Las Vegas Raiders Insider Podcast Features Legendary NFL Writer Rick Gosselin Declaring Rooney RUle or Not, Mark Davis Should Hire Antonio Pierce, Champ Kelly Now, Like His Father
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00:00 Hello everybody and welcome back to Sports Illustrated's Fan Nation Las Vegas Raiders
00:06 Insider Podcast.
00:07 It is always a thrill and an honor when I get to have this guy with me.
00:12 He is the reason that I'm a sports journalist.
00:17 He is considered by many, myself included, as the greatest NFL writer that's ever lived.
00:26 Hall of Fame voter, a man with relationships on all 32 teams, he's the inventor of the
00:32 mock draft.
00:34 His impact on the NFL was so far that owners would call him to get information.
00:43 This is a guy that had a tremendous relationship with Al Davis and others.
00:48 He's universally respected around the NFL.
00:51 I get to call him a mentor.
00:54 I get to call him a friend.
00:57 I get to call him a hero.
01:00 Very few times in life do you look up to someone and then when they become intimately part
01:07 of your life, and he is that with me, we talk about things that have nothing to do with
01:11 sports.
01:12 He has helped me through dark times.
01:15 You get to meet them and you realize they're even better than you hope.
01:20 Oftentimes they're a disappointment.
01:22 Every big article that I write, my deep dives, he helps me.
01:25 He edits them.
01:26 We interact.
01:27 We talk.
01:28 He knows my sources and he helps me formulate.
01:31 He's one of my favorite people on planet earth and a dear friend, the great Rick Gosling.
01:36 Rick, thank you, my friend.
01:37 I know, always a pleasure, but you know that already.
01:40 Yeah, you are so dear to me.
01:42 So I wrote an article, which obviously all my articles you're familiar with and you helped
01:47 me in all of that, but it was about enough's enough.
01:50 It's time for the Raiders to hire Champ and to hire Antonio Pierce.
01:56 Now there's a lot, even a PFT report that said that to hire off last year when the Colts,
02:06 if they wanted to hire Jeff Saturday, they didn't have to go through the Rooney rule
02:09 for an interim, but if they wanted to retain them, they did.
02:13 I talked to two general managers.
02:15 You know who they are.
02:16 I've told you who they were.
02:17 I don't reveal my sources to you.
02:19 It's different because you work with me on it.
02:22 Who said that they believe you'd have to rework the contracts, but that they would be fine
02:26 hiring them now.
02:27 The point of the matter is, is whether they can honor, they have to honor the Rooney rule
02:32 or not.
02:33 I've made the statement, go ahead and do it now.
02:35 It's the Raider thing.
02:38 Your thoughts on that, sir?
02:40 Yeah, the Rooney rule was created to make sure there was an equal opportunity, that
02:45 qualified candidates got a shot at jobs and it was geared to more minorities would get
02:51 into the interview process.
02:53 There's a precedent for this.
02:54 In 1989, Al Davis fired Mike Shanahan after four games.
03:00 He made Art Schell the first African-American head coach of the modern era.
03:06 And then after the season, Art finished seven of five.
03:10 After the season, Al promoted him, made him a permanent guy.
03:14 I don't think anybody would stand in Mark Davis's way if you want to promote Antonio
03:19 Pierce because there's, again, there's a precedent with this franchise, there's a precedent in
03:24 this league.
03:25 And again, he's not, it is a minority candidate, you know, and there've been a lot of cases
03:31 where you've had minority candidates interviewed, there were token interviews and they weren't
03:36 serious.
03:37 This is serious.
03:38 And Antonio Pierce has shown that he's probably deserving of this head coaching opportunity.
03:44 And I don't think anybody would stand in the Raiders way if they wanted to make Antonio
03:50 Pierce the permanent coach.
03:53 And Champ Kelly, again, done the same thing, the job he's done, getting the job after the
03:58 trade deadline, the way he's worked the waiver wires.
04:01 I know that you would agree with me.
04:03 So here's my question for you.
04:05 There is a school of thought that says he should have to wait till the end of the year.
04:10 Don't do it now.
04:11 You'll screw it up.
04:12 What is your opinion?
04:13 What's your thought?
04:14 If these are your guys, you hire them now.
04:17 If you're prepared to go ahead, go forward with these guys, why wait?
04:22 You know, give Champ a jump on the draft.
04:24 And you know, you don't want Champ in a holding pattern or Antonio in a holding pattern while
04:31 you figure out what their future is.
04:34 I mean, if these are the guys, you hire them.
04:37 And again, they're both African-Americans, they're both minorities.
04:40 I don't think anybody would stand in the way of either hire.
04:43 And both these guys, what we've seen, they appear to have earned the chance to hold on
04:49 to these jobs on a permanent basis.
04:51 You are so widely respected around the league.
04:55 Owners will talk to you, people in every organization.
04:58 Here's my question for you.
05:01 With your knowledge, which is universally respected, and what you've seen them do, what
05:08 you saw Rich Passaccia do, do you believe they've done enough to earn the job now?
05:14 I thought they should have kept Passaccia.
05:17 I know Rich.
05:18 Rich had been here in Dallas.
05:20 And I thought the job he did, he earned the right to continue on, even if he gave him
05:25 a two-year deal, you know, continue to prove himself.
05:28 But I thought he earned the right to go forward as a head coach.
05:33 I think Antonio Paris is in the same boat.
05:35 I think what he's done, he's clearly changed the culture of that team.
05:40 He's changed the mood of the locker room.
05:41 He's changed the attitude on the field.
05:43 I think he's earned that chance.
05:46 Again, I'm not sure why.
05:48 If he's the guy, why wait?
05:51 I don't think there'd be any resistance from the league if they named Antonio Paris head
05:55 coach.
05:56 All right.
05:57 I want to ask you something that I find fascinating.
06:01 And I really appreciate your thoughts on this.
06:05 The NFL is a unique league.
06:09 The impression is that it's very large, but it's really a small group.
06:15 It's pretty interesting how it works.
06:17 And there's so much dynamics and so much politics.
06:22 If Mark Davis feels like, OK, I can't hire him without the Rooney rule, waiting to the
06:30 end, is there anything more Raider than to basically say, no, this is my guy.
06:34 I'm hiring him.
06:35 NFL, be damned.
06:36 I'm like Nastogi.
06:37 And you want to come after me?
06:39 Is there anything more Al Davis than if Mark did that?
06:43 Because this is following in Al's footsteps.
06:45 Al did this once before, and it worked out pretty good for the Raiders.
06:50 Was the Rooney rule around in '89?
06:52 No, no.
06:53 No, it wasn't around.
06:54 No.
06:55 But the point is, he did it.
06:57 He did it.
06:58 I'm sorry?
06:59 The point is, he did it.
07:00 And again, this was the first African-American head coach of the modern era, when no one
07:05 was hiring African-American head coaches.
07:09 Al had the open mind and the keen football sense to know that Art's the guy.
07:15 And they had great success early on with Art as head coach.
07:18 This is so rich.
07:19 Like I said, there's a precedent in this building, in this league for this.
07:24 And it was paved the way by Mark's dad.
07:27 One of the things I find funny, and this is no disrespect to the Roonies, I think they're
07:32 wonderful people, so please don't hear this as disrespect.
07:36 But Al Davis hires the first African-American coach of the modern era, the first Hispanic,
07:44 Hispanic quarterback.
07:45 I mean, this is the legacy of the Raiders.
07:48 They were doing this before it was popular.
07:49 There wasn't a Rooney rule because of the Raiders.
07:52 It was because of everybody else.
07:54 Do you think it wasn't called the Raider rule or the Al Davis rule because of the NFL's
08:00 relationship with Al Davis?
08:02 No, because Al didn't have an issue with hiring the best candidate.
08:07 And the Rooney rule is to say, let's interview several people and determine the best candidate,
08:13 whether he's white, black, yellow, or what.
08:15 Interview the best candidates and make sure no one is overlooked in the process.
08:20 And I think it's really helped African-Americans along the way as head coaches.
08:26 But the Raiders don't need this rule because they've set the precedent.
08:33 Al and the Chiefs were very big on the HBCU schools in the 1960s when the NFL teams weren't
08:38 touching those schools.
08:40 It was Al and Lamar Hunt that were all over the HBCUs.
08:44 So I don't think anybody's going to accuse the Raiders of racism.
08:48 I want to ask you about something I have told the people that you believe, and I agree with
08:55 you by the way, but I found it fascinating.
08:58 You have been surprised at how many special teams coaches get overlooked in the hiring
09:04 process because unlike offensive and defensive coordinators, they have their hands on both
09:09 sides of the ball.
09:10 Could you expound on that, please?
09:12 There are only two coaches on the staff that address the entire team, the head coach and
09:16 special teams coach.
09:17 They deal with offensive players, defensive players, and that's an attitude that's coached
09:23 into these units.
09:24 You saw with John Harbaugh and Dave Taub in Kansas City and Pete Rodriguez and Brad Seely.
09:33 And Bill Belichick in particular, he makes sure he has special teams.
09:37 He will draft special teams guys.
09:38 They drafted Julian Edelman because he could return punts.
09:44 I'm surprised that Dave Taub has never gotten a chance to be a head coach.
09:50 John Harbaugh proved you could do it.
09:52 John Harbaugh was a long time and one of the most successful special teams coaches in the
09:56 league and he felt he had to become a position coach elsewhere to get a head job.
10:02 So he became a defensive back coach and got hired after a year by the Ravens.
10:06 But Dick Vermeule was a special teams coach.
10:10 Bill Cowher started his career as a special teams coach.
10:13 Bill Belichick was a special teams coach.
10:15 These guys deal with the entire roster.
10:18 They deal with offensive players, defensive players, and they have to coach their techniques.
10:23 Again, I think some of the best coaches in this league are special teams coaches because
10:33 they lose players.
10:35 Teams tend to keep the core of the offense and defense together.
10:39 But there are years where a special teams coach has lost his entire core of five coverage
10:44 players and they've just got to make do with the draft picks.
10:48 A lot of times draft picks, these guys, they want to start.
10:51 They don't have a desire to be on special teams.
10:54 They got to coach them into it.
10:55 I talked to both Bill Bates and Steve Tasker, two elite in the history of the NFL special
11:01 teams players.
11:02 They retired the same year and I asked them, "What was the hardest part of your job?"
11:06 And both of them said, "To teach a whole new group of players that what we do is important."
11:12 And that's a message that special teams coaches have to get across.
11:15 Again, I'm surprised more special teams coaches haven't gotten that opportunity.
11:19 You are the inventor of the modern mock draft.
11:22 You were the best at it.
11:24 No one will ever compete with you.
11:25 I don't know if I was the inventor, but we've been doing mocks a long time, but I got to
11:28 be pretty good at it.
11:30 We're going to call you the perfecter then of it.
11:32 You were the perfecter of the modern day NFL draft.
11:36 And I do one after the season, starting the Monday of the combine, and I do every mock
11:44 draft Monday up till the draft.
11:46 And one of the things that you did so well was getting resources from so many other teams,
11:55 finding out what teams were thinking.
11:56 I've tried to mimic you as best as I can, and talking to other teams, getting as much
12:02 input as I can, and really followed how you taught me.
12:06 You are the best at it.
12:09 Why do you think the NFL draft has blown up and gotten so big?
12:17 Because it's not an NFL event.
12:19 It's a college event.
12:20 There are college teams in every state, every major city.
12:25 I remember going back a couple of years back, the light bulb went on when the top three
12:31 markets for a draft were Jacksonville, Austin, Texas, and I can't remember the other one.
12:38 But it was because Tim Tebow, Colt McCoy, and there were three very high profile college
12:45 guys.
12:46 Those were the top TV markets.
12:47 And that's what the NFL is kind of encapsulated here.
12:52 It's a college event.
12:55 Every school has a vested, every fan.
12:58 You go to Michigan, you got Michigan, Michigan State, Central Michigan, Eastern Michigan,
13:02 they've all got teams, and they've all got players that are drafted.
13:05 J.J. Watts started his career in Central Michigan.
13:09 There's so much investment, even the casual football fan has an interest in the draft
13:14 because he may be a bigger college football fan than he is an NFL fan.
13:18 And that's what the NFL has tapped into.
13:20 And people mistake it as an NFL, but it's not.
13:23 It's a college event.
13:25 That's pretty good.
13:26 The last thing that I have for you, when you started in the league, it was much different.
13:33 Now the NFL Network, it's a 365 day event.
13:37 It has gotten so big and so enormous.
13:42 Did you, you were so universally respected, you saw things before others saw them.
13:49 Did you ever think the NFL would be this big?
13:53 Well, I covered, no, because I was covering bad teams.
13:58 I covered the Giants in '70, I covered the Lions in the early '70s, the Giants in '75,
14:03 '76, and I had the Chiefs for 13 years, they went to one playoff game.
14:06 I used to go to training camp for the Chiefs, and there may be 30 people in the stands watching
14:11 practice.
14:12 They didn't need ropes, they didn't need guards, they were just sitting in the stands watching
14:15 practice.
14:16 When I went to Dallas in 1990, I was shocked.
14:20 Jerry moved the camp to Austin.
14:22 They had set up a souvenir tent, they had concession stands, they had stands, they were
14:27 getting 10,000 people practice, and now it's even bigger, now it's here in California.
14:33 They got stands set up, they got tent suites for corporate sponsors.
14:42 I never saw it coming, because maybe if I had been in Dallas with America's team, with
14:46 a big fan base, but when I was covering the Chiefs, we might have had four people in the
14:50 locker room during the open locker room period.
14:53 There weren't TV cameras, there weren't microphones, there weren't ESPN, there wasn't the NFL network,
14:58 there was nobody, and you could develop relationships.
15:01 It's much tougher now to develop relationships, because it's all kind of, I guess, packed
15:06 journalism.
15:07 All right, I told you that was the last one, but there's one more I have to ask, because
15:11 you hit something I believe on.
15:14 I think Al Davis is the most significant owner in pro football history, or in pro sports,
15:19 and I want to explain.
15:22 He has impacted European soccer.
15:26 Without an Al Davis, I don't think there's a Jerry Jones.
15:29 He's impacted the NHL, Major League Baseball, NBA, and how owners market, the way they sell
15:36 everything.
15:38 I think that Al Davis, and there are other owners who may be one more, or whatever, but
15:44 he is not just a pro football icon, he's an American icon, and really a world sports icon,
15:53 because of his vision and the way he's changed professional sports around the world.
15:58 Am I overselling Al Davis?
16:01 I think George Hales would be in there as far as the NFL, and I think Jerry Jones would
16:05 be in there as far as the financial dynamic of the league.
16:08 He's the reason that they have all these new stadiums, he's the reason there's a salary
16:11 gap.
16:12 Al Davis would tell you that he built the Raiders.
16:15 He used the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees as his model for how he wanted to
16:20 build the Raiders, the tradition, the pride, the fan bond with the team.
16:26 I think Al has got a far-reaching influence on a lot of sports, a lot of people.
16:33 I know Jerry Jones, he's one of his confidants.
16:35 A lot of people went out, Al was wrong, he was the guy they called, they asked for his
16:39 advice.
16:41 I think he's easily one of the two or three.
16:43 You put Lamar Hunt in there because he founded the AFL.
16:46 But if you're doing a Mount Rushmore of significant NFL owners and influential people, I think
16:54 Al Davis would be there.
16:55 He'd be on that mountain.
16:56 Awesome.
16:57 So again, to recap what we originally wanted to discuss, it's your opinion that Rooney
17:05 Rule be damned, if this is your guy, go hire him now for Mark Davis, correct?
17:10 Yeah, because that's the precedent his father set.
17:13 He's your guy, he's an African American.
17:15 You want him, he's your guy, go get him.
17:17 Go get him, let the league worry about it.
17:19 I don't think there's going to be anybody that's going to put up an argument if he hired
17:25 Antonio Pierce, if he did it tomorrow.
17:28 Awesome.
17:29 He is the great Rick Gosling, one of the greatest NFL writers to ever live.
17:33 If you were doing a Mount Rushmore of writers, he would be on it and be the first name.
17:37 He is a tremendous mentor, a great friend, and someone that I look up to and admire with
17:43 all my heart.
17:44 Thank you, Rick.
17:45 Thanks, Heino.
17:46 Always my pleasure.
17:46 Thank you.