Belichick HOF drama, Monken to Cleveland and More Coaching Carousel Updates

22:40Ollie Connolly:I understand that I'm walking into this role in a much better position than Coach McDermott did. I am not naive to that. I also understand that the expectations are higher as well. I didn't take this job to shy away from expectations. I sure as hell did not do that. I'm embracing it. I'm understanding it and I'm meeting it full on. I know what I signed up for and we're going to embrace it because no one rises to low expectations. I want what the city wants. Let's go. He sold me, Ali. He sold me. And Joe Brady, one of football's great curses, and he went so hard to drop an F-bomb there and caught himself at the final second, which I appreciate.

23:21Ollie Connolly:And I admire him giving Sean McDermott some props after the guy who just gave him the job spent last week doing anything but give Sean McDermott props. So I thought that was pretty classy. I do think with Brady, you know, I think their whole project there, the idea was if we're going to stabilize us, worst case scenario, we have Josh Allen's top five offense in the league. Joe Brady can deliver that for us. And then just on the margins, you get the right officiating call, the right bounce of ball. That should put us in a championship game. I think that that is a fair assessment. And if you looked at the design of the offense that he installed and where it's at compared to the rest league, if he was just doing that for the Cardinals, and even if they were say 14th in the league in success rate, whatever number you want to use, you would say that's That's a really attractive external candidate.

24:01Ollie Connolly:He just happens to be with us and then has a relationship with Josh Allen. So I do think you can start stacking things up and say it makes a bunch of sense why you would just say, let's give this a shot for a couple of seasons. If it doesn't work, we'll still have Josh Allen in his prime and we could maybe look elsewhere. So I've come more around on the hire than when it was initially announced. Okay. I appreciate that because I didn't have a lot of familiarity with Joe Brady public speaking. And by the end, I'm like, OK, I get why he's bewitched all the national media members. A master marketer is Joe Brady.

24:32Ollie Connolly:And I appreciate that. You can cynically look at that. You know, you're you're there in the snow in Manchester. You can cynically look at that. I'm here in L.A. and I'm thinking, OK, maybe this guy's going to pop. He's good. He's got he's got the goods. The thing I will say is what I appreciate about him is he gets to Buffalo. What they did on offense that we've talked about together for two years now with the the smash mouth spread infusion of getting the bigger bodies on the field, but bringing a lot of the stuff we did at LSU together was a directive from Sean McDermott that that's how he wants it to look.

25:01Ollie Connolly:And then he had the chops to actually pull it together and make it look excellent for a couple of seasons with all the caveats that Josh Allen bails him out and everything looks pretty good. If you call him plays for Josh Allen, I am interested then, well, if that's a directive from the guy who's kind of viewing the game from a CEO, you know, 10 ,000 foot view, can you step into that role and have that same lens offense defense? And that's why I think the DC hire is going to be so important. Yeah, it's huge. And I meant to mention with Jim Schwartz, because he's already getting talked about as a potential candidate in Buffalo.

25:31San Francisco is another attractive job that is out there. I don't think I'm burning anything by saying, you know, I heard some whispers that like maybe he could even be a candidate for a team that currently has someone in place and would displace it. I don't know who that would be, but he is an interesting name to drop into it all. And, yeah, like on one hand, you could look at Joe Brady as a little political. He got a lot of credit for, you know, coaching up like the greatest college group of skill position talent ever assembled and now coaching up Josh Allen. On the other hand, like maybe he is a guy.

26:09He did strike me as a guy that maybe he is a guy like a Brian Schottenheimer who might be better suited to run a building than he actually is, is just like a pure schematic game plan caller, which I got that feeling from Schottenheimer. And I think that's that's been borne out a little bit. So those are some positives. Also, Josh Allen obviously loves him. Josh Allen, though, texted him. They they wouldn't talk during the interview process. And he texted him afterwards. What was it? It was something like I didn't get you this job. You earned this job yourself. Good one.

26:41Ollie Connolly:You got the years in Carolina earned him that job. Did they always standing calling place for Josh Allen? They got him the job. By the way, Josh Allen, some news there. He talked afterwards and he said he had a fifth metatarsal broken bone in his foot and he played through it during the season, but he aggravated it against the Browns, which I think we knew. And so he was playing through it in the playoffs and now he's recovering from that injury. but Josh Allen's happy. And maybe Bill's fans like Eric Roberts behind the glass, they're happy too. Let's take a quick break. We're going to come back.

27:16We're going to go through the coordinator hire, some assistant hires, and talk Belichick in the Hall of Fame after this.

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29:07Ollie Connolly:Hey, it's Carissa Thompson. Everything these days is fighting for your attention. Work, family, social media, and it makes it tough to figure out what should really come first. But here's something that absolutely deserves to be at the top of your list. Your breast health. Breast cancer is the second most common cancer and the second leading cause of cancer death among women in the United States. and the rates are still rising. More women under 50 are being diagnosed too. But here's a stat that really hits home. One in two women who qualify for annual breast screenings aren't getting them. That's half.

29:41Ollie Connolly:And yet when breast cancer is caught early, the survival rate is over 99%, nearly 100 % for stage one before it spreads. If you're 40 or older, you should be getting screened every year. And if you're under 40, it is never too early to understand your risk. So come on now, Pay the girls some attention. Head to yourattentionplease.com to learn your breast cancer risk and what screenings you might need. Trust me, your future self will thank you. Brought to you by Novartis. Lowe's knows Sundays are for football. So tackle your home improvement projects by Saturday and earn your Sunday with great deals on LG and Bosch appliances, select Bounty and Swiffer cleaning products and more.

30:22Then once your to-do list is done, get ready to kick back, relax and enjoy the game. Shop in-store or online now and earn your Sunday with help from Lowe's, official partner of the NFL. Back on NFL Daily, as I mentioned, in the 70s, Fahrenheit, 20s, as you guys would say there. Holly, I'm feeling better about the Bills move. Why not help get your friends hired? I mean, I had one full-time hire that I could use that ended up being the only one at the NFL. And I used it on my friend Chris Wesseling. It was the best hire I ever had. You know what you're getting.

31:05Ollie Connolly:Yeah. And you can trust them and they don't go running to the media and leak on you all the time. I'm in. I'm in on Joe Brady now. Let's talk about some of the coordinators. Although, I do want to at some point get what Ali teasingly said. He can't even say what his real thoughts were about Joe Brady or that press conference. There was something about that press conference that you're holding out on me. That'll be when we do NFL Daily After Dark and we're like full five pints deep, and then we can release all the Joe Brady tapes. That's the show. We're the outsiders. We don't need to worry about what they're going to say about us.

31:39We can bury Brian Dable if we want, but there's really no reason to. I think he's a good offensive coordinator hire for the Tennessee Titans. When we last talked about this, it was not for certain. He was still up for a couple other jobs. So he said, let's table that until it's actually happening. He's also going to bring his offensive line coach from New York with him to Tennessee, has some talent to work with up front. Ultimately, if you kind of look at the teams in the trickiest situations coming into the offseason, I get the idea that Titans fans would have a lot of optimism of Robert Sala, Brian Dable the front office is a little more clear with Borgonzie is now in charge how are you feeling about the Titans overall and especially Dable and Cam Ward mixing and matching yeah I

32:28Ollie Connolly:don't love the fit with Cam Ward I think it's almost too on the nose to obviously pair kind of big name coordinator with former first round draft pick but for the actual development of what does Cam Ward need in his game I don't think it's going to be that additive to what he does Brian Dable will come in it'll be a super spread offense a lot of easy buckets a lot of kind of spread option principles similar to the final embers of the time with josh allen where it's all super spread stuff we already know cam wall can do that stuff that's what he did in college that's what he made it and that's where he flashed and had all the the crazy highlight throws of the titans last season he needs to develop in a full field true professional offense and i just don't think brian dayball is as willing or interested in running a full field professional offense anymore a lot of under center turn the back play action heavier sets trying to design mismatches that way sprinkling in tempo with bigger sets it's still a bit slimmed down a little 2016 i would say by its logic and so i think what will happen is camwell will put up some solid numbers and people say it's a good high but in terms of how does it get us to being a team that could really challenge someone and freak out playoff caliber defenses i just don't think that fits that unless dable wants to evolve and coaches can always evolve and add in fresh ideas and i love Brian D 'Abel's a guy, even though I know he's a unique kind of guy and it's not everyone's flavor.

33:44Ollie Connolly:He's my kind of guy. And I just don't, for me, it's leaning into the bad habits of Cam Ward more than it is trying to progress and develop the player. Okay. I'll make the argument on the other side. What if he is a little bit, and this is a bad example because look, Greg Roman, um, is, is an epithet, uh, to, to some Ravens fans and, uh, especially Patrick Claiborne thinking about the Lamar Jackson era, but maybe, maybe what if he's almost like a similar analog to well he'll juice him up in what he does really well for now and he's not as long he maybe doesn't wind up being his long-term guy you just got to find your i guess todd munkin in this scenario maybe sooner than the ravens did but that would need to include some kind of development path before you get to the next guy and i find that to be deeply insulting to lamar jackson who played in a pure progression offense in college football that was an nfl passing system from Petrino, which is not what Camwell played.

34:39Ollie Connolly:And he played in an all out air raid offense. You see one side of the field, you throw it to one side of the field. Brian Dable is still running the highest volume of just half field read offense in the NFL. You just can't play that way anymore. When everyone's moving and rotating and rolling and you can't figure out what anyone's doing. I mean, these guys have done press conference after press conference, right? Talking about this very issue of going to a full progression read type offense. That's not the way Dable sees things. He wants to have a keen critical eye on. He knows where the ball is going at the snap it's control freak type stuff and trying to limit any exposure to the quarterback and i think cam ward will look good in that i'm not saying it's not going to work where you get the touchdowns and the yardage and the numbers look much better in year two i'm talking about the development the player to go and be maybe one of the top eight players in the league which i think he has truly the potential to do if you can hone in on some of the rhythm based parts of his game make him a more consistent thrower and then build in the kind of upside highlight reel stuff the development path should be what Caelan Williams did with Ben Johnson, where you get all the structured greatness and then you can have some freelance responsibilities within that Jared Goff style offense.

35:40Ollie Connolly:And that's where I believe they should have looked. Yeah, that's all fair. And it's a good point on where Lamar was. It's more the idea of, well, can he supercharge him for my own enjoyment? Because for everything that Greg Roman gets picked on, that early Lamar, Greg Roman, you for the first like 18 months of it was fun to watch. And I do think this could be fun to watch, but I hear what you're saying on the long-term growth. And Cam Ward is not starting from, from the same spot. He, he still has a lot of developing to do. So does Aaron Glenn as a head coach. I don't know if he's going to get the time to do it.

36:18We've learned that, you know, since we last taped, Brian Duker is going to be his defensive coordinator. He reached out to John Gruden as a potential offensive coordinator option, or at least was going to be an option in terms of some part of the offensive staff. Just a bizarre series of events. Zach Rosenblatt did a good job kind of pointing it out from the athletic of that. Initially, Aaron Glenn said he's not going to call the defensive plays. They interviewed eight different guys. Duker was not even one of those eight guys. Wink Martindale was the favorite for the job. I think he expected to get the job.

37:00They changed their mind at the last second. So they've spent three weeks on this process. Duker isn't even one of the nine people interviewed. Then after Martindale blows up, they interview him the next day and hire him that day, basically. And so it doesn't give you a lot of confidence that you're firing eight or nine guys at the last second and hiring this guy. And now Aaron Glenn is going to be calling the defensive plays. And Frank Reich is apparently the favorite for the offensive coordinator job.

37:25Ollie Connolly:It's just preposterous. I mean, what was in the pitch deck when he got the job? He was supposed to come and arrive to be rah-rah, instiller of confidence, CEO type, going to run the whole building. And what was the blueprint? This cannot be it. Wink Martindale and Aaron Glenn share no commonality in defensive style, zero. And you go into negotiations, post-interview, let's get into contract talks, then pull the ripcord because you decide, well, I'm going to call the plays and I don't understand Wink Martindale's defense. So let me go and get my buddy and I'll call the plays. I mean, it's almost just insulting to the profession to do what he did to the staff of telling everyone they're going to be back.

38:01Ollie Connolly:Then actually you're out late in the cycle, just totally unprofessional to then go to Tanner Engstrand and say, well, you can stay on the staff, but we're going to try and bring John Gruden as a senior advisor to help design the offense. You won't call the plays and then you have to say to the boss, well, then what will my job be? What is my role in the building week to week? OK, yeah, scratch that. You're out then. Where is the logic? Where is the thinking? And then the default answer is going to be, I'll get my buddy for the defense to carry the bottles and I'll design everything. And then I'm going to hire Frank Reich as the OC.

38:34The list for the OC candidates is pretty wild. It's Daryl Bevel, who we'll remember from his time in Seattle. It's Ronald Curry. Greg Roman getting interviewed there. Linda Wells from the Cowboys. I believe he's a tight ends coach. I'm not sure. Yeah, it's also hard when you go back. there's some clips going around of Glenn talking about how it took him a while to put together the coaching staff last year, but you had to really look hard for the right guys. And this was supposed to be sort of the expertise of Glenn is that he's been in the NFL a long time and that he's going to be great at building a staff.

39:12That was one of the best things that Dan Campbell certainly did in Detroit was like, know the right guys to hire. And it really feels like they're flailing and just making up as they go along. It's, it's depressing if you're a,

39:22Ollie Connolly:And it now feels like chasing names to satisfy someone else, which is where I'll give Aaron Glenn a little bit of a cushion, right? The names on the list are names that someone who maybe isn't in contact with the sport day to day, but has owned a team for a long time, would recognize the names of guys who were successful even a semi-generation ago. So speaking of familiar names, Patrick Graham, who's bounced around a lot as a defensive coordinator, is going to be the Steelers defensive coordinator. I thought it was telling that Art Rooney and Mike McCarthy said how it was important for them to maintain the Steeler way, which was a 3-4 defense.

39:58They wanted to they literally were saying, like, we want to run the same defense. It's been effective for so long. Why do we want to change that? And I'm thinking that was the most expensive defense in the league, and it wasn't effective this year. But Patrick Graham can can run that system. What do you think about his fit with Pittsburgh?

40:16Ollie Connolly:it's also truly not what they've run as you know no one just runs one front for the entire game and mike mccarthy's too smart to know i think that was just like red meat to the local media that we're going to maintain the steel and i think red meat for the ownership too yes i agree with that yes you probably say that in a in your first meeting with them and they go okay put that in the tech in the checkbox he's from pittsburgh his dad loves the team he runs the three four great let's hire the guy let's not speak to anyone else um patrick game i have a funny relationship with because I think one-off design-wise, he's as good as there is in the league.

40:46Ollie Connolly:And I make this point all the time. And then Raiders fans will say to me, well, why do we keep getting beat over the head defensively? And I say, great point. Maybe I'm digging through the minutiae of the game too much and not recognizing the fact they get throttled over the head all the time. So it's like a pressure coach in a world of pressure and disguise football. I really think he's an A-plus design type guy, but you cannot ignore just the general facts. And I get they've had tons of issues throughout his time there in Vegas. One with Pete Carroll being not allowed to call his own defense, radically transform his defense, doesn't even understand half of what's going on there in terms of the verbiage.

41:21Ollie Connolly:And then obviously just not having the talent and the players. I think when he's had a modicum of talent at all three levels, they've been fairly okay. This is by far the best group he will have worked with. And so I would have it as like a be higher. I think he's better than if you just put together a table chart of like the fancy metrics with his groups, so it won't tell the full story of what the potential could be with him as your DC. Yeah, he's managed to keep a DC job somewhere for seven straight years. This will be eight. Miami one year, two for the Giants, and then four for the Raiders.

41:54At no point did he ever have a great roster. But at no point did he really have a good defense. So that's like a long, that's a track record. A lot of them were average. They weren't like, they weren't bad with the Giants and the Dolphins. But this is the best group. I'm interested to see it because I think this would be a little bit of proof of concept. OK, here's Patrick Graham getting creative with with a better group of players. And so we shall see how that looks. The Chargers made an interesting hire. And we'll fire through these last couple, but get to the Hall of Fame. But they hired Western Michigan defensive coordinator Chris O 'Leary.

42:30And he was part of this tree. He was in that building a couple of years ago as a safeties coach. So he's kind of doing the thing that Jesse Minter did, like back and forth from college and then back into the warm, loving embrace of the Harbaugh's. But Jim Harbaugh has a really good track record where you kind of have to give him the benefit of the doubt of hiring good coaches. If he has a secret sauce like that, that has to be a big part of it.

42:55Ollie Connolly:Yeah. And work with Minter back at Georgia State eons ago, 12 years ago at this point. I'm just fascinated by this may bore the national audience, but this kind of lend lease program that the Harbaugh's have developed between college and the pros. And I think coach development is rarely ever discussed. It's always player development. And we now are in an era where what's the most recent OC or the longest tenured OC in the league is like what, 2024, 2023, something like that. So you have to have a development program for the coaches and them saying, well, you're a really talented safeties coach.

43:25Ollie Connolly:We want you to prepare to call plays. We only have three preseason games where maybe we give you a couple of series, go back down to college for a year, go and get that skill set, then come back to us. And it's kind of predetermined going in and doing that from Baltimore with Michigan, Harbaugh replicating that going over to LA. I think it's really fascinating the way they've hit on a market inefficiency. I think that I'm surprised that the teams haven't just said Alabama will be our feeder team. Let's send three staff members there a year and then call them back up to the big leagues. Well, I think that was a huge part of Belichick's success back in the day, which is why, again, I think it's a young man's game is he was so good at developing coaches.

44:00He had a very specific idea of how he was going to develop coaches. That can't last forever, but this is kind of a new school way to do it. Wait, this is not the directional Michigan University or college that you worked for, is it? There's too many in Michigan. It is indeed. Oh, it is? Yeah, it is. Oh, so he's your guy. He's my guy. Do you have, I mean, okay, so we should get excited about Chris O 'Leary from Western Michigan. I should have known that's where Ali was once on staff. Is that correct? That is correct. Wow. All right. uh shout out to what what's the nickname of the team the western michigan the broncos the broncos all right let's go broncos uh speaking of which wow that was not on purpose what a transition i thought it was fascinating that bo nicks i just had to get this into the show called his own press conference this week um we find out that the broncos fired joe lombardi by the way so he's gone we can talk about that for a second but i do want to say that bo nicks calling his own press conference to directly contradict his own coach means it is time for delivering results presented by Uber Eats.

45:08When football makes you hungry, order Uber Eats. I've never seen a quarterback do that. That is delivering results as a leader. Let's listen to Bo Nix talk about his injury.

45:18Ollie Connolly:Nothing predisposed, nothing that was there originally. I might have gotten confused. Didn't have any predisposed issues. Man, my ankles were feeling really good. I don't think he really should share how many surgeries I've had in the past, to be honest with you. But because I don't you know, he doesn't really even know that.

45:39I just wanted this story to not go by without the rest of the country hearing it because Broncos fans are all about this story for the last 24 hours. But it's not going to really break through. but it really was fascinating to me that Bo Nix had two points to two bones to pick basically that he was not predisposed to this injury whatever that means like that it was some sort of chronic thing that was going to happen regardless and uh that Sean Payton shouldn't be talking about the

46:05Ollie Connolly:amount of surgeries that he had back in college love it it's just classic Sean Payton if I told you before and sight unseen a coach reveal too much medical information about one of his players your first overall pick would have been Sean Payton. That's fair. Sean Payton does like to share a lot. And you always got to think about like, well, why did he share it? And I think it's because he was trying to make the case that, well, it's not my fault. I called him for that run that got his ankle broken and ruined our Super Bowl chances, which he hasn't really taken any heat with for in the first place, which is fine.

46:38It's football. It's bad luck. But but maybe that was subconsciously or consciously what he was doing by saying these things.

46:44Ollie Connolly:Even that defense is a mess because if it's predisposed, how would you only just discover it? And then why would you be calling so many design quarterback runs late in the season if you believe there's a predisposed sense he could hurt his ankle? If anything, it buries you in a deeper grave than you are trying not to dig. uh in i think it was also like a little unfortunate because the person asking the questions about how he had uh gotten three surgeries previously even got the the question wrong because payton had said two previous sir he had gotten two previous surgeries so it was framed a little incorrectly which made payton look even worse i just wanted to throw that out there for the broncos fans who are always uh getting angry about everything and he may have meant to be fair pre-existing some kind of hairline fracture they did not know about until they went in but he's the way he phrased it was like it'd been a long-term thing and therefore bo's having to defend accusations of being injury pro it's i we're maybe too far in the weeds where we're past the point of interest for most fans but i gotta give sean payton credit because they had to the pr staff had to have checked with sean payton of like hey man um i know the season's over been over You said goodbye yesterday.

47:55You did the press conference yesterday. Bo just texted us like an hour ago and wants to do a Zoom press conference out of nowhere that we're just going to alert our guys to last minute. I think he's probably going to address what you said about his injury. Like, is that cool? And Sean Payton's like, yeah, whatever. Just let him be happy. So I'll give Sean Payton a little credit there. Did you have any thoughts on, by the way, him cleaning out his offensive staff? including his coordinator, Joe Lombardi, but a couple of the position coaches too, including Keary Colbert, who was one of my favorite dynasty league draft picks back in like 2006.

48:34I did not know he was on that staff, but he fired a lot of the staff right after the season, which is interesting for a team who I thought played well on offense.

48:42Ollie Connolly:Yeah, I mean, they were maybe a play or two away from making the Super Bowl. And then he's pretty savage about it by clearing out guys who've been with him a long time. And then those guys saying publicly, like I knew this was coming for a while too even if we'd made the whole dance I think we would have been out and but we do criticize guys for all the Sean Payton-ness of it and you can think whatever you want about Sean Payton we criticize Belichick we just talked about Mike McCarthy being really insular I think the Chiefs have become a tad bit too insular in the mid-run of their dynasty he's at least saying like okay I've been with these guys for a long time we've kind of tapped all the resources for this part of the span of kind of the Broncos rebuild or bring some competency from the building after the Hackett debacle.

49:20Ollie Connolly:Now let's maybe press along. And he's got all these young staffers that I'm sure he wants to promote and keep in-house because they're all up for jobs elsewhere. Yeah. Davis Webb in particular has been up for head coaching jobs. He would be a strong candidate, you would think, to get elevated to offensive coordinator. So that could be what Peyton is doing there. That was Delivering Results presented by Uber Eats. When football makes you hungry, get game day deals on Uber Eats, the official on-demand delivery partner of the NFL. order now. All right, let's stop right there, actually, because I have a feeling we're going to go long on this Hall of Fame Belichick talk.

49:54Take one more break and we'll be back in a second.

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53:15Let's get to the main event 45 minutes in. How dare they keep our beloved Bill Belichick out of the Hall of Fame? I'm trying to muster the same amount of outrage that Jimmy Johnson and really everyone around the football community has had over the last few days. Actually, we can throw up, if you're watching on YouTube, the tweet from Jimmy Johnson, which I really enjoyed because it was a quote tweet of a Kaimi Fairbairn field goal from three weeks ago where he cut the lead to five. Good times. And what he said was, I would bet that if the Hall of Fame voters were public, Look, very few of the assholes that did not vote for Bill Belichick would come forward already.

54:04Some are lying about their vote. Jimmy Johnson, what a great friend to have, Oli, in your corner.

54:13Ollie Connolly:A great friend to have. Great for us who want to be in this camp too. And then one of the greatest to ever do it. All levels of the game jumps out there in front of all of us and says, I'll take the shield. Let's do this. goes out publicly and starts taking shots at Paulian and Tony Dungy about Spygate and where he learned to do stuff that became Spygate in Bill Belichick's era. Love that. Love him putting names to it. I mean, it's just deeply insulting. I think everyone knows that. Clearly a massive mess up in terms of the process, in terms of maybe some bias, whether it's media members or people who competed against Bill Belichick.

54:45Ollie Connolly:He's so clearly not just the slam dunk first ballot hall of famer he's on the the mount rushmore of greatest coaches to ever do at any level of the sport um and it really does hurt me for him now i do think your point that you've made before on social media about the pr for him is a great point but what does hurt me is how much he's obsessed with the history of the game and how much it will bother him no one cares more than when they did the nfl 100 series on nfl films and he's just like weeping about the wing team the 1920s and those so much to him. And so to not have that happen for whatever reason, whether it's politics, craft, whatever the conspiracies are, it does hurt me for him that there's always going to be this little buffer, even when he goes in, that it may be a little bit awkward.

55:30Yes, they hit him where it hurts in the end. And I agree. I wanted to make that point as part of like a tweet that used every single character. I was like, something had to go. That got cut out was kind of like, this will hurt him in a way that I don't know if it's intentional. I think a lot of the reasons that people put out there could be part of it in terms of him not being friendly with the media. But I do think it was more of a combination of, yes, like a handful of people maybe on there that had a little bit of an anti-Belichick bias. Bill Polian says that the NFL Hall of Fame has confirmed to him that he did vote for Belichick after saying he wasn't sure, he didn't remember if he voted for Belichick initially, to which I would say, and this is my bigger issue with the whole process, is if you can't remember your vote two weeks later, you shouldn't have a vote.

56:26And I just think there's too many people with these votes that no longer cover the league. And I think there can be some voters that could be represented that way. but I think you got to have more diversity and sometimes diversity isn't just having people of different color and gender, which this list could absolutely use more of, but also of different ways of thinking about the sport and different age groups. Like, yes, you should have covered the league for a good amount of time before you're a hall of fame voter. But I went through the list and it's pretty random. 15 selectors are not even really in the mix covering football now 15 out of 50 and many more if you were choosing uh a journalist to represent that city there's some there's some weird weird

57:25Ollie Connolly:picks you can just say it as it is it's pathetic and embarrassing they have a lot of opinion columnists who've not covered the sport for a long time doing it and it really should be people who are dedicated to the history of the game it doesn't matter what age they are in that respect to me i do think you do have to have a real selection of people on that on the older side just because when you get into the veterans community there's gonna be a lot of young people even uh around your age greg who maybe not will not have seen these players play in their prime so i totally understand that side of things but it needs to be someone wes is not unfortunately here with us but that is the ideal candidate of someone who is so dedicated to learning and understanding the history of the game would have real opinions would go to bat for people and that is the kind of person that you're ideally looking for and does it matter that you have to have one representative covering every single team i mean that to me almost doesn't make sense that if you're going into the veterans committee i'd rather just have people who are historians of the game really care about it still actively follow it day to day and to have opinion colonists from the early 2000s who don't like belichick because they were team tom all the way through is utterly bizarre to me to have people not recuse themselves because they were getting their ass kicked by bill belichick year after years they had to go and change all the rules that way or cry about some cheating scandal that didn't exist i just find it completely baffling and even the process of well there's five people up for it you only get to pick three so now you get this weird situation where you've got the the people who don't cover the sport have a gripe with bill personally the people who competed against him and may have a gripe then people trying to kind of work their votes around to make sure someone they like gets in because they think bill belichick is going to have enough votes to get in is how you get yourselves into this complete debacle and it's just not what the the hall is supposed to be about either the physical hall of canton or just the hall in general should mean much more than that and they they've let the the great institution down greg yeah and do they know ball like i think that should be part like if it's gonna be the hall of fame i think you got to have the best of the best and then Maybe that a lot of them were better candidates at different points of their career, but maybe not.

59:30Some of them are not really locked into the NFL as their main thing. For instance, Kansas City star columnist Vahey Gregorian wrote a column about why Belichick didn't get his vote, which I appreciated because at least it gave the thought process. I don't agree with his thought process at all. It alluded to what you're just talking about. He wanted to get the veterans in. So to explain it to the listeners, you have the modern era candidates and there's 15 finalists and five of those maximum can get in. And then you have the veterans committee candidates. And as you said, there's five potential people that could have been put onto the list.

1:00:14They were the finalists, essentially. But they're in three different buckets. Three ex-players, one, quote, contributor, and one former coach. And so those five men are competing for the same three spots. On top of that, they changed the way all of this was changed a couple years ago, where once you get to that part of the proceedings, you need an 80 % approval to get in. And so do the math. It's really hard to do if people are splitting their votes and you can only vote for three. And it turned out last year that we just had a way smaller Hall of Fame class than ever. We didn't have as many of the ex-Veterans Committee players or coach Mike Shanahan's still waiting.

1:01:01And it created a situation where just like less people are coming in. And so all of that can be true that they absolutely need to change the bylaws and the way that they decided to change it a couple years ago when they thought too many people were getting in to now too few were getting in. But it makes zero sense. And here's where I really struggle with it. It's like Ken Anderson never deserved to go in over Bill Belichick. There's no way. You always have to vote for the person that deserves it the most. And these three veterans, by definition, weren't voted in for 25 straight years. Forget about being first ballot.

1:01:39They weren't first 15 ballots. That's when you come off the ballot. And of course, Bill Belichick should be in as a no-brainer. We don't even need to make the case for Bill Belichick. But it's something I've been surprised, actually, there is this much outrage about. I had a bad barometer. I'm like, oh, this is nice. Everyone's just saying everything. So I don't even feel like I have to. They actually are even more outraged for me because knowing how crazy and out of touch some of the voters are and how crazy the process is, it was still shocking to me. But I think it was a little less shocking or surprising to me than a lot of the people who aren't as dialed into it.

1:02:23And maybe that caused the outrage. I was just like, I can't believe they f***ed this up. but actually like i kind of can see how it happened as stupid as it is so go go for it jimmy johnson and every single show and everything out there like i'm glad you you got this one because it's it's just obvious how bad it is yeah the process is a mess to not have it just be yes

1:02:44Ollie Connolly:no why you have to tear different variations of hall of famers as you said how you can even do that anyway not wind up with bill being number one on your list across the board with the guys on there is a joke, but to not have it be yes, no, to have a 50 person selection committee, I think is way too small. And then to have the names they have on there is frankly embarrassing. You look at, um, some of the people you've read off. I've covered the sport for 15 years. I've worked in the sport for many of those years as a coach or as a scout. I've not heard of some of those people outside of last time the list came out of who the voters were.

1:03:16Ollie Connolly:They don't cover the sport actively. Now, Bill Polian knows way more about football than we do. I think having someone like that on the committee should be there, but you should, if you have a personal beef with someone, recruits yourself. Now, is Bill Polian, you know, does he have the ego to accept he should recruit himself and recognize his bias? I doubt it. But if you have a big enough voting pool, you can at least mitigate some of those concerns. And I'm still not buying, by the way, Polian saying he can't remember, then releasing, going on SiriusXM and reading a well-prepared statement that he had to read on the air about getting in touch with the Hall of Fame.

1:03:50Ollie Connolly:If we're doing any sort of conspiracy theory i'm guessing he confirmed the votes are never coming out because for some reason they're not going to release the ballots because they want because it's this shrouded mystery of all these former columnists opinion colonists deciding who's going to the hall of fame which matters which goes in the tombstone which is all about legacy which matters for family members and generations about whether the guy was in or not this is a voting body that will not put mike shanahan in when the rest of the league is saying year after year all we want is a vision and version of Shannon and football does it look like he had an impact on the sport does he have the hardware to prove he should be in there too and yet the guy cannot get in Mike Holmgren cannot get in and now Bill Belichick cannot get in yeah that's it's a killer and they will they will change the process I I actually sort of lost touch with it and in my head they were changing the process after last year because they all agreed so uniformly the people involved with the voting that it was a mistake what happened that I thought the process had changed more.

1:04:50I don't think it changed at all. It will change ultimately. And this is tricky because I respect a lot of the men and women, although obviously it's mostly men that have these votes. But I actually think the bigger issue is the composition of there's better people in each market to represent that market and that it should not be a lifetime appointment and that someone, I guess the Hall of Fame is the people, needs to take an active role in that either it's got, you either got term limits or you just make the tough decisions because it's an important decision. And it's a really tough thing to be a Hall of Fame voter because most of these people didn't cover the league, they covered their team.

1:05:38And that's the other part where I think the composition could be less 32 different people representing a city and then all these different at-large and like more at-large people because obviously there's self-interest here. Like I'm talking about like people that cover the league like myself, but I think the right national people that were covering the league broadly and whatever type of committee, if it's ex-players, scouts, whatever, it doesn't all have to be media members either that are covering the league broadly. Like of course those should be a bigger part of the pie than someone who is just covering the titans like yeah it shouldn't be majority

1:06:17Ollie Connolly:media members in my opinion it should be historians of the game if they're in the media members it should have more of a national focus because it's the hall of fame it's not the hall it's not the ring of honor of a certain team which is how these guys are kind of presented from whoever brings them to the table then they put the argument up and they go back and forth there should be some kind of weighted percentage of the the current members of the hall getting to have a vote to say do they want someone in the brotherhood or not and you can kind of weight it versus the committee versus those guys too which may lift someone over the top or knock someone below the threshold should be really high by the way to get into the thing rather than it being like uh the basketball hall of fame where everyone who got a single triple double or whatever can get in there um so and you cannot if you have a 50 person member body how can you have tony dungy and bill polian who worked together during the peak of their careers on that plus someone representative from the cult who may or may not, I don't know, be influenced by the fact who the most famous people who ever worked for the franchise are on that body too.

1:07:12Ollie Connolly:So that's three people who may have a similar line of thinking making up that percentage of a 50-member body. It's just ridiculous. It bums me out because some of the people I'm even thinking about, like I like a lot, but they're like covering other sports now. It just, like, it doesn't make a lot of sense. For instance, I'm going to just like give an example of just what I'm talking about. Like they have a few at large broadcasters and it's like, yeah, Dan Fouts, I think made sense at the time. And if you wanted him as part of like the veterans committee, but it's like Greg Olson would be a good person to have in there.

1:07:47So somewhat like if you want to have, you know, someone that's representing broadcasting or something like that played with him. But like there's there's a lot of ways that you could go. And yeah, Belichick would obviously be on my my ballot. I hate the people that were making like the, any of the arguments against them too.

1:08:06Ollie Connolly:Cause I did. If they, if they put your defensive game plan from a Super Bowl against the hottest offense the league had ever seen at that time into the hall, why is the guy who designed the game plan then went on to win eight Lombardi's not in it? Right. You're talking about the, the one he did as the giants defensive coordinator, which is absolutely part of his run. And everyone's like, well, they didn't, he didn't win a Superbowl without Brady at, you know, like the, you know, the best quarterback of all time. Tom Brady was not the best quarterback of all time between 2001 and 2004. I can go back and show you all the rankings.

1:08:35No one consider him a top five quarterback. I think by the end of 04, that was maybe unfair. In fact, he was probably a little underrated by the end of 04. But for 01, 02, 03, he was not that guy. They won because of the combination. And they won because of the combination throughout.

1:08:52Ollie Connolly:Except Bill Polian did have a first round grade on Tom Brady, but decided not to take him. even though he took three centers in one draft class when he had Jeff Saturday, he decided not to take a first round quarterback in any of the first six rounds of the draft because he had Peyton Manning on his roster. You're reminding me of a quote that I was looking for as you were talking, but I wanted to really lock in more with the gold that Ali's spinning that I didn't find it. Where someone said in reference to this whole Bill Polian saying that he voted for him was a politician quote was like, only trust people with their votes.

1:09:22If they say they didn't vote against you, like never trust the person that says they voted for you was essentially uh the politicians vote forget where that was from but i i love that and um i do think there there will be change and i do think there's going to be second impact effects where if robert craft does get inducted uh it's going to cast a little bit of a pall over it and craft is going to have to pretend to be leading that charge from the stage because Belichick's going to be there. Adam Venateri is a really strong candidate this year, and I think he has a good chance to get in. So I think Belichick would be there for Venateri.

1:10:05Would he be there if it was just Kraft? Maybe, maybe not. But either way, Kraft, when he makes that speech, if he's getting in, has to make the same speech that all the expatriates are going to be making, and they all believe it, of how much Bill Belichick was robbed. So it's going to have this like second level impact where it actually, I think in a way is going to be good for Belichick, even though it's going to really bother him.

1:10:30Ollie Connolly:I think their only way out of this is an idea that Nick Wright put forward, which is the best idea. They opened up, if you remember, for the 100 year anniversary, where they just kind of went, we got to clear the backlog. We have a significant backlog here. They're going to have to do that again and just make it a nauseating all Patriots run where you get Gronk in, you get everyone in all at once, you delay Kraft for another season and you just have six pats on the stage. Nick Wright came up with this. I think it's their only way to spin their way out of this, where you can then get the backlash to people just being so frustrated that it's an all Patriots weekend.

1:10:58Ollie Connolly:You put them on the hall of fame game. You do the whole thing. You celebrate the great dynasty of our time. You screen the Apple TV documentary where Robert Kraft is dumping on Bill Belichick for 10 hours. You do the whole shebang and then it will kind of spin back around. The people forget he was excluded from the first ballot and just be frustrated. It's a all Patriots weekend. Fun idea. would be so loathsome for the rest of America to watch that weekend that I don't think it would do the Hall of Fame much justice or service, but it would be fun. I support anything creative like that. I do also, you alluded to it earlier, but just to spell it out.

1:11:33And if it wasn't obvious enough, we're going long on this because I do care a lot about the Hall of Fame process. I would love to personally be part of it, and I would take it seriously. like if they ever let an NFL media person be part of it, like they now do with the associated press votes. And I care. And I kind of love that people are even caring about this because it's like, yeah, I get into this. I think this is stuff worth getting into. But I love the little news item that you dropped earlier. But I don't know if the listener will kind of know the reference that you're talking about. Both Jimmy Johnson and Bill Cowher have alluded to the fact that like, oh yeah, it was common practice.

1:12:15Everyone was doing the Spygate stuff. And that Howard Mudd, the former Colts offensive line coach, he's the one that taught Bill Lachek and he's the one that taught Jimmy Johnson how to do this. Howard Mudd eventually ended up working for Tony Dungy and Bill Pullian, of course. And that they're just now out on front street, let's say in it publicly. It was like, we could have used you 20 years ago, Jimmy and Bill just saying like, oh, everyone was doing Spygate back in the day. But just like a fun little news nugget dropped 15 years later.

1:12:44Ollie Connolly:To Cowher's credit, he has been consistent. Cowher is like open, like here is how I cheated throughout my run. I don't care. I got the trophy. Who cares? And I admire that from Bill Cowher. He did not include there that, you know, his organization was pumping in crowd noise throughout playoff games, which may or may not have happened with Bill Pulliam. That they never really beat the allegations there. Let's wrap up by saying if I'm going to be critical, what would my ballot be? And you mentioned how they did kind of jam in some extra Hall of Famers around the top 100 a few years ago. And then now they're like pulling back and now they're going to have to figure it all out.

1:13:20I struggle with the seniors committee stuff. I don't feel as well positioned to have a strong opinion about it. So when it comes to the senior members and the contributors, Belichick would obviously get my vote. I'm torn on Robert Kraft. Ken Anderson has my vote, in part because of my conversations with Chris Wesseling about Ken Anderson and going through it and some of the Bill Walsh quotes. And you're kind of giving him a little bit of credit for the career that he didn't have. But I am all about peak and Ken Anderson to me for his peak would get my vote as a contributor. So Belichick and Ken Anderson would be my two yeses from the seniors and the contributors.

1:14:11And I think I think I would split up Kraft. I'm not I'm not sure. What do you think on Kraft?

1:14:19Ollie Connolly:I just don't think I'm pro owners going in. Yes, me neither. unless it's like Lamar Hunt totally good with sport wouldn't exist the way it does today without him that's the one after that I think I'm pretty good I don't care they did a great media rights deal overseas frankly but once Jerry Jones is in it kind of opens it that you kind of Jerry Jones in there with those credentials and 20 years of poverty and not have Robert Kraft in there so they've kind of backed themselves into a lane to please Jerry that's where I struggle with it and I'm not a voter that has a history and none of this is official anyway so I'm just gonna say that like i'm not i'm not sure about craft because my instinct would be similar to yours where i'd have a hard time ever voting an owner in unless like the bar is just so high um compared to like possibly getting a mike shanahan or an ex player in and um that's just where i'm at with owners i don't think that anything that happens on the field should be necessarily put to ownership now you need a good owner to be successful on the field but that's the whole case for robert craft there is no other case no they talk about the off the field stuff and working on the committees and building out the league and blah blah blahs if it wouldn't have happened on its own to me it has to be where you've done something like art runeo lomar hunt where it's really the definition of the league as we see now where it makes sense that you go and so it's so beyond just the the league and the sport and like how well they sell media rights and how many trophies you pick up to really impact the sport more generally and the direction of it.

1:15:48Ollie Connolly:And I don't think Robert Kraft's case could be anything about the direction of the sport itself beyond TV rights deals were pretty good and he was involved in negotiations. Sure, yes. And he has a lot of friends in the media, which I think helps his case and when he gets talked about here. But yeah, like the best case you had for Jerry Jones outside of the sport was like, well, he let everyone make more money because they started doing side deals with Pepsi. And it's like, what are we talking about here? Are you going to put that on a plaque? All right, let's go to the modern candidate. So I went through my ballot.

1:16:21Here are the 15 people. I'm going to just read them all that were eligible for enshrinement. Willie Anderson, the tackle of the Bengals for many years. Drew Brees of the Saints. Jari Evans, the guard who played with the Saints. Larry Fitzgerald, wide receiver with the Cardinals, of course. Frank Gore, who had his best days with the 49ers at running back. My favorite really was excited to see him on the finalist list in his very first year, which bodes really well for him getting in at some point if he doesn't this year. Torrey Holt, who's been a finalist for a while, wide receiver with the St.

1:16:56Louis Rams. Luke Kuechly, mostly known for being a multiple time guest of NFL Daily. Terrell Suggs, the edge rusher for the Ravens. Adam Vinatieri, the kicker with the Patriots and the Colts. Reggie Wayne, wide receiver with the Colts. Kevin Williams, part of the Twin Towers, the defensive tackle. Love seeing him as part of the finalists now. That's some progress for him. With the Vikings, Jason Witten getting on to the finalists list right away. I was, it wasn't, that wasn't a given as a tight end, so that really bodes well for him. Darren Woodson, who was his teammate at one point with the Cowboys, and Marshall Yonda, the guard for the Ravens.

1:17:33My ballot, Ollie, and you're just going to respond off of this because we got to get out of here. Drew Brees seems like a no-doubter, right? No brainer. No brainer. And that's the thing with Belichick too. Like as much as I love Breeze, I've made some like all time quarterbacks list. And you know, you could put them in the top 10. You could not put them in the top 10. I think he's probably going to be in almost anyone's top 15. Yes. But, but the fact that like Belichick is, you know, has a pretty strong case for like number one or two coach. And like people would go insane. Like Drew Breeze is a total, no doubt, no brainer.

1:18:08He's obviously getting in. just comparing him to Belichick. Of course, Belichick should be that as well. Larry Fitzgerald makes the list for me too, and I think he's going to get in on his first year. Any Larry Fitzgerald thoughts from over the years?

1:18:22Ollie Connolly:I think he's one of the greatest to ever do it. I think he should be a no-brainer that the problem they've backed themselves into is making these receivers wait and having a receiver backlog that maybe he will just fall out of it, but he should absolutely be in. There is no argument, like no great argument against him. uh you know part of the hall of fame all 2010 teams obviously the numbers that he accumulated are insane that the only thing that could even have possibly created any debate at the time is like first team all pro one time and i do remember i covered most of these years larry fitzgerald was in this weird spot where he usually was like the third best receiver in the nfl or the fourth and that's incredible like he he was so good and i think sometimes you could have made the case he was the the best and and maybe he should have had more than one first team all pro but he it is worth pointing out that that was the case for him uh for most of his career where it was like that to me is absolutely a hall of famer uh a no doubter if you're third or fourth best for most of your career much less like 10 or 12 straight years that's a hall of famer uh but he always did have kind of moss and to or mega different years popping up just like going over the top of him You're running through maybe the four great receivers of all time.

1:19:39Ollie Connolly:And it's like, oh, you're sick. It depends where your threshold bar is. I guess I think there were times where he was a better, more impactful receiver. There were guys who may be a bit more glamorous and possibly more flashy as a vertical threat. Those guys used to always get the AP awards. Although then you think about the run he had in that year with the Cardinals going to the Super Bowl. How just one of the most dominant runs. And he was that dominant as a receiver during that portion of his career as anyone. Luke Kuechly to me was a really surprising omission last year. Just, you know, when you see it, I'm someone who's going to reward Peek.

1:20:16And to me, he was the best at his position during his career. And I do think he'll get in this year.

1:20:22Ollie Connolly:Yeah, him, Patrick Willis, best linebacker I've ever studied, ever evaluated, should be no doubted to me. Yeah. Yeah, and unlike, unfortunately for Willis, you know, not as much, I know he left the game earlier, but not as much injuries early in his career. And Keekly to me was even maybe another level above, but that's unfair maybe to Patrick Willis. All right, so that's three to me that are pretty easy, I think. And then for my final three spots, just to give people a clue, I considered in the end Adam Vinatieri, Marshall Yonda, the guard for the Ravens, and Torrey Holt, who I am feeling that that feeling that maybe some of the voters are like that I do want him to get in.

1:21:04And I think he's waited long enough, but I have to be a man of my word, Ali, and I think put the people in that deserve it most right away. And I would have spent more time with this process, obviously, and who knows if that would have come to a different result if I actually had a vote. but I think Vinitieri and Marshall Yonda just get in for me over Torrey Hull. Marshall Yonda, who all pros at multiple different positions. It was crazy to look at the PFF all pros, which are less consistent because their grading is less consistent. And he had five first team PFF all pros and a second team. And they were at three different positions.

1:21:43It was like he started out at right tackle. He did it at left guard and right guard. But he also, you know, at the end of his career, They made him switch guard positions and he was great at that too. And so I think there's an argument to be made like he was either the best or the second best at his position for an eight year period. Holt doesn't quite get there to me. And so if you are accepting that Vinatieri gets in on his first chance, then those were my last two.

1:22:11Ollie Connolly:Yeah, to me, it would be more between Vinatieri and Holt at that point. I think Yonder is the guy who dominated all the Hall of Famous who are going to come through these next classes. If you speak to JJ, anyone like that and say, who's the guy who would just like murder you for three or four reps in the game? It's Marshall Yonder. If all the greatest players of all time are saying he's the guy who gave them the most bother, then had that level of consistency has to go in right away. Good. You made me feel better about that one because it's tough. Offensive line play. That's where if I had a vote, I would dive more into it, not just the numbers, but talk to more people.

1:22:42I admit that I didn't hear it. It's more based off of what I saw, what I heard at the time, what people say. And I think for him at his position, if you compare him to, let's say, Willie Anderson at the time, Jari Evans at the time, the other offensive lineman on this list, it's like, yeah, I think everyone would have agreed that Yanda, for his position, was higher. And ultimately, I think that's true, too, if you compare him to Kevin Williams, Witten, who, you know, these are guys that I did watch each and every year, Suggs. I love Gore and really hope that he gets in eventually, and even Holt.

1:23:18I think Yanda gets there. What are your thoughts on Vinatieri? And if there's anyone from that longer list that I gave you, I know I didn't prep you too long, that stand out to you as another one that would be really strong to consider.

1:23:31Ollie Connolly:The Vinatieri one to me is interesting because it does come down to this phrase people like to use of, can you tell the story of the game or not? And I don't know how much you weight that. I actually do care about the Holt being a place you can take someone and take them through the trajectory and history of the sport and it would be difficult to tell it without that how do you kick off a dynasty it begins with this guy's foot well was he also just as good and did he have like the longevity well he had more longevity than basically anyone to kick a football at that higher level uh doing it for two different teams who competed non-stop and they won championships on his foot um so to me he does cross the threshold i have a really really high bar for the kickers because i think they probably do have to be in kind of the annals of the game to get in there.

1:24:10Ollie Connolly:Whereas other guys, I'm happy to just say they were the most dominant player at their position for a long time. Yeah, I'm torn on it too. Now, Vinatieri does lead the all-time, like he is the all-time leader in field goals made and stuff. So he has the cumulative. He has the all pros because he did it over a number of years. There was actually a year, I was looking this up, I remembered it too, when he was 42, where he was like eight years into the Colts era and he didn't miss a kick that year. I think he missed one kick that year. So in terms of a big spot, I voted him because I was like, should a kicker make the Hall of Fame, basically?

1:24:47And if my answer is accepting yes, was he the best kicker throughout a lot of those years? No. I think Justin Tucker, for instance, was a more dominant kicker year to year than Vinatieri. It was a different era. I think you do have to adjust for eras. But even for that era, he didn't have the biggest leg in terms of hitting long field goals as consistently. But how I looked at it in the end was like, if I'm going to say a kicker ever can get in, he would get in. And I think for his position, if I'm accepting that a kicker can get in for his position, comparing him to the other players at the other positions, I would be fine.

1:25:27Not like if he had to wait, I don't think it's going to be some egregious, you know, miscarriage of justice if Holt gets in over him or a bunch of different of the players listed. And because I think he'll get in eventually. But if I'm accepting that, I think like he's that kicker. He's the kicker to get in.

1:25:43Ollie Connolly:I agree with you, but it is tough because every year you could push him back by saying, well, Frank Gore, I'm running back. This year we'll do him. Tory Hall, it's his time. We'll put him in. Well, you keep pushing out. Look at the classes that are coming up. It is absolutely stacked. Every season you guys say, well, an edge rusher is maybe in the Hall of Very Good, Fringe Hall of Famer. Let's put him above the kicker. If a kick is going to go in for all elements of it, the cumulative, the story, the game, the history of it, he's the guy. And I and I look all these guys are are such greats that have had such great careers.

1:26:14And I think this process is painful. We found out that Eli Manning is not going to make it this year already. I don't like this trend that we're getting these reports that the guys don't make it. That's never happened before, because unfortunately, they have to keep answering these questions. and it becomes like an annual point of pain when it should be a point of pride that they're so close. So we know, I forgot to mention Eli before. I think it was because I knew he's already not gonna make it. But I'm not slagging any of these other names. To me, none of them, maybe beyond Yonda, hit that point to me that it was like, oh yeah, no doubter, for sure.

1:26:50Like I expect them to get in and he's getting in. And so they're all in a similar bucket where you can make different cases. And for me, the Torrey Holt case was I'm about peak. To me, he was the one in St. Louis. He had a six-year run where he went 1 ,300 to 1 ,700 yards, where he was safely in the top five receivers in the NFL to me in each one of those seasons. And just the subtle mover, incredible hands. And to me, kind of passes that test. It's why I'd probably vote Roger Craig in, too. I forgot to mention that as my other player that I would vote in because for the first seven years of his career, if you look at yards from scrimmage, it's Eric Dickerson one.

1:27:33And then it's Roger Craig number two over like some of the greatest names you've ever seen, like, you know, Barry Sanders and Walter Payton, who weren't like playing for every single one of those years. But he's, you know, solidly ahead of those guys. So to me, if you have a like dominant seven year run, like that's enough for me. I'm for those guys more than the compiler. So.

1:27:50Ollie Connolly:so you're happy with kind of the whole of very very good as opposed to just haul off the elite of the elite top five of the position that's where sugs is a tricky one for me i adore terrell sugs he was not one of the best three players on his own defense often even though i think he's one of the greats but that's me would be the whole of very good i think jason whitten is the whole of good the whole very very good to me as whole and that to you is is enough i don't know because honestly after the first it's why in the end you said it should be yes or no okay and i hate to do this with my guy gore because i i think i would be yes on gore but to me it's it's maybe a little bit of a bias but i really do believe he was one of the best running backs in each of those years where he wasn't honored by the all pro like it was just sort of the situations that they used him in some ways the six guys that i mentioned i strongly consider kind of those are my yeses i don't think i have a yes for the rest of them and so holt has long been a guy i thought was was made my cut for whatever reason uh and i think mine is no on on the rest of them so it's tough that suggs and witten and woodson i think like our halls are very good not quite well i'm glad we solved it for them they can reach out to you next year and just pick it up from that?

1:29:12I'm going to I'm going to try to work some behind the scenes magic. Can I can I somehow get on that committee? Probably not. It's never going to happen. Eric's is like this was supposed to be an hour long show. But you know what, Eric? It's the weekend. And we wanted to talk coaches and we wanted to talk Hall of Fame because we're not going to talk about it at length during Super Bowl week. I thought this was the time to do it. We will obviously congratulate the men that that did make it and hit on that. But for the most part, next week is going to be all about the game and all about the rest of the league because we're talking about two different players from different teams and start looking ahead to the offseason.

1:29:47Ollie, that was awesome. Apologies for keeping you so long. We'll get you back next week. And yes, we will be doing shows all next week from San Francisco. But we do have a show on Monday that will be from the Chris Wesleyan Podcast Studio. So that's the next time you'll hear from us in the feed. Who knows? Maybe the Raiders or the Cardinals will finally hire someone, but I don't think so because they're waiting for Clint Kubiak. We'll see you then.

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