Cowboys’ Gloomsday Defense Disaster & Rangers’ Identity Crisis | Just Wondering | Mike Rhyner

Hi, I'm Norm Hitzges. And today I'm just wondering, are the Cowboys as bad as they've looked through the first five games of the season? The answer may depress you even more.

And then a conversation with old friend Mike Rhyner talking baseball. And finally, what's left over from the way of information from o u's upset of number one, Texas Texas last last Saturday Saturday at at the the Cotton Cotton Bowl. Bowl.

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Retire sooner, better lifestyle. For more information or to schedule a meeting, visit fluentfinancial.com or call (972) 852-4800. Okay, by now you may be pretty tired of talking about the Cowboys puking up their dinner last Thursday night, losing at home to the winless Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

We will touch on one very specific moment of that game a little later. But first, let's look at the big picture after five games. The Cowboys are two and three, and it was probably against the weakest five game stretch on their schedule this year.

They had the Giants and Washington, winless Houston, winless Tampa Bay, and Baltimore at a neutral site. Dallas was favored in three of those games, and they were a field goal or less underdog in the other two. Down the road still for this team, the Rams, Seattle, the 49ers, two with Philly, Jacksonville, and even a pretty good Colts team.

But hey, if you're gonna lose to Tampa Bay with a backup undrafted free agent rookie, you could lose any of the remaining games. After five games, there's one major question here. Who are these Cowboys?

Now, they're built around their offense. Dak Prescott named this offense Gotti, g o t I. Greatest offense there is.

Well, this is not Gotti. This team is terrible running a football. They're the bottom third league in rushing yards per carry.

Starting Sunday's action in the NFL, they were not in the top five in scoring and not in the top 10 in yards gained per game. This is not the greatest offense there is, but it's pretty good and offense still isn't the Cowboys problem. Just like last year, and maybe even the year before.

The problem here is that the Gloomsday defense is dreadful. They're the only team in the league without an interception. They allow 5.1 yards per rush.

That's thirtieth in the NFL. They allow 6.4 yards every opponent's play for five games. That is, yeah, you guessed it, deadliest in the NFL.

In passing yards per attempt, their thirty first. They have five sacks in five games. That's in the bottom three in the league.

The problem for the defense isn't the kids. First round pick Caleb Downs is playing pretty well. Jashan Barham, the linebacker who's taken over the starting lineup has been okay.

He's just a kid finding his way. The other first round draft choice Malachi Lawrence is not finding his way. He's playing less and less as the season goes on.

And honestly, he may be more of an athlete than a player. Now the problem for the Cowboys is the veterans. The defensive lineman, Quinn and Williams and Kenny Clark, very poor.

Low grades for the edge rusher, Rashawn Gary, and the linebacker, Dee Winners, and cornerback Doron Bland is absolutely getting abused. The defense is failing because some very highly paid players on this defense are not playing well at all. And by the way, in the offensive side, tackle Terrence Steele and tight end Jake Ferguson are also near the very bottom of the rankings up their position.

Toss in one of the league's most penalized teams, and you get a team that quite honestly might be a bit fortunate to be two and three. Now end of that one note from the Tampa game. In the fourth quarter, Dallas was out down 24 to 10.

Tampa had the ball at the Dallas one yard line fourth down and for some reason, Todd Bowles had a brain cramp and did not kick the field goal that would have put his Tampa team up an insurmountable 17 points. He failed on the fourth down. The Cowboys went 99 yards to make it twenty four sixteen.

And what had been a pipe dream just moments ago, the possibility of overtime? Well, somebody told coach Schottenheimer, who made some very bad decisions late in the Baltimore game. Somebody told him to go for two.

That's right. The Cowboys were trying to win the game before they tied the game. Now, he said that's analytics told him to do that.

Well, a two point try failed. Oh, wait a minute. Analytics?

How about the gut of a man who's been coaching this thing for more than twenty five years? What did his gut tell him to do? His gut didn't tell him to see if they could tie and get it to overtime.

But then Dallas got the ball back, drove deep into the Tampa territory again. But then a pass from Dak Prescott through the hands of Jake Ferguson off the face of his helmet popped up in the air, intercepted by Tampa. Thank you very much.

Buccaneers leave with a win. But what if Fergie hadn't dropped that pass? What if Dallas had gone on to score?

Well, then they have had to go for two again just to tie the game. And what if they failed on that two point conversion? It's basically fiftyfifty when you go for two or not.

Well, then shotty and analytics would have blown a chance to create a tie and go to overtime, wouldn't they? And Coach Schottenheimer would have had every shred of his body roasted in this city. And by the way, I think rightly so.

But in the end, maybe he'd given the guy in analytics given us his name that told him it was smart to go for two at that point. Next, a visit with the old Gray Wolf, Mike Rhyner. What do you want from your favorite restaurant?

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Do you bet on football? I'm Norm Hitzges, and I've been handicapping sports for the last five decades. And what an incredible last two years we've had picking games.

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Mike Rhyner, the old gray wolf, and I go back to the eighties, and most notably, when we were for more than two decades, talk show hosts on the same remarkably successful Dallas sports talk station, The Ticket, one of the most successful in the entire country, and it's a station that Mike helped create in 1994. Mike now hosts Your Dark Companion, the prime show here on the Stolen Water Media platform for podcast. Michael, my lad, how are you?

I'm good, Norman. How are you? I'm okay.

I'm okay. Thank you. That's good.

Glad to hear it. Suffering through the early cowboy season, but we don't wanna go there. Okay?

We wanna go to another point of suffering, and that's your favorite sport, baseball. How much did the Rangers season drive you crazy? The thing that drove me crazy about it was the amount of nothingness that was there.

I mean, this team never had any kind of identity. Mhmm. And it's not to say that it didn't have some good players who had some good years.

It did. But good years have to come together and form a solid... I don't know, just a solid being, you know?

Yes. They have to come together and form a solid being and then you go out there and you see how far it gets you. Sometimes it gets you pretty far, sometimes it kind of falls apart somewhere along the line.

But once you form that that solid core, I guess is what I'm saying. Once you've once you've got that, then you're off. Then you you see what all...

What what you can what you can accomplish, and that core never really formed with this team. You know, Mike, the owner Ray Davis gets an enormous amount of criticism for not spending more money. He reduced the salaries two years ago, and cut them back again last year.

But in the final four, we now have in baseball, Tampa, Cleveland and Milwaukee are right at the bottom of the table in the lowest paid teams in baseball. A $180,000,000, which is what the Rangers spent last year should be enough if it's spent properly. Yeah, and boy it flies in the face of what we're led to believe about baseball, that being that he who spends the most will eventually come out on top.

But but, yeah, it's... I I mean, it it... It's...

It would seem like that would be enough, but it's really not about how much you spend as though those teams you just mentioned show, it's what you do with it And what kind of organization you have? What kind of minor league system you have? No.

What's going on way out of view from what we normally see? I mean, what we see is the product on the field. Well, the product on the field is basically an extension of what's going on underneath.

And boy, when you look at those teams, what's going on underneath must be some pretty powerful stuff. You know, Mike, it's the way the Rangers are spending money. Jacob deGrom, Nathan Uvalde, Corey Seager and Brandon Nimmo.

Next year, if the salary stays at 180, they would account for $113,000,000, those four players, and as of late April next year, all four of them will be between 33 and 39 years old. That doesn't speak very well of of the baseball end of the thing. You know, Ray Davis just takes recommendations from what those who work for him tell him.

And I don't know, I guess Jacob de Grom was a good idea. Seemed like it at the time. I didn't hear too many people bitching and complaining about it, and I didn't do too much bitching about it myself.

A Valdi has been great. I've loved watching a Valdi pitch. A Valdi is going to go down as one of my favorite rangers of all time, but that's not what we're talking about here.

We're talking about the end result of what they do, and the end result just has not been there. And that... That's...

There are there are a lot of things that go into it. It's, you know, those pick... Those players themselves, but it's what else is around them.

You know? There are a lot of teams that spend a lot of money on a few players, and then, you know, what the other... Whatever else is around them turns out to be pretty good.

I mean, I bet if you looked at the Brewers or the Rays, you would find that. Those are those are in effect you could call them model franchises. Yes.

You could. You could. And boy, with what lies ahead out there, what we're about to get into here.

Yep. This is not the time that the players wanna see something like that coming down, you know? You know, Mike, I don't know if you saw Ranger baseball the same way I saw Ranger baseball, but you will look at other teams.

You will see the Brewers. You will see the Indians. You will see Tampa.

For heaven's sakes, the White Sox even made it into the quarterfinals this year. I They have three straight 100 lost seasons in a row. Yep.

And now here they are. In the playoffs. Yeah.

But Mike, I'm seeing something here. I see those teams go from first to third on singles. I see those teams make productive outs, move the runner along, when the runner gets to third, get him home with a fly ball.

I see those teams have wonderful deep at bats. I see them with terrific defenses, and Mike, I don't see those things in the Rangers. It's hard to say how and why that happens.

Mhmm. Because all the rangers or anybody else needs to do is take a look at those teams, and you will see those very things that you mentioned because that's what they do. Those are the things that have gotten them where they are.

Mhmm. And how anybody can possibly ignore that, how any baseball guy can possibly ignore that and not pay any attention to that and not think that that's not what their team needs is beyond me. Yep.

But apparently, the baseball guys or the Rangers didn't take take a very good look at that. Either that or players who embody those things, players who buy in to that way of playing the game are are they must be extremely hard to find. If if the Rangers are going to somehow redo their salary situation, they would have to move some salary.

Unfortunately, Jacob deGrom and Corey Seager, the two highest paid players in this team, each coming off their worst seasons in years, if ever. Each of them have no trade clause. Chris Young, the president of baseball operations and the general manager, Ross Feds, the snaremaker, their hands are almost virtually tied, it appears, doesn't it?

There's only so much they can do. I mean, they tried to trade to Grom, we're told. Mhmm.

And he said, no. No thanks. I'll stay.

In fact, they tried to trade him to the Braves, a really good team. A really good team that was headed for the playoffs, but he said, nah. I'll pass on that.

I like it here. And Seeger, I don't know. I've never heard of them actively trying to trade him, but I can't imagine they didn't.

You know? And Mike, who would no offense to Corey Seager, who's been a fine player, but at this point, 33 years old, years left at over $30,000,000 a year and coming off one injury play season after another. I I really mind doing this honestly, not as an insult to see or who would take him.

Yeah. Good luck trying to move that. Nobody in their right mind would, and those teams seem to operate out of their right mind.

Yeah. And you know, you look at this season also, and you look for leaders. Duran and Burger and Josh Young when he was healthy, which is something we say almost every year, they they had good years, but Wyatt Langford has not developed at all like it appeared he would, and Seeger has been so hurt the last few years, and those are the two guys who should be driving the bus.

Yeah. White Langford was very disappointing this year. It seemed like he was on his way to having a good year, But then he got hurt, had to miss some time, and when he came back, he just couldn't find it.

He just could not find that groove that he'd had. Mhmm. And that that dogged him the rest of the season.

I I don't know where he goes now, you know? Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna give you... I don't want to select yet another player, But but in the championship season, Evan Carter was a gift from God.

He landed here. He was spectacular. It looked like the Rangers had a star for years.

And yet in the three years since that brief late season trial that Carter was so good at, Mike, he's just been awful. He can't hit left hand pitching. For that matter, he can't hit right hand pitching.

Should should his days as a regular be over here, albeit he's still a young man? Well, they gotta make a decision here. He's a very good center fielder.

I don't know if I would say he's an elite center fielder because we haven't seen enough of him yet due to all of his injuries and stuff. But we have seen enough to know that he's a very good center fielder. So can they construct a team where you've got a really good center fielder, but you've also got a dead spot in the lineup?

In baseball these days, that's pretty tough to do. Yeah. And and that's...

Mike, that's the perfect term. For three years now he's been a dead spot in the lineup. Yes, he has.

One more complicating factor. I shake my head because every year we keep holding, hoping that the Rangers will rebuild some kind of farm system. And they don't.

This right now is a one player farm system. Sebastian Walcott. Yeah.

That's all you hear about is Sebastian Walcott. We're with the... I bet if you took a look into the farm system of Tampa Bay or the Brewers, you would see guy after guy after guy.

You'd see guys that are just chomping at the bit to get a chance at the major leagues, but that's probably not gonna happen for them anytime soon the way those teams are built. But the way it is with the Rangers is the farm system is something that for whatever reason, they've rarely... I I won't say never because there have been sometimes when they did this, I think.

But they rarely see the need to buy into the farm system and buy into player development as fully as they should. Yeah. As fully as those other teams do.

Yeah, especially in pitcher development. Yeah, I mean, we have two kid Ranger pitchers here, and I don't know what to think of the futures of Jack Leiter and Kumar Rocker at this point? I like the future of Leiter, I think.

You know, I'm not ready to buy in whole hog on him, but I see enough there to where if he works at it and if his head's right, and I don't know nothing about his head, but if his head's right and he works at it, I think he's going to turn out to be pretty good. Now Kumar Rocker is a whole another thing. Mhmm.

I mean, I don't like Kumar Rocker at all and the reason I don't is because it doesn't seem to me like he loves baseball. I want guys who love baseball and just yearn to play the game every night. I don't see that with him.

Then the reason I don't is because he grew up in a family where his dad was a football player. And guys his age... Kids his age these days, they don't love baseball.

They love football. They love basketball. They love that a whole lot more than they do baseball.

And when I see Kumar Rocker, I think I'm seeing a guy who loves those other sports a lot more than he does baseball. Now I don't know the guy. I can't say that that's true, but that's what I see when I look at him.

Okay, I'm gonna make you Chris Young for the sake of this question. You run this franchise, we've gone over everything about this franchise, what would you do? What would be your course of action?

My course of action would be to first off, have a press conference and tell the fans we got some work to do here. And I don't know how good we're going to be next year. In fact, we're probably under undertaking a two to three year project to rebuild this thing from the foundation up.

And that's going to start with the farm system. Our resources are going to be put into that, and we're going to start getting more serious than we are right now about developing our own players. That would be the first thing I would do.

I'd I'd tell the fans there. I know that's not something they're going... Gonna wanna hear, but I tell them, look, I'm just gonna be really honest with you guys and tell you what we're doing, tell you where we're at, and tell you how it's gonna be.

And you can take that and decide, what you wanna do with it. Mike, one final personal slash professional question. When the ticket was rolling, your show in the afternoon, the hard line along with the musers, you were just beating the daylights out of this city, and it involved you and your friend Greg Williams, and then that relationship fell apart.

But now Greg is is back and and doing some things with you, and I wondered what thawed that relationship. The main thing that thawed it is time. Time generally takes care of everything with me.

One thing I've learned over the years and I know people might find this hard to believe, is I'm not real good with grudges. Just give me a little time everything I work itself may get a little butt hurt with you for a while, but just give me some time. I'll get over it.

That probably was the main thing and his willingness to do it and come back here and work with us on some things. It was another thing, you know? Mhmm.

But I'm glad that things have turned out the way they have. I'm glad to have him back into the fold to the extent that he is back in the fold and we play on. Well, buddy, let's continue to play on.

I hope we can. God bless you, Mike. I hope we can.

You have wonderful days and it's wonderful to have enjoyed. Wow. Nearly forty years of friendship now.

Wow. Yeah. It's really wild, isn't it?

Thanks for your And now here we are. Thanks for your time old Gray Wolf. Anything for you, Norman.

You want me? Just say the word, and I'm there. See you, buddy.

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It's from Saturday's OU upset of Texas, 2724 in the red rivalry game at the Cotton Bowl. OU is a team that does not move the football well, but Texas certainly helped them greatly in this game. And for Arch Manning, the Texas quarterback who threw two late interceptions, one of which was returned for a touchdown.

He used to be the favorite to win the Heisman Trophy this year. That possibility is likely gone. But if you also listen to the talent valuators, who watch collegians play during the season, the whispers there are Manning, who used to be the favorite to go number one pick in the NFL draft may actually be slipping into the early second round of the draft.

And now a word from our title sponsor. Today's episode has been brought to you by Fluent Financial, Retire Earlier, Live Better, and by Bob's Steak and Chophouse on Lemon in Dallas and in Craig Ranch in McKinney. Bob's, a Dallas tradition for more than thirty years.

Thanks for listening to today's episode of Just Wondering. I'm Norm Hitzges, and know that every day, I'll be just wondering about something. And I'm Mary Hitzges, and I'll just be wondering too.

This is a Stolen Water Media production.