Johnny Manziel
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Ryan Reynolds here for, I guess, my 100th Mint commercial. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, honestly, when I started this, I thought I'd only have to do like four of these. I mean, it's unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month. How are there still people paying two or three times that much?

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This, as always, is the Un-Undisputed. Everything I cannot share with you during Undisputed, which, by the way, returns with Nuclear Force on August 28th. I'll say it again. August 28th. Be there. Today, I will go deep on the new Johnny Manziel documentary on Netflix. I think it just dropped a couple of days ago. And on my personal interactions with Johnny Manziel.

in the all-time sad story he became. Today, I will go behind the scenes of last week's video shoot, which took place right here where I sit, with my brother Lil Wayne for the new theme song that he wrote and recorded for the new Undisputed, which, by the way, launches on August 28th. Be there.

Today, I will review episode one of this year's Hard Knocks and tell you why Aaron Rodgers' New York Jets are in for some very hard knocks. Today, I will tell you why my only hope for my Dallas Cowboys is that Micah Parsons, 11 from heaven, becomes the leader of my Cowboys in ways Dak Prescott is not capable of leading my Dallas Cowboys.

And today, in the end, I will share with you the biggest regret of my career. But first up, as always, it is not to be skipped. I'm going to start and I'm going to end today with the same question. You'll understand why if you stick with me until the end. This question is from Drew from Long Island, and it is, if you could have one do-over in life,

What would it be? I have two answers to that question, and the first one pertains to the aforementioned Johnny Manziel. I had a number of interactions with Johnny Manziel beginning back in 2012. I became a Manziel fan, as you might or might not remember from my days on First Take. The other night, I watched the new documentary of Johnny's life and hard times. It's called Untold.

It's on Netflix. I do recommend it. It's an hour and 11 minutes. I was riveted. They did a tremendous job with it. Johnny was very good, as always, but it made me very sad for Johnny and for me. I was pretty inside Johnny Manziel during those days. I had some good sources. I came to like Johnny. I still like Johnny, but I don't trust Johnny.

The best analogy I can give you about Johnny Manziel, at least the one I came to know, is an old sitcom from the 60s. It's probably way before a lot of your times. It's called Leave it to Beaver. Maybe you've seen some of the re-airs of it on whatever network. Leave it to Beaver. It was about the perfect American life of the 1960s. Featured one villainous character named Eddie Haskell. Johnny Manziel to me was Eddie Haskell.

It was the Cleaver family. Eddie would come over to visit. "Hello, Mrs. Cleaver. You look so nice today, Mrs. Cleaver." And as soon as Mrs. Cleaver was out of the room, little leave-it-to-beaver was left in the room with the older Eddie Haskell. "Shut up, squirt!" That was Johnny Manziel. Johnny's very smart, almost too smart for his own good. Great mind.

Sensational talent, sensational God-given abilities to run and throw the football, but also gifted at telling the adults exactly what they needed to hear. Can Johnny ever fool the adults? I think he's still trying to fool the adults as he's turned 30 years of age. He's a hard-looking 30. He's been through the ringer, has Johnny Manziel, because he put himself through said ringer. Johnny Football,

or as he calls it, Johnny F in football, given that money sign, exploded onto the college football scene, as you might recall, in what was his redshirt freshman year at Texas A&M. The documentary does a really nice job of backgrounding Johnny's days. It's what was called Tybee High School. It is Tybee High School, the antlers in Kerrville, Texas, where Johnny first claimed his fame.

He was something Johnny Manziel. Couldn't keep him out of the starting lineup at Tyvee. Also a great baseball player at Tyvee. But just untackleable. Threw for yards that nobody's ever going to throw for in high school football. Wanted to go to the University of Texas. Had grown up wanting to be a Texas quarterback. They weren't interested. He was just too little. But he did go to rival Texas A&M.

and they couldn't keep him out of the starting lineup when he was a freshman redshirt his first year already had had an incident on campus got drunk arrested for fighting it was an ugly scene but they just couldn't keep him down in his redshirt freshman year and yet as johnny points out from the start his motto was win or lose we booze

He and his good friend from high school named Nate Fitch, they called him Uncle Nate. He was sort of Johnny's partner in crime. Didn't play football, but was Johnny's running buddy. Became his sort of quasi-business manager in those years. And what came clear to me in the documentary was, from the start, Johnny only played football to party. As he said, he developed an alter ego of Johnny, pardon my language, Johnny fucking football, because Johnny

to Johnny Manziel, Johnny Football, and I quote Johnny, "never had a bad time." So the whole point of Johnny Manziel was he found that if he won a football game or if he starred in a football game, it gave him more and more license to star at the party and win the party. And all he really cared about was the party. As he says, "I'm just at heart a frat boy."

Johnny liked his booze, and he started to like his drugs. And this is all happening during his red-shirt freshman year at Texas A&M, in which he's on his way to becoming the first freshman ever to win the Heisman Trophy.

Johnny divulges one anecdote after another. Do you remember the Scooby-Doo pictures? We talked a lot about them on first take because Johnny looked like he was wasted at some Halloween party with arms around this girl and this girl and this girl in a Scooby-Doo Halloween costume. Exploded all over the Internet, obviously. Coaches were horrified. Cliff Kingsbury is quoted liberally in Johnny's documentary. He was the offensive coordinator at this point at A&M.

Cliff is basically saying we're trying everything possible just to keep him eligible, keep him afloat, keep him barely in bounds. And it got so bad that that Halloween party was the night before they were to fly to Mississippi State. This is that redshirt freshman year to play a big SEC game at Mississippi State that's going to set up a bigger Auburn game and then the biggest game of the year is two weeks later at Alabama.

And it's pointed out that Johnny was so hung over on Friday from the Halloween party that they weren't sure he could perform on Saturday. But did he ever go back? I don't have time. I don't want to waste your time with this. Go look at the numbers Johnny's putting up as a redshirt freshman. Look at the yards he's right. He averaged over 100 yards rushing per game. He's got some 300 yard games. He's got some 400 yard passing games. And yet he's

If the world had known he was so hungover on the flight to Mississippi State for that game, if the Heisman voters had known this, obviously Johnny is forever disqualified. But nobody knew it because Johnny could fool those adults. He could snap back into yes, sir, no, sir mode and fool the adults at the pre or post game press conferences forever.

in ways I'd never seen before, and ultimately he was fooling me. I'm hearing bits and pieces. Johnny's got a drinking problem. Johnny's starting to experiment more and more with this drug and that drug. And I'm thinking, God. And I went with it on first take, but I had people above me at ESPN saying, you can mention the alcohol, but let's not do the drugs because we don't have any proof of the drugs. I said,

I'm sure there's some drugs involved here, if not initially just the marijuana, but it's starting to segue into, as a gateway drug, into deeper and deeper drug use. Now, let's steer clear of that. And I kick myself after watching the documentary. I wish I'd gone a little harder. I wish I'd listened to my own screamy instincts. Careful, careful, careful. But I got so swept up in the ability. Trust me on this.

This is as rare a package of ability as I have ever seen on a football field. I know he wasn't the tallest guy. He didn't have Brady's six feet, four inch height, Peyton's six, five. He didn't know. He wasn't prototype, obviously. He had huge hands, which helped. He measured at the combine five, 11 and three quarters. So let's give him six feet ish. It was big enough.

By his second year in college, he was playing around 210-ish, so it was strong enough. He was put together. He had some stature. He did not get knocked around or beat up easily. He could take his punishment and give some punishment on the football field, and he was shockingly quick.

I've often talked about Emmitt Smith's quickness in a confined space. This barely make you miss. Johnny had a lot of that. I'm not saying Johnny was Emmitt Smith, and obviously I'm not saying he's Michael Vick or Lamar. It was in a different package, more of a quickness package than a speed package. He didn't time well in the 40. His best was in the 4.5 range. Still fast enough.

But the quickness, the make you miss was extraordinary. And remember, he's completing 70% of his passes. His second year at A&M, he was second in the nation at yards per completion, per completion from the pocket, from the pocket.

He could throw the football on a dime. He was a deadly accurate passer in the pocket and also on the move. He had Mike Evans. I give you that six feet, five inches of Mike Evans. But Johnny Manziel was an extraordinary talent, a playmaker of the highest order, under fire, under stress, in the clutch. And I got lost in that because...

He came back to put up big numbers against Auburn, and here they went to Tuscaloosa, and here they went against Nick Saban's firepower on offense. It was going to be very difficult to outscore Alabama at Alabama, and Johnny pulled it off. Johnny made the two greatest throws of his career late in that game as Alabama stormed back from, I think, Johnny went up 20-0 to start with.

Johnny made two late throws, the second for a touchdown that put the game away. They were as sweet as you can throw them. Under fire, under heat, under pressure in Tuscaloosa. I was watching up in my room up in Bristol, Connecticut at ESPN on that Saturday. Ernestine, my wife, was watching with me, and I said, this kid is something else, something I have not seen. Johnny won the Heisman that day.

There's a quote from one of the leaders at Texas A&M. He's one of the strongest voices, one of their websites, Texags. And he's quoted as saying in the documentary that the Alabama game changed the course of our history at Texas A&M in football forever, and I believe it did. They estimated that the Heisman Johnny won was worth $37 million in publicity to Texas A&M, $37 million.

It was the springboard to the donations that allowed them to build a whole new stadium, a beautiful new stadium, the house that Johnny built. And yet it was pointed out again and again, as his buddy Nate said, Johnny never looked at a playbook. Johnny did no studying whatsoever in college or unfortunately in pro football. He didn't do study. He did not love football.

He loved what happened after football games. He just loved to party. Johnny wanted to be paid, though, for what he did on the football field because all of a sudden everybody wanted Johnny's autograph on all kinds of memorabilia. And Johnny and Uncle Nate, his buddy, put together quite a business. And they thought it was outrageous that he could not be paid according to the NCAA. And Johnny admits in the documentary that

that he still is furious with all things NCAA. So they began to make more and more money from doing autograph signings all over the country via private jet from Miami to LA. And obviously, Johnny got caught, Johnny got busted, and he got suspended for all of a half a game against Rice to start his second year. To sort of hold off the pack of doubters

and bloodhounds out there trying to get to the bottom of what Johnny Manziel was, Uncle Nate, Nate Fitch, the partner in crime, says they actually invented a narrative that Johnny came from a wealthy family. So he didn't make the money off autograph signings they told the media and any adult who would listen, that this money actually came from Johnny's parents.

I read it again and again. They show me in the documentary saying he comes from oil money. Well, it was common knowledge, although Nate is saying that it was bogus knowledge, a narrative invented to fool the adults who were trying to get to the bottom of what is Johnny Manziel really all about.

He's off hanging with Drake. He's hanging with this celebrity and that Snoop, and he's everywhere. He has become a national, if not international, celebrity as they led up to a draft for which Johnny's entourage at that point, and I was close to several of them,

The entourage became unsure Johnny could even pass the drug test at the combine. He wasn't going to throw at the combine, but they didn't know if he could pass the drug test. Johnny says in the documentary that he had to drink gallons and gallons of water just to pee the drugs out of his system to the point that he could pass the drug test, and somehow he pulled it off and passed. He put on a show at his pro day.

He did convince a lot of NFL people, yet when the Browns came for a private workout, the receivers he had chosen didn't even show up. Everything was so disorganized, and some of the receivers he was running with had their issues also. They didn't show up for his Browns workout, and his agent had to catch passes from him. Yet the Browns ultimately were fooled, as was I. I kept saying before that draft,

If Johnny has any alcohol issues, I'm out. I said it again and again on live national TV, on ESPN, on First Take, again and again. I wanted to say if he has any drug issues, I'm really out, but I didn't. And I should have listened to myself, and I should have been out before the draft, but I was not.

I could have seen a scenario whereby Houston would have taken him, and I think Houston was very interested in the number one overall pick, which they ultimately used on Jadavia and Clowney. But it's reported in the documentary, according to Johnny and his agent, that Johnny did go to Houston for an interview, wound up playing golf at River Oaks Country Club, got wasted, not sure how, but he got wasted by the fourth or fifth hole, his shirt's off, he's breaking clubs over his knees.

And once that got back to Houston's ownership, it was out on Johnny Manziel. I even had John Gruden on the show on first take just beating the desk about the Texans should go ahead and take Johnny number one. John Gruden was completely sold on Johnny Manziel, as was I on the football field. You know what he'd done to my Oklahoma Sooners in the Cotton Bowl?

Anybody but me remember this game? It was a complete wipeout because Johnny ran for 229 yards against Bob Stoops and Mike Stoops' defense. 229 yards. I'd never seen anything like it. It wasn't a man among boys. It was a child among boys, and it was a wild child among boys, but he ran wild, did the wild child.

Never seen anything quite like it. So you know the story of what happened on draft night. Johnny passes Houston, obviously, and he begins to drop. And all of a sudden, as he's quoted in the documentary, he turns to his agent and says, fuck yes, I'm going to Dallas. And I'm thinking, sitting in Bristol, Connecticut, yeah, he's going to Dallas. Cowboys are going to take Johnny Manziel at 16. Jerry Jones made history.

Very possibly the smartest decision of his drafting career. He did not take Johnny Manziel. He took Zach Martin, who is on his way now to the Hall of Fame, albeit as just a right guard. But he's on his way to the Hall of Fame. That was the 16th pick in the draft. Johnny falls and falls a little more. Meanwhile, George Whitfield, personal friend of mine, great guy, great teacher of the game of football, especially the quarterback position.

He's sitting with Johnny at the draft. He's texting with the Browns. He's texting with Dow Loggins, who is the quarterback's coach for the Browns. He gets Johnny on the text, and Johnny finally tells Dow Loggins, let's wreck the league together. Dow shows that text to Mike Patton, then the coach of the Browns, who shows that text then to Jimmy Haslam, the owner of the Browns.

And the Browns plunged, they traded up from 26 to 22 to snatch a falling Johnny Manziel. You know what Johnny's quote was in the documentary? When I got everything I ever wanted, which was being drafted by the Browns, which was $8.5 guaranteed million dollars, he says, when I got everything I ever wanted was when it felt the most empty to me because he didn't really want to play football.

And all of a sudden, the stakes were rising. The pressure was mounting. Johnny didn't want to work at football. He didn't open a Cleveland Browns playbook. He said once he got to Cleveland, and I'm quoting him, I wanted nothing to do with football. Well, he just spent the 22nd pick in the draft on you. You better have something to do with football. But no, he didn't. Started missing practice. They started storming over to his place.

penthouse condo, I think it was above a hotel. They'd find him with women. They'd find him curled up on the bathroom floor sleeping. One time they told me they found him sleeping on a watered-up pile of his own jeans in the bathroom. It's just craziness. It was lunacy. It was insanity. It was Johnny's not so much cry for help, just cry for get me out of here. I don't want to be here.

He forced the Browns ultimately to send him to rehab. He missed so many team flights. He was late, missed so many practices. He finally forced the Browns to just cut him. Remember the incident where Johnny, the day before a game, decided to fly to Las Vegas in disguise with fake nose and mustache and glasses and wig so he could have one night in the casino and then try to get back on time for the game.

did not get back on time for the game. This incident with another woman got a restraining order against him, and it got so bad, according to the documentary, that even Johnny's father told him, and I quote, to go fuck yourself because you won't listen to me anyway. His agent dumped him. And Johnny says that at that point in his life,

He decided, "I'm going to rub this whole thing in your," pardon my language, "fucking face." That's what Johnny says in the documentary. He says he began to do coke. He began to do oxys. I heard he began to do a lot of other things. For one summer, Johnny Manziel was out here in Los Angeles, in West Hollywood, sharing an apartment with, of all people, Josh Gordon. Let your imagination run wild.

And I was told there was a lot of cocaine there and one drug there that's even harder than cocaine. That's what I was told. And Johnny says he decided at that point, after being diagnosed as bipolar, he decided he would spend as much money as he possibly could as quickly as he could, then take his own life. That's what he says in the documentary. I heard tales, tall but real tales,

of Johnny and Josh clubbing on Sunset Boulevard out here in Los Angeles. Johnny says that he bought a gun to use on himself, but that in the end, this is what he says in the documentary, he put it to his head and pulled the trigger and it just clicked. And he couldn't, he says to this day, he's not sure why it didn't fire, but it didn't. So

Now let me bring myself into the story because it's around this time in Johnny's life, this is August of now 2018, that I was asked to do a show with Kevin Hart called Cold as Balls, which is recorded up in Chatsworth here in the LA area, produced by Michael Ratner, who became a good friend of mine. On the day I recorded my episode with Kevin, during which

Kevin and guests sit opposite each other in tubs of very cold water, shirtless. While I was preparing to do my episode, you know me, I'm up in my green room at the studio doing push-ups, trying to pump up so I look halfway decent without my shirt on. Michael Ratner knocked on the door. My wife, Ernstine, was there. Our boss here at FS1, Charlie Dixon, was there.

Michael knocked on the door, and I thought he said that Kevin wanted to come up and see me. I knew that Kevin was taping an episode as we got ready, another episode that was with Johnny Manziel. But I didn't understand what Michael was saying. He meant that Johnny wanted to come up and say hi. So when I heard the knock at the door and opened the door, I expected to open it on Kevin, and I opened it on Johnny.

who didn't look very good. He says in the documentary he lost from like 210 down to 175. Got a lot of new tattoos all over his arms and hands. He looked a little pale, a little weak, a little worn. And I was shocked. How are you? Good, just wanted to say hi. Introduced him to Ernestine, to Charlie. We had some adult small talk, how's the weather kind of talk, how you doing kind of talk.

He was on his best behavior. He was talking to the adults. But as I look back on that moment, I look at it as a quiet cry for help. And I wish I'd been listening, but I wasn't. When I went down to tape my episode with Kevin, Johnny stayed. He'd already finished his, but he stayed and he sat quietly.

with Ernestine at the back of the studio watching the taping on a monitor. There are too many cameras involved to be able to see us in person. So Ernestine and Johnny sat at the very back just looking up at the monitor watching how it went and laughing at Kevin's jokes and maybe even some of my responses. But Ernestine was taken by the fact that Johnny stayed for every minute of my taping, which went on for...

I don't know, an hour, maybe an hour plus. They cut it down, obviously, to X minutes. I'm not sure how many minutes. You can see it. It's up there somewhere on the internet now. But my point was, I know Johnny looked up to me. I know Johnny appreciated the fact that I was mostly in his corner up until the draft. And I just wish I'd known enough

to sit down and actually have a heart-to-heart with Johnny. Maybe I could have helped. I'm pretty good at that if I know help is wanted and/or needed, but I didn't see it. I didn't know. I didn't listen to my instincts that were screaming all along, "No, no, no, no, no." At the end of the documentary, Johnny's sister Mary, to whom he's very close,

says that Johnny is still in no condition mentally to go out and start any kind of new life outside the confines of his old life. And by the way, Johnny says he got so bad, he had to go all the way back to Kerrville with no money and knock on his parents' door, his estranged parents' door, and say, would you help me because I have nowhere else to go.

I've heard that Johnny lives in Scottsdale, but I'm not sure about that. I've heard he's working for a golf company, but I'm not sure about that. All I can tell you in the end is I just hope with all my heart and soul that Johnny Manziel finds something other than drinking and drugging and partying that truly makes him happy. I still love you, Johnny. Next question comes from Elijah from Carlsbad, California, who asks...

What would you say has been the proudest moment of your life? The truth is, in my heart of hearts, I believe that moment hasn't happened yet. That's just me. But I will tell you, when I finish my first book, I'm going to get back to it in just a moment here. But when I finished my first book called God's Coach on the Rise and Fall of Tom Landry and the Dallas Cowboys, the jump starting of Jerry Jones,

When I finished that first book, which for me was my masterpiece, it was my magnum opus. It was the best I could do. I could not have reported it any better. I couldn't have written it any better or any faster. I dedicated my first book to my mother. I'd been estranged from her several times.

I took it to her on a little vacation I took to Oklahoma City and I handed the first copy I got to her. That was a pretty proud moment. But let me tell you about another one that happened right where I'm sitting right now last week here in this studio where I'm taping this podcast. In fact, the moment in question

The moment I refer to happened almost literally where I'm sitting right here right now. This was gone. A big green screen had been dropped for purposes of shooting a music video with my brother Lil Wayne, who had written a new theme song unbeknownst to me, a complete new theme song, recorded it, had sent it to me, and happily agreed to shoot the accompanying

video which we will now roll out on August 28th for your viewing pleasure and listening pleasure because it is instant classic. But we needed to shoot the video portion so Wayne agreed to come in from, he lives out in the valley, it's a 40, 50 minute ride maybe with traffic an hour into West Los Angeles to the Fox lot to this studio.

He's been here many times for Undisputed. We'll be there again on August 28th. We'll be doing a segment every Friday on Undisputed with me going forward. But Wayne came in last week and stood on this green screen that was situated right here. And as we rolled his song, his newly written and recorded song, he did a take of

that was so pure, so perfect, so you nailed it, that with 40 or 50 people in this studio, I stood up at the end and applauded and said, "Okay, everybody can go home now." It was that good. And I went over and I said, "It looked like you had rehearsed that 100 times." And he said, "I did in my head."

Every gesture, every movement, every motion, it was right on cue, right on time, all ingenious. It was perfect. It's a wrap. Just use that. But obviously, we had booked the studio for two hours and the crew for two hours. And here we went. Let's try this. Oh, okay, well, maybe we should try that. Can you try this? Can you do this? Can you try this? And after an hour of that, I'm thinking, I'm not sure how much more we can push this man.

I kept going over, "You okay?" "Yeah, I'm fine." He is so dedicated to the new Undisputed, to the launch of this new show, August 28th. He is such a pro's pro, he knows the drill. He knows this is all part of the process. He wants this video, music video, to be as perfect as we could make it in the confines of a two-hour commitment.

He was good to go and good to go. This is the man I saw, Ernestine, and I went to his L.A. concert here recently at the Wiltern, and he got so upset with that crowd during the short break that he takes mid-concert in which his Young Money acts perform, including my man Alan Cubas. Alan's performing.

Allen's singing to the crowd, and the crowd's not paying a whole lot of attention to Allen. And Wayne comes out and takes the mic from Allen. I watched this. And drops the mic after saying, we work too hard. You can't disrespect this young man this way. Drive home safely. And ended the concert. So I'm thinking, I hope he doesn't drop the mic on us because he deserves to. Take after take after take.

Last 15 or so minutes, I did a few takes with Wayne that could or could not be added to the end of this opening video, theme song video that will jumpstart Undisputed every morning. As I walked in, I said, do I get to take my shirt off? Because Wayne at that point had his shirt off. He has his shirt off in the No Mercy video that we've been using, lo, these seven years on Undisputed.

But remember, that was shot in Miami on the fly. After on the fly, we had decided to go with Shannon Sharp as my new partner back on September 6th of 2016 when I moved from ESPN to FS1. That was a rush job. This we've done correctly because we had the time. Wayne has his shirt off.

for No Mercy. He had his shirt off for some of the takes of the new theme song. And by the way, Wayne looks so great. His physique is stunning. He doesn't lift weights. He skateboards. Man, is he in great shape. He performs, and he performs hard if you've seen him in concert. He is in sensational shape. So when we finished the video shoot, I went over and said, "Hey,

We've got a new song. It's going to be an instant classic, but I don't have a name for it." And Wayne thought, "Oh, yeah, we don't, do we?" We called the first one "No Mercy" because it was "No Mercy." And he says, "Should we just call it 'Undisputed'?" And I said, "Yeah, we could." And then it hits him, "Let's just call it 'Good Morning'." When you hear the song, you'll understand why. I said, "Done. Good morning." So now we have a great new song.

and a great new video and the open, the daily open for what I believe will be a great new show every single morning. Why some work and some don't. Hard knocks. If you stand back from it and you think about it, you think, hard knocks? What does that mean? I've been covering the NFL for, feels like 50 years, and I'd never heard the phrase hard knocks. Nobody says hard knocks.

Been to dozens of training camps. Nobody talks about hard knocks, but it worked. It caught on. Now everybody knows hard knocks. It's kind of a lame expression, but it works for this show because when you hear hard knocks, your eyes widen and you perk up because you want to know just how inside they're going to be able to get this time.

So this year's Hard Knocks obviously features Aaron Rodgers and this year's New Look New York Jets. It's an Aaron Rodgers production from start to finish, as it should be. It's like my producer Tyler Corn said to me, it's like they present Aaron as a combination of Michael Jordan, Tom Brady, and Jesus, and they do. And my biggest takeaway after I watched episode one is that

Are these jets ever in for a long fall? And you can take that two ways, as in a long autumn or a long descent, one way or the other. These jets are being put on a pedestal so high, so slippery, that when they fall, it's going to be a long way to the ground. And they're going to hit with the loudest thud that you will hear this year in the National Football League.

Aaron is everything to the Jets. Aaron is the GOAT, as several players say. Aaron, as one player says, pardon my language, is cool as fuck, and I don't doubt that. He can be a very cool guy. Coaching staff is raving about how Aaron makes throws nobody can make in this league. I don't doubt that in seven-on-sevens with no pressure on the quarterback.

One of the other players quoted as saying, "Whatever they say about Aaron Rodgers on TV is a lie." No, it's not if you're talking about me on TV, because my second big takeaway was, did anybody with the Jets, coaches or players, watch Aaron Rodgers the last three years when he had the one seed three years ago going into the playoffs and lost an NFC Championship game at home to Brady's Buccaneers?

when he stunk up the fourth quarter, when he stunk up first and goal at the eight. Did anybody see that? Did anybody see his young head coach opt to take a field goal that cut the lead from to only 31 to 26? That math doesn't work. But his coach had seen enough. I don't want him to go for it on fourth down because I don't think he can convert fourth and eight because he hadn't been able to convert anything else.

Anybody from the Jets see what happened two years ago when they had the one seed? Green Bay did and lost a home game when Aaron stunk it up to Jimmy G's 49ers. Huh. Anybody see last year when all they had to do was beat the low-lead Detroit Lions, their perennial champions?

doormat of their division. All they had to do is beat them at Lambeau on the frozen tundra to get into the playoffs, and they failed because Aaron stunk. Anybody see his career low numbers last year? I don't know. Apparently not. Jets camp is so big that the voice of hard knocks, Liev Schreiber, one of the great actors of our time, in my humble estimation,

Do you know Ray Donovan? This is Ray Donovan. He comes in via helicopter. First time the voice of Hard Knocks has ever attended any NFL camp. And he comes out to see Aaron bleeping Rogers, New York bleeping Jets. Says he wanted to drive, but the producer said it would be more dramatic if he swooped down via helicopter. And down he came. Ray Donovan was there.

See, I don't know, Ernestine and I saw every Ray, we were so into Ray Donovan. It always shocks me how an actor can pull off a character that is so ruthlessly mean and bad and then be so mild-mannered and soft-spoken in public as Liev was at Jets camp. He was funny, but he was soft-spoken and came off nothing like Ray Donovan.

But the point was, he was there. I just don't think this team can live up to this kind of hype, this kind of expectation that only New York can generate. There's a story that Robert Sala, the coach, tells his team early in this episode in a team meeting about the eagle and the crow.

how the eagle doesn't stoop to fight the crow with clearly superior talent, that he flies higher and higher, takes the crow higher and higher in the altitude until the crow finally just suffocates and has a long fall back to the earth. Sala's point is that all the critics are going to fall like the crow on their faces. So I looked up the story on the internet, and there's actually another eagle-crow story that I found

I think it's a bigger and better one. It has more claim to fame than this story. And this is about the crow trying to be the eagle and failing miserably. And the moral to the story is don't take on more than you can handle, Jets.

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So the other day, it came out again. It's my annual ritual. Whom did the NFL players vote in their top 100? Who was first and who was 50th and who was 100th?

I'm always curious to see just how the players vote, because just a year ago, I remind you, the players voted Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr. the best player in all of pro football. Tom Brady, just one year ago today, was voted the number one player in pro football. So I slowly reveal the list to myself.

And I got to get my first pet peeve out of the way, my annual pet peeve. I just don't know how you can't put quarterbacks in order through the top 10, however you want to rank them. But how can Justin Jefferson be voted the second best player in pro football? I mean, I've seen him three times against my Cowboys, and he's averaged...

2.7 catches in three games, all losses in Minnesota. All losses in Minnesota. 2.7 catches for 47 yards a game. He's been pretty much a no-show three times against my Cowboys. Maybe it's a Trevon Diggs thing. But how can you rank him second? And I'll just scan down the list. Justin Herbert, I'm not the biggest fan yet, but he's 32nd.

And speaking of Aaron Bleepin Rogers, he's 51st on this list. Lamar Jackson is 72nd and Trevor Lawrence is 96. So you're telling me that right now Trevor Lawrence is 94 places on this list worse than Justin Jefferson. I'm sorry, not buying it. If right now

You gave the Minnesota Vikings a choice between Trevor Lawrence, the 96th best player, and Justin Jefferson II. I guarantee you they would jump all over Trevor Lawrence because they're stuck with Kirk Cousins. Jalen Hurts, I saw him coming, I think, before anybody else did. He's risen all the way up to third on this list. I'm great with that. Top five were Mahomes, who was a quarterback at one. I give you that. Burrow is sixth.

Josh Allen's eight, so I'm good with all the quarterbacks there. But this is what obviously grabbed my eyes. Micah Parsons coming off a not great year in his second year was still voted ninth overall. Okay, so he's a top 10 player in the eyes of the players. Is he more valuable than a quarterback? Well, in my case, yes, and I'll tell you why.

So obviously, I'm searching Cowboys, Cowboys, Cowboys, and I have to go all the way down to 34th for the next Cowboy, but it's not Dak, it's Seedy, okay? 34th. Then I have to go all the way to 55th to find the next Cowboy, not Dak, Tony Pollard, okay? 56th, one slot down, was Dak. Number 60 was Trevon Diggs. Number 68 was Zach Martin.

Number 99 was Demarcus Lawrence. So big takeaway for the Cowboys, seven in the top 100, not bad. Unfortunately, though, five are in the second 50, only two in the top 50. Stephon Gilmore is going to be a top five corner, and he didn't make the top 100. Just watch. Mark my word.

But my biggest takeaway here was the chasm between Micah Parsons at nine and Dak Prescott at five, six, 56th. That's 47 places down is Dak Prescott. It's quite a plunge, which brings me to my biggest issue with Dak. He obviously throws too many interceptions, but in the end, I'm talking about his intangibles.

I don't think he's a natural born leader of a football team because I don't think he's confident enough in his own ability in big play playmaking. Dak's too thin skinned. He's just too insecure to be the leader of America's team. And I think the locker room knows that in the end. A year ago, I know for a fact Dak was threatened by Micah's rise to stardom.

Because a year ago, Micah was on the rise. It was starting to feel like it was Micah's team more than Dak's team. So now, I do believe that my Dallas Cowboy defense is going to be the best defense in the National Football League. And it starts and finishes with 11 from heaven. My old Micah. Micah Parsons. So in the end...

I need for Micah to grow up a little faster, to become even more mature than he did in his second year.

And I need to see him start taking over the locker room in ways I don't think Dak is capable of taking over and leading the locker room. Still think Micah has some growing up to do. It's going to have to happen quickly. But I need Micah to become the leader of my Dallas Cowboys that Dak is not capable of being. Simple as that.

Look back in NFL history. Is it possible for a team to be led by a defensive player to a championship as the leader of the team? Well, it's possible if the defense is the driving force of the team. So we go back to 85 Bears. Who was the leader of that team? It wasn't Jim McMahon. It was just a pretty good above average quarterback. It was Mike Singletary, the middle linebacker. I look at the New York Giants.

the championship giants. It wasn't Phil Simms, it was Lawrence Taylor who ultimately led those teams because those teams won more with their defense than their offense. The 2000 Ravens definitely won with their defense more than they won with Trent Dilfer and the offense. Who was the leader of that team? Obviously one of the greatest leaders ever, Ray Lewis. Even the 2002 Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Led by my friend, Derek Brooks, not by Brad Johnson, by Derek Brooks and another all time great defense. You can make a case. It was the greatest defense ever. Derek often does to me. It can happen. Micah can happen. It's my only hope.

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If you could have one do-over in life, what would it be? I talked about how I didn't listen to my instincts about Johnny Manziel, and I wish I had that to do over. I wish I could have helped Johnny more. I wish I had that to do over. But in the end, I'm going to tell you a quick story about the un-Johnny Manziel, as far from Johnny Manziel as it ever got. I want to tell you about a quarterback who died of cancer

who played for Cal as in the University of California at Berkeley, played for Cal 1976, 1977. His name was Joe Roth. I doubt many of you know the name, Joe Roth. If you're a Cal fan, you definitely know the name because they still dedicate either the home USC or home UCLA game to Joe Roth as a Memorial game every single year.

Joe Roth was 6'4", 205 pounds. He was the golden bear with the golden arm. He could flat-out wing it. I know because I observed it closely. Joe Roth was on his way to becoming the first pick in the 1977 draft. If you recall, that pick ultimately belonged to Tampa Bay, which took Ricky Bell out of USC. I knew him very well, covered those USC teams.

Second in that draft was a pick acquired from Seattle by my Dallas Cowboys, Tony Dorsett, the Heisman winner. Joe Roth was actually the Heisman favorite going into 1977. So early in that campaign, I was working here in Los Angeles at the LA Times. They sent me up to spend a couple of days at Cal with Joe Roth ahead of a USC game. Joe and I clicked and hit it off.

He was everything Johnny never was, supremely dedicated, supremely disciplined. Yeah, he'd cliche you to death in interviews because it was all real. He was a living football cliche of try hardest, get every last ounce out of the ability God gave me. He was all about studying tape and staying late after practice, everything that Johnny wasn't about.

He didn't drink, he didn't smoke, he did not party. He obsessed with the game of football. Joe had had a bout with cancer when he was in high school in San Diego. He had beaten that melanoma, but it reared its ugly head during Joe's last year at Cal. And he began to tail off precipitously over his last four or five games that year.

as his melanoma returned. It got so bad that near the end of the year, his diagnosis was, "You're done. Terminal. Can't beat it. Can't fight it." Joe went on to play in the Hula Bowl in Honolulu. I got word from somebody close to Joe that he was suffering again, and my sports editor sent me immediately to Honolulu

to see if I could find Joe and get him to speak about it. I got Joe at a party out on the beach, a big luau featuring all the best college football players in the land, most of them very healthy on their way to the National Football League, including Ricky Bell and Tony Dorsett.

Joe initially denied to me he had any problem, and then he finally gave up and said, "Ah, come up to my room." And we went up to like the 20th floor of the hotel right there on the beach. And he broke down and poured his guts out to me about how this time it's over. I wrote that for the LA Times. I'm sure you can look it up. It was during Super Bowl week. The game was in LA that year at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.

Joe died just a few weeks later on February the 19th, 1977, at the age of 21. I went to the memorial service up in Berkeley, and his mother pulled me aside and said, "Joe felt so close to you. Would you please help us write a book about Joe's life and times?" And I said, "Sure," but I made a fateful mistake.

I allowed the family to retain all creative control of that manuscript, and they were in no shape, as you can imagine, to have any sort of rational control of their emotions at that point. The book needed to be done quickly. Grosset and Dunlap bought it. I plunged into it. I kept my job at the LA Times. I did not take a sabbatical. I worked absurd long hours flying all over the place to see

his friends and teammates and family. I wrote feverishly, slept little, but I allowed my sports editor and my father figure at the time named Bill Shirley to plant one seed in my psyche that turned out to be a rose with thorns. My sports editor said, whatever you do, when you start writing, don't gush. Just let the story tell the story. Don't gush.

So I tried to write in first gear instead of fifth gear. No tear-jerking. I tried to just let the story tell itself. Grosset and Dunlap wanted gushing, wanted tear-jerking. The family, I guess, wanted more Walt Disney, which I just don't do. I wrote a real book about the real human who I'd come to know and love, Joe Roth. The book never got published.

I couldn't please the publisher or the family. It was devastating to me, but I guess in the end, predictable. I just didn't know any better. I got caught in the middle of something I could not win. I learned a lot about people. I learned a lot about publishing. I learned a lot about writing. And I will say this, if God does work in mysterious ways, my failure with the Joe Roth manuscript became my rocket fuel

my motivation, it's what drove me to write what became my first book, "God's Coach: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wade Landry and His Dallas Cowboys." Best book I ever wrote was that book because of my failure with Joe Roth. But in the end, as I watched the Johnny Manziel documentary called "Untold," I sat back and I thought about Joe Roth, God rest his soul,

his great, pure, beautiful soul. And I thought, if only I had been able to pour Joe Roth into Johnny Manziel, I just might have had the next Brady. That is it for episode 75. Thank you for listening and/or watching. Thanks to Jonathan Berger and his All-Pro team for making this show go, especially to Angie. Great job today, Angie.

Thanks to Tyler Corn for producing. Please remember, Undisputed returns August 28th. Be there. The Skip Bayless Show.