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Peter King on serendipity, change, and a life spent covering the NFL

STACKED extracted the fantasy-relevant player signal from this podcast and kept the full transcript here for context.

49 min
Duration
Estimated from transcript
Oct 15, 2026
Published
Thu, October 15, 2026
4
Player insights
3
Players mentioned
Topics
Patrick MahomesReggie White Jr.Tyreek Hill
Player analysis

Player insights

4

Patrick Mahomes

PositiveMatchup24:00

Patrick Mahomes managed the clock effectively during a critical moment late in a Super Bowl game against the 49ers with about nine to ten minutes remaining in the fourth quarter on third and 14. Mahomes came to the sideline to communicate with Eric Bieniemy rather than use a timeout, preserving timeouts for later in the drive.

Insight page
PositiveRole24:22

Peter King highlights Mahomes' decision-making and communication with coach Andy Reid during Super Bowl LIV's critical fourth-quarter moment. With 9-10 minutes left and the 49ers leading, Mahomes came to the sideline and asked Eric Bieniemy if they had time to run the Wasp play—a choice route designed to clear out Tyreek Hill. Mahomes had been getting hit by the 49ers defense and wasn't confident they'd have time, but Reid trusted Mahomes' instinct, called the play, and it worked, leading to the Chiefs' comeback win. King emphasizes this as exemplifying the best quarterback-coach relationship he's seen in 40 years of coverage.

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Reggie White Jr.

NegativeRole27:27

Peter King recounts Reggie White's historic 1993 free agency process, where White was the only major star to receive early free agency rights due to being a named plaintiff in the Doty case. White spent three weeks visiting multiple teams without time pressure, a stark contrast to modern free agency. King notes White visited teams over an extended period, returned to Tennessee between trips to relax, and accumulated 92 voicemails during his process. White ultimately chose Green Bay, influenced by his relationships with coaches including Ray Rhodes.

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Tyreek Hill

PositiveRole25:07

Peter King describes Tyreek Hill's role in the Wasp play during Super Bowl LIV's decisive fourth-quarter drive. The play was designed as a clear-out route where Hill runs down approximately 20 yards and then executes a choice route, deciding at that point whether to run an out, go, or post. In the actual play, Hill read the coverage, saw an opening, and ran a corner route that Mahomes connected with for a crucial gain that helped lead to the Chiefs' comeback victory.

Insight page
Full transcript

Episode Transcript

511
0:00Welcome to The Athletic Football Show, brought to you by the U.S.
0:04Bank Smartly Visa Signature Card. I'm Robert Mays. We've got a special show today.
0:09Peter King is Peter King. Don't really need to tell you who Peter King is.
0:14Legendary Sports Illustrated writer, my boss for a little bit at the MOQB, which we dug into a little bit today.
0:22Peter King's book, about 40 years covering the NFL, the game, was released October 13th.
0:27And we got a chance to talk to Peter on the day the book came out about some of the stories behind
0:35it, what it was like to talk to Peter.
0:38covering the NFL in the 80s, how much of that stuff has changed.
0:43Following Reggie White through his free agency period, picking up Boomer Esiason at the airport the day after he got drafted, even though he wasn't supposed to.
0:52Four decades of stories of perspective on how the league has changed, the way we cover the league and how that has changed.
1:00Really, really enjoyed my conversation with Peter. Let's get into it right now.
1:05Joining us today, I mean, a man who really needs no introduction to talk about his new book, The Game.
1:12covering the NFL for 40 years at Sports Illustrated and various other places, which we'll dig into.
1:18It is my old boss, Peter King. Peter, how are you doing?
1:22Hey, listen, I was your boss for too short a period of time.
1:27Your ascendancy kind of made our time together very short, but I loved when we did work together.
1:33That is, that's a very flattering way to frame that time.
1:37I would disagree with that framing, but it was, you came to me at a time when I absolutely needed it.
1:45Grantland had just folded. I did not have a job.
1:48I did not know what I was going to do.
1:52And you asked me if I wanted to come work at SI for the rest of the season, right?
1:58It was October and I stayed, I originally was just going to stay through the season, but then ended up staying through the draft.
2:07It's so funny. I was thinking about that time this morning and I think it was a combination of the work that
2:15we were allowed to do at MMQB and the types of stories we were able to chase.
2:21But also just the 2015 season to me was such a fun year.
2:25I just remember so many things about it. Like I did a feature about Andy Dalton because he, that was the year
2:33where Andy Dalton was like an MVP candidate. And that was the year where Cam won the MVP.
2:39And so I did a story about the friendship between Cam Newton and Steph Curry at the time.
2:46Cause Steph was really ascending as a player for whatever reason.
2:50I think for a few different factors, I really do fondly remember and deeply remember a lot of the stories that I
2:57got to write in that like four or five month period.
3:01Hey, the story I remember is Jihad Ward. That's right.
3:05That's right. You did a story on this guy who had no business by his background ever being a candidate to play in division three NESCAC.
3:14Never mind the NFL. And you, you killed it.
3:17This guy, Jihad Ward, who had a few cups of coffee in the NFL and he just had this crazy, crazy backstory
3:25and you did a great job with it. Oh, he had to, he went to a small school in New York before
3:33transferring to Illinois and he had to take like a ferry and three buses to get to practice.
3:39And so I, and this was, it was, you, you allowed us to do stuff like this, which I really appreciated.
3:46I went to New York and I retraced his commute to practice that he had to do every single day.
3:53And so I'm taking all these buses and these ferries to Staten Island to get to where the practice field was.
4:01And that was a very fun story. I'll tell you what, that time.
4:05Um, so it was the spring of 2016 and you guys had offered me a chance to stay at SI.
4:13Yeah. And that was what. We had dinner in Indy at the scouting combine at Bluebeard.
4:18It was at Bluebeard. I was, we had, we had dinner that night and I was trying to decide whether I wanted
4:26to stay at SI or go to the ringer.
4:29I was convinced when I left dinner that night, I called Mark Moravik, our co-editor and said, frack, we're going to lose Mays.
4:37And so anyway, whatever. I'll tell you what, it was a lot closer than you remember it.
4:43I agonized that week. I was just pacing around my apartment because there was something so attractive about going back and working with everyone at the ringer.
4:53And I felt like we kind of had some unfinished business and I was chasing that again.
4:59But at the same time, like the idea of getting to work at SI and getting to work with Adam Dewarson and
5:07just all the people that were editors there at the time.
5:10Dewarson's great. I'll tell you what, it was, it was a much harder decision than you're making it out to be.
5:18And I appreciate the fact that you even gave me the decision to make.
5:23So let's dig into the book. I want, I want to start where the book starts because it speaks to a theme
5:31that I want to touch on a lot here.
5:34It's 1984. 1984. You are a Bengals beat writer in your first job covering the NFL.
5:39You're in Sam Weish's office a couple of days before the draft, the week before the draft.
5:45And he says to you, do you want to know who we're going to draft with our draft picks?
5:52And so everything about this interaction, the idea that you're just sitting in the coach's office a couple of days before the
6:00draft and that he's just openly willing to tell you who the players are that the Bengals were thinking about drafting that year.
6:08I'm not sure there is a better note on which to start a discussion or just a lesson about how much things
6:16have changed and how we talk about and cover the NFL in 2026 compared to what it looked like in 1984.
6:23I mean, look, now, you know, no one would share any sort of even halfway inside information on a guy they were
6:31thinking of drafting in the seventh round. It's treated as a CIA secret.
6:36And never mind Sam Weish, the coach of the Bengals, rattling off six or eight names.
6:41Basically, I forget, I think all but two of whom they did draft.
6:46And I first thought he was kidding. So I found a phone number for Ricky Hunley, who was a linebacker from Arizona.
6:54And he was the first name that Sam mentioned.
6:57We're going to take Ricky Hunley. They had three first round picks.
7:01Then we're going to take Boomer Esiason. And then we're going to take Brian Blados.
7:06Then we're going to do all this. And I called Hunley and he says, man, the Bengals have been all over me.
7:14Yeah, they're really, really interested. I said, wow, maybe he's being serious.
7:18I don't know. But I think that just speaks to a time that we didn't treat the NFL like it was the most important thing in the world.
7:28You know, just I mean, one of the reasons why I was born at the absolute perfect time and got into this
7:36business at the absolute perfect time and had the first job at the perfect place.
7:41Robert, imagine watching practice in training camp many days, standing with Paul Brown for two hours.
7:47Yeah. I mean, imagine, you know, there being so few rules around the Bengals coach's office that I used to just walk through the office some days.
7:56I remember sitting down with Jim McNally, one of the best offensive line coaches of his day, and him teaching me about offensive line play.
8:05He was just unbelievably, the Bengals were just an open book.
8:09It was tremendous. And so that was great. Having players like, you know, like Chris Collinsworth and Boomer Esiason.
8:16I mean, imagine having those two guys, you know, the open books of the NFL, especially Boomer.
8:22Two guys who have had decades long storied media careers as storytellers.
8:26Boomer Esiason the other day just got inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame.
8:31I mean, just it's all I was with Boomer today as I go on this little tour to promote my book.
8:39And and I just say, do people have any idea how much you've done in your career?
8:45Because, I mean, think about it. 38 years ago, right now, this year, October, November, December 1988.
8:51Boomer Esiason was the best quarterback in football, was the MVP in a runaway.
8:55And, you know, and then he goes on to, I mean, geez, he did Monday Night Football with Al Michaels.
9:03He did. Anyway, all of this stuff. I was just fortunate.
9:06Truly, true. I'm not it's not a cliche. I'm not being humble.
9:11I mean it sincerely. And then getting to Sports Illustrated in 1989.
9:15I mean, come on. At that time, SI is bigger than ESPN.
9:19And it just it was just one of those things that, you know, a lucky star, whatever, smiled on me.
9:26Do stars smile? A lucky star fell on the top of my head and I took advantage of it.
9:33And but but you know what? I the way I feel about it is, you know, yeah, yeah, I had a lot of breaks.
9:41But you know what? I made some of my own breaks, too.
9:46Absolutely. And I think that there are even little moments in that those first couple chapters where that sticks out.
9:53Like the idea that you went to the airport to secretly pick up these guys that were drafted by the Bengals and
10:00told them that you were their ride from the airport.
10:04Or even something like that, that to me is a perfect example where, of course, the idea.
10:10And I feel this way about my own very small career compared to what you've done.
10:16But you just you get into these moments of real serendipity that kind of drive you forward.
10:22And there are plenty of those, but you still have to take advantage of it.
10:27And so you going to do something like that where you're like, hey, guys, I'm your ride from the airport.
10:34The thought that you would even try to do that is just something that I think not a lot of people would even consider in that moment.
10:44Well, I mean, look, at that moment, all I was thinking is, hey, I could get 25 minutes with the, you know,
10:51first and second round pick Pete Koch, the middle first round pick and then Boomer, the second round pick.
10:58And you know what I really remember about that a lot?
11:02Boomer Esiason was hot that day. And here's why he was the 38th pick in the draft.
11:08He thought he was going to be a high first round pick that Mel Kuyper was in his infancy then.
11:15But he thought Boomer might be the first pick in the draft.
11:19He was the he was on the cover of his his his draft guide that year.
11:25But what I never forget is that Boomer gets in the backseat.
11:29And first of all, it is a two door Volkswagen hatchback with your kid's car seat in the back.
11:36Right. Laura, my daughter, Laura, who's now 43, was eight months old.
11:40And Laura, Laura's car seat was there. I said, oh, my God, I forgot to take the car seat out of the car.
11:48So as I get out of the car and I I stuff it in the in the little trunk and then they
11:56each have duffel bags when they get off the plane.
11:59So I got to figure out a way to stuff it in there without, you know, breaking something or whatever.
12:07And then, you know, you know, you're in a two door car.
12:11You got to pull the seat back. And Boomer has to crawl in the back seat because Pete Koch is six, six to eighty five.
12:20So he's sitting in front and Boomer six, five to thirty.
12:24And he crawls in the back and he gets there and he stretches out.
12:28He's got to fold it into the back. And, you know, he said, welcome to the bleep in NFL.
12:35I mean, he was disgusted. He was mad that Bobby Beathard didn't take him.
12:40Washington ended up picking a lineman from Oklahoma who never played a snap in the NFL.
12:46And Boomer just thought everybody was pulling his leg going into the draft.
12:50And so he was angry when he got drafted.
12:54He was angry when he landed in Cincinnati. So I kind of bore the brunt of that, but it was worth it.
13:01There are a couple of things I want to ask about the Bengals time specifically.
13:07But before we dig into those, I just want to ask you about the process of putting the book together, because the
13:14way that you're talking about it now, there's such specificity to the details and the anecdotes from a 40 year career.
13:22Do you have journals? Do you have notebooks from back then?
13:26Is this all done from memory? Like what was the process of going back and kind of recreating a lot of these
13:33stories from the early parts of your career? The way I started it, Robert, was I had notebooks starting like when I got to SI.
13:42I really didn't save my stuff when I was at the Cincinnati Inquirer and then at Newsday for four years.
13:49I just didn't save it. So what I did was I hired an assistant and I had her go back and find very specific things.
13:58She didn't get every story I wrote at the Cincinnati Inquirer, but she went and found a lot of stories.
14:05I just gave her some keywords and she found it.
14:09She found one story about I was doing a diary with a linebacker from Miami of Ohio named Brian Pillman.
14:16And one night Pillman told me a story that Larry Kinnebrew, an overweight guy, a running back who was trying to make
14:24the team, but he was on a very, very strict diet.
14:27He stole Brian Pillman's cheeseburger that he got every night from McDonald's and he stole it and he inhaled it.
14:35And he told me the story Pillman told me.
14:38And then it's in the Inquirer, in the diary that Kinnebrew stole his cheeseburger.
14:43Kinnebrew gets fined 500 bucks. And Robert, he walks up to me and on the sideline of training camp practice.
14:50And Larry Kinnebrew is maybe 6'1", 260. And he walks right up to me and he gets one inch from my nose.
14:58And he goes, that wasn't no nice thing you wrote in the paper.
15:02And I said, well, OK. But anyway, I had her go find things like that.
15:07Yeah. You know, I called, unfortunately, Sam Weich is dead.
15:11But I called Boomer, had a long conversation with Boomer and called a couple of people with the Bengals.
15:18And that was the process of the whole book.
15:21You know, 1985, Pete Rozelle. I interviewed Pete Rozelle.
15:24That was late in his tenure. He was kind of a beaten man at that point.
15:30And Joe Brown, who was in the interview with me, the longtime NFL VP of public relations.
15:36I had three or four different long conversations with him about Rozelle.
15:40I talked to Paul Tagliabue about Rozelle. And talked to Paul Tagliabue about his term, too, five months before he died.
15:47In 1987, the player strike. The most amazing thing that people of a certain age know.
15:53But people of Robert Mays' age, you know, it's like this weird legend.
15:58But I was one. You realize that at one point in 1987, the players went on strike and the NFL said, well, bleep you.
16:06We're going to play anyway. And they hired guys.
16:09For instance, there was a truck driver from Illinois who went to play tackle for the Buffalo Bills.
16:16Lawrence Taylor crossed the picket line and had to face this guy in the game.
16:21And the guy got seven penalties called on him for trying to block or take down Lawrence Taylor the whole day.
16:28And at the end of the game, Taylor goes up to him and he goes, hey, sucker.
16:34And this guy like a clenches his fist like, oh, my God, Taylor's going to fight me.
16:40And Taylor goes, great game. And just walks away because Taylor loves the WWE.
16:45He loved the WWE aspect of that, the weirdest game he ever played in.
16:50But the one other thing about the strike here.
16:53How about this? The quarterback for the Chicago Bears strike team in the first game that they played, one of the two
17:01quarterbacks who played in the game was Sean Payton.
17:04Yep. How about Sean Payton playing for Mike Ditka?
17:07How about the color man for CBS doing that game?
17:11Terry Bradshaw. Terry Bradshaw talking about what a great athlete Sean Payton was.
17:16And I sent the recording to Payton and he listened to it and he goes, oh, my God, he called me a great athlete.
17:24I mean, you know, what was Terry Bradshaw thinking?
17:27But the other funny thing Bradshaw said is the reason why all these all the strike players love Ditka, we get on
17:35the plane in Philadelphia after that game and on every player had on his seat, a plastic bag filled with ice and three cans of beer.
17:44And he said, so everybody now is going to run through a wall for Ditka.
17:50So anyway, but I went back and was able to find out all of these things.
17:55Quite honestly, I never knew. All right, before we move on, let's take our first quick break.
18:01There's something again, getting back to the serendipity, that having Sam Weiss be the first coach that you cover day to day.
18:09I had one conversation with Sam before he passed.
18:12Obviously, he's much older than, but he's a fascinating character.
18:16Fascinating. And I'm wondering, do you feel like that being the first coach that you covered influenced the way that you thought
18:23about the league or wanted to cover the NFL?
18:27Yes, yes, yes. Because I saw so many people in the league really hate Sam.
18:32Yeah. And think Sam was poison, you know, to the NFL.
18:36He was just, he was a terrible influence. I mean, Chuck Noll, look, Chuck Noll's fantastic, deserves every bit of credit for
18:44totally changing the Steelers and making them one of the great franchises in any sport in the world.
18:50But Chuck Noll called him Harry High School, talked about him derisively all the time because of this no huddle offense.
18:57He didn't think he thought that was cheap and tawdry and terrible and awful.
19:02And against the spirit of the rules, Sam said, show me a rule where we have to get in the huddle.
19:10Who said I have to get in the huddle?
19:13Jerry Glanville hated him. He was counterculture. And Jerry Glanville was, you know, he and Jerry Glanville had the biggest rivalry of any two coaches I ever covered.
19:23By far, not even close. Sam once ran the score up on Jerry Glanville in a game and he, and with, with,
19:31you know, 58 points, 58 points in the last minute of the game, kicked an onside kick, recovered it, and then kicked
19:38a field goal to make it 61. I mean, that's how much Sam Weich hated Jerry Glanville.
19:44Asked after the game, hey, Sam, you know, I mean, that was unbelievable out there.
19:50You have any regrets? He said, yeah, I got a regret that the game wasn't five quarters.
19:56It was four. You know, he wanted to score more.
19:59But Sam was a nutty professor. But the fact is, he was also a beautiful mind.
20:05And he came up with so much cool stuff that you never saw before.
20:10And I said to myself, this is a guy who gets it.
20:14He wants to be different from everybody else. And good, good.
20:18Why do you want to just, you know, run it 62% of the time, three yards in a cloud of dust?
20:25Hey, look, Paul Brown did that with Jim Brown.
20:28I would do it too with Jim Brown, okay?
20:32But, you know, this is a different time, a different place.
20:36And the guys who played for Sam, they rolled their eyes about him sometimes because he was kind of nuts.
20:43But they loved playing for him because every day was an adventure.
20:47And I think at the same time, so Sam Weich is doing that.
20:51Bill Walsh has come on the scene a couple years earlier.
20:55And you write this in the first chapter of the book.
20:59You have Marino, John Elway, Jim Kelly all coming into the league around like 1984 when you're covering the Bengals.
21:06And he said the football establishment couldn't ignore that there were more imaginative brains running more modern offenses.
21:13Bill Walsh wasn't a singular outlier anymore. And so beyond just the people in Cincinnati at the time, the way the league
21:20was changing and some of the dynamics around that and just the aesthetics of the sport are shifting pretty dramatically right as
21:28you're starting to cover the league day to day and be invested in telling the stories about it.
21:35Without any question. And I think one of the things about that time.
21:39And listen, Robert, it's the exact same thing five years later.
21:43Okay. Where all the establishment people are saying, oh, Jimmy Johnson, what a rube.
21:48He's playing with 225 pound inside linebackers. We are going to steamroll him.
21:53Can't wait to play Jimmy Johnson. My God. You know, Godfrey Miles and Dixon Edwards.
21:58Oh, bring them on. Let's do it. And then, you know, you saw what happened.
22:03Speed won on defense. It wasn't just, you know, these crushers winning on defense with the 265 pound, you know, inside linebackers,
22:11let's say, or 255 maybe is fairer. But I think anytime anybody comes in and attempts to change the rules, you know, again, this is not meant to.
22:21I will get back to that. But I'm reminded of, you know, when pro football focus came into being and they started,
22:29you know, maybe really starting to be heard of.
22:32And people are using them a little bit, maybe 15 years ago.
22:36So, and then the pro football focus got so big that by 2017, the winning play in the Super Bowl, Eagles over Patriots, was helped materially.
22:45The touchdown pass to Zach Ertz that won the Super Bowl.
22:49That was a play that Frank Reich, Mike Groh, Doug Peterson got by studying stuff from pro football focus in bunch formations.
22:57But be all that as it may. Remember, pro football focus came in.
23:01Pro football focus is garbage. You know, you can't judge everybody.
23:05And look, every, no, it's not perfect. Okay. But there's something to be said for trying new things and saying, I'm going
23:13to watch the left guard on all 68 snaps of this game.
23:17And then because nobody else is. And then I am going to make a judgment on that left guard about how he played in this game.
23:26Was it perfect? No. Was it better than nothing?
23:30Yes. And so I think that is one of the great things that I recall about what Sam Weich did for the game of football.
23:38And just five years later, what Jimmy Johnson began to do for the game of football.
23:44So many of the memorable things I remember you doing at SI were just providing context for some of the biggest moments
23:52in NFL history the morning after they happened or the two days after they happened.
23:57You were sitting with that. Andy Reid showed you the Wasp play after that game.
24:03And I think you were one of the first people to name it, to talk about it that way.
24:09What of those moments sticks with you from your career?
24:13Like those morning after night of things that where you just got a deeper understanding of one of the pivotal moments in the history of the sport.
24:22Of those, which sticks with you all this time later?
24:26Well, I think you mentioned it, two jet chip Wasp, where, you know, the 49ers are going to beat the Chiefs.
24:33And there's whatever, nine or 10 minutes left in the fourth quarter.
24:37And they've got, I think it was third and 14.
24:41And luckily, no one ever talks about this, Robert.
24:44But luckily at that moment, there was a replay review.
24:48And Patrick Mahomes, they didn't want to use a timeout because they knew they were going to need him.
24:54Patrick Mahomes comes to the sidelines, runs over and says to Eric B.
24:59Enemy, do we have time to run Wasp? And the reason he asked him that is Wasp essentially is, you know, kind
25:07of a clear out route by Tyreek Hill. You run down maybe 20 yards and then it's sort of a choice route.
25:15Okay. You have to make a judgment when you get to that point whether you should run an out, whether you should
25:22run a go, whether you should run, you know, run a post.
25:27What exactly should you do at that moment? And so basically Tyreek Hill gets there and he sees, hey, I got a hole here.
25:35I'm running a corner route. And he runs the corner route and Patrick Mahomes sees him.
25:41And the reason he said, do we have time to run Wasp?
25:45The reason is because he'd been getting banged around by the 49ers and they did not think that they were going to have time.
25:53But Andy Reid, this is why I write, I have a chapter about Reid and Mahomes.
25:59And I think it's the best quarterback coach relationship I've ever seen in my 40 years.
26:05Because when Patrick Mahomes comes to the sidelines and says to B.
26:09Enemy, do we have time to run Wasp? And they get Reid involved in it.
26:14Reid knows that that's the play Patrick thinks will work.
26:18If Patrick likes it, Reid likes it. And they called the play.
26:22It worked, obviously. They go on to win the game.
26:26And Andy, after the game, told me about that play.
26:29And you might say, well, geez, why did he pick you?
26:33Why didn't he tell whoever, Vi Gregorian from the Kansas City Star, Seth Wickersham from ESPN, why did he pick you?
26:40And it's got a little, a tiny backstory. I'll tell you very quickly.
26:451995, I'm doing a story in Green Bay. And Andy approaches me.
26:49He's the tight ends coach. And he goes, hey, at one point I wanted to do your job.
26:56Really? Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to write for Sports Illustrated.
26:59I wanted to write about football. I wrote for the school paper at Brigham Young.
27:04I said, wow, that's cool. So, you know, you meet him, you file it away.
27:10So over the years, Andy was always really good to me when I would come into Philadelphia to cover a game or later Kansas City.
27:19And it's because I think he saw him in me.
27:22And he thought that, hey, there but for the grace of God go I.
27:27And I just think over the years, he felt comfortable because he wanted the story told.
27:33I think he thought that I would tell the story correctly.
27:37And so he did a bunch of those things with me.
27:40And for those things, I'll be eternally grateful. All right.
27:44Before we move on, let's take one more quick break.
27:47Speaking of Green Bay, I love the chapter about the start of free agency in 93 and you getting to tag along
27:55with Reggie White and Jimmy Sexton throughout that entire process.
27:59And I think the number one thing that jumped out to me, you're doing, you're filing away and kind of marking the
28:07dates that they're taking these trips to these teams.
28:10And as I'm looking at that, my thought process is he spent three weeks visiting these teams and figuring out where he
28:18would head in free agency as the prize of free agency when now it happens in 10 seconds as soon as free agency starts.
28:26Do you want to know why, Robert? Remember the first year of NFL free agency.
28:31Reggie White basically got papal dispensation. He was the only guy in that first class, the only big star in the first
28:39class because free agency wasn't going to start in total until 1994.
28:43But because Reggie White was one of the named plaintiffs on the case, Doty, the judge in here, and I forget the
28:51mechanics of it exactly, whether it was Doty or whether it was somebody else.
28:56But I think it was Doty basically said, okay, you get to be free right now.
29:02You can pick whatever team you want. He was under no time pressure whatsoever.
29:07Everybody had to deal with his timeline. And so that was tremendously informative.
29:11I only went with him for a short part of the trip, but then I followed the rest of it, you know, by phone and all that stuff.
29:21And Sexton at the time, you know, I got to really like Jimmy Sexton because the one thing about Jimmy, he was young.
29:29He was, I'm guessing maybe he was 26 or 27 at the time.
29:34He was just, he was like a little younger than me, I think.
29:38And he basically was afraid of nothing. The best agents are, right?
29:43Yeah. Yeah. He was afraid of nothing. And he wasn't unreasonable at all.
29:47He did a really good job for Reggie White.
29:50And it's just so many really, really cool things.
29:54The one thing I'll never forget about that story when I didn't know this.
29:59And so this goes back to, this goes to the, let's go back and find out more about it today.
30:06That when Reggie White was on the road on his first trip, he was on the road for maybe six or eight days.
30:14And then he went back to Tennessee to relax for a few days in between trips.
30:19And he goes back and he's got whatever, 92 voicemails on his thing.
30:24And the last day he was in Green Bay, he said to, Mike Holmgren said to him, Reggie, I got to know,
30:32what is going to make your decision about where you're going to go?
30:36And Reggie White said, yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to pray on it.
30:41I'm going to let God make that decision. And that's the way Reggie talked.
30:46He had a hoarse voice. And so Mike said, okay.
30:50So the next morning, Mike knew that Reggie wasn't home yet.
30:54He knew he'd be home soon. So he called his voicemail.
30:58He knew it would ring to voicemail. And he said, Reggie, this is God.
31:02I'm telling you, go to Green Bay. And, you know, Reggie thought that was the funniest thing he ever had.
31:10He saved the voicemail and always would play it for people, thought it was so cool.
31:15I mean, it's an incredible story. And it just, I think it does speak to the idea of if teams actually did
31:23that now, obviously they can't for so many different reasons.
31:26But part of the reason that I think he made that decision, he really liked Ray Rhodes.
31:32He really liked the relationships he had with the coaches that he was visiting with.
31:38And now, outside of maybe a quick phone conversation, if you're Jalen Phillips.
31:42You've got to make these life decisions. Instantly. Without doing the full, your agent tells you, hey, you know, Vegas is offering you five years, 25.
31:52And the best other offer is four years, 12.
31:55You've got to take Vegas. Okay. Okay. I'll take Vegas.
31:58And that's it? It's over. And you're making a life decision based on a 10-minute phone call.
32:04It's kind of silly. But, you know, Robert, I'll just say this about all of that.
32:10Like, I really feel, I feel in so many ways that, and I'm not one of those guys who said, oh, it
32:18was so much better than, because I don't really think it was necessarily better than.
32:23I know you don't. But I think it's great now.
32:27Absolutely great. And I think there are so many dramatic, cool stories with imaginative people and all that stuff.
32:33But the one thing I do think is that, you know, if there's a lesson, I got a chapter on what I call the perfect football career.
32:43It's about Jerome Bettis. And I say he had the perfect football career because you know why?
32:49He used his head to make a lot of decisions instead of his bank account.
32:54So he could have made, I think, significantly more money in his life.
32:59Had a chance to go to be the man in Chicago, you know, and make a lot more money in Chicago.
33:06He had a chance to go to Houston early on in his career, and they would have given him the ball more than Pittsburgh.
33:15But Jerome Bettis knew who he was. He didn't want to carry it 350 times in a year.
33:21He just didn't think his body could take it.
33:24And plus, he wanted to have a long-term business plan with his life after football.
33:29And he said, I love Pittsburgh. I love the people of Pittsburgh.
33:34I want to have a future in Pittsburgh. So I'm not going to go for two years to go play in Washington
33:41or Chicago or Miami just because they're offering me a million dollars more.
33:46I mean, and so I think sometimes, I know this is presumptuous.
33:50I'm going to tell some PR guys, look, take these 14 pages and have your rookie class read it next year about Jerome Bettis.
33:59And just look and see what a smart person, really smart person who doesn't chase every dollar can do and what it
34:06does for his life and what it does for his career.
34:10You said you don't think it was better back then.
34:14And I truly believe you. I think you've done such a good job of elevating young voices and finding people that wanted
34:22to cover the game in interesting ways. I mean, you write about it in the book, but the staff at MMQB, and
34:29I don't consider myself a part of that group, like the core people, have all gone on to do such great work in other areas.
34:38And I think that you've always really been a fan of the younger generation of people who cover the sport in a way that I've appreciated.
34:47Robert, can I tell you why I did that?
34:51But because Sports Illustrated, they say, okay, you can do the MMQB, but you have a salary cap.
34:57You have X amount of dollars that you can spend.
35:01If you can fit four people in this, you can do it.
35:05If you can fit five, you can do it.
35:08But you can't have any more money than this.
35:11So I realized and I went out and I said, well, what can I do?
35:16And you know what I could do? I could hire young people who were working cheap and I could say, hey, this is your opportunity.
35:25Yeah, who's my Scott Hatterberg? You know, and I said- It was Emily Kaplan.
35:30It was Emily Kaplan. It was Jenny Varentis. It was Robert Klemko.
35:34It was Tim Rohan. You know, Kaylin Kaler. You know, all of those people came for not, you know, Kaylin Kaler started as my administrative assistant.
35:44I remember. And she was just an absolute terror.
35:47She was a bulldog. She really was. She still is.
35:50She was going to do something great in life and she's doing it now.
35:55Same with Emily Kaplan. Emily would not be denied.
35:58And so that was what was so fortunate. And I've told people because, look, I only had that ability to hire a certain number of people.
36:08But if I were starting a website right now, I would go to five college campuses in the United States in, you know, March.
36:16And I would interview 10 people at each place.
36:19And I'd hire a bunch of people for, I don't even know what the number is, what, $48,000 or something like that.
36:27And say, okay. And I don't mean to say I'm playing Hunger Games.
36:32I don't mean that at all. But I'm saying this is your chance.
36:36You got a couple of years. Make the best of it.
36:40You know, make a name for yourself. That's what I would say.
36:44Work as hard as you can. And if you work hard and you do really, really good stories, people are going to
36:52notice and somebody's going to pay you more than I can pay you.
36:57So good luck. And it benefits them and it benefits us.
37:01I did a story once about a band, an album that they wrote.
37:05And the drummer, who still is a buddy, he said something to me that stuck with me.
37:11And he said, you never get the f*** you, your 20s back.
37:15Creatively. And it's true, right? Like you just, it's hard to recapture that even if you're somebody who has a lot of energy and fire and ambition.
37:25But I wanted to, the preface, I was getting to a question about, you've always been really in tune with what the
37:33next generation of people who are covering the sport look like and the work that they're doing.
37:39As you look at the way professional football is covered now, even compared to the way it was covered when you started
37:47the MMQB, what do you think are the key differences in the way the sport is covered today?
37:53Oh, I think quite a few people who are very good probably cover it more from 10,000 feet than happened one and two generations ago.
38:02A lot more. Which is, which in some ways is necessary for two reasons.
38:07Number one, they don't have the budget to travel that people like I had in the 90s.
38:13Let's say nobody ever asked me, gee, why are you going to Seattle this week?
38:18Well, there might be a story out there. Oh, okay.
38:22All right. Good luck. Yeah. See you. The dream.
38:25Yeah. I mean, that's, that's, that was ridiculous. So, but there's that.
38:29And there's also the, the thought that people, I think who cover the game today, as well as not having the same
38:37opportunity, get closed out a lot by teams, which didn't happen to me in that way.
38:42I feel bad. I honestly feel bad. Like I, I met with Ben Solak before I retired and I just said, Ben, I think you are incredible.
38:52And I think you have a great chance to be the next generation's best.
38:57I think you are awesome. And I still think he's awesome.
39:01I love, I love Ben Solak. But the fact is, even if Ben Solak wanted to or had the ability, I have
39:08no idea what his budget, I don't know anything about how he travels or anything like that.
39:14But even if he wanted to, it's so much harder because, you know, when I went to training camp, I get an
39:22hour with the coach, get a half hour with the quarterback.
39:26I was Sports Illustrated. That was the Bible at the time.
39:30And I don't care what, how prominent you are.
39:33Really, that's hard to get these days. Really, really hard to get.
39:37And so, unfortunately, the opportunities are simply not the same as they were, you know, when I was in my SI heyday.
39:45As you think about those constraints and just the practical reality of covering the sport now, working within those parameters, what do
39:53you think you'd like to see a little bit more of?
39:57And what do you think you'd like to see a little bit less of?
40:02I would like to see a little bit more of things like what Mike Silver does, which is, which are going to a game on Sunday.
40:11And even if you don't know somebody and or that somebody isn't going to say much to you or talk to you,
40:19sidle up to them and get something. And make me feel like you were with the most important person in the league on Sunday.
40:27Instead of just going and sitting in the third row of the press conference, even if you get a question in, so what?
40:35How is that different from what anybody else has?
40:39And look, I understand if I was a beat guy for a team and I understood that in many ways that's the
40:46only way I could do it, you got to do it.
40:50I don't I don't I'm not being critical of anybody for doing that, but I'm just saying that I would like to see different.
40:59OK, that's number one. And I think number two.
41:02When something like what happens at the end of the Commanders Giants game happens, you know, and.
41:08And, you know, there's an absolute debacle at the end of the game.
41:12I think I would like to see from the people who cover that game.
41:17Just a wide variety of reporting. And what I mean is and even in my day, it was kind of the same way you covered one team.
41:27So you only went to one locker room. You know, I think sometimes if I was a Giants reporter there, I would
41:35make absolutely unequivocally certain, even if it cost me that I would go and take the temperature of Washington.
41:41And is somebody in that locker room? How in the bleep could this ever happen?
41:47I would just want maybe more measured stories than.
41:50And I understand your sports editor or your whoever editor is telling you, you got to cover everything with this team.
41:57But that was so utterly preposterous that I think.
42:00And I don't know. For all I know, the Post and the Daily News and everything else, it went to also got stuff from watching.
42:09I don't know. But I'd like to have a little bit more of a balanced approach.
42:15The last thing I wanted to ask you, and you write this in the final chapter of the book, and it really
42:23hit me because I found myself thinking this a lot over the last couple of years.
42:28You're talking about what you don't like about the NFL right now.
42:33And you said, I don't like the greed in the game.
42:37And as I think about the league right now and how the league has expanded and some of the decisions that it's
42:44making and just the football every day, the international games, expanding the schedule.
42:49We're at a point now where I just wonder how much is enough, how much money is enough, where are the limits to this?
42:57And you write about Mark Cuban saying, I think it was 2014, about the idea of fat pigs getting slaughtered and the
43:05league kind of pushing up against the limits of what it should be doing and potentially overexposing itself.
43:11Where do you sit with that now? How do you think about the way that the league has just tried to cannibalize
43:19and eat everything and just be this kind of voracious, insatiable beast that it currently exists as?
43:25I really don't mind it. Because if you're a business and you're trying to expand and everything like that, listen, I am
43:33very much in favor of international football. And I don't think it's too much to ask for every team, one game a
43:41year to spread the gospel of the NFL. And, you know, people are talking about, oh, my God, the Cowboys and Ravens
43:49had to get on a plane for 10 hours.
43:52My God. Oh, the inhumanity of it all. You know, to have the let me just ask you this question.
43:59If you're in a life, if you're a young person and you're in a lie flat seat at 10 o'clock at night,
44:07all I can say is, I think you're going to get some pretty good sleep that night.
44:13So don't be telling me what a terrible burden that is.
44:16OK, that's one thing. I like international football. I've been to two of the games in Germany.
44:22Incredible, incredible atmosphere. Tom Brady walked off the field after the Tampa Bay Seattle game that I covered.
44:29And he said to me, that's one of the best times I have ever had on a football field.
44:36I mean, players, I'm sure players don't like the, you know, the plane trips and all that stuff.
44:42My feeling is players like it and all that.
44:45It's a it's a cool experience. So I like that.
44:49I don't like the NFL saying, oh, yeah, we we are all into health and safety.
44:54We care about health and safety. And by the way, we're going to ask these players, starting players in the NFL.
45:02And let's say there are, you know, there's 32 teams and let's say there's, you know, 15 or so full time starters, you know, on all these teams.
45:12We're going to ask these 500 men. To play 65, 62, 65 more snaps every season.
45:17You know, right now that the biggest thing that leads to more head trauma and more problems post career are not necessarily concussions.
45:25They are the sub concussive hits to the head.
45:29The accumulation of all those hits to the head.
45:32Do you think in that additional 65 snaps per season that they play that they're not going to get hit in the head?
45:40No, they're going to get hit in the head an average of six percent more because that's how many plays there are
45:48than they would in a season with 17 games.
45:51And they're already hitting the head six percent more in a 17 game season than they were in 2020 when it was a 16 game season.
46:00So stop with this crap. Please don't insult us by saying that, oh, it's a great idea.
46:06People want more football. Let's give them more football.
46:09Well, let's the heroes that you promote all the time in the NFL.
46:14Let's not ask them to be guinea pigs so that there's a better chance than they have currently.
46:20There's a better chance to have a major head injury or head trauma when they're 55 years old than they have now.
46:28One of the lines in the book is Pete Roselle saying that he liked in the old version, the way the NFL
46:36offseason worked, where there actually was an offseason because people got to miss football and it made them, it increased their appetite when it came back.
46:45And I read that and just, it feels so quaint now.
46:49It does. The idea that the NFL would leave for a couple months in the spring and early summer to be like, Robert, how about this?
46:58We'll see in the fall when we get back.
47:01But how about this? How about this? First of all, in 1984, there's nothing.
47:06There's no attention paid to the scouting combine. Free agency doesn't exist.
47:10There's no revving up for the draft. I mean, people are interested in it, but, you know, it's not a big deal.
47:18And the draft happens. It starts at 8 a.m.
47:21on a Tuesday morning. The first round and a half of the draft is on ESPN.
47:27Then there's nothing for the last 10 and a half rounds.
47:31And if you want to know who your team drafted, there is no internet.
47:36You have to look in the small type in your morning newspaper the next day.
47:41And then, you know what? That happens at the end of April or I think maybe May 1st that year.
47:48Then May, June, July, half of August. You don't pay any attention.
47:52There's nothing with football. Can you just imagine that?
47:55Now, in the second week of May, there is a nationally televised prime time show on the release of the NFL schedule.
48:03And that just says it all about what has happened.
48:07The NFL has become a 12-month-a-year business. I'm telling you right now, Roger Goodell has told his events department, now, today, current,
48:15not today, but I mean currently, I want more stuff end of June, early July.
48:20Find something. Find another tentpole event so that people can get their appetite whetted even more before the start of the season.
48:28Listen, I love the combine. I love free agency.
48:31I love the draft. I love that we have stuff to talk about all year.
48:36It makes my job exciting. It makes it more fun.
48:40I am very proud of the fact that in the 15 years that I have done this, I've never done schedule release content.
48:48That is the one thing that I can hang my hat on.
48:52I have never done that. That's where the line gets drawn.
48:56Peter King, I can't tell you how much I appreciate it.
49:00I enjoyed the book so much. Please go pick it up.
49:04It comes out, we're recording this on Tuesday the 13th.
49:07The book comes out today. The Game by Peter King, 40 years, a storied career covering the NFL.
49:14Peter, sincerely appreciate the time and we'll catch up soon.
49:17Thanks a million, Robert. Much, much appreciated your interest and thanks for your friendship.

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