The Bill Simmons Podcast
The Vikings Get Rammed, Dallas’s Next Coach, and Bad NFL Owner Habits With Cousin Sal and Peter Schrager
Tue, 14 Jan 2025
The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Cousin Sal to discuss the Rams dominating the Vikings and what kind of impact this game will have on Sam Darnold's future. They then talk about Sean McVay's strong coaching résumé (2:54) before guessing the line for Rams-Eagles, and reacting to the Cowboys "parting ways" with coach Mike McCarthy (18:53). Then, Bill talks with Peter Schrager about an early start to the NFL coaching carousel, the best and worst open head coach positions, and more (35:15) Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Cousin Sal and Peter Schrager Producers: Kyle Crichton and Steve Ceruti The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What happened in the Rams vs. Vikings game?
That's it. We can only talk about, uh, the Johnsons and whoever else for so long. Now we've got Amy.
Old bridge white guys. We're getting boring. We needed a female.
Now we got white women.
Um, yeah, I, I, I also am not a Vrabel apologist in that you look at the record down the stretch those last two years and a lot of people who are Titans fans have reached out to me because I've been beating the drum for Vrabel also saying how outrageous it is. And they're like, they didn't win and everyone in the building was miserable under him at the end.
So you take that too and you're like, all right, well, I'm not there every day. So... Look, he did his year in purgatory. He did his year with Cleveland, wisely got his contract to end the week before regular season ended, which was actually a brilliant move because he can interview in person.
Whereas the rest of these guys, even if you miss the playoffs, you cannot interview in person for a head coaching job if you are employed by a team.
Yeah, that is smart.
Did he do that intentionally? I'm going to give him credit.
I'm going to give him credit. He's very good with rules in the games. If he played this one right, because Bill, it was brilliant.
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Chapter 2: How will Sam Darnold's future be impacted?
Chapter 3: What does Sean McVay's coaching résumé look like?
Chapter 4: What are the implications of the Cowboys parting ways with Mike McCarthy?
He had a whole body of evidence for the whole season where it looked like for whatever reason he was this year's late bloomer. Star QB, and he had just come off that huge win over the Packers when he has one of the best games of his career. They have the awesome NFL films video in the locker room after, right? When they're all waiting, Darnold comes in and his teammates mob him. They pick him up.
They show Kevin O'Connell almost like near tears watching it. Great speeches.
Wow, that seems like it was just, now that you brought that up, that really seems like it was not long ago. That's crazy. Well, because it wasn't.
It was two weeks ago. And it just seemed like, man, this is such a great story. The late bloomer Sam Darnold. And then he absolutely sucked in the Detroit game. But I was willing to chalk it out to, hey, it's a bad game. This team's 14-3. They have a great track record. Detroit was fired up. They were home. But they couldn't block the Rams.
And the part that doesn't make sense to me, I was a little worried about their protection heading into the game just because of what it looked like against the Lions. But the Rams don't have a good defense. The Rams defense was 26th. on DVOA for defense. They were the seventh worst defense in the league. It's not like this was, you know, the 2000 Ravens. And they looked like the 2000 Ravens.
So it was just a complete collapse.
Yeah, this was supposed to be a rebuilding year, at least for the Rams defense. You're right. And then you get Jared Verse and Kobe Turner plays out of his mind the second year and Kobe Durant tonight. Anyone named Kobe. All the Kobes. All the Kobes. And it makes you think, was Aaron Donald ever good? Big legacy hit for him. Should he go to the Hall of Fame now? Aaron Donald. Sam Darnold, maybe.
The guy's hemorrhaging money every time he drops back to pass. I know. Could he have opted out of the playoff game? Not just his contract money, our money, because we had them on teasers, the Vikings and everything. But I guess that's what we get, I guess. I don't know. But as far as signing him again, we have to say no now, right? If you're the Vikings. Both.
We talked about, yesterday we were talking about QBs you'd rather have than Herbert. And we were going down the list, and I said to you, what about Sam Darnold? And you paused, which was my reaction as well. And you were like, let's wait to see what happens tomorrow. And of course, what happened was the worst possible game for him.
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Chapter 5: What’s happening in the NFL coaching carousel?
And he comes in, he's playing basketball with the coaches and, you know, he's great with the media and maybe that'll work. But that it's not like for the Bears, that doesn't make sense. Yeah. And again, he's a culture guy.
So like he's got the energy of a 40 year old or 50 year old. So like he'll run through. But I'm just saying this year, that pool of like leader of men, CEO, like, Unless you're talking to Mike Tomlin and John Harbaugh, and I'm trying to think of, you know, Andy Reid's not going. Those are the guys because they're CEOs and they run a team and they once were coordinators.
Tomlin, of course, on the defensive side.
So you're more on my side now with the, you want the coach to be more of a CEO. I'm not saying Ben Johnson can't do it. But I think over and over again, it's hard to, you know, this is something, you know, Lombardi's talk about this on the podcast all the time, that being, running a unit versus running a team People don't realize what a jump that is.
And you actually have to be really interested in, hey, what's going on with the special teams? Why aren't we good at this with the defense? Hey, I've noticed when we're in nickel, this, this, and this is wrong. You can't just like be holding your play sheet. This is why McVay, who I think was a hot shot play caller, but he's not an offensive guy. Like he's a, I coached the whole team guy.
He's a big picture guy. He's, he's personnel. He's everything.
And here is your devil's advocate to that argument. So when Jeff Fisher got fired, they interviewed everybody. They had really liked a few people. I remember they really liked Matt Patricia. They liked Doug Marone. The Rams were in the market for a new coach and they had a lot of guys with a lot more experience. McVay was 30.
And Stan Krohn keeps talking with Les Snead and Kevin Demoff, their president. And he's like, I just don't know. He's young. And the argument that was made in the room by Kevin, Les, and then eventually Stan got on board was, okay, so he's young now and we miss on him this year. And then next year he's hired by someone else. and he's 31, and he's doing it for somebody else.
Mike Tomlin, when he was interviewing, he was a defensive backs coach from the Minnesota Vikings, comes in, meets with them. Everyone thought that job was going to be Bruce Arians, or at the time, Russ Grimm, I believe, was the other one who was interviewing, that it was going to be one of those guys. They hired Tomlin. You didn't know those guys were going to be leaders of men.
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