Fix the Defense, Fix the League, Fix the Rangers? | Just Wondering with Norm Hitzges

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DFW sports fans, lots of local, national writers, cowboy nation, Jerry Jones, Dak Prescott, CD Lam,
they all seem obsessed with keeping free agent George Pickens, the wide receiver, the very, very good wide receiver.
Jerry is ready to give him the 28 million dollar franchise tag, while working on Pickens contract,
a long-term one that would pay him $30, $32, $34 million a year.
Dak is lobbying hard to keep him, CD Lam also, and the columnists, they all want to keep George Pickens.
Hey, George Pickens is a wonderful player.
Keep him.
Absolutely not.
No, you do not need to keep George Pickens.
Do you have an incredible offense with him?
Yes. Do you have a pretty good offense without him?
Yes.
So, what do you need though?
Do you need an incredible offense to win?
No.
You need to fix this defense.
Not another $30 million a year offensive player.
Pickens is terrific, the offense is wonderful, but with that wonderful offense,
$100 gets to $7.99 in one last year.
And the year before, even though Dak Prescott missed nine games,
Dallas still averaged 21 points a game.
Now, what would they have averaged at even around $24.25?
That's enough to win.
That's enough to win.
And I mean win big in this league.
But the defense, it sucked.
The second worst defense in the history of this franchise.
And the only one worse was the very first cowboy defense in 1990.
The defense needs five or six new starters.
Yes, that many.
And that's where Pickens comes in.
The cowboys desperately need that $28 million or $30 million or $34 million
that they appear to be ready to give Pickens.
Those are dollars that can be spent on free Asian defensive players
to make this defense a lot better.
Listen, it's fine to start by putting a franchise tag on George Pickens.
But then trade him.
Trade him.
You can certainly get a second-round graphic for him,
maybe even a very, very, very late number one
from a contender like Buffalo that appears one star wide receiver
away from being it in the NFL.
And there are loads of other teams
whose number one need is a standout wide receiver.
Atlanta, Baltimore, Tennessee, Carolina, New Orleans,
and other teams that really need a very good wide receiver,
Kansas City Raiders, Jets Miami.
Let's say you could just trade him for a second-round draft choice.
And you'd have that $28 million to spend.
Well, then you could take your two number one draft picks
and the number two you got from Pickens
and draft potentially three really solid defensive players.
Then take the $28 million and sign two other defensive players.
Bingo!
There's your five new starters on defense.
But will the Cowboys do this?
But is Pickens that shiny penny?
The Cowboys just cannot see themselves getting rid of?
Jerry's in love with him.
Back in CDR campaigning for him.
But players are not general managers.
Sure, the quarterback and the wide receiver are in love
with scoring lots and lots and lots of points of game.
But as the Super Bowl again showed us,
it's defenses that win championships.
49 of the 60 Super Bowl winners of the two teams in the game.
49 of the winners had higher ranked defenses.
The higher ranked defense wins Super Bowl.
And the Cowboys have got to stop playing pinball, football,
where the score just mounts and mounts and mounts the ball.
It gets flying all over the place.
Hey, there is any question George Pickens is a wonderful player.
And any question it would be hard to say goodbye to George Pickens.
But you know what?
It would be wonderful to again say hello to winning football.
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Tim Kalashaw is now what you'd call a fixture on the Dallas Morning News.
43 years now.
He started in 1983, covering SMU, which then promptly went to the death penalty.
He was a national baseball writer.
He covered the stars before they won a championship.
He covered the Cowboys for six years.
And ever since he became a full-time columnist, the Cowboys have stopped making it to an important playoff game.
Tim did a radio talk show in Dallas for years.
He was a fixture for years and years on ESPN's around the horn.
And he's now seven years old.
But sure doesn't look like it.
Let's start there.
Why don't you look like it?
I would say it's years of clean living, but that didn't start till I was 54.
I was going to say a picture there were years.
You didn't think you'd make it.
If you look at pictures of me at 53, I look about the same as I do now.
I don't know.
The honest answer is genetics.
My father passed away last year at 98.
And he had a full head of white hair.
And until he was 94, he was still 93 or 94.
He was still driving over, driving over to Cheryl Park to go play nine holes by himself or with his buddies.
So yeah, he had a good run.
And so we're glad we got some of those genes and just trying to hang on as a fixture for a little longer.
I guess it's possible we've got 24 more years of your byline with the morning news.
How many years?
How many more years?
24 more?
Oh, no, no, no, I do not.
I do not intend to be writing nor do they want me writing 24 more years.
That's always a good question.
The extra energy.
You know, if I could make it, let's say I can write till 2030.
We're already at 2026.
Then I could, I started writing for the Corpus Christi College Times in 1979.
I would be a seven decade writer at that point.
Six of them at the morning news.
I'm not sure I really want to do that, but I thought about that the other day.
I was going to go to this topic later, but let me stand up for one more question.
Yeah.
Having known so many writers of the present day and so many that preceded you on the newspapers in this area.
Right.
Writing seems to be a hard thing for people to stop doing.
It seems just getting their blood.
It does.
It's also, once you do it, you don't acquire other skills.
I'm not going to go become a TV repairman or a construction worker at this point.
But yeah, even if, even if let's say I retired from morning news in the next year, which is always possible.
I think about things from time to time.
I got to think after a little while I would sit down on my laptop and think about things to write.
Whether they're columns, fiction, whatever.
You get ideas in your head.
And I think about books that I like the idea of starting the book and doing a little of it.
I don't like to do the idea of writing 100,000 words about it.
But yeah, writing is something I, it's, you know, I've done, as you mentioned, I've done it.
I did TV for 22 years on ESPN.
I did seven years of local radio.
Not a lot more writing, but, but even when I was doing all three writing was the one thing I enjoyed the most of those.
Dorothy Parker, who was a contemporary of Ernest Hemingway.
I had one of the great quotes of all time.
I love, no, no.
I hate writing. I love having written.
Yeah, that's kind of, that's kind of it.
Everything about the, everything except the process itself is, is pretty great.
And Dorothy Parker, you mentioned, I just, I just came from New York and I usually stay at the Algonquin when I go there,
which is of course a Marriott now.
Yeah, of course.
Dorothy Parker and all the New Yorker people that they're, they're the ones who made that hotel on West 44th Street famous.
Let's go to a variety of topics.
I'll fire you some quick questions.
Sure. Let me go.
Let's go to the cobblies.
Does Jerry Jones know how to win?
I think he thinks he does.
I think he thinks a lot of these times.
He feels like they came close a lot in the last 30 years when they really didn't.
They came close on the desk, hot at game.
They came close on the Aaron Rogers 4th down pass game here, decks, rookie year.
And they came close one other time to getting to an NFC championship game.
So he thinks all those teams could have done it so that the secret sauce, the magic formula, whatever you need, they still have it.
But I don't think he looks at the larger picture that they've really, they've missed the playoffs more than they've made it the last 30 years.
They've won five playoff games this century.
They're beyond the longest streak in the NFC of not getting to an NFC title game.
They're really near the bottom of playoff wins for the whole league for this century.
And they have the same approach and the same general manager the whole time.
Who's failed.
Everybody else who's failed has four or five general managers.
And they've tried different things.
The Cowboys aren't going to do that.
They're going to try to win with this same formula.
I don't think it's impossible, but I think it's difficult to do.
Does Jerry Jones fall in love too much with stars at the expense of not having those solid mid-range players to fill out their lineup?
He did until Michael Parsons came along and then he fell out of love with the biggest defensive star.
I think that they've had since Randy White.
But generally speaking, yes.
And that's why it is amazing.
And it always sounds like you're putting it on deck like it's his fault.
He's had that contract for two years now. Nobody has caught him.
Others have signed big deals.
Josh Allen, who is a very accomplished player and at least has been to those conference championship games that that deck has missed.
He's won an MVP.
The deck has come close to him and missed.
He got he got he got within five million of deck.
Jerry likes having that's why I thought he would sign Michael Parsons to the biggest defensive contract ever.
But this year he's determined to have deck and CD-LAM and George Pickens, you know, making about $130 million between the three of them.
And then filling in around that.
Now when the seller caps $300 million, you've got a lot of room to play with.
And you can do some things with those dollars.
But I would say in general, yes, he gets a homegrown player.
And we've seen it a number of times.
Guys getting second contracts.
Whether it's Jalen Smith and other guys who we had good starts to their career.
And then all of a sudden they're overpaid.
And because he fell in love with them.
And and it causes problems on the college football.
SME just got a group of donors give them $50 million to support the football program.
Illinois's gotten a hundred million.
Kansas has gotten 300 million.
Wait a minute. Illinois got a hundred million.
Illinois got a hundred million.
The fighting a lion eye or back?
Well, Jim Gropowski is coming back.
The hustling a lion eye are back.
Okay.
And L and I L has gone wild.
Transfer portal is gone wild.
His college football irreparably broken.
I think yes.
I don't think you can put the horse back in the barn or whatever you want to do.
I don't know how they fixed the money.
They thought this 20.5 million per team would do something.
But that's really just extra money on the NIL money.
We know college football teams are going to spend 30 or 35 million on their team alone.
And maybe more as those numbers jump.
I do wonder about everybody's doing it now.
It's the thing to do.
SME is doing it.
As you said, Illinois hasn't been good since almost laws in London as Indiana hadn't been good.
They see that they want a part of that.
So everybody's going to do it.
Most of those teams are not going to have success.
Most of those teams aren't going to be Indiana or even in the college football playoff.
Which sets of boosters are the first to say this is nuts.
We are paying millions, literally millions out of our individual pockets.
For a sport that we don't enjoy anymore than we did when we were watching it the way it was 20 years ago.
I think for the fans, the transfer portal is a much bigger problem than the money.
The money is staggering.
And I don't love the way it's turned out.
I thought it would be more you establish yourself as a starting quarterback.
You throw for 300 yards a couple of times.
You start to get a little money.
I didn't know it just be straight.
You pay three million dollars to get a quarterback.
The way it is.
That's not great.
But the idea of the transfer portal that they have free agency NFL players can only dream of.
They can go anywhere they want anytime they want.
There's all kinds of guys.
One of Estimus best basketball players.
He's on his fourth school, but there's a lot of guys on their fourth school.
And I don't think that's good.
I don't necessarily think it's good for the students or the players.
Even if they are making money, but it's definitely not good for the fans.
Where do these players come from?
Who went where?
I can't.
It's hard to keep up with the college guys, but when they stayed two or three years in football, you had an idea.
Now it's just a free for all every year.
And I think that's kind of madness.
On the baseball, the Rangers have their fingers crossed for a lot of players to bounce back offensively.
They've got their fingers crossed for their bullpen.
And for the very back of their starting rotation.
What's your read on this team?
I'll quote somebody else.
My read is very similar to a man I spoke to at an Estimus basketball game two weeks ago.
Name George W. Bush who sits court side at those games.
And we talked about a couple things.
And then he said, I'm ready for the Ranger season.
And I said, what do you think about him?
And he just looked at me and said, I think they're fragile.
And he said it that George Bush wave.
I think they're fragile.
It's like fragile is a good word when you look at the lineup and when you get to the fourth spot,
you're going to Jack Peterson and Jake Berger and Josh Young and the players who were beyond fractal last year.
They weren't any good.
They have some hope.
They're evolving into Graham and maybe Mackenzie Gore give them some hope on the rotation.
They have the hitters above the ones I mentioned.
Langford and Seager and Brandon Nemo from the Mets.
I think that's hope.
I don't think there's good a Seattle.
And I think Seattle is really good.
But that's okay.
The over and under at Vegas is 83.
I believe 83 and a half wins.
So they're viewed as slightly over 500, which they haven't been the last two years.
So they got to get a little better just to get to that.
I think there is a little hope.
I would be stunned if they're a playoff team, even in today's expanded playoff world as good as the teams are in the east.
And a couple of them in the central.
I think there's hope.
But I think that feeling that Bochi's here magic is always right around the corner if you get in the playoffs.
That's gone.
And I think they need to reestablish with their fans because the fans as much as these players declined.
Fans loved the Dolly Scarcea from what he did before.
They pretty much loved Sinian.
And yeah, they declined.
But they got to they got to reestablish that they got more than the frequently injured Cory Seeger to count on.
Tim Bruce Bochi's a Hall of Fame manager.
And if there were a Hall of Fame for pitching coaches, Mike Maddox would be in that.
And they're both gone.
Right.
How much might this franchise miss those two from a standpoint of.
You don't want to criticize skips you maker, but those were talented people at the top of this franchise.
Those are the kind of people that give you a lot of reassurance over long season.
There are certain coaches and managers that you have them on your team and you think we're okay.
If I'm if I'm a 49ers fan and I see Kyle Shanahan down there, even with a bunch of injuries, I think we're okay.
We got a guy who's really good and really smart and he's going to get us close.
Different guys have that in baseball.
Bruce Bochi, obviously, four world series.
He had that beyond anyone since Joe Tory.
This is this is you know, I'm not saying it's Chris Woodward, but he's no more proven than Chris Woodward.
So you have to just start at the very beginning and see see what happens.
Same with Maddox.
I think Maddox.
Maddox made you feel like the success he had and playoff wins he had in Washington and other places he went.
He knows what he's doing. He knows how to manage a pitching staff. He knows how to get stuff out of guys.
And now they got to kind of start over with can you do that with Jack Leiter?
Can you do that with Jacob Blatz or whoever else is in this rotation?
Can you do this with a bullpen? All the roles are pretty much wide open.
So I think it's a lot to ask these two guys and I think that's a fair question of feeling like you've lost something.
The Dallas stars have been right there the last few seasons, but they've not won it.
Right. Is this the year they win it?
Well, the good news is as great as Connor hell about go as yesterday his team is not going to the playoffs this year.
So you don't have to worry about seeing that in the playoffs. If Winnipeg was still good, I would be worried about what just happened yesterday.
Congratulations, the USA.
I think the stars team is really good. Colorado is better on the ice this year, but for me, that's the team you want.
If you got to pick somebody in the West, be better. Dallas is already eliminated in twice in recent years, three times really to think about it.
And they feel good about playing against guys as talented as McKinnon and McCar.
I think it's a good team, but same as your last question, Glenn Gulletson has coached two teams and has never won a playoff game.
The guy they got rid of goes to the conference finals almost every year of his career with New Jersey with San Jose twice here.
There were there were certain things about Pete the board's personality that didn't suit the team, but he was very good in the playoffs and his teams played like that.
And and that's, you know, they're going to play Minnesota. I mean, it seems like from November until April, we're going to have known Minnesota is the first round opponent.
And Minnesota is good. And and they're worthy. And it's, it's as possible that they win it all this year. It's, it's, it's, it's certainly as much as as possible that they go out in the first round.
It's it's going to be that hard to the West.
How do you read the maps future?
Well, I mean, I think, I think flag is, is everybody as good as you'd want him to be.
I think they're going to what's the losing streak that I've lost count.
It was 10 until yesterday, 11 somewhere. So they're going to get a lottery pick. It'll be the last one they have for a while.
It's not bright, but I'd say there's hope.
You got to put some, you know, I don't think kind of revervings part of it. I think he's 35 next year.
He could be, he could stick around another year, but I just think it's got to be flag and and a youthful team.
And if you keep guys like Marshall and Washington and maybe Max Chris, you were pretty good players.
And you have another star wherever you get in the lottery.
I think you've started a game ground. I just think the West is filled with not just Oklahoma City, who's great.
Houston has a young team, even without Durant. Houston's really good. And the spurs, there's no limits on that team.
Not with Wemba Nyama and Castle.
There may be no limits on that team this year.
Yeah, they may, they may sneak up and do it right now, which is really scary.
In a way, they're scarier than Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City's gonna be really good for a while.
The spurs might be great for a while.
And so you're really just trying to see where do we fit in with these teams that are all 200 miles away from this, but way ahead of us.
So, you know, it's hard to say it's bright just because they got rid of Anthony Davis.
They didn't, they didn't really get anything for him.
So it's, it's, it's, it's a long haul of rebuilding around.
The, the league is seriously angry about tanking.
Commissioner Adam Silvers, the worst year he's ever seen for tanking, that he's used at the bottom of the standings, losing intentionally to get a better draft pick.
What are your thoughts on tanking?
My thoughts are, I've been in a baseball rotisserie league since 1987.
The top four, there's 12 teams, the top four make the playoffs.
The team that finishes fifth gets the first pick.
Team that finishes sixth gets the second pick. Team finishes last gets the eighth pick.
You, you were not rewarded for being at the bottom, you were rewarded for almost making it.
Now, would teams, if they did it that way, and the team with the best record, not in the playoffs at the first pick, would all the teams like Atlanta and the clippers that are in the play on games, would they be the ones taking right now to get out?
I don't know. I don't know if that would fix it. I don't know if that's really a fix.
I think it's, I read what Cuban wrote the other day, and they're about, it's not tanking the bothers fans, it's not having an entertaining product.
And I can buy a little of what he's saying, but there are teams that have tanks for two or three years in a row.
Tim, what sort of entertaining product can they possibly be putting on?
Tim, I got a question. The late punishes those people.
Actually, they find Utah Jazz $500,000. But as the, and what these teams are tanking for is a better near future.
As the season rolls on and we get into March, contenders are going to without notice, rest players, and maybe rest multiple players.
In an attempt to get a better and more favorable future in the playoffs.
Why doesn't the Lee ever whisper harshly in those years?
Yeah, I mean, you know, years ago it did when I think it was, I think it was pop of it, sad all his guys at Miami for a TNT game.
He said genobly or it didn't even fly. I think they didn't even go because it was a back to back.
And I think he didn't fly genobly and Duncan and Parker or whatever. And that started, sort of started it.
That is a terrible problem. There have been numerous times when Luke was here.
The Mavericks player back to back. He plays at home and then he sits at Chicago. That's the one game.
An Eastern conference team has a chance to see a superstar. Teams always sit guys, road games, other conference.
So the league has a horrible problem from the idea of, I'll pay a lot of money for a ticket.
I want to see this star player from another team. You have no idea if that guy's going to play.
Exactly. And that is the real difference between the NBA now and 20 years ago when Jordan and all those guys played 82 games.
And I just saw a stat this morning on something I was looking at on 11 Hayes who I don't really recognize as one of the great players.
I think he was really good. He missed eight games in 16 years. And when you think about guys like that doing that, it's like that's that's a tribute to all of them, but to him.
I mean, guys did not sit for minor injuries. They didn't sit because they had to play two nights in a row.
No, they didn't sit with the playoffs coming up. They just didn't sit and you're very right that that.
But the league, the league seems to want to punish these.
The best they've come up with so far is the thing about you got to play 65 games where you can't be MVP or first team all NBA.
And there's a whole lot of guys who aren't going to.
Yokech and Yannis and the rest of them aren't going to make it to 65 this year.
It's I think the NBA is in a really much worse place than than maybe the ratings, which aren't great. They're okay.
Suggest I just think that's a real.
But whether you're going to the game or just going to turn it on. Oh, the Celtics are playing the bucks tonight.
That's a good game. Well, is Yannis going to play is is is you know, Jalen Brown, whoever, whoever might be that you want to see.
You really have no idea. Well, they played last night. So he's not going to play tonight.
We've got a guy Kansas already working on his load management this year.
Darren Peterson. He's already he's already mastering the NBA's load management in his one year at Kansas.
A final question for you, too. Yes. How much longer do you want to do this?
I knew that was going to be.
There are there are days and weeks and I think I can do it another five years without a problem.
And there are days and weeks where I think I'm going to be done about another month here that's going to be it.
I don't I don't. My life is my teaser. Now I don't do three hours of radio a day.
I did that for seven years. And when you're doing that on top of writing.
And I don't do around the horn, which was a couple days a week.
That was just a half day thing, but it did.
It required you to watch a lot of things that I may not be watching so heavily now.
So just suggest just being a columnist that ought to be enough.
I feel like I can do it physically and more important part have something that feels fresh to say.
Despite the fact that Cowboys give me nothing fresh to write about 28 years of no NFC title game.
A lot of near misses, a lot of not near misses.
I'm going to say right now I have it in my mind to get to that 2030 and be a seven decade writer.
I don't know if I get a prize for that.
But but don't be surprised if I if I pull the plug somewhere before I get there.
Hey, God bless you, my friend.
Be well.
You have some wonderful days.
I really appreciate your time.
Always enjoy it, Norm.
Always set your days at HSE and D Magazine when I was in high school.
Oh, reading you a D Magazine and hearing you on whatever you were on.
K-E-R-A.
K-E-R-A.
You're older than I thought you were.
Listen, I'm 70.
I'm 70.
I'm up there.
Take care of yourself to him.
All right, man.
Take care.
It's a lot of fun.
Oh, that's great, Tim.
Thank you very much.
Sure, sure.
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I'm going to suggest a player to watch at the Ranger's training camp.
It may be critical for the Ranger's success that he succeeds.
See, the Ranger's plan is to be carried by their starting pitching.
The offense has its problems, crossed fingers, but Josh Young, Jake Berger, Jack Peterson,
Evan Carter, who's dealing with injuries this whole career, and they have no depth.
Can those guys bounce back if they can't then the pitching's got to carry this team?
Now they filled slot number four in the rotation behind Nathan Yvaldi, Jacob DeGrom and Jack Lighter,
with Mackenzie Gore.
They acquired him in a trade.
He's very talented, but he hasn't done it yet.
In his years with the Nationals and he's only 27 now, he's not ever succeeded like his talent suggests he should.
But now, in a better pitcher's park with a better team, that's the hope.
And that brings us to the number five starter.
This is a staff with very little depth.
And the number five starter comes down to either Kumar Rocker or Jake Lats.
Now, Lats was much better as a starter last year than Rocker.
So why wouldn't the job just go to him?
Well, because Texas needs Jake Lats in a weak bullpen.
So they're hoping that Kumar Rocker is the guy that wins the job.
Now, Rocker is a former very high number one draft pick.
Texas needs him to fulfill the promise that he showed at Vanderbilt.
But Rocker has encountered Lats and Lats and Lats of armed troubles over the last few years.
Let's look at the last five years of Rocker's pitching life.
He was dazzling at Vanderbilt.
The match number one pick in 2021.
But after looking at his medicals, New York was so worried they didn't sign him.
Did not sign the number one.
So he pitched independent ball this year.
But those armed troubles limited the match season to 34 innings.
Just 34 innings.
Undaunted with that, Texas took them as their number one in 2022.
A third round pick.
A pick that I must hit.
But again, injury problems.
He threw in 28 innings that year pitching in high A.
Texas again crossed its fingers for 2024.
But more significant injury problems plagued him.
He managed to throw him here 36 innings that season.
In 2025, Rocker finally did make it to the majors.
But his innings, including a few later in the year at the minor leagues,
still totaled on the 83.
Look at that number of the last four years.
All sorts of injuries.
Kumar Rocker has thrown only a total of 184 innings in four years.
You would like to have seen Kumar Rocker over the last four years reach something between 400 and 500 innings.
But he hasn't.
He's average in only 46 innings a year.
But he remains a huge hope for the Rangers.
So when they finally did see him in the majors last year, what did Kumar Rocker look like?
In 2025 here in Arlington, for about a half a season, it was a pretty forgettable half a season.
Rocker made 14 starts, averaged less than five innings per start, surrendered more hits than innings pitched,
gave up a ton of homers in those 64 innings.
And his ERA was, well, pretty ugly.
How ugly?
Last year, Texas had 11 pitchers throw more than 50 innings in the season.
Of those 11 pitchers, Rocker's ERA was more than one and a third runs higher than the next worst pitcher on the team.
Ugly.
And when they finally sent him to the minors in mid season, it was not the pitch.
It was too straightened out as mechanics.
Can that once enormously talented Kumar Rocker ever reach the remarkable levels of promise he once had?
Is he capable of perhaps even being a decent number five on this staff?
And even if he's measurably better than last year, how many innings can the Rangers reasonably expect from him?
Expect from a pitcher whose averaged only 46 innings a year for the last four years?
But the Rangers need Rocker to succeed.
This system's very, very shallow and pitching depth.
And already this spring, a couple of the more highly talented prospects have gotten hurt again.
So the Rangers need Kumar Rocker to be pretty good and they need him to eat innings with all this in mind.
And on a team whose path to the playoffs almost certainly depends on the starting pitchers being terrific.
Perhaps the player we should all be watching most closely and surprise Arizona.
Watching with our fingers crossed is Kumar Rocker.
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I'm Norm Hitzkiss and know that every day I'll be just wondering about something.
And I'm Mary Hitzkiss and I'll just be wondering too.
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