Las Vegas Raiders Insider Podcast on the Tom Telesco, Dave Ziegler Impact on the Silver and Black Success
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00:00 Hi everybody, this is Hondo Carpenter from the Las Vegas Raiders Insider Podcast, of
00:07 course from Sports Illustrated's Fan Nation Raiders Today.
00:10 I'm joined by the guy right here who, right there I guess, there, I get turned around,
00:16 forgive me on video, right there, who is one of my dearest friends on the planet.
00:22 He is an exceptional journalist.
00:25 He is a tremendous lawyer, has his own law firm down in Atlanta, Savannah area of Georgia.
00:33 He is one of the best people that I know and he's a man that I trust.
00:39 And I'm going to tell you, the longer you live, my father said, "You keep your circle
00:42 of trust very, very small."
00:45 And I trust him immeasurably and that is the one and only, the great John Schaap.
00:50 John, good to have you, friend.
00:52 Great to be back.
00:53 Nice to get a little visit in to Las Vegas again and be surrounded by a lot of Raiders
00:57 gear, Raiders stores, of course, Raiders vibe all over the place.
01:02 And then, hello 2024 NFL, starting with the foot on the gas.
01:08 So John, I want to get into today the business of the NFL.
01:14 We're going to talk a lot of Raiders.
01:17 And so, if you're a Raider, most of you are Raider fans listening, trust me, we're going
01:23 to get to something very specific, but we got to start at the shell before you get to
01:26 the nut inside.
01:29 You watch free agency start, billions of dollars get spent.
01:35 Then you watch how five minutes after the deadline, they're announcing deals, not, "Hey,
01:41 this guy's going there," but parameters of deals.
01:45 Clearly, we all know everybody was talking before the clock struck.
01:50 So the reality, John, I mean, is the business is good in the NFL.
01:57 There's an old adage, you always follow the money and the money says the NFL is alive
02:02 and vibrant.
02:03 Yeah, I mean, it's just, it's pretty incredible when you look at what's happened to the size
02:09 of the salary cap, as we've talked about before, and now you see it in person and really the
02:14 acceleration of the game.
02:16 We've got a lot of things going the right way, which just continue to add dollars.
02:20 Again, we probably should credit the NFL pretty good job handling the timing of introducing
02:28 legal gambling to their sport and accepting it.
02:31 Had they done it maybe 10 or 15 years ago, the technology may not have been there to
02:35 keep it as secure and relatively smooth so far.
02:40 That has bought a enormous amount of interest in the sport.
02:44 There's no shortcoming of it.
02:47 It's not like people have said, "Oh, there's gambling now in that sport.
02:49 I'm walking away."
02:50 Hasn't happened.
02:52 They've been able to negotiate and manage the climate around them and have just continued
02:59 to climb towards the mountain.
03:01 The idea that this climb gets a lot steeper when you're at the peak of the mountain doesn't
03:07 really seem to affect the NFL.
03:08 There's not a whole lot that's slowing down.
03:11 There's a lot that's moving forward.
03:12 There's a lot that the sport can do to make their product and game even better.
03:17 We have talked about some of those things and we have hit some of them right on the
03:20 head.
03:21 We know that there's going to be some evolution of the schedule.
03:24 We've even mapped out the magic number of six to come.
03:28 When you look at the dollars flying around, these are not speculative dollars.
03:33 These are dollars these teams know they have, they can count on, and they're ready to send.
03:37 The money in the NFL is jumping pretty exponentially.
03:43 That is a very good thing.
03:45 The public out there is saying, "We want more.
03:49 We're going to practically turn the first day of free agency into some kind of a football
03:53 holiday."
03:54 The demand is out of this world.
03:57 Really good time to be a player.
03:58 Really good time to be something like 28 years old in a defensive tackle, just for example.
04:04 Isn't that the truth?
04:06 John, that takes us to our next thing.
04:09 At no time in NFL history has a salary cap management been more key to franchise success.
04:19 I got to share something with you.
04:21 I was talking to a recently retired NFL executive.
04:26 This was his first year out of the game.
04:31 I said to him, we were talking when I was down in Cabo San Lucas, and I asked him, "What
04:38 would you say is," and I thought he would say quarterback, "the most important part
04:43 now of a winning franchise?"
04:44 He was part of a franchise that won a lot.
04:48 He said to me, "Salary cap management."
04:52 I almost fell out of my chair.
04:56 I said, "What?"
04:57 He goes, "The rest doesn't matter anymore, because if you don't have salary cap management,
05:03 you can't keep people.
05:05 If you don't have salary cap discipline, you can't keep people."
05:09 He said that there is absolutely no bigger key to a franchise's success.
05:16 He goes, "Second is quarterback, but first is you have to have salary cap management
05:23 and discipline."
05:24 Does that not bore you to hear that coming from a very successful executive?
05:29 I think it does a little bit, because that's how powerful and important it's become.
05:35 It was always in the mix, but now you're hearing it basically say, "This is kind of taking
05:40 things over."
05:41 If we step back a second, which is what we like to do on this show, going around the
05:46 NFL from a Raider perspective, you see how many teams that look like they were right
05:51 on the edge or so close, and then it's like Charlie Brown with the football getting taken
05:57 away at the last second, or the rug getting pulled out from a franchise.
06:01 They get shredded because of a salary cap situation.
06:04 That is what it looks like is going on in Buffalo.
06:07 It looks like a window is all of a sudden closed because of that.
06:10 That is partially what's going on in Minnesota, where they had a beautiful window and stuck
06:16 with Mike Zimmer too long and started to crush it.
06:19 Now, that window looks like it's gone also.
06:22 When you think about the hyper tightly packed 53-man roster, it's too tightly packed.
06:31 We all know it's already too tightly packed.
06:33 You think about the business interest, the predominant business interest of these athletes.
06:41 I really don't care what they say during the season relative to their business interest.
06:44 I care what they do, for example, like the first day of free agency.
06:48 So many of them, when they step back, think of this as a business first.
06:53 That puts such enormous stress on the salary cap management.
06:57 For us old folks, we go way to the back at the start of the salary cap, when you had
07:01 the 49ers doing things to manage the cap and carbon policy and other cap experts.
07:06 We didn't think that much of it.
07:09 We were understating it.
07:11 It's a huge deal.
07:12 It's become a bigger deal.
07:14 When you look at teams like the Broncos that look like they've blown a giant hole in their
07:19 ship for a couple of years with the Russell Wilson deal, you get an idea of just how big
07:27 the impact is.
07:28 You've got to set the table with the salary cap managed in such a way that you can either
07:33 keep your roster together or add the pieces that you need.
07:37 And I think on a yearly basis, we see teams and we see windows come to a crash and close
07:43 just because of that.
07:44 So it is the right thing to do.
07:47 You hate to say it because so many people are just into what's going on on the field,
07:50 on the game.
07:51 They're not interested in betting on salary cap management, for example, or playing fantasy
07:55 salary cap.
07:57 It's critically important.
07:58 And we see teams who are their own good or their own bad, who are in a really good position
08:05 cap wise to start this free agency period.
08:07 We see others that are going to get partially bailed out by the cap expanding so much.
08:12 And we also see some that are crashing.
08:15 When you see what's going on in Buffalo, when you see the situation they've got with the
08:18 cap, and then of course, when you look around the Raiders division and you see what's over
08:23 there in Los Angeles slash Southern California slash San Diego as a competitor in their division,
08:30 you think we're in pretty good shape compared to the Chargers, aren't we?
08:35 It's fascinating.
08:36 And it all, there's probably more focus on the cap during this start of salary cap period
08:40 than there is any time during the NFL calendar.
08:43 So John, this brings us to a very important point I wanted to get into.
08:47 It's very Raiders specific.
08:50 When Dave Ziegler arrived, the Raiders were in terrible shape.
08:56 And I understand he's gone.
08:59 I get it.
09:00 It's gone.
09:01 That's the way of the game.
09:02 And I'm not, I'm not saying this to say woo Dave Ziegler, although he's my friend and
09:06 I think he did a very good job.
09:10 Raider fans owe him a big thank you for the success of today.
09:14 But I, well, I say today that the free agency is already well started, but I mean, the present
09:20 state of the franchise today.
09:23 And I think one of the reasons of hope is Tom Telesco is a lot like him, very salary
09:28 cap discipline, no emotional spending.
09:33 We're not going to be cheap.
09:34 When I say we, I'm referring to their voice.
09:37 We're not going to be cheap, but we are going to be frugal.
09:40 The guys were 10.
09:41 We're not paying 10, five, but we're also not offering them eight.
09:44 We're going to step to the pump, make our best offering that people know, Hey, we're
09:46 willing to pay you.
09:49 Talk about if you would please, maybe the legacy of Dave Ziegler, because he's going
09:54 to be lumped with Josh.
09:56 And I think you have to separate them and look at what he did.
09:59 Am I being fair?
10:01 I think so.
10:02 In one way, when a coach and a GM come in together, they're completely lumped together.
10:07 They're looked at as together, even inside their own buildings.
10:10 Most of the time when they split, they start to be separated a little bit and it can take
10:15 a little while, but at a certain point they are really looked at independently.
10:20 You can go back to look at Jerry Reese's work with the giants.
10:24 You can look at Ron Wolf's work.
10:26 Look at Bill Polian's work, et cetera.
10:28 Sean Payton, Mickey Loomis, et cetera.
10:30 So there is a separation there.
10:33 What you look at there is you ever go into a job, you're recruited, go into a job.
10:39 It looks fantastic.
10:40 It looks like the facility is great.
10:42 Looks like everything's terrific.
10:43 You get inside and then you find like a back closet where everything's massively disorganized
10:47 and you realize the job you came in, you thought you were doing, we're going to start here
10:52 and do this work there and build this foundation there.
10:54 You actually have to start over here because it's such a mess and it's tying one arm behind
10:59 your back and taping your hamstring to the wall and you're kind of stuck.
11:04 So you have to extract out of there.
11:05 You have to eat dead cap money.
11:07 You have to find a way to look a little bit further ahead than you'd like to, past next
11:13 season, if you will, to position the franchise to have a chance to have some cap space to
11:20 maybe reevaluate things.
11:22 And yeah, it's one of those things I'm sure that all the GMs would do in one of those
11:28 off the record articles or off the record.
11:31 Yeah, I mean, it would have to be an article.
11:34 It's kind of a hidden or a lightly discussed massive responsibility.
11:39 The GM job is when you get into wherever, where are the closets that have been left
11:46 totally disorganized and where are the, you know, it's not really a ticking, it's like
11:51 a, it's not really a ticking time bomb.
11:53 It's like one of those guns that shoots out the cash.
11:56 Where's the loaded cash guns that are going to fire off and explode through the salary
12:01 cap and how do I work my way out to avoid those?
12:04 And I think it's at this time of year, great for everybody to reset their mind on who's
12:10 doing what within an organization.
12:13 An owner is going to own.
12:15 If you're going to look for emotional moves to spend or draft guys, or just think of some
12:21 of the stuff the worst owners in the sport have done, whether it's Carolina or Washington
12:26 or other owners having making pretty large decisions and mistakes, they are going to
12:32 act emotionally.
12:33 When you think about players, players are going to play.
12:37 Players are going to play, that's their job.
12:38 And then when the season ends, it's the business responsibility that seems to dominate them.
12:44 So everybody is in the lane that they're in.
12:46 The general manager really has to do that work.
12:50 Who else is going to do it?
12:52 It does benefit the franchises that can stay disciplined, smart, and focused more often
12:57 than not, and then hopefully have really good judgment.
13:00 We look, just a small example, look at the wide receiver situation in Green Bay.
13:06 The wide receiver situation in Green Bay looked uncertain.
13:09 It looked understaffed.
13:11 It looked undermanned.
13:13 They got apparently some of the right guys and have done a good bit to develop them.
13:18 And they've got a nice chunk of cap space where had they gone out and spent big for
13:26 somebody, it would have been gone.
13:29 This is a time of year, along with the draft, to see a little bit past just that draft pick
13:35 and maybe it's difficult because we're not inside all these buildings, but maybe there's
13:39 also a little bit of a salary cap advantage or leverage that this team has got by drafting
13:45 this guy.
13:46 So, quarterbacks, running backs, we know they're coming, but sometimes another position group,
13:50 I think what Green Bay did is going to benefit them here in the next couple of years as kind
13:55 of a standout.
13:58 So I want to go back to the Raiders because we praised Dave Zeger, but now we need to
14:02 praise Tom Telesco.
14:05 I got a text the other day after the first day, late at night, and it was from an NFL
14:12 executive that I just said, "Hey, give me your thoughts on what the Raiders did."
14:15 And he said, "A+ for Tom Telesco."
14:18 And he talked about this, the Christian Wilkins deal.
14:24 They were very disciplined in how they paid him.
14:26 I mean, the guy's one of the top ones, defensive tackles in all the NFL.
14:30 A lot of people thought he was the best defensive free agent or at the top.
14:35 They get a good deal with him.
14:36 They pay him less than Chris Jones, but they're selling him on, there's no state income tax
14:40 in Nevada, so really you're getting paid more than him.
14:43 They save that little bit.
14:45 And they look at some of the guys they let go.
14:48 And they say, "Well, you know, we understand that, but we know exactly where our point
14:53 is."
14:54 Dave Zegler impressed a lot of people.
14:56 When he was with the Bolts, the family did a lot of the contracts, so their salary cap
15:01 hell wasn't Telesco's fault.
15:04 Talk to me about your initial impressions of Tom Telesco with the Raiders, please.
15:09 Well, he looks a little more organized, and he looks a little less thrown off or shaken
15:20 up by being the general manager of the Chargers.
15:23 There's a lot of things that people inside the sport can't say, won't say, it's not in
15:28 their business interest to say, including a guy that was just the general manager of
15:32 the Chargers.
15:33 But it looks like a little bit of a disorganized mess over there.
15:36 So he might have been hamstrung a little more than we even thought.
15:40 So he did a good job of managing a bad situation and obviously professionally bouncing back
15:45 really, really well.
15:48 It's too soon to tell.
15:49 No downs have been played.
15:50 They won't be played for a while.
15:52 But when you look at Wilkins, what it looks like the Raiders are getting is a guy that
15:56 is about to hit his absolute prime.
16:00 An impressive player that can affect what the office is doing on the other side.
16:07 You're going to have a compound issue when you go against the Raiders front four now.
16:10 So this is a pretty bold start.
16:12 It was not a move looking from a wider perspective.
16:16 That was not necessarily one I was expecting or looking to see happen.
16:20 And boom, it happens right away.
16:22 It happens what sounds like you don't get there to sign him for that dollar value that
16:27 early without some organized thought and preparation.
16:31 So to let's go to me so far looks a little more organized and prepared.
16:35 He looks focused.
16:37 When you go back to the videos from the combine, it doesn't look like he's shaking or trying
16:42 to figure it out as he goes along.
16:45 Doesn't look like he's got an overbearing owner or a coach that is looking to be the
16:52 general manager.
16:53 Also, it's a good sign for Dow.
16:55 And I'm excited to see what they do next.
16:57 I'm also excited to see maybe if there's a surprise or two that they let a player go
17:02 that everybody's thinking would have been part of the next phase, the new really start
17:07 of the Telesco Pierce era.
17:10 But right now, pretty impressive.
17:13 This is a this is a big signing at a position of absolute need when you are in the division
17:20 with Patrick Mahomes.
17:21 John, we're up against the break, but I want to do a one last question.
17:26 Obviously, when deals like these are being announced moments after it starts, we know
17:31 what's going on before we know the conversations.
17:34 Does the NFL need to just get rid of the shadow and just go back and say, OK, 10 days after
17:40 the Super Bowl, you can begin to do your deals.
17:46 I love it.
17:47 I love the business of it.
17:49 I'm enjoying all the fun.
17:52 But is it is it almost a mockery or do you leave it the way it is just because it's fun
17:57 and everybody's loving it?
17:59 It's almost a mockery.
18:01 This is why we get along so well, folks.
18:02 We have the same idea.
18:03 Sometimes I don't even talk about him.
18:05 I was thinking about this on the on the plane ride back, actually, for a second.
18:08 What's the right thing to do here?
18:10 Well, the right thing is you've got the Super Bowl, the celebration, and then how long until
18:14 it goes?
18:15 You know, it wasn't that long ago.
18:16 I remember that like Rex Ryan was was driving up to people's houses, you know, at like eleven
18:22 thirty at night waiting for it to hit midnight.
18:25 There's been some changes and some evolution.
18:27 I think probably a good idea to go ahead and give people a couple of weeks after the Super
18:32 Bowl, maybe two or three, and then, boom, let's start this thing.
18:36 So maybe it should be moved up.
18:37 Not dramatically.
18:38 I don't think it should be like the day after the Super Bowl, maybe a couple of weeks sooner.
18:43 Maybe the start of March is a better idea.
18:46 March 1st is around number.
18:48 But yes, what the NFL should do is continue to refine this, move it back a little bit.
18:54 But of course, don't step on the Super Bowl because the combine.
18:57 Yeah.
18:58 Well, yeah.
18:59 Or the combine.
19:00 Because again, everybody's not in the Super Bowl except the final two.
19:04 So a lot of those fans and people, they'd be ready to go and start eating on next year
19:09 right away.
19:10 There's a right way to probably figure out when to put this relative to the Super Bowl
19:15 and the combine.
19:16 It probably needs a little tweak.
19:17 I'm agreeing with you once again.
19:19 You're right.
19:20 Well, listen, I got to tell you, I was talking to an executive and we were discussing this
19:26 and he goes, here's the problem.
19:29 We and he was referring to the league, have done such a great job of making each part
19:36 such huge news.
19:38 And he said something to me, John, you're going to love.
19:41 He goes after the Super Bowl.
19:44 It now involves all 32 teams again.
19:48 And he goes, they like keeping combine free agency draft OTAs, mini camp, just allow six
19:58 months of everybody.
20:00 We got a chance.
20:01 All right.
20:02 He's a great.
20:03 You know what that is?
20:04 That's a wave.
20:05 It comes up and crashes.
20:07 The wave goes back out and crashes.
20:08 They do a great job at keeping those waves going.
20:12 Nobody else does it in entertainment.
20:14 And that those what you just described are those waves.
20:17 They don't want to screw them up.
20:19 They've done a great job of setting them up and they do a pretty good job of refining them.
20:23 This one needs just a little push.
20:24 Yeah, I told her, I'll tell you what.
20:28 I have had my, my disagreements with Roger Goodell, but what a tremendous job the NFL
20:35 has done in marketing themselves.
20:38 If I was to become commissioner of hockey, baseball, NBA, all of them, the first thing
20:47 I'm doing is I'm going to the NFL.
20:51 Do you remember years ago, the NHL hired Gary Bettman and I don't remember where they were.
20:57 I think they hired him from the, from the NBA.
20:59 They did.
21:01 Okay.
21:02 I remember saying at the time, I'm shocked more people don't go to the NFL and try to
21:07 poach their top people because they're, they're missing it.
21:13 The NFL expansion, they let everything take time and brew their network.
21:18 I just tell you, the NFL has done the absolute best.
21:21 All right.
21:22 Now next week, John, we got a ton to talk about.
21:25 I can't wait to get to that.
21:26 Stay on the line.
21:27 I want to talk to you, but he is the one and only, the terrific, the great, my buddy, John
21:32 shop.
21:33 Remember, follow me on Twitter.
21:34 When you go to add Hondo Carpenter, follow me.
21:36 When you go to Instagram at Hondo SR, John, tell everybody real quick, what is your handle
21:42 on Twitter at J P Spartan at J P Spartan.
21:46 And remember folks, please, please, please like share, get the word out.
21:52 Enjoy it.
21:53 We'll see@si.com forward slash NFL forward slash Raiders.