Latest / Jeff Legwold ESPN Broncos Reports / Jeff Legwold joins Moser, Lombardi and Kane 1/18/24

Transcript

Jeff Legwold joins Moser, Lombardi and Kane 1/18/24 · Jeff Legwold ESPN Broncos Reports

• 0:00
  Well, let's go out to the Ramas Law hotline car accident you need Raumas
• 0:03
  Law medical doctor and at turning Ramas Law dot com. Jeff lakewalldespn dot com
• 0:08
  joins us, Jeff, what is your how will you deal with the weather
• 0:12
  in Detroit? Question of your career? Which one is yours? Well?
• 0:17
  You know, actually it was this year. How about that? I asked
• 0:21
  Frank Clark's status on a day he practiced fully, So yeah, that was
• 0:25
  my Uh I waltz right into that. Yeah, good, Yeah, but
• 0:31
  I don't have any you know, how the weather's going to be in a
• 0:33
  dome type question? Well you know how it works, though, Leggy.
• 0:36
  This time of year, in the playoffs, all these local stations let their
• 0:39
  news people enter the chat right, and the newspeople don't necessarily know everything about
• 0:43
  the respective sports. So you see it every year. Yeah, you know.
• 0:47
  I was once, way back in my newspaper days. I was once
• 0:50
  thrown out of a news meeting because they were going on and on about election
• 0:55
  night, how they're going to buy pizza and make this huge thing in the
• 0:59
  news room and all. And I said, you know what we call election
• 1:00
  night and sports? And they said, what I said, Friday, and
• 1:04
  then it's so true. You're so true. They make news operations, make
• 1:11
  such a big deal like of election nights, and we're like, yeah,
• 1:14
  every high school Friday in any small market in the world. Here, it's
• 1:18
  the same damn thing. You're hustling and bustlings made over the phone, the
• 1:25
  regional wrestling made over the phone on a Friday. Then come talk to me
• 1:29
  about the city council election. There you go. Uh anyway, Jeff,
• 1:33
  Frank Clark. I asked Sean Payton the status of Frank Clark, and he
• 1:36
  looked at me and he was like, you know, we practiced the whole
• 1:38
  day. So I was like, oh, thank you for all the things
• 1:41
  that have taken place here over the last a couple of weeks. We got
• 1:42
  the press conferences from George Peyton and Sean Payton, and we still don't really
• 1:49
  know the clear idea of what their off season is going to look like.
• 1:52
  But if you had to guess right now, just from what you've heard so
• 1:56
  far, what do you think the plan is heading into the off season A
• 2:00
  little pain, frankly, I mean salary cat pain. I think they're planning
• 2:05
  for it, and I think they're they're trying to put the smiley face sticker
• 2:09
  on it as much as they can. They keep saying, oh, we've
• 2:13
  got a plan no matter what we do, but there are certain things they're
• 2:16
  not going to be able to escape. So, you know, I think
• 2:19
  it was a very big admission that sort of flew under the radar, that
• 2:23
  they admitted right up front we're not going to be looking at top tier free
• 2:28
  agents. I mean they said that out loud. So that tells you they're
• 2:34
  bracing for a little pain because in a normal year, this ownership group could
• 2:39
  do whatever it wants in free agency and get whoever they want in free agency.
• 2:45
  And to admit that out loud tells you already they admitted it in January.
• 2:53
  That tells you they're bracing for what will be a difficult off season.
• 3:00
  Yeah, and they knew that going into it. What, you know,
• 3:01
  what the decision, if they're gonna make that decision, what was going to
• 3:05
  be the effect of that? Jeff, did you get a chance to listen
• 3:07
  to the Sean McVay discussion about Pooka Nicole before the draft? Did you hear
• 3:14
  that audio or see any transcript of it? Yeah, I I've seen a
• 3:19
  little of it. And I've talked to many scouts about you know, Pooker
• 3:23
  that was he was sort of like Penix in this draft. Not to the
• 3:27
  degree of Penix, but he was a medical. Pooker was a medical and
• 3:32
  a lot of people had sort of the fourth, fifth, sixth round grades
• 3:37
  on him. McVeigh though, he knew what he wanted and he knew what
• 3:39
  he saw, and he said, we I don't give a rats rip,
• 3:43
  We're taking this guy. I want this guy. This guy is going to
• 3:46
  be great, trust me on this, you know, talking all his personnel
• 3:50
  guys. And he was right. I mean, Pooquainnicoua was unbelievably good and
• 3:54
  it might have been a bit of a gamble when you talk about the medical
• 3:57
  situation. So don't the Broncos have to do this same kind of thing.
• 4:00
  Don't they have to get a little bit lucky or have some serious foresight to
• 4:03
  help out the skill positions here, Jeff, When you can't go buy anything
• 4:08
  and you've got to draft it and develop it, well, they don't have
• 4:11
  many picks, mos. I mean, that's the other crimp in this I
• 4:14
  would also ask you if Puka Nakula was here, do you think he would
• 4:18
  have played that many snaps, and I say, no, he also has
• 4:23
  He also has Stafford delivering him the football like that I did. But how
• 4:28
  many snaps did Marvin Mims play? I mean, was he not one of
• 4:30
  the three best receivers on the team. Yes, But Sean McVay have to
• 4:36
  that's that's gonna be the at this point. But they're gonna have to be.
• 4:41
  That's that's gonna be the at this point. But they're gonna have to
• 4:45
  be. That's that's gonna be the toughest choice for Sean Payton and this coaching
• 4:48
  staff because your only way out of this difficulty is to get younger and play
• 4:56
  younger, and he has not done that very often in the past. You
• 4:59
  are so right. I mean, first of all, to have the conviction
• 5:01
  to draft certain players then go get them is something that McVeigh has shown.
• 5:05
  But then they won a Super Bowl recently, so they can afford to say
• 5:11
  screw it, just play the young guys. We were building anyway, and
• 5:14
  what do you know, those young guys took you to the playoffs. The
• 5:16
  approach in Denver was far different. The approach was we got to fix this
• 5:19
  now because it's been going on too long, and you saw the difference in
• 5:24
  the way they handled young players here. They don't give them the leash that
• 5:28
  McVeigh. Did you see that changing? I mean, I don't know how
• 5:30
  does that change next year? It has to or they're they're gonna be playing
• 5:35
  a lot of middle of the road better than players because that's all they can
• 5:39
  afford, and their choices are gonna be to play younger players or stick with
• 5:46
  these these middle of the road some of these middle of the road guys.
• 5:50
  You know, it's I keep telling the story and I don't know if people
• 5:56
  are really understanding. There were four teams they year that went into the season
• 6:01
  with sixty million or more dead money. Four three of them did well because
• 6:10
  they were three of the youngest teams in the NFL. Green Bay was the
• 6:13
  youngest, the Rams were the second youngest, and the Buccaneers were the eighth
• 6:18
  youngest. The fourth team was miserable, the Cardinals, because they were the
• 6:26
  twentiest youngest. The Broncos were the twenty fourth youngest team this year. They
• 6:31
  are not set up. They're not set up for the decision they made,
• 6:35
  which is why I've been critical of it. I'm not critical of the idea
• 6:40
  of releasing a quarterback you may not be a fan of. I'm critical of
• 6:45
  doing it when you're not prepared to do it. And they are not prepared
• 6:49
  to do this, and I don't care how many smiley face stickers they put
• 6:54
  on it. Going young is the only solution. And they only have six
• 6:59
  draft picked and only two of them are in the first two days of the
• 7:03
  draft. Leggie on that subject last year, it was a lot about and
• 7:09
  by the way, all conversations with Lagwell brought to you at Betsave Colorado,
• 7:12
  the exclusive club for passionate gamers and betters across the state, last year was
• 7:15
  about is this a Russell problem or is this a Hacket problem? And this
• 7:20
  year, the question I'm asking now is how much of it was a Russell
• 7:25
  problem and how much of it was surrounding talent? Because me and Vick and
• 7:29
  Moje talked about this last couple of days. If you watched that Sunday night
• 7:31
  game between the Lines and the Rams, and you saw Cooper Cup and Poka
• 7:35
  Nakua and Karen Williams and Jamier Gibbs and Saint Brown and Laporta and all these
• 7:40
  different guys. The Broncos have none of those like, none of those weapons
• 7:43
  at all. And so now you brought up Tampa Bay. If I put
• 7:46
  Russell on Tampa Bay, are they still division winners? Are they still winning
• 7:50
  a playoff game? Do they still look the same because they have Mike Evans
• 7:55
  and Chris Godwin some talent on offense? Well, I would add, And
• 8:00
  I've asked the Broncos this. I've asked people with the Broncos face to face.
• 8:07
  Uh, can the Broncos honestly say, in the two years Russell Wilson
• 8:11
  was here, did they do everything possible to make Russell succeed? I would
• 8:18
  argue no. I think they've had two coaches. The only guy who fit
• 8:26
  Russell into what they were doing was Jerry frickin' Rosberg. Look what Russell did
• 8:31
  the last two games of the year last year. He's the only guy who
• 8:35
  said, Hey, Russell can do these five things. He doesn't like these
• 8:41
  five things, let's not do the other five, let's do the five he
• 8:46
  likes. Well, look how it looked. It's very Why why is that
• 8:50
  such a point of contention, then, Jeff? Why why is it like
• 8:54
  pulling teeth? Then? Because the NFL sometimes is the n e L,
• 8:58
  the National Ego League. Everybody wants to do it their way and have it
• 9:03
  looked there. I would argue, and people can argue, Look, I
• 9:05
  know a lot of folks just want Russ go on and they don't care about
• 9:09
  any of it. I get that that's fine, But I would argue,
• 9:13
  or I would ask did the Broncos really do with Russell Wilson what they said
• 9:18
  they would do? I mean, I heard Sean Payton say I don't like
• 9:24
  to sing karaoke if I don't know the words to the song. And yet
• 9:28
  I think he handed them the song and said you sing it this way.
• 9:33
  When did it go sideways? Because haven't spoken. Even back at the Super
• 9:39
  Bowl last year, Sean Payton seemed enthusiastic about resuscitating Russell Wilson's career. He
• 9:45
  seemed to really want to. I want to get into this and help him
• 9:48
  so he can help himself this and that. When did it go bad?
• 9:52
  Was it the losing streak? Was it a particular game? Was it training
• 9:54
  camp? Was it the first time he saw him? When did you notice
• 9:58
  that disconnect? I'm not sure they ever for whatever reason, I'm not sure
• 10:05
  it was ever really connected, I guess. I think in OTAs in mini
• 10:11
  camp, I saw kind of you know, it was heading toward good progress.
• 10:16
  I thought from what I was seeing, you know, how they were
• 10:20
  lining up, what they were working on. It looked like to me,
• 10:24
  hey, they're going to make some progress here. But I think a lot
• 10:28
  of it is sometimes like when you you try to change a guy's throwing motion
• 10:33
  and it works okay in practice and it's fine, and then he gets in
• 10:37
  a game in the stressful situations and all the changes go out the window and
• 10:41
  he goes back to what he was doing. I think that's kind of how
• 10:46
  the season went, and when they started one in five, I think it
• 10:48
  just exacerbated it. Yeah, I think there was a tell to Jeff and
• 10:54
  just how he addressed certain topics after games, like, you know, after
• 10:58
  the Raid game, we gotta we gotta be better in the past. Yes,
• 11:03
  yes, yeah, yeah, we can't have that fumble our communication.
• 11:09
  We have to be quicker with the play call. You plint it out the
• 11:11
  last game, the last game they keep when he said the offensive line needs
• 11:15
  to protect better, he never said that. I'm trying to make Jeff after
• 11:18
  the Raider game, after the Raider game. He pinpointed Peyton did the offensive
• 11:22
  line and upfront, and how we didn't protect he never he never did ever.
• 11:28
  It was the same. It was the same problem all year, you
• 11:33
  know, And I you know, just little things. Look, you know,
• 11:35
  part of this job that I do is little things. Uh. You
• 11:39
  know he called Stidham staty a nickname. Uh, you know, colloquial.
• 11:45
  Uh. He never does that with with Russell, And I don't know,
• 11:50
  And it's it's all dime store psychology. I get it. But I would
• 11:54
  argue, for two years, the only guy who really tried to fit Russell
• 12:00
  Wilson into an offense is Jerry Rosberg in a two week span. That's what
• 12:07
  I would argue. I just gotta let you go. Does chalk walk this
• 12:11
  weekend? Is that what it is? I mean, favorites all gonna just
• 12:13
  walk the way to the title games. Well, they're the they're the better
• 12:18
  teams, you know. I think the guy with the most pressure on him
• 12:22
  this week is is Lamar. I love that team, and I think he
• 12:26
  is a spectacular player, and but you know, people have been riding him
• 12:33
  about his playoff performances and all of that, so he's got a little pressure
• 12:37
  on him. But the two that the Niners and the Ravens are the best
• 12:41
  teams and if they flex and do it right, they're going on through.
• 12:45
  How many one seeds make the Super Bowl zero one or two? Well,
• 12:48
  we never almost We almost never see the two one, So it's hard.
• 12:52
  It's hard to say that. But they are the two best teams and if
• 12:56
  that was the Super Bowl, I think it would be a pretty damn good
• 12:58
  one. That is Jeff Legwald ESPN dot com. He joined us every week.
• 13:01
  Thank you, Leggy. Thanks Jeff Legwald. Brought to you by bets
• 13:07
  Safe Colorado, the exclusive club pro passionate gamers and matters across the state.
• 13:11
  What a picture say said see you, Leggy said, see you Leggy,
• 13:16
  like his Mike was when we returned. Can we talk about the Shiloh and
• 13:26
  Shadoor Sanders doing Louis Vaton fashion modeling as opposed to being at the first team
• 13:31
  meeting and is that hypocritical of Dion Sanders or not. We have modeled before God