choppy's not believing any inside info you tell him.
03:11Yeah, he's getting cut off.
03:12He's not believing.
03:13He's kind of dismissing it with an attitude to you, too.
03:16You guys saw what happened to Jermon McCoy in the draft, right?
03:20And that was a sad thing.
03:21I'm not saying that, like, what happened to him, but, like...
03:23You said that was going to happen.
03:25I want you all to just go back to, like, eight weeks ago when we would start talking about Jermon
03:28McCoy
03:29and the attitude Choppy used to give over that.
03:32That stuff that we were hinting at the whole time that then happened on draft day,
03:35Choppy knew all of that eight weeks ago, and he just refused to, like, accept it when we were talking
03:39about it.
03:39Yeah, we're talking about it in commercial breaks.
03:41Like, Bobby, here's how it usually goes.
03:43Bobby will call me at, like, five or six.
03:46Give me a heads up.
03:47We'll discuss it.
03:48And then when we come in here, he tells Choppy before the show we're in a commercial break.
03:53And I'm even like, why are you telling him?
03:57But we have a good trust, and nothing has leaked out on the air.
04:01He clearly won't leak it.
04:02He doesn't believe it.
04:03Yeah.
04:03It's not like G-Bag, where you tell G-Bag something, and it's in the next segment.
04:08Like, Dawson's literally teasing it, and Woolchuck or Broaddus are saying it, blowing up everybody's spot.
04:14But Choppy just is accepting.
04:16They're believing it.
04:18Their problem is just they're repeating it.
04:19Choppy is just rejecting it.
04:22And, man, if I were you, that would really irritate me because you're, like, letting him in on the inside
04:27info, and he's backhanding it.
04:29With attitude.
04:30I end up being right in the end, so it's okay.
04:32But with Pickens, we had talked about it the other day where he was like, you know, so you think
04:37the reservations are the same.
04:38So he said, so you don't think his value's gone up at all from what it was last offseason.
04:43And that's where I think the nuance exists is I was like, no, that's exactly the thing.
04:47Last offseason, maybe George Pickens' value before he played was $22 million a year or something like that.
04:54NFL teams look at that and go, you're a headache.
04:56I'm not paying you $22 million a year, even if that's what you're worth as a player.
04:59I'll pay you $15 million if you're going to be.
05:02I need a discount, a severe discount if you're going to do that.
05:05Now this offseason, he played well enough that you can look at him and go, as a player, your market
05:09should be $34 million or something along those lines.
05:12And teams look at him and go, I'll pay you $27 million.
05:16You definitely have gone up.
05:17I'm willing to pay you more than I was last year, but I still want a discount off what you
05:19did.
05:20But it's that same reservation, still the same hesitancy to say, I don't want to pay you what your market
05:24value says you are as a player.
05:26So if, let's just say he was an outright free agent, what do you think he would sign for with
05:31another team?
05:32I know it only takes one.
05:33Is he just, so it depends.
05:35Is he just committed to, let me get the best deal possible and I don't care if I end up
05:38with the Jets?
05:39Or do you, like, is there some sort of, like, focus on let me end up somewhere where...
05:43I won't, no, I won't put any conditions on it.
05:46Someone somewhere probably will throw him close to what he's worth, I would guess.
05:50So he'd get 30s.
05:51Probably a bad team, though.
05:52Probably a bad team that's willing to just go, we need a Hail Mary, we need a playmaker.
05:57They would be willing to do that.
05:58Any team that's, like, close and trying to manage things a certain way, I would think would not give him
06:03the full value.
06:04They'd maybe get close to 30, but that'd be it.
06:06And they wouldn't want to give up picks for it.
06:07I guess I just didn't think other NFL teams would be that patient because they make so many stupid, dumb
06:12decisions.
06:13We can see Malik Willis play for two games and he gets paid by the Dolphins.
06:18So I would have thought, like, that primetime year he had would not have still had teams hesitant and backing
06:28off.
06:28I've said this a few different times to people on the beat, like, when we've talked about it.
06:32But I know there was a perception that, I think we talked about it on the show, that there was
06:38this perception of what a punishment.
06:42You made him sit out a series against the Raiders.
06:45And in reality, I don't think that was a punishment for C.D. Lamb.
06:47I mean, or it's not much of one.
06:48Okay, you sit down.
06:49It's maybe a little embarrassing for a second.
06:52For George Pickens, that is a national stage, first game back after Marshawn Nealon's death.
06:58And 31 other NFL teams around the league saw he did something.
07:03What's he like?
07:04We haven't heard any chatter coming out of Dallas, but what's George been up to?
07:06Why is he getting punished again?
07:07What has George been doing?
07:08What was worse for him, that or the Lions game?
07:13Ooh, Lions game was bad, I think, for some people.
07:15I would probably still say...
07:17I think it's the Lions game.
07:19The Lions game was not good.
07:20They're compounded together.
07:21They're not good.
07:22But I still think the sitting out the series against the Raiders looked like a nothing burger to a lot
07:30of people.
07:31It was a public signal that, hey, this guy that you all around the league think maybe he's been a
07:36little bit quieter this year.
07:37Look, this is a clue that maybe he's not.
07:39And not that that was the ultimate, like, hey, let's signal to other teams to do this.
07:42But that I think that that is a punishment.
07:45You're being punished publicly.
07:47And that in and of itself is something you want to avoid.
07:50And so I think that it carried more weight for pick and sitting out that drive than it did CD
07:55because other teams are going, what's what's he doing over there again?
07:58Is he doing Pittsburgh stuff again?
07:59And that that was a problem.
08:01Let's go behind the scenes with Caleb Downs.
08:04Mike Florio, ProFootballTalk.com will join us at eight.
08:07Yeah, so this was a documentary that I guess he's got a partnership with DAZN and it's like this.
08:15They've done little.
08:16He's done podcasts with his brother, Josh Downs.
08:19And this was like a 20 minute like mini movie, a documentary that was following around his family and him
08:24like while they were getting ready the day of the draft.
08:27So it's just kind of behind the scenes footage of him getting his suit and talking to people.
08:31But there were a couple of different clips in here that I thought were pretty interesting.
08:34We were all trying to figure out where was Caleb Downs going to go?
08:37So this is a little bit difficult here on the front end, but you'll then hear him talking to a
08:42buddy on the back.
08:43This is Caleb Downs speaking with his agent, Ryan Tolner, and then like friends on the phone about where heading
08:50into the night of the draft he's expected to go.
08:53The Saints have a real interest.
08:55They're the Cowboys and potentially the Giants.
09:03Low chance of five, probably like seven to nine is a sweet spot.
09:08And then like 12.
09:1112 is the season.
09:13Yeah, 12 is the season.
09:14They've been down to stay at 12.
09:16It's going to be tough.
09:17So he was excited about going to Dallas, it sounded like, but you heard his agent there say his the
09:22first team his agent said was eight Saints, which we did not hear a lot of chatter about the Saints
09:26as an option.
09:28But I thought it was interesting there.
09:29He said eight Saints.
09:31Then he said Dallas 12.
09:33And then he said Giants 10, not five.
09:37He said 10.
09:38Yeah.
09:38And he said moving back up to try and maybe like maybe going up to seven or something like that
09:43to try and get ahead.
09:45And then obviously they took Francis Mount Noah.
09:47So they had just passed completely.
09:49And you see some of that on draft night.
09:51He's looking a little like kind of like person his lips and like a little frustrated, which is why I'm
09:56really curious.
09:57If Reese doesn't fall to five, what do the Giants do?
10:01That's probably what love.
10:03That's yeah, that's probably what adjusted things was.
10:07They ended up taking they thought maybe they were going to get love to follow them.
10:10They didn't believe the maybe they didn't believe the Cardinal side.
10:12Maybe they were wanting to take Carnell Tate.
10:14And then what ultimately happened was when they got Reese to fall to him.
10:16Then it was like, well, we need one offensive and one defensive.
10:19We're playing on taking Tate or love there at five.
10:21We've taken the defensive player.
10:22Now we got to switch.
10:23Yeah.
10:23When you go back, this is a Bill Simmons exercise.
10:26The what ifs and how it affects, you know, the future.
10:32Cincinnati's trade.
10:35Cardinals with love.
10:38And is there one other thing that made all this play out?
10:41What do you think were the number one gifts for the Cowboys?
10:45Tate, Cardinal Tate, Ford of the Titans.
10:47That was the biggest pivot point where it's like, oh, we've got like there's a chance this
10:52will fall right now because you got the right guy to fall as well, Reese, because if Bailey
10:58would have been sliding was mocked top six, like often to the jet.
11:03You had him going to Washington.
11:05Right.
11:05But Tate going earlier than that then creates the domino effect of what the Giants do.
11:10And then the Chiefs want to move up and like all these different things that happened
11:12around it, it all like got kind of pushed over from that aspect of it.
11:18But after he's he's kind of sitting there, he's getting a little tense in the green room.
11:22He's a little frustrated.
11:22You can see it.
11:23He started to look at his phone and he's trying to he's trying to mellow out.
11:27He's singing along with sweet Caroline as his family's talked to.
11:29He's like, I'm good.
11:30I'm good.
11:30But his family's looking like they're sweating a little bit because it's obviously gotten
11:33past 10 now and he still hasn't gone 10 teams.
11:37Well, he gets the call from Dallas.
11:38So we've all heard the draft phone call.
11:40He's hyped.
11:40They're all excited for him and everything.
11:43Then he stands up and they're getting ready for the scene where, you know, you get the
11:46phone call, but then you got to look surprised when they announce your name.
11:49So they're getting ready for the scene.
11:50And while he's getting ready, they're kind of talking logistics.
11:53And you can hear the competitor in him come out when he starts thinking about how he went
11:5911th instead of earlier.
12:01They traded with Miami.
12:02They traded with Miami?
12:03Yeah.
12:04Yeah, they traded up to 11.
12:06Yes.
12:07Yeah, look, Dallas has picked 12.
12:08I mean, what's his name?
12:09They're picked 12.
12:10Is that all the teams that passed up?
12:12No!
12:13That's right.
12:16It's the only time, like all these times we've seen Caleb Downs, he looks very neutral
12:20and like, you know, oh, I'm happy to be here, whatever.
12:22This was, he just starts thinking about all those teams that passed and he just, you can
12:26see it on his face.
12:27He goes, and he like gets down and he starts just like stewing in it.
12:31And you hear somebody in his family that kind of off to the side, like settle down, Caleb.
12:34Like a little bit like, oh, we've seen this before.
12:36This is the competitive guy, but you could see just furious.
12:41Now, I tweeted this clip yesterday.
12:43This one.
12:43I think he made a comment too about like taking notes on the top 10 who passed.
12:49Oh, yeah.
12:50That's a, the competitors like to do that.
12:52Amon Ross St.
12:53Brown still to this day loves to list off every receiver that went ahead of him.
12:56And then, you know, there's the whole Tom Brady, every quarterback.
12:58Um, this was an interesting clip.
13:01I thought now this one I tweeted and they're going to be some people I think who are confused.
13:04So I'll explain it when we get after.
13:06But this one, I tweeted this clip yesterday.
13:08It went super viral.
13:10It's got like 600,000 views in like 17 hours.
13:13What?
13:13Uh, yeah.
13:14And it was, now the reason why it does is there's a lot of Eagles fans talking on this
13:18clip and going, how pathetic for you, Dallas fans, that this was the interaction.
13:22This is Caleb Downs after he got picked talking with Matt Patricia.
13:27Uh, he was even, oh, now you know, you know, now we know it, now we know it, now we
13:31know
13:31it, now we know it, now you roll, now we know it.
13:41Very simple clip, but it's Matt Patricia and him talking and he says that Eagles defense
13:45and he goes, now you know it.
13:47And he goes, I know it.
13:48I know it.
13:48He goes, you know it.
13:49Know your role.
13:49And a lot of people were just like, boy, like these Eagles fans are jumping all over the
13:53clip.
13:53Can't even get the Eagles out of your mouth, right?
13:56When you get the most important moment of your life and you're thinking about the Eagles,
14:00it's like, you guys are so dumb.
14:02We do it too.
14:02No, but this one is dumb.
14:04This is, this is missing context and understanding what that is.
14:07Matt Patricia, who is a literal like rocket scientist.
14:12That was his job previously.
14:14Uh, Matt Patricia helped work through all these different concepts that he put in place
14:19at Ohio state and all these different kind of Fangio like concepts.
14:22Fangio, Philadelphia, Christian Parker, Fangio disciple from Philadelphia.
14:26It's going to be a lot of Philly concepts.
14:28That's why he says that Philly defense.
14:30And then Matt Patricia said, I talked to shoddy about it last night.
14:34So Matt Patricia, that's, that's an interesting note.
14:37I don't know that we've heard yet is that shoddy was talking to Matt Patricia the night
14:40before the draft about Caleb downs.
14:41And man, you see like Patricia, who's a notorious hard ass and everything else.
14:48Every time you see him talk about him, interact with downs, he adores Caleb downs and thinks
14:54he's special, but you can see it.
14:55But super competitive side, clearly super smart.
14:58We played the stuff from Will McClay yesterday where Will was talking about, he was installing
15:03like Alabama, Ohio state and Dallas defense in our 30 visit.
15:08He's, you're starting to see some of that, that leak through of just what a special player
15:12he is.
15:12Jeremy Fowler, ESPN caught up with scouts, coaches and executives to kind of, kind of go
15:17through everybody's draft.
15:18Here's what he said about the Cowboys.
15:21Some inside the building were stumping hard for fourth round offensive lineman, Drew Shelton
15:27as early as day two.
15:29The coaching staff is high on Shelton's ceiling quote, only so few humans can play tackle in
15:35the NFL.
15:35And he's one of them said a team source, super athletic.
15:38The Cowboys have a history of drafting successful offensive lineman.
15:42Malachi Lawrence is one of two primary players under consideration at 23, a rival team believe
15:48the Cowboys were considering Keldrick Falk, but a Dallas source says that was not the
15:52case.
15:53It was not Keldrick Falk, it was CJ Allen.
15:55The team was high on receiver Jordan Tyson.
15:59Did the threat of taking a receiver high play a role in Pickens agreeing to sign his franchise
16:04tag hours before the draft?
16:06Hard to know for certain, but it's not out of the realm of possibilities.
16:09This feels far from over.
16:11A Cowboys source also says they did not receive a call from Pittsburgh about the 20th pick.
16:17The Steelers were planning to take Makai Lemon before the Eagles traded up to select him.
16:22So that is what the league is saying about the Cowboys draft starting with Drew Shelton.
16:27You know, when you see insinuations from national reporters and then you have to kind of like
16:32figure out, are you saying that because you genuinely are just talking out loud and wondering
16:37or are you saying that because somebody told you and you're trying to drop a nugget?
16:42I'm curious what Fowler's saying there about the Jordan Tyson thing.
16:45Like if he thinks, if he's heard at all that there was any sort of a push to, that is
16:49what
16:50caused him to sign as quickly as he did was because they knew that was lingering out there.
16:54What else jumped out to you in the division about what the league had to say?
16:59So I thought it was kind of interesting that when you look at, well, first off, I think
17:02the most interesting thing I read on this entire thing was in the Pittsburgh section,
17:05oddly enough, and where it said that the Pittsburgh Steelers are really banking on Mike McCarthy's
17:12teaching ability to save Drew Aller's footwork, which is pretty hilarious to me because that's
17:19that's not really his line of work.
17:21But quarterback actually worked with Joe Montana.
17:23Yeah, he stood next to him at the urinal.
17:26So when you I liked what they talked or didn't like, I agree with what they were talking about
17:31with the Giants draft again, just like that.
17:33They nailed every pick, but also like the Malachi Fields pick that they got, the Notre Dame
17:37receiver, that was a really strong one that they got.
17:39They lead off with Vandy.
17:42Since you're a Vandy guy, you got the Vanderbilt shirt on today talking about Eli Stowers said
17:46that there were some teams that had hesitancy about Stowers because of a knee injury that
17:51he had had, but that the Eagles were all good with it, didn't have any real concern over
17:55anything.
17:56They compared the one of the scouts compared Washington's third round pick, the receiver
17:59Antonio Williams to Randall Cobb.
18:01Boy, if the commanders could get a Randall Cobb, that'd be wonderful, especially as they're
18:06apparently being held hostage by the San Francisco 49ers right now over Brandon Ayuk.
18:11But I think that what you see is there's a lot of positive feedback in here and in other
18:19places right now for just everybody thinks, even though they passed on Caleb Downs, that
18:22the Giants nailed it, like that the Giants went through and really nailed the draft.
18:25So first test for Harbaugh of like, hey, how are you going to run a draft?
18:30How are you going to run personnel?
18:31So far is passing great.
18:33But Giants fans, don't you feel like, at least on social media, freaking out?
18:37They hate the Maunoah pick.
18:38Almost universally, it seems like.
18:40Which I also understand they're a little hesitant with like, you guys have screwed up
18:43some offensive line picks.
18:45And that they would be like, why are we going to trust this now?
18:47But they thought, go just like, I mean, that's the Giants defense, tough.
18:52Like, so you're looking at it and I could totally see them going like, why are we, why
18:56are we wasting time on an offensive lineman who fell?
19:00Like, why are we going to bother with that?
19:01Let's make sure that we just get the best defense possible.
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