Peter King

Sports Illustrated’s Peter King, who is preparing to run a half-marathon after losing a Twitter bet to Chad Ochocinco over Terrell Owens, joined the Dale & Holley show on Friday afternoon. Asked about Monday night’s game, he said he expects “some points” from the Patriots and Dolphins due to New England’s defensive concerns.

“One of the things that would surprise almost anybody who’s watching football this year is how generous the Patriots defense has been,” King said.

“What really has surprised me is they’re basically averaging giving up 27 points a game. That’s eight points more than Cleveland, that’s 15 points more than Kansas City, that’s 11 points more than the Rams. The Patriots right now, and it’s shown with how Darius Butler got yanked, that [Bill] Belichick is going to be patient up to a point. But I think it’s showing right now that the one things the Patriots should have done this offseason and didn’t do is really address their pass rush situation.

“Who knows, it could get better. Maybe [Brandon] Spikes is the guy who they’ve been missing,” King said. ”Maybe Tully Banta-Cain turns into this Patriot generation’s Mike Vrabel. Who knows? It’s still early. But this is a team that needs to get after the quarterback better and needs to cover better.”

Following are highlights from the interview, including King’s thoughts on Philadelphia’s quarterback controversy, Logan Mankins‘ situation, and the future of Bill Parcells.

Do you think the Eagles are going to have an issue at quarterback?

I think there’s a very good chance that could happen. I think that’s a really prescient, good question to ask right now because all along and what Andy Reid has said to me, and said to everybody else, absolutely, positively, “Kevin Kolb is my quarterback of the future.” But, this is the same Andy Reid who said last February, “Donovan McNabb is my quarterback, stop making an issue of it.” And after he traded McNabb on Easter Sunday he said, “Hey, Kevin Kolb is my quarterback. It’s not even an issue, we’re not even going to have a contest.”

Now, I will tell you this, interesting little sidebar, when that happened, Michael Vick was not pleased. That’s the only time in the year-plus he’s been in Philadelphia that he felt a little bit wronged. You know, “Why isn’t there a competition? Why can’t I compete for the starting job? Why do we assume that Kevin Kolb is better than me?” But he shut his mouth, he didn’t say anything. And then after a while, in essence, what he did was he just started proving he should be the starting quarterback of this team. Now, he is.

I’ll tell you this: I think one of the things Andy Reid has learned from this is not to make the sort of pronouncements that he made along the way here. I think now if you asked him about it, he’d say, “Kolb’s my quarterback, let’s just play the games.” He’s not in the mood of saying, “Hey, come hell or high water Kolb’s playing for me for the next five years.” Because he realizes, just like we do, that times can change. And if Vick keeps playing like this, Andy Reid is not firing Michael Vick at the end of this year and letting him leave for somewhere.

On Logan Mankins’ situation:

If I were a Patriots fan right now, my wish would be that we get a [second-round pick] for Logan Mankins, because it’s clear that Mankins is dug in with his position. The Patriots seem dug in with their position. If there’s somebody out there that would give them a second-round pick for an annual Pro Bowl guard, and I were the Patriots I’d take it in a second.

Now, I don’t know if that offer will be forthcoming. It’s interesting when I talk to front office people about this draft in 2011, you get a feeling that it’s almost a more important draft to many of them than the 2010 draft is, which everybody thought was the best draft in a long time. The reason that is is the future is so unknown right now. Not that anybody thinks there won’t be a draft in 2012 and beyond. But, if this is the last draft for some time, people want to have their hooks in. That’s why I think it might be difficult for the Patriots to get the true value for Logan Mankins.

On Brandon Spikes and Aaron Hernandez falling in the draft:

Well, I think that whenever a talented player falls in the draft it’s usually for two reasons that I’ve found over the years. Number one is that he either had off the field problems, like drugs or personal problems off the field, but something took him away from being a real dominant player. Either that, or he’s slow.

Bill Parcells was very much angry at the end of the draft a year ago, as it turned out with how high they moved Pat White up on their board. His whole point was that basically, if we are going to be moving guys up because of what they do in the offseason and because teams fall in love with him, it’s terrifically unfair because we’re putting that above what we saw on tape for them as players for so long.

I think that’s one thing that people do now in the offseason, which they spend far too much time, far too much time, looking at things like postseason interviews, what kind of guy he is, he punched out somebody in high school. I always thought that what happened to Spikes in this year’s draft was, in essence, he went from having what, in essence, was a really strong middle career to not having a great senior year.

I’m going from memory off this and I might be wrong, but he only had two or three sacks his senior year. His production was way down his senior year, and he had that incident in which he got angry at one of the, I think it was Georgia if I’m not mistaken, he got angry at a back during a game and in a pile, he was accused anyway, of trying to gouge the eyes out of the running back.

Anyway, a lot of people wondered, “Is he a little bit too nutty for his own good.” Who knows why he fell so much? But I think in his case it has to do with production. He wasn’t slow, but he’s not a burner in the 40, and I think a lot of people marked him down for that.

The future of Bill Parcells:

I think the most likely scenario for Bill Parcells is to turn into what I would call a true consultant…I think his ideal world would be if he could spend more time in Saratoga than he has, but he still has his fingers in some team’s pie basically as a full time consultant. But not somebody who was looking over the shoulder of a general manager as he was with [Dolphins general manager] Jeff Ireland. Once he felt Ireland was doing the job the right way the way the general manager needed to do it, he said ‘It’s your job now.’ I’ve got my guesses based on places where some people really like Parcells. It’s all total guesswork. Plus some team is going to have to do two things for Parcells. Number one, you have to give him a real say so it has to be with a general manager/owner president type who is comfortable with a strong-willed personality coming into the organization. And second, you’re going to have to pay him. Whoever is going to get Parcells is going to have to meet those criteria.

On the three remaining 3-0 teams:

I like the Kansas City Chiefs a lot more than I thought I would, and I understand they haven’t played a very tough schedule. They come out of their bye now and meet Indy and Houston on the road, and that’s where the rubber will hit the road. I’m not saying they are going to be a very good team. The young players…these guys are not playing like rookies. I kind of look at them, and I am fascinated by the Chiefs and I wish I had taken their rookies more seriously than I did before the season. There is no doubt in my mind, they are a better team than any of us thought.

With the Bears, I just wonder long-term; they’ve been poor running the ball and they are really relying on Cutler to get them out of so much trouble so far. So I’m just a little skeptical over the Bears right now…They’ve just got a few things that worry me. I think they’ll still go 4-0 because the Giants are just not playing well at all in any phase.

Although I did pick Pittsburgh to win the Super Bowl, I’m just like everyone else; I would not have picked them, without Roethlisberger, to be 3-0 right now with a fourth string quarterback. Playing the Ravens in, if it wasn’t the Vick-McNabb game, what would be the marquee game of the week.

On coaches of 0-3 teams in the league:

Jim Schwartz is absolutely safe. John Fox is an interesting because Jerry Richardson has no intention on bringing Fox back. This is the last year of his contract. John Fox is in a place right now where the owner has been the most vocal person in the NFL in meetings about controlling costs… Jerry Richardson has privately let it be known that he is not paying a coach big bucks; so at the end of this year he’ll let John Fox walk. I think that unless it got very untenable in Carolina, I think that Fox will coach until the end of the year. It’s not a staff that has a natural interim coach. There is not a guy there who Jerry Richardson would say “let’s name him.” You’re hardly going to look at [Former Patriots assistant] Jeff Davidson, the offensive coordinator, as a guy who can handle a team. But who knows?

You ask about Buffalo. Chan Gailey and Buddy Nix have told Ralph Wilson in essence that this is a long-haul operation. Although Ralph Wilson is old, and is extremely unpleased with how they are playing, it would be hard for me to imagine that after 11 or 12 games you whack a guy and go the interim route.

That brings us to the San Francisco 49ers. Although I would be surprised if the York family fired Mike Singletary before the end of the year, there’s a couple of interesting dynamics in play. Coming into the year, everyone was high on the Singletary way. Almost every week there has been a little brushfire crisis. Here they are with the deepest linebacker group in the NFL maybe west of Pittsburgh and their linebackers are playing terribly and allowing 29 points a game. That has befuddled everybody, that’s Singletary’s position. How in the world are their linebackers being beat so badly? The second thing is the seeming disorganization and mayhem on the offensive side of the ball, where they have so many weapons and have been so inept. If you had told me that the San Francisco 49ers would have score 38 points in 12 quarters against not a strong schedule to this point other than New Orleans, I would’ve been shocked. So, I don’t know what’s going to happen with the 49ers. And add to that that Greg Manusky the offensive coordinator is very well regarded in the organization. If they had an absolute debacle, I wouldn’t be shocked.