While everyone's mostly here to watch draft prospects run and jump around in Indy, the first two days of NFL Combine week are all about general managers and head coaches meeting with the media. This is the last time we’ll hear from them before free agency begins in March, which means they’re kind of incentivized to not be truthful about their plans.
Some of these guys know what they’re doing because they’ve done it for so long. Some of them have never done it before, and it shows. Others have been doing it for a long time and ... well, they’re still terrible at it.
I watched the pressers so you didn’t have to. Here are the best and worst of what we got from media availability at the Combine this week.
Naive, wrong, and bad
Duke Tobin, Cincinnati Bengals general manager
Duke Tobin has had his position with the Bengals since 1999, which is absolutely crazy. A team that has such a history of sustained failure, and they still won’t change the brains behind the operation. Absolutely mind-blowing.
Anyway, Tobin got asked during his press conference whether Cincinnati had adopted AI in its analytics.
Tobin answered: “Yeah, AI? Yeah, we dabble in AI. Yeah, we try to use as many resources as we can. It’s still new to us.”
In the history of mankind, no one has ever actually dabbled in anything. You didn’t dabble in cigarettes; you chain-smoked when you were studying for finals. You didn’t dabble in watching F1; you got really into it after watching Drive to Survive. You didn’t dabble in sourdough; you accidentally killed your starter after eight months during the pandemic.
No one dabbles in anything, and Duke Tobin hasn’t dabbled in AI. This cat thinks you still need to log in to the internet, going on to say that anything from a player's 40 time to his height or weight could be described as an analytic.
Listen, I know that analytics are hot in the streets these days. Old heads think they’re bupkis, and football nerds treat them like the 10 Commandments. Personally, I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle, but that’s just me.
But Tobin thinking that general numbers that describe a player are analytics is so wildly on-brand. This guy has definitely heard someone talk about going to it on fourth-and-short or going for two when they’re down by 14 and wondered how Chase Brown’s bench press reps fit into the equation.
Delusionally bad
Darren Mougey, New York Jets general manager
The Jets hired Darren Mougey to be their general manager last offseason. Their failures in his first year on the job were a long time in the making, so it’s hard to put all or even most of the blame on him.
That doesn't mean he's not still in a tough spot; his roster is a hot mess, and his coaching staff might be an even hotter one. He was obviously going to be asked about the dysfunction of 2025, and specifically Breece Hall, who will be the best running back in free agency this year if the team can't get him to agree to a new long-term contract.
If Mougey were smart, the first thing that he would say before every answer would be "I have five first-round picks over the next two years," just to remind everyone how much might change between now and next season.
But he didn’t do that. He was asked: “Do you get a sense that [Breece Hall] wants to be here long term?”
Mougey answered: “I do. I do get the sense that Breece wants to be here. We’ve had good conversations throughout the season and after the season. So just finding a way to do that.”
If I go to the grocery store for 15 minutes, I know I’m going to have at least three bad conversations: one with the cart guy, one with the cashier who acknowledged my 30-pack of Bud Ice and one with the bagger who asked if I want my extra tall boy of Bud Ice in a paper sleeve.
Mougey, on the other hand, has good conversations with a guy who was legitimately sad that he didn’t get traded at last year's trade deadline. Conversations so good, in fact, that he’s now got the sense that Hall is totally chill with everything. They were so good that he wants to come back and spend the next two or three years of his short professional career in a rebuild with the Jets.
One of three things is true here:
- Mougey is a delusional buffoon who thinks that everyone likes him.
- Mougey has only ever had bad conversations, so relative to those, this one was good.
- These conversations never happened.
Good question, veteran response
Brandon Beane, Buffalo Bills general manager
Typically, the questions that get asked at these pressers aren’t super in-depth or inflammatory. Brandon Beane’s first question was about what it’s like to scout Georgia players — something light-hearted and clearly asked just to fluff up an SEC school.
But his second-to-last question was hilariously different: Now that you’ve had a month to marinate on it, why do you think you got promoted and head coach Sean McDermott got fired?
“That’s a question for [owner] Terry [Pegula]," Beane said. "We’re kind of just moving forward, I’m not sure of that.”
You can call Beane a lot of things, most of them mean, but you have to admit that's a professional deflection. If you get a question that you don’t like, then you just tell the person to ask that question to an entirely different person. In this case, that different person is the owner of the team, and a person who they’ll never have a chance to actually talk to.
I kind of want that reporter at every Bills presser this season and offseason, constantly asking that question to everyone. Put the pressure on those ding-dongs and never let them forget that they made a bad decision.
Reluctantly good
Sean Payton, Denver Broncos Head Coach
No one likes Sean Payton as much as Sean Payton likes Sean Payton, and his arrogance makes it super easy to rag on him. But if you’re going to be hyper-critical of someone for saying and doing lame things all the time, you have to give them their props when they say or do something smart.
In his presser in Indy, Payton was asked about the lack of a Tush Push ban this offseason. He answered: “I think if that ever goes away, it’s not a health and safety thing, right? We discussed that last year for two hours, and we just adopted a thousand more kick returns. Which play do you think is more of a health risk?”
That’s a great point that people (who are not head coaches) have been making for the past nine months. It’s good to hear that he’s got that same rationale.
He continued: “So, I think if we choose to ever move on from that, it won’t be because of health and safety, it will be because we don’t like it ..."
Thank you. Teams need to just be honest about why they want to ban the play. “We don’t like it” is honest. It’s dumb, and it’s no reason to ban a play that is otherwise within the rules, but it’s honest. Now, let’s see if he can land this plane.
“... which is okay.”
