Power Players: NFL Journalist Peter King

Hi, everyone.

Welcome to another episode of NFL Daily's Power Players, where we talk to the people who shape the fabric of the sport about how they do their jobs. I'm Jordan Rodrigue, and today I'm so excited to welcome a great hero of mine, a famous sports writer who certainly has contributed to the fabric of the NFL over the years, Peter King.

Peter King is going to be talking about his new book, The Game, which releases on October 13th. And when we talk about bearing witness to a constantly evolving sport, it's hard to think of many who have done it like Peter has. He was a columnist for Sports Illustrated for decades. He bylined the Monday Morning Quarterback, a column that we all held in our hands or read online over the years.

every single Monday after that weekend's game slate. And he spent the early morning hours after Super Bowl wins with Andy Reid in his office, or he'd ride on a bus across the country with John Madden. He's covered strikes and TV deals and the game's most impactful people over the decades. And in retirement, he decided to write The Game, which is, of course, a book about the NFL's past and evolving present, written, of course, in his unique perspective and voice. It was my honor to talk to Peter today, someone who really has impacted my own career as a sports writer. And this conversation, of course, as is Peter's way, ranges topically just about anywhere. So I hope you enjoy this conversation with Peter King. Peter, I am so, so

grateful to you for joining Power Players today. I have multiple copies of your book at this point, The Game by Peter King. I took it around with me on my training camp tour. I was excited to share that with you. It is a very, very special piece of work. It's excellent. It's incredible. I recommend it to everybody. I've already sent a copy to my mom as well. She's very excited about this. I really want to dig in with you. Why did you want to write this book?

Jordan, thanks for having me. It's really nice of you. Basically, when you've done something for four decades and you kind of drop out of it cold turkey because you want to do other things in life, that doesn't mean necessarily that you don't love what you did. I love this job every day that I ever did it. And so what did I do when I quote retired? I was watching Scott Hansen every Sunday. And the only thing that was kind of missing in my life really is that I wasn't staying up until four o'clock in the morning on Monday, which I had done for maybe the last 25 years that I did this, my Monday column. And it's amazing how one little thing could make you say, I just simply have to stop doing this. And that's

one of the things that did. But there were so many stories, Jordan, I covered over the years that I still had major curiosity about. The football strike in 1987, which, come on, that's 39 years old now. And the vast majority of people either weren't who love football, either weren't born yet or don't really remember very much about it.

I mean, Sean Payton, quarterback for Mike Ditka and Terry Bradshaw announced the games. And so all I'm saying is that there are a lot of things there's, you know, why did Reggie White choose Green Bay? Secrets. He really didn't want to, but he did. Why did Paul Tagliabue have such angst after the towers fell in New York? Well, I mean, he had a fear about a second attack that was not just going to be attacking a building.

It was going to be a nuclear attack. He had legitimate fear. So those are the kind of things. How did the NFL get to own the sports calendars? Nobody's ever heard of the circular calendar that the NFL operates on that never ends. And Roger Goodell is saying, you guys better find something at the end of June, early July.

I want a tentpole event there too. So Peter O'Reilly, the events planner, he has his hands full now. So why did all these things? Why is it so important right now, at least in my opinion, to have imaginations? I went into the Saints world in 2018 and the Broncos world last year to find out how the weird Byzantine mind of Sean Payton works. Because I think you win in the NFL with imagination, you know, as well as this isn't like when I started covering the game, Jordan, and Bill Parcells says, I got four running plays. Until you can stop them, we're not going to stop running them.

And that's how they won. That's how they won at least their first Super Bowl. But there were so many things I wanted to write about the rise of women in the NFL, both in the media and inside the game. People need to understand women are coming. And it's not just Jordan Rodrigue saying this. It's not just Mina Kimes saying this. I am saying this because I saw it.

I saw Donna Ponte, you know, being an incredibly strong woman advancing the cause of other women in this game. And, you know, I believe that, you know, with the Rams, Nicole Blake, she's part of this book who runs the draft now with the Rams. She's only 30 years old. I will be surprised if she's not a general manager in my lifetime. And so there's just a lot of things that I had borderline intense curiosity about that I wanted to tell, not just what happened, but I wanted to delve into these stories deeper. And so, you know, going back to, you know, in 1984, when I got the head coach of the Cincinnati Bengals to dress up in the tuxedo and top hat, the week of his first game, and quite literally, because he was an amateur magician,

pull a rabbit out of his hat for the front sports page of the Cincinnati Inquirer. I mean, Jordan, the world is different. I'm the luckiest man on the face of the earth that I was involved then and that I could look back now and kind of do a living history of how the NFL took over the world.

It's there's so much to get into and I'm stoked to do it. And again, we're talking about the game, Peter King's new book. This is such an historical text, but it's written in your voice, which I loved because I came of age reading you and so many people. found your column to be religious material, right? Like we've been obsessed with it for years and years. And so to hear this history being told and retold and certain things that, you know, generations now probably have forgotten about that have shaped the league and how the league is now.

you know, it was, it's such an important book for that reason too, because of, of the way that you delve back into these key historical moments and you re-reported a lot of it, which I loved. And the 1987 strike, it was, um, it was so visual the way that you wrote it about the guys from all of the European leagues and the feeder leagues coming in on the bus.

And there's, there's superstar players picketing out front, out in front of these stadiums and, and, you know, the dynamics of crossing those picket lines and, and then, the pressure that the league put on people and the pressure the union was trying to put on the league to actually allow players to own their rights. And then ultimately that leads, you know, to Reggie White and the Green Bay story where he's a free agent. Can you tell me a little about your re-reporting process and some of the moments that really were not surprising to you because you were there reporting along the way, but when you went back, things that stood out to you that you thought, oh, this is really crystallized here now, seeing the impact that

this has had in the future.

Well, I was reminded very recently with the death of Ernie Acorsi, who died. was a huge resource for me with this book. And when he died, my jaw hit the floor. Two days before he died, I had just mailed him a copy of the book with a note thanking him so much for his help. I don't know how many people know this, but I mean, Ernie Acorsi probably was, Ernie Acorsi lit the fuse that led to the Herschel Walker trade. He is the first person who called Jimmy Johnson or Jerry Jones and said, hey, what would it take to get Herschel Walker for me? And Jimmy had wanted to trade Herschel Walker. But at the time, he was still so new in doing this job. He's a year into it. But things like finding out things

that for 35 years or 30 years I just had no idea about how did Ernie Acorsi, why was he there present at the birth of the Herschel Walker trade and how was he involved in it? So the process very simply was calling about. I don't know, 220 people altogether who I used as resource people throughout, some throughout my career most, and then went back to them and then going to visit so many of them, going to visit Parcells and Peyton Manning and going to Isla Mirada, Florida and seeing Jimmy Johnson for a day and just going over everything in this strange, strange world that he inhabited with Jerry Jones. But Jordan, you can't do this job for any length of time unless you're curious. And none of this was work. None of it. Because I

wanted to know, gee, 1988, I always heard that Bill Walsh was really kind of losing it while he coached his last season. And oh yeah, he was losing it. And you'll read in this book how he lost it and who got him back, you know, sort of back in the fold. But I was so curious about so many stories. And I'll give you a classic example. Paul Tagliabue, just four months before he died, he agreed to talk to me for the book. We talked for 65 minutes.

His voice was weak and he was struggling with Parkinson's, but he really wanted to do this. And he wanted, because I had written a cover, one of the cover stories the week that the NFL had to cancel all the games and I saw him. in the NFL office on Saturday, five days after the towers fell. And we met in a conference room at the league office in Manhattan.

And he started crying during that time. And I reminded him of that. And he told me why he was so emotional. And he was so emotional because he still thought another attack very well could be coming. And so there are just things like that that I wanted to find out. Paul, tell me, what was going through your mind?

What happened then? And it's because all these years, Jordan, I've been curious. I wonder what really happened back there. I wonder if Reggie White really wanted to go to Green Bay or was there another team or teams? And I wondered, I went back to so many people. The one thing, I'll just tell you one other quick story.

In 2015, I was running this website at Sports Illustrated called the MMQB, and my life had changed so much. I had been covering the league for 30 years, and I needed bigger things. In 2013, I did a story on the week in the life of an officiating crew with Gene Steratore. Nobody had ever done that. And I wanted to do a week in the life of a quarterback.

So anyway, pulled a few teeth. You'll read about that in the book, how exactly it came to be But I had always wondered with Carson Palmer, if you're like me, I never have asked somebody, hey, what did you think of the story? Because I don't work for them. I work for, I have employers. So I don't care if Carson Palmer liked the story. I don't care if Bruce Arians and Larry Fitzgerald liked the story. But I did want to go back because I know that Carson Palmer viewed it as, oh, I'll do it. But it was a bit of a distraction because he is anal to the nth degree. And so I just really always wanted to know, having nothing to do with what the story was, but was it really hard for you to do? Are you glad you did it? And what he told me

was so rewarding. He said, that story is going to live on because I have a son right now who's a sophomore in high school, who's our backup quarterback. He's a high school quarterback in Southern California, or high school coach rather, in Southern California and had a great first year, Santa Margarita High School, if I'm not mistaken. And then his other son, his young son is in fifth or sixth grade. And he said, I want them to read this so that they know if they really want to be good, this is what you have to do. And that was one of the greatest things I could hear that, you know, what more do you want in life for somebody to think that what you did will matter to people down the road? And I just kind of felt

at that moment a little bit, just a little bit like I bet Doris Kearns Goodwin must feel, you know, after some of the books that she has written, when people come up to her years later and say, man, I learned so much about this bit of history or that bit of history or something like that, that look, we are not covering Washington. We're not covering the Supreme Court, Congress, anything like that. Does it really matter? Well, it does matter to a lot of people. But it's not all that important. But what is important is that you feel like you're doing something that can live on and that can contribute to the discourse in what it is that you did.

Well, that was your column for so many years. I mean, it was a piece of the fabric of what football is. And whether you saw it that way or not, I'm here to tell you as a witness, like, people saw it that way. And it would be the first thing that all these executives and coaches and people would read every morning when they would see it, you know, in their inbox when it started getting emailed. And then also, you know, on the website. And now having some of it revisited in book form and specifically, what I want people to know about this book is that You extrapolated historical moments and details that directly inform why the league is what it is today. You've covered the multiple commissioners.

You covered Roger Goodell's push for the international slate and the full-time NFL calendar and the TV deals. You covered previous commissioners and their struggle with lawsuits and some of the the scandals that they dealt with and the strikes and those momentous happenings throughout the league. But you also went into buildings and captured really important people or people who are catalytic figures in the league. And some of the little things that they would say, and if you don't mind, there's one of my favorite things that you said that you have is you're talking about basically how teams identify talent now and how they build systems and processes And you were talking about the Giants. It's chapter three,

the rebirth of the Giants. And you're talking about Bill Parcells and his learning process and what he's being informed by. And you said he was at a lunch with Dallas coach Tom Landry. And Tom Landry advised Parcells to build models at every position, size, ability, temperament, desire, and never make exceptions. And this is the excerpt that Tom Landry told him. If you start taking exceptions on your team for whatever reason... Soon you'll get used to doing it and you'll have a team full of exceptions. And Peter, I bookmarked it and highlighted it because as you know, I cover a lot about front offices and the scouting process and talent identification and how teams are built. And that rule is a rule and it stays a rule

and it's been a rule decades ago and it's a rule now, but the way that it looks now looks so much different technology and process and all of that and the people, but it still was a rule then. So, so identifying those moments, I'm curious, what was important for you to make sure to say, let's call back to this historical thing and make the reader understand this still matters today.

Well, here's one of the good examples about that, and it has nothing to do with X's and O's. It has to do with, in my opinion, one of the things that has bothered me over the years is when I see players make decisions. For this logic, you get offered four years, 18 million from the Jets, and you get offered four years, 16 million from the 49ers. Now, you look down the road, the 49ers have stability. The Jets lose every year. But you mentally say to yourself, you mentally say, well, I can't turn down $ 2 million more and a little bit more guaranteed because who knows what the future holds. So players invariably, 90% of the time, take the most money. And I always thought, OK, in the short term, if this is your last contract and

you know it is, I understand that. But what if you're not sure if it's your last contract? And what if you get cut one year into that contract and you never see much of that $ 18 million? And so I always thought this always stuck with me. that the smartest guy I ever saw ever in terms of dealing with that kind of ethos was Jerome Bettis. And the reason is because Jerome Bettis, four different times in his career, turned down twice in one negotiation, turned down more money slash better opportunity to stay in Pittsburgh. You want to know why? Because when he retired, he wanted to have business in Pittsburgh. And he wanted, he knew that he might live in Pittsburgh. He wasn't sure, but he would always have a place in Pittsburgh. And he saw what

happened when Rod Woodson, OK, took a contract offer. I think it was with San Francisco. Might have been the Ravens. I forget. But he took he took an offer elsewhere. And within eight months, his restaurant in Station Square, right south of downtown Pittsburgh, was closed because people said, ah, he's not one of us. He's itinerant. You know, whereas what happened to Jerome Bettis? Jerome Bettis ended up having a TV show. in Pittsburgh for 20 years after he retired or 18 years, something like that. He ended up having a restaurant for 12 years after he retired, very popular restaurant. And, and so all I'm saying is Jerome Bettis saw the whole, he saw the future. And I really, I'm just saying, Jordan, I, I mean, look, none of

us is ever going to make that kind of money. I get it. But I, I do think if there was one chapter in this book that I would want players to read, it's the chapter on Jerome Bettis. Think of things other than the check, than the contract you were going to sign today. Think of your life after football.

And so that is one of the things I'm, I, I love this chapter that I wrote about Jerome Bettis because I really want players to To read that and to realize that you just shouldn't take the most money all the time. You should look at what's going to be best for your life.

Mm-hmm. We see it with coaches now too, Peter. I know you follow along with this too. Over the last several years, especially, some of these, I guess, less than desirable openings, they've had a hell of a time trying to get people to take these jobs. And coaches like Ben Johnson will turn down first opportunity, second opportunity to wait for what is right. As you have documented over tens, you know, decades here, and also in this book, again, quite well, the... autonomy or the individuality that you're starting to see a little bit more, not just from players, but also from coaches, coaches becoming brands themselves. What has that shift been like for you? And was there maybe a favorite interaction that you can remember from either a

coach when you're talking to this book? And I'm thinking of the Andy Reid chapter specifically, but was there a favorite interaction that you had? with a coach and what do you kind of make of the way that we're, people are making decisions about their careers in that space right now?

Well, I look at the best coaches in football and they're in, you know, I can think of, I'm sure I'm going to miss some here. I don't, I don't know Ben Johnson. Okay. I don't know him. He looks like he is brilliant, but I don't know him. So it's hard for me to say, but If you take three coaches who would be in the conversation for the top, say, five coaches in football, Andy Reid, Sean McVay, Kyle Shanahan, all of them understand that they need to be in position with people who they trust, who they think are good.

Why did Kyle Shanahan end up taking the 49ers job in 2017? It's because he knew he could direct what he wanted his general manager to be. And he ended up convincing John Lynch to come. He knew he had a brilliant guy in Parag Marathe in the front office who just recently has left. And he knew he had an owner in Jed York who was not just going to sit idly by, but he knew he had an owner who was going to let this team do what it was supposed to do. OK, and so and, you know, I could say the exact same thing. for Andy Reid with Clark Hunt and bringing on Brett Veach. And I know that it's always been the same with Sean McVeigh, Kevin Demoff, Les Snead, and a great, you know, inside Tony Pastore's, a great inside the organization piece. But you

mentioned Andy Reid. And one of the things that I always really appreciated about Andy Reid is that, you know, first of all, I've known him since 1995. He was a tight ends coach in Green Bay, and I was there to do a story on, I spent a week with the Packers in 1995 for Sports Illustrated. And one of the things that I remember about that week is Andy Reid coming up to me, and I didn't really know him. I mean, I'd heard of him, but I didn't know him. He said, man, you have the job I always wanted when I was at Brigham Young. I wanted to cover football. I wanted to be the next Paul Zimmerman. So he understood over the years. I always remembered that. And I said, man, I hope this guy gets a head coaching job one day because I think

he's going to allow me to do stuff that I really want to do. And the last two Super Bowls that I covered, there's Andy Reid letting me into his office alone after the game so he can tell me about these great plays that he called and that he imagined and all that. And so that was good. But what I really wanted from Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes is I wanted the story of how the two most important members of an organization. And you can say, oh, the owner is vital. This guy's vital. The GM is vital. No, no.

The two most important people, and it's not even close, are the coach and the quarterback. That's it, period. And to me, Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid are the best example of a coach and quarterback that I saw in 40 years. And I think you're seeing it. If you read the chapter I wrote on them and you read stuff, you know, the guy who made that chapter, honestly, is A-Rod, is Alex Rodriguez. Because Alex Rodriguez said, you know, it is so great. Football is so lucky. Because he said you're in a secondary or tertiary market like Kansas City.

You can keep Patrick Mahomes. He doesn't have to be in L.A. or New York. He can be with a brilliant guy like Andy Reid in Kansas City and make the same money that he could make anywhere else. You know, Jordan, on a totally side issue, I'm totally mind boggled why baseball doesn't get this. And why baseball doesn't. just continues to say, no, no salary cap, no anything. We're going to do this. And everybody said, hey, the guy in Pittsburgh, he's putting all the money in his pocket. He's doing this.

The Marlins, the Miami Marlins, they don't try. Well, look, if the Dodgers have a budget for players, and I don't even know what it is, of 500 million a year or whatever it is, and the Marlins have one for 80 million a year, And you tell me the Dodgers make more money from the local TV contract than the Marlins make, period. So to look at this, and I'm really happy that Alex Rodriguez, he saw this. He saw the strength that football has. And I'll just go back to one thing. I did a Mount Rushmore of pro football history where I have the 100 most important people ever. And I had Pete Rozelle number two on the list. And I was pretty critical of Pete Rozelle in the chapter I wrote about him. I think he

stayed too long at the party. Two work stoppages in his last seven years in the job. And there hasn't been a work stoppage in 35 years since, 36 years since. But all I'm saying is that Pete Rozelle in shepherding through the revenue sharing deal championed so much by teams in Chicago and New York, that is what has made the NFL the absolute total powerhouse that it is today.

And that means that and I was in Kansas City. I was I talked to a group in Kansas City about early in September. And one of the things I said to him is I said, do you realize how lucky you are? You have. one of the best, probably when he quits, one of the best five quarterbacks in NFL history right here. In his prime, you have one of the best five coaches, arguably, in NFL history, at least top 10. Right now, he's... probably not in his prime.

He's probably entering his last two or three years. I don't know. But appreciate it. And, you know, sometimes you're going to go 6-11. That's life. This is the most competitive sport on the planet. And so just understand. But I just think I look at a place like Kansas City And I just say that is absolutely awesome because it's possible in Green Bay. I mean, the best legacy of Pete Rozelle, best legacy is that in Super Bowl history, Jets and Giants total have won five championships. Green Bay Packers, since Pete Rozelle took office in 1960, the Green Bay Packers won seventh. And, you know, that says it all.

The two teams in New York haven't won as much as the one team in the smallest market in American pro sports.

You kind of bridged a lot of connecting ideas that shape that are, you know, intrinsic to football into these very compelling stories. And sometimes they were quite emotional. You mentioned the Bill Walsh story. stuff at the at the beginning of this interview that was not those were not things that i was familiar with was how me either emotionally distraught he was at times and and then the the we have i think the lore of jimmy johnson and jerry jones has been well well documented but this part of it this whole um the the the dynamics and the the way that they would talk to each other at times and and the way that they would talk to you instead of talking to each other at times.

And it just, to me, you captured like so much of the angst of what this sport can be, including some of the key figures in Tagliabue, another example of this. Did anything surprise you about some of the people you went back and revisited? Did you change your mind about anybody?

Bill Walsh weeping twice in Eddie DiBartolo's kitchen in Menlo Park, California. That, that blew me away. You don't consider Bill Walsh to be a weeper. And he wept twice. And as Carmen, that was in 1988, the last year he coached. And as Carmen Policy, the president of the team said to me, I thought I was watching our dynasty collapse right before our eyes. And I would just make this point that I think one of the things that surprised me about the book and about doing all the research in the book is that the people who I went to now after 15, 20, 30 years, after all that time, They had not talked about these things. Jimmy Sexton, the agent for Reggie White, he had not revisited this in decades.

And his memory about everything with Reggie White, I confirmed it all with Carmen Policy, Ron Wolf, and Mike Reinfeldt, who was doing the cap in the business and negotiating with Green Bay. But What surprised me is the openness, I should say, of all these people who had not talked about this for, in some cases, 30 or 35 years and are saying, oh, my God, that's. And I hate to say this, Jordan, but I think some of the people who talked to me, they did not want their stories to die with them.

Yeah.

I mean, I don't mean to be morbid. But there are some things in here. Paul Tagliabue, who died four months after we spoke, I think wanted people to know that he was legitimately conscious. I wouldn't say scared, but just conscious of another attack that could be far worse than the attack on the World Trade Center. And nobody has ever known that until they'll read this book.

Mm-hmm. And, you know, what I want people, we're talking about the game by Peter King. We've got the great Peter King with us here today talking about his process and what he learned from everything here on NFL Daily's Power Players. But you have an appendix at the back of the book. Normally for a historical book, people see appendix and they're like, OK, we're done reading the book.

This appendix is awesome. So rad because you go through and you build a Mount Rushmore of the top key 100 figures, maybe not the top, but the key figures in football, you know, and you have key figures that include coaches, personnel, people, players, of course, you also included TV figures and newspaper people, scientists, you even shout out Seattle's 12s. So I'm curious what went into the construction of this and how difficult it Was it to maybe not include like, you know, quote unquote, pick your favorite children, pick your favorite children and not include some of the people who probably, you know, quite well for the sake of maybe other people on the list?

Well, Jordan, I wanted to keep in mind, first of all, you know, understand something. This is not about the best players. This is about the most important people who made the NFL what it is today. Number 50 on the list is someone that I guarantee 99% of people who will open this book have never heard of Arch Ward. Well, he was a guy who was the sports editor of the Chicago Tribune for 25 years. And while America was largely ignoring pro football in the 30s and 40s, Arch Ward made Monday's Bears Mondays all over Chicago, and he covered the living tar out of the Bears as a team.

And not many media were doing that in those days. I put the managing editor of Sports Illustrated, Mark Mulvoy, in here because when he ruled SI at its highest point ever, you know, in the 80s and 90s, when he ruled SI, one of the things that he did was he would, he loved, the NFL. You know why? Because he knew when he put, for instance, when he put the Dallas Cowboys on the cover, he'd sell 200,000 extra copies on newsstands around the United States. So he was motivated to put football on the cover of the magazine and he did it year round. And so I got an analytics guy, Neil Hornsby in there. Everybody will say you're crazy. But Neil Hornsby was the guy with Pro Football Focus who I think really was there at

the birth. I mean, there are other people, obviously, Brian Burke, Aaron Schatz, all of the people today who do a fabulous job with the numbers, the meaningful numbers. And it's so much more important. But I'm talking about people who were sort of there at the creations. And there when it really was making headway, when it was getting big. And, you know, I remember as I passed this around, this took me 19 months from the start to the end because I last fiddled with it in February of this year.

But I remember passing it around and a couple of people, I showed it to eight people whose opinion I really respected. And they said, I think I have Joe Namath number 14. And they said, how in the world? I mean, Joe Namath, he had that great win, but blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I said, I'll tell you two things. One, that when you think of Joe Namath, just understand that at the end of the 60s, when pro football was really starting to blow up with the merger, at the end of the 60s, the three most famous men in America were Richard Nixon, Elvis Presley, and Joe Namath. And I don't know in what order they were in, but they were.

And number two, I said, I'll just tell you what Ron Wolfe told me when I was talking to him about this list and where he liked people and all that. Ron Wolfe, the Hall of Fame general manager, who I treat very well in this book, I mentioned to him about the Joe Namath criticism, and he said, well, how many people can you say brought 10 franchises into the National Football League with him? That's what Joe Namath did.

That's how important he was. The AFL was a power league, and the one person who was the most powerful by far was Joe Namath. So You might say, if you're questioning certain guys, just know that I understand and I accept your arguments on so many of these, and that's fine. I got Lamar Hunt over Al Davis. Most people are going to say you're out of your mind. I don't think I am. But hey, it's a free country. Let's argue about it. Let's fight about it. Let's meet at a bar and get drunk over it.

I love that. And, Peter, thank you, first of all, for being on NFL Daily's Power Players with me today. As you know, I am just such a follower of your work and have been. You really helped me shaped my career, inspiration for my career. You helped pave the road for so many young journalists. You talk about this in the book as well, the opportunities that you felt very important to make sure that you were creating for other people, especially people from different backgrounds in the sport.

So thank you for that as well. But I have to call back to your column before I let you go completely. I want your beer nerdness from this process and I want your coffee nerdness from this process. What did you drink? What did, what kind of coffee, how much coffee did you sip on? How did you get through this basically?

Well, I'm going to tell you about, I've changed a little bit in say the last 10 years of my life. And that is I'm probably more wine nerdness now.

I'm a big cab guy now.

And so I probably ended quite a few nights with Silver Oak or Frog's Leap or Joseph Phelps. And Carmen Policy now has a great wine called Casa Piana, which I don't drink as often. It's slightly pricey, but it is fantastic. But anyway, so I probably would end many days with a glass and a half of one of those.

As far as coffee, I've become a big macchiato guy and a cortado guy. So there's a good Italian coffee shop in my neighborhood in Brooklyn. And I go in and there have been many days where I would just sit there for two hours and bat out some work with a double cortado, which is, two shots of espresso with a little foam cap on top. And so that's where I am at age 69. Who knows? I could change in the next couple of years, but that's where I am right now.

Well, that's one of the cool things about what you've always done and the sport that you've covered is you've changed and evolved right along with it. You guys can see the game on bookshelves everywhere you get books. Order online as well. October 13th is when it's out. Peter King, it was an absolute honor having you on NFL Daily's Power Players today.

Jordan, thank you. Anytime. And I just want to say that I know you probably don't want to look 30 years down the road. and I doubt I'm going to be around to read it, but I want to read the book that you write about things you experienced in your life, because some of the stuff that you do is so illuminating and so fabulous. And, uh, I just really enjoy what it is that you do. And, and, you know, I'll just say one last thing and I don't mean to hog this, but, um, You know, obviously, when I retire, a bunch of people say, oh, my God, we're going to miss you. We're going to do this.

And I say, do you realize how much deeper people go now than what my generation did and how many more really good, strong people there are in the media? And I just think football is really in a great spot. And with so many smart, smart, dedicated, passionate people covering it. So anyway, I wish you all the best.

Thanks, Peter. That was, of course, the legendary Peter King. I could have talked to him all day about everything he's seen and experienced over his decades covering the NFL. Fantastic conversation. Make sure you check out his book, The Game, at any of your local bookstores, any of your national bookstores.

Get it online. Thanks again to Peter for joining NFL Daily's Power Players. Make sure you keep an eye on your feed because we got more football for you on the way.

Power Players: NFL Journalist Peter King

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