Podcast: Gosselin Declaring Davis Should Hire Like His Father
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.