 Hey, what's up, everybody? Welcome to Tom Korn's Patriots Talk podcast. We're in Las Vegas, Nevada, getting ready for Super Bowl 58. Lviii. Lviii. Sounds right. And as we do so, we will be providing you every single day with a podcast edition. And we're going to lead it off this week by talking about trade-down scenarios. It's a topic that's near and dear to Phil and I's hearts. And I've been trying to convince people of the notion, Phil, that it's not a horrible idea to trade down in the NFL draft. I found a guy to back me up. It's Eric Eager from Sumer Sports. Eric, hit it. Hit it. If I were in charge, I'd trade down just because, you know, Jaden Daniels is phenomenal as far as a prospect, but there are some concerns, you know, pressure to sack ratio. Like sack avoidance is the number one. You look at Patrick Mahomes down year statistically. He averaged three yards fewer per attempt than Brock Purdy did this year, but he was second in the NFL in sack avoidance to Josh Allen. Josh Allen would be second in MVP voting this year. And so Jaden Daniels, he took a sack on 20% of pressures this year, 30% last year for LSU, and that's something that carries. And so when you think about the Patriots having to rebuild the offensive line, having to rebuild the receiving core, when you have a quarterback that struggles with pressure, struggles when the wide receivers aren't open, and that's going to be hard to build an offense around. We saw it in Washington with Sam Howell. That's another guy with a high pressure to sack ratio. For young quarterbacks, it's just not conducive to success. So unless they can go up and get Williams, go up and get May, I just don't think that it's a good gamble for them. And so I think moving back and, you know, you could end up with a player like Bonix. You can end up with a player like Michael Penix. Michael Penix, by the way, under 10% of his pressures as a college quarterback turned into Saps. So that's a guy with quick processing and could do that even in an offense where you're kind of building up the line or something like that. So I would prescribe a trade back because there are going to be a lot of teams in a down year offensively in the NFL that are going to be desperate for a quarterback. Not long after we had one of Eric's colleagues, former NFL general manager, Thomas Dimitrov from... Sumer Sports. Join us. Thomas took the opposite viewpoint. I want you to confirm from me the best move for the New England Patriots in the 2024 draft is trade the hell down. He's so hot on this, Thomas. He's dying for you to confirm this theory that he has that that's the best thing to do. You don't need to buy a Corvette and park it in front of a pup tent. So it's a great point and you are in a great spot, but I think there are some really interesting quarterbacks this year, right? I'm excited about them. Remember, you're talking to a guy that used to phrase Trader Thomas in Atlanta. So if I ever did come back as a general manager, I would be much more mindful of the trading down having worked in data for the last two or three years. So you talk about trading down, you talk about really smart people and understanding. The real PhD in our business is a guy like Eric Eager who you just had here. Impressive guy, right? I learned from those guys all the time, but then I have to like pull my hair out sometimes when I'm talking to these outrageously smart guys like come down a little bit and understand this is still football. We're folding in data and we're learning more and we're augmenting. As I've always said, I love that, but we're not doing PhDs in mathematics yet. We're building football teams. So if you don't like the quarterback, if you don't like Drake May and he's sitting there, if you don't like Jaden Danielsville and he's sitting there, the smart thing to do, Phil, is to get to the side of the plane, position your parachute, jump and pull the Rick Ford. Okay. So Tom, that's correct if you don't like the guy, but what if you like the guy? And you still know you have all these holes on your roster. So that's my question for you, Thomas. If you feel as though Drake May or Jaden Daniels, say those are the two quarterbacks that are potentially available to the Patriots through overall, you feel as though they have Pro Bowl upside or even all pro upside. Do you take them knowing that your roster isn't very good and it might be a rough year one for that quarterback because you don't know what's on the line, you don't know what's at receiver, or do you say it's just not our time at that position? Let's build everything else and drop the quarterback in later. Look, as much as I want to understand what you are saying because you've been around this a long time, I picked Matt Ryan. My very first pick ever was a third round overall pick and because I wanted him so much, if we did not pick Matt Ryan, I would have been in this business two years, not 13. So I have a little bit of a different perspective. If you have a guy to your point that you really like and that you know that in the next, if you're a good scouting department, a good management group, you definitely get your scouts knowing what's out there two, three and four years away. That's a big thing. If you think there's going to be a bad run, like back in the day when Atlanta didn't take a quarterback three or four years ago, that was a bad two or three years of really trying to figure out. So if you're here now with some really good quarterbacks, that's when you have to really sit down and decide, is it best to trade back, or is it best to get your guy now? And that has a lot to do. Who's going to be your new GM? I mean, that's a whole other thing, right? If you get a guy who's been a GM before and he's not as wigged out by that, maybe he doesn't do that. If you're a first time GM, it's different. Do you get wigged out by the public pressure? You're Elliott Wolfe, you're Matt Grohl, you're Gerrard Mayo. The entire planet knows you need a quarterback, but the people who go granular say, we need a lot more than that. We should stock up, we should trade down with Atlanta to eight. We should make the smart move here, get two first round picks for next year. Now we have the collateral to move up. That's the smart thing to do, but it's also going to cause a late April insurrection. How much does the outside noise and perhaps even the pressure from the owner, who I don't think is going to be over the top? But do you need a hood ornament for your franchise right now? No question there's pressure out there for that. I mean, again, you go as your quarterback goes, we know that, but what are you going to do instead? And again, you have to have the proper plan. If you don't do that and you trade back, okay, let's say you're not getting the top five, but let's say you're getting bow nicks. I don't know, whoever it might be. Whoever might be there, and then all of a sudden three games in, four games in, you're like, oh my God, is this reminiscent of, that's a tough place to be in, right? Look, I love it. If you love your guy, you got to go for him. And then you have to be very smart in how you're putting your team together. If you have the right GM, and they're not just about getting one or two players here and there, but they have a really good insight of how they're going to build their team and have the foresight to say in the next two or three years we're going to do it this way, then I think you can pick the quarterback. If you're just here and now, and you're always doing the now here and now stuff, I don't think you have a chance. And I think at that point, you'd really have to think about moving back. This is absolute sustenance for us, because it's going to be the ongoing conversation. What do you want in your quarterback? Do you want it now? Does that guy at number three satisfy it? And if not, does the guy at number two, do you trade up? Phil, to me, this is the driver of all conversation. And it can be the driver of the direction of the team through 2028. There's no doubt about it, because if you get the right guy, you're in the mix in a positive way for maybe the next decade top. If you end up hitting Allah, Matt Ryan, Allah, the Bengals model with Joe Burrow. I think that's what Dimitrov was really driving at, was even though the roster stinks, the same way the roster stunk in Cincinnati in 2020. If the right guy is there, you take the right guy because you don't know when you'll have the opportunity to get him again. I find it really interesting that that Eric, the guy that we add on for next pass, is more in line with your view. And Thomas is a little bit more in line with my view, though I did recently put together a mock draft where the Patriots traded down. And the outcome was kind of interesting, Tom, because they also traded for Justin Fields. You can get really creative with it if you decide the quarterbacks that are at the top of the draft aren't for us or they're good players. It's just, it's not the right time for us, because we're not ready for him. That's my argument, because what you've done then is you've extended the game. You now will have two first round picks. If you do it right, you're going to have two first round picks the next year. I keep using Atlanta as a perfect example. You trade down with the Falcons. You take the eighth overall pick. You still spend it on tackle, edge, receiver. And then next year, you have two firsts to dangle over whoever. Then you go and take Spencer Rattler, Flavor of the Week, because he had a good senior ball week of practice, or Bonix or Pettix in the second round. Or you don't bother with that. It do take Spencer Rattler in round four. Rattler. Great name. But to me, you've pushed it down and not put all your chips on one number. The only problem is, just to counter, the problem is if it's Joe Barrow that's sitting there for you at three, because then you have a fourth round pick and Rattler, who in all likelihood, quarterback's taking that point in the draft, don't turn out too much. And then you're waiting, and you're waiting, and you're waiting, and the roster might be pretty good. The way it was in San Francisco, Tom, for years, and they had Jimmy Garoppolo, they actually got all the way to a Super Bowl, and they still said, we don't have enough of quarterback. We better move Heaven and Earth to make sure we get the right guy. This is why this conversation is awesome, because Joe Barrow is the perfect example to segue into the next conversation that we have with Eric Eager, and Eric was actually on with Phil for the Next Pats podcast. I'm going to strongly recommend you listen to this whole thing with Phil and Eric on the Next Pats, but I wanted to sample from it, because I'm sitting over here in a media room here at the Super Bowl, and I heard this, I was like, ooh, this guy's great. And then I said, Phil, ask him about the weather. And this is what Eric Eager had to say. So I said, hey, crazy weather we're having here in Vegas, isn't it, Eric? It's radiant cold. I thought we were in the desert. It's a job the way you're supposed to do it, stop digging around. What do you think you're in Vegas? Think you see them be sales? Listen to me. This is great, because Joe Barrow is the highest-paid quarterback in the league. Joe Barrow is injured quite a bit. Joe Barrow took a monumental number of sacks in his first couple of years. Joe Barrow also succeeded because of a variety of physical skills. Jimmy Garoppolo, good quarterback, good definitive of good quarterback. He's an 80. He's a 78 to an 82, somewhere in there, but he got to a Super Bowl, but he's also two injury playing. Here's what Eric Eager had to say about finding a quarterback who can withstand weather and withstand a battering. Is anything that you have looked at pertinent when it comes to how these guys might perform in bad weather? Because the options we think the Patriots will have would be Drake May, Jane Daniels, maybe some of the second-round quarterbacks that are in the mix as well, or later first-round guys. Is anyone in that mix a bad weather quarterback? Because we know that's when the Patriots, you would think, play their most important games this December and January. Yeah, we don't have anything in measurements, but I do think one of the biggest L's the analytics community took was Josh Allen, when you looked at his college data, we were good enough at adjusting for that. The weather, you can actually tie to it, wind and all that stuff. But the traits, you look at Joe Burrow, who in my opinion is a phenomenal quarterback. I think he's always in my mind going to be a little bit of a step below Herbert Allen Mahomes because when he's injured, he's just a little worse. So when I look at quarterbacks sometimes now, I look at the physical traits matter in overcoming weather and injuries. And I think, you know, Williams has a lot of great, he's a rubbery arm, he's under six feet. I mean, he's going to come in under six feet. I think there's some things, you know, to that. I think Daniels is kind of thin, right? He kind of reminds me from a build standpoint of Jim McMahon, who was a winner, but he never played 16 games for the Bears. He never played in that, you know, he never was able to, after that Super Bowl win, start a whole season. I look at Drake May from a size perspective. You saw him on the side of that basketball game in UNC. I think size to me is the biggest thing for injuries, but also weather. And that's why Josh Allen, I know the Bills haven't won the ultimate game yet, but it's why the Bills are in it every single year and are resilient to all the perturbations in football, which is weather, which is injuries. The guy never misses a game. He never sees that big of a drop in his play. It's because he has that physical gift and that's, you know, it takes it back to the old school scouting where, you know, you do really want to have that big physical quarterback because when injuries come, inevitably, when the weather is bad, you need a guy that's going to be able to rip a ball through, you know, that tough weather and within injuries to his body. It's a fascinating answer that you give because you're right. It does marry old school football philosophy with the data. You have a wider margin for error. If you're bigger, stronger, you can work through a thumb injury or a calf injury or you can cut it through a 25 mile an hour wind. Yeah. Justin Herbert played all of the 2022 season with broken ribs and no, and you know, it was more legitimate than everybody was saying. And now granted, they were not the best team in the league, but he got them to 10 and 7 and a playoff berth playing through that because he's just more physically gifted. Now, he didn't play the greatest, but I guarantee you some of these less physically gifted quarterbacks who are accurate and all this, Joe Burrow is probably not playing as well as Herbert with the same injury because he's just simply not as big, fast and strong as Justin is. When Phil finished, he was all excited about this because he's like, wow, that's like a confluence of the two eras, the big, strong, strapped pocket quarterback and also the squirrelly guy who could move around. Well, and it's, it's philosophies coming together too, right? Because you could find the most old school football scout who would come to you. And if you asked about the quarterback position, he would say, I want him to be six foot four, I want him to be able to throw it through a brick wall and I want him to be able to stand tall in the pocket and see the entire defense. That's old school thinking, but the analytics part of it and the data would suggest, well, you also want this guy because if you're faced with adverse situations, whether it's weather related or injury related, that guy's going to have a better chance at pushing through those things because of his physical talents than someone who is a little bit more slightly built or a little bit shorter or a little bit weaker armed like Joe Barrow. I thought Eric's example was a pretty good one. He's comparing Justin Herbert and Joe Barrow. One guy is big strapping monster arm. He could play with a broken thumb and still be pretty good. Whereas the other guy might be a little bit more inhibited. So that to me is that's a point in favor of Drake May. And you're hoping that you can mold that ball of clay, that quarterbacking ball of clay that may appear to be and hope that those tools, which some of these other guys at the top of the draft don't have, allow him to overcome more and reach his potential in a way that those other players can't. I wanted to cut the initial thing that Eric said about trading down right at a conversation he had about Jaden Daniels and Jaden Daniels numbers in terms of sack avoidance and dealing with pressure and throwing while under pressure. It's really fascinating. Again, listen to the next Pats podcast because not only does he make the point on Jaden Daniels and why it's a little bit of a dice roll that you might not see because of sack avoidance and the importance of that, but also with Lamar Jackson. He makes a great point to say, look, he's going to be the MVP. He's an exquisite player. It sounds like Doris Burke. Exquisite. He's an exquisite player. That's good work. But he also is starting to slow down just a smidge physically. The plays that he made three or four years ago are not the same ones he makes now. Still brilliant player could go out and run for 1100 if he wants to, but you're going to see a diminishment of skills that you won't with a guy who can't run on the first place. We have so much more from Thomas Dementroff. We're going to get to the rest of that interview right now on whether he'd come back to New England, whether he'd be interested in that, the benefit of a football overlord with a franchise and also Bill Belichick's future. Enjoy all of this and we'll see you tomorrow with so much more from the Super Bowl. What a day! You bring up if you have the right GM. Patriots right now don't have a general manager, Thomas. I'm curious because we talk about you all the time. I don't know how closely you're following NBC Sports Boston in our coverage, but we do talk about you all the time. Would you ever have any interest in making your way back to Foxborough and being general manager of the Patriots? You know, it's interesting. I love, I mean, they're always my favorite second team. They were, even when I was in Atlanta, right? I loved the AFC. What about the irony of going there and getting your ass kicked in that Super Bowl by the team you supposedly love? That was such a bad, we don't even need to bring that up. Yeah, no. You feared they're all at his own. Yeah, we're going to blow right past that. No, I went there all my, I know. But to your point, I daydream about a lot of different things in this business now. I've been out, this is my third year. I always thought, honestly, I would be out two or three years and I truly, I would maybe do a PhD. I like to call it a PhD. It's not a PhD. Let's just call it a Masters in Data just to fold in, because I'm a football guy at the core, but to be able to fold in some extra elements I think is a really good sell point. So I have thought about, okay, what's the next step now? Three years out, would I consider places? And yet it flies by pretty fast, right? We saw that. You guys are in an interesting spot there with your GMs, though. Potential GMs, right? Because I've heard Mr. Kraft, I think, have they not talked about this being done in the spring after Mr. Kraft? So we did say something to that effect at Drubma, it was a introductory press conference where he said, we will have someone, we will appoint, who's the word he used, appoint someone to make roster decisions when the time comes. Does that mean they just say, Elliott Wolfe, you're going to retain the director of scouting title, which he has now, but you're also going to be our lead personnel person? Does it mean they hire a GM, whether it's Thomas Dimitrov or assistant GM of the Chiefs right now, Mike Borganzi or somebody else? I don't know. There's still a lot of questions about the timing of that kind of move and who it would be. Why? Is there any merit to a football overlord position? Oh, my gosh. I get me started on that because I believe there is, but here's how I understand, here's my belief in how it needs to be done. When you're talking, and I hate the word czar, whatever we call it, like overlord, I kind of, overlord is kind of kind of monster like, or is that like Boston master? What was that movie? Yeah, yeah. Not talking to anyone. But the overlord, the overlord idea, it's interesting you say that because I do believe there are organizations around here that could really benefit from some of those guys. This isn't just about us, you know, pumping the 50-something year old. Sorry. I know you're young, but I mean every once in a while, look, if you get a 50-something year old who has been a GM for 15 plus years and have a really good understanding, have been in the league a long time and they go in and they understand that they're going in to help the GM and the head coach be successful. Understand this. If you're a czar that comes in and you're making that new GM and the head coach paranoid and insecure, I don't think it works. Don't make the decisions for them. Tell them how to make the decisions. Right. And so, I would say this to a number of different owners that I have talked to, tie that contract to that guy and it's not easy from a former coach. But if you have a former personnel guy, because I do believe it needs to be a personnel man, not a former head coach, who knows about building, tie his contract to the success of that GM and head coach, meaning you're not around his back going to the owner telling that these guys don't know what the heck they're doing, throw me in this job, let me take care of all this. You really have a vested interest in making that GM and that head coach successful. Then I think you have something. You play out a big contract right at all in success. But in three years, if that head coach and GM aren't doing well, you're out the door too. That's what I believe. When you say tie the contract to, meaning you have escalators in your contract, if somebody else comes in and you're helping a GM and a head coach, hey, if they win X number of playoff games or they get to a Super Bowl, then you benefit from that as well. No question. I think he's wild about that. Then you could have, and I guess you guys are all should be at this juncture, successful enough and secure enough where you're not saying, oh, I need that escalator, especially if you're a guy in your mid to late 50s or whatever, so that you can say, look, we can definitely win if we start veteran quarterback X, Gardner Minshew here in this game and try and make a run to get ourselves to 10 wins instead of putting Daniels in there. And I'm just using, for instance, instead of putting Daniels in there now and letting them develop for the last however many games, it would be beneficial to keep going with Gardner Minshew, if you were the GM. You're saying the sage personnel guy might be able to have a longer, take a longer view relative to the younger people that are in those jobs. Hey, we can go kick the crap out of this team if we start Minshew, but we need to get the other guys some reps here. Well, and that's a big thing. And I love that thought. If you get a 42 year old who has maybe been a GM for six years and you think he's good, but he comes in and he's thinking about the next wave. I hate to say this, but a lot of those guys that have been in their mid 50s and have been around at a long time, if you look at some of the lists of former GMs who are executives who could be that position, they've kind of already made their millions, so to speak, whatever that is. They're not in there worried about their contracts as much as I want to come back in. I want to win a Super Bowl for this organization. And I want to help these guys grow. That's a cool, we're all, I will tell you, most of the people that are in my stage are like, I have this drive to truly mentor. And mentoring like that, I think could be a really good thing. Unfortunately, there haven't been a lot of owners talking about it, right? Back in the day, they used to bring in Bill Parcells or Mike Holmgren. We saw it with my buddy Dave Caldwell down in Jacksonville. They bring in a great coach. I mean, we know that with Tom Coughlin, but that guy cumbersome. Tom comes in, Dave's in there, it's just a little bit messed up. I think you pick the right people and I think it can happen. I'm wondering, Thomas, if you view the setup that they have now, let's say there's a scenario in which they keep what they have now, which is drama is a new head coach. He'll have say on personnel because he's going to be the guy playing the players. But you have Elliot Wolfe and you have Matt Groh and it's not really clear who's in charge. Can that be problematic? It can be problematic. Both of those guys are like, by the way, a lot. I like Elliot a lot and I've gotten to know Matt over the last year and a half a lot more and believe it or not, we've talked analytics as well and data and where the league is going. He's a very smart guy. I know there was something that went down there with the players. Didn't something go down? Adrian Klem, was it a former player? Did they have? No, I don't want to get into that. Adrian Klem was there as the offensive line coach, ended up having a health issue, had to take off. They're short staffed, I would say, on the coaching staff and in the front office. I think they were rankled. They were rankled. Some of the players, excuse me, some of the position coaches were rankled at the level of talent. That's what I was getting at. That wasn't a story at the end of the year here. But I think Matt and I think Elliot, yeah, I think if they're there, whatever they do, they're both personnel people who know their world well. It's tough to coexist if you had the co-CEO, that's not even what it would call it, co-GM, co-personnel thing. Triangle of authority. Tom keeps bringing up from the P. Carroll days. That's not easy. Andy was in shock and then Robert over the top. Oh, Andy too? Yeah, that's not an easy thing. So you can end up with tension. You can end up with tension in the personnel room. You can end up with tension between position coaches and personnel, because everybody has so much at stake, their anxiety rises, their reputations are attached. With Bill Belichick, the culture was a certain way, and fear was a big motivator, always, I think, among other things that he was able to tap into. We are potentially going to see a whipsaw of the culture in which it's more open, more comfortable, more accepting, more fostering, and nurturing. Silo's are going to be demolished. Walls are going to be broken down according to Gerard. How does a team guard against whipsawing so far that it causes a culture shock among the players in there, and maybe the entire organization? I watched it happen, Bill Parcells to Pete Carroll. The players acted like he was a substitute teacher. I mean, everything but the paper airplanes. How does Gerard guard against that? It's a great point. I think it's incumbent upon Gerard to make sure that he doesn't, that he's very aware of that, and that he doesn't go the opposite end of the spectrum. Look, when Mike Smith and I took over in Atlanta, he was coming off of the Bobby Petrino thing, right? And Mike is a good guy, and yet he had toughness enough about him, but he also knew he needed to be mindful of what was there before. As we know that Coach Mayo needs to understand what Bill did, and what he might need to change for sure, but to go the opposite end of the spectrum can be troublesome, because all of a sudden, if now you move away from being uber-accountable to not being as accountable, and I'm not saying that would happen, but it's the fear of that. If I'm a general manager, I'm a little concerned. I'm watching it closely to make sure that, yes, I get it, new day, and you need to be mindful about your players, and you need to interact. I mean, I think Dan Quinn is great at that. We can talk about Dan another time, too. Dan is going in there with Adam Peters, co-existing, and how important it is to make sure that Dan comes in really aggressive and upbeat, but he also has an accountable side that a lot of people think that Dan's more just a player coach. No, Dan will fight you, figuratively speaking, right? He'll call you out. Will your new head coach call you out there? Something that I don't know. I think it's important, right? I think, very quickly, I think a guy like Raheem Morris will call his players out, as pumped up and energetic as he is. I've seen him there as a deco-ordinator. He will call him out. Will draw it? Yeah. See, I think he will, one million percent, be a hard, tough, disciplined coach, but the culture of, I don't want to have, I don't want to do this X, Y, or Z, or show up late, X, Y, or Z, because I might be kicked out of the, I might be gone. I don't know if that will necessarily exist, or the looseness of a practice, or any of those things. I think the voice, too. I think it would be a different voice. I think you'll hear a lot of the same messages. In terms of hard work and accountability, it'll just be a different voice, a different tone. I want to ask you about, we're talking about the new coach. Ask you about the old coach, because you're very familiar with everything that's going down there in Atlanta, and very familiar with Arthur Blank. Haven't worked for him for a long time. Why did that not work out, Thomas? Because it seemed like it was so close. I thought it was so close. I was on my board every day, putting 90-10, 90-10, thinking it was 100, close to 100, well, not 90. I'm a data guy now, right? I can't say 100 if I'm saying 90-10. But it was, literally, I was thinking, that's going to happen. I think the two of them got along well. I think interestingly enough, I'm pretty well the only person in the country that knows both of them to the level I do. Scott, purely, of course, does. Scott, but Scott wasn't working with Arthur in the same way that I did. So I think both of those guys could work well together. One was what, Bill's 72. About to be 72. Almost 72, Arthur's 81. So there was whatever, 10-ish years, whatever it is. And I think, nine, I think the situation that they could work together, I thought was moving along well. Then I started hearing a lot in the media that there was, you probably heard it from Tom Pelisaro, maybe not, maybe I don't want to out Tom. Tom, I like Tom a lot. But there was this phrase that there was an inner cabal, this cabal happening. That's a pretty strong word, right? Yeah, it is. I actually had to look it up to see the true definition of it. Because I mean, I know what it is politically, but how is it in football and has it happened before? There was a lot of talk that inside the building that a lot of the people that were there knew that Coach Belichick was going to come in and he was going to want his people around. And look, we don't need to get into this, but I believe arguably the very best that this league has ever had does deserve the right to come in and do that. If you want that, and I do believe, and I said this publicly, that I don't think there's another head coach out there in the next three to four years that has a better shot, you guys could argue with me about this, better shot at getting that team to the Super Bowl than Bill. If you do it the way that Bill wants to do it, right? And then of course you have to have a quarterback there. That's my thought. It's unfathomable that he doesn't have a job right now, just like it's unfathomable that, I mean, Vrable doesn't have a job. And it honestly was before Dan didn't get a job, I thought these three men are not going to have a job. So anyway, I don't mean to protract here, but I just think Bill, the way that he goes into Atlanta and spends time, talks about what he wants, I mean, it was pretty public that he was going to keep Terry Fontenot, the GM who replaced me, that they were going to work together. Now the Rich McKay stuff was a little different. You saw that. All right, the president, Rich, he and Rich weren't going to necessarily function together. I'm surprised that they couldn't work together. Phil and I talked about that. You got two guys who are older. Rich McKay is kind of salt of the earth, unless it's just a facade that I notice from the outside. Yeah, I mean, Rich has been around a long time, right? And I figured the two guys of that age could find common ground, even if they didn't agree on the friggin' pass interference defensive holding rules. They could find some common ground, because Rich was doing his job with the competition committee to make the game more palatable, and Bill's trying to win games. So of course it's going to be at cross purposes at points. But it's a people business, right? Yeah. If relationships... And Bill's not one to literally look at people swimming early on, and it can be hard to make sure those work in a situation like that. And you guys saw though, after the fact, right, that was not the issue. And again, there wasn't an issue, but the idea of Terry Fontenot and Co, right, some of that group that was in there, Chris Olson, who's a cap guy, and different people that have been in there a long time, that it starts coming down to that, knowing that, you know, of course, Bill's going to put his people around, whoever that was. And then you go back to Rich, and you know, Rich after that, they moved on from Bill, they hire Raheem Morris, and then it came out in the media the very next day. Arthur said, Rich is being moved up and away, to the AMBSE, so that's Arthur's Sports and Entertainment, CEO, and he no longer is interacting with football. That's a big deal. Rich, I'm not answering for Rich, of course, because Rich, you said he's very, he's adept, and he's been around a long time, very smart man. He decided that he was going to be moved away from football. That's not easy after you think Raheem's coming in and maybe, you know, it'll go back to status quo. It's not. So to Arthur's credit, he heard the people in the city. There was a lot of people throwing back, and Rich has been there a long time, 20-something years. When you're somewhere like that, I feel like even my years at being there 13 years, there were people clapping when you leave, right? If you have a strong enough hand about you, there's always going to be people saying, it's time. Yep. Yes, so anyway. Do you think Thomas Bill will get a job next year? Because I'm guessing if Arthur was steadfast in wanting Bill, all Rich or Terry or anybody in the building who didn't necessarily agree would have to say, he went 4 and 13, his 2021 rebuild, the free agency money was poorly spent. They could not develop a first-round quarterback who seemed pretty talented. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers rebuilt Post Brady quicker than Bill did. Why do we want to hire this guy? I mean, that's the evidence against the greatest coach of all time, which he certainly is in 2025 when the next cycle comes up. I think in the end, I mean, many of us who have been in this football league for a long time, we realize, again, I'm not being overly stated here, but never has there been an opportunity to acquire arguably the best head coach in the history of this league who didn't just retire at his last organization, never have the ownership group that's in place now, or never have GMs had an opportunity to pull someone. So do you step back and you look at all the things that you need to look at and say, okay, we'll make the adjustments because we think we have a shot at winning the Super Bowl with this guy who's a tactical and in my mind, a situational mastermind. And believe me, I've been around some good coaches. None of them are of the level of Bill that way. And I think they would agree I'm not being negative towards anyone like that. This guy is special that way. So I'm just thinking, and I do know and I won't mention names, there are people out there right now who have had coaches in their building and if they could convince their owners to move on, they would do it on a heartbeat for Bill Belichick. All right, that's our guy, Thomas DeMittrock.