Hour 1: Jeremiyah Love Draft Prediction, Lions Trade Montgomery, plus NFL Insider Tom Pelissero

22:46Tom Pelissero:But it's going to be big money. It's going to be probably up in the high teens. And so realistically, you're probably better off if you're the Lions, either getting an economical option in free agency or drafting a running back or two to try to fill that other role. So it was probably best for everybody. The Lions free up some cash and cap space. the Texans upgrade and David Montgomery gets an opportunity now to be a feature back, which was simply never going to happen in Detroit.

23:11Rich Eisen:All right. Tom Pellicero here with some breaking news on this Monday after the combine. What's the story come out of the combine? I mean, is it still Max Crosby, even though we didn't really get much smoke or fire on that front over the weekend?

23:26Tom Pelissero:Tom, I would say Max Crosby and his future is as big of a story as you have in the NFL right now. We talked about this last week. We've heard what John Spitek said publicly at the podium, that he expects Crosby to be there, that they've got a great relationship. They talk and text all the time. We have not heard directly from Max about how he felt about those comments, how he feels at this point about his future. I have gotten roughly 50 Instagram story alerts from Max, who appears to be in the facility shooting all 22 tape of himself making plays, showing himself boxing, shooting hoops, proving in a variety of different ways.

24:07Tom Pelissero:A, I'm still a great player. B, I'm a lot closer to health than other people might think that I am. And the Raiders, even though they're not proactively making calls, I would believe that they are going to continue to get calls. And anybody who needs a pass rusher is going to be interested in this because, you know, there's Trey Hendrickson, Odafe Owe. You got a few guys in free agency, but really a trade for Max, if you're not going to draft one, is probably your best way to get an elite type of pass rusher. Those guys just don't hit the market. So if I'm thinking, who would be the teams that would make sense for Max Crosby?

24:44Tom Pelissero:Again, I think anybody who's a contender and has sufficient cap space or the ability to create it should be involved. But, you know, a few that would come to mind would be the Chicago Bears, a team that people will remember swung another trade with the Raiders for a pretty high profile pass rusher in Cleo Mack some years ago. They feel like they're close. They were right there at the end in the playoffs. Could Max Crosby be somebody that puts them over the top and elevates that pass rush? I think that would be a fit. I can see Buffalo, they've got some things they've got to work out in terms of their salary cap and how they're going to devote their resources in this offseason with Joe Brady coming aboard as a first-time head coach and also changing over the defense now with Jim Leonard calling the plays there.

25:27Tom Pelissero:But for Max to come in and join that team that's been looking for a closer, they've taken swings at it, signing Vaughn Miller years ago, I can see that being a fit. And then the one that everybody wants to keep talking about, and I do believe that it makes sense, is with the Cowboys. Max is from that area. He trains in the offseason with C.D. Lamb. The Cowboys have ammunition. They don't have any day two picks this year, but they got two first rounders. They've got enough cash and cap flexibility. Jerry Jones has indicated they're going to be aggressive, and I believe a lot of that aggressiveness is going to be focused on the defensive side of the ball.

26:03Tom Pelissero:What is that price tag going to be? Is it a first round pick and more? Are the Raiders going to draw a hard line at getting two first round picks? All those remain open-ended questions. But if we're just looking at this from a leverage perspective, when do you maximize your leverage? I would say it's sometime before the market opens one week from today. Because the moment some of these teams that need pass rush help go and spend that money someplace else, you start to run out of suitors, kind of like the Bengals did last year with Trey Hendrickson. Max Crosby is different than everybody else who's available.

26:36Tom Pelissero:He's 29 years old, coming off of a knee surgery, but still very much in his prime. A culture changer behind the scenes. Obviously one of the best defensive ends, edge players that we have in the entire NFL. He's different, but you still need the money to pay him, and you need the picks, the ammunition, maybe a player to go and acquire him. The moment you start making other moves, it becomes harder. So if the Raiders are going to trade Max Crosby, there's no hard deadline on it. He doesn't have like a, you know, a conversion or anything like that that makes it from a contract perspective necessary.

27:07Tom Pelissero:But I have to believe the Raiders are approaching this, that if they're going to trade him doing so before next week would make sense.

27:14Rich Eisen:Well, even before the draft, obviously, I mean, that would have to be the deadline. And the Cowboys fascinate me in that regard because if they end up trading Micah and using the draft choices they get to go get Max Crosby, I understand Crosby's four years older, but he's also a different guy in the locker room. me it's a different it would be a different setup and certainly uh if i'm the raiders i'm intrigued by that 12th overall pick based on all those defensive linemen i just saw work out at the combine if you can get mendoza and one of them um you might you might be tempted on that front even though max crosby means so much you know it's it's interesting that the whole the thing is fascinating to me, but the Cowboys, aren't they in the worst cap hell of any team in the NFL right now?

28:05Rich Eisen:Obviously, things can be massaged, but right now they're almost 60 million over the cap.

28:11Tom Pelissero:Tom, there's different contracts that they can dip into and create cap space pretty easily doing simple conversions on Dak Prescott, among others, they'll get them back closer. There's also the possibility you could trade a player in a deal to go get a Max Crosby, which would help alleviate some of that. And when you go back to the Micah Parsons trade, you know, there's a lot of different ways that you could look at it. And that's one of those rich defining trades that we'll all be talking about for years to come and analyzing it and hyper analyzing it. But if you look at it from this perspective, if in the end, based on where all these picks ended up going to what they did with them, if they traded Micah Parsons, in essence, for Kenny Clark, Quinn and Williams, and let's say Max Crosby, that's a pretty good haul that allows you to accelerate your rebuild as opposed to just taking those picks, drafting players, and hope they develop into those types of core talents.

29:06Rich Eisen:Tom Pellicero here on the Rich Eisen Show. When does the quarterback market pop? When?

29:12Tom Pelissero:This is one of the ongoing mysteries, in part because those guys who have the guarantee triggers in their contracts, those all come after the start of the league year. Here's what I mean in very simple terms. We'll know by tomorrow what happens with Daniel Jones and the Colts. They've been trying to get a long-term deal done. If they can't, I would anticipate that they tag Jones. It may be the transition tag, which is at a lower number, but we'll see what direction that goes. Everybody else, in terms of namely Malik Willis and what his market is going to be, those players will become free agents on Monday.

29:46Tom Pelissero:And so some of the same teams that might be going, all right, what is the right number to go get a Malik Willis? or if you're going to, in a different bucket, sign a Joe Flacco or a Jimmy Garoppolo or whether it's Aaron Rodgers, Russell Wilson. There's some big names that are available. You may have to make those decisions before you have final knowledge on whether any of these other guys are going to end up getting cut. The prevailing sense within the league is besides Kirk Cousins, who we know based on his contract is going to be released on March 11th, you have triggers in the contracts of Geno Smith and Tua Tonga-Vailoa that don't hit until next Friday the 13th and a Kyler trigger that doesn't hit until Sunday the 15th.

30:27Tom Pelissero:So if you're coming down to it, you might think, all right, we're just going to sign this guy when he gets cut for the minimum. But if one of those teams decide to hold the player you're going after, you might be more motivated just to go out and at least get an insurance plan before those insurance plans dry up. That's one of the reasons this quarterback market is so difficult to project right now. I wouldn't think that all those teams, the Raiders, the Cardinals, the Dolphins, drag this all the way out into the end of next week. Based on the fact those guys have guaranteed money, the players technically can't be released until next Wednesday, March 11th.

30:59Tom Pelissero:But you could tell them, you could announce it, you could do a lot of different things that would allow the market to start moving. But right now, I've talked to many of those teams that are eyeing those players. And to a certain degree, while they're working behind the scenes, they are frozen a little bit by not having firm and final word from those teams of exactly how this is going to play out. All signs are pointing to Tua becoming available if they can't trade him, which has always seemed like a complicated situation. He would be released, I presume, prior to March 13th, so that would be next Thursday.

31:31Tom Pelissero:And then with Kyler Murray, it seems like things are pointing that direction, but Kyler has not been told what the firm and final word is. I believe he would have a really robust market if he were cut and be able to sign for the minimum and Gino Smith would have a market but you know if you're the Raiders we've kind of talked about the Raiders within this lens of well they're drafting Fernando Mendoza we think at number one overall so they've got their quarterback what if Clint Kubiak doesn't want to play him out of the gate what if the best thing for an RPO heavy quarterback in his college career is to sit back behind a veteran and learn until they feel like he's really ready to hit the ground running on a Raiders team that's doing a ground-up rebuild.

32:13Tom Pelissero:If that is the scenario you have in your head, do you just keep Geno Smith, who you're already paying 18 and a half this year? He'd have another$8 million vest if he's still on the roster on March 13th. Do you move on from Geno, whether it's via trade or cut, and maybe sign one of these other guys that you potentially can get for the minimum or close to it? Of all the teams that we've talked about and there are a bunch that need quarterbacks from the Vikings the Steelers the Dolphins and the Cardinals presuming that they move on the Colts pending what happens with Daniel Jones among others the Raiders are another team that depending what they do with Geno Smith don't rule out them being players in that same market probably not spending much money to do it but looking to add potentially another veteran to that room as well man and this is all going to pop in

33:00Rich Eisen:the next week right i mean pretty much at this point by monday we should we should get a better indication of where these things are going because every single team that you're referring to that's going to cut their quarterback or potentially deal them um has another team that's wondering if they're available to be had because they've been cut or not like this there's going to be too many people needing answers to let this thing linger. And then there's, you know, Rogers, who says he's going to let the Steelers know sooner rather than later, or at least that's the assumption. We haven't heard a single thing from him.

33:37Tom Pelissero:That's another one. You know, if the Steelers, we've talked a lot about Aaron Rogers, and he's been in communication with Mike McCarthy. He spoke recently with Omar Khan, but we're a week away from the free agent negotiating window opens, which was the soft target for having a Rogers decision to this point. As I sit here, we don't have an Aaron Rodgers decision. So even the Steelers, they like Will Howard, but you're not just going to go, well, Will Howard, that's the room for the year. Him and Mason Rudolph, you're acquiring somebody. Somehow, do they become players for, let's say, a Kirk Cousins, who I know that if things had fallen differently last year, could have been a consideration in Pittsburgh.

34:14Tom Pelissero:These are all intertwined here, Rich. And I'm not even being cryptic, as I often am. I'm just literally saying the teams themselves don't firmly know so many different things. And so much of this quarterback market is going to be defined by who becomes available, that there is a lot of uncertainty. One of the things that we'll get a pretty clear idea of by this time one week from now is what is the Malik Willis market? And does he take out one of those starting jobs? If the money goes crazy, it's going to eliminate some people from being in that mix. I've always liked Malik going back to meeting him at the Senior Bowl.

34:50Tom Pelissero:He made the most of his opportunities. We know his downfield passing numbers are off the charts, but it is a really, really small sample size. Does somebody feel confident in Malik Willis enough to say, we're going to give you 20, 25 million a year? Is it possible the number comes in under that? If the number is under 20 million, and I'm not saying that it will be, but if it were, that might bring some other teams into play. Even a team like the Vikings that we've talked about repeatedly as being in the market for the bare minimum quarterback. In fact, if you've got another bite at the apple here on a young quarterback to come in and potentially compete with J.J.

35:23Tom Pelissero:McCarthy, there's just a plethora of different ways that this entire thing can go. I would say the first step of this, which we'll get word on in the next 28 hours here, is what's happening in Indianapolis with Daniel Jones. Is it possible they get a deal done? I don't, sitting right here right now, believe that's going to happen. Then do they franchise tag him or do they transition tag him? If you transition tag him, that means now he can sign an offer sheet someplace else. The Colts may well match it, but it would at least leave that door cracked open ajar for other teams to go, even for a guy coming off an Achilles.

35:57Tom Pelissero:He played at a really high level when they started 7-1 last year. It'd be one more thing for these teams to evaluate.

36:02Rich Eisen:Yeah, we had Chris Ballard on during the combine. I did not get the sense that somebody other than Daniel Jones is their quarterback in the fall. Like, I don't think he's going anywhere. They're going to figure that thing out one way or another. Franchise tag to maybe kick the can down the road and figure it out. Before I let you go, what are the other tag situations? This is a 4 p.m. Eastern Tuesday deadline on that, Tom. What do you got for me here?

36:29Tom Pelissero:Well, let's start with the Jets and Brees Hall. And their GM, Darren Mugee, said at the Combine that if they can't get a deal done with Brees, then they are planning to tag him. They are still working on that. it's not the door is not completely slammed shut on getting a Brees Hall deal done but he's the top running back on the market and so we'll see exactly how this plays out if they can't get a deal done I know there's been a lot of talk about the transition tag I wouldn't be surprised if it's the franchise tag instead you're talking about only a three million dollar difference from 11 to 14 it would you know prevent one of those situations like I'm talking about with Daniel Jones where if you transition him, somebody else can sign him to an offer sheet that makes it more complicated for you to match and re-sign the player.

37:14Tom Pelissero:We'll see what direction that goes, but would not be a surprise to me if Brees Hall ends up getting the franchise tag by 4 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday. Trey Hendrickson in Cincinnati is another really fascinating one because he would be the top defensive end if he hits the market. It has always seemed logical that he is going to hit the market, but the Bengals have refused to rule out the possibility of using the franchise tag on him, possibly setting up a tag and trade situation because the moment that Trey would get tagged, I would imagine, based upon what's happened the last two years, that he's going to go through the roof.

37:46Tom Pelissero:He doesn't want to be staying in Cincinnati. He doesn't want to have his movement restricted. Again, we'll find out. There's been nothing clearly communicated on that front to this point. Certainly, Trey Hendrickson would be one of the top free agents, And that might be it, Rich. I'm not anticipating this being a big tag year. You know, George Pickens, Kyle Pitts have already gotten the franchise tag. The Colts are going to use it, whether it's on Daniel Jones or potentially on Alec Pierce. The Jets, again, barring a deal to intend to use one on Brees. And maybe the Bengals, that's four or five tags in a league where, you know, it's not uncommon for us to have eight to ten of those.

38:23Tom Pelissero:I think that that speaks in part to the realities of the tags, that at some positions are just completely prohibitive. I mean, there's some good linebackers that are going to hit free agency this year, whether that's, you know, Quay Walker, Devin Lloyd. But a$27 million tag number is just not realistic. Nobody's going to do that. And there's also some other players that are going to hit free agency that I believe are going to have, you know, really strong markets. It's a pretty short list. But, you know, take a John Franklin Myers, not a household name, never been to the Pro Bowl. But position scarcity drives a lot of this.

38:54Tom Pelissero:There are virtually no defensive, true defensive linemen, interior players, defensive tackles that are going to hit free agency. I've seen people projecting John Franklin Myers getting, you know, 10 to 12 million. Just I'll say this one, Rich. Don't be surprised if that number has a two in front of it when JFM hits free agency.

39:12Rich Eisen:OK. And Kenneth Walker, the Super Bowl MVP walks. So what happens?

39:17Tom Pelissero:I would be surprised. It'd be really hard to franchise tag Kenneth Walker. and I don't really see the transition tag being an option. It doesn't mean they can't get a deal done, but it would be really tough financially and otherwise. All those guys that Seattle has coming up, between Devin Witherspoon, Jackson Smith and Jigba, among others that are up for contract extensions, if the market's right, John Schneider is always going to, he's never going to slam the door on any player, but a$14-plus million franchise tag, I know important Kenneth Walker was in the playoff run, and, of course, winning Super Bowl MVP.

39:53Tom Pelissero:But tagging him just doesn't seem realistic for where they are right now. And so I do believe that Kenneth Walker is going to get an opportunity to see his market.

40:00Rich Eisen:Tom, thanks again. I will reach out to you maybe later in the week, get you back on here, and it'll be interesting to see if you're suited and booted or you're just casual. We'll find out.

40:11Tom Pelissero:We are suited, booted, and ready for at least the next two weeks, Rich. Anytime, night or day, I will sleep in the suit.

40:18Rich Eisen:Tom Pellicero, everybody. Check him out on the Insiders on NFL Network and NFL Plus right here on the Rich Eisen Show. All right, lots to take in. Also, your phone calls, 844-204-RICH, number to dial Max Crosby with his star on the side of his helmet. Two cents, TJ Jefferson. I got it. Don't worry. The Rich Eisen Show, the podcast.

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41:57Rich Eisen:Back here on the Rich Eisen Show, 844-204-RICH, number to Dom. What if... Not if I told you. What if the Micah Parsons trade for the Dallas Cowboys in the long run... Micah. Turns out to be in favor and won by Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys. What if that is in fact the case? Because, again, the way that you acquire and then turn into more assets when you trade someone away. Tom Pellicero just said, if they land Max Crosby, and they could basically say listen we we know what the compensation comp is because we're the ones who created it that's true for somebody four years younger than max so we know what the compensation should be for max crosby if anybody knows what the market bears it's the one who said it and created it.

43:00Rich Eisen:It's us. And if you want Max to wind up in a spot where he'd be happy and if you want to not see him more than but once every four years like a comet. Like a comet. You know. Haley Scrosby? Every 86 years. I'm not a scientist. I don't play one on TV. I'm just telling you the way it can be sold. that's not a bad idea. And if you get Max and Quinton Williams and Kenny Clark, and that's the way that you fill out your defensive line by trading away Micah Parsons. God, if you're listening, help. How can anybody sit here but say, oh, my goodness? Which is why, you know, Jerry doesn't mind when you send slingings and arrows in his way if he's playing the long game.

43:50Rich Eisen:He loves it. Now, interestingly enough, George Pickens has been franchise tag, And the guy who he needs to be negotiating with for a longer term deal is David Mooligeta, who is the agent of my department. Yeah, that part. Who Jerry claimed to not know. Apparently, in talking about the possibilities of negotiating with him and how it's still fine, I think he confirmed they still haven't met.

44:24David Montgomery:Regarding his representation, I can clearly work with his agent, not clearly to you, but clearly to me. I have no issues. We haven't met, as you well know, but we haven't met. But to the end that we can have discussion about him and other players that he represents, We understand the angst that's there, how he's representing and his goals of maximizing the dollars. And he clearly is accomplished enough to know the alternative to that is our job of managing the club and the salary cap and getting as much mileage out of the cap as we can. No mistake about how much we want George Pickens to be a part of our future.

45:16David Montgomery:and I would want all of our fans to rest assured that I have every intention of working very good with his agent. I have no reason to have an issue other than the fact that he represented Parsons and we ended up making a trade with Parsons. But you all heard me say before that had little to do with his involvement. But that was more about just the situation, criticize me or not, about what Parsons was worth in a decision on our part.

45:55Rich Eisen:Here's the one thing I know that George Pickens is not going to do, even though Stephen Jones went on Friday's show on us and said that Jerry and George had already spoken and George was excited about still being a Dallas Cowboy, loves being a Dallas Cowboy. The one thing that George Pickens is not going to do is shake Jerry's hand and say, we've got a deal. because that's the way you wind up on the Green Bay Packers. Yeah, we can't have that again. It should be good for George. Hey, George is in a great spot, man, where everybody's looking at 88 maybe, and he's doing his thing, and the run game's working, and the tight end game's working, and the offensive side of the ball, I am not worried about for the Dallas Cowboys.

46:41Rich Eisen:I'm happy with that. And if they're able to take the 12th overall pick, and instead of using it on a young defender, get Max Crosby for it? The Ridge Eyes and Show Podcast.

46:51Tom Pelissero:Shot clocks, big shots, upsets, aces, TGL playoffs are here. First, Atlanta Drive starts their repeat run against Los Angeles Golf Club. Then, Rory's Boston Common Golf and Tiger's Jupiter Lynx face off in their playoff debuts. Who will advance? Keep up. It's playoffs. Tune in Tuesday, March 17th at 6.30 p.m. and 9 p.m. only on ESPN and the ESPN app.