Hour 1: WBC Final Reaction, NFL Network Analyst Daniel Jeremiah, plus WNBA Labor Peace

23:38Rich Eisen:All right, Akeem Mesidor is three. So then I guess it's Bain and Maunoa. Those are the last two? So I've got no. I've got, and then I looked at it, by the way, and I put an 11th guy down there. So it's going to be a starting 11. Okay. Keontae Scott was next for me. Okay. And he's somebody that big plays, big games. Saw the pick six in the playoffs. I just love, to me, he plays like an old school Miami Hurricane, which is odd to say for a guy who grew up by me here in San Diego. But he is everything that Miami is all about, with just how tough he is. Against the run, you see him as an absolute missile.

24:15He never taps the brakes on the way to a ball carrier and just finishes every single time. So he's got a high batting average as a tackler, and super physical, tough, competitive. Next, I'm going to go with the USC Trojans. So this is number two on the list of 11 here. McKay Lemon. I just wrote down on him, you know, you're kind of going through and looking for comps. I was joking with Zerline the other day because, you know, we talk about Amon Ra, we talk about Heinz Ward, like how tough he is. And I'm like, nah, I think I'm going to go Johnny Lawrence because there is no fear in his dojo. He is working in the middle of the field, fearless.

24:48He does not brace for contact. He runs right through the ball and takes whatever medicine they want to give him in the middle of the field. He catches everything. And then after the catch, he'll break tackles. He'll fight for extra yards. I'm a Makai Lemon guy. And the number one on the list, it's the name and the game. It's Bain. I just put him at the very top just because you look at him just throw guys around. He plays with an energy and a violence and a temperament that seems to be contagious along their front. So those are guys, when I went back through and just looked through my notes, Rich, I found a lot of similarities in their play style.

25:23Now, not all of them have all the prerequisites in terms of the size. You see Bain with the lack of length. There's holes there in some of that stuff. But if you're talking about wiring and how you compete and how tough and physical you are, those are my favorites.

25:36Rich Eisen:Okay. Thank you, number one. That was great. I appreciate you doing your homework. I have some follow-ups that can kind of lead us to your mock. So the arm length with Bain, we're not talking about it anymore. It's what you're saying. Like the tape 100 % outweighs the measuring tape is what you're saying. Daniel? I think, I believe so. No, I'm not naive to think that there aren't teams that will have that impact, you know, where they have him slotted. But somebody's going to pull the card. The tape is too good. The versatility, the ability, I think, to move him inside and let him rush inside where he can be a real, real matchup nightmare.

26:18I think teams are going to covet that. So, you know, we'll see. they'll all have to make that decision when they're on the clock. I just have a hard time believing that there isn't somebody that's going to say, like, I'm not passing. He's too good of a player. Okay. And moving to your mock draft now,

26:33Rich Eisen:based on what you just gave us, an awesome top 10 that I had no idea with one more, which we normally have around here too. But we call it one more. That's a drop. All right, we'll get one more. Yeah. And again, we would have produced the heck out of it if we'd get it in advance next time. Next time. Next time. Next time. Next time. It's all good. You send me a text, send me an email. We'll produce the heck out of it for you. But we just got your top 10 dogs with one more in the draft. And you mentioned Makai Lemon is your top wide receiver dog in the draft. And with the Dolphins trading away Jalen Waddell on Tuesday to the Denver Broncos, I would think they would go ahead and draft somebody like Makai Lemon at 11th overall.

27:17Rich Eisen:and looking at your mock draft, you have the Dolphins passing on Lemon, leaving him for the Rams to select in the spot that Atlanta would have occupied, and that's something that the Rams have in their back pocket from last year. Why do you have the Dolphins not going for a Waddle replacement and going with Mansoor Delaney in the corner out of LSU? Why do you have that? Do you want a flowery answer or the real God's honest truth? I want all of it. All right. The real God's honest truth is I turned that mock draft in the day before and I woke up having my cup of coffee and I got a text that literally was like, hey, Waddle's been traded.

27:59Now you've got to put a new name in there for number 30. So I have my cup of coffee and I'm like, all right, who did I not have going in the first round? Who could make some sense there? All right, I'll give him Keldrick Falk, give him an edge rusher there at the end of the first round. I did not work through all the different permutations of what that could look like with them at the 11th pick. Okay, then my follow-up then, would you put Lemon there in Miami now? That would be tough to pass on him for me. Just what I think of the player and then now them having a glaring need there, that's going to be a very enticing option for them.

28:35Rich Eisen:So I found the right question to ask to find the one Achilles heel in your mock draft. Oh, yeah. No. Well, the other one, no, this is the way mock drafts work. You turn this thing in, and literally between when it's supposed to come out within a three-hour period, literally three hours, you get this trade happens, and then Houston, I had Houston taking a guard because I'm looking at their roster going, this is a championship team, caliber team. They just need a guard. And then they go out and sign Teller after I'd already given him Besantis in the first round. So, I mean, it is what it is. All right.

29:08Rich Eisen:So then let's go to the top then. Let's go to the tippy, tippy top before we return to the middle of your first round. Why do you have the Jets going Arvel Reese at the end of the day? And then we'll do the domino effect after your answer. Sure. I mean, just in terms of how I stack the players, I'd have Bailey there. And I've had Bailey go on there in the previous iteration of the mock draft process. So twofold here. One is, OK, let's see, you know, if this, then what? If you change the name in there, how does that affect the rest of the top 10? It's a good exercise. But the other side of it is everything to me about the Jets screams 2027.

29:45So if you're not worried so much about what you're going to get out of this player immediately in 26 and you're in the draft room and you're saying, OK, guys, we got the three first rounders in 27. That's where we're going to find our quarterback. That's where our future lies. So let's look at this pick with number two is who's going to be the best player in 27. And I think when you look at it that way, you could look at it and say, OK, well, I think Reese has the most upside here. I think Bailey's going to be better right out the jump, and Bailey has a higher floor. But if we want to swing a little big here and allow for some time for him to develop, you can make that case.

30:19Plus, with the flexibility and the 3-4 that they're in, you can do a lot of different things with him in that scheme. So that's how I ended up just switching it up a little bit and putting Reese in there.

30:28Rich Eisen:Okay, and then now it's anybody not named Mendoza or Reese for the Cardinals. Walk me through how you think Francis Malinoa's name winds up. and Arizona Cardinals third overall draft card? The way that this, the way that where they're positioned, what they need to me, and you had mentioned this a while ago, so I'll give you some credit on it. That to me, the Cardinals would be a team, the one that get the heck out of there. That would be a spot where you could say, okay, we've kind of pinpointing and we'll get to love. Love seems like to me, it just makes all the sense in the world for Tennessee with where they're at right now.

31:02So I'll kind of work backwards. They did all this work in free agency on the defensive side of the ball. this pick absolutely without question has to be something for cam ward so who helps cam ward more than anybody in this draft it's jeremiah love so you can kind of find the jeremiah love spot so now you can look at some of these other teams and say hey in a draft where maybe we don't have quite the star power he is one and uh and that might be a situation where arizona might not have to take full price they'd be willing to move back a little bit knowing they could still get an offensive lineman to their liking they could take one of the pass rushers if they were still there But that, to me, would be a spot where it makes sense to at least have the phone calls ringing a little bit.

31:42From who?

31:42Rich Eisen:Who would ring to the point where they'd move up? Arizona wouldn't move too far down. That would covet Jeremiah Love. It could be Tennessee, just saying, to heck with it, we'll move up one spot, give up some draft capital here. There's a couple different places you could look at. To me, the most fun example is if we are the – let me just run through this little scenario I was looking at the other day. So if you are the Rams, I mean, everything screams all in, right? I mean, what they're doing screams they're going for this thing right now. You're this close. You're a drop punt away. You've already gone out and you've got McDuffie.

32:22What if there's a world in which you can move up in this draft to go take Jeremiah Love to put in your backfield as your finishing piece, to give you somebody that's as talented as Todd Gurley, what they had early on in the McVay years there, to be that little piece there. And oh, by the way, if you could pull that off without trading next year's one, which you'd have to get creative. But I think there's a way you could you could do that. And then you still have the A.J. Brown thing kicking out there in June for next year's one. And so you have a Rams offense with as good as they were last year.

32:53And all of a sudden you look up and you've got Jeremiah Love in the backfield and you've got A.J. Brown out there with Puka Nakua. I mean, goodness gracious. So and Devante Adams. And Devante Adams. It's an all in. That's an all in. Push all of your chips into the middle of the table for this year. So what about Kyron? Is he part of the deal? I think Kyron's a good player. I mean, but this is a Jeremiah Love's on another another complete level. So, I mean, you could trade. You could do a lot of different things there. Blake Quorum, those guys are good players. But this is a needle mover. This gets them back into the Todd Gurley era.

33:29Jeremiah Love is that good, right? Correct? I think he is. I think he's really, really good. Bichon good? McCaffrey good? Yeah, he's in that neighborhood. He's in that conversation of those guys. To me, Saquon is my guy that I had kind of up and above. I wouldn't put him there. but in that next wave of guys absolutely is in that conversation.

33:48Rich Eisen:Daniel Jeremiah here on the Rich Eisen show. So he doesn't get past Tennessee at four is what you're saying. I don't think so. I just don't know how they can do it. I was a little bit confused by free agency with them. I thought they would do more. Wandale Robinson's a good player, but they took a lot of resources and dedicated it to improving that defense, which is fine. But I just, to me, I'm trying to help my quarterback. He took him one overall, give him some more firepower. and Ridley coming back and Wondell Robinson, that doesn't really move the needle for me. So to get an impact player feels like that's almost a have to do it at this point in time.

34:24Rich Eisen:Okay. We just heard Jeremiah Love for Jeremiah Love, everybody. By the way, Mike Hoskins just got in my ear to tell me that. I can't take credit for that. You have no ownership there? No. But that's just the group I have around me, DJ. They know the way I think, and I know the way they think. And trust me, if Del Tufo had rights, he would have had a great song. Oh, no. I know. He just doesn't have rights. But Fox does. That's why he hangs out with them more. Listen, let's move on. The Giants take Sonny Stiles at five. If this is the way the draft board drops. Correct. To me, it's best player. He's the best player available right there.

35:03Impact guy behind their young line. And then to me, this was the exercise I wanted to do with this one was Carnell Tate. It's a decision. We're going to talk about it a lot over the next month. All signs point towards Cleveland tackle receiver in whatever order. And usually I'm, I'm of the mindset of it's going to be, the tackles are going to go. So you usually take the tackle first and you can see what's left from the receiver group. I would just look at it. I'm saying, okay, they could, this is a little bit of the gamble here, but take Tate who you feel like is the best receiver in the draft.

35:34You get him in the boat. And then because there are, you know, a decent number of tackles where they are with their second pick. I'm not doing trades in these mock drafts this early, but they could monitor that situation. And one, you know, one of them starts to drift. They can use that second pick and come up and secure the tackle, but that's a way where they could get, you know, the top wide receiver in the draft and then who carries a higher grade. So you'd be getting, you know, best, more best player available approach, but then be, you know, be on the lookout, be aware with that second pick that they could, you know, Hey, once, if Loma was getting in range, I had them falling to him.

36:07in this one. If Freeling's starting to drop, you could be a little bit aggressive with that second pick because they don't have a left tackle right now. So that would be something that they need to get accomplished.

36:18Rich Eisen:All right. Listen, for the rest of your mock draft, I'd love to go pick by pick or at least a couple just to pick out. But I do want to hit you on the trade before I let you go in the few minutes I have left with you. Everyone can check out Daniel Jeremiah's mockdraft nfl.com and of course on uh on his social handles the the trade between the dolphins and the broncos dj um i want to start with the dolphins first because they they get malik willis and they have basically said a chan is untouchable according to our soon to be uh Disney colleague Adam Schefter. So the concept of let's bring Malik Willis in and then kind of send away his best receiver option.

37:08Rich Eisen:A lot of folks are thinking that maybe Willis made a mistake signing with the Dolphins. I'm wondering what your thoughts on the Dolphins side of things, roster building as well as supporting the new kid that they got in his first real shot at starting in the NFL. DJ? Well, it's going to make life tough on them. When you look where they are, it was, I was a little bit confused on the timeline here because the stuff that I had heard and talking to a bunch of people before free agency around the league, and you talk to agents who have a good feel of what free agency looks like and what teams are in on what players and everything I got was pretty consistent on Miami, which was they're pointing towards 27.

37:44They're going to take some, some salary medicine this year. And, and they're going to be more of a 27 approach than a 26 approach. Well, then the news comes down that they signed Malik Willis. And I was like, well, geez, that must have been some faulty information because they went and got the top quarterback out there on the market. And then you look at the numbers and they weren't, it wasn't a massive investment there. So, you know, they've got Malik Willis to line up and play quarterback for him. And if he shines and can elevate a limited supporting cast, then maybe that gives him more of a future there.

38:16But that to me, with what they've done feels less like a full push and commitment in Malik Willis, more so like, hey, Malik Willis is going to be our starting quarterback for this year and maybe the year after. But this kind of pulls back a little bit from me of saying, oh, there's full commitment and full belief in him and they're trying to win around him. This still feels like that original information, which was this is a team that's still, you know, all systems go on 27.

38:41Rich Eisen:So do you think he would take a mulligan on signing with them or did they tell him? Like, how does it work? Yeah, I don't know that. I don't know if they told him like, hey, it's going to be lean and rough here. We're just going to have to overcome some obstacles here in the first year, but we're going to be going for it here in 27. We'll see what they do with these resources they have in this draft. They're going to have to play a lot of young players. I don't know what he was privy to in terms of the plan and the information there, but right now, they've got the draft coming, Rich, so let's get them through the draft and see what other pieces they can accumulate here.

39:15but right now I would say his degree of difficulty has jumped way up and then in terms of Denver you

39:20Rich Eisen:talk about the number of teams that are looking at 2027 Jets being one obviously Browns might be another one you're talking about the Dolphins just mentioned their moves look like 2027 type things which would certainly help the teams who want to win in 2026 and the Broncos are one of those right like Knicks is going to be maybe in his last year of his rookie deal this year and let's go go to work and get Jalen Waddle and the heck with the first and third round draft picks this year right yeah they're they're in a roster position where it was going to be hard for that pick for the 30th pick to come in and have a big time impact not that there aren't good players there but this is a roster remember last year's first round pick Jaday Barron didn't start for this team they're in a they're in a really good spot to the point where I was doing these mock drafts and you'd get there and go okay I could see them wanting a big time tight end well there's not going to be one there.

40:12Sadiq's gone. So you don't really have that opportunity there. And then the running back position was an opportunity, but they brought back J.K. Dobbins. They've got Harvey. They're in pretty good shape across the board. So to find somebody that's going to have a big impact, I think it made sense for them to make this move because Waddle will come in. It won't even be just him making plays. He's going to stretch everything out. He's going to open things up underneath for everybody else. He's going to change the box counts. This is a team that has an excellent offensive line and they can really, you know, run the ball, move people in the run game up front.

40:46And now you're going to be able to pull an extra guy out of the box because of what he can do down the field. So I thought, you know, it was a smart move for them knowing this is not the time to pick somebody that helps us a year from now, two years from now. They want to go right now and Waddle helps them more than to pick at 30 Wood. No doubt.

41:04Rich Eisen:Okay, DJ, thanks for the time, brother. Look for more of my calls and texts. Really appreciate it. I appreciate it. Voluntary homework, by the way. I mean, you don't. That was incredible. Don't get used to that. No, no, no. But next time it happens, just, you know, hit me up. We'll support you. Post-production. Let's get some post-production. We can do that. We'll do that. Look for the reel later on in our socials. You set the bar high, but that's what you do. That's what you do. Just try a little extra. Daniel Jeremiah, everybody, right here on The Rich Eisen Show. Here he goes off to do more shows, more content, more drafts, more mocks, more homework that he wasn't asked to do, which is very appreciated.

41:39Rich Eisen:Didn't ask at all. All right, we'll take a break. 844-204-RICH. See how Mike just rolls in the break music. That's the mic we know. Our ratings are all going up. The Rich Eisen Show, the podcast.

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42:33Pre-K pickup, back home to meal prep. Time for my fire station shift. One more Celsius, got to keep the lights on. When the three alarm hits, I'm ready. Celsius. Live. Fit. Go. Grab a cold, refreshing Celsius at your local retailer or locate now at Celsius.com.

42:54Rich Eisen:Back here on the radio outfits that carry us. This is ESPN Radio Affiliate as well as Sirius XM Channel 80. congratulations to everybody who got it done with the WNBA and the board of governors and everybody to make a deal. What a dreadful time this would have been to argue and squabble and tell all the fans that are going to get a full dose of the awesomeness of women's basketball in the March Madness tournament that we're going to be talking about at length with Andrea Carter in our number three. what a dreadful time it would have been to take all of that momentum and flush it down the collective bargaining squabbling toilet again i'm i'm so um you know i grew up two member my parents were members of the teachers union in new york um so i come from a union household and uh i also come from a household that um um went through a lockout with the nfl yeah Oh, my God.

44:03Rich Eisen:People getting furloughed. You remember all that? It's crazy. I got furloughed. Absolutely terrible. Terrible, terrible. So the fact that it gets avoided and then the players of the WNBA who deserve a bump, who deserve a raise, getting a significant one. The salary cap that was one and a half million bucks is now seven. Okay. So you can do the math. that's about 4x, 3 and change X right there. The super max that was just a bit shy of a quarter of a million is now starting at 1.4. The average salary that was$120 ,000 is now$600 ,000. I mean, that's almost 6x, that's 5x. I shouldn't do math off the top of my head.

44:55Rich Eisen:I'm more verbal. That's why I do this show. That's why we're not doing algorithms on the Rich Eisen show very much. I wouldn't be. None of us would be. Minimum salary that was sixty six thousand. Wow. Is going to surpass three hundred thousand minimum salary. Minimum salary. Love it. So now this means a lot of these women won't have to go overseas and play just as well. We're assuming again, you know, the revenues for the women's game is not obviously NBA revenues. Clearly, clearly. So I'm assuming that what you just said is right. Hopefully. I don't know. I'm not that deep of an expert on it.

45:38Rich Eisen:But the bottom line is a raise was more than deserved and deserving. And if they feel that they are happy with the revenue share apparently is 20 percent. If they're happy with these numbers and they think they can play basketball with these numbers and be prosperous with these numbers, then I'm fired up about it. If the union feels they've come away with a good deal and that the players feel that they are respected and that they are compensated to their happiness, then let's go. The bottom line is this is a golden goose right now. And the eggs are only becoming more valuable with each passing year.

46:27Rich Eisen:And so for them to not take the momentum of the last several years on the heels of a Women's March Madness tournament, that certainly if the top two seeds of each region advance, there's going to be some outstanding elite eight games, leading to final four games and a final game that this entire country is going to be watching. and to flush that over dollars and cents, I'm glad it's not happening. The Rich Eisen Show Podcast. From 30 for 30 Podcasts.

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