Good Fits? Harbaugh, Stefanski, Hafley, and Saleh Land Head Coaching Gigs

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1:07Welcome to the Ringer NFL Show. I'm your host, Shiel Kapadia. Today we are talking new coaching hires. John Harbaugh with the Giants. Kevin Stefanski with the Falcons. Robert Sala to the Tennessee Titans and Jeff Halfley to the Miami Dolphins. Did these franchises get it right? What are some of the details that have emerged? What are we keeping our eye on in the weeks, months, and seasons ahead as those guys take over? We're going to talk to my friend Billy Gill from The Ringer. Break it all down. Let's take a break. We come back. We talk to Billy. The Ringer NFL Show is presented by FanDuel. FanDuel's got it all.

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2:31All right, we are back here on the Ringer NFL show with Billy Gill. We are looking at the coaches that have been hired. Did these franchises get it right? What's interesting? What do we have our eyes on? And Billy, let's start with the New York football Giants. They had their press conference with John Harbaugh on Tuesday. Giants fans are over the moon. They're very excited. Now, the thing that most interests me, there's a couple of things, but the first thing here is sort of the power dynamic. You know me, I like the politics of an NFL building. And it sounds like from all the reporting, a lot of this was in the Athletic from Ian O 'Connor that John Harbaugh, as recently as the weekend was like, I'm not signing on the dotted line unless I get full power and I report to the owner, not Joe Shane.

3:19And they're going back and forth on it. And finally, Giants ownership says, yeah, we can do that. So that's what they were asked about all day today. And Joe Shane's like, I just want it says on a piece of paper. No big deal. And John Harbaugh's like, oh, you guys, that's so overblown. not a big deal. What are you thinking about this power dynamic there with John Harbaugh with the Giants?

3:39Sheil Kapadia:I think it was awkward and reading it was kind of like a roller coaster of emotions and adventure, right? Because you read and it's like, okay, so Chris Mara, who's the younger brother of John is the one that kind of was initially behind this. He went and he met John at his house in Baltimore and that was the initial meeting. And then John went out there according to reporting and he's like, you know what? I'm going to, I'm going to, I love my F-150. I'm going to drive my F-150 over to New York. And I just want to be alone with my football thoughts and the 190 mile drive. Right. And they're like, no, you're going to come on a private change.

4:10Sheil Kapadia:Like, okay, you know what? That's a better idea. I like my F-150, but I like a private jet better. Cause that'll get me there in like five minutes. So he did that. And then waiting for him on the plane was Joe Shane, the aforementioned Joe Shane, and they hit it off. Then they had a meal in this private wine cellar, which I'm sure we're going to get to with a special menu and this whole, you know, situation and the Giants had set up. And then they left and it seemed like things were great and everyone was in love with each other and they were ready to sign on the dotted line and texts were going back and forth with reporters.

4:38Sheil Kapadia:How did it go? He said it went great or went well or whatever he said. And then nothing happened for a couple of days. And then they texted him again. It's like, what's going on there? And then this is my favorite note from the article. He just sent - I think it's going to be my favorite note too. I can't wait to hear what this is. A shrugging emoji. Like what's going on? He sent a shrugging emoji. Like, I don't know what's going on. And then it becomes a thing where this guy that he was on a private plane with and he hit it off with for, you know, however long the flight was an hour or whatever, who he's then had dinner with kind of like, yeah, I like this guy, but also I'm not going to answer to this guy.

5:08Sheil Kapadia:So the only thing that's keeping me from signing and becoming your coach when I want this to happen and you want this to happen is the GM here. Who's kind of in the way who again, lovely man. I just don't really want to deal with him professionally. So they eventually moved him out of the way. He got what he wanted. And now they're going to have a dynamic where you have a GM who he doesn't have to report to. And then they were even making notes in the article about like, well, if now there's like kind of a disagreement on who we're drafting, it seems like it's going to be John's call. So like, there's a little bit of an awkwardness there, but I mean, they got it done.

5:36Yeah. It's settled. It sounds like, again, this is Ian O 'Connor wrote a long piece about this on the athletic where a lot of those details come from. And yeah, it sounds like if there is a tie break and I know they're saying collaborative, we're going to work together, but it's not, you know, there are always are going to be disagreements where the coach wants one guy, the GM wants the other guy, and someone has to break the tire. Someone has to have the final say. And it sounds like John Harbaugh has the final say here. So yeah, when he was asked, that was the most interesting part to me too, where they asked John Harbaugh on the weekend, like, where are we?

6:09Is this getting done? I wouldn't peg John Harbaugh as an emoji guy that when he did shrug emoji, that surprised me a little bit. He's 63 years old. Now, not to say there's a certain age where you can't use emojis, but were you surprised by that? Or you think a lot of NFL coaches use the shrug emoji?

6:25Sheil Kapadia:There were a lot of things that were very specific, very detailed, particularly about the dinner. But the shrug emoji was the thing that I was like, I didn't I didn't really see that one happening that way. Yeah, I don't know that Joe Shane a year from now, I don't know that his key card is going to work to get into the Giants facility. I think he has a chance to get like really good at golf this next year because I just don't think there may not be a lot for Joe Shane to do. Again, he seemed, you know, John Harbaugh's like, oh, he's a nice guy. John Harbaugh has good outwardly social skills. I think he's still got some of that Jim Harbaugh in him, but he hides it a little bit better where he seems like a more friendly guy.

7:02But yes, by all the reporting, it's kind of like, I don't know if Joe Shane's going to be around or have a lot to do with this organization.

7:09Sheil Kapadia:What did you make of the situation where they were talking about how much of a role Jack played in this whole thing, John's dad, where they basically decided we want John to go to one of the original franchises. We don't want him to go to like all of these other teams out there. So he was basically dead set on like, I want him to go to the Giants. And John was like, I'm going to go to the Giants. And then you were reading in the article where it seemed like it was a done deal. But just in case it wasn't a done deal, they had canceled all of the other means. Just in case they're still having conversations with the Titans.

7:37Sheil Kapadia:and you know what? He had a hundred million and he was getting 20 million a year, but like I could have gotten him 6-1-25 if I really wanted to. But yes, anytime there's anything with the Giants, it's like the Giants Mystique, one of the great franchises. And yeah, you know, his dad told him all and John's like, what else do I have to think about? It's the New York Giants. Well, you did have to, you know, you did keep the Titans in your back pocket there just to make sure if you didn't get exactly what you wanted. So I always think the Giants Mystique stuff is so funny because the last 10 years, do you know how many teams have won fewer games than the New York Giants, Billy?

8:12Sheil Kapadia:Is it just the Jets, maybe? It's just the Jets. Yeah, of course. There was a time, sure, the Giants' mystique. It's been a decade where the Giants' mystique hasn't mattered that much here. Now, this dinner, I mean, I eat this stuff up. The details of the dinner that John Harbaugh had, this is from The Athletic, this is from Connor Orr of SI. They had all the details that they wooed John Harbaugh. at this dinner at a Mediterranean restaurant called Elia in East Rutherford, New Jersey. And I first thought, this is crazy. I've never heard NFL people eating anywhere except for a steakhouse in my time covering the league, following the league.

8:50It's always a steakhouse. This is all they eat. But then I found out that they actually do have steak here. Now, there were some interesting details in the reporting, Billy. One of them is that they bring every prospective coach here dating back to Pat Shermer in 2018 and just a few days before, they dined Mike McCarthy there. If you're John Harbaugh, how you feeling about that, Billy?

9:15Sheil Kapadia:I didn't like that. I didn't like that. This restaurant seems to be part of the giants, right? The wives have their annual things there. They used to have, this was like a war room for Parcells back in the day in this wine cellar underneath the building. So they have this long history with this restaurant. they speak with the owner the owner came in and for this meeting they had a completely different menu set up for him where it was things that no one else could really order which by the way here's another thing a little red flag with this shane that we need to be worried about i think i know what it's gonna be cut onto this so they basically said okay we're gonna bring in we're gonna source in this fish and this meat and this chicken and john's gonna decide what he wants and who's gonna order first i don't know is it gonna be john mayor is it gonna be john harbaugh who's gonna who's gonna go first they had a whole thing it's like okay john harbaugh you order first you're the man of the hours how they you know they told him and he ordered the fish and there's this fish that they don't normally have there and it's cooked a special way and all this stuff right so then john mara's like you know what i'm gonna have what john harbaugh is having and then like some of the other people follow lean like okay we're gonna have what john harbaugh is having this is the manny hour we're gonna do this we're gonna do that and then they go to joe shane like what are you gonna have joe and probably you know expecting he'll follow soon like i'm gonna have what everybody else is having.

10:27Sheil Kapadia:We're in this together. We're big, happy giants family. We're all eating the same meal. He's like, I'm going to take the ribeye. And it's like, Joe, what are we doing here? Like there's a new menu just for tonight. There's these three items. Pick one of these three things and you're going off menu. And then other people are like, yeah, you know what? I'm going to take the ribeye too. And I wonder if that's when John Harbaugh was like, you know what? We had this nice plane ride together, but it seems like Joe Shane's going to kind of do whatever he wants and not kind of follow suit here with what's going on.

10:55Sheil Kapadia:It was weird. I read that. That's 100 % when the power struggle started. Because then after that, when they're having all the negotiations, they said, oh, Joe Shane just recused himself from the last 48 hours of negotiations. Yeah, that's because Harbaugh said that steak eating, you know, hooligan, I'm not taking orders from him. He'll do whatever he wants. I'm trying to build a culture here where we're all on the same team and he's off in the corner ordering a steak. Get him out of here. Yeah, I think Joe Shane recused himself from the negotiations this way John Harbaugh recused himself from being the Ravens coach, I think.

11:30Sheil Kapadia:You know what I mean? Like someone's like, how about sit this one out a little bit? You're not going to mess this up for us. Yeah. Giants fans are happy. You should be happy. This worked out. Well, you know, it doesn't guarantee a Super Bowl, but he gives you your best chance since Tom Coughlin to get back to being a relevant football team. It's been a long time there. Speaking of which, we go to Atlanta. Next coaching hire, Billy, Kevin Stefanski, the Atlanta Falcons. new head coach. Now, what fascinated me the most with this is the Falcons hired two search firms. I don't know if you remember this.

12:02When they fired Raheem Morris and Terry Fontenot, they said, they put out this press release. We're hiring two search firms, ZRG Partners and the Sportsology Group. And they're going to advise us on who to hire for GM and who to hire as coach. And I don't know what they paid those firms, but those firms somehow got them to land on Matt Ryan, very outside the box idea has nothing to do the fact that he played quarterback for them for 14 seasons, won an MVP, got them to the Super Bowl, was kind of the last relevant stretch of Atlanta Falcons football. Apparently that's what the search firm told him to do.

12:39And then they told him, they said, search far and wide for a head coach. Kevin Stefanski is the guy here for your head coach. So I want to give a bravo to ZRG Partners and the Sportsology Group, because this is a great, You know, you're familiar with CTC, right? Cut the check, cash them checks. I mean, this is one of the great grifts in all of sports that Arthur Blank paid both of you, not just one. And the tremendous advice and insight that you gave led them to Matt Ryan and Kevin Stefanski. Those are certainly not two things they could have just got from listening to a bunch of NFL podcasts.

13:15Sheil Kapadia:Well, and Matt Ryan also has no experience in this position whatsoever. So I think that his job is like president of football or something like that. Like it's some ridiculous title, but he has zero front office experience. So consulting firm, thank you for telling us the name of our former quarterback who's beloved, who's going to come in here. But also, how much did you actually research? Because he's been on TV the past couple of years and he's never run a team before. But like, thank you, man. Sheel, I got to tell you, consulting seems like the dream job. Like if you should do that, we should open up a consulting firm.

13:45Sheil Kapadia:I'm trying to figure out how you get there. Right. And exactly what I would be qualified and consult. I mean, you've described me as a man of media. So maybe a man of media consulting type situation. But the good thing about consulting that I've seen and dealing with like consultants over the years at various companies is consultants are paid handsomely for coming in and basically saying, these are your problems, which usually you know what the problems are, but these are your problems. And here's how maybe you should fix it. And I don't really care if you fix it or don't because you're going to pay me either way.

14:17Sheil Kapadia:So you could follow these suggestions. You don't have to follow the suggestions. You're really on your own. Now, please pay me for me just telling you what the problems are, which you might have already known. And also, the solution is your former quarterback. Like, crazy. But also the dream, if you could get it, right? The dream. You give a little advice. It doesn't matter if the advice is good or bad. It doesn't matter if they follow it or not. It doesn't matter if they follow it and then it fails. You're off. You're consulting someone else. I want to consult. We'll work on that consulting. Now, there was a food angle to this one as well that I couldn't help but notice.

14:49Did you see the text from Albert Breer on this, Billy?

14:53Sheil Kapadia:I did see this. I was trying to figure out timeline-wise because it seems like the Falcons had decided who they wanted and they brought in the person that they wanted and then they wined and dined the person that they wanted, which is Kevin Stefanski. But the details of exactly how the meal went, Sheil, were incredible. Like, incredible situation. So they had Kevin Stefanski come over. He comes to Arthur Blank's house. Arthur Blank apparently set up this meal. He had like the meat set up and he had potatoes and stuff like that. Like he had in his mind exactly what he wanted to do. Arthur Blank, who's 83 years old, by the way, he said, you know what, this is, which probably if we're going to be honest, it's probably Arthur Blank's favorite meal.

15:32Sheil Kapadia:And he's like, you know what, let's have this meal. This is going to be great for Stefanski, which tells me like he liked this. So they had this all set up. Arthur Blank then stands up and he says, I'm cooking tonight. And he decided to cook all of the meat and have this barbecue on his own. And he's cooking everybody's meal. and then at the end of the meal, they're like, hey, you want this job? Here you go. And they brought him for 90 minutes. Arthur Blank, the 83-year-old, cooked him dinner and then gave him a job. Like, this was a crazy story. The line that got me, again, this is from Albert Breer, says Blank had planned a steak and potato bar and surprised everyone by cooking the ribeyes himself.

16:09Now, Billy, you know I'm a vegetarian. So I read that and I think, all right, they're trying to paint Arthur Blank. Like, sure, he's worth billions of dollars, but this is a man who he'll cook a ribeye. He's a normal guy, just like you and me. How do I view that? Is that like normal guy behavior? Let me throw a couple of ribeyes on the grill, you know, just a couple of men eating some steaks. I don't need someone to cook this for me. I'm a regular guy like you, Kevin Stefanski. Is that how I'm supposed to read that? Because that was a very interesting detail.

16:37Sheil Kapadia:I was trying to figure out like if Arthur Blank puts on the apron, like the kiss the chef apron or one of those things. Yeah, like he has something like that and then he's doing it or if like there's someone like overseeing it and he probably asked like, oh, how do you take your meat? And then he's there and he's like flipping it over because if you're Kevin Stefanski, this is probably the weirdest job interview you've ever been on, right? So you're at a job interview and now all of a sudden the person who's in position to hire you or not is cooking you a meal. You now need to eat the meat however it comes out.

17:04Sheil Kapadia:Like if you say like, oh, I like it medium rare, I like it medium, whatever. If that thing comes out well done, like you need to eat that because you need to get this job, right? So Arthur's there cooking and I wonder if there's anyone overseeing it. I wonder if people like this meal. Let's take a break. We come back. We get Billy's thoughts. He is a Dolphins fan. We get his thoughts on Jeff Halfley and then very exciting hire for a number of reasons, Robert Sala. This episode is brought to you by TaxAct. Like an expert coach, TaxAct offers step-by-step guidance and guaranteed accuracy when filing taxes.

17:36Get tips along the way, add expert assist to talk to tax experts and let our experts do your taxes for you with expert full service. Tax Act helps you find the deductions and credits you deserve so you can get them over with. Visit taxact.com to learn more. Conditions apply. See taxact.com for details. To the Titans. All right, we are back here on the Ringer NFL show. All right, Billy, your team has a new coach. Now, I didn't notice it like a glow over you today that you were just over the moon and that we got it right. We nailed it. This is going to be the guy that leads us back to the promised land.

18:12Jeff Halfley, the Packers defensive coordinator, is your new head coach. How are you feeling? You're speaking for all Dolphins fans right now.

18:21Sheil Kapadia:I don't know how I'm feeling. I'm not feeling excited, right? So I guess that is telling me how I'm feeling. It's a weird one, right? Because on the surface, you look at the situation, you say, okay, the Dolphins go out and they hire someone who used to be with the Packers. They just hired their GM. Their GM was with the Packers. Their GM must have just called his friend and be like, hey, you want a job? Here you go. oh, here's a head coaching job, right? But if you listen to reports out there, I was listening to Diana Rossini talk about it. It wasn't the case. Apparently, Jeff Halfley was very impressive on his Zoom interview, which is difficult to do, and then was also very impressive when they spoke to him in person.

18:56Sheil Kapadia:They said, this is someone who can kind of command a room, command a team. This is someone that's going to be respected, which the Dolphins seemingly had problems with towards the end of the McDaniel era, where it seemed as though he may or may not have lost respect of some of the players and wasn't really, I guess, like the disciplinarian i guess kind of wanted everyone to be an adult but that's not always the case so jeff halfley i guess is the guy that's going to come in and be the disciplinarian and get things back in order also if you saw monday night football a couple weeks ago back in december this is the dolphins also hired a consultant a consultant who i don't think had any previous history consulting officially in any capacity he was he's living the dream yeah he got see he got this dream done and that's Troy Aikman who was hired as a consultant for the Dolphins and I'm still not exactly sure what the connection there was because Troy Aikman has no connection to the Dolphins in any on-field capacity.

19:48Sheil Kapadia:I don't know if he has some business ventures with Stephen Ross but Stephen Ross seems to trust Troy Aikman for some reason and Troy Aikman was talking up Jeff Halfley on Monday Night Football not too long ago. So now you wonder, okay, did Troy just say like, hey, here's this guy that I like, you should hire him and then they ask the former GM or former player personnel person from the Packers. Like, what do you think, John Eric? And he's like, oh, you know what? Yeah, let's hire that guy. I don't know exactly how it worked, but it seemed like this was someone that they got pretty early on. Now, he was not fired from Boston College where he had a 22 and 26 career record, which is not great.

20:23Sheil Kapadia:The reason that he left is because he fell out of love with the way that you had to coach with college. Like he didn't like the aspects of having to deal with the NIL and having to deal with all of the off the field stuff, which is fine if you leave and you go become a defensive coordinator. But now that you're the head coach of a team, you once again have to deal with some of these annoying things. I don't know how much I love this hire. It's not proven. He's also not, we saw last year and we've seen the past couple of years, like this trend of let's hire the like 30 year old, like up and comer boy genius, right?

21:01Sheil Kapadia:Where this hiring cycle, we've gone away from that. But so far, there's been three former coaches who have been hired to take over teams. He's the first one that's getting his first crack at it. And he's not old. I mean, he's 46, but he's also not like the young, up-and-coming, 38-year-old, revolutionary coach that we're going to see, kind of, which was what McDaniel was, right? So it's an interesting hire, and I just, I don't know. I'm not very excited about it so far. I think what happens is teams, when one type of coach doesn't work, they go the opposite way. Like this happens, I feel like with every NFL organization.