Latest / Scouting the League / The Stories behind "The Game" w/ author Peter King
Transcript
- Rodrik David @RightStepAdv: The business of football comes with so many stories, and Peter King has written about so, so many of them, from Jerry Glanville to Bill Walsh, Ricky Williams, Andrew Luck, Jimmy Sexton, Barry Sanders, just to name a few. Today, Neil sits down with Peter to talk his new book, The Game, along with the stories, changes, and his view of the game today. Pre-orders of the book are available. Check the show notes for that link. I pay Personally am an audiobook guy, so looking forward to hopefully coming out in that format. But before we jump in today with Peter and Neil, make sure you head over, like, subscribe, and share this podcast wherever you're listening and watching, whether it's on Apple Podcasts or that video portion on YouTube, hit those buttons, sharing, commenting, let us know what you think. I am Roderick David, here with you for a short time today. Follow me over on Twitter at right stepadv, rsafootball.com is my website. Everything that we're doing here on Scouting the League, including our report 2027 draft on Mike Matthews, wide receiver from Tennessee yesterday. Let me know any players you want to hear. Everything we put out is in response to what you as a listener want to hear. Neil Stratton is along for today. Of course, he is at Inside the League on Twitter. InsideThe League.com is his website. Make sure you check out his blog at succeedinfootball.com and get it signed up for that Friday rap. Peter King, if you're not following him already, you need to be. He is at Peter underscore King on Twitter. Quick message here on the one stop shop for every report you need over at right stepscouting.com. get your reports today at rightstepscouting.com. Looking forward to getting that done for you. For scouts and aspiring scouts, the scoutingcommunity.com is a spot for you. And if you need the insoles, it will upgrade every pair of shoes you have. BlueMaka.com is that spot. Use code Scouting20 at checkout to let them know we sent you and get a little discount on that order. As we get ready to jump in with Peter, it was as a young pro scout in January of 2018 that I had the chance to meet Peter, shake hands with him at the Green Bay vs New York Giants NFC wildcard matchup at Lambeau Field. No surprise that Peter was telling stories then in the press box as pregame workouts got started. He has seen and been a part of so many iconic things in the NFL. Neil does a fantastic job as always leading this one, so let's get to it. speaker-0: If you love football, if you follow football, you know who Peter King is. For three decades, Peter covered every football story imaginable for Sports Illustrated and wrote the Monday morning quarterback column, which was pretty much required reading. His new book is called The Game. And if you ever read his work, you're not going to want to miss this. Peter, welcome to the podcast, buddy. speaker-1: Neil, great to be on with you. Thank you. I love how you I I really love how you not only love the game, but made something happen that now when we look at it is important to so many people. So congrats to you. speaker-0: That's that is hum very humbling for you to say, Peter. I obviously I've been an admirer for a long time, buddy. All right, let's dig right in. Peter, you I mean, during your years in the game, I can't there I can't remember any stories, especially during that thirty years, that you weren't right on top of. What's the most intriguing story in the league right now? And if you are still on the beat, what would you most like to be covering? speaker-1: Boy, that's a good question. it probably isn't as interesting as it may seem to you, Neil, or maybe even to the people who will listen or watch this. But I really don't like the idea of an 18th game being added to the schedule. The reason that I don't like it is that players are already playing a lot more snaps now. than they used to. I mean, you go back fifty years and I did in the book. Basically, if you are a center in nineteen seventy three, seventy-four, seventy-five, and you played a full season, you played a 14 game season, which is what they had in those days. And now you compare it to let's say Creed Humphrey of the Kansas City Chiefs right now. you know, over a three or four year period, you're gonna play five or six hundred fewer snaps i in those days than you are today. Creed Humphrey, and naturally he plays in the playoff a lot of playoff games too. So that matters, he's a little bit of an outlier, but the fact is that Creed Humphrey is already playing four or five, six hundred more snaps than the average center would have played a half century ago. And now you want to add more? I mean, I just think I think it's insane and I think it's disingenuous of the NFL to try to expand the schedule even more. speaker-0: I think the fans would disagree with you and me, Peter, but I couldn't agree more. maybe that's one reason why we don't have a bigger following 'cause we don't really play to the fans. But i if you're if you care about the people in the business and like to think we do, then I think it's really important to take those things into consideration when they're already playing Thursdays and now Wednesdays sometimes and then and and Black Friday and all those kind of times. It's just you have to recover from this thing. It's not it's not basketball. speaker-1: Yeah. Okay. speaker-0: So you return to quoting a lot of sources you probably had not spoken to for a while, Peter. Did the rapport return instantly? And if not, you did you have to kind of restore that trust again? speaker-1: there was a bunch of people who I haven't talked to in years. I g you know, Jimmy Sexton, the agent, is mostly now a a college guy, I think. I'm right in saying that if I'm not mistaken, a college guy. And and plus the last ten or so years, I hardly ever dealt with agents. nothing I have nothing against agents, but I just didn't really deal with them. so it was really Good because I used to have a great, very inside-ish relationship with Jimmy Sex, and it was great to renew that because I was on the airplane with him in 1993, him and Sarah White and Reggie White and Harry Galbreth, who was a guard at the time, and they were on the way from Tennessee to Cleveland to start this trip where they were going to be wined and dined all over the country. in at the start of free agency. And so Jimmy Sexton loved going back and telling the real story about what happened basically 32, 33 years ago. And he was eloquent, smart, learned a lot from him that I didn't know. That was the kind of stuff, and talking to Carmen Policy, the president of the Niners in 88, I had always heard. That Bill Walsh had a very, very rough last season as the coach of the 49ers. Now they won the Super Bowl, but it was rough. And Carmen you know, confirmed that and told me a lot of stories. Stories about Bill Walsh crying in Eddie Debartolo's kitchen in California when things were really hitting rock bottom with the with the team and they're losing and they're you know, it's going bad. But those kind of things, talking to Paul Tagley about I did one of the last interviews with the former commissioner before he died in November twenty twenty five, and him talking about being concerned that there was going to be another attack on the United States after nine eleven. And he, because of work he had once done with the Defense Department, one of the things he was worried about was the prospect of a Of a nuclear device being brought into on you know into America. And he said it really wouldn't have been that hard. So anyway, those are the kind of things that I was so glad that I went back to talk to people who many of whom I hadn't talked to in years, and they were they were forthcoming, so I was pleased about it. speaker-0: the story that you tell of Mike Holmgren calling out Bill Walsh, there's really no other way to say it. When he was waffling between Steve Young and Joe Montana, I thought was remarkable and just speaker-1: Especially because Mike Holmgren at that time in nineteen eighty eight was so new in the business. He wasn't Mike Homgren who took two teams to the Super Bowl. You know, he was just a guy trying to make a career for himself with three kids, hoping that he doesn't get fired by Walsh for being bold and telling him, Hey, pick a quarterback. But that turned out to be a seminal moment in that last Bill Walsh Super Bowl season. speaker-0: No doubt about it. All right. So you you already talked about Jamie Sexton, perfect segue. Agents have become extraordinarily powerful in today's game, I would argue. And there's a lot of quid pro quo in sports writing now, Steve, Peter. DSC reporting being more transactional now than it used to be when you were running, you know, riding regularly. speaker-1: I thought you were gonna say I thought you were gonna say something else. I thought you were gonna say basically, was it as transactional then as it is today? Because I think it's pretty transactional today. look, I believe that there were some people in the journalism business who viewed it very quid pro quo-ish. I tried not to. But I was accused of you know being too close to Lee Steinberg and and all that because hey, you know, Lee Steinberg held the keys to the car w with Steve Young driving it and Ricky Williams and I d f name you know, he had he was yeah, he was Moulugeta and everybody combined, you know, back in the day. But I I I I think honestly, Neil, I and again Because I didn't deal with agents much tort in like my last ten or fifteen years. I I I think it was damn transactional back in the eighties and nineties. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. speaker-0: Let's move more into football. Okay, so you described the 49ers' intentions, and I hope I'm not mischaracterizing things, to draft Phil Sims out of Moorhead State in 1979. If that had happened, Peter, I'm gonna put you on record here, would we see him in the same light that we so see Joe Montana today? speaker-1: It's great question. I don't know. I don't. I mean, you saw, look, you saw Phil Sims early on. He got hurt a lot. I think four of the first five seasons he was in the NFL, he had some sort of injury issues. And then he became a relative Ironman until he broke his foot and Jeff Hostettler played in the Super Bowl against Buffalo after the 1990 season. But I think Sims, look at how he played in the Super Bowl against Denver after the 86 season. He was that's one of the best Super Bowls a player has ever played at any position. 22 of 25 with one drop was I mean, how do you play the best game of your life and the biggest game of your life? He did. So the moment wouldn't have been too big for him. I think he probably would have played. Nearly as well or better because I mean, Phil told me a story that when Bill Walsh came to work him out, that Walsh said to him flat out, Okay, I'm gonna tell you what's gonna happen. We are gonna draft you. The day after the draft, you are going to come to San Francisco. You're gonna spend the entire off season there. I am gonna work with you, and you are going to lead the NFL in passing. In 1979. And Sims thought that Walsh was out of his mind. Now keep in mind, Phil Sims played four years at Moorhead State and he won eight games. And, you know, he th he was he thought he knew he was going to get drafted fairly high, but he could not believe that Bill Walsh was saying that to him. But that's what Walsh said. Now, who knows what would have happened, but I think. when Kenny Anderson told me a story about Bill Walsh. Obviously, you know, when Kenny Anderson joined the Bengals in the early set early 70s, he was drafted in the third round out of Augustana College. Walsh was his sensei, and Walsh basically worked with him every day in that offseason. And Kenny Anderson was ready to play that year out of Augustana College. Mm-hmm. And and so I don't know what would and Kenny Anderson had his best years under Bill Walsh. He loved Bill Walsh. So I can't tell you what would have happened, but Sim certainly would have had a chance. speaker-0: There's a certain self-congratulatory nature to football these days, I think, because there are they they go into every nook and cranny, but when you look at a guy like Kenny Anderson out of Augustana and Phil Sims out of Moorhead State, and I and even a Dave Craig out of and I can't remember what the name of the school is that he went to that is no longer playing football. It's amazing where these quarterbacks came from that are kind of synonymous with greatness now. speaker-1: Well, you know what I find the interesting thing, I exactly what you're saying. Football is such a ridiculous crapshoot at times. The angriest and the really the most I I think almost sad and let down I have ever seen Jerry Jones. And I've been around the man a lot. Okay. Saddest I ever saw him. Is when the Cowboys missed out on drafting Paxton Lynch in 2016. So and he was convinced that they screwed up because John Elway, the great John Elway, running the Denver Broncos, made Seattle a better offer to trade up to go get Paxton Lynch. And when it was Denver that they found out they lost out to, he was disconsolate. He Jerry Jones just thought we have just made a massive, massive mistake. I mean, I he the next day, twelve, fifteen hours later, I met him in his office like noon the next day in Dallas. And I'm telling you, the Jerry Jones acted like his dog just died. I he he was he was just really unhappy. But I only tell you that story because in two thousand it was Bill Walsh. Who told the 49ers, look, we're not gonna be in business for a stationary quarterback anyway. So I know some of you here like Tom Brady. We're not taking Brady. You know, the guy we need to take is Giovanni Carmazzi from Hofstra. We'll train him. He reminds me of Ken Anderson. Small college guy, we'll get him in here, he'll work, all that. So look, Neil, the fact is, even the geniuses mess up massively. Over time. John Elway, I love Paxton Lynch. Bill Walsh, I love Gio Carmazzi. It's an inexact science, and that's all there is to it. speaker-0: As much as we'd like for it to be, it's it's very inexact. And and I and I might add, for everyone who loves stories of draft intrigue, there are a number of such stories in this book that are, again, compelling, fascinating, whatever word you want to use. Paxon Lynch is a good one, but there are a number of others, and and Peter goes into minute detail on them. Okay. Sam Weich versus Jerry Glanville or Jerry Jones versus Jimmy Johnson. More compelling story, Peter. speaker-1: Well, the more compelling story is Weich versus Glanville because everybody knows about Jimmy Jerry and everybody knows the story. I didn't spend a lot of time in the book talking about that. I've spent a little bit because I definitely wrote a chapter on the great cowboys. But the J the the Sam Weitch Jerry Glanville story, it's it's one of those things I tell people like, Look, if you weren't around in the eighties, or you weren't a fan in the eighties, or you weren't born in the eighties. You know, two of the greatest stories are, you know, how crazy Sam Weich was. And you know, he was the nutty professor. And how crazy the NFL strike year was in nineteen eighty seven when Sean Payton is plays quarterback for Mike Ditka. I mean just i it is crazy, crazy stuff. But Glanville and Weich hated each other with such a passion. And Weich, you know, one time, quite literally, ran the score up on Glanville so mercilessly that he made that he kicked an onside kick with less than a minute to go to try to run up the score more. And he scored, whatever, sixty-three points that day or sixty points, and he wanted to make it more embarrassing. And he was asked after the game if he had any regrets. And he said, Yeah, that the game wasn't five quarters long. Because he wanted to score at 90, you know, and that is some kind of hatred that people do a good job of masking today. I think that hatred exists, but everybody is so concerned with their image these days that. They don't want you to know that I detest the the Houston the Cincinnati coach detests the Houston coach and vice versa. They don't want to know, for instance, that Chuck Knowles' private nickname for Sam Weich was Harry High School because he detested some of the stuff like the no huddle that Sam was bringing to the NFL. speaker-0: The AFC Central was just rife with stories back then. I remember was it you didn't include when Sam Rice said you're we're not that the we're not in Cleveland when he took the bike thing. I think there was a time maybe I can't remember if Glamville did it to Weish or Weissh to Glanville when they had cut a linebacker in the preseason. They put him in at running back in the the later stages of a game. Those a blowout. Again, just so many stories. And and that was most of most of the fun to me is to hear those again. speaker-1: mean, look, I I don't mean to be it was so much better then, but I'm just telling you, it was more fun then. But there were less you know, honestly, Neil, I mean, there were just a few less rules. I mean, when my first year covering the NFL, Sam Weich asked me basically in these words, do you want to know who we're gonna draft? And he told me. Now, I wasn't convinced he was telling me the truth. I thought he might be set in a trap or whatever. But everybody he told me about, they drafted. Every guy. And so, you know, it was just a different world. It was like, you know, Mel Kuyper told me that, and that was Kuyper's rookie year too, nineteen eighty four. Kuyper told me that, hey, listen, the draft Well, you know, and look, and I I found out about this. I did some reporting about the Omni Park Central Hotel in New York City where the draft was that year. Attendance, one hundred and twenty-five. And it started at eight in the morning on a Tuesday morning. Boy, that's a way to get great ratings. And they stayed with the draft at ESPN for a round and a half, maybe a little bit more than that. And Mel Kuyper said, You won't believe this, but they left the draft. To show a tractor pull. So that is where we were then. That is not where we are now. speaker-0: Say the least. Okay, John Mar John Madden, do a lot of work on on John. You rode in the bus with him. That must have been really interesting. His charm to me, Peter Kim, and his colloquialisms, and I think his praise for the superstars of the game, LT, Troy Aikman, Emmett Smith, go down the line. Today's fan to me is different. I think social media has probably made modern viewers a bit more evolved. You can go go so deep into the games now, just on what you see on Twitter and Instagram or what have you. Do you think Madden's success would translate into today's broadcast? speaker-1: Yeah, because he would still have told you why things happen. Thing I don't like about broadcast today, and I don't mean that this is everybody, but sometimes analysts get so I think analysts want to be Madden, okay? And so they tell stories and they they try to yuck it up and they do all this, but sometimes You're in the middle of a big play in the game and they'll be talking about some other thing or the dinner they had with so and so or whatever. Look, most people are here to find out why, especially if you're a former player and a top analyst, you know, on TV, people are watching you to find out why you know, pick a thing. Why did Kenneth Walker just run for 77 yards? Why, you know. What happened on that play? What I and I don't even know what whoever was doing the game said at that point. But what I'm saying is that's why I think analysts have their job. but Madden was able to do both. He was able to explain why Kenneth Walker was able to run for 77 yards and also talk about the guy in the stands who you know, is there any circles, who's got his finger up his nose. I don't know, you know, a i you can do both, but keep in mind people are watching the game because they want to know about football. I think Madden always had that in him. speaker-0: Ricky Williams, Andrew Luck, Barry Sanders, all great players, all walked away in their primes. I think, especially when you would look at Luck and Sanders, I don't I think they I would I would argue that they were not fair to their teams. They left in the days, sometimes the hours before camps were starting without having imparted that their decisions to them. speaker-1: Well, Luck also Luck left. Luck left a month into training camp or three weeks into training camp. Yeah. And look, the Barry Sanders one was just weird. The day before he announced his retirement, he called the Lions PR office and he said, Hey, what's the exit off I-71 for Saginaw for our camp? So you talk about this thing coming out of left field. I mean, they were the Lions were utterly gobsmacked. By that. I think Jimmy Ursay was gobsmacked by by Andrew Luck. But look, for most of the forty-eight previous months to the day he retired, most, he woke up, I'd say all, but maybe two or three months, he woke up in pain. And he just he just couldn't do it anymore. He thought he could take it and he thought he'd get better, but he wasn't getting better. Ricky Williams, that was a weird one. Because when he left the Dolphins and went to India, quite honestly, I think he would have gotten suspended for marijuana to start that year, and he just didn't want to deal with that. Plus, he was tired of being the guy who for the Dolphins to win the game, he was gonna have to run twenty five or twenty-eight times every Sunday. And he just he didn't want to be a one man team. But I understand what you're saying, and I do think i it's a little bit unfair, but you know, the thing about Barry Sanders, he played I think nine years. That's a long time for a running back. It is. but, you know, I understand and fans I think to this day in Detroit, who even the fans who love Barry Sanders are a little disappointed that he did what he did. speaker-0: We got a minute or two left, Peter. in that minute. you discussed the failures of Spurrier, Kelly, and Saban as college successes who went bust in the NFL. They did. Everyone talks let's talk about the Herschel Walker trade and its impact on Jimmy Johnson. However, had Jimmy not gotten Troy Aikman, not had the quarterback, does he go bust as well, like those three did who didn't really ever speaker-1: I don't think he would have gone, you know, Neil, I don't think he would have gone bust. I think he would have figured out whether it be with Steve Walsh or someone else. He would have figured out a way. I'm not sure how. Jimmy was a rare bird, I think. And he was really a rare bird. But I do think because when I say he was a rare bird, he figured out against he he went against the grain because he went small and fast on defense when everybody was doing what Parcell would be doing. He went big and you know, solid on defense and not fast. And It turns out that Jimmy knew what he was doing. And so I think he would have figured a way to either make a player or build his offense around an average to above average quarterback in Steve Walsh. Now, would he have won a couple three Super Bowls? I don't know that. But Aikman was the perfect quarterback for Jimmy because Aikman didn't want the circus that Jerry you know, was interested in having. And neither did Jimmy. And Troy had an ally in Jimmy, you know, because he just wanted it all to be about football. But that's a really, really good question. I don't think he would have gone bust. I don't think he would have been Saban, y you know, and and and and dumped out after two years. But I can't swear that he would have won a couple of Super Bowls. I think that he was so determined to conquer the NFL that he would have figured a way. That's just my gut feeling, Niels. Gut feeling. speaker-0: The book is the game. speaker-1: Hey Neil, can we do one more thing? Sure. Can we do one more thing? Absolutely. Okay. And I don't mean to go over time, and if you can't do it, just tell me. But speaker-0: No, you're talking about. speaker-1: when we were talking about we were gonna what we were gonna talk about, one of the things you said as you referred to, I did a Mount Rushmore in this book. Okay. It's the 100 most important people to making the NFL the gigantic cultural monster that it is today in American society. And so you made a good point and a valid point. You don't have any scouts on your list of your top 100 most important people. And I thought a lot about that because I thought a lot about it. I thought everything. I also don't have any agents on the list. Okay. and I don't really have pure assistant coaches. You know, I don't have Monty Kiffin or Jim Johnson or I I don't I don't have any of those guys on the list. But I do want to I I would love to have a a short discussion with you about why I did what I did, not even saying that it's right. I might be wrong. But when I was doing this, I just tried to think, you know, like I don't have Anthony Munoz on the list, and he's the best tackle of all time. Well, the reason I don't have Anthony Munoz on the list is that I think the NFL would have gone, gotten just as big and was not made particularly any more monstrous because Anthony Munoz was an absolute block of granite and a great, great football player. And so that's why I mean I got a Boatload of quarterbacks on this list. I got a lot of coaches, all that stuff. But I have Ron Wolf on this list in the 50s. And Ron Wolf was probably, I would say there aren't many better scouts ever in NFL history. and obviously he became a general manager. But When when you asked me that question, I really started to think, because I respect your opinion. And I really started to think. And I started to think of some of the scouts, particularly who scouted you know, the black colleges or you know, in the sixties, who who scouted the MIAC and and and and basically the HBCUs and all that stuff back when they were really Not on anybody's radar. You know, Lloyd Wells and obviously, you know, the Steelers took great pride in looking at every prospect. And so I thought about that. And I do probably have one regret because I have some honorable mentions in there. I probably should have put one or two scouts in honorable mentions because they are a great part of NFL history. But I just don't think there is a singular other than Ron Wolf, who obviously became a GM and who is the biggest single reason why the Green Bay Packers, you know, for the last 35 years have been a formidable franchise in the NFL. but that isn't to say I'm right. It's just to say that is what I thought. I just didn't think there was one who was necessarily a singular figure. Other than, you know, as I said, Ron Wolf. Well speaker-0: Lists are by their very nature subjective, Peter. I don't think anyone's gonna hold it against you if you left a couple off. And you know, that might they probably your opinions change and that those things kind of happen. But I want to make sure we get you out here, Peter. Again, the book is the game. Five hundred plus pages of awesome stories. I've never been so happy to get COVID. I was down for the count for two days and did nothing but that's the only way I was able to get through it. Peter King, the legendary Peter King, thank you so much for joining us, buddy. speaker-1: Thank you, Neil. It was a pleasure to be on. I really appreciate you asking.