NFL Run Game Is Back & DEI Hiring Just Got Exposed | Ep 1239

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On September 25th.

Bucky Brooks (0:02)

Manning!

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No one's coming for us.

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It's just you and me, boy.

Jason Whitlock (0:06)

58 miles.

Steve Kim (0:08)

Heart of the Beast is the must-see adventure of the year.

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An incredible story of survival.

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I got you.

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One of the most extraordinary on-screen blondes you'll ever see.

Bucky Brooks (0:18)

One of the greatest dogs that ever walked the earth. Brad Pitt.

I'll get you home.

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Heart of the Beast. Only in theaters September 25th.

Bucky Brooks (0:27)

Ready PG-13.

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May be inappropriate for children under 13

Bucky Brooks (0:30)

All right.

Jason Whitlock (0:31)

Today's show is going to be different. I'm going to connect the resurgence of NFL running backs to the NFL's failure of DEI policies. Yes. Hold for a second. I'm going to connect the resurgence of running backs to the failure of the NFL's DEI policies. It's why this show is mandatory for people serious about sports in American culture. The truth I'm going to unpack today can only be heard on this channel.

I need you to be patient with me. This may take a little bit of time.

All right. So let's start with the Kansas City Chiefs. They did not open the season with a Patrick Mahomes masterpiece. They opened it with a mugging on Monday Night Football.

Chiefs 31, Broncos 10 Joe Buck and Troy Aikman witnessed the mugging and they described it. I'm not sure they know what they watched. Andy Reid handed the ball to Kenneth Walker until the Chiefs advanced far enough for Patrick Mahomes to run it into the end zone. A 15-yard scramble, brace on the knee, two defenders arriving late to the party. The first eight minutes of the season for the Chiefs carried a message. The 2026 Kansas City Chiefs, they ain't your older brother's chief.

Heck, they're not the Chiefs Taylor Swift fell in love with three years ago. The new Chiefs are a team, Hank Stram, Len Dawson, Willie Lanier, Buck Buchanan would love. By the end of the ninth, Kansas City had 220 rushing yards. The first time in 78 home starts with Patrick Mahomes that they cracked 200 on the ground. Kenneth Walker, the off season steel and the Super Bowl, the reigning Super Bowl MVP. He ran for 173 yards and put Denver away with a 60 yard touchdown on fourth and inches.

Design runs beat pass attempts. Arrowhead got football. Denver's proud run defense got exposed.

Now let's wait for a minute. I think we've seen this. I think we saw it earlier this weekend. Baltimore ran the partner exam on Indianapolis. Derek Henry, punishing the clock for 144 rushing yards and three scores. Lamar Jackson, used when necessary, not as a bailout plan.

Jesse Minter's defense, setting the temperature. Two heavyweights opened the year with the exact same sermon. Run it, stop the run, pass as punctuation.

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There's that fire. Grab your popcorn.

Jason Whitlock (3:42)

Seattle Seahawks, they wrote the blueprint a year ago. Great crowd energy, dominant ground game. A quarterback who only had to be competent, Sam Darnold. And a defense that earned a nickname the hard way. They called it the dark side. Not because a network focus group liked the Viles, because the locker room named what it had become and the rest of the NFL had to live with it. The Chiefs named what they've become inside Arrowhead Stadium last night. Great crowd, great defense, great running game. The Chiefs, Seahawks Midwest. Let's think about it. Under Mike McDonald, Seattle finished as the league's top scoring defense, generated pressure from the front, and carried a Super Bowl run that ended with the Patriots getting embarrassed 29 to 13

A decade after the Legion of Boom, on January, this same group refused to rent the old brand. Darkside was not nostalgia. It was a warning label. The Chiefs looked in the mirror and imported the back, who helped the author, the title. Kenneth Walker is not a gadget signing. He is the identity transplant in a copycat league. Week 1s, the teams that dominated the clock, they told on themselves, Kansas City, Baltimore, the Giants, San Francisco, living in that 30 minutes time of possession or more, with 165 to 220 rushing yards on the ground. For a decade, the smart people told you the exact opposite.

Running back became, in the language of the blogs, the league's most worthless position. Committees over bellcows, replaceable bodies. Don't pay the man who finishes the run. Pay the man who throws when the pocket is clean.

A Bleacher Report performed the eulogy in 2018 The draft industry still lectures you that the position is a luxury tax. That was always a fashionable lie wearing analytics clothing. There was a time OJ Simpson and Walter Payton were paid like the faces of the league while quarterbacks lived lower on the food chain. The ball lived in the dirt on purpose. Physical football was not a brand activation, it was the job. Then the league fell in love with aerial theater. Quarterback insurance in the rule book and the mythology of the singular genius under center. The running back got talked down like a cost center. The market congratulated itself for being clever while the sport got softer in the mind, even when it stayed violent in the trenches. The quarterback did not just get overpaid, he got over explained. Strategy poured from the sideline into the earpiece. The position got richer and in too many buildings simpler. A highly compensated operator of other men's ideas. The run pass option flattened the read even further. You do not need a mystic skillset to take the snap and see one defender. You need a line that moves people, a back who refuses to go down easy, and a defense that makes every drive feel like a long walk in wet cement. Hyper-focus on the quarterback was treated like moral law. It was product marketing with shoulder pads. Now connect this to the NFL's corporate agenda. Diversity, equity, and inclusion. The elimination of merit. When the league decided it needed more black head coaches, the solution was just as thin as what they did with the strategy on the field. Mandate a minority offensive assistant. Put him near the quarterback. Proclaim that proximity to the golden position would manufacture coordinators and then head coaches. It sounded righteous on Twitter. Television and blogs platformed it like scripture. Surface level analysis with a press release attached. Short-sighted, mechanical, a paperwork pipeline cosplaying as justice as if the headset were a diversity internship and the offensive meeting room were a vending machine for future kings. That mandate did not fall out of the sky.