Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: All right. Dieter and Hutch. I am at Moscone center in.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: I'm also in San Francisco.
[00:00:14] Speaker A: What room of Moscone center has a bed?
[00:00:18] Speaker B: I'm. I'm at my mom's place when the dogs are vomiting. All right.
[00:00:22] Speaker A: Oh, wonderful. I got a lot of vomited takes around me right now, but we'll. We'll try to endeavor to. To smarten the place up a little bit.
All right. Pretty blunt. We're talking about Raheem Morris here today. He's in. Bit of a. Bit of a surprise. Would you qualify it as a surprise, Jake?
[00:00:41] Speaker B: I would. I wouldn't say it was a huge surprise. I mean, I think the last time we talked, I think that I thought that was the likeliest outcome. It did feel as if they were going to default to Gus Bradley because it was the safest option.
I don't know. There's, like, an element of, like, is Kyle ever actually just gonna go with Raheem Morris because he's run some different things and Gus runs what they know?
I think it's the most logical choice, obviously. I think it's the. The easiest. I think it's the most. The best combination of Kyle knowing someone, trusting someone, and just well qualified for. For the job in a number of ways. I think we can talk about his flexibility as a coach, which I think intrigues me the most, but I think it makes the most sense. And the only reason it wouldn't is, you know, if you read too much into, like, oh, he likes to run 3, 4. That won't work here, all that stuff. Even though, realistically, he's a polyglot, and he runs whatever fits the personnel he has. And when he didn't in Atlanta, he went, well, that didn't work. Let's change it.
[00:01:48] Speaker A: He seems to me, and this. This might be a term that gets people a little tricky. Feels like the safest pick to me. It felt like the Niners wanted to do the safest thing in getting Gus Bradley, but from a football standpoint, he's the safest.
He's not going to challenge the personnel that the Niners have in the same way that, like, a Jim Schwartz, who there's obviously still some chaos around him, would have done. Where it's, hey, I play a different system. A lot of the stuff is the same, but the stuff that's different needs to be very different. Whereas Raheem has done it all, has tried it all, and has been very effective. I would argue last year, I mean, Atlanta, going Into that Week 7 game was the best defense in football. Now, Jeff Ulbricht had a lot to do with that. Let's be clear. Jeff Ulbrich did a wonderful job.
But it's Raheem Morris, defensive minded head coach. He's signing off on all this. You can't pretend as if that's not his purview as well. And they were very aggressive, very aggressive last year. It ended up burning him against the Niners, but I loved that aggression from a young defense.
[00:02:50] Speaker B: Couple things. Raheem, he brought in Jimmy Lake. They tried to run three, four didn't work. He can. Lake brought in Ulbricht said, I'm going to, I'm going to hand a lot of this off to you. Let's see how it goes. And it worked extremely well. And while it faded, particularly in the run game, particularly after the Niners exposed them, which we talked a lot about leading into that week, running gap scheme stuff, they still, after having a 31 sack season and being unable to develop any pressure on the quarterback, had 57 sacks, second most in the NFL, most in franchise history. And we're an extremely disruptive defense. Even if they weren't necessarily a dominant defense, I still think they just didn't have the horses. They had a lot of weird pieces, they had a lot of cool pieces, but it was still like, I don't know. The defense is a few years away. Even after adding like Pierce and, and our guy from Georgia.
[00:03:43] Speaker A: Yeah, I like they.
I thought Ruka Roro took a step in his second year. Xavier Watts was really good for them at safety. Like there's a lot they, they got the most out of Mike Hughes. Mike Hughes, remember Mike Hughes, very physical corner out of ucf. And then they get him over there. I think he was in a lot of statistical things and it's a sample size thing, like the best corner in the NFL this past year. We know that's not truly the case, but there was a lot of statistics that said nobody was better than Mike Hughes. That tells me something.
Again, I'm in to heirs of commission. It wasn't a great defense, but they, they blitzed it like a league average rate. They had the fourth highest SAC rate. So when they blitzed, they got home, they won. That's good coordination to me. I like the fact that they were simply going to try things in Atlanta last year because as we mentioned with Gus Bradley, who would have been the safe choice from the spectrum of hey, he's in house. There's nothing that we have to do. Everyone knows him already. That's the safe choice.
[00:04:41] Speaker B: He would have been the lazy choice.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: That's another way of phrasing it for sure. Lazy choice. And he doesn't run simulated pressures. He'll run too high, but only to serve the COVID 3 scheme, it's a lot of zone. He doesn't mix up man and zone. There's not any man match in what we've seen from him in earnest. And even when they say, oh, well, that was actually a cover six play. No, it wasn't. It was poorly played cover four. So you're. You're operating on this premise of you have a young defense, and I think the last thing that you want with a young defense is someone saying, you know, let's pare it back a little bit. Let's keep things simple. You want to let the young defense eat. You want to let them go. You want to embrace their aggressiveness as young defenders and then tailor it to be better positioned.
I just don't know how anyone could have looked at Brian Flores, who for a minute seemed like a viable candidate for the 49ers. Right. Or just anybody because he was in a contract dispute with the Vikings. How anyone could look at Brian Flores's defense, which is entirely predicated on aggression, just to the wall all the time. Let's go and then go. I think Gus Bradley's a good hire. How can. How can both of those two things be true at the same time? The answer, if we're being honest here, Jake, is that people don't know what the hell they're talking about. But if you do know what you're talking about, I. I don't understand how you could hold those two opinions in the same light. And Raheem Morris is definitely not going to be Brian Flores. But what he showed me last year at Atlanta, and it's not to say that, again, they were a good team and that he didn't deserve to be fired, but there was enough flashes there with nascent and over the hill talent combined that you go, I'm interested in exploring that space a little bit.
[00:06:23] Speaker B: Yeah. I think what people forget, I think there's like a lot of talk about the 49ers want to stick with four down and want to play the system behind it.
I.
There's a lot of narratives and all that. I think the thing about Raheem is, as I wrote, he's a pragmatist. Like, I want to give people a little bit of context in case they don't know. So, like, when he left, okay, when he was with. With Atlanta, Kyle wanted him in 2017.
Dan Quinn said, no, you can't leave. I'm keeping you.
He, before he went to the Rams, he leaned on that sort of COVID 3 Foundation, Legion of Boom stuff before it went sort of the way of the dodo in terms of. Teams are still running a lot of COVID three. But like, running cover three like Gus Bradley was running it, like 50 plus percent of the time is insane. Like, it's just not a functional defense.
[00:07:15] Speaker A: There's a time and a place for cover three. There's no argument against that. But to run it as a foundational play is to just ask to be carved up.
[00:07:23] Speaker B: Just Madden, it's going. This is, let's just run cover three every play. It's easy. You know, we like, we like cover three. We'll, we'll keep everything in front of us and play fast. But Raheem, after he, he left Atlanta where he was running sort of the COVID 3 Legion of Boom foundation, blah, blah, blah, blah, he moved to three, four and five man penny fronts where he's running some tight fronts a lot thing we talked about a lot. And he's like, oh, I have Aaron Donald. I'm gonna let Aaron Donald eat up the middle and that's going to solve a lot of problems. And I have Von Miller. I'm going to maximize those guys and let everything else sort of work around it. And he didn't have Von Miller the entire time. But like when they won the super bowl, they did, and they were still. That, that was still like not prime Von Miller, but he was still cooking.
[00:08:05] Speaker A: Very important.
[00:08:08] Speaker B: Yeah. Mixed in a lot of COVID four, a lot of COVID six, a lot of like this sort of zone match, man match principles that. A lot of the stuff we're seeing in the modern NFL that Salah used when he went to Atlanta, he tried to bring that 3, 4 basis. Didn't work. It didn't work. They didn't have the personnel, they didn't have the dudes. They couldn't get home. They were getting cooked. And he said, all right, that didn't work. I'm bringing in Jeff Albrook, we're going to change it up. And listen, were they like the best defense in the NFL? Top 15 unit?
[00:08:40] Speaker A: They were.
[00:08:40] Speaker B: I would.
[00:08:40] Speaker A: They were.
[00:08:41] Speaker B: They were a top 15 unit. They were top 15 second half, largely, largely because of their run game. But they produced after being fundamentally unable to get home. And that's, that's a big win. And I think more than anything, it speaks to the fact that he adapted his scheme and Said, this isn't working. And I think pragmatism is a huge component. Him being he's still 49 is incredibly well respected. Him having a basis in the secondary and being able to talk to young secondary players, being a really effective communicator, which he did with the Rams the year after they burned it all down after winning the Super Bowl, I think is something where you go, he's going to be able to communicate with the young secondary. He's going to identify what these guys are good at, what they can't do, and he's going to be able to teach them. I think that's something that you're going to look at some. You're going to look at him as a coach and say, he's malleable. He understands what strengths and weaknesses are and he doesn't try. He's not an ideologue. He's a pragmatist. Right.
[00:09:37] Speaker A: And that's huge. Let's just even take it back a step further. Where did he come from? He came from Tampa too. Right. And so you think about in. In some ways, Kyle Shanahan has just been dating everybody to get to Raheem Morris, his soulmate.
[00:09:54] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:09:54] Speaker A: Like he really has in that. Okay, well, we lost Robert Salah. Okay. We're gonna go with d', Amico, who is, you know, extremely well respected, good looking black man. Maybe that's just the one for one there.
And. And that. That follows through. But that's still again, taking what Salah did well at the end of his first tenure.
[00:10:12] Speaker B: Right.
[00:10:13] Speaker A: And adapting it a little bit further, having the dudes first and foremost of which he has again in Houston now to where it's like I barely need to coordinate. I just need to sic the dogs on him, which is a hell of a way to get through the day.
[00:10:24] Speaker B: If you can explicitly not coordinate there.
[00:10:28] Speaker A: I need to substitute 0% and call like three plays because I got the dudes. But you know what? You got to identify the dudes, you got to coach up the dudes. You got to get everybody into that position. I'm not saying he's not doing a great job. He is.
But he's got the dudes and he had the dudes in San Francisco even as it was the tail end of kind of the first era of Niners. So then you go, okay, we lose to Miko. Ryan's here. What do I need? Oh, well, let's Tampa 2 guy. Let's go with Steve Wilkes. He's a Tampa 2 guy. I know Tampa 2 from my time with. Going back with Raheem, going back to Jon Gruden's staff, I believe in Tampa, too.
Fred Warner didn't, but that's okay.
And so there's that. They fire him. They bring in Sorenson, who's like, I don't know. I'll try cover four. Like, they even run plays.
[00:11:14] Speaker B: We've run out of time to interview anyone, and he's here.
Okay, let's try it, I guess.
[00:11:21] Speaker A: So that was a completely wasted year for everybody. And then this past year, they're like, okay, well, we're going back to Bob. And Bob, to his credit, was very dynamic early in the season. Very dynamic. You saw guys peeling off into coverage. You saw five man fronts, a lot of odd front stuff, even post play, you know, aggressive blisses from linebackers and safeties, a lot of disguise coverage, a lot of cool shit. A lot of stuff.
[00:11:48] Speaker B: And some stuff not necessarily working, but trying it.
[00:11:51] Speaker A: And so they quit doing that. They quit doing that when Fred went out because I don't think they trusted the communication. I don't think that they trusted that they could get the play out there that is a commentary on the players themselves. But simply, I don't think they trusted it anymore. You get Marquis Siegel out, Jair Brown in, I believe that had a lot to do with communication. And they just got way more simple, way more basic. And they started doing this Ben, but don't break thing, and it didn't work. Who amongst anybody who was watching was like, I like this 49ers defense in the second half of the year or even the second two thirds of the year, who was like, this is fun. I really like this. And that's what the Niners, they were.
[00:12:30] Speaker B: At bottom five defense down the last, like, six weeks until. Until they played the Eagles.
[00:12:35] Speaker A: And you could explain it via all the injuries and all this, but they were also way too basic. And they were poorly prepared for that game against the Colts. I mean, just wildly poorly prepared. Like, you and I had a bad game plan against that game against the Colts. We're not the coordinator. And it was. It was. Again, I'm not trying to kick dirt on Robert Sala's grave. It's merely to say that just taking Gus Bradley, who I'd have to imagine was part of the whole, hey, let's tone it down a little bit chorus, because that's what he's always done, would have been a disaster. It would have continued on. On a trend that wasn't looking in the 49ers favor when we Talk about Raheem. He's got the COVID two chops. He's got the COVID three chops. And this past year, and he's always done this to a degree, but especially this past year, he's got sort of the chaos defense chops that you're looking for as well. And I think he's going to look at the personnel at hand. There's obviously a lot of room to be improved on the personnel. They can go in a lot of different directions, but the idea of, oh, well, now Raheem Morris comes in. So they're going to go get a free safety or they're going to go get, you know, X, Y and Z. Good luck guessing. Good luck guessing because I think he's going to evaluate everything and it wouldn't shock me if maybe they even took a year to say, okay, what do we actually have in house? And they just go, best available player. And, you know, you probably need to bring in a defensive tackle, but that would have been the case with anybody. I think you need to bring in help on the weak side linebacker. That would have been the case with anybody. You probably need a depth corner. You definitely need more help at safety, but. Or at least bodies at safety and preferably one that costs a little bit of money. People.
[00:14:08] Speaker B: People are shouting out Jesse, Jesse Bates because he's in the Falcons and there's a trade but which was a great safety. I just have trouble. And, and maybe they do. And because there's. There's an element of, like, if you trade for them, it doesn't count in the compensatory pick formula. Like, there's a whole element of that. Right.
[00:14:24] Speaker A: They're not. They're not wrong, but that's not incorrect.
[00:14:29] Speaker B: It sucks, but that's not incorrect.
Right. It's not how they've done business. I'm not saying it's out of the question at all. It's just I, I sort of recoil when people go, big name player we're all familiar with Niners should go trade for him because he just played for this guy. It is a fit. But it's Also, he's a 29 year old. And safety is a weird position where sometimes when it goes, it goes. And yeah, when it goes, there's a little strangeness there, but, yeah, but it could. I mean, listen, it could make sense.
[00:15:00] Speaker A: That leads to a bigger point, though. This is. This is his best chance at having a Spagnolo. It really is. So the only job, to my knowledge. Correct me if I'm wrong here, Jake, that Raheem was earnestly interviewing for was. And it was Arizona. Arizona, the redheaded stepchild of the NFL, who couldn't have hired a coach because they can't compete fiscally with everybody else. So they were just taking everybody else's runoff. I'm sorry. Like, I'm sure Mike before will be fine or doing. But like, that was.
[00:15:29] Speaker B: It's gonna be rough fallen. It's gonna be rushed.
[00:15:32] Speaker A: It's a shambolic situation for them, and it's because they don't have the cash and because their quarterback situation is a total mess. And so no one wants, you know, no one wants to go there and take a shot on it and take that upswing. But they feel very, you know, to use it a sport like, they feel very championshipy as opposed to Premier League. Right. They feel very bottom of the table. And bottom of the table doesn't get first dibs on coaches, even. So there's that.
He'll get interviews moving forward.
One, because I expect him to do a good job. I'm hopeful he'll do a good job. I'd like to watch good defense, but he'll get interviews moving forward. But he's already got two shots at this, and it's hard to imagine.
[00:16:11] Speaker B: He did have an interim one, too, so. He's had two and a half.
[00:16:14] Speaker A: It's two.
[00:16:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I know. Yeah, I know.
[00:16:17] Speaker A: But. But. No, that's fair. That's fair. I do. I. It has to be mentioned. He did have another interim role, so he's had plenty of shots at this. He's clearly not a head coach. I'm sorry. Like, I don't know how you could have watched Atlanta Falcons football this past year. And, like, I feel like Raheem Morris is in real control of this game. And in fact, anytime you looked at him, he was just sort of staring in the half distance wondering what was going on. His clock management was terrible. His game management was terrible.
He's a good coach of coaches, though, and that's why he's so respected around the league. And I've been using this a lot lately because I've been thinking about the Bill Cower line. My job isn't to coach players. My job is to coach coaches. And Raheem Morris is a great coach of coaches. He has a tree of his own. There's a reason that, to my knowledge, Sean McVay had a standing offer for him to come back if Chris Shula got a head coaching job. Like, yeah.
[00:17:06] Speaker B: Which you think might. Probably. Probably happens.
[00:17:09] Speaker A: I think probably happens.
Why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you go back to there? You know the situation. Everyone knows you. They got a brand new facility coming up like it's. You want a Super bowl there as a defensive coordinator, why wouldn't you go back? It's the same thing as a Salah, except Chris Shula never got that job, which was a shock to me legitimately. So when Chris Shula doesn't get that job and Arizona just decides, yeah, whatever, we'll take a lafleur. Which one? It doesn't matter.
How cheap is he? Cool. Let's go with that. We're gonna have to pay Kyler Murray. How much money? Yeah, we're gonna go with the cheapest option.
[00:17:40] Speaker B: Right.
[00:17:41] Speaker A: That's probably his last, best shot to get a head coaching job. He'll get interviews. He'll always get interviews. But it's hard to believe that with the crop that I think is coming up in coaching a couple of guys who pulled themselves out of this process with Mike McDaniel being back in the ring next year, all this stuff, that Raheem Morris is going to be in a position to where he'll have any sort of a pick, and he's going to be making great money with the Niners, I presume. Don't know that for a fact, but I presume he'll be in a system.
[00:18:10] Speaker B: It's good. It's going to be good money. We don't know exactly how much or if it's going to match the reported 3. 6. 6 million a year for Ryan Flores, but they paid Salah ton. They're gonna pay Raheem Morris a ton.
[00:18:21] Speaker A: Yeah. So it is. It is pretty straightforward in that they've been looking for the Spagnolo, and I'll. Mia culpa, perhaps. I don't know. Maybe I. Maybe I don't feel bad about this take. Maybe I still stand by this take. I thought that Brandon Staley could have been that guy. Brandon Staley, of course. You worked with Raheem Morris back in la.
[00:18:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:41] Speaker A: Tough to know.
[00:18:41] Speaker B: It felt like. Yeah, it felt like there was this. A stain on his record and, like, sort of a.
I'm not necessarily sure they spoke the same language.
[00:18:51] Speaker A: That's totally true.
[00:18:52] Speaker B: I don't know.
Yeah. And. I don't know. There was. There was like a weirdness and the whole dynamic of, like, is he the defensive coordinator? Is he not?
I don't know. I don't know. But it didn't feel like it was as hand in glove, but. But I think. I think if they had. If he had free reign, like, I would have liked to see what that looked like.
[00:19:13] Speaker A: Me too. And I think he's doing a good job in New Orleans. I think New Orleans next year will be even better because they had to make a lot of kind of year, year to year roster moves just to get into the kind of fronts and stuff they want to do.
Which is again why I'm always more of an advocate for sort of garbage is the wrong term, but misfit for misfit trades. There's so many defensive coordinators. Everyone has their ideas of what they want to do. And you know, think about how good.
Think about how good Jones has been for Seattle. That was just a misfit for a misfit trade.
They're just like, we bring him in, he's not working there. We'll bring him in. And he's been integral to their turnaround. Second half of 2024 into 25. Seattle's defense has been the best in football and it almost directly coincides with getting Ernest Jones to play middle linebacker in a trade that no one thought much about mid season.
[00:20:02] Speaker B: I did with.
[00:20:03] Speaker A: Well, I know you did because you're a ball knower, but.
[00:20:05] Speaker B: And then somebody went, he's not good. I went anyway.
[00:20:09] Speaker A: Just you wait.
Yeah, he's not Fred Warner, but you know what he is. He's a communicator, he's a sure tackler and he's perfect for that system where he's nicely constrained.
Yeah, well, you know, that's how we're going.
Forget the pre show notes, by the way, Jake, thank you. And so it is no more Ernest Jones talk was the pre show note.
So Jake just constantly texting me, you won't believe how long this guy is.
So it is, it is something to where I think that this has a lot longer of a Runway. They have had five defensive coordinators in five years. It would stun me. It's not to say it's impossible, but it would stun me. If we got 6 and 6 just because they're so close, there's so much trust there. And I think they're going to. I think instead of what they did with Salah where they gave him sort of a blank slate more or less and just said, build this defense as you see fit, they could do the same. But I think they kind of got burned by that a little bit to where they could have used a little bit more depth and maybe, I don't know, not taking Nick Martin, 75 overall.
And apparently, you know, this Front office is a pretty good in finding dudes off the streets to fill deep gaps. So maybe there's a little bit more balance moving forward. Maybe they do the Jake Hutchinson best available player model, which is always better in theory than it is in practice because you're sitting there and you're going, I really need this. And then you're like, but this guy's really good.
We got a lot of time to talk about that. My own, My overall point is this feels like something that can be stretched out. This feels like something that permanent is never the right word, but it feels more than temporary. To be sure.
[00:21:51] Speaker B: Raheem has one bite left at the apple at best. Right. I think, truly, I think he gets one more head coaching chance and then never again. And I do think it's going to be tough. I think it would depend on an owner being cheap and having sort of familiarity with him and liking him and how people talk about him.
[00:22:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:13] Speaker B: And. But I also think after you fail twice and you don't really get close, it's tough. It's tough because he's a sharp guy and he's young enough that I think he will get another opportunity. But, like, it wouldn't shock me if it took, you know, three or four years to get there. It could also be next year. It depends on the owner, depends on the situation.
But I do think it's like he, as much as he, like, might not get another chance. Like, he almost has to be very careful about which one he chooses because if it doesn't go well, he's never, ever, ever getting another chance.
[00:22:47] Speaker A: Do you think Bob salad about which one he chose? I get the sense that Bob was just going to take whichever job he got.
[00:22:54] Speaker B: I think Bob pre scouted. I think he pre scouted for the next year. And when I kind of like Tennessee, I can go against Liam Cohen. I'm devastated to not be back with my Jags.
And I like that quarterback there. I like, I like that quarterback. And I think there's a little bit of, a little bit of angling for that job and not, not doing the wide net. And you know what? To their credit, maybe that maybe the small net works. I still think not interviewing some young minds when you have the ability to is just lazy. But the argument would be that, like, you already know the candidates you're taking seriously and maybe by interviewing other people, you piss off those candidates that you are taking seriously, which I think is a reasonable counterargument, even though I would still interview him anyway.
[00:23:43] Speaker A: My, my, my counter you're going to.
[00:23:45] Speaker B: Talk to those guys outside of, you know, in an informal setting, I still think take the chance to do those interviews.
[00:23:51] Speaker A: Yeah. And I also just love that argument of like, oh, it might. It might peeve the folks that are interviewing for the job. It's like they're interviewing for a job that you have open.
They have no say in this matter.
Like, what are you talking about? Like, if you and I are going for a job and they're like, we're talking to other candidates, what are you going to be like? Well, I mean, the real deal is right here.
Like, okay, that's a great way to not get the job. How dare you interview other people for an open job? How dare you do due diligence?
I think it would have been prudent. And I do think that they are still maybe a bit too beholden to their position coaches. And I understand. I'm all for loyalty, but there have to be some limits to it. And I guess we'll find out what those limits are in the. In the product on the field. But I'm very excited to just see what the defense is because I don't think we gave Robert Saleh enough credit going into this first year back on maybe changing stuff up. I think we just talked about him as if nothing had changed in the league or with him, mainly because the jets showed no material change at all during his tenure in charge. We just thought, hey, it's going to be the same Robert Salah that comes back is the one that left. And that was good. Like, we like that guy. That guy was doing more stuff. But Robert Sala, you know, I think adeptly and accurately saw the wave of things, understood that defenses have to be on the front foot in order to compete with just the unbelievable offensive schemes that are out there right now. And all the innovation that happens on that front, and they say we have to double it, we have to be even more innovative. And it might have a lot of risk, but the reward will be incredible because the rules are stacked against us. We have to do something big and bold and brash because if we just stand there and do the fetal position like Russ Bradley wants to do, we're dead. We're dead. The rules are made for the offense to succeed. How do we break the rules? How do we beat the rules? So I. I'm just of the mindset of. I'm very open minded now to Raheem, who has this track record of being pragmatic, who has this track record of adapting, who has this ability to self scout, I think is. Is a positive trait that a lot of guys have, but maybe no one has done as well as him. Maybe this is why he keeps getting head coaching jobs in that he, he's. He's very good at figuring didn't work and then selling how he can change it and then he has to manifest it. That's the problem. But I'm very open minded to what this can be and I'm very curious to see what kind of, what kind of power he has over the roster. I'm wondering if they pull it back a little bit from what they gave Salah.
[00:26:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I think what's intriguing is people will obviously go, well, the 49ers, you know, Raheem will have to keep it the same and sand scheme. I think Shanahan is sharp enough and I think briefly talking about Jim Schwartz, I think he was clearly open to that. I think a lot of teams were open to that. I think the reality is the Browns probably were going to be a pain in the ass to let him go and I think it was going to be really, really difficult to try and get him out of a contract that he's still under contract for.
And I think people think he wouldn't.
[00:26:53] Speaker A: Take three and yeah, I missed that one. I thought that would be the easiest part. That's, I think, the biggest thing. I think they probably, from what I can tell, and this is very rudimentary, very loose conversations. I'm not pretending as if this is in any way empirical or. But from what I can tell from just some very loose conversations around, that way it was possible.
Probable is probably not the right word, but if they really wanted it, they could have done it. But you can't miss. You can't miss. And when Raheem Morris is right there, you and you have this possibility. It's like, well, how much better is Jim Schwartz than Raheem Morris? I think he's a level better to be clear. But I agree you have to take the one in the hand as opposed to the two in the bush. You just have to if you're the Niners in this situation and it's a damn good one in the hand.
[00:27:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
Especially when it's somebody you're. You're thinking he could be here for the long haul. He speaks the same language. And that language, to be clear, like we've talked about with the, with the scheme that a lot of people run, it's not this singular just purely wide zone play action thing anymore. It's a principle of like evolving off of that every year. They all those guys around the league have taken that and they've evolved it in a similar way because they have similar mindsets and they see the same problems presented and they go, oh, my buddy did this. I'm actually going to steal that and rip that off and I'm going to take it a step further. And we have these per these, you know, players that work for us. And, you know, the rams going with 13 personnel because that's like sort of the personnel they had and when we want to go big and we're going to attack Seattle that way. So they all take sort of a similar foundation and it's how they evolve it. And I think Raheem is a guy that Shanahan doesn't look. Have to look over his shoulder at.
[00:28:34] Speaker A: Nope.
[00:28:34] Speaker B: He knows that he is has been an executive. He's been in the same spot. They can have some difficult conversations. Raheem is a guy that can call out Shanahan and say, hey, I actually don't think this is working. I think we're stale here. And maybe he will, maybe he won't, but I think it's someone Shanahan is comfortable having those conversations with, respects enough to be challenged by. And if he says, I think we need to evolve, or, hey, the wide nine that we were so obsessed with, it actually isn't working on an every snap basis. It's not that we need to get rid of it completely, but this is our as our pure foundation, as an every snap thing.
It actually doesn't work anymore because we don't have the dudes up front to hold on to it. And even if we do, we're still getting exploited and we're still getting attacked, particularly at the second level. I'm really interested to see how they build around and what sort of freedom they give Raheem in terms of roster construction.
[00:29:27] Speaker A: Yeah, the draft is going to tell us a lot. Free agency will tell us a lot, as it always does. Like, that's the most obvious statement of all time. Like, hey, the players they bring in will tell us what they want to do, but again, we come back to the modern state. I'm so GLAD you mentioned 13 personnel. What's your counter? What's your counter to 13 personnel? If you're the 49ers because you didn't have one this past year, you can't play base now. Maybe you think, hey, we're going to go get linebackers, we're going to set up to play base.
Maybe they look at what Seattle's done what what Houston's done. And they say, okay, that's how we want to play. We're going to not sub. We're going to move X, Y and Z around. We're going to bring in, you know, Jair to play big nickel and he's going to be cornerback, Sam, linebacker. There's a lot of different things that you can do with the state current, you know, the roster currently in place and then add little pieces that you think can give you a little bit more dynamicism in spots.
There's also, you know, just straight up, they got some money to spend. The cap went up more than even expected and always dangerous. And we know Jed's not the biggest fan of dropping the big bucks on players that haven't already sold the jersey for him, but it's a good opportunity to go out there and get a defensive tackle. It's a good, you know, I don't know if it's a good safety class but, but Aloha Gilman is a more viable option now than before.
Yeah, you can talk about, you know, offensive line, all this stuff. I do think that they need to spend it but like John Franklin Myers is a much more viable option today than he was yesterday.
That's about it. That's about it. Honestly, Logan hall maybe?
[00:31:07] Speaker B: No, because John Franklin Myers is the guy I went where it's like that's a sort of mid to high tier vet who can play like sort of anywhere, like in that sort of 4i range, if that's how you want to take it.
[00:31:18] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:31:19] Speaker B: And can do a lot of different things. And so where I'm looking at it is like they have pretty much three key free agents in Juwan Jennings, Spencer Burford and Gross Matos who can probably get above a 5 million per year range where you might net like a 4th or a 5th round draft pick out of it. And I think they're going to be pretty conscious to try and make sure they don't. They leave one of those picks open because next year is like the draft that we've all built, been building up to where you've got Jeremiah Smith and a lot of guys who've been waiting to come out of college and architect and all these guys that people have been waiting on. And so I think they're going to go, all right, we can have two sort of bigger names and then, you know, the likes of like Jordan Elliott or Kendrick for Brian Robinson might get, you might count as like a seventh rounder and they sort of match in that range. I think they're going to be pretty conscious to keep one of those slots open.
And so I'm thinking it's like two mid to high level signings and then one of those slots they say we're not going to match. We're going to go with like 3 million a year range at best.
[00:32:23] Speaker A: And this is a good, this is honestly a good free agent class to do that with. If you want to bring in linebackers, there's, you know, Quay Walker's one big time one. But we mentioned this, you know, previously, Christian Harris, Troy Anderson. Troy Anderson, who just worked with Raheem.
[00:32:35] Speaker B: In Atlanta, that's another guy. I, he might be the likeliest name from Atlanta in terms of, he also.
[00:32:40] Speaker A: Might be the least likely name because he just worked with them there and he's like, I can't, this guy can't stay on the field. Why would I bring him here? But yeah, Troy Anderson, if he likes him, that's an easy transition. I like EJ Speed out of the Texans, Willie Gay with the Dolphins, probably not Jerome Baker, he's pretty washed.
[00:32:56] Speaker B: But Tyler Algier, not on defense, but.
[00:32:59] Speaker A: Like that another good option as well. Someone we talked about when we fixed the 49ers back a week or so ago. It's, it opens up a lot of possibilities. I think it provides a little bit of hope. It was going to be a really tough sell. And we're not in the, you and I are not in the business of selling the 49ers. Right. Right. They sell themselves based on the quality of their play. But it would have been really hard to, would have been hard to glean positives out of, I think, a Gus Bradley defense. Now, of course, we're talking completely in hypotheticals. It could have worked out great. I just don't think it would have. I just really don't.
[00:33:36] Speaker B: We also enjoy the projection of like, where something's going the big picture of like drafting players and what are you building towards and what sort of concepts are you trying to instill? Still an evolved evolution. And I find that I, I find that particularly interesting. And Gus Bradley's main adjective is static. He is a static, stagnant way of the past guy whose philosophy didn't work in Indianapolis and hasn't evolved and he's got other people around him and, and I'm sure he would have. Again, he slowly incorporated more quarters and other things and a little bit of COVID six, but like, still not really innovative in terms of like how he developed his pass rush, how he again, zero simulated pressures. He ran in 20, 23. Almost an impossible figure. I think it just would have been hard to go into a season and say we're looking at a team that doesn't want to do anything. They don't. They don't have an interest in trying stuff.
[00:34:33] Speaker A: It's.
[00:34:35] Speaker B: And I'm glad they didn't do that.
[00:34:37] Speaker A: There's two ways of going about defense. Okay? You can have all the dudes and do nothing, or you can have none of the dudes and try a bunch of stuff to sort of amplify it. The best defenses do both, by the way, or you have such great dudes like in Houston. You don't have to. Right.
[00:34:53] Speaker B: Like Seattle's doing Brian Flores.
Other sides of it.
[00:34:58] Speaker A: Other sides. But, okay, like, there. There's a level of dude on Minnesota still. There's a ton. There's more dudes than you need it. They have so many. They're the only defensive football that has so many dudes. You just go, just don't screw it up. Just. Just let the dogs eat, baby. Whereas In Seattle, Mike McDonald's is as good as it gets at this. He's got the dudes and he's doing stuff. It's stuff all the time. And again, how do you keep offenses guessing? How do you make it when the quarterback drops back and you have to do what Raheem did last year. You have to. You have to do what Robert Saleh tried to do at the beginning of this past year. You have to make them second guess what they see on the field, who's coming, who's going. Hot blitzes, all this. And then hot blitz is not just a hot blitz, but also disguise coverages behind that. And is it hard and is it difficult? You bet it's hard and difficult to coach it up. That's why there's not that many good defensive coordinators. There's a lot of dudes who can just say, you know, have that one little sheet and could just go cover four. We're going to run. We're going to run fire, which is nothing. It's a linebacker blitz that they run once a game. Like, you can do that. You better have the dudes. The San Francisco 49ers cannot look anyone in the eye and say, oh, we have enough dudes to do nothing.
What are you talking about? No, you don't. Because anytime you tried to do base last year, you were gashed, so you clearly don't have the dudes. And by the way, it's the O ring Theory. On top of that, you're only as good as the weakest player on your defense. So you know what you need to do when, when you have a player who's overtly weak like a Luke Gifford or late in the season, a Dee Winters or a Jordan Elliott, a defensive tackle who they just ran duo bat until they took him off the field, you need to figure out ways so that you don't know what he's doing. If you're an offense, you have to figure out ways to insulate him through scheme and tactics and aggressiveness. And I just, I didn't see any of that late in the season for the Niners. I wouldn't have expected any of that from Gus Bradley. And to be fair, it's not exactly Raheem Morris's ballywick. I don't think he's going to be a Brian Flores chaos defense type, but at least I know he can do it again. Fifteenth in in blitz rate, fourth and sac rate. And do you think it was because James Pierce is an elite pass rusher? No, it was because Divine Diablo's getting home, because they brought a bunch and they threw a weird coverage on the back end. Seattle does the same stuff, by the way, where you go, well, Seattle, they can get burned by the deep shot. Well, they get burned by the deep shot because they bring pressure in such a way that flushes a quarterback out in one direction, which is also the overloaded side of the defense. So if you want to throw it to the open guy, which ironically, Ricky Pearsall kind of was in that playoff game on the weak side the entire time, that's great. You have to throw it entirely across the field and dare our unbelievable secondary and athletes to not pick it off. Because there's no way you're throwing a rope on the run to the right.
70 yards across the field for a 20 yard game, there's no way you can do that. And that's a lot of high school defense. It's a lot of, you know, college defense, which is you can't make that throw. So we're not even going to protect over there. You do that in the NFL. If you can scheme up ways to consistently get the kind of push you want up front, get the quarterbacks to move in the direction you want, and now you have the upper hand. That's all I'm looking for. I'm looking for a defensive coordinator that finds ways to get the upper hand. Because if you just stay there and again, as you said, be static, fetal position defense, you're dead. You're dead. Because these offenses at even their most baseline level are too damn good. Clint Kubiak is about to get a head coaching job and is the. Is the offensive coordinator of a team that's probably going to win the super bowl by multiple touchdowns, if my opinion is correct. Like click Kubiak, his offense is day or week one of Kyle Shanahan. There's. There's nothing new or different or interesting on it. This is baseline stuff.
But that's good enough to be. This to be. To have us here talk. You know me radio row with the Seahawks all around me. Like, that's good enough. So what are you doing as a.
[00:38:53] Speaker B: By the way.
[00:38:53] Speaker A: Coordinator?
[00:38:54] Speaker B: Yeah, by the way, we need to get you next to Gray's able at all costs. I don't think the NFL will allow such a thing.
[00:39:00] Speaker A: We're not. No. But space time doesn't allow it.
[00:39:05] Speaker B: Space time doesn't allow. That's fair. Let's get to some comments here. Yeah, I guess your mic keeps cutting out.
[00:39:10] Speaker A: Whatever.
[00:39:11] Speaker B: Let's rip. Let's rip.
[00:39:12] Speaker A: It's probably for the best.
[00:39:14] Speaker B: I heard you. I heard you loud and clear. Dimitri, get Omar Cooper Jr. And get Raheem a DB like Davison, Igbonoson, and we're good.
I. Yeah, I mean, I. Early days. I. I don't really have a complaint. I think Cooper is a really physical wide receiver. I gotta watch more of him. Igbosan. I did the Hutch report. I did a deep breakdown on him. I think if I were to trust anyone to. To coach him, I think Raheem's a pretty good guy to try and coach him, but it might take a year or two, and I don't know if that's a premium, if he's like a round two guy, if that's something you want to wait. That said, you know, like, it actually might be perfect in terms of, you know, getting. You've got D or Lenor who you might want to get off of in a year, and you say, let's get a guy who can be our backup number two because Daryl Luder is whatever. And we just say we're going to train him to be our number one in a year. So I don't hate that.
Yeah.
[00:40:09] Speaker A: Kind of what they want to do with Bernardo Green, to be. To be frank, they wanted to ease him along. I think that's the right way to go about quarterbacks, frankly. There's only so many good players that you could just toss in right away. In fact, there's Very few of those in general.
[00:40:22] Speaker B: Chuck, any DB coaches that Morris may bring with him, Is Joe Woods a possibility?
I think Joe woods is maybe a likelihood. There's. He's a guy that they.
Again, by the way, Joe woods was with Raheem and Kyle in 2004 with, with the Buccaneers. They go, they all go way, way, way back.
I think the Niners tried to interview Justin Hood. That was clearly like an early indication he's a secondaries coach of the Falcons that was rejected.
They lost. Lost they did they part away with, with Daniel Bullock who's now with the Packers. They clearly need someone to fill that role. I think Joe woods is the likeliest choice for that.
Although you know, you could sniff around, you know, some, some low level assistance for the Seahawks and, and interview them for that position just for the sake of it. I'm not sure that's something they want to do.
[00:41:12] Speaker A: Well, the beauty, the beauty of having Raheem Morris is that you, you don't need someone in the secondary to be the, the sole voice. I mean he's, he's the secondaries guy. So.
Yeah, I couldn't tell you. I really couldn't tell you.
[00:41:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:41:31] Speaker A: But I have some trust that the guy who so many good secondaries coaches have come from, you know, his tutelage that he'll be able to find somebody that's worthwhile. And again, we didn't talk about Daniel Bullock's at all all season until he was no longer with the team. And now suddenly it's all his fault.
[00:41:53] Speaker B: He interviewed for the job that Nick Sorensen got. So just to be clear, like Nick Sorensen beat him out for a defensive coordinator job, which is not an ideal thing to have on your resume. There's a lot of other factors. I'm just saying it doesn't look great.
[00:42:08] Speaker A: What is Nick Sorensen doing right now.
[00:42:14] Speaker B: For the Cowboys? Yeah, yeah, that's right.
[00:42:17] Speaker A: What a gig that is. He's the one. He's the one who told the, the punter to flip it up to Brandon Aubrey and then mess Brandon Aubrey up.
Great job. He tried something.
[00:42:27] Speaker B: Good stuff.
This is all right, I think. Last one and then we'll both get out of here.
[00:42:31] Speaker A: That's fine.
[00:42:32] Speaker B: I thought the title was going to be. At least it wasn't Gus Bradley because I can hear Jake saying that and I feel that.
Listen, all the best to Gus and you know, being a high level assistant with the Titans, most likely I would have.
[00:42:46] Speaker A: People.
[00:42:46] Speaker B: People is not something I have an appetite for.
[00:42:50] Speaker A: Absolutely. I'll also say This. I think a lot of people are like, oh, well, Gus is going to go to Tennessee or Gus is going to go to Arizona.
Is he.
Is he.
He's. Oh, he'll be the coordinator. Oh, and he can call place there. I think there's just a lot of credit for Gus. This has been good for Gus. Gus got a lot of. A lot of shine by being the de facto choice here by the Niners. They did Gus a solid by being lazy and being like, we'll just bring in three guys, only two of which will.
[00:43:21] Speaker B: And maybe that was the plan all along, as they were like, yeah, Gus is the only guy we were going to interview in house. And maybe we read too much into it.
That said, casting a small net. I think it's worked out for them.
I just personally believe you should take the opportunity to interview as many candidates as you can. At least. At least who are doing something you're interested by and who might challenge your offensive scheme. Maybe the rate the Seahawks, you know, going to the super bowl complicated that, but Carl Scott is a guy I still think would have deserved an interview. Before we get out of here. Yeah. Just want to show Tucker.
[00:43:55] Speaker A: Hi, Tucker.
[00:43:56] Speaker B: It's been a minute. It's been a minute since he's been on the pod.
[00:43:59] Speaker A: You want to see Larry Krueger? I can show you Larry Krueger.
[00:44:02] Speaker B: Well, our guy Kevin Clark just walked by before we started, so it's about a bunch. Not as big.
[00:44:08] Speaker A: No. Damon Bruce is just walking around in circles.
[00:44:12] Speaker B: Wish I was kidding. Maybe. Yeah, maybe. I'll meet you down at the wharf and we'll do. We'll do a post. A post pod.
[00:44:20] Speaker A: That's not happening.
That's not happening.
We'll probably do something again, I don't know, later this week. We'll talk about the Super Bowl. We'll talk.
[00:44:27] Speaker B: We. Yes, we will do something again this week.
Again.
Subscribe to the Hutch Report. I will have some more draft stuff. I will also, if you are, for some reason visiting San Francisco, I'll have in this week's newsletter I have some food ranks.
[00:44:41] Speaker A: Oh, for all you sickos out there, fancy boy.
[00:44:44] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:44:44] Speaker A: With your food recommendations. Eating food like a man with money.
All right, we will talk to you later. Bye.
