00:00What would upset Browns fans more, seeing Baker get this three-year deal or if he became a free
00:05agent and signed with a team like Pittsburgh? I'm the wrong guy to ask that question, Kenny.
00:11Why? Because... Well, your name's on the show, so I have to ask you the question. I can't just...
00:16Well, I'm the wrong guy to ask because if I don't think a quarterback is capable of winning a Super
00:21Bowl and I think his body's going to continue to get worse and worse and worse, then I want him
00:26on the rival. So you want him to play for Pittsburgh? Plus, it's great for the rivalry.
00:32You know, you've always told me we need things to make this rivalry better and better and better
00:36as I told you that NFL rivalries aren't as big a deal anymore. Well, you're not the wrong guy to
00:39answer or ask the question. You've answered the question and I thought you answered the question
00:43quite... I disagree, but you answered the question quite nicely. Yeah, that to me would be the better
00:48alternative than, say, Pittsburgh finally being bad and going into the draft and getting a guy for the
00:54next 10 years. I'd rather, if I was going up against him, I'd rather have Baker.
01:00So you have no problem taking on Tampa Bay next week?
01:04Oh, well, that's kind of irrelevant in this case just because we're one of the... I'm expecting us
01:08to be one of the worst teams in football, so... Oh, okay.
01:11It's not... You know what I mean? Like, it's... Obviously, I want to beat them, but...
01:16But nothing can be done until next year, you were saying, under this hypothetical, so it wouldn't
01:21even have mattered. Okay. Because I... I mean, I tell you, I think that we have a great chance
01:27to win on Sunday, considering it's week one. A great chance. I think we do. I think we do
01:31have a great chance, but I would tell you that week two, you probably have a chance because
01:36anytime he's pressed, he's gotten in his own way. So I do think you'd have two chances,
01:43but you have a quarterback who's afraid of his own shadow who's playing for you.
01:46Well, him... I'll tell you, Baker getting his contract done, you know, I said three weeks
01:50ago, when he made training camp all about his contract, and he was talking to the team
01:55about his contract... Actually, didn't he say... Didn't he talk to the team about not making
01:58his training camp all about his contract? Which, definitely, that's what a guy would say
02:01if he was trying to mute the conversation. I think he was trying to... Having more conversations
02:05publicly and then telling the media that... What he was doing, he was putting pressure,
02:08and it worked. He got the contract done. He did. Now, we have to see the actual terms
02:12of the contract, because as we know, a lot of these deals, unless they are, you know,
02:18the top flight, elite level players, a lot of these deals, you start to uncover, oh, yeah,
02:24the guarantees aren't exactly what they are. This isn't anywhere near the money that you
02:27think they're going to be. And then we find out way later, like a year and a half later,
02:31like, uh, that wasn't even close to the, you know, annual per year that we thought
02:35it was going to be. But either way, good job getting it done. And so maybe this won't
02:39be weighing on him. He doesn't have to prove everybody wrong every step of the way.
02:43So I think it was a good job by both sides to be able to get it done.
02:45So I think that it's, to me, it's more convenient to keep him in the NFC South
02:50than to keep him with Tampa Bay. You're only going to see him a handful of times
02:53during his career, if that. If he were to become a free agent and sign on with one
02:57of these other teams. I mean, again, I think that this crop of quarterbacks is
03:01coming up. I think that no team or no fan base would be as jazzed about him if he
03:05had to hit free agency because, you know, I always said this about offensive
03:10linemen and I still mean it. I know that Tyler Lindenbaum became an off became a
03:13free agent, but there's still few and far between the real top quality
03:16offensive linemen usually don't hit free agency and the usual top quality
03:22quarterbacks usually don't hit free agency. And so if he were to become a free
03:27agent from Tampa where they kind of stuck in the middle, I'd be like, I don't know
03:33where he's going to sign. And maybe I would turn myself into some sort of a
03:36pretzel thinking he was going to do poorly in Pittsburgh. I just don't need to
03:40go through like next week's going to be a weird week. Something's going to be said
03:44some, there's going to be some ugliness leading up to it. I guarantee it. I don't
03:48think it's just going to be kumbaya, whatever. We're going to interpret
03:50everybody's words differently. Remember the monk man was here in 2019. So words are
03:56going to be said in some fashion and we're going to have to break down a press
03:59conference. I guarantee it. And I only have to do that once every like three or
04:03four years when he plays for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I don't need to do that
04:06every like twice a year. And you would say, yeah, maybe you would just settle
04:10into a rhythm of that. He plays for the Pittsburgh Steelers and that's it. It, it,
04:14it really got ugly and nasty at like for a while. It kind of went that way with
04:18Ben Roethlisberger. And then at the end, when he just kind of got bored with
04:21life, he seemed to be taking shots at Cleveland every year he possibly could.
04:25So I, I, and I think that Baker's a guy who takes everything personal. I think
04:29he'll take things personal next week. And I think he would have taken things
04:31personal over the next, how many years have you were to sign with the
04:34Pittsburgh Steelers over the off season? So that being pointed out, it's like,
04:37Hey, again, I get a chance for my team to learn a lesson to not freak out like
04:43this ever again and give up three first round picks for a basket case to
04:47replace somebody that we probably could have repaired the relationship on.
04:51Hopefully we'll learn that lesson. And I got nothing against him.
04:55That was a, that was a once in a lifetime situation.
04:57You say that now, but there's been plenty of chances for, there's plenty of
05:00chances for history to repeat itself. I don't, I want to make sure that they
05:04remember this lesson as long as they can. Those guys on paper, as good as Sean
05:07Watson, never available in the first place. You can't trade three. Like it wouldn't
05:10even, it wouldn't even come up. And I hope that they have this conversation.
05:14So I hope, I hope that we'd never have to have this conversation someday. I hope the
05:17guy they'd taken in April just set sail and everything's great. But if they
05:21don't, or if he's not, I don't want to have the old on paper conversation again,
05:27because everybody thought on paper, he was going to be great. I now he's not
05:31even good on paper. No, he's not good on paper. It's an unprecedented fall from
05:35grace that we've never seen in sports. He's not good on papyrus. He's not good on
05:39anything. Uh, I hope that this is a lesson they learn and I hope they take with
05:46them for the end of days. I mean, you should always be trying to upgrade your
05:49quarterback though. You don't, you don't dispute that going after a quarterback
05:53better than Baker wasn't a stupid decision. Like I just, you were trying to
05:57maximize your window and Baker was in a tailspin. I understand that I could
06:01understand the logic behind it, but I didn't understand. I understand the
06:04logic behind trying to improve your quarterback position, but I still didn't
06:08understand the logic of going after Deshaun Watson. I think we were pretty
06:10clear on the record about all that stuff. I didn't want to have to deal with
06:13any of the fall out there. Even though you did admit he was better than Baker. Of
06:15course I admitted at the time he was better than Baker, but I still didn't
06:18think it was going to be. And that's why, that's why the national people that
06:20came on, they, they, they were like, yeah, this is a massive upgrade. And I
06:23still didn't think it was going to be that much better than what it was. And I
06:25ended up being right about that. Did I not? I think it was. You were the one guy
06:28that predicted the all-time unprecedented fall from grace. I didn't think it was
06:31going to be. I never said it was going to be this bad, but I never thought it was
06:33going to be as good as what you made it out to be. I just think, um, again, this
06:37isn't, this isn't you, but like the learning, the learning, the
06:41lesson, like you should always try to upgrade your quarterback. If you don't
06:45think the guy is capable of getting to the Superbowl and winning in the window
06:49that you had. And as you see these windows close very fast. So I don't want
06:53them to learn that lesson. I do want them. You don't want them to learn a lesson
06:56over the greatest mistake ever made in professional sports. If they have a window
07:00and their quarterback isn't good enough, I, the lesson is just keep the
07:04quarterback and hope that he gets good. No, the lesson is, is that sometimes an
07:07idea that's too good to be true. It probably is too good to be true. And it
07:11ended up being way too good to be way too true. The only true part about it is
07:15that we were sucking again. And the only way we had out was with a
07:18journeyman, 40 plus year old quarterback. So yeah, I do want them to learn that
07:23lesson, Anthony. So you're willing to just go into it again with a guy that
07:27again, you, like I said, you agree with me all the time. It's kind of a moot point
07:31because it's not even going to become available. The guys, guys don't don't like
07:35to sit out and have him not play football for a year, have the issues going with the
07:40ownership. I understand him behind the scenes. And then we learn about
07:43accusation. Like this is not going to, this is not going to happen. Like that
07:46will never happen again. But I think there will be quarterbacks that are
07:49available again. And I think that they need to do their very due diligence even
07:53better this time. And they said they did. They were willing to do it. That was the
07:56thing. You know, you, you do, they did their due diligence until they knew that
07:59Baker wasn't going to want to come back and they knew that they were going to be
08:01stuck. They did their due diligence until then. And then everybody freaked out.
08:06And then he demanded a trade. And instead of trying to just go, Hey, like you did with
08:10Kareem Hunt, David Njoku and God knows who else were like, we ain't trading you. Instead
08:14of that, you decided to give a guaranteed contract to an albatross who nobody wants to
08:20see coming up on Sunday. Instead of just trying to either a bringing a veteran and having
08:24compete or be trying to work it out in your lesson. Either of those situations scenario.
08:29Is it the guaranteed money that was because, you know, we were one of 13 teams. I say after
08:34I under, I say that guaranteed money because it's a point of emphasis. It's always the
08:37three first round picks that hurt worse. Cause you bet on him being better that you would
08:41carry it over with the three first round picks. And not only was he not better, he was the
08:45worst in the league.
08:45I know. Yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, it's, it's still something that I can't believe. I can't
08:51believe he was the, wasn't the same player. He was unrecognizable.
08:55I think to a lot of people, but I don't think, do you think that'll happen again? Like
08:58that whole set of circumstances?
08:59I don't think, I don't think so, but I do think there might be a scenario where it's
09:03buyer beware when it comes to a quarterback that you're trading for. I don't think you're
09:06going to have a scenario where you're being accused of terrible things. And, and you have
09:10a team that might, uh, when it comes to the accusations, might've looked the other way
09:16on some of these things. And then they make that team that looked the other way makes you
09:20available. And then we jump into it because we can't get a situation figured out with a quarterback
09:25who definitely was immature and crazy in his own right and had way too many rabbit, rabbit
09:30ears going up. Like we, I would have much rather worked it out with a nut job that we
09:34had than what we have right now.
09:35But in the future, Ken, would Ken Carmen have ever supported moving on from Jared Goff to
09:41Matt Stafford? I think under this, you'd say, well, we learned our lesson. We wouldn't
09:45do that again.
09:45Matt Stafford had a history. I'm glad you brought this up. Matt Stafford was a veteran. Matt
09:51Stafford didn't have any of the things around him. I don't try. I trust Detroit more
09:54than I trust Houston. I bet you a lot of people would be like, well, come on, we're going
09:57to the playoffs. We're not moving on from, from Jared Goff. We went to the Superbowl.
10:00Oh, it would, it was a risky move. I think a bunch of people would say, we learned our
10:03lesson from Deshaun. We're not doing that. And I'd be like, no, I'd still go after Matt
10:06Stafford.
10:07Then you know what? And if we ever find ourselves in this situation, you're going to have
10:10to remind me because I bet there's good and bad, but I didn't think that the Deshaun
10:14Watson situation was going to work out. And I granted I've, he was nice in 2016, everything
10:21else I always questioned. And the fighting is okay. I've got it pulled up here. Those
10:25the vaunted, the vaunted quarterback tears, the Sando tears for three of those years, people
10:31had Deshaun Watson on the same plane, if not higher in some of those given years, the
10:36Matt Stafford and somehow you need to hope that he wake up, wakes up those echoes coming
10:40up here in four days. Yeah. Good luck. Yeah. Four days.
