Peter King checked in with Dale & Holley on Friday to give his take on the offseason in the NFL and on this weekends Divisional playoff games.

With Dean Pees now out as defensive coordinator and Romeo Crennel in Kansas City, King talked about why Crennel jumped to the Chiefs and didn’t wait for his old job to open up.

“I know that Romeo Crennel surely was attracted to in Kansas City, is that that thing is going to be his defense,” said King. “He’s going to be making the calls, it’s going to be all him.”

King discussed the coaching situations in Washington and Seatttle, and talked about what he might change the Rooney Rule. King also dished on Mike Holmgren and Bill Parcells, and the possibility of one or both returning to the sidelines in the future.

Here is the transcript. To listen to the full interview click here.

What did you make of the departure of Dean Pees?

Surprised. You sort of got the feeling not that, not that it was dysfunctional all year, but you sort of got the feeling that because they could never really get the pressure that you have to get in today’s NFL, whether or not there was going to be a change made at the end of this year, you felt like something was going to happen. But I was a little bit surprised. It just reinforces the fact that two teams, very, very bottom-line teams, the Miami Dolphins and the New England Patriots, neither of whom had disastrous defensive seasons, both decide to make changes. To me it points up the year-to-year desperation that you have to try to get it right.

I think with the Patriots it isn’t only the fact that they didn’t get the pressure on the quarterback that they really wanted, even though I think Tully Banta-Cain finished with 10 sacks, they never really got Derrick Burgess going in terms of sack-mode. I think he had some very effective games, but he and Adalius Thomas never became that guy. They never developed any real great pass rush threats and the fact, the number that jumps off the page with the Patriots is giving up 4.4 yards a rush. I was looking at stats at the end of the year and I said, “Wow. I didn’t know it was that bad.” But I do think that some of the things are fixable and they are especially fixable if you got four picks in the top 53 or 52. I’m sure that the Patriots will go for at least one edge rusher in the first couple of rounds in April.

Why do you think Romeo Crennel goes to Kansas City when he could have come to New England?

That’s a very good question; I think it’s a very good question. I’m not sure, and again I know that Bill Belichick and Romeo have a very good relation, but I don’t know the profile of a coach that Bill Belichick wants running his defense. As you’ve seen in the last few years, one of the things that Bill has done, is he continues to develop young coaches and take guys who really think they can mold sort of in his own image. He takes those guys, sort of like he did with Josh McDaniels, he’s doing it with Bill O’Brien, he’s doing it with a bunch of guys on his staff.

My only thought is A: I think [Crennel] felt a little bit more comfortable in trying to do something himself. And B: I think one of the things that I know that Romeo Crennel surely was attracted to in Kansas City is that that thing is going to be his defense. He’s going to be making the calls, it’s going to be all him. If you’re a coach, especially if you are a coach who sat around for a year and hasn’t done anything, and is used to making a lot of the decisions yourself, I mean I haven’t talked to Romeo about this at all, but my gut feeling is Romeo wants to go to a place where he can run the show, and he’s going to be able to run that show in Kansas City.

Is it possible a problem could occur if Belichick had to choose between Pepper Johnson and Matt Patricia for defensive coordinator?

I suppose it could. Obviously Pepper Johnson is a guy who wanted to move up the food chain. I remember being the reporter in the Patriot’s Super Bowl against the Rams and when Pepper Johnson he was the live wire out there, he was the most lively guy at practice. He was all over the place. He was excited, running a lot of stuff out there. He’s always been sort of the “up guy” around that team from what the guys say. I’m sure he wants the opportunity to do it, we’ll see what happens if Bill goes in another direction.

What do you think of the Pete Carroll move, and what do you think about the Seahawks and the Rooney Rule?

I’m going to give you my theory on this and it’s a theory that I’m working on right now. My theory is that after the Seahawks had an opportunity to talk to Leslie Frazier and after they had a chance to talk to Tony Dungy about Leslie Frazier. After they thought of different combinations for their front office, I have a feeling it went from, “We are going to do everything we can to get Pete Carroll in here.” To if Pete doesn’t, the owner Paul Allen wants to make sure that there isn’t a situation where the head coach has every bit of power in the organization, he doesn’t like that. He thinks it creates a lack of motivation on the part of the scouting department and the personnel department, which basically is the same thing. He wants to make sure that there is a check and a balance in place for Pete Carroll. Once he saw Leslie Frazier and some of the possibilities with Leslie Frazier and who they could have brought it, it didn’t sway Todd Leiweke, president of the Seahawks, totally. But it convinced him that, “If I had to go in this direction and Pete is unwilling to sort of play on the general manager position a little bit,” then I think he would have been OK with Leslie Frazier coming in now. That isn’t to say that this thing didn’t happen the right way. We all know that both of those situations in Washington and Seattle, they both started with the answer and worked backward to the question. Daniel Snyder started with Mike Shanahan and worked backward to make sure he covered all his bases. Seattle, they started with Pete Carroll and as they worked backward they saw, “Wow. If we have to take Leslie Frazier we are going to be a lot happier taking Leslie Frazier then keeping Jim Mora.” That’s a long way of saying that I don’t like what happened with the Rooney Rule either, and I think it’s wrong. On NBC last week I called Frazier’s interview the longest sham in NFL history, because at the end of the day if everything had worked out with Carroll then that’s who they were hiring. But I think they were so impressed with Frazier in the time they talked with him, it made them believe that if they had to go that way then they wouldn’t be too ticked off.

What’s the right way to do the Rooney Rule?

I think I know the right way to do it. It’s to only slightly tweak the system that is in place now. In other words, there has to be a way that I believe there is a way, and I was talking to one club president about this issue, this was what we came up with. If you decide at any point during the season, lets say that you decide on October 30 that I’m replacing Jim Zorn, and you are Dan Snyder. You notify the league and say, “Look I’m probably making a coaching change and here is what I’m thinking of doing.” There is one guy in the league office who is in charge of this and he’s a trustworthy guy, you know he is not going to be a leaguer, he’s not going to talk to the press, but you talk to this one guy and you say, “Here’s my plan, here’s what I’m going to do. I want Mike Shanahan but here’s what I’m going to do, I’m going to talk to Jerry Gray, I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that.” That way everything can be documented, it’s all down you all say, “On October 30 this plan was set in place.” It doesn’t ever have to come to the light of day, but as long as the league can say that they are satisfied with it that’s fine. But I think in some ways, Roger Goodell was on Mike & Mike this morning on ESPN Radio and he said something interesting. He said, “I know some things that I can’t say.” For instance Michael, and I don’t know if this is true or not, but what would happen for instance if you found out that in Seattle that the choice was Tony Dungy and Leslie Frazier running the Seahawks versus Peter Carroll and whoever it is, whoever he ends up hiring maybe Floyd Reese. We could argue all day on which is better, but at least then you could say that is fairly interesting. And I don’t know that happened or not. But I’m saying there are things that we don’t know that happened during the course of these interviews that I believe make the Rooney Rule, from the outside it looks terrible, but from the inside you say this isn’t as bad as it looks.

Did Pete Carroll want to get back to the NFL that bad or did he live before a potential scandal came to USC?

That’s the $64,000 question. There is no question that something is going to happen to USC. If the NCAA is still on Reggie Bush’s case, and I was in New Orleans last week and I asked someone what was going on and he said, “There’s still, this is still something that plagues Reggie Bush, and he has still got to answer questions about it.” Dale I do believe that something is going to happen there, and I also believe that Pete thought at the end of the day how many more chances was he going to have. Especially, he’s got a very, very limited pool of teams, and in my opinion they are five: Denver, Arizona, San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle. He would never go to Oakland, so there is five teams. In essence there is three teams, because he wants to get up every morning and see the water. So it’s like when Jimmy Johnson wanted to get back into coaching. I remember meeting with him in 1995 showing him the salary cap situation and the talent situation of Tampa Bay and Miami, and how if he had a brain in his head he wouldn’t have taken Tampa Bay. But he said, “I want to live in Miami.” So it looks like Pete Carroll wants to live on the West Coast. It looks like San Diego is going to re-sign Norv Turner for at least two years, so he’s solid as a rock. Mike Singletary is solid for now in San Francisco and that’s sort of an odd organization anyways. You don’t know if you want to go in there with John York’s son running things. Seattle was absolutely wide open and one of the richest men in America owns the team. I’ll tell you one other thing, if you have an opportunity and you are out in Seattle for whatever reason, you got to go see their training facility. It’s right on Lake Washington, which is one of the real undiscovered gems for people in the United States, you might say, “Lake Washington, what’s that?” It’s just one of the most beautiful lakes to live on in the United States. You are in training camp watching the Seahawks and they got this beautiful complex right on Lake Washington and quite literally people come up on their boats and they sit out, they put the tanning lotion on, have a beer and they watch the Seahawks practice. In the summer it’s nice. That’s the kind of thing Pete Carroll will hear off and he’ll hear the sirens song and that’s what he’ll want to do.

Who is going to win these games this weekend?

The only dog I’m picking, and it’s weird that they are an underdog, is Dallas. I’m picking Indianapolis because I just think that even when people try to keep the ball away from Peyton Manning, he still makes enough plays to win. Miami did it, they only gave Indianapolis the ball for 15 minutes earlier this year and the Colts had enough to win. Even though Baltimore is a real formidable enough opponent, I like them. I would love the Jets if they had two more Darrelle Revis’. But even if Revis takes Vincent Jackson out of this game, who’s covering Antonio Gates and how you going to shut him down? Nobody knows who Legudu Naanee or Malcolm Floyd are, but both of those guys are capable of having a 120 yard game with two touchdowns because they are big. They are a big NBA team at receiver. Even though I think the Jets could make it a very good game because of their run game and because the Chargers have been susceptible against the run, I like them. The Saints are so tired of everyone telling them how bad they are. Sean Payton is angry and he’ll come out with a vengeance. It’s funny if you ever diagram their plays, which I did when they played against Dallas. On the first 35 plays of the game, they had 33 different formations or different motion men. They only ran the same formation twice with the same people. It’s really a fascinating thing to watch when you watch the Saints play football. I just think that right now DeMarcus Ware and Anthony Spencer are just too much for Bryant McKinnie, Phil Loadholt in Minnesota this weekend. The only way that those guys are not big factors is if Minnesota max protects on 60 to 70 percent of the pass plays, and I just think it takes a lot of their weaponry. I think Dallas has a little bit too much on defense for Minnesota.

How much pressure do you think Minnesota can get on Tony Romo?

You are probably right, but I don’t think it’s going to be all that much different than what he saw in the last eight quarters against Philadelphia. Jared Allen has had a very quiet end of the year, last couple of months, last five or six weeks. Again it really depends on how Minnesota plays. Does Minnesota try to blitz Romo? Does Romo go to the hot guys a lot? He threw one hot to Felix Jones last week and he made a 30-yard gain out of it. There is awful lot of short stuff that they do, recognition stuff for Miles Austin that if he sees a blitz out of the corner of his eye he does a little curl and then he’s in space. So I don’t know. I think that Spencer and Ware are a little bit more dangerous than the Vikings pressure can be.

Do you see either Bill Parcells or Mike Holmgren returning to the sideline?

I don’t see Bill doing it. I’d be very surprised if Holmgren were to do it. Mike Holmgren talked to Bill Parcells a few times before he went back in this. Bill Parcells job is the template for what Miek Holmgren is doing right now. That’s what Holmgren wants to do. Mike Holmgren wants to have a family life. He and his wife do a lot of things together. When he left, this would have been a year ago Thanksgiving. I was out in Seattle and sat down with him for about an hour. His season was in the toilet, so we were just talking and he said, “You know someday I’d might like to run a book store.” He’s just that kind of guy. He’s the kind of guy that when he’s in the middle of it, he’s going to be gobbling the Rolaids and all that stuff. I just don’t think that it owns him and possesses him the way that it does some guys. I would be very surprised if he takes over the Browns next year, unless, unless and it’s a big underlying unless, unless he couldn’t find somebody to run his offense. He’s not worried about somebody to run the right defense for him, because he’s a little bit malleable in that area. But I think that he’s got certain ideas, and Eric Mangini actually told me this, that when he talked to Holmgren one of the things he said to him in essence, “I think we can run some West Coast because we’ve been around it in Brett Favre in New York, we did a lot of stuff.” I think that sort of helped him and he’s going to look at how this coaching staff runs the offense this year. Then I think he’ll make his decision, but I still would be surprised even if it’s a debacle ths year and if there was an outcry for him to return, I’d be surprised if he returned to coach.

If Floyd Reese leaves the Patriots would a guy like Mike Lombardi leave TV and rejoin Bill Belichick?

If Bill Belichick called Mike Lombardi and asked him to work for him Mike wouldn’t even ask what the contract said. He’d be there in five minutes. And I have no idea what Bill would do. He’s had a few opportunities to hire Mike and go after him when Mike has been between jobs and he never has. I would doubt that would happen, but you never know. Mike is one of the smartest guys around this league. He’s got an incredible memory. He soaks some things up that are just unbelievable. I remember asking him about Charles Haley when he was working in San Francisco in that draft. He said, “I was in the room with Bill Walsh when he looked at a couple of plays of Charles Haley from James Madison. He said ‘that’s all I need to see, lets’ get this guy.’ Well coach you didn’t see him do this. He goes ‘I saw him do enough that if he can do that a couple of times the way he rushes the passer than I know we can coach him to do it all the time.” So he’s got incredible memory, he’s smart, he thinks outside the box, is a good cap manager. I think Mike someday would be a real good hire for somebody in the NFL and hey if Bill hires him I would laud it. I think it would be a great hire.

We wouldn’t get to talk to him anymore though.

He’d go very, very far underground after that.