Football Justice

The Bill Barnwell Show

ESPN

Sports

4.4 • 647 Ratings

🗓️ 21 December 2023

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In today’s episode of the Bill Barnwell Show, Bill discusses the pros and cons of expanding the NFL schedule and how it impacts the quality of games. Then, ESPN writer and metaphor expert Brooke Pryor joins Bill to break down the downward spiral of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Mike Tomlin’s future in Pittsburgh, and if the Steelers can get their spark back. Plus, they discuss the keys to specific teams succeeding with backup quarterbacks. 0:35 impact of expanded NFL schedule 12:06 Mike Tomlin’s future in Pittsburgh 15:30 George Pickens ‘lackadaisical’ effort 22:35 Wide receiver issues in Pittsburgh 33:54 Will things be different with Mason Rudolph? 38:30 Is Mike Tomlin to blame for the offensive struggles? 50:38 Big picture: why do certain teams succeed with backup quarterbacks? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey guys, welcome to the Bill Barnwell show. I am Bill Barnwell. Today, Brooke Pryor, our
0:12.0	BSPN joins me to break down everything that's gone awry for the Pittsburgh Steelers during
0:17.8	this downturn. What's gone wrong? Why it happened? Whether Mike Tomlin is to blame
0:24.5	what his future looks like in Pittsburgh, how they can get out of this tailspin they're in,
0:30.4	all of that's going to come up. But first, I want to talk about the league's expanded schedule
0:35.1	because it's getting to be a lot. So last week,
0:39.5	we had one Thursday game, three Saturday games, a bunch of games on Sunday, and then, of course,
0:44.7	the Monday night game. This week, it's expanded even wider, a Thursday game, two Saturday
0:51.0	games, a bunch of games on Sunday, and then three games Monday on Christmas
0:56.6	Day. I know Mark Cuban was the one who really criticized the NFL for expanding their schedule,
1:05.2	basically saying, you know, that the NFL was going to be expanded itself too thin. I'm going to paraphrase what he said
1:12.0	in terms of the NFL schedule being too wide. And obviously, I have a little bit of a
1:18.2	bias here, or I have some level of that responsibility because I'm not the one making programming
1:24.3	decisions, but obviously ESPN is part of the expanded programming for the NFL.
1:29.3	ESPN airs Monday Night Football has aired two games a couple times this year.
1:33.9	The NFL has expanded to international games.
1:37.6	And there's going to be more international games this year coming up later in the 2020's decade. There's going to be, I think, up to eight international games
1:47.1	in a season, which means more games at weird times, perhaps in some places. I'm not saying
1:52.9	every game has to be at 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. I'm not naive to say that the league is going to go
1:57.4	back to that, but there is an element of saturation. And there is an
2:02.3	element we're seeing, I think, that's coming up for NFL criticism. We're seeing people complain
2:09.8	about the quality of play. Tom Brady, of course, is the most notable one. We're seeing people
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