John Lund Unleashed Ep. 40: Saleh reunion, Curry All-Star, David Lombardi and more!

Please visit my website to get more information: https://johnlundunleashed.com/

🔔𝐃𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐮𝐛𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐲 You Tube 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐥 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐮𝐩𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬. https://www.youtube.com/@JohnLundUnleashedPod/?sub_confirmation=1

John Lund Unleashed Episode 40 Jan 24 , 2025:

00:00 Introduction and Show Overview

01:26 Personal Anecdotes and Daily Life

02:38 Upcoming Guests and Show Highlights

08:05 Coaching Changes and NFL Updates

10:10 Robert Sala’s Potential Return to 49ers

12:52 Liam Coen’s Controversial Departure

14:43 Defensive Coordinator Predictions

17:59 Analyzing Robert Saleh’s Coaching Impact

20:05 Defensive Efficiency Charts and Analysis

22:30 Special Teams Performance and Expectations

25:51 Final Thoughts and Future Prospects

32:10 Quarterback Dynamics and Team Transitions

36:25 Offseason Prospects for the Rams

47:31 Steph Curry’s All-Star Status and Team Dynamics

01:03:33 Life Lessons from Athletes’ Humble Beginnings

01:04:03 The Impact of Scams in Sports

01:05:55 Banking Security and Personal Experiences

01:12:15 @DavidLombardi joins the show – The Return of Robert Saleh to the 49ers

01:15:02 Analyzing Robert Saleh’s Coaching Impact

01:20:28 The Need for Evolution in 49ers’ Defense

01:25:11 Special Teams Challenges and Future Directions

01:34:06 The Importance of Special Teams

01:38:50 Robert Saleh’s Potential Return

01:42:08 Backup Plans for Defensive Coordinator

01:46:20 The Offensive Coordinator Dilemma

01:51:50 Brock Purdy’s Contract Negotiations

John Lund discusses various topics surrounding the NFL, including the potential return of Robert Saleh to the 49ers as defensive coordinator, the controversial departure of Liam Cohn from the Buccaneers, and the overall state of coaching changes in the league. Lund shares personal anecdotes, highlights upcoming guests, and analyzes team performances through charts and statistics, particularly focusing on the 49ers’ defensive efficiency and special teams performance.

@DavidLombardi joins the show- The conversation also touches on the need for evolution in the team’s strategies and the challenges faced by special teams. In this conversation, John Lund discusses the critical aspects of the 49ers’ performance, focusing on the importance of special teams, the potential return of Robert Saleh, and the search for a new offensive coordinator. The dialogue also touches on Brock Purdy’s contract negotiations

NFL, Robert Saleh, 49ers, coaching changes, Liam Cohn, special teams, defensive coordinator, Matthew Stafford, Steph Curry, sports commentary, NFL, Quarterbacks, Offseason, Rams, Steph Curry, All-Star, Warriors, NFL Draft, Team Strategy, Sports Commentary, sports, banking, Robert Saleh, 49ers, scams, coaching, p NFL, NFL, 49ers, special teams, Robert Saleh, coaching, Brock Purdy, contract negotiations, offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator, David Lombardi, David Lombardi Interview, David Lombardi 49ers

TRANSCRIPT:

Good morning, unleashed Lund loyalists. Thanks for tuning in live each weekday at 8 a.m. on YouTube, Instagram and X.

Remember, please like and subscribe and listen where you get your podcasts. Be on the lookout for Lund loyalist perks by joining the club and if you really want your comments read during the show, you can use supers and stickers.

Now, as close to on time as he gets, here’s Johnny. Johnny.

SALEH REUNION, CURRY AND POST JOHNLUND UNLEASHED.COM

EPISODE 40 COEHN FLIP SALEH 49ERS ST UPDATE DANIELS MOM RAMS GONE? ALL STAR STEPH CHARLES/SHAQ POST MIZUHARA RANDOM JOHN LUND UNLEASHED A BAY AREA SPORTS PODCAST Oh yes, thank you so much for joining us. I’m sorry I’m a couple of minutes late. Just chased a dog down the street. It has been one of those days already, but you know what? I feel great. I’m glad I’m here. Thank God for you guys.

EPISODE 40 COEHN FLIP SALEH 49ERS ST UPDATE DANIELS MOM RAMS GONE? ALL STAR STEPH CHARLES/SHAQ POST MIZUHARA RANDOM JOHN LUND UNLEASHED A BAY AREA SPORTS PODCAST Just great. So you can see what’s going on today. There we go.

Happy Friday, TGIF to you. Uh, we have a long day today. Just like a second day in a row where it’s just overwhelming. There are so many things going on, but thank you, thank you for joining us. John Lund Unleashed.

On a Friday edition of the show. We keep talking about Robert Saleh day in and day out, but uh today is the day. David Lombardi is going to join us at some point. I was just texting with David does a great job covering the 49ers, 49ers insider. And uh he’s got charts, numbers and all sorts of impressive things. So he’s going to join us uh as I was just texting with him back half of the show and so I don’t know, 9:30, something like that, 9:30 Pacific time if you’re watching somewhere else. Um, anyway,

uh we will discuss that with him. Let me uh welcome everybody right after I get done looking at the chalkboard which we do every single day. Episode 40. We’re up to 40. Uh pour yourself a 40. So the uh Liam Cohen flip, I think I misspelled that, but I was in a hurry this morning. Uh Robert Saleh, a special teams update, Jayden Daniels mom, some Rams could be gone. Robert Saleh could come to the 49ers and some Rams could be gone. That would be a pretty much a good off-season regardless of what any what else happens. Uh All-Star Steph, I told you and you already knew this, I didn’t you didn’t need me to tell you.

I didn’t pat myself on the back or anything. Uh you knew that uh when the early returns came out that Steph Curry was going to be an All-Star wasn’t going to be about uh somebody else starting and Luka did get hurt anyway. So uh we’ll talk about All-Star starter, some guy named Quinton Post last night. Uh who knew that the stretch five was already on the words. We’re going to do that.

Fun with names with Charles and Shaq. Uh did you see this thing with Eppy Mizuhara uh the former interpreter for uh show. Hey, I’ll play that for you because you know it’s passwords and and I don’t know about you, but my bank is constantly hitting me up and I’m glad that they do that. But uh when you hear this audio you’re like what is this woman on crack? I mean it’s like this guy’s just like yeah just give me 200,000.

Uh random stuff which if you know the show at all uh we’ve got tons of random stuff and we just they just just happens throughout the uh show. Jayden Daniels mom, this thing is really funny as well. So we got a just an absolute ton. I got a ton of video and fancy charts and all this kind of stuff for you. So it is going to be a tremendous day and like I said David Lombardi who’s got himself quite the following on uh on YouTube. He’s going to join us as well and does a really really good job and I was watching his um show last night when the news came out. Let me move this computer back a little bit. There you go.

Uh when the news came out about uh Robert Saleh potentially coming back. So he’s going to join us to talk about that. Good morning, good morning, good morning. Good morning. Early bird goes with the what’s shaking this morning the the Tolbert. What’s shaking? You know that uh when I would do that people get really angry. You’re not Tom. You’re not Tom. Don’t do that.

Uh good morning to uh the skills report. I wasn’t scaring you. It’s just like I said I was going to come on at about 8:05 which I’ve been doing to give everybody a chance to get comfortable but then I walk into my house and then I’ll welcome everybody again. I walk into my house just a minute just to heat up my coffee and everything. So then my wife had taken all the coffee which is fine. I make a quick pot real fast. And uh then I look and you know we have a seventh grader and a ninth grader in the house and the door’s just wide open and it’s like nine degrees. Well for California it’s like nine degrees it’s probably 55 but then California blood and

the door’s it’s not unlocked it’s open. And so I walk outside and you know you know my dog we don’t have one of those uh those invisible fences cuz my dog is just so afraid to go anywhere. But I look and he’s like freedom! Woohoo! And he’s just down the road. I’m like come on man. So then I do that I come back and I’m not upset. I’m not upset at all. Uh anyway, uh good to see everybody. Uh Esteemed Diaz uh good to see you. I always screw up your name and I’m not going to do that. Uh let’s see who else we have. 59 fifty. I like that name as well. Wes is here today. Uh Tacky our good friend is here today as well and I already just saw the word horny. I’m not going to go not going to go sideways. Uh Scott, uh according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, Pete Carroll and the Raiders agreed to terms of a three-year deal.

Wow. Uh Pete Carroll goes back. That’s that’s not a bad move for the Raiders if I’m a Raiders fan to change the culture. He’s 73 years old, but he acts like he’s 53 running around chomping gum. So that’s not a bad move for the Raiders. My kids are Raiders fans. So hang on a second. Maybe he’s already texted me. It’s 8:23 and it’s a Friday. He’s in there’s no way he’s up. But uh Pete Carroll’s not a bad move for them. And I had did I had said before Robert Saleh worked for Pete Carroll but he’s not going to go to the Raiders. That’s not a way to a new head coaching job.

Uh hello Walt. What is it? I can’t find it. Uh yeah I had one of those mornings man and it’s Friday and I’m not going to complain because I learned a long time ago in this business. No one cares and you know I’m not digging ditches. So uh Joey, one of my favorites is here as well. I love you all equally all my children. Uh sports fan Vernon is here today. Uh the the the Gizmo is here. All right. So uh as I’ve been scrambling around it looks like fresh pat.

Uh looks like uh hello Lundy. I like people can call me Lundy. I have no issue with that whatsoever. Uh Pete Carroll to the Raiders. That’s an interesting one and doesn’t shock me at all. And if you want to look at uh Happy Bird who is uh who is uh Bababooie? Oh is that Bababooie? Bababooie. Uh thank you for the two dollar donation Daniel. I finally have everything straightened out as far as the finances around here. So I might make a buck or two on this thing and like I told you before my wife is just like look you go into the studio every day.

You laugh, you have fun. I sit in here and work my butt off. She’s got her own business and she busts her butt every single day. Actually she’s leaving for Tahoe today. Good for her. Uh good for both of us actually. Uh we like being together but you know how it works. You’re in a relationship. And um so anyway uh she’s off today cuz she’s earned it. She busts her butt inside and I sit here and screw around and laugh all day with you all and um she’s like you know be cool if you made a couple bucks maybe take me to dinner buy me some flowers. I’m like I’m working on it. All right. Uh so anyway good to see everybody. There’s an absolute boatload to get to today and I’m I don’t I don’t just say those things. Sometimes I do, but today I really really mean it and as you see from the show cover today there is Robert Saleh and

Kyle Shanahan unless something really weird happens uh they’re going to be reunited and it feels so good. How about it? What would you do? How would you rate me on that? About a ten and a half maybe? Uh that’s David Lombardi in the middle. David is going to grace us with his presence like I said backside of the show and there’s an All-Star Steph Curry and I love this time of year because you find out how popular it’s 50% fans, 25%

uh media and 25% players coaches kind of a thing and it’s very cool. So we’ll get into that but um prepare to be impressed as Pete Carroll’s going to go to the Raiders. So I I made this yesterday. So Ben Johnson to Chicago. I said Carroll, Schottenheimer, Moore, or Saleh in Dallas. Saleh’s not going to get that gig. So it’s going to be Brian Schottenheimer or Kellen Moore.

Jacksonville uh Cohen is going to Jacksonville. Saleh was there but canceled the flight. We’ll get into that in a second. I told you uh Carroll or Steve Spagnuolo which I’m shocked that Steve Spagnuolo and maybe it was just because Kansas City’s always deep into the playoffs but ever as much trouble as he gives the 49ers and I get it. He was the head coach of the St. Louis Rams. That’s how long ago it was since he got an opportunity to be a head coach, but his defenses are ridiculous.

As we well know. Uh Mike Vrabel. Uh I don’t know what’s going on in New Orleans. You don’t hear a lot. So that’s Mike McCarthy who I can’t believe would get another shot. Brian Flores, Doug Peterson late of Jacksonville uh he interviewed for that job. Joe Brady is no relation to Tom Brady. He is uh the offensive coordinator of the Bills. They’re still playing Kellen Moore and then Aaron Glenn with the Jets. That’s what it looks like. That’s why I popped that up only because we want to talk about Robert Saleh. So let’s get into that.

So here’s the deal. Rich Stroud does a great job covering the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and as you can see there Liam Cohen became the Bucks latest runaway bride, ghosting his bosses in Tampa Bay for more than 26 hours, blaming his disappearance on a sick child while secretly sneaking away to Jacksonville to become the Jags head coach when he’d withdrawn his name from that job Wed. Wow.

Okay, before we get into this whole conversation and why it affects Saleh, how it affects Saleh and then we get into some real fancy numbers thanks to a friend of mine uh who does a really good job. The SF Data Niners guys do a really good job. So we’re going to flash up some really fancy charts that I know David Lombardi used on his show yesterday and I will re uh they will reappear when David joins us, but let me just pop this up one more time how crazy this whole thing is. You and I talk about this all the time. I love to relate things that are not related to sports to regular life cuz then regular people like you and I

can it can relate to them if that makes any sense. So sports is sports it doesn’t often make sense. People try to fit it into a puzzle like it’s real life and it never never fits. It’s just not it’s not reality. As if you go to a game you know that you spend Monopoly money at games. It’s not logical. None of this stuff is the manner they make they just any of it. So anyway with that as the background that Liam Cohen better be uh better be successful in Jacksonville cuz he just torched a bridge.

You can’t do that. Like just say to the team look they fired Trent Balke who’s a complete jackass and they reconsidered and they’re going to hire me and I’ve reconsidered them. I’m sorry. They did agree to terms did Cohen. He’s the former Tampa Bay Buccaneers offensive coordinator. The fourth best offense in the league helped Baker Mayfield etcetera etcetera. You probably know the story. But that’s the backdrop. He says no when Balke is the GM and he was the latest coach to say look I’m not working with that guy.

Whether it be lame duck whatever the case may be and and even without Balke Jacksonville’s a joke. Shad Khan the owner waiting to fire Balke this weird thing with Liam Cohen. It’s just a bad organization. So anyway Liam Cohen ghosts the Buccaneers. They’re like you’re signing the contract dude or you’re not signing the contract. And so he doesn’t sign the deal which Tampa thought was a mere formality. Are you coming in to sign the contract today? Yeah my kid my kid’s sick.

I’ll get to it. Meanwhile he’s in Jacksonville. He becomes the head coach. Now that’s all fine and good and maybe this will be forgotten in time and maybe you don’t care about this whatsoever because it just delivers Robert Saleh and you’re like I don’t care about the labor just show me the baby. Like I get it. But to me it’s kind of just a crazy thing cuz you just don’t see it. You know you’re an adult. Now look I’m not much of an adult. I’m immature, but if that kind of situation happened and it has happened to me before I would call my employer at the time and say look I’ve reconsidered.

I’ve told you this before. I’m just not a bridge burner. All the businesses are way too small. If there’s anyone young listening bridge burning is stupid. So anyway this guy’s going to get fired in two years cuz Jacksonville’s Jacksonville and then he’s going to be like I’m really sorry it was stupid. Just God what are you doing? So anyway all right. That’s the backdrop that you may or may not care about, but what the residual effect of that whole thing is and you and I have talked about this over the last couple of days and I made it the big story again yesterday at johnlundunleashed.com. And it’s this uh Matt Maiocco coming up with and I told you this I said a couple of days ago 80 20 yesterday I said 90 10 even before any of this stuff came out.

I know a few people. So it said uh Robert Saleh in line to become 49ers defensive coordinator unless he ends up with head coaching position. If he is a defensive coordinator this season, it’ll be with the 49ers, he told the team. So that uh Robert and Saleh in line to become 49ers defensive coordinator unless ends up a head coaching position. If he’s a defensive coordinator it will be with the 49ers and I told you the whole time I thought that the bigger threat was not Jacksonville. I didn’t think he would get that job anyway. I thought because I think they wanted an offensive mind to work with Trevor Lawrence which ultimately they did.

But uh so Saleh’s not going to go to Detroit which was again he’s from Dearborn Michigan. They maybe have have better personnel. They’ll probably win more games next year and I thought that might be a better springboard than the 49ers. But Saleh’s got a relationship here knows Kyle Shanahan. I’m sure that he thinks he can fix things. So he’s going to come here if he’s going to be a DC and let me flash that up one more time. He’s not going to Dallas, not going to Chicago, not going to Jacksonville. Pete Carroll just went to Vegas. Vrabel’s done. Glenn’s done. That leaves New Orleans and I haven’t heard his name at all in connection with New Orleans and as we talk about all the time who just left New Orleans?

Dennis Allen a defensive guy. Where do they probably want to go? Offense. The two guys that I have flashed there which don’t mean that it’s right but Mike McCarthy and Joe Brady are both offensive guys. Uh Flores is a defensive guy. Peterson’s an offensive guy. Kellen Moore is an offensive guy. So I haven’t heard Brian Flores a lot. I mean so he’ll probably get the job, but usually you go one from the other and uh they had a defensive guy which by the way as I’ve said many times Dennis Allen has the personality of you asleep me asleep in the middle of the night. So uh they would go in a different direction. So I don’t think it’s going to be Robert Saleh. Robert Saleh certainly is not that.

He’s not a flat liner, but uh I don’t think he’s going to get that gig. So Robert Saleh by pretty easy math is going to be the defensive coordinator of the San Francisco 49ers. In addition to that and then I’m going to pop up some really cool little charts here in just a second. So in addition to that Matt Maiocco let’s steal another thing from a friend of the show our good friend Matt Maiocco. 49ers interviewed Brant Boyer for special teams coordinator opening uh served as the Jets special teams coordinator since 2016.

The 49ers expect to have position filled next week. It will not be Nick Sorensen, source said. He is not expected to remain with the team. Nick Sorensen’s not going to be on the staff. Uh he went from DC to possible special teams coach which he had done for one season in Seattle in 2021 to probably having an opportunity elsewhere and it would have been strange in the building anyway. I just I don’t know that that would have been great. The guy’s DC and special teams or now he’s just floating around. So he decides to go somewhere else. So we’ll get into the special teams and who Brent Boy Boyer is. Now he was a ten-year linebacker in the league. You probably know the name. But if you’ve been a special teams coordinator for what eight nine years uh for the Jets you must be pretty decent at your job. But we do have some charts

which we will uh talk about in when it comes to the special teams coordinator. So everybody caught up. Looks like Robert Saleh unless something unforeseen happens is going to be reunited and I won’t sing it again because people got angry when I sang uh the peaches and herb big hit. Hey it’s peaches and herb here on 973 your contemporary hits. Actually peaches and herbs is not a contemporary hit. So let’s go to charts. Let’s have fun with charts. SF Data Niners. They do a really cool job of this and somebody you should be following on social media. So

bottom is bad, top is better. That’s about as simple as I can make this whole thing. And the only reason I pop this chart up well let me go over the chart then I’ll tell you why I popped this thing up cuz there’s a reason for it other than to uh impress you with charts. So in 2021 as you see uh decent run defense but not much else on his 2021 Jets. 17 and 18 clearly the 49ers did not have a ton of talent but he was decent they were decent against the run and then you go above the Mendoza line there in 2020 better. And then what’s interesting is that in 2022 and 2023 his Jets defenses were good and actually the first half or not half five games of 2024 they were good. So they had really solid defenses for the most part other than that 2021 you can see down there with the Jets.

2019 they’re good at everything defensively were the 49ers. That was a Super Bowl year. So my point in popping this up is to look at Saleh’s defenses over the last seven years with the 49ers and the Jets. But also to remind you something that we know on the show is we if you’re new around here we have certain philosophies on the show and one philosophy is not overly simple and certainly not um not just mine. This is stolen but I just like to remind people of it is coaching only can take you so far. So Robert Saleh Saleh’s a hell of a coach and there’s a few different reasons why this is a great move.

One of them being he will maximize the players. He will maximize the players that the 49ers have. So will they have Dre Greenlaw? I don’t know Mr. Han. Uh will they have Talanoa Hufanga? I do not know. Will they have some interior defensive line help for the third time? I don’t know. So they do need to get some things straight defensively. They need some interior defensive alignment. They have to figure out if Dre Greenlaw is going to get a multi-year deal from someone else. I doubt it and I have he literally played half of a game. So I think he’s going to play on a one-year make good deal and uh I think he’s going to be motivated as hell and I think Warner and Greenlaw are going to be great and Saleh will maximize them. It’s a young secondary. I think uh Saleh it’s not talentless it’s just young.

And I think that Saleh will maximize that plus some people were suggesting some former Jets DJ Reed who’s a former draft pick of the 49ers would look good back in uh red and gold for the 49ers and that would add a veteran corner which I think Nor is great. Uh Green, Ronaldo Green is going to be a rookie. I think he could use a third corner there and a veteran and DJ Reed would look pretty good if he wanted to come back and wanted to follow Saleh or some other guys as well that would make some sense if Saleh could bring them back. I know David Lombardi said Javon Kinlaw I’m not a huge fan, but he can explain it when he joins the show at some point in the nine o’clock hour. So

again Saleh’s a great defensive coordinator and coaches who are really good coaches will maximize what they have. But don’t get me wrong in 17 and 18 they just didn’t have enough talent. So Robert Saleh is not a magician. He will work the talent that is there. He will maximize the talent that is there, but if the talent is not there then I don’t care what coach you are. You’re not going to be able to make bad talent good. Can you make good talent great? Yeah. Can you make bad talent better? Yeah. But they need to fix the interior of the defensive line. They need to get Dre Greenlaw healthy. They need to get Bosa healthy. They need to maximize the young secondary. He can’t tackle, he can’t catch, he can’t get interceptions, he can’t sack quarterback, but he can maximize what they have. So there’s a good chart for

Robert Saleh. Let me get before I go out to the lines and hear what people are saying. Watch this one too. Now this is a super fancy chart that I think David used in one of his

shows yesterday and this is even cooler from the guys at SF Data Niners.

This includes Vic Fangio. So these are defenses for the 49ers as you can see their SF defensive efficiency 2011 through 2024.

Look how cool that is.

Woo! So that again, bottom not so good, top much better.

So you can see Nick Sorensen in 2024 in the left bottomish side just under the Mendoza line there.

That was the defense of the 49ers. So even in 18 and 17 Saleh’s defenses weren’t quite as good.

Demeco in 21, Saleh in 20, then you got uh Vic Fangio there. 14 was his worst defense, that was obviously Harbaugh’s last year.

But when the 49ers were cooking with gas, 11, 12 and 13, you can see they’re very, very good. Demeco Ryans in 22, even Steve Wilks in 23, not bad.

And then Saleh again in 2019 when they went to the Super Bowl. So the two Super Bowl years you can see 19 and 23.

Pretty good defenses, but you can look at Vic Fangio other than the final year of Harbaugh in 14 which it all fell apart and I think they were what eight and eight that year.

Uh 11 through 13 when they were solid and competing for Super Bowls, NFC Championship so forth.

Really, really good defense. So you hope to get the 19 defense back or just in that range of what Fangio was doing, what Demeco did in 22.

Like they need to be in upper echelon defense clearly.

And I think that all ties in. You heard the words so much this year about complimentary football.

What does that even mean? It means that your defense, your special teams, which then leads to your offense.

Can I take more chances? Do I have to kick field goals with Jake Moody? Do I all of that goes into Kyle Shanahan’s thinking.

Can I eat can I trust my defense at all?

Well in 2024, I’m not gonna go for a fourth and short at the 50 because my defense stinks and they’re gonna give up a touchdown.

That’s complimentary football. I’m not gonna I can’t take this chance because my special teams stink and they’re gonna give up a big play that’s gonna turn the tide of the of the game which we’ll get into this Brant Boyer guy in just a second.

So how how about that? Are you impressed by these charts or not?

Because this morning I thought to myself, I gotta get these charts in because this is gonna impress a lot of people who rely on the show to be great.

So what do you think? There’s the Vic Fangio. So that’s 11 to 24 and Saleh’s coming back and then there’s

solid defenses.

Dun dun dun.

Thanks to our good friends at SF Data Niners.

Pretty cool, right?

All right, I got another one for you.

Now this is special teams related.

So let’s find out how good Brant Boyer is.

Shall we? At least on last year again, SF Data Niners.

As you can see at the top, this is expected points on special teams.

I’m I’m just charting you to death. Maybe you hate this. Uh I’ll find out in a second.

Uh the Steelers are best plus 56.2.

Niners historically bad at minus 63.8. I mean if you look, the Ravens were second worst at 38.7.

I mean they they almost doubled them. I mean I’m not a math guy and we don’t do math on this show.

Very, very rarely. Especially this early in the morning. Math, really? Charts, really? Numbers, uh

But uh so they’re dead last. It’s ugly. They he Brian Schneider should have been fired I don’t know less than midseason.

But you go to 23rd in the league and that’s where Brant Boyer’s Jets are.

10.5. So that’s a marked improvement.

But still they’re 23rd in the league and what I’ve been saying for for a number of days is

let’s go back up to the top.

Steelers, Patriots, Lions, Cowboys at plus 27.3.

Uh Bones Fossil was available and he went to Tennessee. I would have been all over that. So he was fourth best.

He authored the new kickoff rule in the NFL which I don’t know if they’re gonna keep that or not. It was on a one-year trial, so we’ll see.

But uh anyway, we had him on the show many, many times with Papa and I and it doesn’t mean that he’s great or anything else.

But I just know that the Cowboys were bad in a lot of areas last year.

They were fourth in special teams and Fossil had been with the Rams and a number of teams and very, very well respected and I would have thought they had a relationship with them.

Jim Fossil’s son, but he ended up going to Tennessee. I have no idea if the 49ers reached out or if you know he had some connections in Tennessee.

He must have because he wasn’t on the market long and he went to Tennessee. So whatever, uh he’s gone, he’s not coming here.

I’m just saying they had the fourth best special teams based on expected points on special teams and the Niners didn’t get him.

And if they get Brant Boyer, don’t get me wrong, that’s a marked improvement, 23rd to ridiculously bad in the 30 second as the 30 second

worst special teams or 30 second best or the worst special teams in the league or however we wanna term it.

So it’s better, but it’s not great.

I mean I would have liked to see like a top 10 guy in special teams, but uh anyway, whatever.

Um the Saints by the way at 9.9 there, their special teams guy was their interim head

coach. He I don’t think he’s gonna get the head job, so he’s just kind of floating out there too.

Maybe again, things are about connections and who you know and uh this guy Saleh knows this guy, so I’m sure that Saleh’s been talking to the 49ers going, hey this Brant Boyer

he’s really good. So I tell you all the time about connections in sports and if you wanna know who’s gonna trade with who or who’s gonna go to what team or who’s gonna just find out where the connection is.

And Saleh’s connected clearly to the Jets. This guy was a special teams coordinator.

He probably put in a good word for this guy and therefore he’s the latest guy to be interviewed.

Doesn’t mean he’s gonna be hired or at least I haven’t seen this morning.

But uh there’s a connection there. So better, but I was thinking maybe they could do even better than that.

So there you go. That is the latest as far as special teams and defensive coordinator and other than something weird happening, it looks like Saleh is going to be the defensive coordinator.

So what did you think of all those charts? Were you impressed because I did it for you.

I mean I did I didn’t do it for me. I just looked at all those numbers. I thought you know it’s gonna really like this.

The people. The people are gonna really like this and that’s why I did it. So what did you think about that kind of stuff?

Is that impressive?

Uh are you going to uh go and talk to all your friends and and say did you see the charts for the love of God, this was good.

Uh the the the the the yeah D lineman is what like people are saying

already wanted to go to the draft. That’s cool man.

Yeah minus 63.8 Nick J. I mean come on man.

That is ridiculous. How bad I mean there’s bad and then there’s like

double as bad as anybody else. Like the second worst one I didn’t pu I could pop that up again but I’m looking at the at the chat right now.

Um was like 33.8 I think negative 33.8 something like that. Not just absolutely crazy.

But uh yeah so they were bad. So if if you go from minus 63 to minus 10, it’s that’s the marked improvement.

I just think well you’re still 23rd. But if you don’t have I don’t know half the issues that you had would you win one, two more games?

I mean it’s very possible and you might be in the uh the playoff mix. I mean honestly, we don’t talk often about special teams and I don’t care what Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch said at that press conference about like

he cares about special teams. Hmm a little. Not a ton.

Uh thank you for the contribution. Don’t. It’s good to see you. Post needs a lot of mins and Roberts back lfg.

Um yeah I’ll get into uh this quitting Post fella and he’s actually got a really interesting story about Steph Curry which I thought was really cool.

Thank you for the donation by the way. Really appreciate it. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Uh by the way, um I gotta get my wife. She’s like I tried to donate to your show the other day and uh

uh but uh you know like she couldn’t figure it out so I I don’t know how to do it.

Uh what is this about? You’re talking about Holler. What did I do?

Um no I didn’t do it. I I have never burned a bridge. I have ne I have a guy, one guy and you wouldn’t know who he is so it’s it doesn’t make any point in in bringing down his name.

In the 27 years that I was on the air as a sports radio talk show host, pre-post guy, TV, whatever the writer, I’ve only had one guy and I don’t even know what I did to the guy.

I’ve only had one guy honestly who time and time again and I I I’ve learned my lesson and I won’t go back to asking him for a gig or or any kind of help or anything.

One guy and I don’t even know what I did. I have no idea but this dude just does not like me.

But I don’t know. But yeah if you’re Liam Cohen, I hope it works out in Jacksonville that is a massive swing of the bat because first of all it’s not going to because Jacksonville’s a joke.

There are just certain organizations that do not work.

But uh hopefully people have short memories because around the league Jason Light, the general manager of the Buccaneers is a well thought of fella and um

Liam Cohen just I mean my kid’s sick really and you’re gone for 26 hours and the next thing they know it’s unbelievable.

Like wow dude. Woo! All right, uh we will get back to it. Give me your thoughts on that whole thing. So again, just to recap, looks like Saleh’s gonna be the uh defensive coordinator.

We did tell you that if you listen to the show with any regularity, we told you that was gonna happen.

Uh we gave you the coaches, we gave you the uh the Liam Cohen thing even though they’re on the chalkboard they completely misspelled that name.

There’s no H in his name, but whatever. Gave you the special teams update as well and David Lombardi will probably join us.

Let me check my text because he said he would text and I can also see him in the green room behind me. So um yeah back half of the show.

So we’re looking at probably what time we got?

Uh we’re probably looking at 45 minutes uh for David Lombardi. So hang around for Lombardi.

He’s always got a lot of great stuff to say about the 49ers. So

make sure that you

to uh stay around for that.

All right, let me give you a couple more things that are football related.

We gotta get to Steph Curry is an All-Star today.

Uh fun with Charles and Shaq trying to say names.

This uh Muzahara thing is unbelievable.

So what we’ll do is we’ll talk about some more football things.

We’ll get into uh All-Stars Steph and some dude named Quinton Post and the story he tells us about Steph Curry taking him home.

We’ll get into the uh Muzahara audio which is unbelievable which because

passwords and safety and banks and I mean it it goes into this whole thing that you and I need to talk about that’s not sports related but we all are in the same boat.

So that’s why I wanted to play it and then I don’t know random stuff will happen and then we’ll circle back to all this 49ers talk once again.

So let me go here real quick.

Okay, I played all that, I played all that, I showed all that.

Pressed you with charts, blah blah blah.

Uh here’s another good thing.

Right, hopefully the 49ers with the 11th pick in the draft

do some great things.

Uh hopefully they have a great off season, maybe they sign a couple of guys, get Brock to a deal done, all these kind of things.

But that’s off to a good start with

looking like Robert Saleh is going to be the

49ers defensive coordinator once again.

Then I read this morning things get better.

because I didn’t know that Matthew Stafford was considering retirement because I watched his post game press conference as you probably did in Detroit and somebody directly asked him

and a lot of times what you’ll get from older players, you got it from Trent Williams, you got it from Joe Staley, you get it from guys near the end going, yeah, I I I guess I gotta start thinking about it.

And that’s not what Stafford said.

He essentially said, yeah, I think I’m gonna be back.

There was no kind of I might not be back, at least that’s not what I heard.

And as good as the Rams are defensively with all this young talent and I talk about the offensive line all the time, if Matthew Stafford’s not there.

Their backup quarterback, I think it’s only on a one-year deal.

There’s some guy named Jimmy Garoppolo, you might have heard of him.

So anyway, I look in the New York Post and really what I’m looking for in the New York Post is stories for the sweet clean family friendly caboose person and I see this.

Matthew Stafford’s wife, Kelly reveals where QB is with retirement decision as Rams want answers.

And the piece basically says he’s not sure and I’m like,

uh could the news get better?

Again, the Rams have a ton of young talent.

I’m sure that a lot of quarterbacks would like to play for Sean McVay, but as we’ve talked about many many many many many many many times

it’s hard to find a quarterback.

Now, Sam Darnold went to USC, he’s from Southern California.

If Matthew Stafford leaves, I bet that Sam Darnold would and he and if the Vikings don’t keep him, which based on the last two games of the season, it went from

Sam Darnold is staying in Minnesota and JJ McCarthy out of Michigan, the rookie ninth overall pick

is either gonna be shopped or they’re just, you know, he’s not making a ton of money on his rookie contract so they can keep him for a while and see if Sam is legit.

Now it sounds like Darnold could be going to the Raiders.

He’s gonna be a free agent and they’re gonna let him go.

And it sounds like he could go to the Raiders or a number of different teams there that could be looking for quarterbacks but if

the Rams are looking for a quarterback, I could see him wanting to go home, Southern California, work under

Sean McVay and be the quarterback of the Rams.

So they could make that transition.

And as good of a season as Darnold had and at times it was MVPish, Matthew Stafford is much better.

Matthew Stafford is better even at 36.

He can’t move as well, those kind of things, but Stafford is a killer, we know that.

He’s one of the once you get past that first layer whether you wanna admit it or not because he’s on the Rams, what do you get past that first layer of quarterback?

Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Matthew Stafford somewhere in there even at 36.

He just he’s ripped his heart out around here enough times and we know it.

And he can get look, he can have too much trust in his arms sometimes but it’s an awesome arm still at 36 and he’s a pain in the ass.

So if he leaves, that’s more good news for the 49ers.

Then on top of that and before I show you this next one which is more good news against the Rams, a young and up-and-coming team with good offensive and defensive lines

and probably the rookie of the year in Jared and uh Jared Verse and Fisk is really good and blah blah blah.

Then you hear this and look, I’d love for the 49ers to pick this dude up.

A hell of a run, Cooper Kupp may have just played his final game with the Rams.

He’s had a lot of injuries and kind of like the 49ers as good of a guy as good of a player as Kupp is.

After a while you’re paying a guy a lot of money, he’s getting banged up, he’s not playing a lot and he’s 31 years old which is not old but

for his injuries I think that the the Rams have maybe had it and they’ve got Puka Nacua and other guys and I’m sure that the Rams believe in

some of their young guys and Kupp’s making a lot of money so I could see Cooper Kupp leaving.

Now he’s gonna be somebody that everybody around the league is going to want but there’s two things to this.

A, Cooper Kupp and Matthew Stafford who have like this telepathic connection leaving the Rams would be tremendous for the 49ers.

So the off season would start Saleh’s back, better special teams guy, hell you couldn’t get worse.

Stafford could leave the Rams, Kupp could leave the Rams.

Thank you very much.

That would be a nice start to the off season and I would love to pick up Cooper Kupp.

Like I know that Ricky Seals-Jones is on this team and now you don’t want to spend a ton of money with the receiver room.

I’ve talked about Deebo on a number of occasions but could you imagine just for the heck of it, let’s have some little little bit of fun here that’s probably unrealistic.

But could you imagine a wide receiver room that hey hey Ricky, we know but just for like a year or two we’re gonna put Cooper Kupp in here.

You want to learn a thing or two about playing the slot.

So you’d have Jauan Jennings, Cooper Kupp in the slot and Brandon Aiyuk coming back.

Yeah, that’d be pretty good.

And then Ricky Seals-Jones could learn from one of the best slot players in the history of the game.

Yeah, that would be nice.

I I know it probably is not gonna happen but I just thought I would uh I would alert you to that fact that that’s that would be pretty cool.

So as I say Rams gone question mark there on the on the chalkboard, that would be nice.

That would be a nice start to the off season.

Get healthy, get Saleh, get a special teams guy, anybody would be better than Brian Schneider and that as I just showed you that chart that makes you wanna vomit.

Uh Cooper Kupp leaves, Matthew Stafford leaves.

All you gotta do is be great in the draft and get a couple of free agents and resign Brock and you got a pretty good off season.

But as far as starts go, as far as an appetizer to the off season, that would be a good start.

That would be a really really good start.

All right, before we move totally off NFL and then we’ll loop back to it like I said when David Lombardi joins the show in I don’t know.

I’m just gonna take a guess 37 minutes or so.

And we will loop back to the NFL.

Let me play you one thing.

This is pretty funny.

Uh it says uh Daniels mom.

I kind of skipped ahead to the Rams, sorry.

But this is pretty cool and

it goes back to uh the Rocky movies, right?

Uh women weak in legs.

Come on, Rock.

Hit the chicken.

Hit the chicken, Rock.

Women weak in legs.

So that’ll make sense in a second.

It doesn’t right now and you’re like, why are you yelling at me?

That’s a good point.

Uh here is Jayden Daniels’ mom who is uh also his agent

saying what she is most concerned about.

Of course Jayden Daniels the quarterback of the Commandos as they take on the Eagles this weekend for the NFC Championship.

This is hilarious, watch this.

Some girl out here, she’s got Jayden Daniels wall and

her mama said, hey honey, you’re gonna be the one who’s gonna go get ’em.

And I know that sounds crazy, but I guarantee there’s someone out there who was trying to get their hooks into Jayden Daniels.

So thank god he got a mama like me cuz it ain’t happening.

Yeah, I bet she did say something like that.

So that’s his mom who happens to also be his agent that is essentially saying no woman is getting her hooks as she puts it into my son

uh Jayden Daniels.

We’ll see.

I mean like uh Burgess Meredith said women weak in legs and that is certainly no offense

to any of the fine women who are watching the show like Joy and sports girl for life and all of our good friends.

That’s that’s not absolutely that’s not a dig at anybody.

It’s just as you say Joy.

Uh she loves her boy and she’s just trying to protect him and she’s also his agent.

And there is something to that.

I mean my son and I you know I don’t know.

He’s had some girlfriends in his life but I’ve told him so many times like get your career going, get your career going, get your career going and then you can you can double back to that but he’s in Arizona at ASU andI don’t know how you do it especially in the hot weather but he’s been pretty good about it but you know it’s just

can’t help it.

Like when somebody comes along, somebody comes along like you can be this whole thing like yep, I’m focused, I’m focused, I’m focused, I’m focused and then you just never know.

You don’t know when it’s gonna happen.

So anyway, I thought that was pretty hilarious as well because she’s sitting there going, you know.

And you could tell man, he’s a mama’s boy.

He’s like, yeah, I know.

I’m just talking about the Rams.

John, they have Jimmy G.

I think Jimmy G’s on a one-year deal.

Can somebody check that out for me?

Uh I think he’s on a one-year deal and he ain’t he’s not gonna be a starter.

Uh he’s a decent backup at this point but I could see Sam Darnold going down there so I don’t know what that does for you.

Uh F the Staffords.

Yeah, not a lot of people like the Staffords.

I put it that way but I do respect Matthew Stafford and that arm and I know we’ve had this conversation a million times if

they had gotten the 49ers.

Matthew Stafford instead of the Rams and the Niners were trying but you could tell that was probably a prearranged marriage because there was that whole thing

down in Mexico and uh Sean McVay just happened to be there and then there’s the Staffords and

I don’t know, I guess they never looked into that but the 49ers tried and that’s why when Christian McCaffrey came back came onto the market with Carolina

and they were fighting for him.

The Niners were like they threw in an extra third round pick and it was I think it was Cam Akers the Rams offering the difference was an extra third round pick which kind of was worth it for that because they’re like the Rams aren’t beating us again.

Imagine if they had gotten uh McCaffrey instead of the 49ers too.

It’s like kidding me.

I do not love kickers. Where did that come from? I did not we’re not they’re not drafting another kicker. I can tell you that right now.

Um did I ever tell you the story? All right, so let me do this and then we’ll I promise we’ll get to All-Star Steph before we get to uh David DeBardi uh coming on the show.

Did I ever tell you the story when so I was working with Tolbert in the afternoon and we used to have obviously Kyle on every other week so we’d have John on and then we’d rotate to Kyle in the morning show would have the other guy on, etcetera, etcetera.

I think now it’s John in the morning and Kyle in the afternoons. I don’t know if Kyle’s still doing it but he was when so when it was me and Tolbert and so I remember the time this is I don’t know when I start I started working with probably in nineteen so this had to be like maybe two thousand eighteen.

Something like that. And there was this thing where Sean McVay had had spewed off a bunch of plays so there was somebody interviewing him. It might have been my our friend JB Long who’s the voice of the Rams, I can’t remember but it made all these big headlines because I think JB was like what about this play? He goes oh that play is X Y Z right zip two on, you know.

So he’s he’s just naming off all these plays left and right and I was watching that thing and I know that McVay and Kyle Shanahan have this big rivalry going on and I’m thinking to myself I know Kyle could do that. So he rattles off McVay does I don’t know six or eight plays, you know, they show a play then he rattles off the name he knows it right top of his head and everybody’s like oh my god this guy McVay what a super genius he is and

I thought to myself Kyle could easily do that. And so I did the same thing but I the thing is is I didn’t tell Bob Lange who was the PR guy for the for the forty-niners at the time so he comes on the show and there’s a rule in interviewing

that if you’re going to ask something controversial or something that might flip the the tide of the interview or something that might piss somebody off or whatever you usually wait till the end because if you do it at the beginning then what happens is is you you kind of change the vibe of the interview and then you have fifteen minutes or something to go in the interview and you’re like damn.

So what you do is you have some fun you have an icebreaker. It’s almost like somebody who goes up on stage we’ve all seen this. You have a speaker right and he goes up onto the stage and he does an icebreaker and if it doesn’t work then it’s like oh boy. But you have an icebreaker you have a little bit of fun you loosen up the crowd a little bit then you go into your speech and then you have fun you know there’s a there’s a whole whole uh thing to it.

So we have Kyle on you know every other week and he’s a great guy and we’re having fun and everything we talk about niners a little bit we break the ice blah blah blah then we get to the bot the the end of this thing and like I said they like to know if we’re gonna spring something on somebody but I knew Kyle could do this.

So I had like six or eight plays that we actually had audio of and so we played the audio and then I asked Kyle afterwards what play was that. And so because I was like I know he can do this. Like this thing about McVay is stupid every coach could do that.

That was my premise is like every coach could remember all these like any play and these weren’t like some plays were obvious plays like you know a long touchdown or something and he would remember that but then some were kind of innocuous plays where I thought I’m gonna show that he really didn’t have because

people wouldn’t be impressed it was just like the big plays you know oh yeah I remember that play like the ball that went off like Ayuk’s face mask right in the NFC championship game of course he’s gonna know the name of that play.

But you know so I I kind of dug deep and I think I so I probably did like six of those or something and I told him at the time I I I gave him no heads up whatsoever. I thought this was a cool thing. Tolbert looked at me like uh I don’t know bro.

And so then I asked him I said hey Kyle I got something for him and to do this thing and I explained what it just explained to you which is I I I know you could do this McVay did it everybody’s making a big deal nationally about it I bet you could do the same thing and he kind of was nervous. I was a little bit like uh oh.

I might have got myself in some trouble here because if he doesn’t you know nail these plays then everybody says McVay could do it you know Shanahan can’t and you know the rivalry between the two and all that kind of stuff. So sure enough same thing boom he nails it boom he nails it boom he nails it nails all six.

And we get off the air and I’m like woo that was a cool segment everybody’s you know texting going Kyle’s a genius and this is gonna go viral as well and all this kind of stuff. I get this text from Bob Lange of the forty-niners you’re lucky that worked. You’re lucky he knew.

Oh yeah they were like oh because they sit right there when they’re doing the interview with them a lot of times and they’re just kind of waiting and they’re they’re listening they got their headphones on and they’re hearing listening to make sure we’re not stupid asses and asking them questions that are you know whatever.

And they never like send us a thing on what he can ask Kyle they don’t do that but they certainly don’t like us to spring stuff on him so uh anyway he nailed it and um they were a little bit nervous but then I remember seeing him that Sunday uh I remember going down and and seeing him that Sunday like at a game whatever the next game was and he’s like you’re lucky he knew all that stuff.

It was like heck man just have a little bit of fun. Anyway I don’t know why I brought that up but uh oh yeah about all the Rams and all that kind of stuff. All right let me double check one thing to make sure that uh because if I go down this road of I haven’t heard anything from him yet.

Okay if we went if we go down this road of Steph’s All-Star and this Quinton Post thing and everything then we’ll go back to uh football in just a second when we have Lombardi on and about uh twenty about thirty minutes something like that. So we’ve got enough time to go down this All-Star Steph road and then we’ll uh come back.

By the way thank you for coming in we’ve been on the air today about an uh not an hour uh forty-five minutes and twelve seconds to be one hundred percent exact. Thank you so much for joining us John Lund Unleashed we are here weekdays eight AM eight AM Pacific Time on YouTube.

Please subscribe on YouTube John Lund Unleashed Pod. We’re also on X and Instagram as well live uh podcast later right after the show we hit a button so Apple Spotify wherever you get your favorite podcast.

Do remember rather than telling you all these places we are on social media at John Lund Radio on Twitter and X and Instagram and all these places simply go to JohnLundUnleashed.com JohnLundUnleashed.com. We archive everything so we archive the show we archive uh podcasts we put the story of the day up there we have shorts that we flip up there as well and

we have a uh blog that we do the story of the day we post that video up there first and for uh insiders and subscribers to the channel so make sure you subscribe for that because that’s how we send that video out later in the day the story of the day. So we go through like you know how I am uh I don’t know twenty stories during a show or something and then we get ADD and we go all over the place.

So then we concentrate for a second and we send out a story of the day which we do separately and we put that exclusively on JohnLundUnleashed.com and we send the video out to our subscribers and then I write a little story around that on the blog. So make sure that you’re going to that daily JohnLundUnleashed.com and that’s where we have all the social media so rather than me telling you fifty places to go just go to JohnLundUnleashed.com.

Subscribe to all those things podcast show all those kind of things and we appreciate it as we are live right now on X and on Instagram. Let me check in with my Instagram people for just one second. Uh boy lots of people on that very very cool. So uh by the way one of my favorite people I just saw right there my friend Crow is uh hanging out on uh the Instagram so very very cool.

All right let’s get to the baseball or excuse me the uh basketball and the All-Stars stuff with Steph and then uh we’ll double back to David Lombardi here in a few minutes. So here’s the deal as you can see on the chalkboard if you’re new to the show to the right episode forty.

The Cohn flip and that is Liam Cohn misspelled Robert Saleh likely to the forty-niners as I’ve been telling you for days now special teams update we did. Jaden Daniels mom wants nothing to do with women because women weaken legs.

Uh the Rams who could be gone in Stafford and Cup yes please and I would like Cooper Cup on the forty-niners that may be unrealistic and now we find ourselves to uh Steph All-Star Steph. So let’s look at All-Star Steph and do a couple of things here.

Uh I told you weeks and weeks ago when those first uh returns came out that there was no freaking way that Steph Curry was not going to be an All-Star an All-Star starter I should say there’s no way that in San Francisco here in a couple of weeks that Steph is not gonna be an All-Star starter so Steph is an All-Star starter.

Shay Gilgeous Alexander uh is in the backcourt with him in the front court this is interesting. Remember I’m always talking about the old man team the Suns the Lakers and the Warriors pretty much in the same boat. Durant and LeBron will start upfront uh for the Western Conference. Curry is gonna be there Shay Gilgeous is gonna be there.

Here is Kenny Smith now this is gonna be fun you’ll enjoy this. Well maybe you will maybe you won’t but uh here is uh Kenny Smith who can actually say the name Steph Curry.

per night shooting forty-five percent and forty- Hold on that’s not right. Let me get this to the beginning there we go. Let’s play this. All right here you go. In the West surprise surprise Stephen Curry from the Golden State Warriors.

His eleventh All-Star appearance sixteenth season MVP of the game in twenty-two twenty-three points five rebounds six assists per night shooting forty-five percent and forty-

All right so it pretty easy right you could say Steph Curry that’s not a hard thing. So Steph Curry is uh you hear uh Kenny and EJ say he is gonna start in a couple of weeks here in the Bay Area no surprise but it’s a little bit harder uh saying Janis Antetokounmpo um it is not really that hard to say uh Jokic but uh apparently

Charles and Shaq struggle with those names. So really easy Kenny Smith gets Steph Curry and I’m sure for entertainment purposes only uh Charles and Shaq get harder names although being to the fact that they are uh on TNT talk about the NBA quite a bit these guys aren’t rookies and have been in the league for many years but yet they still struggle.

From the Milwaukee Bucks Janis Antetokounmpo that I say was in the neighborhood you know what I mean from the Denver Nuggets Nikola Jokic.

er Colin Jokic

with

I mean it’s not like like I’m not gonna go on a rant here but they always tell you in our business and I this is not just our business, you know this.

But the number one thing is people hate having their name mispronounced, right?

Well mine’s pretty simple, John Lund.

And still some people will be like it’s like really?

And my dad told me years and years and years ago, may he rest in peace, that one of the reasons why he gave me such a simple name was and didn’t you know, I mean there’s John, J O H N or J O H N.

That’s really the only things if I’m ever signing up for something or a bank or anything like that, I’ve like get asked that question.

But he never wanted an overly complicated name because he thought, you know, you’re gonna have to explain or you’re gonna have to spell it for people or you’re gonna have to so

it’s not like Janis Antekounmpo is a rookie.I mean he’s been in the league for a long time.

If there’s certain guys’ names you can’t pronounce that are rookies and more and more we if the NBA becomes an international sport, I understand occasionallyit’s Janis Antetokounmpo.

Like really?

You can’t say that guy’s name?

Now maybe that’s a Charles Barkley bit and maybe it’s back to what we’ve talked about a lot of times.That’s Charles being Charles.

Uh even though he hates San Francisco said it again the other day, called this rat infested and if I was the Warriors I’d be like get out.

I just I wouldn’t have him here.

I just be like, dude, I know you’re Charles being Charles.

I know you’re a big deal but he continually say that San Francisco is rat infested and all these kind of things when every other city in America, all these other cities in America should say have worse crime rates, worse problems, worse this, worse that.

If you don’t want to come here, dude, don’t come here.

In fact, I was the Warriors I’d be proactive and say you’re not welcome, beat it.

Like you want to be on a screen somewhere, fine, but we don’t want you here.

Just like you don’t want to be here.

So anyway, that’s a whole another rant.

And we are having fun with this whole thing but like if I’m Janis,

next time I see Barkley, it’s like really?

Like I’ve won championships, I’ve won MVPs.

Say my name, bitch.

Like say it and say it right.

Like are you kidding me?

Really?

You can’t say my name correctly.

It’s not that hard.

Uh and then Shaq like he talks to Jokic all the time.

Like they just had a bit on the air the other day.

They just had a bit on the air the other day.

Dude, they did a bit the other day.

Jokic.

His brothers are gonna come after you if you can’t pronounce his name, man.

So anyway, there’s that.

There is the uh All-Star Steph.

And there’s Charles and Shaq trying to say names which again, I’m sure it’s a bit and that’s fine and a lot of people laugh and so on and so forth.

But I’m telling you this.

First of all, I’m Jokic the next time that I see Shaq, it’s like bro.

And then if I’m Janis, I’m like bro.

And then if I’m I’m the Warriors I’m saying Charles, we don’t need you here.

So anyway, there are those things.

And then this is pretty cool last night.

Let me pop the they popped the box on from last night for the Warriors uh for the game last night.

So they beat the Bulls, they smoked them late.

I mean just like get out of town.

But remember the other day, look at that look at that fancy graphic I have up there.

See that 83 points, you can barely see it in red.

So I was complaining the other night against the Kings because the starters did absolutely nothing.

And there’s Steph back at it, 8 to 19, 5 to 12.

He expects even a little bit more but 21 points, we’ll take it.

But then look at the uh look at the bench there.

Gui Santos again.

Gui Santos, 7 to 10, 5 to 6.

He uh rolls it.

They got 83 points as you can see from the fancy red graphic there.

83 points off the bench last night.

Santos, Moody, I mean I don’t I don’t know what else to say.

When Moody gets on the floor, he’s solid.

Now is he gonna be that solid every single night?

No.

But still, Moody comes off the bench, double digit scorer.

Shruada, decent.

Uh Pojemski comes back, he looks good.

But it’s all about Quinten Post.

Who?

Quinten Post, the seven footer and we’ve been screaming and yelling

about a stretch five.

Well he’s a seven footer out of Boston College, 7 to 12, 5 to 10.

He’s gonna do that every night?

No, he is not.

But he gives you 20 points and after the game everybody was giddy.

Steve Kerr’s like, oh my god, big dude spread the floor and Steph Kerr’s like, oh my god, I love Quinten Post.

And it was like you look at it two different ways, don’t you?

Or it’s like, okay, Gui Santos has been on this team for like three years now buried

and has an apartment in Santa Cruz.

Are are we just understanding that that guy might be able to shoot?

Like he’s been around and I’m not saying this is any great revolution or revelation and I’m gonna go back to one of my show philosophies.

We’re gonna go back to that in just a second but Moody to me, I don’t know.

I I don’t know what Moody did.

I don’t know who Moody slept with.

I don’t know what the deal is but every time he’s on the floor, he makes mature decisions and then last night he’s six of ten, four of seven and you’re going

why doesn’t he play more again?

I don’t know.

And he’s gonna be on some other team at some point, probably next year and he’s gonna be in a rotation and he’s gonna be good.

And it’s gonna be one of those situations where you go, we used to have that guy.

And then you go down to Post and again, I don’t know what he’s gonna do but in 19 minutes and 44 seconds, if you score 20 on seven of 12, five of ten, I’m gonna I’m gonna break some news.

That is efficient.

Thank you.

Please give me full credit.

That is efficient basketball that he’s playing last night.

So 83 points off the bench, 131 106.

The Bulls stunk but still.

There is Zach LaVine at the top there and he’s been a guy that a lot of people talk about and just less than 33 minutes, he scores 24, four assists, three boards.

Um I’m not a huge Zach LaVine guy.

You’re gonna have to give up a lot.

He makes a bunch of money.

There’s been rumors.

I don’t see LaVine as a guy.

Vusovic is a guy that a lot of people want.

Last night, not overly impressive if he was trying to make a push

to get to the Warriors in 30 minutes, four of nine, nine points, minus 15 hockey stat.

And so I’m not I wasn’t overly impressed with what he did

uh last night.

So those were a couple of guys.

Patrick Williams is another guy up there with the uh with the Bulls that has been on the trade block, not really associated with the Warriors but again, three of 11, he wasn’t great last night.

But the bench does it.

Quinten Post was great.

Bunch of really good guys off the bench and then Steve Kerr said something that he always says when a guy has a good game.

I’m gonna play that guy more.

I’m gonna put him in the rotation more.

Like we’ll see.

He said that about Moody a bunch of times.

He said about Santos the other day.

We’ll see.

Uh guys did return though and the Warriors are at the point where I like I don’t care what somebody’s name is.

If Santos is hot, he stays in the lineup.

If Post is hot, he stays in the lineup until further notice.

It’s kind of like a hitter in baseball.

You gotta start going with a hot hand here.

Like Buddy Heild played 19 minutes, good.

He was one of seven, oh of five last night.

Like pull him.

And you gotta start playing like I know what the rotation is.

I get it.

Most coaches want to play with the rotation and don’t want to sit there and be like we’ll pull this guy out.

A lot of guys want to know when they’re coming in.

That’s that’s an important thing for their ment for their mental side of things.

I don’t care.

You’re 22 and 22.

Still 11th in the Western Conference and you just play the hot hand.

I don’t care and if somebody comes to me and says I need to know what my spot in the rotation is, your spot is as good as you’re gonna play.

You play well, you play.

If not, then welcome to it.

Quinten Post.

I mean that’s just how it’s gotta be for the Warriors at this point moving forward.

So anyway, maybe they had their stretch four on this team the entire time.

But let me play something that’s even cooler than that.

So nice job Quinten Post.

Nice job Moses Moody.

He always seems to play well when he gives when he’s given the opportunity and I don’t know why he’s not giving more

of an opportunity because I understood it when the Warriors in 22 win a championship when he’s young whatever.

But he’s always been older than his years, a mature soul as they say and every time he plays he scrappy defensively, hits open hits open shots, plays smart, mature game as I said and yet

he’s in and out of the lineup.

I don’t get it.

But anyway, here’s Quinten Post, you may not know him.

Seven footer, Boston College, 20 points last night.

But the story about Steph Curry, it’s like what is Steph every time you think I’ve heard everything about Steph Curry.

I know he’s great.

I know Lund always saying I was just the CEO and this that and the other.

It’s like I know, I know, I know.

And I say this, what other superlative can you give Steph Curry?

I don’t know.

Like I’ve run out of them.

I’ve said that a million times.

Like how how many times can you say Steph Curry is great?

But then you get this story from Quinten uh Quinten Post last night in the post game after the Warriors win.

Take a listen to this or watch this.

Good.

I’m like yeah, I’m good.

I figured out.

And he’s like no, what do you mean?

Like I’m gonna I’m gonna get an Uber.

And Steph’s like are you trying to go home?

I’m like yeah, I’m I’m I got you.

So at 2:30 at night, maybe 2 3 o’clock, I don’t know, whatever.

Steph is like I got you and uh I mean that just shows, you know, how how he is as a person and uh at that point probably out of the 50 people that were on that airport, Steph was the last person that needed to worry about if I got home, you know, but that’s just the person he is.

Great teammate and then obviously everything on the court.

All right, so you just heard what he said but I’ll just kind of recap it very quickly.

So here they get in about 3 o’clock in the morning and I’m I’m surprised like if I’m Steph and I have this kind of money,

I never drive ever ever ever again.

I’m not driving.

Um somebody’s picking me up.

I have a car service.

I have a cocktail weight in the back.

I mean it’s just, you know, that would be that would be me.

I would just be a big timer.

I’d be like get back in the back of, you know, some kind of stretch.

Like I’m not driving at 3 o’clock in the morning.

Are you kidding me?

I’m exhausted.

Anyway, Steph’s not that pretentious kind of a guy like I would be and so

he’s a queen.

Everybody’s like later, later rook, later rook, later rook.

Everybody’s gone.

He’s standing there going damn it’s three.60 in the morning, I can’t get an Uber. Steph, Super Steph, who’s, you know, friend to all, perfect man, looks looks it goes, hey rook, you have a ride. Now I’m gonna get an Uber even though one’s not coming at 3 in the morning, I got you.And then he was asked later in the interview, you know, how far out of the way did Steph go? And he said like 20, 25 minutes. And I’m like, wow. Like if I again, you and I, you got a buddy or something, me probably doesn’t know Quinton Post. And Quinton Post said right there,that was before he even played a game. Like this dude was in Santa Cruz more than he was with the Warriors in San Francisco. And it’s just like I got you. It drives the guy like 20 minutes out of the way. For you and I, average folk, that’s not a big deal.But for Steph Curry, like superstar guy, LeBron’s not doing that. LeBron’s not the last guy there going, hey rook, you know, just seeing LA. Like I’m in Manhattan Beach, where are you at? Uh

kidding me? No way. Not going into the valley, bro. Have a nice walk, have a nice Bart, have a nice San Francisco anyway. You get the point. So anyway,

what does Steph not do? We learn every single day that Steph does this, Steph does that, Steph is amazing. And I wouldn’t I don’t know. I wouldn’t have done that. I probably wouldn’t have done that. I’d like to say that I would, but I but I wouldn’t.

What do you think? What do you think about Steph just driving himself? Like I I mean, would you? Tacky says Steph taking Bart. Steph is not taking Bart. Kidding me? He’s not like uh Otani took Bart one time. How how would that be now? Like that was when Otani wasn’t even at like nobody even knew Otani. Like he could do it.

But now it’s like imagine Otani on Bart. I said Otani was on Bart one time because, you know, people are saying Oakland, teams aren’t saying only saying San Francisco. He he took Bart. And sitting on Bart, there’s Otani.

Like what? Uber Steph. That’s pretty cool. Yeah, I mean that’s that this is pretty much this pretty much sums it up. Uh right there.

Thank you Wes. Curry is God. Honestly, you think everything, you think to yourself, Steph Curry just like you almost get to the point where it’s like, my God, man. You know like when your your significant other will say something like, I don’t know, I’ll just pick a name out of there, Bob.

You know, but Bob does this and Bob sent her flowers and Bob and Bob and you’re like, oh my God, enough already, man. You text Bob one day and you go, dude, can you stop it? You’re making us look bad out here. Like Steph Curry, everything.

It just does everything. Brings guys home, hits threes, CEO of the team, it reps everything correctly, great golfer. Like at some point you’re like, because we all have that guy like he’s good at everything or that person is good at everything. Like Steph’s good at everything. He never screws up. Oh this rook.

The best the coolest thing I ever heard that a veteran did for a for a rook or a young guy was Joe Staley. Joe Staley would take young guys even if they weren’t offensive lineman but mainly offensive lineman who were free agents or late round picks, who looked at either, you know, rent or buying a place or whatever the kid and well young guys really didn’t buy a place uh

free agents wouldn’t buy a place. But Staley before he got married, like took him into his house. He’d have like three or four free agent or late round offensive lineman down in the San Jose area and they’d be living with him. And he’d be like, yeah, just you know, buy a few groceries every now and then, it’s cool. And he’d buy most of the groceries, he would he would pay their, you know, obviously it was his house, the mortgage, stuff like that. Guys living in the basement, guys sleeping on the couch. It’s like, yeah, we we understand.

Because these dudes were like, what? No what? I remember when Trey Lance came here and we did the first interview with Trey Lance. Sorry to bring this guy up. It has nothing to do with football. And um

one of the first things he said to us was like, oh my God, the rent here is unbelievable. It’s like, dude, you just pocketed a bunch of money that you’re we didn’t know at the time, not gonna earn. But you know, guys moving from where was it? North Dakota, whatever it was, and then he lived in Minnesota and things and then he comes to the Bay Area and he’s like

So, you know, Joe Staley’s doing that was like the nicest thing I ever saw. Steph Curry probably did that. I know that I was living in Pittsburgh, Mario Lemieux did that. Mario Lemieux puts Sidney Crosby in his basement and just said, dude, you live here for a while, that’s cool. Number one overall pick, the whole draft and I’m sure they got a decent amount of money in hockey after all, but still he still lived in his basement and

saved a bunch of money. I think good things he’s doing that when he’s done. Got another thing coming. All right, let me play one more thing for you baseball related and this is just there’s no real baseball discussion to be had today.

But I saw this yesterday and it’s gonna kind of send me on before we bring uh David Lombardi on the show. It’s gonna kind of send me on a little bit of a not a rant, not a rant at all, just a little bit of a tangent on this whole thing because I don’t know if you’re like me. Let me let me set this up before I play this.

So this is gonna be Eppy Mizuhara who is the former interpreter for Shohei Otani, you know that. And you know the story and it came out uh what beginning of last year when they were in Japan. And uh he was around the team and then it came out that he stole all this money to uh cover for his gambling debts and we were all questioning is that Otani who did the gambling debts and then and it’s come out more and more that as much as you may not like the Dodgers that uh

he absolutely was scammed out of all this money. So the backdrop for this before I play this for you is, I don’t know if you’re like me, but you have like 5,000 passwords, you can’t remember them, all these different things, your bank, you you have like a

three dollar I don’t know, not three dollars, I’m gonna say a three dollar coffee, you know, eight dollar, ten dollar, twelve dollar coffee at like Starbucks or something and you buy like a a scone or something and all of a sudden you’re getting this alert from your bank. Did you just spend twelve dollars and eighteen cents at Starbucks? It’s like, yeah, I do that all the time. It’s not like I just went out of the country and there was some five thousand dollar withdrawal from Japan. Like yeah, I just I I was at Starbucks. I’m always at Starbucks. Like what are you talking about? So anyway, I get that all the time. My card gets flagged for weird things and and they’re like

you know, I I get it. You’re trying to protect me. I understand that. But it happens all the time and it’s kind of a pain. So you’re like, okay, I in one sense I’m very happy that my bank is looking out for me and another sense I’m like can you just turn my card back on please? I’m trying to make a a purchase here and I’m at the I’m at the checkout line and everybody thinks I’m broke. Like it’s embarrassing. Can you please help me here? So anyway,

banks are overprotective, I get it, they should be. But then I hear that this morning uh from Eppy and he’s stealing two hundred thousand dollars and he’s calling this bank. And somehow they get a hold of this audio.

And it’s not like this woman is like, it’s two hundred thousand dollars. I don’t care how much money you make. She’s looking at Otani’s account. I’m sure that, you know, there’s money flying in and out of that account and it’s kind of like I’ll give you a quick story and then keep me going here because I’ll go ADD on you.

But I was in Vegas one time and I walked not that I’m a high roller, don’t get me wrong, I am the opposite. But I I walked into the high roller area and there was I know Michael Irvin was in there. It was it was a bunch of it was a bunch of NFL guys. I can’t remember the exact situation, but I look and I turned to the guy that I was uh hanging out with to the left and there was like a a stack of chips and I said how how much of those chips were? They goes they’re ten thousand a piece.

And there was no less than like 20 there. So I’m just and they’re playing per hand. So you you know, you’re looking at what? Two hundred thousand dollars something like that. And I’m just like, my God, man. So we’re just standing there. And of course, you know, pool’s a pool’s been nice for you. So they this guy walks over and goes, sir, uh because you know, there’s a rope and everything, but you’re trying to lean over to see what they’re doing and they’re gonna get out.

They just looked at me and the way I was dressed and like get out. I’m like, you don’t think I belong here? Kind of looked at him said, you only belong here and they’re like please, stop, get out. So, you know, everything is relative based on the amount of money that you make, the amount of money that’s in your account. So to me, you know, 50 bucks coming out of my account, I think I have my alert set at like a hundred bucks.

So if you ever try to rip me off, if you go under a hundred bucks, then you’re fine. So I get the alerts over a hundred bucks, probably more than I should tell you. Anyway, I I uh so let’s let’s stay on track here. So

Otani is, you know, making a ton of money. There’s money in and out of his account. I understand that, but as as I play this for you, two hundred thousand dollars is still two hundred thousand dollars. It’s still a lot of money. And this woman is pretty casual about this whole thing and it’s not like he’s being overly uh convincing or anything like that. Maybe it maybe this is why because he’s being so casual, but she seems to not think anything at two hundred thousand dollars. So

uh take a listen to Eppy A and he’s uh he’s uh sn he’s trying to steal two hundred thousand dollars at this point. I don’t know where the audio came from, but from me to you.

Mizuhara phone call with bank DOJ/Court filing in federal case. Behind this track. Okay, hang on, let me show her. Thank you. How may I help you? Well, I tried to log into online banking and it told me that’s not available at this time and I’m getting a phone call. Sure, I can take a look into that. All ready. And could you tell me the name of the payee and the amount of the transaction, please? The person on Sunday to

Yes. It’s about two hundred thousand dollars. Thank you. All ready. Now recently we come across a trend of fraud and scams, so we have been monitoring the online transactions closely to make sure our clients are not the victim of either. What is the reason for this transaction? For a car loan. Okay. You said it’s for a car loan?

Yes. Okay. What is your relationship to the payee? All right, I think that’s it. But it’s like we’ve run across a lot of fraud lately. So we’ll ask him something. Like like if if you’ve run across a bunch of fraud, like ask him what is social security number, what’s the last four of your social or like my bank, like I said, if it’s twelve dollars and eighteen cents at a Starbucks. If I’m getting a venti whatever it is,

iced in the summer, hot in the winter. But if I’m getting some sort of venti whatever it is, vanilla, sugar-free, blah blah blah. And I’m getting three vanilla scones. It’s like I I gotta answer fifty questions. This is two hundred

thousand dollars. I don’t care how much is going in and out of the account. It’s $200,000.

And she’s acting like it’s drive-through at McDonald’s. Like, um, sir, we’ve had a lot of fraud, so if you just tell me what this is for, then we can get you the 200,000.

It’s for a, um, car loan? Car loan. Yeah, car loan. Okay.

My god. Whatever bank that is, can we make that public whatever bank that is? Because I never want to use that bank.

She’s just like, kicking back. Sounds like she’s having, I don’t know, coffee and a cigarette. Sounds like it’s close to closing time. It’s like 4:59 on a Friday. Like, man, I gotta get out of here. This 200 grand, whatever.

And it’s not like he didn’t do that one time. He did that a lot a lot. And now and now he probably has ten different accounts and so he’s, you know, playing the shell game with all these different ones. But still if there’s 200 grand,

and I I’m sho- I’m show hey, I gotta go to my bank and look. If it’s 200 grand, you call me direct or something or I gotta get a text from the bank or is this you or I mean, come on.

And today’s Diane Edwards like, I don’t know if again, you tell me. I get an alert on everything. My card gets closed down every two or three days. Like, did you do this? Did you do that? It’s like, yeah.

These are places I frequently go. I mean, aren’t we in the age of AI where it’s like, yeah, if something happens, uh, you know, out of the country, in Japan, like what like all these different things.

Then yeah, I totally get it. I I you freeze my card, stop my card, text me, do all these things from a technological standpoint, make me put in a code, all these different things. What a cool. 200 grand.

Like, somebody better show up at my house. Is this you? Did you do this? She’s just like, yeah. So it’s for a car, right on. Anything else? My god, man. That is crazy. Anyway, there’s the latest on that.

Uh, Jason says, where’s Lombardi? What do we got? 9:30? He said back half of my show. So we’re in the back half. And we started at, well, we started at 8:15. I was a little bit late. As I told you, I was chasing the dog down the street.

Uh, he’s look at that. You are so good. He says he’s clicking in now. So let me get him prepared for for David Lombardi. He says he’s clicking in now and I’m gonna see him in just a second here now. So I want to I want to impress him.

I want to impress him when he does come onto the show because uh, he’s great. He’s got a great following on uh YouTube. He has 100% earned it. He is absolutely great. I see him in the green room as we speak. There it is.

If you’re not following David Lombardi on his uh highly successful YouTube channel with over 82,000 subscribers. What is wrong with you? And I watched him last night actually when all this

uh, solid news broke. As you can see right there, breaking, 49ers expect Robert Saleh, Nick Sorensen won’t return, Brant Boyer interview. Did a great show last night. He is awesome with the numbers. He is the guy that you have to watch

uh here on YouTube for uh your 49ers insider stuff. He’s got a great gig. Him and Tim Kawakami do a tremendous job and let’s get some more insight from David Lombardi, insight into what’s going on with the 49ers and here is the great David Lombardi.

How are you, man? Good to see you. What’s going on, man? Yeah, I was just talking you up, so I really appreciate the nice words. I I was finishing up my show and I was like everybody better uh change the channel over now to to John’s show. So hopefully

there’s there’s a nice bump. Hopefully we’ve brought some people over and it’s really cool to see you here on on YouTube because you’ve always been one of my favorite guys to listen to for a long, long time in the Bay Area. So I’m actually really, really excited. I’m kind of geeking out at the opportunity to do something with you.

Well, I feel the same way. I really do. And let me let me just again pop it up there and cover our faces for a minute, cover mine more than yours, but uh your page is awesome. I was watching you last night. I was texting with you and then I I I was watching you and you just you do a tremendous job. Your your mind works so well. Your numbers are so great and whether it’s with the Athletic or what you’re doing now with the

SF Standard and just doing the tremendous job you’re doing. So I got a lot of respect for you for a long time. And I think people don’t understand them before we get into the 49ers. If I’m not wrong, I know you went to Stanford. I think what I was at 95-97 the game. I this clicked into my mind one time. You were with us just for like a brief time, right? Didn’t you weren’t you at 95-97 for for a minute?

Yeah, I did the uh I did the updates like every 30 minutes or whatever. Yeah. I remember that. Yeah, that’s exactly right. So anyway, we’ve known each other for a long time. Uh, tons of respect. You you you do something that nobody else does with the 49ers.

And it’s no surprise that you’re as successful as you are on YouTube. So everybody make sure you follow David, you probably already do. He’s tremendous at what he does. So let’s just jump into this whole thing. So we were looking at obviously the situation with

talk to the Jags, but all of a sudden Liam Coen does an about face says his kid is sick. Actually he’s in Jacksonville. Dude, talk about burning a bridge. That better work because that’s not good. But anyway, he’s going to go to Jacksonville. The Raiders are going with Pete Carroll. I don’t think Robert Saleh’s going to the Cowboys or the Saints. So um, as it’s been reported, if Robert Saleh is going to be a DC, and I thought maybe the Lions would make sense, but that’s not going to happen, so he’s going to reunite with ca- with uh Kyle. So give us your thoughts on on Robert Saleh coming back and how big of a deal is that to you?

Well, first it has to become official. And I’m always wary of this stuff like, I mean I’ve done all these shows here the last couple days and I keep on trying to couch it saying, hey guys, we just saw what happened with Liam Coen. Crazy stuff is happening in this league with these coordinators and these coaching jobs. So they gotta get it signed, sealed and delivered. Maybe that happens today, maybe it takes a little bit longer, but it’s it’s on the right track, that’s for sure. You can kind of just run process of elimination. And we know that Saleh has told the 49ers that if he’s a coordinator this year, he’s going to be a coordinator with them.

And he’s interviewed for three head coaching positions. Two of those are now filled, right? Jacksonville with Liam Coen and the Raiders with Pete Carroll, which is another crazy twist of this morning. And it doesn’t look like he’s a serious candidate for the Cowboys job, which is the third job that he’s interviewed for. I don’t know what the Saints are doing, so that they’re kind of off on an island by themselves. But uh anyway, if if Saleh comes back, it it this is the big fish hire for the 49ers if they’re able to get this done.

Because they’re looking for three things. They were looking for experience, and Robert Saleh obviously brings that. He’s now been a head coach in this league, so he’s even more experienced than he was the first time with the 49ers. They’re looking for somebody who’s familiar with what they do schematically because they don’t want to change all too much, but they want to combine that with the experience to give themselves some adaptability. And the third thing is energy. And all I can think of when Robert Saleh’s name pops in my head is week six in 2019 against the Rams down at the Coliseum when they had the goal line stop and then Jimmy Ward was breaking up a pass of the Cooper Cup.

That was the moment the 49ers defense as we know it in this modern era was christened. And that was Robert Saleh became the face of that. He became the star flexing, fired up on the sideline. And I think that Kyle Shanahan realized that with Wilks and with uh Sorensen the last couple years that the energy level wasn’t quite there from the defensive coordinator position, the way that he wanted it to be for the defense. So Saleh checks the energy box, he checks the experience box and he checks the the familiarity box. And and those are the three things that the 49ers really needed and that’s why they consider him to be the perfect candidate.

Uh the great Dave Lombardi is joining us. Make sure you’re on his YouTube channel and you’re following on social media at Lamberti himself. There’s not anybody buddy better when it comes to the 49ers especially when it comes down to the numbers. Let me pop this up because I know you were using these as well. The guys at SfDataNiners do a really awesome job. I love those guys.

So I don’t know who it is, but he does need either, but I’m just like I I steal their stuff all the time. I try to give them credit, but as we can see right there, uh, you know, with the Jets he was good. With the Niners 17 and 18 a little bit more of the struggles. 19 they go to the Super Bowl and he’s so great. So I think the thing that I I was kind of looking at when it came to to Robert Saleh is no coach can overcome no talent. But I think the big thing with Saleh is whatever talent they do have, he is going to maximize said talent. So do they still need to get some interior defensive lineman sure. Do they gotta figure out Dre Greenlaw sure. Do they have a young secondary yeah.But what he’s going to do is maximize what the 49ers do. So let me pop this up and I I think you can see this. So to you when you see like this kind of a of a chart there uh with Saleh, obviously bad, bottom, better, top, uh 17 and 18 they didn’t have the great talent, but as as you can see even with the Jets, solid in 2022 and 23, they had great defenses and even the first five games of 24 they were really really good. So clearly Robert Saleh can coach.

Yeah, and and it’s funny it it followed a similar trajectory with the Jets as it did with the 49ers that 21 season, they were the worst defense in football. That was his first year and he just inherited a bare cupboard plus he stripped it down to to start rebuilding his own team, but it was very quick the the resurrection there from 21 to 22. So you’re going bottom left to to middle top. Uh that was just in one year of work that they turned that defense into a plus pass defense and then by 2023 it was plus in all categories. That was the number three defense in all football. So that was his third year with the Jets 23 and 2019 was his third year with the 49ers.

So you could see that there is a a parallel in the rise of both of those defenses. However, I would say for the the sake of the moment and you just in retrospect in general, I would say that 2020 job that Robert Saleh del-

delivered might be his finest work.

because it’s all delivered within context, right? And 2020, the 49ers were so, so depleted by injuries.

Right.

And look what happened in 2024. They they were depleted by injuries. I don’t think it was as bad as it was in 2020, but the defense fell off a cliff this past year.

And that’s why they got rid of Sorensen because the defense fell down to number 26, the run defense was number 29, uh,

and they they just couldn’t adapt when they needed to adapt when the talent wasn’t there. Saleh in 2020 without Bosa for almost all of the year with so many other guys hurt.

Saleh.

Kerry Hyder was his best pass rusher.

Oh man, look at him pulling that out. Yeah, I mean.

Yeah. So Saleh in in 2020, uh, that was the number eight defense by EPA that year.

And that directly preceded him getting the head coaching opportunity.

So I think football people, yeah, everybody recognizes that 2019 was knocking on the door of historical greatness. It was an awesome defense, but what can you do as a coordinator when things aren’t perfectly lined up for you?

That’s the big test and Saleh passed it with flying colors in 2020 and I think that that’s, you know, it’s not not as sexy to talk about, but I think that’s even more important for the 49ers if they do end up finalizing this moving forward.

And that was a great uh, that’s a great point about 2020 because we know after 19 then you had the injuries to Nick Bosa, Solomon Thomas in New York and everything kind of like this year.

Let me pop this up too because I know you’re familiar with this one, but this is another great one. So this goes back it even throws in Fangio, uh, throws in DeMeco Ryans and then you can see where 2024 was on that chart even Steve Wilks in 2023.

So they go to the Super Bowl in 23, they get they go to the Super Bowl in 19.

But then you look at those Harbaugh years. Now 14 with Fangio obviously is more towards the Mendoza line there in the middle because that was Harbaugh’s last year in which they went eight and eight. But then 11, 12 and 13 when they were in the mix NFC Championship games and Super Bowls, they’re right there as well.

So I love this chart that the guys put together because you can tell from uh, from Fangio’s time to Saleh’s time to uh, Wilks’ time to Sorensen’s, you got everybody in there through the a couple of eras there from Harbaugh to Shanahan.

Yeah, and the outliers of the past two years, every other year except for the past two, the 49ers have stopped the run at above average level.

You could see why Wilks got fired after a year and and why Sorensen uh, didn’t technically get fired, he got pulled out of the the the defensive coordinator spot. They wanted to keep him uh, on the staff, but it doesn’t seem that Sorensen wants to. That’s the latest report. Doesn’t look like he’s gonna be back.

But anyway, they’ve replaced both of the guys from the past two years and I think the root of the reason why is because the run defense is falling off a cliff. Even personnel deficient 49ers defenses and I’m talking specifically about 2017, 2018 and to a certain extent 2020 because of all the injuries,

even personnel deficient 49ers defenses uh, have had been able to stay above average in run defense.

And the fact that the bottom fell out in run defense led to so many issues over the past two years because the problem John is that you just lose control over the game if you can’t stop the run.

Like 2021 is a really good example uh, of the opposite happening. The 49ers really struggled in pass defense in 2021, uh, where’s 2021 on there. You could see it’s it’s in the bottom half.

Yeah, on the bottom right.Yeah. So so that pass defense was worse than this 2024 pass defense. It was almost at, you know, at the level of 2017, which obviously wasn’t a good year.

But the 49ers still made the NFC Championship game and they’re still a dropped interception away from making the Super Bowl, maybe winning the Super Bowl. They had already beaten the Bengals that year.

And the reason they were able to overcome the number 23 ranked pass defense was because their run defense was number two in the league. So they they at least had some rigidity up front

that allowed them to not just get blown out of the building. If you can’t stop the run, the whole thing craters.

Right? And that gave them some chance of controlling game flow to a certain extent that allowed the offense, which was good in 21 to to do its thing.

Uh, but but you can’t operate with a bad run defense and Shanahan has realized that and he’s swung and missed at the two straight coordinators in that regard. So they need Saleh to get them back on the right side of this graph.

That was a great uh, that’s a great point about 2020 because

we know after 19 then you had the injuries to Nick Bosa, Saleh, Thomas and New York and everything kind of like this year.

And there’s a there’s a typo there. Sorry, uh, 22 was number one defense on the right.

It says 14.

So just just to preface that there’s a typo.

Yeah.

No, that’s all right. I just I I was watching you last night. I stole this and I wanted to make sure that I gave you credit there, but great stuff giving us the insight on that one as well.

So so let me ask you this, let me just throw the charts off for just a second and and ask you this question, where is which is so what does Robert Saleh solve and what does Robert Saleh not solve?

So yeah, it’s better. I mean Nick Sorensen’s a young guy. I was surprised that they did what they did because you’re in a Super Bowl window. I know that the injuries happened last year, but Nick Sorensen was in over his head and all the other coordinators maybe, you know, who would have known where they would have gone after that. Pete Carroll’s gonna end up in Vegas, that wouldn’t have been the case. I know that a lot of people, you know, we heard some rumblings about who would have been backup plans and people didn’t like that.

But so Saleh comes in. What does he solve, what does he not solve?

Well, it’s gonna depends again on the the personnel that that the 49ers bring in to see what kind of ceiling they have. But I think as far as the floor goes,

one thing I noticed about him in New York, uh, and we didn’t get to see all too much of this in San Francisco, but we saw a little bit of it in 2020 is that he was willing to up the blitz rates when the defense wasn’t quite as good on the personnel side.

In 2022 and 2023 when he had his two best defenses in New York, the Jets had the lowest blitz rate in the entire league because they didn’t need a blitz. And Saleh back with the 49ers felt that he didn’t need a blitz and uh,

the proof is in the pudding. He didn’t really need a blitz and and they were fine. But when he absolutely did need the blitz, when uh, the pass rush was decimated by injuries in 2020 with the 49ers or when the Jets were talent deficient in 2021 or when they struggled a little bit more at the start of the 2024 season before he got fired as the head coach,

the blitz rates were up like near half of uh, like the midway mark of the league. And to and they were effective blitzes too. And that showed me that this guy can be adaptable. He doesn’t just stick with the same thing. And Kyle Shanahan talked a lot about that needed adaptability at the press conference right after they they announced that Sorensen wouldn’t be coming back as the defensive coordinator.

One of the biggest issues with the 49ers last year, they only blitzed 1.7% of the time with two or more men.

That was the lowest rate in the league and to give you some perspective, Steve Spagnuolo was bringing such blitzes like 13 or 14% of the time, like seven X’s. And I think in this modern league you you have to be able to bring aggressive blitzes.

Don’t necessarily have to do it a lot like Spagnuolo does, but you have to be able to do it enough to mask issues when those issues inevitably arise. And I remember that game against the Lions, man, they were helpless the 49ers over the second half because even when Sorensen did send the blitz, it was ineffective.

So there’s a whole art to it that I think Saleh has shown he can deliver on and and we’ll see who he uh, builds his staff with if he does come to the 49ers because all of that’s gonna be really important as far as evolving schematically with aggressiveness.

And I think that’s what the 49ers need to fix first and I think that Saleh brings the experience to be able to do that. How do you think and and I know you were at the press conference here and this question was asked at the press conference, did they need to evolve this offense in a certain way?

And the reason I ask is you know you look at Mike McDonald in Seattle and doing different things and Brian Flores in Minnesota and a lot of teams you go back to a Pete Carroll defense and you say, look, you’re gonna know what we’re gonna do, but we’re just gonna do it better than you. But everything evolves. So do they need to evolve the offense a little bit? I know I know Kyle and he said it at the press conference loves this defense.

But do you think Saleh brings a couple of wrinkles or do they just kind of stick to what they’ve done and what Kyle has liked in the past?

Well, I I think that Kyle specifically said, well, you know, I like the scheme, but we do need to evolve. And you’ve seen it in this desire. You’ve seen this through his hires. Like he literally went outside the system to bring in Steve Wilks in 2023 and the hope was that he’d be able to integrate Wilks into the system. It was kind of like Mike Shanahan in 92. Kyle would bring that up. He said Mike came in to be the 49ers offensive coordinator in 92,

even though he didn’t have a background with the 49ers. They loved what they’re already doing that was coming off walls going into Seifert and Seifert told Mike Shanahan, hey, lock yourself in this room and just study our stuff for the whole summer

and uh, then integrate your own things.

And that’s the idea that they had with Steve Wilks that that was a tacit admission that they needed new ideas. That they needed to evolve. And I think that when they brought Brandon Staley in in 2024, even though he wasn’t the DC, that was another tacit admission and I I don’t even think it was tacit. I think they literally said it. I have notes here. This is actually this is funny. I stumbled on these. Um,

it says the Ritz Carlton on it because it was the Ritz Carlton in Orlando. This is Look at you, bro. So I’m sitting there, I’m sitting there talking, we’re talking to John Lynch in the in the conference room, just a few of us. At the top of this, I have coaching and it says B Staley. So Brandon Staley and I have quotes, uh, I think I asked why what the vision with Brandon Staley was.

And John Lynch said, we want to play our style of defense, but evolve. That’s why we brought Brandon Staley in. So

it wasn’t tacit. They they literally have been saying we need to evolve by bringing in these outside voices and you put up the graph earlier with Fangio on it. Brandon Staley, Fangio disciple. Now he’s probably not gonna stay on the staff next year, but uh, how the 49ers have acted over the past two years shows you that that there is this need to evolve.

What Kyle Shanahan said a couple weeks ago shows you that same desire to evolve. And I think that Saleh, now that he has stepped away and been a head coach elsewhere and worked with Jeff Ulbrich and worked with different personnel with the Jets, blitzed a little bit more in a couple of those years,

he has evolved and and he brings the experience and the the the knowledge of the existing system that the 49ers need.

Dave Lombardi is joining us. Just does a great job covering the 49ers and I I I was looking away because I was going through my my 49ers list and making sure we weren’t missing anything because I don’t want you to miss anything.

And if you go to right now, I’m just looking at a piece that you just wrote at Lombardi himself on Twitter, the 49ers land their big fish in Robert Saleh. Here are the wild twists that made it possible and that’s on the uh, SF standard right now. So David is a multi-media superstar.

Just a cover himself.

I had my header and I was like, hey, hey, can you add likely to the headline here?

That’s what I did last night. It was writing something and I was like, oh yeah, this isn’t done. Like

likely.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So so if you refresh it, it’s funny because you’ll refresh it and you’ll see that a a new word pops up in the headline.

49ers likely.

Oh yeah, you’re right.

Yeah. You did. Very good. I was like, hey, hey, hey, wait, we gotta be careful with this, right?

Yes.

There you go. What a likely. That’s tremendous. I gotta show this to people. I’m gonna screenshot this and put it back on.

Um, the other thing that came about yesterday, let’s get into this and again we’re gonna steal, we’re gonna no, we’re gonna give credit too, uh, but uh, we’ll put this chart on there as well you and I and uh, you’ve viewed this before and

I mean the expected points here are so ridiculous. I want people to understand that I mean you’re looking at minus 63.8. That’s almost double what the Ravens do. It’s just unbelievable. But uh, two things before we get into Brant Boyer,

do you know if there was any conversation with Bones Fossil just because Pop and I used to have him on all the time. He’s a great guy. Authored this kickoff rule

and he goes to Tennessee and you look at where the Cowboys were in that thing. They didn’t do a lot right this year, but they’re at 27 plus 27.3

and Fossil quickly after McCarthy gets fired there goes to Tennessee. So I don’t know if there was any conversation about Bones Fossil.

Brant Boyer’s uh, Jets team and he’s been there since 16, a guy that they’re talking to right now and probably Saleh said, hey, I I like this guy, you might want to talk to him.

They’re still at minus 10.5, which is still light years away from where the 49ers are and they’re 23rd. So it’s it’s not Bones Fossil, it’s not as bad as the Niners. It’s better certainly, but when you when you look at that number,

do you know if there was any conversation with with uh, Bones Fossil?

I I don’t. I don’t know. There was no official interview with him. Uh, Chris Banjo was one of the interviews. He’s probably gonna end up with the Jets.

Jet Modkins was another one of the interviews. Obviously now

Brant Boyer was an interview, but I I didn’t hear anything on that front. I didn’t hear anything on the Darren Rizzi front.

He’s a good defensive coordinator was with

the Saints before.

I I’m of the opinion that and I think that, you know, the data kind of points in this direction. Brian Schneider before he joined the 49ers was considered one of the better different special teams coordinators in all football.

And Kyle Shanahan himself said you never hear a coach say this after he fires somebody. He said that Brian was the fall guy.

So I think that he was acknowledging, yeah, this guy has been a good special teams coordinator.

Right.

Just something happened. I don’t know.

I mean the the the one variable here that’s remained constant plus here’s more evidence. Richard Hightower who obviously struggled with the 49ers, they had the number five special teams unit with the Bears this past year.

So I think this is a top down thing.

And I don’t necessarily think it’s uh, oh the 49ers don’t pay attention to uh, special teams in terms of roster building because they clearly do. I mean they they’ve used a third round pick on a kicker, a fourth round pick on a punter. They signed George Odum, who’s one of the best special teams players in football.

I think it’s a mentality thing that that almost on a subconscious level permeates special teams that Shanahan in the past has said in as many words, you know, I just hope special teams doesn’t lose us the game.

Whereas you go back to coaches like Bill Belichick and some of the guys that are really obsessed with special teams, they’re they’re looking at it as a chance to to gain an advantage and win the game.

And I think it’s important to speak of special teams in that way because I think it bleeds down to how the unit ends up performing.

And I think that uh, you know, for the 49ers sake, hopefully Shanahan realizes this and starts to treat special teams a little bit more seriously on game days and the most tangible example I could give is 49ers have never run a fake punt, like a designed fake punt under Shanahan.

Wow.

Well, one time, the one time they ran one was Mitch Wishnowski just improvising and it got pulled back because of a hold.

So uh, I I haven’t seen them do anything creative on kick returns. I’ve never seen them run a fake punter or fake field goal. I I just think that having the willingness to run that, having it in your playbook once a year might

completely change how the

the special teams kind of mentality is going into the games. You’re trying to seize something instead of just trying to sit back on your heels and and prevent something from being taken from you.

Yeah, that I mean that’s kind of just kind of the way I look at it and I understand and people for, you know, all season long the 49ers were using this term and we were using this term complimentary football and I don’t sometimes I don’t think people understand that

if you don’t have trust in your defense which Kyle didn’t, if you don’t have trust in your special teams, you don’t have trust in your kicker, like it all comes together so that Kyle can maybe be a little bit more aggressive whatever the case. And I know he gets a lot of grief for those kind of things, but I’m with you

that I think if Saleh comes back and he can trust his defense, if he can get a better special teams guy, I don’t know what’s gonna end up working with Jake Moody, what was he 31st ranked overall kicker, so can they get his mental side back. But if they can get these things back on track,

then I think it’ll work from an offensive standpoint where Kyle can actually get it more more aggressive and and do some certain things. But I know last year he didn’t he didn’t he didn’t have any trust in special teams, he didn’t have any trust in the defense, therefore it’s hard to play complimentary football.

Absolutely. Yeah. And

I I think it’s kind of a shoot for the stars, land on the clouds kind of thing and that you know, if if you just instead of right now they’re shooting for the clouds and landing on the ground

with with special teams. They’re just saying, hey, we we want to be a mid-range special teams unit. Just don’t screw it up. Well, that inevitably in a hyper competitive league is not a good mentality because you’re obviously shooting for the very best on offense and defense. You would never say, oh, I just hope that our offense doesn’t lose the game.

You know, you you never say that about the offense or the defense, but you’re actually saying it about special teams. So I I really do think that it’s it’s hard to put your

finger around this because everybody just wants to point at one coordinator, one kicker and in this case, yes, the the kicker was probably the biggest portion of of those expected points that the 49ers lost was on Jake Moody.

But you have to realize that he was 13 of 14 before he suffered his injury. He’s 11 of 20 after it and why did he suffer the injury because they weren’t good on kick coverage because he got run over by DJ Dallas trying to make a a a a tackle on kick coverage. So

it all ended up being tied together. Like the ineptitude of one of the coverage units and I get it Moody didn’t have a great kickoff on that play either, but the ineptitude of the coverage unit led to the injury to the kicker and then if in case you didn’t notice, the next kicker got hurt the very next week trying to make a tackle. So that that problem wasn’t fixed. Like so this is all tied together and then it it just ends in this fiasco where you lose

64 expected points. It was John, it was literally the difference between them being a positive point differential and a negative point differential team with special teams. So it has to be addressed.

No doubt. Uh, that’s another thing. By the way, I just I got this so I wanna pop this uh, this back up. There is uh, there is the story right there that you were just talking about and they did put in that uh, they did put in that uh, change that likely. So there you go. David Lombardi’s piece in the SF standard. Make sure you check it out.

Likely land their big fish in Robert Saleh. Here are the wild twists that made it possible.

Is there anything there you can uh, oops, sorry about that.

Uh, is there anything there you I I I want people to go read it, but is is there anything you can kind of give us a tease towards in that piece? The wild twists?

Uh, well, I’m just well, I I mean the whole Liam Coen thing, it’s fascinating because that has drawn for obvious reasons national level headlines. Might be unprecedented, but this is what I wrote.

Coen ghosted his former bosses in Tampa who’d offered him top level money to remain offensive coordinator for 26 hours, secretly flew to Jacksonville and reportedly blamed his disappearance on a sick child. By Thursday night, Cohen had agreed to terms with the Jaguars, all while Saleh didn’t even make a scheduled trip to Florida for his second round interview with the team.

So that entire process ended up opening up Saleh to the 49ers because there was a period of time, maybe a 24 hour period of time from Wednesday to Thursday when Saleh was literally the betting favorite to be Jacksonville’s head coach. He’s obviously not gonna be Jacksonville’s head coach anymore.

And the one thing that changed, which is makes it even crazier here, especially from the 49ers perspective, the one variable that changed that Trent Balke got forced out as Jacksonville’s GM, which seems to have obviously been a prerequisite for Liam Coen to change his tune. He leaves Jacksonville saying he’s out of consideration.

The Jags finally realize, oh, maybe we shouldn’t have this guy who keeps on surviving head coaches around because Ben Johnson didn’t want him there and Glenn didn’t want him there and Liam Coen probably didn’t want him there. So they they get rid of Balke, the former 49ers GM

and they replace him with Ethan Wall, who was a member of the 49ers scouting department for almost two decades. He bridged the Balke and the Lynch eras and Ethan Wall probably deserves a lot of credit as the interim GM for bringing Liam Coen back to

to the table. And so it’s all this, this is a national story, unprecedented stuff, but characters who used to be in the 49ers building are playing major roles in it to at the end of the day clear the path for Robert Saleh to potentially come back to the 49ers. So I kinda wrote about all of that.

Very cool. Make sure you check that out in the uh SF standard, he always writes great pieces does David Lombardi. In terms of a timing standpoint because you put the the word likely in there, uh like you said really New Orleans is the only one. Dallas I I know Jerry Jones a little bit. I think he’s gonna go to the offensive side. I’ve been saying Kellen Moore the whole time, maybe it’s gonna be Sean Payton, but it looks like it’s gonna happen. Do you have any sense of uh timing here of of when Robert Saleh could officially become the Niners defensive coordinator?

Yeah and and then and then obviously the Saints and I mean there’s still head coaching openings technically there although the Raiders and Jacksonville those are those are closed with with Pete Carroll and and Liam Coen respectively. I I figured you know last night there was a ton of momentum. I think what Mike Silver said, I think it’s gonna be happening soon.Uh it it seemed that maybe Saleh would just, you know, an announcement would come soon today, but then there was a little bit of a backing off. I think Matt Maiocco said, you know yeah he said he’s gonna be a defensive coordinator of the 49ers if he’s defensive coordinator but that he can’t be head coach somewhere else. So that just it just depends on if Saleh wants to wait this out and see if something pops up.Head coaching wise it it appears that he’s got a handshake deal with the 49ers right now, but like Liam Coen he hasn’t actually signed on the dotted line. So then it’s just gonna be a matter of when when does he want to sign on the dotted line and if he just wants this all to be over and and you know I’m sure from his family’s perspective that they want to know where they’re gonna be at some point there’s a deadline there too. He he could sign now and it all will be over, but if there are some other faint opportunities.

Sometimes guys just like to interview for the sake of interviewing your your networking for the future, right? So and that’s his that’s his right, you know, the the the Jets gave him that right when they fired him in week five of this season. So uh all power to Robert Saleh there, but I do know that if this drags out a little bit longer then we’re gonna see that anxiety creep back into the 49ers fan base. That’s for sure.

There’s no doubt about it. It’s again this looks like 99% uh 99.9% where in your mind were were there any backup plans or what was the backup plan that maybe Pete Carroll’s name was thrown out there? Uh what what did you think if it wasn’t gonna be Saleh just for the heck of it what what did you think?

I think Brandon Staley’s a lot better coach than people give him credit for. And he’s already been in the building for a year. So uh I think you know when we talk about why Steve Wilks failed, they were trying to take somebody who was running something totally different and it was like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. I think they they they’ve been happy with with Staley working with the uh DBs this past year and I think that a lot of that went well for the 49ers specifically the part that he was running. So they interviewed him. They gave him that interview. They wouldn’t have given him the interview if they were terribly displeased with how he coached. He had the number one defense in football the one year he was a coordinator in 2020.

I don’t pretend to look at his head coaching resume which wasn’t good and and act like that’s how he’s gonna do as a coordinator. Those are two very different jobs. So I think that Staley was that that backup plan for the 49ers, but if they’re gonna go in a different direction if it’s Robert Saleh then it makes sense that he wouldn’t remain on the staff because this is a guy who who has succeeded as a coordinator in the past before. I mean it would be a coup for the 49ers if they could land Saleh and somehow keep Staley around but but I would get it if if if he left given that just the same way that I get Nick Sorenson leaving, you know, demoted at the very best from defensive coordinators. So why would you want to stick around the staff but they they interviewed DeShawn Townsend from the Lions, he’s a DB coach.

I just that that never seemed to be something that they would pursue as far as a higher because uh it didn’t seem that Kyle Shanahan wanted a first time coordinator again. He talked about experience and he might have been able to pick up some ideas from DeShawn Townsend and a lot of times the interview process is a sharing of ideas back and forth and then you give a guy some exposure for the first time. So I always thought that the DeShawn Townsend situation was was more of that for the 49ers. Um and that left Brandon Staley and Robert Saleh as the two candidates who who appeared to have a legit legitimate shot and I think that Pete Carroll’s name started to be floating around started to be floated around after the twists in Jacksonville.

Right? When Liam Coen said no thanks to Jacksonville and went back to Tampa, 49ers might have started sweating. And they’re like okay what do we do now? And that that’s where Pete Carroll’s name came up but obviously now it seems that things are back on a more orderly trajectory.

And the only thing about Staley that I had heard, I’d heard from some former players that that made me he wasn’t as liked and there was maybe a little bit of arrogance there and then when I looked at his number like 2020 with the Rams people don’t understand. I mean they were number one in yards, number one in points. They had one touchdown against you know these numbers, 12 interceptions. It was incredible. And then he just couldn’t turn that over to to the Chargers when 2024 and 2024 and I don’t care that he was going for it on fourth down. I don’t care that he was a bad head coach or whatever people want to say.

Great you know great coordinators can be bad head coaches. It doesn’t mean like Liam Coen is not automatic, Ben Johnson is not automatic because you’re a great coordinator doesn’t mean you’re gonna be a head coach great head coach. So you know I don’t I don’t know what it’s gonna translate to but I I know that like you said there was a lot of people in the building that did like him. Let me flip two more quick things before you out here and I’m trying to keep monitoring on things to make sure that we’re not missing anything because I know you got a lot of things to do on all this all this stuff. But um you asked the question during the press conference

about the offensive coordinator gig and of course you got to still go through the Rooney rule and do all those kind of things. Do you know where they are as far as looking for an OC for Kyle, will they have one?

They will. I I think that the you know the heavy favorite is Clay Kubiak because they wanted to you asked that question I remember in the press. Yeah yeah and Kyle just kinda served up some news to me there. I I was shocked actually. I had to go back and like replay it. I’m like did Kyle just casually announce that he’s the OC? Right. Yeah. It it Kyle works in funny ways sometimes, you know, like Kyle walked by in the locker room and you know just just you have a quick word with him. It’s it’s kinda funny. It’s a little quirky but but I’ve enjoyed it over the years but um this happened in a press conference and it’s like oh wait he’s he’s gonna promote Clay Kubiak and and Kyle he he said it but then he said it wasn’t that big of a deal but he wouldn’t have said it if it wasn’t that big of a deal. I think it was there was a little bit of uh both forces going on here.

I think it’s Kyle’s gonna remain the play caller. He should remain the play caller. We’ve seen around the league why that’s so valuable because these defensive coaches and you look at or coaches you don’t call plays. So you look at uh Todd Bowles and in Tampa or Dan Campbell in Detroit. These are coaches who don’t call plays. They’re in huge trouble when their offensive play caller leaves. Liam Coen goes to Jacksonville, Ben Johnson goes to Chicago. Oh god now now what what are the Bucks and and what are the Lions gonna do, right? So you’re insulated against chaos

to some extent by having a head coach who can call plays. That that’s really important for the 49ers. But you’re also much better positioned for success and this was not a good year for Kyle Shanahan play calling for for for numerous reasons. I think you’re you’re much more insulated when you’ve got a trusted voice in that offensive meeting room with with the head coach who can check the head coach but not just check the head coach also be a bigger picture set of eyes, right? That that he could see if you’re starting to go too far down a rabbit hole and I think that Clay Kubiak’s ascension to that offensive coordinator title even though if it’s not officially yet.

The fact that Kyle Shanahan wants to promote him to that title means he’s developing the trust to be the guy that Mike McDaniel was. McDaniel the only other OC in title under Kyle Shanahan back in 2021. And that was a really good offense in 2021 even though they were really really struggling with injuries along the offensive line. So I think that’s that’s really important because uh you want that healthy exchange of ideas and that healthy pushback within the offensive coaching room and I think that it’s a sign that that it could be there because he’s willing to give a guy a front facing offensive coordinator role.

Uh David I’m I’m so glad you brought that up because I was pounding the table before you asked that question and I I I was I was so intrigued by it because uh I was I was saying on the show like he need okay, you need a defensive coordinator, you need a special teams coordinator, but I said one of the things that you saw week in and week out was I want somebody who Kyle can trust which is the key. Kyle can trust bounce things off of I mentioned the same thing you just did a Mike McDaniel type where especially in the red zone. I know you’re missing Christian McCaffrey and all these other guys but are you becoming too predictable like all these different things that if Kyle can trust a guy what McDaniel brought and I thought they were missing that offensively. So when you asked that question and

he said Clay Kubiak and then you had to go through the Rooney rule and I heard Clay was talking to the Seahawks and different guys. So I don’t know where that stands right now but he needs Kyle’s not gonna just trust anybody. I don’t think Kyle’s just gonna bring somebody from the outside and say okay I trust you. It’s gonna take a minute like it did McDaniel he knew like it does Kubiak he knows. So I hope that’s the case because while we’ve all focused on DC and special teams and I get it. I really do think that Kyle needs somebody that like that back in the building not as you said to call plays but just somebody who’s in the room where he might say hey Kyle what about this? And I think that might have been missing.

I think it was definitely missing down the stretch of the game against Detroit where they passed the ball 16 straight times. I mean that that was a great example of you know great game plan. They completely exposed Detroit’s defense forfor for most of that game with a balanced attack. They’re running, they’re passing. Obviously like the past game was how they were gonna most hurt the Lions, but this is the NFL and if you get too pass happy, they’re gonna tee off on you. They’re not gonna respect any of your play fakes.

The safeties are gonna be reading the quarterback’s eyes and eventually the the quarterback is gonna start throwing picks if you’re passing every single down. I don’t care if it’s Tom Brady, Joe Montana, Brock Purdy, whoever it was and his second pick came on a tenth straight passing play.

And to me that was just a loss of oversight. That was the 49ers, you know, calling plays, calling plays and Kyle’s like this is working, this is great, but the whole time Kirby Joseph on the back end of that Detroit defense starts licking his chops. He’s like they’re passing every down and on that second interception

he there was a play action and he didn’t even did not even budge on the fake. He was like this is a pass the whole way and it was a pick and the 49ers lost control that game. And if you have a healthy back and forth on the sideline or up to the booth on your communication system say, hey Kyle, we’re we’re getting a little too far into this passing rabbit hole. We gotta keep them honest.

It you can do that when you have a Mike McDaniel. When you have somebody who is able to doesn’t have as much power as Shanahan but has that voice and can have the confidence to step up and say, hey, we need to change course here a little bit. And I think that’s really important for any offensive staff.

Great stuff, man. Real quick, we can I know I know I said I wouldn’t keep you long and I could talk to you all day, but real real quick. Uh, Brock Purdy, it’s not that it’s gonna get done, it’s gonna get done. But is it gonna get done quickly? What do you think?

I’m not sure. Uh, that it might that might depend on the 49ers here and and how quickly, you know, there’s so many dynamics. We don’t even know what the salary cap is exactly yet. So that’s gonna come out at some point in February. Uh, I would think they were so awash in salary cap space back in 2018 when they resigned Jimmy Garoppolo to the highest deal ever at the time that they got that done in early February. They didn’t even need to know what the what the cap was. They were that was

the infancy of of building this version of the 49ers. So it it wasn’t a concern at that time. Now every every dollar is a concern. So they’re I think at least gonna have to know what what the cap is gonna be, which is based on NFL revenues so they could properly structure this thing. Beyond that,

I personally don’t think that this is that complicated. I think that the market is the market and also you know, a lot of this is just an ego match because the the APY is not gonna be what functionally changes life for either Purdy or the 49ers, right? It it’s gonna be the guaranteed money and the structure, which that that’s what you need to know the salary cap for. But

we’ve gotten our APY answer through the fact that there are a lot of quarterbacks who are less accomplished than Brock Purdy in the fifties, including and that doesn’t include Dak Prescott who was less accomplished than Brock Purdy who’s at sixty. So if this is just a vanity kind of thing for for both sides, like for the agent and for Brock Purdy and and obviously for the 49ers not wanting to look like they lost in negotiation

49ers might as well just drop that at this point because they can work with a 61 million number just as well as they can work with a 55 million number by by the way that they structure this and precedent tells us looking at especially at the failures of a lot of these quarterbacks in the playoffs, precedent tells us with a growing salary cap and the this contract having to take a certain percentage of it that

60 61 is on the table. So I think it just is a matter of how quickly both sides kind of realize that and but every single negotiation John in history of negotiations always ends up being a little bit more I think about the ego and and and about the surface level numbers than it does about the nuts and bolts. So there’s always gonna be that component. So the question is how quickly do they get that component out the door and focus on the real nuts and bolts.

And and real real quick just because you already did a great job with this and you’re tremendous with the contracts. People have to make sure that you’re following David on social media. His YouTube channel is absolutely must watch, must listen. Uh, but you already did a breakdown that I I I actually I think I popped it up on the screen the other day on my show, but uh so just I’m just roughly speaking here. Maybe the first year is 15 on a cap hit and then 23, then like 28, 29 and then boom and hits into 74, but I think

uh you did such a tremendous job with it, but I think what people have to understand and remember is Jimmy Garoppolo back in like 18 made 25 million dollars and was the highest and then Derek Carr got it. We’ve doubled since that point, doubled plus. And so by the time you get to maybe that fourth year that you laid out and you look at 74 and people want to vomit or choke, but it’s like that’s gonna be the going rate. I mean that’s just what it’s gonna be. And his cap hit wouldn’t be 74 that year because by the time he hit that fourth year, it’s non-guaranteed basethat you can convert into signing bonus and you just you surf a wave. And what people need to understand is the cap is rising. So it’s totally sustainable to move money into the future. People

ll act like the bills gonna come due at some point. Well bills only comes due if you push if you unsustainably push money into the future. But if the 49ers have been doing this for eight years now, and they’re they’re projecting where the cap is gonna be based on the rate of cap inflation that there’s been and they’re moving that money into the future in a way that still fits under the lid of the rising salary cap. So it’s like there and there’s no penalty for doing this. All you do is restructure the deal. So it’s like taking out a zero interest loan. It’s not like they’re paying

interest on this this money that they’re pushing into the future. So I I compare it John to the salary cap is a bunch of sinks filling with water. Every year is its own sink and you can’t let the water flow over over the the tip of the sink in any given year. So your your expenditures are coming through the faucet and then your restructures are leaving through a drain that leads to a pipe that pushes the water and pours into faucets of uh future years. So you’re constantly exercising flow control. You’re trying to manage how high the water level is in every subsequent season. So far the 49ers have kept the level of the sink under the the the top of the sink and in all these years and I think they can continue doing that by playing the same game with Brock Purdy.

But there’s a reason that David Lombardi went to Stanford man. I I’ve never heard that that put that way. That was tremendous. Even my small brain went, “Oh yeah, I get it.” That’s awesome man. Dude, you do such a good job man. There it is right there. Make sure that you’re checking out David Lombardi. You probably already are, but make sure you are social media at David Lombardi on uh on right here on YouTube. You do such a great job man and thank you. I know everybody’s busy this time of year. Things are going crazy. Solid news at any time and so thank you for taking the time man. It’s great to see you. I’m excited to be on here. I’m having a great time with it, but guys like you really make it worthwhile to to really get knowledgeable and to give everybody a bunch of knowledge. But thank you man.

It was great. I I just wanna know when you’re coming on to my channel. I’m looking forward to that. Anytime dude. This is this is so much fun and it’s been just so illuminating for me and to just have so much fun with this whole thing. It’s been awesome. So thank you as always. You make us smarter when we talk to you and I know we’ll I’ll see you soon and I’ll be back down there. But uh thank you so much for your time and insight bro. We’ll talk to you real soon. Thanks John. We’ll talk to you soon. You got it. All right, there’s the great David Lombardi and again we flash this up again.

He’s got a great page. Uh you need to be checking it out. He makes you smarter as you just heard there. Have you ever heard the analogy that he just made with the the water going in, the water going out? See that’s what I mean. I mean he’s got it. And we’ll hit you up with that real quick. We just went over the charts as well. So there’s Saleh. It looks like it’s a 99.9 unless there’s something crazy and I did this before and there’s Saleh versus 2011. Go back in the show a little bit further. And uh you can look at those as well. But uh let me just go back real quick to my wonderful graphic that is award-winning

and show you that right there. So again, Saleh’s not getting a gig. It doesn’t look like to me. Chicago’s Ben Johnson, Dallas, throw Carroll out because he’s in Vegas. Shottenheimer and Moore I think are on that one. So Saleh would only be as a DC. He’s not going there. He already told Matt Maiocco. If it’s DC, he’s going to the Niners. Jacksonville is Cohen, even though it’s misspelled C-O-H-E-N. Uh Vegas is Carroll. That I did this yesterday so I was pretty on point. Uh Vrabel, uh Aaron Glenn and then New Orleans, the names we’ve heard, probably offensively related. I don’t know how Mike McCarthy continues to get jobs, but it looks like he’s going to. Joe Brady is there. Uh Flores is Brian Flores, Doug Pederson is interviewed for that job. Uh Joe Brady is the OC of the Bills by the way and then Kellen Moore on that list as well. So I don’t think Saleh unless there is something that New Orleans has on the table that we don’t know about and they just fired a DC and Dennis Allen, so they might wanna go in a different direction offensively. Who knows? Mickey Loomis, longtime GM

in New Orleans. So it doesn’t look like he’s gonna get a job there. Let me just pop up Maiocco real quick. You know this, but I’ll do it again. Unless he ends up with the head coaching position, it’ll be with the 49ers if he’s a DC. Special teams, we talked about that with David Lombardi, Brant Boyer is the name. Ten years as an NFL linebacker. Nick Sorensen’s gonna leave the organization it looks like and then David Lombardi who we just had on the show, not expected Boyer. So you got that stuff and then Lombardi’s piece which I just popped on while we were doing that. Are you impressed that I was able to multitask?

I am. Uh let’s see where is it now that I just did that. Uh there is David Lombardi’s piece right there. That is the latest from David. Make sure that you check it out from the SF Standard. 49ers likely, as he said, he added the likely uh land their big fish in Robert Saleh. Here are the wild twists that made it possible. So make sure you check out and support David. He is awesome. Gave us some great insight today. All right, uh we did a lot of great things today. Let me just recap as we do. Episode 40, Cohen’s flip, we talked about Saleh’s special teams update, Jaden Daniels’ mom, we played that for you.

She doesn’t want some girl getting her hooks into her boy. Rams gone, potentially Matthew Stafford, uh he’s looking at it. I don’t think he’s gonna retire. Cooper Kupp may have played

his last snap with the Rams. Those are good things to the off-season in addition to getting Robert Salah. Played the Charles and Shaq for you. They can’t pronounce names anymore. Uh, Mr. Post scored 20 last night to help out Steph Curry. We geesh we uh played for you the Mizuhara uh audio in which he took $200,000. He did that multiple times and the woman was like, yeah, sure, let me help you with that $200,000. Did you mean to open the door for you?

And random things we do throughout the show. So uh there you go. I don’t think we have missed anything today. Did a couple of hours. Hopefully you are better informed. Let me throw this up there for you real quick before you uh run off onto your Friday and start drinking. Uh did you see this thing?

Bill Belichick looking good there by the way, 24-year-old girlfriend. Uh if you don’t think money matters in life. Uh this is beyond the money that Bill Belichick is getting paid. Must have been windy there in North Carolina that day. Uh look at this, $100,000 in expenses for relocating. I I mean look, I I take a U-Haul across the country. I drove a U-Haul across the country on more than one occasion, but I’m not Bill Belichick. $100,000?

It’s gonna cost you $100,000? I don’t think so. $100,000 in annual expenses. Any like dinners and stuff like that or wooing kids or whatever it’s gonna be. 25 hours per year of private aircraft use. If you go over 25, like if you’re in the air at 25 and you got two hours to go, they cutting that off? Probably not. Uh $7500 a month for vehicle allowances. That’s nice for him and his uh girlfriend. I mean

if you got a if you got one at like a thousand bucks a month, that’s a lot. So I mean seven and a half, I mean you’re getting a you’re getting a few vehicles with that, aren’t ya? Chapel Hill Country Club membership. Never been there, but I bet it’s nice. Four tickets to all sporting events. He could be a big-time scout, per all Carolina events. Imagine the basketball uh tickets. He could sell those for a pretty penny.

And then access to a suite for home games, 80 suite for away games. That’s in addition to he’s getting paid. Like he’s getting paid. In addition to that. My lord. No wonder he took the job. Like I was thinking how could Billy like Belichick’s taking that job? What is he crazy? And going to North Carolina? I’m like looking at myself going, now I understand.

My god, man. Anyway, there’s Belichick. He’s getting a bunch of different perks for that. That’s the only other thing I didn’t play. What else? I think that’s about it. I think that’s all the damage I could do for a specific day. Gave you everything there. I gave you everything on the board today. The chalkboard. If you’re from uh David Lombardi’s group, thank you for tuning in as well. We have a great group here every

day. 8 AM Pacific Time, Monday through Friday. We are here. Welcome here for story of the day. If you don’t want me to tell you about all the social media places you can catch me. It’s very simple. All I have to do is go to johnlundunleashed.com. johnlundunleashed.com. Archives for shows which we do as I said every day. Archives for podcasts. We got the uh blog on there as well. So everything you need, you are super served if you go to johnlundunleashed.com on social media. We’re live not only on YouTube every single day where you should subscribe so you don’t miss anything.

But also on X and Instagram, we are live at John Lund Radio. So there’s lots of different ways you can get a hold of the uh show. That will do it, I think, unless we have any questions. Let me go back down to the comments to make sure that we have covered everything because I like to be super service. Thank you Wes, good to see you as well. Thank you. Thank you John. Thank you. I really appreciate everybody uh going through there. Um let’s see what else do we have.

Uh I think that’s about it. We have uh done all the damage we can do for one specific day. Good stuff from David Lombardi today. If you missed David Lombardi, here’s what I’ll do. I obviously will post the show. I will post the podcast, Apple, Spotify, wherever you get your favorite podcast. You can go back and watch the show on YouTube and then what I’ll do is I’ll separate out

David Lombardi under the interviews section of my YouTube page at johnlundunleashedpod. johnlundunleashedpod is where you subscribe and I’ve got the interviews separated out. So if you wanna hear me uh yip yap for the other about I don’t know, an hour and 45 minutes, hour and a half that we didn’t have David on, I will separate out that interview shortly as well. So that will do it. Have a tremendous Friday night. We will see you tomorrow, the uh the Saturday show. You wanna do the Saturday show at 10 AM. We’ve been doing that. It’s been successful.

So we’ll be tomorrow at 10 AM. Hang out for maybe an hour, 10 AM Pacific Time and then uh Monday we will be back as well. If there’s some breaking news over the weekend on Robert Salah or today, we’ll be back on the live stream as well. Everybody. Have a great day. Thanks for hanging out with John Lund Unleashed. Make sure you subscribe, like and all those things. Have a great Friday.

Thanks for hanging out with John Lund Unleashed. We’ll try to be better next time, though I wouldn’t hold my breath. Please like and subscribe on the John Lund Unleashed Pod YouTube channel. Watch live shows weekdays at 8 AM on YouTube, Instagram and X and make sure to have your alerts on for shows throughout the day or night. All things Lund can be found at johnlundunleashed.com. johnlundunleashed.com.

Goodbye.