Bleacher Report's Jason Cole Checks In About the NFL
Jason Cole of Bleacher Report joined the Scott Garceau Show with Jeremy Conn to cover the top stories in the NFL. Last week was a historic week for the NFL in terms of scandal with the Ray Rice video being leaked followed by the Adrian Peterson child abuse story. Scott asked if this was the worst week in the history of the NFL. "Well not volume wise, but ugliness wise Rae Carruth is hard to top. Ray Lewis was bad but Rae Carrtuh was a show stopper in terms of ugliness. That was the one that made you just sit there and go oh my god what is going on here. These don't quite make me do that like repulse me quite as much as that because you have seen that crime before in your lifetime. But just the volume of it makes you go please kind of just stop at a certain point and can people behave themselves as normal human beings."
Scott was able to follow up by asking if the recent crimes by Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson make teams stray away from troubled athletes coming out of college. "The thing that changes people thinking regarding this is is your team more successful when you take guys who are more focused on the field. Or are you more willing to take your chances with a guy like this and live with the results. I think the best example you can come up with is the New England Patriots. The Patriots when they were winning titles took a lot of guys who tended not to get in to trouble. Now that didn't mean they had troubled pasts, Willie McGinest from college had his fair share of fights. You can go right down the line there were a bunch of tough guys on the team and every football team has those guys. But they weren't as disturbing as Aaron Hernandez."
Finally getting to on the field action, Jeremy asked Jason if listeners should be concerned about two 2013 NFL Playoff teams, the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts, who are both off to 0-2 starts on the year. "I'm concerned about the Saints because I thought they had a chance to win the Super Bowl, and I think that losing those two games specifically are the ones that are going to come back and haunt them at the end of the year. And you're going to say that's why they didn't get home field advantage, that's the reason why they didn't take advantage of the talent they have and that's going to get in the way. With Indianapolis I thought they were a dark horse to get to the Super Bowl from the AFC. But my bigger concerns are not necessarily losses but the injuries along the offensive line, the injury to Robert Mathis, whether Trent Richardson is going to get going. The fact that they lost 2 games to quality opponents like Denver and Philadelphia, I don't think that's going to be a major stumbling block for them. When you lose two games to like Atlanta and Cleveland even on the road in the first two weeks when you're as talented as the Saints are. That's the kind of stuff that hurts you in the long run.