Peter King

Sports Illustrated’s Peter King joined the Dale and Holley Show on Friday to talk about the controversial Thursday night win for former Boston College standout Matt Ryan and the Falcons, who the best teams are in the NFL and some of the league’s surprising storylines.

To hear the interview, visit the Dale and Holley Show audio on demand page here.

King also addressed Cleveland’s win over the Patriots last week.  “I just will say this about Cleveland and Oakland,” King said. “I know this is weird, but it reminds me of Kevin Millar when it’s 3-0 in 2004: You better not let us win this one, this one game. And it’s almost like the Browns and the Raiders. You better not let us in the playoff because we’re going to beat somebody.”

Here are some more highlights from the conversation:

Lots of great sporting events including an incredible football game last night:

I can’t help but feel that the Baltimore Ravens really got jobbed. In two ways: Number one, the facemask call on Terrell Suggs. Well I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a guy get his facemask grabbed, and then there’s a facemask call and it goes against the guy who got his facemask grabbed. So that was one.

And then, look, I mean we can talk about how incidental contact, how refs should throw the flag away on the last series of the game or whatever do it like an NBA game but the fact is, the NFL has talked adamantly that a foul in the final 40 seconds of the game is the same as a foul in the first 40 seconds of the game.

And that was no if, ands or buts offensive pass interference on Roddy White for pushing down Josh Wilson and it was just a terrible, terrible call. Now, having said that, I still think that they would have been in position to kick a field goal to win the game. So I’m not saying it cost them the game but the fact is they still would have had to make that field goal to win the game and I just thought both of those calls at key moments, particularly the second one, were horrible calls.

Is Matt Ryan an elite quarterback?

No, he’s very, very good. I thought he played very well last night. I wasn’t sure that, well Joe Theismann, I’m shocked after the game last night that he’s not in Canton yet, which is probably what [Bill] Parcells would say. But he played very well last night. He missed a couple of open receivers, one of which Roddy White in the first half, would have been a touchdown. But you play on that big stage, in a big game when you are trying to win home-field through the NFC playoffs and I thought he was very good last night.

Where do the Falcons rank with some of the best teams in the conference and in the league?

It gets so interesting now. These things change week by week. I would have told you a week ago that I picked the Patriots as the best in football. And then after what happened last Sunday, you are left to wonder well where do they belong. And the fact is, it’s very hard when the teams are so close in ability, to play a great game every week in the NFL.

Right now to me, I think the one team in the NFC, I’d like to say the two teams in the NFC that could really compete with Atlanta would be Green Bay and the Giants. And Philadelphia, if [Michael] Vick is playing well, their defense is turned around. And New Orleans is still good. There are five teams in the NFC that I think are, I’d say much better than we thought two weeks ago.

I mean, two weeks ago you could make the argument that the top seven teams in football were all in the AFC, or the top five, six, seven, whatever it was. But now I think, I’d probably say the Giants just because of the way they’ve played lately, but I think the Giants, Eagles, Saints, Falcons, and Packers. It’s going to be one of those five and they are all very, very close right now.

Should Brett Favre be nervous after Jenn Sterger’s three hour meeting with NFL security yesterday?

Probably so. But I never thought that if she didn’t cooperate that he absolutely was going to be in the clear, just because it was a real black eye. I would still be surprised quite honestly if he were suspended even if everything were true because he’s been fairly much, well besides waffling, he’s been pretty much a model citizen in the league for the last fourteen years. Again, I don’t know that it’s going to rise to the level of a suspension, but if it’s all true, he’ll certainly be fined by Roger Goodell.

He would only be fined? No suspension?

Usually you can sort of get a feel for which way the league is leaning on this. There have been very few times where Roger Goodell, on the first violation of the personal conduct policy, which is what this would be. I don’t know that he’s suspended somebody for the first violation of the personal conduct policy, and that’s what this would be for Favre.

Obviously this is an offense that we all find highly offensive if it’s true but there may also be accentuating circumstances now because another witness, the NFL I believe has talked to another witness that basically says there may have been more text between the two sides than what we currently know about. So, I’m not sure we know the full story of this thing yet.

You wrote an open letter to Jerry Jones to fire Wade Phillips last week. Was that a difficult decision for [Jones] personally? What do you think Jason Garett is going to do as head coach?

Well, first of all, Jerry does not look at public opinion and decide things, in my opinion. I’m not saying he’s ignorant of what’s out there, but Jerry didn’t read my column and get motivated to do anything other than say, well there’s another one in the book that says I should whack Wade [Phillips]. I mean, he did all this stuff clearly with him and Stephen [Jones] and just his own confidants.

I think that the one thing that really surprises me over the last few weeks is when I see commentators, and when I see people, you know columnists, and people on TV saying well no good can come of changing the coach in the middle of the season, it’s a futile thing, it’s ridiculous, and all that stuff. Well, I mean, I think a lot of good can come of it.

Number one, you’re telling your players that this is not going to be tolerated anymore. Michael Jenkins giving up on a play and just getting out of the way, and allowing the Green Bay Packers to get more yards. James Jones did this last Sunday in the full view of everyone in America.

As Jim Mora, the young Jim Mora called it, a treasonous act for a football player to literally step out of the way and allow someone to gain more yards. I mean, it was ridiculous. So are you telling me that you want that to be acceptable? No. What has to happen is that you have to put a stop to that right now, which Jason Garrett is doing. I talked to Garrett yesterday and he told me in his words, “If that happens again, there will be consequences.”

He basically has thrown a line of demarcation in the sand, between everything that happened before Nov. 8 and everything that happens now. And whatever happens now, he’s the new sheriff in town. The good thing, if you like the Dallas Cowboys, is that Jason Garrett has nothing to lose. He can be the bad sheriff; he can be the bad guy and really come down hard on these guys which I think he is going to do.

As to what he’s going to do and how they’re going to do, well all I know is he’s never coached the defense before on this team. He doesn’t really speak to the defense. The Cowboys have the kind of team where the head coach handles the defense and Garrett handles the offense. So, we’re going to see if they respond to him. And he’s also got to try to win with a quarterback on his last NFL legs in Jon Kitna. So he doesn’t have much of a chance but he’ll go down swinging.

Are the Vikings conspiring to get coach Brad Childress fired?

I might of thought something like that until I saw how they played in the last ten minutes of regulation and then in overtime. I mean, this was a team dying to win this game. This was not a team laying down to say to [Minnesota owner] Zygi Wilf you better fire this coach like Randy Moss told you to do last week in New England. So I don’t think they are.

I think they don’t like him, and that is very, very clear. But the fact that they don’t like him I don’t think is going to have a lot of bearing on how they play on Sundays from here on out, positively or negatively. And just remember, Zygi Wilf owes this guy somewhere between $9 and $12 million bucks so I don’t think he’s going to be able to get out of paying him. If you look at the situation, Zygi Wilf is not Jerry Jones. He’s not tremendously wealthy. I mean he’s wealthy, he’s a New Jersey real estate guy, but he doesn’t want to go giving away $9 million bucks now.

After the Patriots/Browns game, do you reconsider the Patriots team as a whole?

First of all, I thought [Eric] Mangini coached a great game with Brian [Daboll] and Rob Ryan and Brad [Seely]. They did a really good job. The Chansi Stuckey touchdown doesn’t bother me at all because every team, no team practices for that, no team thinks something like that is coming where the offensive line is just looking around. I don’t criticize anybody for that. I think it was a brilliant play by the Browns.

The thing that would worry me is that they got physically handled, I think, on both sides of the ball. They better figure out a way to play Peyton Hillis. Because, teams are going to look at that and say, let’s play a big back against the Patriots. And hey, there’s not a lot of big backs like Peyton Hillis, I totally understand that, but why not slam a fullback against them? You know, a fullback sized guy against them, you know to try to win the physical battle that they just could not win.

The strange thing is, the previous week Ron Brace makes, to me, the defensive play of the year in pushing Phil Loadholt back and the Patriots stopping a very physical runner in Adrian Peterson, who obviously isn’t Peyton Hillis’ size but he’s a very physical runner. And that’s the thing that boggles my mind a little bit. I mean, the previous week they faced a physical runner, and a quick runner obviously, and did a pretty good job against that line and against that back. And then last week did not do a good job at all.

How the heck is Peyton Manning keeping that offense going with their injuries?

First of all, he’s had Reggie Wayne. And if you have one guy, and then you have to invent everything on the fly each week and you have to get Jacob Tamme ready and you’ve got to get a bunch of other guys who you don’t know very well ready, at least you have your one crutch guy. And if teams are going to double him, fine. You throw the ball to Tamme 12 times like he did last week.

I’m impressed with Manning, but not shocked. I would think most people would agree, that he’s clearly week-to-week the most imaginative quarterback and the guy who can make things work from week-to-week. I’ll never forget [Qadry] Ismail telling me the first game he ever played when he played for the Colts, I think he only played for them for a year or two, but the first game he ever played Manning told him on Saturday before the game that they were changing this, that, and the other thing, and just be alert and be ready. And Ismail had a big game the next day. And they basically invented it the day before the game, you know, what Manning wanted to do.

I think he’s also helped by the fact that this isn’t the first time this has happened. He’s had a few instances in his career where he’s had to be inventive week after week. He’s great at that. But I also think Tom Brady has been good dealing with five new guys receiving the ball too. Even though there have been a few more hiccups probably in New England’s offense, I think Brady deserves credit for that as well.

Should Pats fans waiting for the first round pick that the Pats own for Oakland start lowering their sights to the middle of the first round or the back of the first round because the Raiders are legit?

The two teams that really I would talk about right now, I’d talk about Cleveland and I’d talk about the Raiders. And just a couple things about Cleveland. If you just consider for a second that Cleveland was entering a stretch of the following four teams. Pittsburgh, which obviously when they played them was probably the prime Super Bowl contender in the AFC, New Orleans, the defending Super Bowl champion, New England, which at the time they played them might have been the best team, considered the best team in the league, and then the Jets, who at 6-2, a lot of people think could end up in the Super Bowl coming off a championship game appearance.

Well, they put a scare into Pittsburgh late in the third quarter. They physically beat New Orleans, they physically beat the Patriots and now they’ve got the Jets at home, with a confident quarterback and the hardest running running back in football right now, and I pick them to win this. I pick the Browns to win this. Tell me three weeks ago that anyone could have seen that coming.

I think you’re right about the Raiders. Jim Trotter from SI went out there and spent three or four days out there last week, saw a totally reborn Richard Seymour who is playing great. I know Scott Pioli in the wake of the game thought that Richard Seymour had one of the best defensive performances a player in the league has had this year in that game last week. They just couldn’t block him.

There are other guys in that defense like Tommy Kelly who have really risen up and played great. So that’s impressive. When’s the last time that you could say about the Raiders that they have some real adversity in a game and don’t either start pointing fingers, throwing haymakers, or something?

They have a horrible call last week in that game against Kansas City for those who didn’t see the game. Because they didn’t have the ability to call for a replay review, they were out of timeouts, and they were out of the ability to review, they gave up a fumble that was a terrible call by officials and gave the Chiefs a short field, and [Matt] Cassell threw a beautiful touchdown to Dwayne Bowe.

And that, in many games in the last five, six, seven years, that would been it. The same old Raiders. They would have gone down, they would have slugged somebody, they would have [complained] at somebody. They just would have gone nuts, and instead, they just gathered themselves together they went on two long drives, Jason Campbell was brilliant down the stretch, and they ended up winning the game in overtime. Just a great performance by then.

When’s the last time the Raiders had two quarterbacks? I’ll go into a game with [Bruce] Gradkowski and Campbell and I’ll like my chances with the defense playing that well, with the running game playing that well.

How big of a chance is Tony Sparano taking by replacing Chad Henne with Chad Pennington?

I had a long talk last night with Chad Pennington and, to me, in my opinion, I think it’s brilliant. I really do. Chad Henne has been poor in the red zone this year. He has been poor in the clutch this year, you know in fourth quarters. I just think that on his bench is a fresh, ready Chad Pennington, who, and I wrote about this in my Friday column, since 2007, this is a more accurate quarterback than Peyton Manning and just a hair more accurate than Drew Brees.

Now, obviously he hasn’t played as much as either guy has. He’s played about half as much. But this is a guy who is one of the most accurate passers of our lifetime, statistically the most accurate passer. I just look at him and I like the fact that they have 2 must win games in a four day span, because they’ve got the Thursday game.

They’ve got Tennessee this Sunday and then they’ve got the Bears this Thursday. Those are two games they have to have to get back in the AFC East pennant race. I think this is a good move by Sparano, this guy is not going to make mistakes, and he’s going to be accurate down low, down near the end zone. I could be proven wrong on this, but it’s not like they’re replacing Johnny Unitas either.

Henne has been in and out. I think it’s a good move by Sparano. I think it shows, a lot of guys would be afraid to make this move, but I think it shows that Tony Sporano A) has the courage of his convictions, and B) if it backfires, and the owner wants to fire him at the end of the season, let him, because he’s doing what he thinks is best for the team.