It's another edition of Wral Triangle and two. I'm Mark Bergen. He's Luis Fernandez Loaded pod today, Lewis, it is Black Monday, lot of change in the NFL, but we know he's gonna make the playoffs, but on the flip side of this, we now know likely where Drake May is headed in the NFL barring a trade and he's gonna team up his former North Carolina teammate Sam Howell if everything comes to fruition. But Lewis NFL week 18 has come and gone. What say you now that it looks like Drake May is headed to the Washington Commanders. So, I mean, we, we've known that that May was gonna be a top, you know, whatever pick here, right? It, it's all gonna be about need and desire and, and all of that stuff. Um I, I'll, I'll be curious to see how the rest of the kind of draft process shakes out for me because, um, you know, he's, he's definitely gonna be someone I think who like passes, interviews with flying colors and things like that and because of his physical talents, I think that's gonna really jump off the board to some people. Um, you know, the comp that you hear all the time with Drake May is Justin Herbert. And I think, you know, if any, like because of Justin Herbert's success on an individual level, statistically, I think that's something that's gonna make that style of quarterback even more valuable, which is wild to say just in general. Um So I, I think I'm really excited to see what Drake ends up doing, uh in this process. Um I mean, he's, he's gonna be either QB one or QB two that there's, I don't think unless Jade and Daniels just absolutely crushes everything but IQB one or QB two. I'm with you there in terms of the prospects. I think Williams, Caleb Williams out of us c would be considered the favorite. I'll talk more about Williams in a bit, but Washington's gonna have a huge overhaul. We find out today. They fired Ron Rivera who also was serving for the last four seasons as the team's head, not just the head coach, but the general manager as well. Bringing over Bob Myers who is Bob Myers Mark, former front off executive in the Golden State Warriors that helped build Steph Curry and company into the dynasty that we know them to be for NBA titles later. And he's now gonna try his hand at football. So you'll have a new coach, you'll have new front office people, new ownership taken over from Daniel Snyder. And here's another thing too, Lewis, the commanders, whoever's running the front office, whether it's Myers or someone else have the highest in the most amount of salary cap space heading into this off season massive overhaul in Washington and it looks like Drake May is gonna be the face of that. Assuming that Williams goes to the Bears. Number one overall, we'll see how all this shakes out though. So one thing we talked about before we got started recording, it is just kind of like going over the the situation with all the pictures here because we do know that wild things can't happen in the NFL draft. All you got, I mean, you don't have to go very far to see the Panthers trading up to the number one spot for last year, right? So the 11 kind of like nugget rumor that I've seen floated around, right? You mentioned all that stuff with the commanders, how they are, you know, brand new owner, they just let go of Ron Rivera. Um You know, all of that kind of stuff. So they're really trying to clean house, they're really trying to establish a new face if you will. Um Caleb Williams is from the Washington DC area. Oh, ok. So the rumor that I've seen kind of floated out there, I don't even know if rumor is necessarily the right word. More of just kind of like a thought is what if the commanders throw a bunch of stuff at the bears and try and move up one spot and take Caleb Williams number one. That to me would be fascinating. And then we have to look at what does that do for Drake May? And the bears have a predicament of having the number one pick in back to back years. They got the king's ransom for last year's top pick. They could probably get even more considering how highly touted both Caleb Williams and Drake May is. Let me add another wrench into this plan, right? What happens if Caleb Williams? Look, we expect Drake May to be top three, top two. What happens when Caleb Williams measures out lower than 6 ft one which he's listed at, at us. C right. Come on mark that's not coming, is coming. I mean, even if he does, I don't think it's gonna impact it like we were talking about people are gonna lose their minds, Lewis. I mean, you know, everyone, everyone said that Joe Burrow's hands are too small and you know, he should retire like that's not, that's not gonna there, there are some of those measurables that matter. I think Caleb Williams has shown more than enough on the to prove that those measurables are non existent. If the, the absolute farthest Caleb Williams falls is QB two, that's the absolute farthest I'm with. Yeah. Yeah, that's, but that's what I'm saying is what would it take for May to overcome Williams? And I think that that would be part of the narrative in terms of look, we saw, we were talking about this a year ago with Bryce Young and it says, no, knock on Bryce Young is the low NF L's lowest completion percentage of any starter. And we said, well, what's the recipe for success? Five bodyguards in front of him, stud, skill position players didn't happen this year, terrible coaching around him. And we'll get into the Panthers later on in this discussion, but undersized quarterbacks traditionally struggle in the NFL. That's not a hot take by any stretch of the means. So, ok, he's just because he's listed at 6 ft one if he measures out to be like 6 ft flat, I'm just telling you, you heard it here 1st January the eighth before the NFL combine and before April's draft here. So let's, let's look really quick here at the draft order and just kind of see where the possibilities would be. Right. The one Chicago to the commanders, three, the new England Patriots for the Cardinals. Those three are obviously like if it's gonna happen and there are no trades, you would imagine it's gonna happen. I, I don't see, I don't see Drake May falling past the Patriots and then what, what do the Patriots look like? Is Bill Belichick there, you know, what's the offensive coordinator situation? They're like, they're receivers, they, they need a lot of help with the skilled players department in particular. Um So I don't see Drake may really falling past there if someone trades up, maybe that's different. Um, you know, the Giants at six for sure would be interested. Um, the, the Falcons at eight, I would imagine. But I, once again, I don't see Drake May falling that far. I think, you know, I think those teams would need to trade up Lewis if they want to get Drake May. Yeah. There, there are plenty of quarterbacks or there are plenty of teams that need quarterbacks. But essentially, if you're not in the top three and you want either Drake May or Caleb Williams, you're gonna have to trade up to go get them, which these, these two are definitely even if you go past those two and look at like Jaden Daniels, for example, and some of the other quarterbacks in that mix, like there are plenty of really talented quarterbacks. I could see this, you know, the first half of this draft being pretty quarterback heavy unless Bill Belichick's coming back and he even hasn't had that great of success since Tom Brady left Drake May should be thank his lucky stars right now because you're getting essentially a blank canvas in Washington. Now, I know traditionally Washington hasn't been uh a very well run franchise. I'm trying to be polite here, but you mentioned the Patriots and the struggles of the offense, Lewis, you're spot on when they're tied with Carolina for least amount of points per game averaged this past season, it's like other than Ramon Andre Stevenson, who missed time with injuries, like they don't have the skill position players to say, ok, let's plug Drake May or a new rookie quarterback into this system. And what exactly do you have around him other than maybe Bill Belichick comes back. So you go to Washington, Terry mclaurin is gonna be there a very underrated receiver and again, it's just an entirely brand new regime and, and I, and I know that teams can manipulate the cap. So we probably overestimate salary cap space to an extent, but you'll be able to go out and get a player or two that can help a young rookie quarterback. And again, Bob Myers, I look at championship pedigree, um let's try to revamp what this organization in Washington, what it's traditionally been a and then you get to have the familiarity of having Sam Howell be your teammate too, the same guy in your quarterback room and both of you are NFL starters now and you too can duke it out and practice and see who performs at the highest level because that's, that's definitely the thing, right? And with, with, with Ron Rivera being gone now for the commanders like that, I would assume that means that the Sam Howell experiment in Washington has done as well. Um You know, because it, it was the kind of thing where like if, if Sam Howell could have performed at a level where like he's a franchise quarterback. That's something that could have saved, you know, Ron Rivera's job or whatever it might be. But, well, what about the enemy as well? Is the enemy staying in Washington? That's another thing. The offensive coordinator, Eric, the enemy. I, I mean, I've been wrong on this before but I feel like Eric the enemy at this point, like, maybe he's gonna be a, a hot head coaching candidate. Um, But we, we, we've been saying that for years now, you know what I mean? Um So I don't know, we'll see. Um, do you want to go ahead and turn to the Carolina Panthers? Let's do it. Let's do it. Firing General manager Scott Fitter today. This needed to be done. Um You fire Frank Wright mid season and um a year after he fired Matt Rule midea, uh the track record of success with Carolina, like I approach this off season this way, Lewis where it's like assuming they get rid of Chris Tabor as well. We're recording this on Monday, January the eighth. Um assuming that they're not gonna bring Chris Tabor back as the interim. Um How do you try to salvage Bryce Young in year two? And then how do you compete with the other teams in the league that will also have head coaching vacancies and just in the aftermath of David Tepper, throwing a drink at Jaguars fans a week ago and getting fined 300 grand. Uh it's not looked at very favorably right now. Uh, not just in the media, but, you know, if you're a head coaching candidate and you want one of these 32 coveted positions and you want to position yourself to succeed in this league as a young coach, Carolina is not that appealing of a job. And I'd argue it's probably we'll see what the other vacancies will end up being Lewis. But I'd argue it's one of the least appealing jobs and especially considering you don't have a first round draft pick in the 2024 draft either. Yeah, and, and that's, that's, that's really tough, right? I mean, because hindsight is 2020. If you're the Panthers, obviously, you'd be like, oh yeah, don't trade up, stay at nine, go get a franchise quarterback, but who, who knows? They also, they thought they were a quarterback away and it's, it was very clear that they were not a quarterback away. Um, you know, I, yeah, Scott Scott Federer needed to go. Like I, I was honestly kind of surprised it wasn't a back when, uh Frank Reich was, was fired. I was kind of surprised it wasn't a Reich and Federer both let go on the same day type thing. Um I mean, it's just the G M's job. The main thing is the roster construction, right? And you look at this roster and there are a lot of like solid defensive pieces, obviously. I mean, you Derek Brown set an NFL record for most tackles by a defensive tackle on Sunday. Like, you know, you have Brian Burns, he's gonna be a free agent. Now. There, there are so many of those things that like are very, they have to, there are so many like issues with this team that yes, you can look at coaching, but a lot of it was just what the roster was and so that falls on Scott Federer, you know, and, and, and when you look at what this, what, what the Panthers need to do in the off season, it's just, it's all about Bryce Young do whatever you can to do the most and get the most out of Bryce Young. Um The, the most recent situation I kind of look at with this is um Mike mcdaniel and the Dolphins, right? You need someone to come in who can take a, a young quarterback who has struggled and, and salvage what his career could be. I, I think that Bryce has, um I think Bryce would fit very well and kind of like quick timing type based systems like uh run oriented systems that you see like in Miami within that. Um, you know, Kyle Shanahan, you know, Sean mcveigh type trees. But um I also think that you, you have to have someone who's gonna be committed to Bryce Young and building a good offense, especially around him. I like how you go with the glass half, full perspective, Lewis because I was gonna go glass half empty in Chicago where I've seen this story play out where front office head coach, sell out, sell the farm to get the rookie QB. That's gonna magically save everything. I'm talking about the Chicago Bears with Justin Fields and then everyone ends up getting fired because you don't produce the results that you expect. I really feel bad for Bryce Young because it's like, what do you have around him right now? And uh you're gonna have to make some moves to try to upgrade this roster and how nice it would be to have a player like DJ Moore, hindsight's 2020. I, I think one of the first things whoever takes over is gonna have to determine is, is what do you do with Burns considering a year ago? You could have gotten two first round picks for him by all reports and if you're just gonna let him walk in free agency, it would be, it would be, it would be malpractice, it would be atrocious like you can't, you can't like does he even want to come back to Carolina? Right? I, I'm II I mean, I don't, I don't think like Brian Burns is a bad relationship with the Panthers, but it's just like it, I really, it comes back to like that, that value estimate, right? Where the whole reason you didn't trade him for two first rounds is because you, you wanted to keep him, you wanted to make this work, get a long term deal. Have him be kind of AAA pillar of your defense moving forward if you just let him walk in free agency? Jeez Louise, like, not just that, but does he even fit into a defensive scheme for whoever you hire as the head coach? Right? Like, so like this is another thing where it's just like the Panthers are a mess. Um back to back weeks getting shut out to Lewis. I'm gonna to be honest with you, I know Bryce Young needs the game experience, the reps, but with this coaching staff and with this game plan, I honestly think it was irresponsible playing him in the final week of the regular season. Like, what if he had gotten hurt? I get that, like put Andy Dalton out there, hey, this season's already lost Bryce, you know, we appreciate your efforts this year. This really isn't on you at all. Like it's not say, yeah, he needs to perform at a higher level. But again, what's around him to set him up for success? Um I would have liked to see Andy Dalton this last week, but it's funny you mentioned mcdaniel, I, I go, I go with the Bears. I've seen the Bears play this narrative out over and over and over again. But with what mcdaniel has done to Salva Tua when having a lot of the same conversations, like, is he the guy or not. Well, I know, but after, after, after last night's game against the Buffalo Bills you, oh, maybe it was not getting it done, but it's fun overall. I mean, you're in the playoffs and you're lighting up the scoreboard with Tyree Kill Jalen Waddle and company. I mean, come on. Yeah. No, that's fair. I, yeah, but either way, whether I, the, I mean, the two main focuses, right? You have, you have to get the good coach. You have to get the good system. You have to get a good GM, golly, they, they just GM is gonna be more important. No, no, I think it's fair because you have to, with, with the draft situations that they're in right now, you're gonna have to do more with less. You're gonna, you're gonna have to really take advantage. Every pick has to count because you don't have that first round pick. Um, you know, you wanna go to hoops, let's go to hoops, Wednesday number eight UN C or Alma Mater Lewis against NC State in Raleigh PNC Arena. Tar Heels have been looking good on the hardwood. Uh RJ Davis playing at a very high level. Uh, Lewis, I know, um, my brain just isn't quite all the way there yet to say let's move from football to basketball. So I'm gonna get up to speed very quickly here in the coming days. Uh, now that the regular season is over for the NFL but what do fans need to look forward to in this matchup of these two triangle teams? Well, so a little bit of history. Right. I think I saw it was um UN C stats and information. I wanna say put this out there. This is the first time since 1974 that UN C and NC State will play each other and they are both at least three and, oh, in the AC C? Wow. Wow. Wow. There's a lot of, I think part of it is like, it feels like these two are playing, playing pretty early in the, in the conference schedule, but like, it's still, it's, it's, it's a big deal and when you look at they, they've both gotten here in two totally different ways. Right. Um, you have UN C who, obviously he's trying to turn things around from the very big disappointment that was last year. They faced a very difficult nonconference schedule, were able to pull out some big wins in. There had a couple of tight losses. You had them, they kind of like take this new roster built the form a little bit and have now rattled off a few big wins in conference play. Um, and our top 10 right now in net, um, the, we're recording this at 1133 so we haven't seen this week's a P poll, but you, you're gonna assume they've wrote, they've risen in the A P poll as well. Um, then you have NC State who essentially a huge overhaul of most of their roster, right. Um And they, all of their AC C games that they played so far have been so tight, right. You have an overtime win against Boston College. You have a game winner on the road against Notre Dame who Notre Dame is improving a little bit but still is not very good. Um And then you have a pretty good performance against Virginia as well. So the, the thing that I think if you look at big picture storylines for both of these teams, right? If you the question, oh, who, who is this more important? Who, who, who, which team does this game matter more for? Right? And based on where each of them stands, it's gonna be NC State for sure. This one is at PNC arena. So you're gonna have, it's gonna be a rile, it's gonna be a rowdy and rambunctious crowd for sure. For the Wolf Pack, their biggest issue in order to go back to the NCAA tournament again this year is gonna be their nonconference schedule. They, you look at Kal, you look at the different analytic sites and they have one of the easier nonconference schedules. You don't have a whole lot of control over that, right? They did play some good teams in there. Ole Miss on the road, they played BYU, they had some really tight games in there. Um Some, some teams that in hindsight now are, hey, those teams are pretty good. Um But their nonconference schedule was not very strong. And so what has happened is the Wolf Pack have set themselves up in order to make the NCAA tournament, they're going to need to perform well in the AC C, especially if, you know, I I III I could get on my soapbox and, and talk for a few minutes here about how ridiculous it is that we look at the AC C the way we do from an analytics perspective over the past like two years. And fortunately this season, the tide has turned a bit right. People are respecting the AC C a little bit more from a analytics perspective. You're starting to see more AC C teams get in the, the tournament with like the minorities of the world, the Jerry Palms of the world. Um But you just struck a nerve right there, Louis, listen, Mark, I will go off. Um But NC State is going to need to perform well in the AC C I want to look at uh really quickly. I mean, like I mentioned RJ Davis, um we talked some before. This is the pot. He's a freshman. Elliott Cao would like to see the free throw numbers improve. He's a guard and shooting less than 60% from the foul line. But the matchup, I mean, and I hope we get it too. Like sometimes offense defense. Uh I want to see Baycot versus Burns. That's something I just, I want to see the two big men go mono, I mano in this one and, you know, it seems like both of them are in their like 10th year of eligibility. Uh, I know that's a bit of a hyperbole, but that's just a match up. That's just gonna be point blank period. Fun to watch. No, agreed. And some of this I think is gonna be the kind of the styles as well. Um, NC State has really slowed things down a lot this year on Ken Palm. Their adjusted tempo is 100 and 52nd in the country, whereas Un CS 60th. Um, so you're gonna have a bit of a, a style is kind of going back and forth. The one player who I think is gonna make the, obviously you have the DJ burns for sure. Um, I, I go with other DJ DJ Horn, uh, for NC State. Um, what he's been able to do, um, coming in for the wolf pack has been really impressive. Um, you know, he, he's gonna matter a lot. Uh, the way he moves the ball, the way he's shooting from the outside 42.9% from three right now. Um, so it, it's gonna be really interesting to see how that works out for him. Um, yeah, I, I think it's gonna be, I think it's been, would be a really fun game. A really good game, a really good atmosphere. Um, but it's state is 65 in net right now. Still, it's beginning of January. So this matters a little bit less, but 65 in net. Ken Palm has them as a 64 best team. So this is the kind of game where if state could get a win here, it would go very far in their tournament chances. So, um, you know, if, if, if it's one thing, if this game was in Chapel Hill, but the fact that this game is in PNC Arena, it's gonna make for a really fun atmosphere. Um The Tobacco Road is all over the AC C this year, right? Un CNC State Wake Forest all undefeated in the AC C Duke two and one, you know, and trending upwards. It's, it's, we're set up to have a really fun AC C men's basketball season this year and I'm, I for one am excited for it Wednesday at PNC arena. It'll be Casey hints from WRL sports there. I have that right. Lewis. Yep, Casey Pat and Brian Murphy are all uh covering the game. So we all hands on deck. Uh It, it'll be a fun one. We'll have you all covered on WRL sports fan, uh, as well as on Fox 50 WRL that night, Lewis. Any final thoughts before we sign off here? This has been fun. Let me see here. Um I would say, uh uh when we talked about the men's basketball teams in the triangle. Um We're gonna be giving more attention to the women's teams as well here. Moving forward now that we're in AC C play, um UN C picked up two massive top 25 wins this week. Um beating Syracuse and then beating um uh Notre Dame on the road. Uh NC State losing a last second heartbreaker in Blacksburg against the number 13, I believe Virginia Tech. Um Literally, they, they, they went seven minutes, I think at the end of the game without scoring, but still took the lead at the very last second and then um Virginia Tech scored with 0.9 seconds left on the clock. So the newly no longer undefeated wolfpack are going to be just fine but, but still, it's, you know, it's, it is shaping up to be a really fun uh college basketball season in North Carolina Mark. Um That's, that's my last word. That's my main take away. I'm pumped. It's amazing. The Tar Heels fans I've talked to really since like October after that second football loss, it's like bring on hoop season, we're ready. So I think that's, that's, that's more Carolina football than anything mark I could give you once again. I, if I could, if I could talk to sundown about all that, we can talk to sundown about all that. Uh Luis Fernandez, you're the absolute best. There's been another edition of Wral Triangle and two. If you're watching on youtube. Tap the subscribe button on the 99 9 the fan youtube page, Apple and Spotify five stars and five stars only. He's Luis Fernandez, I'm Mark Bergen. We'll see you next time. Take care so long. Everybody.