- 7 weeks ago
Andrew Callahan joined Fred Toucher, Wallach, and Hardy to react to the Patriots’ roster moves. He explained Jabrill Peppers’ surprising release, why Kyle Dugger stayed despite trade talks, and raised concerns about Christian Gonzalez’s slow hamstring recovery. The group also debated a potential Micah Parsons trade, with Callahan saying depth is a bigger issue than adding stars.
Images courtesy of USA TODAY NETWORK
Images courtesy of USA TODAY NETWORK
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00:00So, what did you, any surprises, Mr. Callahan, from these final cuts?
00:06Jabril Peppers on Friday.
00:09And those are two separate things.
00:11When they cut Jabril Peppers Tuesday, I'm going to be surprised.
00:13You do it three days later after you seemingly have your 53-man finalized.
00:19That's another separate surprise with the timing.
00:22It makes it all the more curious.
00:23What happened in those three days that they didn't know before?
00:25It's a great question because I checked in on this and got kind of a, you know, an unclear answer, basically.
00:35Like, hey, it was a lot of things.
00:36Basically, what Rabel said at the podium yesterday.
00:39And I texted a couple of executives and asked from three different teams.
00:42Like, hey, was he available?
00:43Did you hear about him via trade?
00:44Because I figured you'd just be able to flip Jabril Peppers for a six-round pick, maybe a seventh, whatever.
00:48He said, no, he didn't really hear anything.
00:50And Mike Reese said he heard from one team that did hear from them.
00:52But one of those same executives goes, something had to have happened or was happening.
00:57And thanks to people like Mike Giardt and Phil Perry had it, too, that there was no off-field incident.
01:02But to me, the one thing I'd land on is they're really cognizant year one of Rabel's message getting through to everybody.
01:10And that is not just the rookies who are going to listen because they have to, but the new veterans.
01:14We've seen totally new leadership.
01:15If Peppers wasn't totally on board, given his role had just diminished, this might be, you're not good enough for us to keep around and try to make you happy.
01:23Why don't we let you go play and play somewhere else, which might have been what he wanted.
01:28Okay.
01:28And so, you know, Duggar is still on the team.
01:34Is that surprising to you?
01:36No.
01:36I know it was surprising to the team and to Duggar's camp Tuesday when the team makes a decision in the last 20 minutes before the deadline that he was going to end up staying there.
01:47Because the last two weeks, they talked with multiple teams.
01:50They got closer with one.
01:51But the issue was how much money the Patriots wanted to eat and didn't want to eat.
01:55And that's what the other team was asking for.
01:56But because of all of the discussions and some of the reporting I had, both sides were like, yeah, he'll be off.
02:01We'll split.
02:02It'll be fine.
02:02It didn't happen.
02:03So him staying, though, because the Patriots didn't want to eat $10 million for nothing and not have a player who at least can be on the scout team, which is what he was yesterday at practice, it doesn't totally surprise me.
02:14But they didn't expect to land there last Tuesday.
02:16Okay.
02:17Do you think you could be traded?
02:19Yeah.
02:20The other thing I heard after that had been finalized was this is not a guarantee.
02:24Like, don't expect Kyle Duggar to have this, you know, sharpie roster spot.
02:27And he might even, this is pure speculation on my part, be a healthy scratch on some of these Sundays.
02:33You know what I mean?
02:34Well, that sounds like it's trending in that direction.
02:36It sounds, if they have him on the scout team, it sounds like that's certainly a possibility.
02:41But he's not the defensive back to worry about.
02:43The defensive back to worry about is Christian Gonzalez, who I thought for sure would be back by now.
02:48I mean, you saw it happen with Justin Jefferson in Minnesota.
02:51They sat him down for a month to make sure the hamstring was healthy.
02:54He was back at practice last week.
02:56I figured it was the same thing.
02:57It isn't.
02:58Me too.
02:59And my thing is, I've not been worrying about this because I'm just not going to worry about guys who are injured when there's a game more than two weeks away.
03:05Today, there are five days left until that game Sunday.
03:08He's not practiced in 36 days.
03:11You're talking about more than five weeks.
03:13And hamstrings are notoriously tricky.
03:15You talk to any trainer or anyone in the athletic training field, like, they can get very finicky as of how far you've recovered and how you're able to test that.
03:23Mike Vrabel didn't tell me that he had a setback when I asked him that directly, but he said, well, it hasn't gone.
03:30And then he stopped and changed the thought, which to me says this is either taking longer or he did have a setback.
03:35And I have no reason to believe right now, more speculation on my part, that he'll play Sunday.
03:40Really?
03:41It's been more than five weeks.
03:43Yeah.
03:43Okay, and so if he doesn't play Sunday with injuries like this, how long does that generally last?
03:52Do you have any kind of perceived timetable on it?
03:55No insight there.
03:56And I don't know if they do either.
03:58Because the other part about my confidence of, there are two things.
04:02We would see him walking around practice every single day.
04:05With Mike Vrabel, as we saw for stretches with Bill Belichick, if you were really hurt, media never saw you.
04:10They didn't want to let you know that someone had a wrap on their knee or a sleeve on their leg or whatever it might be.
04:15Christian Gonzalez is walking around in a beanie and a hoodie and sweatpants at every practice.
04:20I'm like, okay, he's fine.
04:21He looks fine.
04:22The other part is I just would have shelved him anyway.
04:24He's your best player.
04:25So the fact that now Mike Vrabel is like, we can't even put him out for a walkthrough, tells me that they're either going with more caution than they expected.
04:33Or again, he had some kind of setback.
04:35So there's no timetable for me.
04:37Okay.
04:38Anyway, just because it's on the top of everyone's mind and it's been all anyone's been talking about, the Micah Parsons trade, the two first-round picks, the defensive lineman for Micah Parsons.
04:50The deal is made.
04:51He's very highly paid.
04:53Highest paid non-quarterback, I believe, in the NFL right now.
04:56Um, you're going to hear the fans of every team say this, uh, you know, it should the Patriots, you know, he's young, but it was two first-round picks.
05:07Should the Patriots have invested in a player like Micah Parsons?
05:11I wouldn't have.
05:12And I, I, it's the easiest thing in the world to sit here and be like, the Patriots should have traded for a top five player in the league.
05:18How else do you get them?
05:20Blah, blah, blah.
05:20Yeah, it's likely they probably don't get a player like Micah Parsons with either of those first-round picks.
05:25But their issues are not just the lack of star power, it's the lack of depth behind them.
05:31And that's been because of the draft.
05:32Like, Fred, I think, honestly, if the Patriots were allowed, and this somehow worked in the NFL, to keep just the players they really wanted, instead of filling out a 53-man roster, that number would have been in, like, the low 40s.
05:44So, if there, if Mike Rabel, who's taking a long-term view on this, as he should, because if you're going to sustain winning, you need to get it right draft after draft after draft, you give up your biggest prize assets.
05:54It's a team that might pick in the top 15 for a guy who's unbelievable right now, but is also known to be a little bit of a locker room issue, according to his own teammates in Dallas.
06:03Yeah, and then AFC GM or front office guy said that, yeah, said the same thing.
06:08He's not led by his teammates.
06:10He's a problem, but.
06:12And where do you go with that?
06:13Like, okay, now we expect the Patriots to make a wild-card run.
06:17They still can't pass protect.
06:18You still want a better receiving core.
06:20Adding Parsons doesn't solve the problems that are keeping you from making the next level going, they should contend for an AFC title or a Super Bowl.
06:28I wouldn't do it on that side of the ball, without even bringing in to question all the locker room issues and the money and all that.
06:36It's just, that's not the part of this team that concerns me.
06:40And I'm not convinced about the defense either.
06:43But I wouldn't make a big move for that player on defense.
06:49That's not what you need right now.
06:51How much better do you see Dallas' side in doing that?
06:55No.
06:56Okay.
06:56How much better does that make Green Bay?
07:01I'm picking them to go to the Super Bowl.
07:03Because of Mike Parsons.
07:04Because of Mike Parsons.
07:05Okay.
07:05I thought they were close.
07:06I picked them last year.
07:08And I have the Ravens beating them this year.
07:10But I, like, that is a guy that fundamentally changes your defense.
07:14And here's the best part.
07:15This is the stat from Bill Barnwell whenever that trade happened because I completely lost track of the days.
07:19Because when the Cowboys had him on the field over the last four years, they were the best defense in football by EPA per play.
07:29When Parsons was off the field, and this is more than 1,000 plays, they were the second worst defense in the NFL.
07:36That's one player.
07:37His pressure rate was so far ahead of everyone else, correct?
07:40Yes.
07:41He could have gone, like, 200 snaps without a pressure and still lit.
07:43However you want to slice it.
07:44Like, against true pass sets or in terms of total pressures or overall pressure rate, whatever it is.
07:49That is equivalent to the on-off splits for Nikola Jokic in Denver or Tatum here in Boston or LeBron for any number of years with the Cavs.
07:59That is not only just a below-average defense now in Dallas.
08:01It's probably an average team because they got rid of that guy.
08:03Okay, what about, and I've heard this from national guys, that outside, in football, outside of the quarterback, other players are fungible in that, like, you can, teams win while losing star players that aren't quarterbacks.
08:21Yeah, I mean, you have to reinvest those resources, right?
08:23You freed up the amount of cap space you would have committed to him otherwise.
08:26And their cap probably would have been over 50% for C. Lamb and Mike.
08:29This being said, is that, like, I'll give you an example.
08:33Like, the Lions lost Hutchinson, and they still, now look, they lost to Washington in the playoffs, but they lost Hutchinson, who's a top-20 player.
08:42Still had a great regular season.
08:43And still, you know, won far more than they lost without him.
08:48Like, it is, like, and so it's interesting that you say that Green Bay now is your pick, well, you picked them before,
08:55but this makes Green Bay this much better just because teams lose players that aren't quarterbacks and still seem to win.
09:03So, I think if you cited 10 examples, and that Lions one is a good one, you would find that all of those teams had good depth.
09:11And players that you could at least plug and play.
09:13No one's as good as Aiden Hutchinson at defensive end for the Lions, but you've got enough good guys there to replenish that,
09:20because the Lions have crushed the draft now for four or five years.
09:22This isn't a Lions, this isn't a Patriots argument.
09:25This is that Micah Parsons will make Green Bay better, but players that aren't star quarterbacks don't make teams Super Bowl teams, if that makes any sense.
09:39Like, Dallas didn't do anything with Micah Parsons.
09:43And, you know, do you invest that much in a guy that's not a quarterback?
09:49That's kind of the, that was the thinking.
09:52So, I think the piece of this is to ask why Dallas didn't do that, if that's a piece of evidence you're going to use to support that case of,
09:59okay, non-quarterbacks are not enough of a difference maker.
10:03My counter would be Micah Parsons is in such a tier of his own.
10:07Like, if that player is a non-quarterback, but he's a top five player in the league,
10:11because even Bill O'Brien was telling us two years ago before the Patriots played Dallas and got their butts kicked.
10:15That guy is by definition a difference maker.
10:17And he's a difference maker by what he does to the opposing team's quarterback.
10:21And how he's also a force multiplier for your own defense, where he's drawing the double teams.
10:26When you're a defensive coordinator and I need to get to the quarterback,
10:29and I understand he's going to take two offensive linemen, or a lineman and a running back and a tight end, out of the picture.
10:34That lets everybody else eat more and have an easier job.
10:38Well, no, I get that.
10:39So to me, all of that adds up.
10:41No, I get that you need a pass rusher in the NFL, and that pass rusher, left tackle, quarterback, and corner are the elite positions in the NFL.
10:53It's just, now look, I think Dallas should have kept them too.
10:57But it's just, giving up so much for one player, and that player hasn't won.
11:05Is there an argument to be made that, is it worth, you know, for a Green Bay team that, you know, is Jordan Love as quarterback?
11:14Is that the team that should make that move?
11:18I think Green Bay also looks at this holistically and says,
11:20Jordan Love's going to make another leap in a second year as a starter.
11:23Like, they're banking on that.
11:24And you know they are because they paid him handsomely.
11:25But within that argument you kind of laid out, I hear a little bit of an inherent contradiction.
11:31Okay, the player who's a non-quarterback hasn't won enough.
11:34So why are we going to trade for him if he doesn't drive winning?
11:37But non-quarterbacks are not worth it because they don't drive winning.
11:41So was it his fault that they lost, or was it on the quarterback?
11:43No, no, it's not Micah Parsons' fault that he lost.
11:46It's that, look, if you can draft Micah Parsons, you pay him.
11:50Like, he's a part of your team, and you pay him.
11:52Yeah.
11:52Because you drafted him, and you pay him.
11:54And that's what you do in the NFL, draft and develop.
11:57Again, I think it was a bad trade by Dallas, too.
12:00I'm just talking about the improvement of Green Bay.
12:06I'm just kind of arguing that I don't know if – because people are now – like you, but you like them anyway.
12:12But, like, people that didn't have them even winning the North are now like, oh, well, they're a Super Bowl team.
12:19And I would push back.
12:20I don't think a pass rusher is the difference between you not winning a division to all of a sudden making a Super Bowl.
12:28Like, that's not – there's a lot of good pass rushers on bad teams.
12:33So, I think that zooming out, any team that you consider like a contender has probably, what, like 5 to 10, maybe 12% championship equity.
12:42Like, your odds of winning, no matter – even if you're the highest level of contender, are not 50% or more.
12:46You're not shooting for a probable outcome.
12:49For them also, okay, what was the missing piece in Green Bay?
12:52I'd say one of the bigger missing pieces was that pass rush.
12:55Like, they've got a really good offensive line, a really good young quarterback.
12:58Their receivers are all coming up with him.
13:00You're well coached.
13:01You've got a decent secondary.
13:03Okay, Xavier McKinney, I think, was an all-pro as a safety last year.
13:05Like, it comes in a specific case of he came at a discount, just two first-round picks and an aging defensive tackle.
13:10They weren't going to pay anyway.
13:12He is the missing piece.
13:13And that has to be a specific piece, not just we're one player away, one player away who's this good and plays this position.
13:19That's how I think they looked at it.
13:20So the executives who disagree, I obviously disagree with them.
13:23Look, the Rams, I mean, that was the way that the Rams did everything is they went and got stars, and it worked.
13:28Jalen Ramsey in the Super Bowl year.
13:30Yeah, absolutely.
13:31So, I mean, it does work.
13:32It just was, whenever anything is so unanimously for something, I just want to see if there's a counterargument to it.
13:41Because I want to see if there's any kind of logic to what Dallas did, which I wouldn't have done if I was Dallas.
13:49And if you're a Patriots fan, you should see this.
13:52If you draft and develop guys, you can pay them.
13:55And we've talked about with this, Andrew, before.
13:58The gap isn't crap, and there is limits.
14:01But you can sign your own guys.
14:02Yes.
14:02You can keep your own guys.
14:03The draft, you develop, and you re-sign.
14:05That's how it works.
14:06And the thing is, if you want to keep your own guys, you can keep your own guys.
14:08Yes.
14:08Like, you can do it.
14:09Like, there's ways you can do it.
14:11You can do it.
14:13Unless you're Elliott Wolfe and all those draft picks are out the door, as well as all the people he re-signed are out the door.
14:18If you want to keep those guys.
14:19That's what I'm saying.
14:20They don't want to keep any of those guys.
14:24Oh, yeah.
14:24All right.
14:25Well, look.
14:26We have Andrew.
14:27Do you have the two stats in the one?
14:29And I told you we've got a twist this season.
14:31Oh, no.
14:31It's coming with a twist.
14:33Oh, boy.
14:34Wow.
14:34He was dead the whole time.
14:35What does this mean for my scorekeeping?
14:37Am I going to need a separate column for the twist?
14:40Yeah, you weren't here to write everything down before.
14:41The twist only works because you're scorekeeping.
14:43So, this is simple.
14:45You guys got it.
14:46But it's going to be – the standings are never more important than they are this season.
14:49I love this.
14:49All right.
14:50Love this.
14:50For all the latest from the Sports Hub, download the app at 98.5thesportshub.com.
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