 Terry Bradshaw said he would have retired before leaving the Steelers. He doesn't understand Tom Brady's decision, quote. I don't know what the hell Tom's doing, according to Terry Bradshaw. So let's bring in Luce Riddick. Lewis is Michael Don and Peter first off. I hope everything is safe for you and your family. Yeah, everything's good. Everything's good on our end. How about you guys, everything good? So far, so good. So what do you make of what Terry Bradshaw said? Do you understand why Tom left? Yeah, I do. Because, you know, he's a guy who put in 20 years at one place and decided that it was time for him to move on for whatever reason that is, which he will never come out and tell you the reasons why he felt as though he had to make a move and why he didn't think it was, you know, in his best interest to finish at the place that he started. But obviously a guy of his conviction, a guy of his accomplishments, he has a good reason for doing what he did. I mean, he's the winningest, most accomplished individual in the history of this league. So if he left a place that he's accomplished all that at, then he obviously has some pretty darn good reasons in who am I or anyone else regardless of what your level of accomplishment has been to question it. And basically we'll find out, but you know how Tom Brady is. He's not going to give you any indication about what it is. Of course, there's going to be people who say that they have sources that'll tell you that it was this, that it was that, that he was uncomfortable with this. It was his wife, it was all kinds of things. But it is what it is. He's moved on now at this point. There's no, there's no reason to really sit here and speculate about it and drag him through the mud in any way, shape or form. And even ask those questions about him if you ask me. Yeah. And, you know, Michael started it off by what Terry Bradshaw said. I just looked it up. Terry Bradshaw played a combined nine games his last two years in Pittsburgh. You know, so it's apples and oranges. Tom Brady might have had a rough year relatively speaking to the rest of his career, but this is still a guy that can go out there with the right weapons and win. And from what we know, doesn't it just seem to make sense that he's probably got a better chance of winning in Tampa than he did in 2020 when New England? Well, from where we're at right now, I mean, I guess you could say that if you were just looking at, looking at it roster for roster. Remember now, last year, still, I mean, they were in the, I mean, they're still in the playoffs and they're one of the best teams in the league. At one point during the season, you know, before they hit the tough part of their schedule, this was considered to be the odd one favorite in the AFC, depending upon whether how big of a pat in the homes in Kansas City Chief Band you were. I mean, winning for the Patriots means going to the Super Bowl and winning it. Winning it for most other people means getting double digit win. And maybe, you know, being a wildcard team if you're lucky, winning your division. So I think the Patriots are going to be that. I still think if he went back in New England, they were going to do enough to put a team around them to where they would still win relative to what everyone else considers winning. I think for Tom, though, and for the Patriots, it was, can I get back to a Super Bowl again and can I win it? And number two, and this is the unknown part, we don't know what was going on with him and how he was feeling regarding his relationships with everyone up there, whether or not he felt like he was being challenged or whether or not he felt like he was being respected. We don't know any of those kind of things because, again, he's never going to tell you that. He's never just going to come out and flat out tell you that until maybe when he's done playing. So all we can do is speculate. But I promise you this, New England's going to win. They're going to win games. They're going to win a lot of games because that's just how they do it because they have the best coach of all time and they are one of the best offensive coordinators in the league. And they just have a system and a way of doing things that it's always going to end up being double digit win. So, but again, this is a guy who has had the perfect career for 20 freaking years. He's done everything right. He's the nine Super Bowls, man, and one sixth of them. Whatever he wants to do, let him do it. He certainly has that right, Lewis. And I'm just wondering though, the present situation we're in in the world, you wonder if he's going to have time to work with his new receivers or the season just going to start abruptly and will that set him back? I mean, this is a guy, he's going to be 43. He's not buying green bananas. So in order for him to be successful, I wonder if it would have been more prudent to stay in the place that he knew. Now he's going to a place that he doesn't know with great offensive weapons, but is he going to be able to work with them and what kind of effect will that have if he's not? That's a great, great point without a doubt. And it was the number one reason why from the very get go, I said the risk is in him leaving. He's taking a huge risk. He's stepping out there on the plank now. I mean, he doesn't know Tampa's way of doing things. And you make another great point which we've talked about and I've lived through. One, he doesn't know what these guys are like down there. He doesn't know how they work and he's not going to have a chance to even be around them more than likely until maybe training camp kicks off. And that is a huge risk for someone who's been used to doing something for one way for 20 years. And then maybe he'll say, you know what, I needed a press start and that's fine. And he has the right to do that. But when you're talking about this winning football games, we know that football is so nuanced and so relationship driven and chemistry driven. He's not going to have a chance to really do all those things. So he's taking a tremendous risk. And I did believe and I agreed. I said the best chance for him to win like he's used to winning is to stay where he is. Because even if they don't go through on all season up there, Tom can teach the offense. Tom knows exactly where he parks his car every day what the trainers are like, where his locker is, how Bill's going to correct him, how Bill's going to coach him, how Josh is going to put in the offense, what they're going to run on first down, second, he knows every situation up there. He knows nothing about where he's going. So yeah, it's a tremendous risk but that then lies the intrigue because if he can get on the same page, that's Cam Brady and Chris Godwin and Mike Evans and O.J. Howard. And if they can get somebody like Jason Peters down there free agency, he's one of those free agents who wants to go down there and take less money to play with the great Tom Brady and figure out that offense online. And the defense does continue to improve and Todd Boll does continue to show that he's one of the best defensive minds in the league. Makes the NFC South intriguing as hell and it makes the NFC overall very intriguing with Tom Brady. So maybe he doesn't care if they don't win at New England level. Maybe he doesn't care if he doesn't put up the same numbers as he has at the height of his career. Maybe what he really does care about is his peace of mind, his enjoyment of the game, going out the way he wants to go out. I mean, there's so many things that maybe he cares about that we don't and that we care about that he doesn't. So that's what's so interesting about it. You mentioned the NFC South and of course it's bizarre that a Tom Brady conversation is now an NFC South conversation but that's where we are. Yeah. For years, the quarterback down there has been Cam Newton. When you think NFC South, you think Cam Newton, what is his future? Man, you know, it's another one of these things, these situations where, you know, the only thing you can really say is I don't know, only because everything's on hold and in particular how that applies to Cam is because teams can't get a look at him to assess where he was at physically and health wise. If he could go business on one right now, you could get kind of, you could really start reading the tea leaves and start speculating about what would be a good fit and who has a lot of interest and who doesn't and why they would have interest. Now, if you just look at it organically without him having visited anywhere and not knowing where he's at physically other than to look at his Instagram, I would say right now, look, I would think that the chargers would make a lot of sense. I'd love to see Cam out there with Anthony Lynn in a run centric offense that emphasizes play action with those two big jokers that they have the wide receiver out there in Keenan Allen and Mike Williams, along with Hunter Henry. And look, Austin Neckler and Justin Jackson, those guys are fabulous running backs that they obviously made a decision that we don't need Melvin Gordon. We have much more, you know, economical options here to try and build up all of them to the line. You know, that defense is great out there or it's gonna be, it'll be competitive. Cam competing with Tyrod Taylor. Yeah, I'll take Cam all day in that one out there in that offense with that coach that's gonna protect him. Who's a great people person, a great leader. You know, he's gonna try and put, he's gonna take care of Cam the way he would want to, provided that they'd have a good relationship. That sounds perfect. The other place I thought would make sense, but Matt had no history with him once Chicago, but I see why they did the thing, did what they did with Nick Boles, I'm all for. Obviously Washington made some sense before they traded for Kyle Allen because of his relationship with Ron. But you know, they can't do anything either because they don't know what his health status is. They can't get him up there to look at him and that's what's gotta be frustrating and very, very irritating for guys like him at this point. Is Stinham the next quarterback of the Patriots or could they go elsewhere? Could they get enough to trade up to go after one of the top quarterbacks in the draft? Yeah, I don't think they'll do that. I don't think they're gonna try. I don't see New England making that kind of aggressive move. I know that they like Jared. I know that they believe he at this point in his career and his development cycle is ahead of where Jimmy Garoppolo was at a comparable time. Does that mean he's ready to step in and having New England be a 12-13 win team and have people go, Tom who? No, I don't see that, but if I know anything, nobody does it better than New England as far as absolutely extracting everything they possibly can out of a player and giving them everything that they need to succeed and I know they're doing that with Jared and I know he's a tremendous, tremendous talent who just hasn't, who in college didn't have the opportunity to really show that at Baylor and Auburn. You know, are they gonna go into the season with him, Cody Kessler and Brian Hoyer? No, I think they'll add a young guy and they'll add a guy probably on the third day of the draft. And everybody goes, who? And then Josh will do his thing with him. Josh McDaniels and Bill will do his thing and next thing you know, he'll be in the preseason. He'll be looking good and people will be going, have the Patriots found another guy. And they'll just work their program the way they do. I don't think they're gonna make a big splash in the veteran market unless it's for someone who decided to take a major pay cut to come play for them which you can't rule out, but we'll see. Talking with Lewis Riddick here on the Michael K Show. So I read Seth Wickersham's story over the weekend. It was fascinating to me which leads me to a fascinating question and I wanna throw it at you. So according to Wickersham on ESPN.com, Tom wanted to play for the 49ers. That was his first choice. They said no. Did they make the right choice? Lewis trading two years of Tom for maybe eight, nine years of Garoppolo. Yeah, weighing the short game versus the long game is always, you know, that's the thing that GM and coaches have to do. And if you look at Jimmy Garoppolo's stats all year last year and you look at it through basically three quarters of the Super Bowl, Jimmy Garoppolo's on his way to be in the MVP of the Super Bowl. And then he got Pat Mahomes and he missed the manual sanders on a poster out that would have sealed the game for him, but absolutely sealed the game more than likely. And I think when you look at it in that context and you really pull back and go, okay, what do we have here in Jimmy now? And what are we gonna have for him conceivably for the next five, seven, eight years versus do we wanna bring Tom in here and not be able to have Jimmy now? What if Tom isn't the same Tom? Which is not out of the realm of possibility, okay? We're an uncharted territory with Tom Brady. We assume he's gonna look like he did last year and maybe a year before, but we don't know. When you get to this age, man, it could, the bottom of me just fall out. I've seen it happen to guys. I've seen guys like right before my, it's almost like they're in a time machine and someone's just aging them by the second. And we don't know if that could happen to Tom. So I think they're just weighing the possibilities of, do we trade off this short-term potential excitement and euphoria over Tom Brady versus a guy who for three quarters was playing like an MVP and we're on our way thinking we're gonna win the Super Bowl and then he missed a couple of throws and Pat and the Homes got hot. Did we get rid of that? I see why they did it. I see why they made the decision that they did. Do you like what the Jets have done so far in free agency? Yeah, I mean, look, they're being conservative. They're being conservative. They are trying to make some additions to the offensive line that obviously that they need to make and trying to see if they can qualify it that way. I think they're gonna wind up obviously being, people who are gonna try and move around in the draft and get themselves in position to get the players that they want there. And Joe's is gonna try and be very methodical with it. Now, the one person who I've mentioned like a couple of different times that seems to be someone who maybe have overestimated their value relative to what the league thinks about them is the Devin Clowney, right? Could the Jets use a physical freak like that who all get, I get it. He's had some injury history and then he's had production concerns as far as what people think that guys like him should be paid for, which is sex. And he hasn't always, he hasn't racked up sex like a Khalil Mack bond. No, he's not that kind of guy, but he is an explosive multi-positional hybrid player that Greg Williams could be wondering with considering you guys know how many different defensive packages Greg Williams used. He was this and I was with Greg multiple years in Washington. That's the kind of guy who could absolutely thrive under Greg's tutelage and under his coaching style. We'll see what happens. But wouldn't Clowney just take the 18 million that they're offering him in Seattle? I mean, he might price himself out. Great question, right? I mean, he sees himself as a 21, 22 per year guy. He sees himself as someone who's up there in Aaron Donald Reigns, the forest buckner range. He sees, he thinks he's that kind of guy. Look, Chris Jones in Kansas City thinks he's that kind of guy too. Why do you think he isn't signed to a long-term deal in Kansas City? And he had to be franchise. All these guys think past rushers, premium players on the edge think, hey, we're 20 mil plus guys. That's what we are. And many people would say, you're never gonna get that. But that's the interesting thing about contract negotiations. You know, it takes two to tango and it's not just teams being cheap because you never really know what players think of themselves. Well, sometimes they out themselves by not finding deals and you find out, man, they offered you what? And you didn't take it. That's where we're at with him. Now, is this free age, is the draft strong enough wide receiver wise that the jets can be quiet on that front via free agency? Yeah, yeah, it is. Although I love Robbie Anderson, I really do. I like him and I think in certain places, but I'd love to see Robbie Anderson just hop on the turnpike and go south and go down the Philly in the sun right there. Carson Wentz would be jumping for joy. But yeah, this draft is deep and it's got all different types. It's got big guys, small guys, inside guys, outside guys, guys who play inside and outside guys with tremendous ball skills. As far as 50-50 balls are concerned, guys who are great run after the catch guys. And those wide receivers all over the place. So yeah, I think it's interesting. I think you're gonna see, you're gonna see some real good players come out of this draft. And I think, you know, the old ad is that wide receivers take a long time to develop like it used to be when I was in Scouting in the mid-2000s. I don't think it's quite like that anymore because all fences have changed to adapt and adapted to look like college offenses now. And people say, well, you know why wide receivers can't get off the press? Well, have you watched press coverage in the NFL much? They don't press. They get up there and look like they are. There's about three or four guys who press. Otherwise, it's seven on seven. So wide receivers are playing faster and better and quicker than they ever have. And I mean, if you need it one, this may be the strongest draft for wide receivers in the past 20 years. All right, we have about a minute. And I wanna ask you this because we haven't figured it out. Have you figured out what the Texans did with the Andra Hopkins getting so little for it? Please. Yeah, I figured it out. When, you know, when your personal feelings get in the way of things and you have a whole lot of power and you're the coach and the GM, which means you can affect the short term and the long term of an organization and you really don't have anybody that can really check you and balance you out and make you look at things, you know, in a whole 360 degree type manner. These are the kind of decisions that you can make and everybody will just go, okay, do it. And that's really kind of situation. Bill O'Brien has crafted for himself down there. Everyone knows that it became personal between him and DeAndre. Talk to coaches, you talk to scouts, you talk to anybody who knows Bill O'Brien and they may not go on the record and say it, everyone knows him and DeAndre didn't see I'd I at all and didn't really get along at all. And sometimes when that happens, it's like, you know what, I'll take whatever seems good on the surface. I just want him out of here. That's exactly what they did and they're probably gonna be regretting it if they don't replace him with someone other than Randall Cobb and get a true number one on the outside that could give them some kind of comparable production because the Sean Watson, he's the other guy who right now, other than their fans is probably sitting there going, what the heck is going on? Right. We've been asking the question though. Okay, so O'Brien and him don't get along and Bill O'Brien says I've had enough and it becomes a personal problem. Did he still have to settle for such a bad deal? Well, you know, I mean, when the other teams get wind of the facts, you know what I mean, you know this, the league is such a small, small circle. Everybody talks, nobody can keep their mouth shut. Everybody wants to talk, whether it be to each other or to people in our profession in the media, everybody talks. So people knew he wanted him out of there. You think someone's just gonna pay an arm and a leg for him when they know that he's either gonna trade him or, you know, he's probably not gonna cut him, although I mean, if he got so bad, I guess he could, but you know he's gonna trade him. He just wants him out of there so you know you could probably get a good deal off of it as long as you dress it up and throw a couple of things in there that makes him feel good about it or he can go back to his boss and go, hey, look, I got enough warm, I just needed to get him out of here. So of course, I mean, it was almost the buyer's market in that sense, when you know that somebody that it's just a relationship that's broken and the team wants to make it move. And that's what happens when you talk too much and you talk to people and people know you're dirty laundry, you put yourself in a bad bargaining position in that kind of situation. And that's what you wind up getting. Louis, please stay safe, you and your family. We thank you for giving us a couple of minutes today. That was fun. Absolutely, thanks a lot guys, you do the same. All right, that is Louis Riddick's.