Change isn't coming. It's already here. Commerce is going digital and tax complexity is multiplying.

Tax rules evolve, rate shift, data floods in. Vertex connects it all.

A global tax compliance platform powered by tax-ready data and intelligence systems.

Smarter tech, continuous tax compliance, built-in confidence.

Learn more at vertexinck.com. This is the athletic football show.

Welcome to the athletic football show.

I'm Robert Mays.

Fun show for you guys today.

We're going to be talking to a couple of our beat writers about the news over the last week. Some of the movement in these front offices at those head coaching spots. We're talking with Michael Sean Dugars, our Seahawks writer at The Athletic, about Seattle moving on from Pete Carroll, what direction they may take their head coaching search. Chatting with Ben Standig, our Washington football team writer, about Washington's decision to hire Adam Peters to be their new general manager, what their head coaching search would look like, the new direction that this franchise is taking under Josh Harris and that new ownership group.

And we're also going to talk with our Patriots writer at the Athletic Chad Graf about everything that has happened in New England,

the end of the Bill Belichick era, the start of the Gerard Mayo era, whether they're going to be

taking this in a drastically new direction, is it just kind of a continuation of some elements

of what Belichick was there? So many fascinating questions lingering over all three of these teams.

Excited to dig into these conversations

let's do it joining us now our wonderful seahawks writer at the athletic it's michael shan

dugart michael shan how you doing man i am doing good robert how are you i'm doing great we're deep

into playoff time but the nice part about this little stretch of calendar, you could say it's nice, maybe it's not nice, is that along with all the playoff things we have to dig through, it is coach season. And the team that you cover made, I think, one of the most surprising decisions of this cycle thus far. Even if there were rumblings, even if you can look at his age and their lack

of playoff success recently and say, yeah, maybe I understand it. The news that the Seahawks were

parting ways, whatever, however you want to phrase it with Pete Carroll, I think was a shock to people

maybe outside of that Seattle bubble, that Seattle ecosystem. When you heard the news, what was your first reaction, the fact that Pete Carroll would no

longer be the coach of the Seattle Seahawks?

My very, very, very first when I got the notification was, okay, did he get fire or is he

...