Games with Names - Mitch Morse on the 13 Seconds Game | 2021 AFC Divisional Chiefs vs. Bills

Episode Date: June 9, 2026

Mitch Morse is in studio! The legendary center, who played for both the Bills and Chiefs, is here to relive one of the most iconic Overtime playoff games between the two teams in which Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs led a 13 second drive to tie the game and ultimately defeat Josh Allen and Mitch's Buffalo Bills in Overtime to go to the AFC Championship in 2021. (0:00) We kick things off. (0:43) Mitch joins us on the couch. (54:33) We go back to 2022. (1:07:29) We break down these teams. (1:22:14) We dive into the game. (1:47:03) We score it. Support the show: http://www.gameswithnames.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off, and that was the last time I saw him.

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I'm Akela Hughes, and Rebel Spirit Season 2 is about both of those things. As I was watching these statues come down, I was thinking about what it meant that I grew up in a majority black city, in which there were more homages to enslavers than there were to enslave people. Listen to Rebel Spirit Season 2 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Every family has its secrets. But what happens when you discover that your dad has been living a double life? That is not the look of an innocent man. Is everyone lying to me about who they are?

I felt such desperation. I felt it was what I had to do. Listen to Deep Cover the Family Man on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. January 23rd, 2022, Arrowhead Stadium, Kansas City, Missouri. After the third lead change in the waning moments, the bills capture the lead. But when things look grim, Pat Mahomes is the grim Reaper. This is the 13 seconds game. Oh, that was sick, dude.

That was sick. That was cool. Welcome to Games with Names. I'm Julian Edelman. They're Jack and Kyler, and we're on a mission to finding the greatest game of all time. And today we have a very special episode coming out with former NFL center, Mitch Morse. And if you haven't already, drop a like and subscribe to Games with Names.

Let's go. Games with Names production of IHeart Radio. Welcome to Games with Names. Today we are looking at the 13-second games. game, the 2021 AFC divisional round between the Bills and Chiefs with Mitch Morse.

Mitch, in one sentence, why did you pick this game? And I'm regretting the decision right now, to be honest. Why did I pick this game? I don't like myself very much and I

enjoy flicking pain when I can. And this game is painful. Sounds like a alignment to me. It sounds like alignment right there. You know, they don't enjoy anything but pain,

it seems like. Well, it's just, and more than a sentence, dude, like no matter what side of the ball you were on in this one, pragmatically,

you take a step back and you look at it just objectively. It was just a good game. Yeah. It was a good game. And, you know, like you,

you were talking about off the, off the air, on the air, like, it interjected conversations that changed the landscape of, I mean, at least playoff football, right? And does it suck ass to be on the other side of it? Sure, it blows.

But, you know, it's one of those games that you'll be able to tell your kids about. And even when you look back at it and watch the game, you can still feel the energy. You know, there's a few games you look at from your past. And they played such a pivotal role and not developing, not only developing you as a player, but it's kind of the team as a whole that you can put yourself in that position.

Like, oh, I remember kind of how the air even felt or the crowd or the little nuances that for 90% of the games that you lose. But I can put myself in that game right now, how you felt the moment, the ebbs and flows, all of it. It was extraordinary. It just sucked ass how it ended. I mean, it's an instant classic for sure.

I mean, I'm so excited to get, into it. We'll get into a little later, but is this the greatest game of all time? I know Bill Byrd doesn't believe it is, and I know one of you two guys hate this game too. I'm a lover. You're a lover? I love it. I mean, I know it's painful, though. I know it's painful, though.

No, pain is good. We're just talking about. Pain, pain's pure. As an outside observer. Yeah, yeah. You learn a lot about yourself through it. Do I think it's the greatest game of all time? No, probably not. What is? Dude, another one that I was a part of, that you were part of, that 2018 AFC championship game. That was a big one.

But, I mean, this might have been one of the more pivotal games I've been a part of, maybe one of the greater games I have. I mean, what a guy. He brings up two games. What a football lover. Ball no one. He brings up two games, ball lover, ball knower. And understands the magnitude of two insets.

insanely great games that he was on the losing side, but being able to compartmentalize. Sure. Sure. For the sake of the game. Take a step back and see it. That's fucking, that's nine men mental toughness,

doing what's best for the sport when it's not necessarily best for you. Well, we'll also get into it here, but that's also what gave you that uneasy feeling. Yeah. Right? Because that game, it was a very, the AFC championship game.

I know you guys have talked about it in Ozzie back in 2018, but like it was a very one-sided, contest. You guys, it was pretty much y'all's game in that first half. And then there was a back and forth ebbs and flows. And then it was to the point where we had to go down on the chiefs, that being, with 30 seconds left or so to send it to overtime too. So you're sitting there on the sidelines of this one. And the sidelines, you know, rightfully so, the human experience, right? Like the ebbs and flows of this game, the emotionally charged, you think you have it in the bag to a certain extent. But there is that like weird kind of tingling, uneasy feeling. Because you know,

especially I, dude, we, we did the shit three years ago on the other side line. Fuck, dude. No. It sucks. But the only reason we talk about that game so much, 2018, AFC championship between the Patriots and Chiefs is because the respect factor for your team that you were on at that point in your career. The Chiefs was so high. You guys were the new, the new girl in school. You guys were the prom king queen, whatever you want, whatever the high.

highest of the high. We were the old farts just trying to scrap away and try to keep the glory as long as we could. Hey, did you touch that ball? No, I didn't. No? I really didn't. I mean, it really didn't matter. We threw a pick the next play. We threw a pick the very next play ball. I mean, ball definitely. Ball definitely lied. So you retire last year. What do we up to these days? Dude, you're looking at it. One of my favorite past times is just sitting down. I fucking love it. I dig it. And so I'm doing a lot of that. But truthfully, dude, like, I don't know.

You're trying to, try not to keep an idle mind. You're talking about this. But having full autonomy of your time, it's trying to be a dad. You're at the same time, like what fills your cup up. And to a certain extent, you're still trying to figure that out. But I do enjoy this space,

the media space. That being said, it's been a humbling experience. And that gives a negative connotation at times. It's, you know, talk about pain as you learning. You're learning so much about, yourself, the space, but like the art of conversation, like just the chewing the fat. I love it. It fills my proverbial cup up. I dig it. So we're just going to give it a go.

And if it doesn't work out, I'll go home, sit down some more and march on, man. You know what? It's funny that you say it's humbling. And I feel, I felt the same feeling when I jumped into this space for the first time that I felt when I jumped in the Patriots locker room for the first time. Anytime something new is coming in to your life, it's going to feel outrageously uncomfortable. It's going to feel humbling. And just like in football,

the more reps you have at it, the better you're going to be. No doubt. So everything like the more, when I started realizing that when I retired, like we were talking earlier, we were we were herded cattle for our whole life. Since we were probably eight to,

10 years old. Get up, go to school, go to practice, play on the weekend, the game. It's the same thing when you get to professional sports is you're going to school for football, then you practice, then you go and you do it over and over every single day. Now, when you get out of the league, we were given the schedule our whole life. We were given the routine and we were able to doll it up to our individual specifics. But once you get out, it's about making your routine. You know, that's what we were talking about. And right now, you know, it's going to feel weird because you were institutionalized for since you were probably 14 years old when you first started playing football

because that template has been the same since for 25 years of your life. So, you know, it's that uncomfort of getting into something new that we all feel once we get out. So, brother, you're in the same boat as everyone else. Yeah, which is really nice to hear, but it's that pendulum swing, right? because you yearned for the thought of not having that structure. Yeah. Like, I can't wait for that first training camp where it's just a Tuesday.

I can wake up and, you know, do whatever. But the pendulum's swinging back. And it's, it's been great because you realize, like, I think once you come back from there,

truly where your heart of heart lies. And that is having that structure. And so we're just figuring out in the fly, dude. I love it. I love it. So you grew up in Austin, Texas. Talk to us about Austin, Texas. and where the love of football came from in your life?

Was it high school there? Yeah, it was high school because football for me really didn't come to the fold until high school. I mean... Big guys. Yeah. They're too big for Bob Warner. No one grows up wanting to be an offense in the lineman either.

Let's just be honest. You said at some point, and that kind of goes through with why we were talking kind of fun and everyone, oh, I'm and enjoy pain or they're a self-deprecating bunch or, you know, because everyone's dream was crushed. Unless you were just one of those like super hefty kiddos. there's like if you want to be on this field,

you're going to, at a young age, strap it up. But, uh, I did flag football, which is smooth, man,

like, but you had the ball. You know, you're just the receiver quarterback. And then, you know, you had the kids blocking with, you know,

the old 1960s arms, right? Uh, Austin itself is just kind of, I don't know, if you spend any time out in Austin? Yeah. Yeah.

It's got a good, funky heartbeat. Yeah. Like a blue speck and a red sea. And, and, uh, it's still to its core,

a really good, funky town. town. Cost of living has gone up like any place worth living. You know, the hippies smell a little bit better than they used to, but, you know, grandma's still smoking skunky weed in the park. You can smell it when you're taking a walk. And it's just good folks, good soul. But sports are still very prevalent. I mean, University of Texas is interjects energy into that town, which is, you know, whatever. I'm not the biggest Longhorn fan now. Be growing up, you know, you bleed burn orange. And I went to a smaller high school

where they gave you an opportunity. Dude, you remember the first time you put your, you used to have those big hit pads. Hit pads. And these things are, I mean, they felt about two,

they felt about half the size. And then I remember sitting there not knowing where to put your pads in and you're trying to put your hip pad. Like this doesn't feel right. And you're the tailbone pad. They're like, how the hell do weave that with this very strange rope?

And, but I remember just instantly, you feel it, man. You feel that, you know, have to be like weirdly cliche or all that stuff, but there is something hits you in the soul.

Not the physicality of it all, but just the camaraderie of it, like suffering with your buddies. Even at that young age, suffering, you didn't really know the definition of it, right? But it was powerful, and you gravitate towards it. And then that turned into kind of, you know, you just stature grows.

I grew about four or five inches, gained about 50, 60 pounds. And then so the opportunities present itself. But, you know, there's some dudes in the locker room that they had this video. from the jump. From the jump. I wanted to be an NFL football player.

And my football career is about as least sexy as possible. It was just like, and the next step was just a happy coincidence along the way of trying to do it right at the time. And that kind of got me through until, and then once it got to the point of like the NFL, it was just being at the right place of the right time. You got Pat,

or you got Alex Smith, who taught you how to be a pro. He had Pat who, I mean, it was just lightning in a bottle, what you thought. and then it just exploded to this unbelievable consistency of just being a tremendous football player.

Pat Mahomes, that is. Alex Smith. Yeah, Pat Mahomes, Alex Smith. Then you go to Buffalo, you got to chase the cheese, and then you find out that the culture's amazing and that Josh is this prolific football player, and then you're just along for the ride, man. So I know that kind of went off the cusp there,

but football has been great, but it was just kind of a happy coincidence. Man, Texas high school football, insane. I wanted to jump into that. but you already just brought it up. Alex Smith, Patrick Mahomes, to Josh Allen. What a, what a, what a trio.

What a, what a blessing to have those types of quarterbacks? What were the main differences of those two? Are those three? Yeah, a hair probably. And Trevor Lawrence. You can't forget about Trevor Lawrence in there. I totally forgot Trevor. And I do believe,

I'm not just saying this because I was with a guy. I love the dude. I do think he's on the cusp of finding that. You know, those quarterbacks is really good ones. they have that freak switch. It kind of goes. And it manifests itself in different ways. It's not this raw, raw thing, but it's this time.

It's this moment where no matter the moment, especially the big ones, everything seems to calm down. They step in that huddle and when they're relaying the play call, it's just like, what are the formation, all this stuff? And then they look at the position that it did. A little reminder. Oh, you just feel it. And he's got it.

Singletary, look to scan on this one maybe. Watch, watch a scan. What's the best? You know, that's, that's the good one. What you're saying basically is, in the high stress environments, the great quarterbacks, they don't act any different. No, they seem to calm down. They, they, exactly.

It's because they've done it in their head a million times. And it's just, and I try to put myself in that position, and maybe it's just because I'm a manic weirdo, but like, for me, and it's such a calming presence, especially the quarterback. And that being said, we'll go back to your original question of those guys and their differences. I mean, Alex was one of those guys. He was year 12, or maybe year 11 when I come in as a rookie center. And the patience he had is a dude who, I mean, I played tackle and the SEC, but the Missouri was coming from the Big 12 where it was we had these like five foot splits.

We had just started doing three point stances when I got there. And you were your first nine on seven, especially goal line or short yardage. I'm seeing dudes. I don't even know. I'm like, I didn't know you could put more than six people in the box, and now that it's nine up, you know? And so the patience he had, the patience that Andy had, but he was by far the freakiest competitor.

I've been around. Alex had, talk about that freak switch. He'd walk in there and he would just lose his mind in the best way, constructively. And you feel like, oh, man, this is what makes him tick. This is why he is who he is. And then Pat comes in and... This is Baby Pat.

This is Baby Pat. Baby Pat. He gets drafted in 2017, heir parent to Alex, and he's an unbelievable teammate from the jump, right? I'm sure he's spent time with Pat. He's just solid as a rock. Great dude.

And then in 2018, he comes in. It's his team, and he starts hot that week one. We play San Diego in the soccer stadium here, which is kind of a fun experience. He goes, and then it's just week after week we're waiting for the other shoe to drop and it doesn't. And I've never seen a dude's life change more

from week one to week 16 from the outside world, right? And he just stayed the same dude. And I always thought that was going to carry him into being just not only a good player, but just a great teammate, right? Then you get traded and you sign a fat contract. Or you didn't get traded. You sign a huge contract, $45 million. Yeah.

Highest paid. Yeah, no, that was smooth. With the Buffalo Bills. And you're kind of introduced to this guy who's a freak of an athlete named Josh Allen. What's his difference? What makes him tick? You know, but you hear it. He's kind of, people say he's like a puppy dog.

I'm sure he spent a little time with Josh. I haven't really. And he's a central Cali boy and I'm a Cali kid. I grind for those guys. That's a Logan Mankis type. You guys, that is Logan Mankins. Shout out Logan Mankins. Not to get off track.

I had dinner with one of your ex-teammates last name. Ryan Wendell. Fucking Wendy. Whoa. My roommate. I know Wendy's, I don't have you seen him recently. He's thin. He looks.

He's got like veins in his arms. Of course. I'll tell you one thing about Wendy. He's a book guy. Right? Sure. Love that. Love being a book guy.

But when you share a house with someone, you can't read in the communal TV room. We used to fight all. He was sit there with this after. It's like six o'clock in the afternoon. We just got motherfucked for 12 hours. I want to go play some FIFA. This guy's reading a book on the fucking FIFA. So he came in.

And then we'll, yeah, I know we're all. over the place. I'm sorry. But I had to talk to you about Wendy. Wendy. Wendy. So his first year of coaching, he took his hiatus is my first year in Buffalo. And we, like, so I'm looking for places to stay. You know, love Buffalo. There's not too many spots to stay. No family. So we just got a little duplex where we stayed in one of the sides of the duplex. Turns out I share a wall with Ryan Wendell. His family, he's got a young family. I think he had just had one of his kiddos, not yet too. And Meredith. I'm sure you get to know. Yeah, yeah. Fucking awesome. Awesome.

And he was an assistant coach, but like, I remember after games, we'd go hang out in my garage. He'd come over with Meredith and we'd just drink beers. And, like, there was the first coach I had that was able to, and I think this is true for, like, guys who played and know it. Like, we're going to, like, inside the building, we'll have a good working relationship and that's that. And but then also, like, we're all humans. Let's have a relation, like, just a good fellowship, a camaraderie. And he was the first coach I really had that was able to marry. that.

I don't know what that's like. Yeah. I'm joking. I'm joking. I'm joking. I know you guys had a good thing going on. But he was in, so of course he was there,

but also getting to Buffalo. Yeah. I mean, we had seen Josh in 2018. He had come in a little bit and played against Minnesota and did this like hurdle in Minnesota over this guy and the whole league saw that.

So you saw this kid had kid. Dude had spunk, right? And then you find, out that just he is the best. The really good players, like those superstars, not only have that all it factor playing, but they take the time, and I think this is a special attribute

to have as a football player, especially at that caliber, I'm sure. I've heard Tom had this too, right? You take the time no matter who you are, if you're the multimillion dollar football dude, you know, player in the league or locker him, rather, or you're the dude who's the undrafted guy, who's, you know, he's only going to be there for a few years.

third tight end in the 13 personnel group that you needed to get that one fucking play good. No doubt. And he takes a time to foster relationships with those dudes. And even in your subconscious, you feel like, hey, I got a piece of the pie, man. I got it with Josh. And then his house would always be the place we'd go to.

He built this sweet pad in Buffalo. And that's another happy coincidence because then he, quarterback, much like any position, it's just time on task. You're talking about it, retirement, time on task, playing football, time on task. And especially at that position where so much information is coming at you at any given moment. And you have to quiet your mind for the little things, but you have to be the master of this whole offense, right? He starts figuring it out and you're along for it.

And he's testing things out. Yeah, he might throw something here or there that's it. He rarely makes the same mistake twice and that manifests into, I mean, now we're seeing, you know, he's already won one MVP. and he's just, it was so solid. I was such a breath of fresh air. And not only they had such a good culture in that building that, you know, not much else is going on in Buffalo. So it's really just you feel like the camaraderie with the team.

I assume a little bit similar with the Pats, right? Like there's something special because of where we are, like this building has a little bit of a heartbeat. And at the helm, we got a guy who would put his body, you know, you hear people say he'd put his body out on the line. The dude does not give a shit about his body when he's playing football. It's infuriating, but it's just such a rallying cry for a team, and he's got it, man. We'll be right back after this quick break.

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Stream us on your phone. Or listen now at iHeartRadio.ca. I love the sounds. The buzzing from the stadium, the chanting from the fans, the announcers calling the place soccer, football, at home. Why do I watch the World Cup? That's like asking me, why do I breed? I inherited that fandom from my mom.

I like watching it with my dad. It's a connecting force. From Futuro Studios, I'm Fernanda Chavari, and this is American Football, a show about soccer culture in the U.S. and its underdog roots. We go beyond the game to the people and the stories that make it great. A soccer game is a festival. It's not just a game. It's your culture. I took an elbow to my head, which cracked my skull. It is an American game.

The Brazilians don't like hearing that, though. Are they the only ones that don't like that? Nobody likes that. As we get ready for the Men's World Cup this summer, listen to American Football as part of the My Coutura Podcast Network, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's a breath of fresh air to hear that two of the greats in our sport

have that kind of mentality. And it's not a coincidence. You know, all the great quarterback they're great teammates. You know, you hear the ones that will consistently be great for a long time. Everyone can mess around and have a good year or two. But it's, you see it. You know, it's the EQ of those guys that makes everyone want to fight for them.

It's when your highest paid player making the most money, the biggest name, is also working the hardest. That's the formula. And these dudes, like I think of Tom. and I assume if Pat and Josh want to do this, they're going to have this huge, illustrious career, and they might be with one team, but they're going to have different iterations of that team.

And it's got to be exhausting to think about that and like a stance. Every season feels like a lifetime, and every season you have your relationships and stuff, and they're going to do this, what, 15, 20 times if they want to, but they still do it. It's a special thing, man. It really is.

You got to be a kind of a serial killer. Yeah. Legit, bro. Like the compartmentalization of these guys is outrageous. Mm-hmm. Because, you know, just like you're talking about with Pat and, you know, and Josh, these guys are great teammates and they're killers on the field. But then they're like great dudes off the field and they do it all day long. They continue to do it.

You got to have, you got to be missing something for that. You guys are fucking nuts. now let's talk about being retired o lineman what what does a dinner look like with a retired o'leman versus a dinner look like with a guy that's active 315 pumping well actually i got beef with wendy because i was i was been pretty good recently but and he's this skinny little dude now but he brought the he brought the old inner o lineman freaky-ass dinner out where it was just pasta. Did he cook?

No, you guys went out. No, hell now. We went out. Where'd you guys go? It was like a place called ganache or something. I could, I think I totally fucked that up.

But something, it's like a pasta place. It's one of those cool places where you walk in and the meat lockers right there. You immediately know, you immediately know it's going to slap, right? A little dry age. But I'm late. So he's like,

I'm ordering your food. The Gepelas, and he just, this fat fucking plate of pasta and this huge steak. we're all sharing and I'm sitting there and I'm just, it hasn't changed as much as you think. It's the little things like, for me, just trying to, like, what carbs you put in there, right? So I didn't, I gave so much shit to people who are like the granoli, like, drinking water out of, you know, a glass bottle.

I'm just like kick rocks. And then you're in it. Yep. And I'm, like, weirdly into it, right? I even did the, like, the, like, the- We're not burning fucking 8,000 calories anymore every day. No, it's like fruit. You try to slam fruit.

Potatoes. You're getting potatoes and grottin over here. Mac and cheese. Yeah. Wendy brought it out. Fuck him, actually. He's,

he, he's the man. But, um, yeah, that takes a bit because you've told your body for so long. Like, hey, man,

you got it. You got to keep this up. And then once you hit 30, it's like, all, dude, cool. Here's your wish. Yeah.

Best of luck. And then you're done. And I, the stress of it all, like, the thing that really got me was when I was playing and I didn't even really notice it. It was like,

I'd wake up to, pee every night and then I just find myself eating peanut butter and I'm like why the hell I'm eating peanut butter is like I don't know how the hell I'm gonna block erand Donald on Sunday now how how many have you lost weight I like 30 pounds maybe that's just muscle like because you're not hitting it I I mostly probably yeah it's crazy because the linemen they just shrink the people don't realize these guys got to eat I remember we had this guy Mikey right it's a solid name yeah it's a solid name he was from since Atty, he was a D-Tackle early in my career. And this guy hated eggs, but he had to force himself.

And he would eat 14 egg whites every morning. And he would almost throw up while he was eating him. But he needed it for the weight. Like he was always under his weight. It was fucking outrageous what some of these guys had to do to keep weight. I've never heard even of a guy trying to gain weight. 14 egg whites is an insane. Well, this guy was like OCD like with everything. Like, yeah. And he was like, hey, you want to come over and make a homemade ice cream with, almonds. I'm like, what the fuck is this? That sounds like a good time, dude. That sounds fun.

The Vitamix just came in. Check out this blender, man. You can make ice cream with just ice. Wendy's reading in the living room. That's a nice, that's a nice thing. I mean, this is the shit we had to deal with. Yeah, it's tough. Wendy was an insane chef, wouldn't he?

Wendy was a good chef. No, no, that was, oh, Conley. Yep. Conley was the best chef. Who was the best chef out of the limine? The best, so actually probably the center now for the bills, Connor McGovern. He's solid. he's humongous and he loves food.

But it's like the guys who'd take the time. Yeah, no. We used to go to his house for Thanksgiving. He'd have homemade beer, homemade wine. He'd make, he deep fry a turkey, smoke a turkey, bake a turkey. Just in case. Well, we'd have like a lot of guys, but he would do one of each. He made a fucking homemade marshmallow thing, like homemade marshmallows where he had to go in the garage and make them or something for this hot cocoa that he made to

put on the hot coat. I mean, it... I feel like a garage is where you have to make marshmallows. I don't know what to fucking eat. I feel like you don't have to, you can't make marshmallows anywhere except the garage. No, no. It's got to be the garage. I mean, on a workbench. It was insane. All right. Let's get into some of your craft talk. Center have to be one of the smartest guys on the line. You're communicating with the quarterback every play all day, every day. Who were some of the guys you looked up to when you first got in the league that you wanted to model your craft after? Oh, that's a great question. I was just talking to Taylor B.I.

the center for the Chargers now about, because he's about five or six years younger than me, and you have these different iterations of guys that you look up to when you get in. And it's, anyways, that being said, when I first got in the league,

dude, there was a, I mean, it was a treasure trobe at the position, right? You had the pouncy twins. Insane? Unbelievable. You had Alex Mack.

Fucking flexible. I mean, it was the craziest stance. And he, when he'd run to the, he'd always run to the ball, head up, had a motor.

You would not believe played 14, 15, years. You had Max Unger, who was with the Seahawks and then ended up with the Saints. You had Rodney Hudson. You had Eric Wood with the Bills. And then, I mean, oh, you had, oh, who had just, he was only a year old than me, but Corey Lindsay, who's an L.A. guy. He was with the Packers and all these, oh, and then Jason Kelsey was doing his thing, too. And so you're just, You're watching these guys. And it's one of those things where I can sit there and say I'm watching Jason Kelsey or the Pounceys.

And I'm like, sure, I want to run. I would love to run like a gazelle, jump over a dude and just absolutely dogwalk, a linebacker. But I can't take anything from that and actually apply it to my game. So the guy that I really watched a lot of was Alex Mack just to learn how to move in like a phone booth. Like for me, I was moving too much. Like you learn how to move in a phone booth. and then max on gurgers. What does that mean?

So moving a phone booth is like, so if you come, especially if you're playing tackle, like you think of, especially your first kicker, how much space you work with. That's mitigated every position you move inside. And at center,

like, if you move more, like if your first step at times is more than six inches or seven inches, like that's too much. You're going to get overextended. You're not going to have your position of power because off the rip,

this dude's sniffing your nose. and if you're not ready, he's going to, and you don't have that base or you're not going to throw that hand. It happens so quick to him. Speed to power. You got to be ready for it. Yeah. I mean.

Anchor. And just to have that anchor and have that base, especially then with how quickly it's happening, you cannot move or get overextended. Or like the first time a guy is sniffing your ear and you think you have to overextend, he crosses your face. Like if you don't have your feet in there or you're out,

you're going to look pretty silly. and then Dante is going to be up your ass, you know, saying some shit to you. Oh, 1,000. Are you talking about Mr. Scardac? I am talking about Mr. You never had Scarne.

No, I met him in passing once. He worked me out for a pro day. But even that short amount of time, he had a presence about him. And then I talked to Wendy or anyone who goes around and chats about Scar. You hear a few things.

One, he would do push-ups. He was the most, he had the lowest heart rate on the team. team. We used to compete every year. Our trainers right there to confirm. 39. This guy used to have a 39 heart rate at 90 years old. He was like 82 years old. So he's almost dead walking around, right? Seriously? They call out a marathon heart. Call it a marathon heart. I mean, because he used to, he used to swim every more and do all these push. He was fucking in, he was shredded.

Yeah. Ellen, he was, you know, he kind of had this. So he was, he'd do pushups. He would do pushups and then if you were a rookie or the first day you were there, he was going to try to break your will the first three days, especially in like rookie mini camp, just to see how you do. I heard that. Every single person I talk to is like, you know,

misery loves company, he's just going to see how you tick. And three is that, yes, he might give you the business, but he's also going to love you up when the moment dictates it. And that,

uh, he's just a, he's a good soul, man. He really is. And, you know, for,

for the guys that weren't lame and we didn't realize he was always like super nice to us so like I never thought of I was like that's a best coach ever man you see the linemen coming out they'd be like fucking scratching their head out of a media like man there's no doubt but I did see the different like I heard him coach because we used to do all you know when we're watching the offensive film you'd hear the coaches from the offense coach and the o lineman you'd hear the running backs coach coach in front of everyone they were coaching and when you'd hear him coach man it yeah he would be he would be he would would get on a guy, but he would also give you the exact thing you had to do to make the play

right. He would maybe say, you fat piece of shit, but he'd also say, you take your right hand, you put it under his left, this, you drop your weight, you do your little set step, or, you know, like he would give you the technique. So he's not just yelling at guys, he's coaching him up and just, you know, and he communicates it for, in a way where everyone, can understand. Oh, you're going to hear him. You're going to hear him. I don't know if I made that right. No, I think you did. I think he's going to get your attention a certain way, but then he's going to give you the gold. 1,000 percent. And that's what good coaching is, is guys that can teach you and tell you and communicate what you have to do. Don't yell at me and say, we got to do better.

Tell me I got to do. What do I got to do to get better? No doubt. And that's what the good coaches do. Who are some of the good coaches you had at the offensive line position? Great question. two come to mind immediately. One is the head of line coach for the chiefs still. Andy Heck. He's been there since Coach Reed got there in 2013. And he played 13 or 12 years in the league. So you know that he, which is great,

I've always appreciated guys who have played or like those coaches who have been in there for a bit. And both of those kind of fall in the same category of understanding what the toll it takes mentally physical or like to actually be able to achieve what they're asking. and he, oh man, he's a, he's a great dude. He's one of the greatest teachers of the game. I remember learning, you know, teaching his coverages and the way he would ask.

And, you know, he's very stern, but he wasn't a dick. But he would also kind of, my favorite thing about him is he, if you messed up on the field, he'd be like, what were you thinking here? And a lot of the coaches would be like, what are you thinking here, you dumbass? he legitimately wanted to see how you processed information because his whole thing was like maybe certain dudes receive information in different frequencies I want to match your frequency so I can explain to you

because maybe what I'm saying what makes total sense to me is just falling on deaf ears but he was also dude that you know if you had a young pliable body was going to work you to the bone in the best way you know they also the chiefs believe in trial by fire. I assume similar to New England,

which is just like you're going to get better through about a thousand reps and you're going to sink or swim and we're going to give you every opportunity to swim. And Coach Heck was right in that category and was a beautiful teacher, but very monotone and still one of my dear friends. And the other one I can think of

is a recently retired O-line coach for the Buffalo Bills, Aaron Cromer. And he, I mean, he was the cattle for the 2018, the 13, you guys beat him 13 to 3, but that offense in Los Angeles with Todd Gurley, he was the offensive line coach and run, run dude for that team. They were very good. They're unbelievable. They were, I think they were like the highest scoring offense in NFL,

in NFL history that year. Remarkable team. And then he came over to Buffalo in 2022 and really revitalized that offense. And you've seen James Cook do his thing the past few years. and just his ability to, because he's the exact opposite of Adonte. He's not going to motherfucker you. Now he's going to give you autonomy.

He's one of these things is everyone doesn't move the same way biomechanically. How I get out of my stance, my position of power. Now we're all at the point of contact and to be in the same place, kind of this symbiotic organism that thinks in the same way. But he's going to sit with you and talk with you for a few hours about how, all right, if this isn't how you want to do it, how are you going to do it. But now that you have ownership of it,

he's going to hold you accountable because, like, hey, man, we sat there for an hour. And you talked about this is how you want to do it. And to give that freedom, especially at the point in the career that I had him, two very opposite guys,

both brilliant minds. And it just shows you, like there's so many capable, there's a lot of incapable coaches, which is wild in this league. I've heard that right now at the O'Line position from insiders, players.

It's, he said it's malpractice right now. with some of these offensive line coaches. There's a few of them. We'll leave them nameless that they shouldn't be done. And it's the most important, it's honestly one of the most important aspects of the game. Been in TV for five years.

Five years now. Every first three months of the season, we talk about offensive line problems. What the fuck are we doing? What are we doing out here? Well, it's the one position. So the practice, lack of practice, the new CBA. I mean, there's so many reasons to it, but, you know, it needs to get going.

It's such a volatile position. I mean, yeah, I mean, the no-shit moment where, you know, there's five dudes trying to work as we talked about that symbiotic deal, whatever. But the offense, I feel like always, when you first get into training camp, the offense always takes a little bit longer in the defense, always. And then the offense of the line always in certain aspects, especially the run game. It's because you guys got to practice the hitting. They don't, we don't, you can't practice in passing camp and organized team activities, mini camps. Those are in fucking diapers.

We're in just helmets. Big linemen, yeah, they block and stuff, but they're not really doing, it's not the same. You know, it's, it's the lack of padded practices, which those guys, the padded practices is mostly the most important for the linemen. A lot of linemen look forward to padded practices because you got something to grab onto. 1,000 percent. And you get to work the, it's not even just like

when people think about it. It's not just like the, running off the ball and moving guy from point A to point B. It's like, all right, well, subtle hand placement and pass protection. Where can I grab the collar?

Can I do this? Or how, like, be a part of offensive line plays holding people. Yeah, but there's an art to holding people. Inside, keep the hands inside.

Keep your hands inside. Keep your elbows in. You can only do that so much to a certain extent with shells. Yeah. But with pads, that's when you really get to work on. And also,

like how do you hear about throwing your hands you can only do so much throwing your hands with shells but like how at what place am i going to hit pads so i'm actually going to emit power my position of power through the palm of my hand you kind of have to have pads to do that um that being said like i do think and that was a great thing about kansas city and buffalo to a certain extent is like i assume new england it's like well we got pad of praxis we're going to use them i hear about that a lot i hear about Andy Reid's practices and training camps and how they're really hard. Explain that. Explain how hard these practices are.

Man. Yeah. So, you know, the rules changed probably my last year there and just time on practice. But if there was three hours to have, you're going to have two hours and 50 minutes worth of practice. And,

you know, I just, you know, you go to St. Joseph, Missouri, which is, you know, a place.

And it's, it's, it's actually strangely hot, like on fire hot. Those Midwest towns, they're getting hot. Yeah, and they're stamy. And, you know, every day you'll do your ND for 45, you'll do one-on-one pass rush or seven-on-seven for about 25, 30 minutes. And then you'll do, you know, your team blitzes and all the stuff, your situations. And then you might just do one rack of 11 on. And then you'll do a situation.

and it's either a full go two minute and then if it goes too quickly, you'll do two of them. Or I'm sure you've heard you'd end with a long drive drill. And long drive drill for Andy is one of these things where he wants to, this is not so much technique. Like by play 13, you're leaning on each other. He always associated with like what wrestlers have to go through.

It's like you're immediately when you're wrestling, you're going to get to this point where your body is telling your mind, please, I got to stop. But what he wants to do is train your body and your mind. to push through that moment because you're going to have an 18 play drive in the season. It's going to come up at some instance. It's just going to. So the ones verse ones would go for 18 straight plays.

2s versus 2s, we go for 12 and the first 3s would go for 8. And he'd throw about a 30 minute or 32nd rather, water break in about 9. And you couldn't substitute. So these guys and the defense really actually probably got screwed, especially the D line more than O line. But you're just leaning on guys. you do kind of have to go through that. And also more than anything, the thing that's not talked about is those two,

the one thing I do mess about football. I don't miss playing. I got nothing left to give. What I do miss is like those really, you know, that one or two days in training camp where he didn't sleep for some reason. It's also the one day where coaches told you like, hey, we're doing 56 plays of team.

And it's, God has a sense of humor, so it's also hot as shit. Hot. But you get through it. You actually might even go through. I might even crush the process. It just was a good practice. And you're walking off and you had those two hours between that and your first meeting where you get in the tubs and you go eat.

And there's something about going through that and you're almost in like this weird hysteria, not hysteria, but just kind of this weird case of delusion because of what you had gone through. And you're sitting in the locker room after the cold tub or maybe in the cold tub, like those moments. What that does for a team. Yeah. You can't. You put that in a pill form, pal. No, I mean, you also got to think about the other side when you had the worst practice. Yeah.

After those two hours, those two hours leading into the low lights that you're about to watch. Maybe think you might get cut a couple times. Am I going to get cut today? Am I going to get, I'm getting cut today? Oh, fuck, I'm cut. We'll be right back after this quick break. Pride is like love. You feel it in your heart.

IR Radio. Canada's number one streaming app. radio and podcasts, including IHart Pride Canada, your favorite hits and must have party bangers, plus personalized and curated playlists, like back in the day pride. Come together, celebrate, love. Take pride with you anytime, anywhere. Just ask your smart speaker to play IHartPride Canada. Stream us on your phone or listen now at iHeartRadio.ca.

I love the sounds, the buzzing from the stadium, the chanting from the fans, the announcers calling the place soccer, football, at home. Why do I watch the World Cup? That's like asking me, why do I breed? I inherited that fandom from my mom. I like watching it with my dad. It's a connecting force. From Futuro Studios, I'm Fernanda Chavari,

and this is American Football, a show about soccer culture in the U.S. and its underdog roots. We go beyond the game to the people and the story that make it great. A soccer game is a festival. It's not just a game. It's your culture. I took an elbow to my head

which cracked my skull. It is an American game. The Brazilians don't like hearing that, though. Are they the only ones that don't like that? Nobody likes that. As we get ready for the men's World Cup this summer, listen to American Football as part of the MyCultura podcast network, available on the IHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You got to tell me about those because there's, I mean, it's lower about the law. Oh, you got to. Well, just like you said, right? After, you know, practice, you have, you have about two hours. Guys would take a nap. Guys would go get a lift. Guys would go do psychological training or something.

There was something to do that you could do for those two hours. And as soon as you would get in to that first meeting, we would meet together as a team. And there would be about a 15 to 3rd. 30 play cut up and it could be from anything at practice that day. It could be from the individual drill. It could be from the one-on-one's drill. It could be from the nine-on-seven drill. And it just highlighted examples on what is good effort, what is a good play,

and then there would be low lights of this is not what we're looking for. This is the program of what we're not doing. And it was just like one of those things were... No one was safe. No one was safe. Yeah, that's tough. You know, but it also, it was one of those things where it's a different time and there's so many ways to the top. At this time, this specific time, it almost galvanized us together in this moment where like we're all shit in our pants about this. And it was kind of like us versus him.

And I think he did that on purpose because the times he did give you a slap on the butt. It made you feel like, holy fuck, this was the best day ever. and then those times where it was it, you know, you thought you were getting cut, but then you knew you had to bring your A game the next day at practice. Because every day on good teams, you either win it or you lose it.

There ain't no fucking staying the same. You either won the day or you lost the day. There's no staying the same. They gave words power. Like when you got the praise, you knew it meant something. It meant something. And then when you got shit on.

Oh, man. It definitely meant something. It meant something. You light a fire. What's the best coaching point you ever got? Oh, the best coaching point I ever got. Like technique-wise was actually Andy Heck, my first line coach. He said your elbows only have so many punches.

So you might as well throw those hands as hard as you can. Because no matter what, if you don't throw them or throw them hard, your elbows only got so many. might as well just punch people as hard as you can within yourself without reaching. And he was right. My elbows are cooked, dude. They're gone. The best, like, probably broad spectrum coaching advice I got was, you know, what's interesting was, I had a coach.

I forget exactly who, but I was a young player and I didn't have a family. And I thought, you know, I had so many instances where I would just find myself on a Wednesday in season being at the facility until 8 p.m., like doing another round of contrast or doing this stuff. And it's like learning how to, like, hey, there's also the art of removing yourself the best you can.

You have to unplug, even if it's for two hours at night. You have to. Yeah. Because especially as a young player or when you're still figuring this thing out, no matter how you look at it or no matter how much mental fortitude you have, especially those young dudes,

are going to go through it. that proverbial rookie wall. Some guys that last for game. Some guys last for a day. But finding a way to remove church and state, and he even used it as like, all right, there's a handle for me, even as a coach.

There's a handle and there's a door I walk through every single day. I don't change what door I walk through. And when my hand hits this handle, I try my best to flip the switch on. I'm in work mode. And then when I get to my, you know, I leave my desk, go outside,

get my car, throw my seatbelt on. I drive home when I, when I actively put my car in park, that's when the other switch flips. And finding a way to do that, whatever that works for you, you have to remove yourself in some capacity or you're going to burn yourself out, even if you think you're a superhero. And then you're going to have these loals and it's going to affect everyone around you. Yeah, it's no way to live. You got to reboot. And it's hard, dude.

Hard. I never rebooted. That's why I burned. I burned it out. I don't know. Yeah, well. I lived at the facility. If that's, okay. I burned it out. I lived in the training room.

I got my trainer here right now. This guy fucking hates me. I don't know why he's here. He works so much. Shout out, Jim. Now, lastly, before we can jump into this game, I've always, I've always wondered, give me the POV of the center in the whole huddle situation. When you call the huddle, are you, where are you standing in the huddle? Are you breaking the huddle? how much pride does the center have on the huddle?

How much pride does center have? That's, you know, we're a very prideful bunch, Jules. But the huddle, the center always sets the huddle. Yeah,

absolutely. So you're always looking for, immediately your eyes gravitate towards the side judge to at least know where, you know, the ball marker is. So then we're setting the huddle.

How many yards are behind? So usually, you know, some coaches one at five or six, usually four and a half. enough where you can still break the huddle and have a few strides to get to it. You don't want to break it. And there's a few times where you accidentally break and you turn around.

It's right there. You know, like that kind of blows. But so you set the huddle. Everyone comes through. There's the personnel shift. Sometimes you're getting it. You're hearing the personnel shift or, you know, change. All right.

So zebras coming out where you're expecting nickel, all this stuff. And then you immediately like, while that's being kind of decided and worked through, you get your eyes towards. what shifts they're making or what personnel groupings are coming in or if, you know, certain guys talking to line it up in a certain way. Really the first thing you see is if it's base or nickel or if it's base presented as nickel or the opposite, right? And so you already know no matter what the call, you're already going to set yourself into it. Why is that important for the linemen? Because that starts every single rule that you have, right? So what is base first nickel?

So base is when? So base first nickel in regards to an offensive lineman. is the amount of known rushers. Okay. Right? Because you can look at it as like, right, the base front for the bills at the time, not anymore is a four three,

but then are nickels four two. But for us, I'm thinking how many down linemen are there, right? So four, or if it's like a third down pressure package, there's only an odd front, but maybe we're going to have odd rules or they're going to present it as a four down,

in which case we have to designate one of these guys as a four, is the known rusher. So that our four, down four known rush your rules, especially in pass protection, can apply. You get the play call, whatever is pertinent to that,

and then if it's a certain run, if there's some sort of motion that's going to bring in, either, you know, that covers six safety or move someone out or shift so you know that's moving. You break it. And then you have to know the shifts and movements because of the timing of the snaps.

Totally. And it's not like every single one. There's a ton that you just don't, I don't care. But there's especially in certain formations or like you have a do it's mostly duo schemes especially when you're trying to move in or you're dependent on if your receiver's gonna come out

and you're gonna dig out that dude which is fucking awesome by the way keep yeah always love yeah always love the fellas that do that uh you know you starts off always usually the huddle always starts off with the cadence you're gonna be on this and then you're gonna get the play call

and then you usually end on cadence too so the same thing happens to you you just try to set the guys tones because they're trying to digest so much information out there, like, hey, it's yellow, yellow. And then now we're going through it. So even if it's their subconscious, they know it's going to be on two if yellow is two. You go through it.

Usually it's, you know, run protection. It's the mic or whatever is designated on that. A lot of the times you can omit the mic call. And I know that's kind of sacrilege for the Patriots. But the nice thing about that is a, that's mostly on the offensive line. and the quarterback can move you off of it. But if it's past protection, you're thinking about your four down and five down rules,

you're known rushers. It's five down, you know, usually that means it's going to be a five-on-five call or a six-on-six-call, or even if it's a seven-man-pro, whatever, seven-man-on-seven-man. And then you just think of if it's a weak protection or a strong protection,

and what that looks like is the cap, is it a three-by-one or is it two-by-two? Do I have to, especially if it's like a weak-side protection and we're responsible for that outside. Do we have to kind of account for that dude who's capped? Is this a position that looks like the mic cap? And then as a center, you do the best of your ability. And then the quarterback has, of course, the final Trump call.

But usually you're on this symbiotic relationship that you know. Or sometimes the great thing is, like, if he knows, he just does it out there. And listen, as a center, you like to think, do the coaches that would ask you, be like, all right, I need you as the center position to look, out there at the secondary and see what that. I'm like, I got short arms. My gut is going into my lungs in my center stance. I'm having a hard time breathing, right? And I got, I can't, I can barely look past my tackle. So then that's when you really get that communication with the guys and you know through a thousand reps. They know what information you need. I know what information. I need.

Of course, I'll be the Trump call. But, you know, at the same time, if you got to trust your dudes out there because they're seeing shit that I can't. And then it's one of those things that's also super fluid. And that's one of the great things about the, like the center position and we would kind of get you outside of sometimes over analyzing everything else that was going on. I was like, well, I have the memorandum that I need to give to the offensive line. I have my checklist, my proverbial checklist, but that kind of calms you down and gets you into the routine.

We're talking about routine. Especially at center, every play has such a routine. Every position does for sure. I assume you have the same. kind of diagnostics going through. For eyes. Yeah. Routine. No doubt. Where you put them. Now, how

what percentage of the time are you just sitting there looking at like one of your guys and say, hey, we got this. We got Ringo. They didn't get a lick of the plague call. And they look at you and they're like, yo, what do we got? How many times is that happening? Yeah. It just kind of depends on where you are. If, you know, that horn's playing for hound stirred down. Foxborough, which fucking sucks.

that's going on and you know the crowd's going nuts and like that is you make a you know you make an what's the word you uh a concerted effort to slow down your movement from and you're looking at these guards eyes and you're making sure you're hearing the things where you get in each other's ear so they can relay the tag you're not talking to the tackles at all right these the guards are you know they're playing telephone in the worst way And then sometimes you're at a point, especially with young dudes as I got later in my career, it's like, listen, I have to get you that information any way I possibly can't. If that means to get your attention, I have to motherfucker you. I will, I promise you, I love you to death.

And it was a rarity because I'm kind of a pacifist in general. But listen, I will be, I will love you up on the sidelines, especially when we get this thing down. We're all together. We'll have a laugh about it. But like, whatever it takes for me to get this information to you, especially because usually those moments where we can't hear each other are the biggest moments. 40 seconds. 40 seconds. 40 seconds get this shit going.

No doubt. So I got to get this information to you. I'm sure it's the same way for everywhere else. Like, I'm going to do this in the best way, but sometimes I just got to get in your face and fucking yell at you. And, you know,

I'd hope you do the same thing for me to make sure that I know what's going on. And, you know, and the thing that I hate the most is when they pan to the sideline and guys are getting spirited on the sideline. Sometimes they're like, oh, look at these guys or at each other's next. Or it's like, no, it's just kind of, it's the spirit around the,

game in the moment. And I promise you, these guys are buds. They're working through some stuff, but also like they're going to be better forward on the field in the next drive because they're, they're all in on this together. They're working together as a team and figuring this thing out. A good motherfucker session is always needed sometimes. I was a guy though. I would give a motherfucker. Yeah, and you can do it in a constructive way. Yeah, helmet toss, a ear pat out, breaks off the helmet, maybe a little urgency. You know, sometimes you just need a little juice. Yeah, you seem like a guy whose helmet was never safe. Never.

Never. Yeah. And sometimes it was just like, you know, there goes his name. There goes Jules' helmet. Well, you know,

sometimes if practice was like shit for me or something, I needed a little juice. I fucking throw my helmet just to get me going. Yeah. No doubt. I was, I was very, you know,

my disposition was very even keel. Oh, you're fucking center, baby. Oh, I know. You're going to hit me, man.

Yeah. No. No. All right. Let's go back into time and go over some pop culture around when this game took place. It wasn't too long ago. It was January 23rd, 2020, 2020, 22. Man, 2022.

Number one movie, Spider-Man, No Way Home. Easy on Me by Adele was number one song, scream, Kingsman, an American underdog. We're all in the box offices. Will Smith. Will Smith got slapped. The 94th Academy Awards. What did you think about that? Yeah, I mean, tough, dude.

It was tough. I didn't know if it was part of the show. I thought it was a stick for sure. And then it wasn't? It was honestly, you got to tip your cap to Chris Rock for being a pro. Pros pro. He kept it going. No, no doubt.

Man, the Rams won the soupie. Aaron Rogers got his last MVP in Georgia. This was when the Georgia guys were unstoppable. those few years. How were the, who were the, the, the craziest, who was the craziest alumni group that you ever encountered in the locker room? Like the, just, the looser.

Yeah, because for me, let me tell you mine real quick. Yeah. For me, it was the Florida guys. I was gonna say Florida. Fucking Florida. We had a bunch of Rutgers guys, for some reason, Bill and Chattniana, whatever, that guy. Who are the guys for you? Yeah, I would say Florida.

Florida. It's something in the water in Gainesville. And we're kind of in that age. range where you're probably like five years younger. That time Florida was really good. We had like 10 Florida guys on our team. Yeah, they just, I'll tell you what. They, they were a little loose in the locker room for sure, but

dude, they had the spirit about them playing football. Oh, they ball. They were fucking good, man. They were hell of good. You movie or TV guy? I'd say less now as a dad than I'd like to be. Yeah. Like, uh, as much as that five-hour plane ride sucked over here, it was,

dude, I was just digesting as much as I possibly could on the screen. Dude, I always thought the best rest I always got was on the planes and on the buses. Definitely there. You know, when you were playing. Definitely there. Even nowadays, like, when you're on the flight, you're not in dad mode or anything. It's kind of like you get to crunch. Even when we were playing, you know, you would sit there and you'd have a 45-minute bus ride to Providence or wherever you're going.

You can get the best rest of the week there because it was like, everything's done. Nobody can get to you. No one could get to you. The works in. Were you able to sleep on the plane ride home after a game? It depends on how my body was. But I was always pretty exhausted.

Yeah. We'd always have our iPads like later in my career. So I would watch the film right before. The guy would come down and collect the iPads from you in. Yeah. And so I would go to Teddy or Jared. I say, hey, give me the goddamn iPad. I got to watch these.

right now. Get to know what I was going to get motherfucked on. Oh, man. Did you do that, Mitch? Yeah, sure. Yeah. Now, the thing, by the time I was retiring, that they had a guy, like an ops guy,

an intern would come through, and he had just a little plug-in, so he would do that, and it would take about five minutes for each iPad. So guys were just able to give their individual iPad. So we were all able to go through it. And it was, you know, if it was a fun game, you'd go through.

But even, like, the good games you'd sit there, and I would still only dwell on like the one or two that was like, how the hell? What was I thinking? You know what? The coaches always say it. Chad O'Shea used to say to me all the time after a practice, whether it was good or bad.

Because the film's never as good as you think and it's never as bad as you think. That's another one of those great coaches. You know what I mean? You never shut up. So soft. Never as good as you think. It is never as bad as you think. And it's goddamn true.

But it always was just as bad as I thought and was never as good as I thought. and was never as good as I thought. Yeah. It was like, man, that sucked and you're right. I'm looking at it. This is dog shit. And then I was like, oh, I had a pretty good game. Nope.

Yeah. What the hell was that? Man, did you watch that, uh, did you see that, um, Kurt Warner movie? American underdog. American underdog? No, I, no, I didn't. Oh, I know what you're talking about. I haven't seen it.

No. What? It's wild. They made a Kurt Warner movie. They made a Kurt Warner movie. Wild. I mean, he was bagging groceries. He was bagging groceries.

He's playing for Iowa Barnstormers. It's movie where it was a great. It was a great story. Who's an NFL guy that would have a great biopic right now? Right now, I'll tell you a dude who kind of flew under the radar. This guy named Warrant DuVernet Tardee. He was a guard from me in Kansas City,

French Canadian from Montreal. And he had an incredible story where he grew up on a farm in Montreal and then his parents were going to go from, farmers and then they went to bakers. But before that, they built a sailboat and they sailed from Montreal down to Cape Horn and back. So for a year and a half, his high school was they'd learn, they'd be taught on this boat. And then they would just drop them off at a random island with some random people. Be like, your lesson today is just learn. Or they'd catch fish and do that. And so then he comes back and his parents open this bakery and they end up having, like going to, I don't know

this was a thing, but there's like a baguette competition, a world baguette competition. They win like second best or third best baguette in the world. He goes, he doesn't speak English, but goes to McGill University, learns English while learning medicine, becomes a doctor, like a surgeon, plays good enough football.

The first time he ever played football is at college. He's drafting the sixth round of the Chiefs, ends up starting for eight years, wins the Super Bowl against, you know, San Francisco. And in his off season, he would go from, playing football to being a surgeon and getting his residence, you know, his residency,

he owned, like at one point owned 100 chickens, uh, would get his own maple syrup from the, uh, from the trees. And he, uh,

like when COVID went down, he took a year off, did emergency medicine. I remember this guy. Bro. I, now that you say the emergency medicine. I remember the guy.

Yeah. The most interesting in the world. When a mall, I mean, he ended up playing so well. He got like, like, four for,

you know, four for 40. And at the time, for a guard. It was really good. What is he? Arnold Schwarzenegger and twins? And now,

and now, dude. He grew up on an island? No, he was great. No. So, and now he does, uh,

he was just over for the winter Olympics in Italy, doing a correspondence for, uh, mantra, like for the French Canadian. He's unbelievable, dude, smart as a whip,

no matter what he does. Like when I got in there, he was his first year. He'd just come off of, uh, just kind of not a red shirt, but, you know,

he was, not suited up and he was learning guitar and Spanish. Brilliant mind. And now what he's doing is he's doing more schooling so that, because the health care system in Canada is a little strange. But there's like this, I don't know if it's an application or something where you can, especially in rural Quebec.

And if you need a surgeon, you can do, the hospital can rent a surgeon. So he's getting his pilot license so that on like the weekends, he can go be an emergency surgeon at these rural places and come back. The dude is, he would come back with the coolest off-season story. Wow. Like, what did you do?

I went fishing a couple times. What'd you do? Like, this guy came in with, you know, his leg missing and like, that's like that. And, of course, we'd always ask him for, like, medical. Like, this kind of hurts. What the hell? And he was really cool. He's like, I can't, I can't tell you.

Then he'd, you'd kind of, yeah. I used to ask guys if they needed a medical intention to come over to me. Dr. Jules will see your surgeries. I'll tell you what it is. Step out three to four. Three to four weeks. What was the, if you said one part of your body,

got worn out more than the others. My left knee is pretty bad right now. That's a nice, the position's nice. I mean, it doesn't hurt right now. It's just when I walk a lot. I have like, I wore out the whole medial side of my knee.

And I try to get like at least 20,000 steps a day because I'm out running. Yeah. And like, if I get up to, I know when I'm at around 22,000 steps by how my knee feels. Like it just feels like it's just wearing out. We'll be right back after this quick break. Pride is like love. You feel it in your heart.

IR. Radio. Canada's number one streaming app for radio and podcasts, including IHart Pride Canada, your favorite hits and must have party bangers. Plus personalized and curated playlist. Like back in the day pride. Come together, celebrate love. Take pride with you anytime, anywhere. Just ask your smart speaker to play IHart Pride Canada.

Stream us on your phone or listen now at iHeartRadio.ca. I love the sounds. The buzzing from the stadium, the chanting from the fans, the announcers calling the place soccer, football, at home. Why do I watch the World Cup? That's like asking me, why do I breed? I inherited that fandom from my mom. I like watching it with my dad.

It's a connecting force. From Futuro Studios, I'm Fernanda Chavari, and this is American Football, a show about soccer culture in the U.S. and its underdog roots. We go beyond the game to the people and the stories that make it great. A soccer game is a festival. It's not just a game. It's your culture.

I took an elbow to my head, which cracked my skull. It is an American game. The Brazilians don't like hearing that, though. Are they the only ones that don't like that? Nobody likes that. As we get ready for the Men's World Cup this summer, listen to American Football as part of the My Coutura Podcast Network, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Yeah, that's not... Other than that, like, I mean, yeah, there's bumps and bruises, and I'm... We all, like, we all, like, no pain when you wake up. Sure. But the fact that I don't have to... to go and perform or like practice like I'm sitting there I could be in pain I'm like oh I'm fucking great today what's good let's what are we doing today because you don't have to go doing it you know what I mean all I got to do is talk now well and not to panner but even from the outside looking in you

had a warrior spirit I remember there's one game I don't know what it was if it was in 2018 or 2019 maybe when I first got the bills were playing in new england you cracked out on some dude and I thought you had died like you had knocked yourself completely out and and then you're back in like four plays later. No, I don't think I was heck in four plays later, but I had to go in the locker room for that, remember? Yeah, and I came back.

And like the crowd's like, oh, my, am I supposed to be bringing this up? Was that the rib? Oh, that was, I could have been a rib. It was a rib? Yeah, I think I broke the cartilage in my rib. It was one hell of a block. Zero mispractices.

There we go, baby. We were flying in. we were for like the first two weeks we had like a rib specialist because this was the same year that um Tyrod Taylor punctured his lung yes so they were flying in a rib specialist because everyone was scared to shoot up the ribs now so they could do the ultrasound to shoot it up for practice and it was crazy bro no the ribs the ribs are the worst you can't you can't do anything like a sneeze is going to kill you I was always cool if anything was like not a lower extremity.

So like if it was, I felt if my shoulder or my arm or my hand or rib, like if it wasn't your lower extremity, you could go. Try to go. But I mean, everyone was like that. Everyone's like that. A lot of guys are like that. Yeah. No, dude.

Is that what were your spirit, man? No, sir. What were you like in 2022? What was I like in 2020? like right now you're sitting here. You just got over to Buffalo. Yeah. So where are you in your life right now?

Where am I? Actually a great, it's a great question. I just had my son about 10 days before this game. Oh, wow. Let's go. So we had played the Jets in the last regular season game. And they flexed it from a one to a four,

which kind of stunk. But my wife was in Kansas City. That's where our offseason home was. And we had the induction set for that next day. It's five in the morning. So we played the jets, caught a flight that night, landed in Kansas City about midnight, drove home, took a nap, went and had an induction date.

And then we'd found out on the plane right back because you were waiting to see where you're slot in the playoffs. It went from Sunday. We got the Saturday, like, at least it was a night game against the Pats. And so anyways, had my son flew back. So in a really good spot. We just had our second kiddo. I think it was my seventh season in the league.

And it was a super interesting season because it had its ebbs and flows. Like we had all these expectations because we had just went to the AFC championship game the year before. And I think we started off with a brutal loss against a good Steelers team. But, and we're at a point,

I think we're like, you know, six and five. At some point we go down, and maybe more than maybe like seven and five. we go down to Tampa and we played, you know, Tom right off after he'd won the Super Bowl and Gronk, and we were down by 28 to 3. We ended up getting it to overtime. We end up losing the game.

Chris Godwin goes off. Great play. But that was a catalyst for the back half that season where we kind of felt like we hit our stride as an offense. We knew we were going to do. We'd come off that Patriots game in the playoffs where we didn't punt. Like, it was a really solid time. So, but we knew that walking into Arrowhead against,

at the time the Titans of the AFC, right? It was going to be a... We had gotten the better of them in the regular season, but, you know, that doesn't matter worth a damn when you're in the postseason. It doesn't matter.

Now, let's talk about those Titans, Jackie. Let's break down these Kansas City chiefs and jump in the game. Go of these 2021 chiefs. 12 and 5 started a little slow. Three and four to start the year. Uncharacteristics of the chief. Defense was letting up a lot of points.

Got that ship right in a little bit, though. Notable additions, we got to talk O-line here. Joe Tuni and Kyle Long came on the team this year. Huge. I mean, you know, Joe Tuni, anywhere he goes. Joe Tuni is a pretty interesting guy, too. Golden Goose, man. I mean, he's a smart guy.

Hall of Fame. Oh, he's going to be a Hall of Famer. First Ballot Hall of Fame. We don't know what first ballad is anymore. Oh. Kyle. Yeah, yeah, good call. Good call.

I was a beast. Kyle Long was a beast. Oh, I used to train with him when he was coming out of baseball. Talk about a freak switch. Freaks switch. He's got it, man. He's a great dude. When you see this Chiefs team, what are you thinking right?

You probably get like... What am I thinking? That's a great question. Half of them are your boys. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, totally. I mean, I remember being super impressed

of that rookie class they had. Like Nick Bolton, another Missouri guy. I'd come in there. Shout out Missouri. Creed Humphrey. And Creed came in and he had gotten all these, you know, he was the second coming stuff. And as a grudgeon, I'm like, whatever.

And then he'd already proven that he did and ever since then has been the gold standard of the center position absolutely dogging a great dude um yeah joe had come over from new england and really solidified that interior because they had also brought in i think it was the rookie season not only for that but for tray smith who's now prolific you know pro bowlers so they had creed joe tony and tray smith uh what what else do i remember yeah they had that kind of slow start but i mean this is prime tyroek hill he hadn't got the but the nice thing, not the nice thing,

but the interesting thing at this time was that Tyreek and Travis weren't the only stall worse. Like they had Byron Pringle who had just come about. They had a run game with Clydes Edward Lair that was going nuts. And then he was playing great. He was out of the backfield. And then that defense had really found its mark

and became the number one defense or maybe the number two defense starting in week 11 or 12. So it just felt it felt like it was going to be. be right and just, man. Freaking spags, turn the dial, man. Spags, I got to tell you, I most respect, our paths never cross, but the man's a genius, and he's really

a kind dude. Yeah. He's a football's guy. He is a football guy. And he's been in the game forever. He respects good football. He respects good players, and I loved competing against those kind of guys. No doubt. Yeah, he was solid. And they also had a pretty, and now looking at it on the right, like they had some really underrated players like Tershawne

Wharton I'm sure I fuck that up but he's an unbelievable but their second D-line coming in especially in the interior was really solid Jaron Reed had come over

I think he only spent one year there was playing pretty solid Chris Chris was playing out of his mind and then Frank Clark especially in the post season was possessed huge and he had a motor

like a son of a bitch Mike Dana now with the bills but so I mean they just all over the place and then Melvin Ingram had come over and I mean he was in our division when I first got into the chiefs with the chargers and

he was booked in book ended with Bosa and then he went to Miami and then came here and maybe even a stop with the Steelers but he was incredible so a really good team now this is your first time looking at Andy Reid is not your coach are you sitting there thinking like man he I remember those Fridays he used to drop those crazy third down roll to the right hit a flat route He's going to do that against here. Oh, you know he's going to do it. I mean, every fucking time, third and short, fourth and short,

we're just going to roll to the right hit a flat pass. I always thought, why don't we, why do we not do this every third down? Every third down. Any third and five? Third and, or anything in between.

Third and short. Third and three, third and four. Come on, roll out. What's the craziest play you saw Andy reed draw up? Oh, man. Okay, so we had a guy named Don Tari Po.

He was a D tackle. He's about 360. and he drew up a play call called Bloaded Tebow Pass. It was called. It was insane. Bloaded Tebow Pass. I know where it's going.

I love this. So it was, you know, at the time as Alex Smith, he motioned out, we had to do silent count, silent cadence for this just because we didn't want Don Tari to have to do, or any person who wasn't Alex have to do

a verbal cadence. And it was Christmas Day versus the Denver Broncos right if they'd won the Super Bowl. And we had, Don Tarry had already that year caught a touchdown and ran for one. Because he just, he just isn't the first time. So he goes. He does his three steps,

jumps, throws it to our tight end, Demetri's Harris. Touchdown place goes nuts. But then he would also do like some, you know, weird shifts where guys would just kind of like move and do fun. But like the really like fun, corky things where the offensive linemen were doing twirls was by the time I was gone. Yeah. But when he gave Don Taripo the opportunity, yeah, there it is.

Oh my God. God. It's a great play, dude. Against the team. Frame that. Frame that, man. That's insane. Yeah.

And Don Tari was, dude, that place was lit up. Really. One of those games you talk about where you can just feel it. One of those moments

where you just, you feel the air. It's a little crisp. It was solid, dude. I feel like Andy's great at naming them too. Like,

then you just name like, Prince fries. I mean, it was fat sensitive too, the bloated. Yeah. You know, I mean,

caring. He cares. He cares. Guy knows his teammate. He loves that guy. Let's jump into these bills, Jackie. Let's talk about the Buffalo Bills, baby. The 2021 bills, 11 and 6.

This is Sean McDermin. We got Dayball, friend of the show, leading the offense here. Second straight AFC, East Divisional title. This is kind of when that shift of becoming big dog on the block was happening with these guys up in Buffalo. DeMar Hamlin's rookie season. Spencer Brown's rookie season. High-powered offense scoring over 28 a game.

Number one ranked defense. Number one ranked third down defense. Yet no pro bowlers on the defense. Unbelievable. No respect out here. Really high point differential here. All losses were by one score. So, I mean, a Buffalo team that was pretty much a wagon here.

Those two safeties. They loved to play with those two safes. You know? Yeah, those dudes are solid. Good folks. How is ski ball? Dave's? Dayball.

This is the perfect situation for dayball in Tennessee. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that defense with Robert Saul. and zooted and booted, ready to roll. Then you have Cam Ward on the precipice, I think of being brilliant. I think he's got it, right? And then you have Daibal, who's this young quarterback whispered. I mean, they're going to air it out 60 times a game.

Yeah. But they're going to put up points, and he's going to learn a lot that Cam is. I can't wait to see. I mean, that's NFL's undefeated storylines every year. He's anchoring the, they're calling it the bald squad. They have nine bald, assistant coaches. They have nine bald coaches. Yeah.

They got the graphics and everything. Let me toss it up here. Wow. That day ball really holding his own there as leader of this group. Insane. Wow. That's solid. Yeah,

that'll be a new era down there. Aaron Whitecotton. He was with the bills for a bit. Look at Gus Bradley. Look at how bald that team is, man. I think Robert's a brilliant defense of mind, man. Why? I just think that those defense you play,

especially because, you know, I think about those Jets teams especially. They were just suckers, dude. Those guys would just hum, Yeah, because it's, you know, play, you know, rush the pass around the way. So, you know, if they're running the ball. It's just like, you're going to get your bell rung 30 times a game playing that defense.

It's wild. You got to tell me what it's like playing an old orchard as a Buffalo bill. RIP. Because I know I enjoyed it playing as an opponent. I'm sure he did. Because it was fucking, it was like a frat house. It was like literally you roll up and you're out of college. You're getting dildos thrown on the field.

You're seeing kids flip you off that are like two years old with their parents. Yeah, it's a beautiful. It really is. It's, you know, because I didn't have that experience until my last year in Jacksonville. We went up there for a Monday night game. Yeah. To see the other side. And, you know, the windows are tinted to a certain extent on the buses.

But I had, because I heard this. I'm like, I don't, you know, not the, not the fellow, not the, not the crew, not the mafia. And yeah, man, they had like light. saber-sized dildos and just oh yeah those kiddos were flipping the bird but you know because they kind of see the silhouette and they see it's me

I loved it I felt immense pride I just beaming even though we got our tails kicked it was it is a unique experience you know the one thing that was a blessing and a curse at times was having that one tunnel to go down it definitely made tensions palpable at times but also kind of there was something

cool, I'm sure for you guys too. When you're like, you're breaking down, your Sunlim and you're like the opposing team walks by, kind of a little friction, just a little tension, nothing crazy, but just feeling the anticipation's palpable for the game. So when you enter Buffalo Stadium, there's only one hallway. And the locker rooms are like right next to each other. Maybe close quarters. They walk out of their side. We walk out of our side and we walk down the tunnel together. Yeah. Pre-game. It's gonna be the only stadium that does that, right? I think at the time it was.

but I'm, I think it was either the old San Diego Chargers or the Colosseum would do that one of those. You ever played in the Coliseum? I played the old San Diego though. Dude, San Diego had like the horse stables is the, yeah. Qualcomm was tight. It was cool. Yeah, you're tucked up in like a hill. And Phillips kind of doing this thing.

I just loved going out there. We get to go out a couple days early. Yeah. That was the cool flying. Like you flying right over the water. The house is around the hill. Exactly. That being said, playing there is, it was one of the greatest joys of my football career.

I just, it just seems to matter a little bit more in Western New York to those folks. And you feel it and they embrace you. And it was just, it was such a privilege to play for that team and to feel the love and share their disappointment when things weren't going well. I don't think it's a matter. This is just me personally. now this, I can't believe the Pats are back in this division doing this. It's insane. It's insane. It was wild. I was really impressed, especially that defense was incredible. I think Drake's the man, truly. But I think it's a matter of, you know, when, not if for this team. And I want to see more

than anything, Western New York burn. Yeah. You know, Philly, they say it was crazy when that things goes out. I'd like to see Western New York kind of light of fire. It would be. It'd be great for sports. It would be great for sports. Let's get in this game lead up. Oh, man. That was, what do you think about this new stadium, by the way? So we got, we got to do a little tour of it. Yeah, it's going to be, it's going to be special. It's going to be a whole different vibe in regards to it as actual seating now, but they were very cognizant of keeping it its roots in Western New York and the little subtleties. And it just seems there's some grandeur to it. It's going to be a fascinating any place to watch football play. I can't wait.

And it's outdoors still. A dome would have been sacrilege, yes. One of the 12 new stadiums that is only grass and outdoor, I think. Yeah, it's it's a beauty. Yeah, the grass thing. The dudes are stoked. Yeah. I was there when they, I didn't know there's grass farms. Oh yeah. There's places in Jersey

where like certain, it was like, so they had just flown in the grass from the grass or driven it up. They were installing it there. It was cool. There's some fresh grass. Fresh grass, dude. Let's lead up this thing real quick. Kansas City entered is the two-seed Buffalo, the three-seed. Mitch mentioned it earlier.

Buffalo was coming off what they call a perfect game against the Patriots scored on every drive. Didn't punt. Oh, my God. That was a beat down. Remember that one? We've tried to block that one out. Beat down. That was brutal. It sunk the ship.

It did. That was rough. Earlier that year, you guys had come in and ran and threw the ball three times. Yeah, the win game. That was insane. What do you remember about that game? It being insanely cold. and Mac Jones is one of my best friends. But, you know, he's doing his little like... Shimmy.

Oh, dude. I tell him all the time. I'm like, why do you make it so that people want to hate you so much? When really, as a dude, he's unbelievable person. Yeah. He's a great teammate. I think we've all matured in this thing, right? Yeah, 1,000 percent.

I mean, he was 22 years old. Yeah. And when I had him in Jacksonville is great. That game in particular, yeah, right place. right time. You know, sometimes it just goes well for you. And everything winds up and everything did. We'll be right back after this quick break.

Close your eyes. And you can hear the entire world come alive. 2026 FIFA World Cup is on. And you can stream it all live on TSN Radio. From the opening kickoff to the final celebration. Every match, every moment. Listen to FIFA World Cup on TSN Radio. Gives Canada to the lift off.

Available on IHeart Radio. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast, Point Game is about defying the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before. And he knows without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game.

We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nas Reid. He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson,

we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nash would get that thing. That man, hell get the flying. He running up the court, licking his fingers, why he got the ball, like, after you go through a training camp with that Isaiah, you figure it out real quick. Get your ass up and down the court,

and you're going to get the ball. So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Now, do you think playing these guys, would you play them? Week five? Week five. How much that helped going into this game?

Or was it different, different team? We were both very different teams, especially that Chief's team. Really. Especially that Chief's team on defense. defense. They had this light switch moment where they just hound in. We didn't, we, Chris Jones hadn't played that game too. So they had missed a few guys. So yeah, I mean, it was, it was nice to go in there and feel that, especially that was the first time we played him since the FC championship game

where we lost. But I mean, we had the wear with all to know that that wasn't really going to matter much. What was the mantra leading into the week of prep for this? The mantra was, I mean, we understood the magnitude of it. We understood that this is the team that eliminated us from possibly going to the Super Bowl the year before. That being said, I'm sure the teams you've been on too, it's like we know what's gotten us here. We understand that mistakes will be amplified. This is the biggest stage. But don't change up what you've done because we know what works.

You have to keep it the same. I mean, we used to get the same speech. Don't be taking any extra pre-workout drink for this game. Don't do anything different. Yeah. Don't. Don't. Look, we've been doing this shit all year, fellas.

Look, we've been doing this shit all year. That's like the shit we would hear. The hay's in the barn type of. The hay's in the barn. Let's get into the game. All right. This, I mean, if you don't know about this guy, I mean, you've been living under rock.

This is unbelievable arrowhead playoffs, division round. This is when that rivalry is really, starting to bubble up. And we start this thing off with a long 15 play 71 yard drive. Singletary kicks it off with a big run. He was so hot around this time. Went for a fourth down twice.

Twice. Once in midfield, fourth and two. Then again, you get in the red zone on the one, fourth and goal going for it on the first drive in Arrowhead. Like Mitch, what was the script like and what was that drive kicking things off like? Yeah, I think we understood the monster that was on the other side, which was that Chief's offense. Yeah. And, I mean, you close your eyes, point someone, they're liable to light you up, right?

So we knew that we had to take every opportunity we get. And sometimes we had to create it. I do remember coming into this game, we were going to be aggressive on fourth down. Which is great. It's liberating. Yeah. It's a super liberating thing. And it, I mean, it worked out.

And then the little bit of the story of this game, the Chiefs Respond, 13 plays 74-yard drive. Pat had that huge 35-yard scramble right up the middle of the field, gets it done with his legs. again in the red zone, punch it in 7-7. We're like, we're trail. We're keeping serve here. You guys were also running that quarterback power. Yeah. To the weak side.

Oh, man. Ran that quarterback power. A lot of pin and pole with the quarterback. A lot of pin and pull. Like day ball loved pinn and pull front side. We'll walk in the backside of the offensive line to make it a play action pass or give it an option. Do that.

So that, Kansas City drive right after. Yeah, Pat scrambled three times, I think for like 52 yards. And those scrambles were. insane. So immediately you knew. Demoralizing too, isn't it? You guys go out on the road, get one on. We put seven on the board. That's the ebbs and flows

of a playoff game, man. Like, you're cloud nine. Yeah. We just accomplished one of our goals. They come and score right away. This was full just trading body blows. Trade and blows. Come out in the second quarter up, pardon me. We have three punts. A little weird on this one. Man, I made a hawk flipped the field with a big one down to the Kansas City one.

That was a great punt. Shout out to special teamers, baby. Got out. Special teamers were on. Now, when this game unfolded, you guys, like we just talked about, you guys score, they score, clearly adjusting to the adjustments game. Then you go three punts, three punts. When did you feel like the game was kind of settled and we knew what it was about? Yeah, I mean, so we knew the chiefs were an incredible second quarter team.

we were kind of getting into the fold of this thing. When did I feel like it really settled down? Probably like five or six minutes left in that second half. That's usually when I felt like most games settled in. By that late. Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

I never believed in settling in. Like you really found the groove of how this game was going to go early. And then I feel like you have to reignite that. I feel like that even when you go in halftime, there's a reignition unless there's some huge discrepancy and score. But, yeah, we knew. especially after we traded a few puns, that's a few defensive stops on both sides,

that, you know, this game was starting to settle in. Yeah, and we see, we see Kansas City get the next win here and get up 17 or 14-7 with a Byron Pringle touchdown. Defensive holding, one of the few penalties in this first half, extended bad drive, Dane Jackson, third and goal that kept it alive. Then it's a minute 52 left, Buffalo down to score. Got to get aggressive here under two minutes left.

Go down seven plays, 75 yards, in a minute 15, get a touchdown. Cole Beasley was big. Cole Beasley was big on that drive. Bees was. 14, 14. Then you had, you give him the ball back with 27, or 37 seconds, pardon me,

and Buckernerner, and Bucer missed a 50 yard or uncharacteristic. I know. Big miss, though. Yeah. Yeah, he's a stick now. When, when that, when that happened,

you felt like it breathed a little life into the, the fellows. The stadium definitely, uh, yeah, because it was so, characteristic, especially I was with Harrison. He's automatic and just like, talk about mental fortitude. That dude's got it up here. He is just

built differently to see that. It was just kind of a, I couldn't believe it. What's McDermott saying in at halftime? For he, he was always pretty good. Yeah, he was always pretty good at half time, which was like done, we just kind of reiterating when we talked about not too high, not too low. Keep your foot on the gas.

Violent, aggressive, yet in the realm of execution. Now you guys get down double digits here. Yeah. 23, 14. Yeah. How are we feeling at that point? If I remember correctly, they come out with like an eight-minute drive.

Yep. Big Jerry, Jared McKinnon. 15-play drive, 64 yards. Ends of a field goal, which is a little bit of a win. But it's still,

it's a win because you take off that much time and you're still coming away with points. Yeah, 13 plays 7.59, almost eight minutes. You're right, Mitch. What I remember we,

I felt terrible for our defense because they had this 15-play drive. then we go three and out. Yep, real quick. And then they get back out there and I think they score a Tud. They do five plays, 61 yards. That one ends in a,

uh, McCull-Hartiman 25-yard run. He was an incredible. The reverse. Incredible play. Classic Andy. So you guys go down 10. Now what's Josh,

how is Josh feeling in the huddle once you guys are down 10 in Arrowhead against the team? You guys. And everyone struggles against. Yeah. Like, what's,

his vibe in this huddle when you guys are about to start kicking this thing on. Right. So it kind of goes back to the very beginning of this conversation is those great quarterbacks, right? They have that it factor where everything just kind of tightens up, especially in these moments where everyone else is kind of, you know, the spankters are slammed, right? These one of these guys are in a really good spot. But we all understood because this is kind of how the script had gone for the year prior. Like we kind of let it go, get away from us in the FC championship game. He's always just kind of fired up

about just executing doing your jobs. Just enough to kind of get the troops riled up, not too much where it's like some strange soliloquy that we've all been around those dudes that try to give you some strange. Now, was Gabe Davis over in like Anaheim with Danny Glover before this game, Angels in the Outfield?

Because this guy have four tuddies. Like my playoffs game. This guy had the best game in the history of his life. He's, he's, he's, such a stud, dude. There's been no greater... You got that reference, right? Angels and the office? Sure, Angels and of course.

Leafly. And I got it once you said Angels in the outfit. I was a little bit... You said Dangliver didn't get me at all, but Angels the outfit I'm all about. I was a little bit behind. Gabe's had a few tumultuous seasons of injury. But this game in particular...

I mean, he shined. Shined. I mean, four touchdowns. It was incredible. I mean, you guys were beat. like blitz zero on those explosions? Were those blitz zeros? Well, so they actually didn't blitz very much at first.

And then they started giving it the business and going. And then Josh was able to step up a few times. And Gabe just the whole, you talk about the Holy Spirit. Yeah, but you can only step up a few times because there were some like real blitz looks. And you guys ended up getting those huge explosion touchdowns, plays where guys are wide open. And it's because they had that one second. Totally.

If you have, you, you just got to hold them. That's the one thing for blitz zero. You either have to have a combination that's going to win quick or you're going to have to hold them up. Two, take three, man, and just pray to Jesus. You get that football out. And he gets... And he gets...

And this is in that same moment right now. We talk about getting down nine points. What's Josh doing, rallying the troops? Guys, we got to get something going here and you got it fast. One play, 75 yards. Bomb to Davis. We're right back in this thing. It's 23, 21.

So... That felt good. How are we feeling 2321? It's just like the same thing. Guys, we know it's going to be up and down. Just fucking in the middle. We were a little fired up after this one. Fired up.

Because you felt like if we'd sputtered again, if we'd done another three and out, our defense is getting no rest. They go down to score again. It's well more than a two possession game. This is, we're going to have to get some turnovers. But that was such,

and you could feel it. You're talking about putting yourself in that stadium. That just, oh, man, that felt good. I mean, when you quiet down, Arrowhead. It's a hard place to quiet down because they get rocking. It's a great feeling. And that's how you quiet them down. You go score. Got to score. It was shot them up there if you can. And not to take anything away from

Gabe Davis is insane performance. But we do need to backtrack here real quick in the second quarter of the Honey Badger concussion out. I mean, that's that was a big. First drive. Yeah. First drive. They didn't have McDuffie yet. Nope. Now, you guys were exposing them. It, it, uh, it took a while. It took a while. We were just trying to, you know, but then around this time is when we started airing it out and Dave's was doing his thing. Keep chipping away. And talk to us about that last minute. Unbelievable. That last minute of the game. Of the game. You guys are down, right? Well, so yeah. So we,

I think we get the ball back with like eight minutes left in the game and we go on a 17 play drive. right after a field. And then it's fourth down with, I think, like, two minutes and 30 seconds left. And Gabe does one of these out and ends. And the guy trips his feet. And it looks pretty, you know, it's not, I'm sure it's not really fun for him to watch.

But it wasn't like he got, he just tripped over his feet. Anyways, Gabe goes in there, scores. Now, I think we're up by three. And we're feeling good, but there's still a ton of time. So no one's, we're feeling like, we're in this game, but nothing's over. all. They go down. I think they convert a big third down with Travis and then Tyreek hits this run. He was in peak form because he also had a punt return of this instance that almost broke for a

touchdown. They got three out of it. Yep. So he was on fire this game. Goes down, throws up, chunks up the deuce. Yeah, just some real Houston hip hopper reference for you. Trunk up the deuce. And then he goes in. And then it's like a minute and six left in the game. and we had just gone on the 17 play drive. We know, and we had it kind of like, it was a grinder. Are you running out of plays by this time? I'm sure. But Dave's also carried 70 plays.

He carried in like fourth. Because you guys are playing a lot of plays at this point. I mean, these were long drives. You guys probably had 100 or 88 plays. Yeah, it was a pretty substantial amount of plays. But that's also the great thing about the playoffs because it's usually cooler nights. Get your breath. You're not getting too warm.

And you're in shape. then. Dude, Pops was chunky as fuck, dude. I'd already gained my baby weight. We looked like Michelin, man, all white, terrible look. That being said, we go down. And, yeah, so, like, this game, we had Cole Beasley, who made some really key third-downs.

Huge catches. And Cole's the man. Like, I love Cole. You know, Emmanuel Sanders on this drive had a huge conversion, because if he hadn't even caught it, it was thrown for a flag. and Emmanuel Sanders was also, you know, rock solid. And then Gabe also had another big catch.

We get down, I think it's first down, maybe on our 25 with 17 seconds left. And then, you know, it's interesting sometimes when you're in the blocking situation, especially when it's kind of, we talked about that sub personnel or this four down where especially at center. It's fucking awesome because rarely are you blocking one-on-one. Yeah. So you're going, you're helping your guy, and you kind of feel it. You don't hear.

There's something about it. You might hear or you feel the balls just escaped. It's out. And so immediately you're seeing this. And you're trying all in a split second to diagnose something you really don't know, which is the back half, you know, this secondary. What else? But everything, he just kind of opens up, catches it.

And it was just on the field in the moment, pure relation. Because he felt like, yeah, you felt like at the time, it was just this huge emotional rollercoaster and release. It didn't feel like you had the game by any means, but it's just like, holy shit. Like, I can't believe. It didn't feel like you had the game. There's 13 seconds.

13 seconds. Yeah, I'm telling you, dude. I'm telling you. I just, maybe it's my eternal pessimism. I'm just like that too, though. You know what I mean? Like, I just, until the clock hit zero. Like, this was not full celebration moment.

We got this thing. Oh, I mean, guys were feeling it. And even yourself, like, even me saying that, it was hard not to feel like, I can't believe this. It's probably going to happen. Yeah. There's that little dude in the back of your head that knows who's on, what's going on on the other side,

what the conversations, you know, the dude over there who's just cooking, about plays and the fellows who can just slang and bang. And, yeah, dude. And so they, then,

you guys score. 36, 33, bills are up at this point. As we said, 13 seconds left, kick off three plays, 44 yards later, sets up the Butker field goal.

This time drills it. sends a single T. Nails it. Which you got to give him, you got to give him his kudos on that, man. Like you go out missing a PAT and I've been around. P.A.T. earlier, we forgot to mention that. Gaskowski did that with us a couple times. Missed a P.A.T. then came back late.

Kicks a game winner or a tying field like that. That's almost more impressive than a guy going five for five. Oh, got that misses that shitty one at first and then go nails a 50 yarder to get it going. I totally forgot about that P. to, yeah, he, he, and you knew it right when it's set up. So he was going to nail that. So you guys go to overtime, you lose the toss. Again.

What goes into your head? Again. Again, lose the toss. What goes in your head? Did you, did you write there? You son of a bitch. Did you right there think that you lost the game or was going to be tough? Oh, man.

Just with the way the game had gone, you thought maybe there was, a chance. But, I mean, once they started marching it down and once they got into the red zone or the high red, Trave. And then Trav does this thing. And, you know, it's kind of a similar instance, this feeling of just, oh, it's hard to explain. It almost doesn't hit you at first, right?

Because it's just like you're still, your mind, even your subconscious, trying to comprehend what the hell is happening. But you see that celebration of the guys, and it kind of brought me back. And I hate keeping going back to that 2018 game. But it was right when you guys had scored that overtime. And David Andrews that did one of these, like, just like freaky dance to the side. You know what I'm talking about?

I do those things. And you just felt it in your soul. And, yeah, walking off that field is I lived 25 minutes away from the stadium. So I was going to go home, fly home, do exit interviews, and fly back to Kansas City. and it's so hard to explain that locker room afterwards. I've been around some disappointing locker rooms.

Emotions are, you know, you don't know when they're going to catch you or not, how they're going to catch you when they are. And it was just raw. It was raw, dude. How long did it take you to process this, that you guys lost that? How long?

I mean, it's hard losing in the playoffs and going home. but like to lose in that fashion with the just the the ups and downs of of climbing mountain you had to climb a mountain you climb the goddamn mountain sure and then you had to get and then it gave it back uh i mean that that takes some time that offseat that offseason must have been tough you know for me it was interesting because i i was going home to a new kiddo so that was that was a great that was a great palate cleanser right very good uh going home to my family you know

of course in my neighborhood, all cheese fans, but I had kick-ass neighbors who took care of me. And they were very kind and understood where I was at and they were great. So that helps a ton. How about that? Totally.

So he loses in Kansas City first year in Buffalo. Then he's going to go back a day later after his exit physical and he's going to go sit there and probably have some Kansas City barbecue with his brand new little beautiful baby next to some Kansas City fans. It's a unique experience. for sure. I remember the first year I left, they ended up winning the Super Bowl and I'm sitting there watching the Super Bowl in Kansas City and fireworks are like the fireworks kept us up all night. It was such a weird feeling because it's like you're your friends. Yeah. Right. And you know what?

I'm not going to sit here and I was meant to be in Buffalo at that time and time marches on, right? But it's it was always a strange instance to for them to keep going back and back and me just being in my living room there and, or, you know, an Overland Park camp. is just being like, fuck, dude, come on. Well, I can give us a, give it his one shot. Give us one opportunity. And, you know, the cheese fans are always very kind of girls fans. They're pretty actually kind.

Like, they're great, great fans. They're not really assholes. No. Like, they'll motherfuck you. And they'll do some stuff. But like, they're always pretty polite. They're great. And salt to the earth, solid as a rock.

And it is really one of those fun stadiums to drive into. You can smell it before you see it. Now, Jets fans on the other hand. Now, I'm just, No, it's true. I remember going to MetLife, I think of the first game of 2023, and we're walking, we're driving up there. It's Aaron Rogers game where he comes out with, you know,

and he ends up unfortunately tearing his Achilles, but so places on fire. And I'm with Dalton Kincaid, who's a rookie as his first game, sitting in front of me. And this kid had to be eight or nine, grabs a hot dog. Chunks is, what a cannon this kid had. 20 yards hits it would have hit him right in the face mustard and everything and then they just like

moan him and they're just like eh and he just looked back at me i'm like dude yeah this is as the NFL but also welcome to metlife yeah well welcome to met life man welcome to met life man we'll be right back after this quick break pride is like love you feel it in your heart iR radio canada's number one streaming app for radio and podcasts including iHeart pride Canada your favorite hits and must have party bangers plus personalized and curated playlists like back in the day pride come together celebrate love

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the place soccer football at home Why do I watch the World Cup? That's like asking me, why do I breed? I inherited that fandom from my mom. I like watching it with my dad. It's a connecting force. From Futuro Studios, I'm Fernanda Chavari, and this is American Football,

a show about soccer culture in the U.S. and its underdog roots. We go beyond the game to the people and the stories that make it great. A soccer game is a festival. It's not just a festival. a game. It's your culture. I took an elbow to my head which cracked my skull. It is an American game. The Brazilians don't like hearing

that, though. Are they the only ones that don't like nobody likes that? As we get ready for the men's world cup this summer, listen to American football as part of the MyCultura podcast network available on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

your podcasts. All right, what's the aftermath of this thing? Oh, let's put a bow on this thing, the cheese would end up winning this thing, 42, 36 on a Travis Kelsey touchdown. Instant classic. Instant classic. Kansas City would move on to their fifth straight AFC championship game. Then they would fall to Cincinnati at what they renamed Burrowhead,

27, 24 in the AFC championship game. This game would win the SB game of the year for 2022. And this, of course, would cause them, one of the causes to change the overtime rules, ensuring that both teams got the ball. Tyreek Hill would leave for Miami and Free Agency later that year. And then Mitch, of course, would go into play two more seasons.

This was not only, Harold is an instant classic, set tons of record. Gabe Davis broke the playoff record. Set had four touchdowns in a single game. That's a playoff record. Three go-ahead touchdowns in the final two minutes. Playoff record.

But now, this was all-timer, instant classic. We're still talking about it. It's going to, I feel like this is going to score pretty high. There's no turnover. covers by either team either.

So it gave a green game. Wow. Great call Mitch. We'll get into it when we score this thing. Let's get into it. Let's name it and score it because I want to get into it. Now, let's name the game. These are some names that we came up with. But if you have a name that you have, we'll go with that. We came up with the 13 second game. 13 seconds. The Gabe Davis game or anything else? I would say the Gabe Davis game. I would say the Gabe Davis game. He, what he was able to do that game and those big moments, not even those touchdowns. There's a few. There's, I mean,

there's one catch that he babbled going out of the sidelines. He did this toe drag. He was just on fire. He was an all-day sucker in the biggest moments he came up, clutch. Man. Score the game. Is this the greatest game of all time? Let's score it. Mitch. Decimals encourage, buddy. We encourage those decimals. So you like, so how prefaces. So we'll get into, we'll get into. Let's pump the brakes.

Pump it. Pump it. Right here. Eminem, we got you. Stakes. The stakes of this divisional game. Oh. Zero to 10 decimals encouraged. The stakes.

Stakes. Oh, man. 9.1. 9.1. I would say it's a 9.3. Just because for me. Oh, wow. At a 9.0, Kyle, I see it. I see it. We're all in the same little.

We're all in the same. That's nice. That actually feels nice to roll together. Yeah. I like that. It feels really nice. What's the star power of this? Now, let me tell you, I mean, this is an instant classic, right?

Yeah. But when it's all said and done, there could be two top five, top eight guys of all time at the most important position. Pretty starry. Yeah. I mean, you think of like the three amigos over there at the time with the chief. Chiefs. You have Pat, Trav and Tyreek. And then you have Chris Jones,

who's possibly Hall of Fame. All four of those guys are probably Hall of Famers. And then with the bills, Josh, and then a few guys whose careers are still being written. Star Power,

if you just look at those numbers, then the guys who played well, I would say even more than the stakes, probably 9.3 for me. I'm going to go with the 9.2. I mean, you got Pat Mahomes and fucking Joshie. At an 8-9, guy went 9-3. I'm so low.

We're still in the ballpark. I still feel like we're all together. Luster up, maybe. Even though you, is that you? Yeah, I don't know why I did that. You fucked that up pretty good. Like, we're all in this. Usually I'm a high-score guy.

What's getting into me? Yeah, this is great. God. What about the gameplay? Zero turnovers. Unbelievable special teams plays. Unbelievable explosion plays. Right.

Unbelievably long drives from both teams. high execution in this game. More touchdowns. 13 seconds. Three from my homes. A minute. On that itself. On that itself.

I know. Overtime. I know Bill Burr would disagree because he likes a little more defense on this thing. I would say gameplay for me would be 9.6. 9.6 is strong, but rightfully so.

That's a 9-4 to me. I'm with you. Let me see. Where did I give it here? I won the 9-8. 9-8. We're all back. We're all back.

This is nice. Now we're feeling good again. Water is finance level. You know what else is nice? Your restroom has like all the assortments of like altoyds. Yeah. That feels good. That's Leah.

Shout out. Shout out. Shout out. Leah. Leah, that feels very humming in there. Thank you. Oh,

yeah. We got a couple smelling salts in just in just case you want to get a little. Do you really have smelling salt tonight? Yeah. I haven't done one in. I don't know. We might should have to. We might do one after this episode.

We'll have to do one. I haven't done one. Oh, man. It's just. I feels like I haven't done one since like the first Trump administration. I'll be honest. It's been a while. In a minute.

Four years, you stopped doing them after a while? I didn't do. I like to do them before every drive. How was you going to say? Oh, yeah,

I don't know. Like someone got me with the, everyone, every team's got the dude with the bottle. Oh, yeah. I got,

no one, if you need the prep, but if someone just gives you a drive-by and you're not expecting it, it makes one to throw up out of my ass, dude. It's terrible. It's not for everyone.

It's not for everyone. It's not for everyone. No. Not, yeah. Kind of band, kind of, No, the problem with that is.

It's like the team can't get it. But now you're going to get some stuff. It's like dudes who want more milligrams of nicotine in their thing. So they go to Sweden and get the 30 things. They're getting these things from China that are going to melt your. Yeah. Melt your nasal. Who knows what kind of kill after you take one hit.

Whoa. Whoa. Where am I? All right. Let's grade the name of the game. The Gabe Davis game four touchdowns, NFL record. This one's got some staying. power. The name, we grade the name,

zero to ten decimal. I, okay, so I'm going to say there's the only reason I'm going to get it lower, it's still being the nines, but you could like the 13 seconds game, all that stuff. You could, you could combine them. 9.0. You can combine the 13 second Gabe Davis. Gabe Davis game.

That would cover it all. It's a little bit long-winded. That's the only reason why I would say like. But the only thing is that's what everyone's going to remember it as. Everyone's going to remember the 13 seconds. 13 seconds. So that's the thing. So that's the only reason why a docket is like for the guys who are in it or no ball, they know it's game.

Immediately. Exactly. There's no mistake in this. Yeah. I'm going to go with an 8.9. Solid. I like that. Yeah,

that's solid. I mean, this is some of the highest. I went 9-7. Kyler went 9-7. This is going to be the highest game. This is going to be insanely high, Leah. Calculating here.

This is a 9.26. Where does that land on the list? That puts us. at new number three. Four. Number four, yes. Right ahead of the. Super Blood Wolf Moon.

That was the game we mentioned earlier. You were talking about. Wow. Really, really good. New number four game. Yeah. Jeez. Pretty good.

We've had some hitters. We just did the, we did the World Cup game yesterday with Argentina versus France. It's messy when he won the World Cup versus a bopping. Are you going to make any games? Huh? You're going to make any games? Oh yeah.

Boston. Dude, how was the roast? The Kevin Hart one? Yeah, I saw you with Bert. It was awesome. Laughing your ass off. Yeah, no. The roasts are always fun.

I was actually, I enjoyed this. Do they feed you at those things? Like, do they give you? There was a cheese platter. And it was stale cheese. I tried it. The cheddar was like, you know, it's interesting.

Yeah, the cheddar wasn't to be, but some of the cheese is like, like they come out. Yeah. It was a chakouterie board, but they didn't really feed us. Yeah. They gave us drinks. But the thing for me is like

charcutory boards, as long as there's more, I give them props as the only fruit. I don't give them props. The only fruit they have is just grapes. No. If they have more than grapes, if they have a fig,

you got a fake or not a fig. Maybe have a, you know, maybe a raspberry jam. Yeah. A little disappointed because there was no meats. It was just a cheese chacuterie. I mean, this is,

this is LA. Yeah. And we should have options. Yeah, but if American Airlines is going to give you more on their chakutery board. No, I'm just joking. The roast,

it was a spectacular. I enjoyed it. It was an unbelievable night. It was fucking, I mean, those things are crazy, bro. Like, I wouldn't expect the time to come out there.

I assume you, you had the, I saw Tommy. I saw Tommy. I gave him, we ran lines a couple times. I had to work them out a little pregame.

A dude wears watches, man. Yeah. That dude wears watches, watches. It's exposed to a $5 million watch? I don't know why I get on these things. I get on these weird Instagram things where it's just like look at the Met Gala's

watches and I'm always, I'll watch every single one. I don't know dick all about watches. I don't either. They could be making these numbers up. I'm like, whoa. But Tom's some guys were like this is a 70,000 watches. And then it's Tom's wearing just, you know, normal stuff and his watch is like something by Jacob and Co. It's all

fucking diamonds. It's like 10 million dollars. $1.4 million. I'm like, all right. But a dude like that uses those as an investment, like a... Yeah, I mean, he's also... What are your thoughts on cards? Like, trading, like some people are in... Trading cards? Yeah. I used to love it as a kid.

I mean, I used to go buy... Like, Pokey... But now it's become a huge... Commodities are huge right now. Cycical thing. We talked about, like... Cynatas are back in kids. But watches, like, I was never...

I would always consult with Tom on... I only have, like, three watches. And I would always consult with him because he knew... you know, hey, if you get this one, you'll maintain money. Just like you said, he makes money on all this stuff because they're pieces of art to him. And when you get access to certain, I don't know. I don't know the game.

I'm not a watch guy. I have a couple good watches. But it's good to have people who know. But it's good to have people. And shout out my boy Jeff Lifter. Shout out Lifter. We love. Rifter.

He's the watch guy. It's another great name. Jeff Lifter. Great home, Cam Shaft. Just to, for all our watch heads out there, the Bezzle Boys, page six says, $6 million estimated. It was an off-catelow Rolex seedweller. Seedweller.

What he was wearing? Diamond infested. 18-carat white gold fully set by getting cut. Square cut diamonds. It's going to be expensive. It's called infested. There's so many. It's infested with diamonds.

I literally went into his green room and I got pink eye from the shine. It was so shiny his watch. I got a pink eye instantly. No, I didn't. It would have been funny. He would have been funny. I was going to say, dude.

Oh, man. Pink eyes. Yeah. Yeah. Mitch. He's great. Shut up. Shut up.

Your eye. Mitch, did we miss anything from this game? No. No, you guys covered it beautifully. Man. I was,

I'm very impressed with your ability to break that down. Oh, appreciate it. Mitch. Thank you for saying that. Jackie. Jackie. He puts a lot of hard time into that.

Yeah. And I can tell. I appreciate it. He fucking. He fucking. Rockstar. Yeah, he is. Everyone's got their role and everyone does their role very well here.

I appreciate. Leah. Bathroom. I'm also the bathroom attendant. You'll see Matt and Mitch and Matt. And then Tim over here keeps the cameras rolling. I've been peeking over. Tim's seems guys.

Tim's got kind eyes. I like Tim. He's cool. Let's go, baby. The first time you hear the Beatles is when you look into his eyes. Everyone, go check out Mitch's podcast

in good company. with Mitch Morse. What, what is that podcast about? Yeah, who's just, who's with? Who's with my buddy Casey,

ha, he was with the Jags. He was a video guy. He'd been doing that within the league for a bit. And now he works for, he runs the studio for Dick Sporting Goods headquarters.

They have their studio. And so he'll be, he also does like commercials and stuff. He's a Yenzer from Pittsburgh. They're the best. I love of the Jensers. They're the best. And, you know,

what's fun is just like, Like he's got a good soul. For us, we just like to talk. Football is what we know. And we love to interview folks. And I've been so fortunate to interview folks that I didn't even know I wanted to talk to, but I did. And it's one of those humbling experiences we talked about. You just get lit up.

Everyone's got a story to tell. And for us, we just want to have more opportunities to talk to more folks. And everything else, kind of all the other kind of cool stuff that comes with it, I think if you do it the right way, we'll kind of come to the fold. But for us, our biggest thing is we just want to have more opportunities to talk to cooler people. I mean, in good company. And try to keep some pretty good company, dude.

Amen. Hey, since we have you here, we love to have you on at some point. Without a doubt, I'm on. I got to say that Labat's sponsorship is fired too. Hey,

that's a dope sponsor. You know, I'm a Sam Adams guy myself, but I'll, I'll think of a little game. You know what? You know, it's cool.

And maybe Label dropped me after this. But Sam Adams does have some really good seasonal, like the winner. like especially around like October. Oh, yeah. October Fest. If you like locker, I got an Edelbrough. Oh, so that you're, you're invested in the game.

I don't know. Edelbrough got his own beer. I got a big time. This is an honor. No, we have a force our city, our, what is it? It's our, our city, our, Derek White. Our city. Our city.

Yeah, our beer. There is. Now, Labat, LeBats, one is our first, you know, is the first company that gave us any they gave us their blessing and gave us a little backing and they've been so great and they're really just like, do your thing. And they're going to have us up. It couldn't be more perfect because linemen and beer. It just, it's like fucking pigs and shit.

Yeah, no, it is. Yeah. You just give a lineman a beer or not a beer. You got to give them like a 24 or 36 pack because they drink like 15. Yeah, we like to think we do. We have fairly gentle disposition. No, yeah. but like a post game.

You talk about a post game. Okay, so I know you have places to be. And your guy's been, oh, he left. He's good. Yeah, he's fine. Your guy left. But talking about those moments where you can put in pill form

and you'd be a fucking billionaire, dude. We talked about not being able to sleep on a plane ride home, but like when you break, and when you go on an away game, you break down after a big win. Those two hours, talking about kind of the same vein

as the two hours in training camp, but those two hours, after a win, you hit the showers, you go, and it's even like between when they're loading the stuff up and the bus, like the, remember the buses before you take off? Yeah. Like under the stadium, maybe the... After a win.

After, only after a win. And then you, like, the equipment guys maybe have snuck you, just some beers into the, maybe. A couple beers. You snag one of the boxes of food that is being given to you. It's going to give you, it's going to, it's a fart factory coming down the pipe. Always, but it's, but you can't help it, eat it. Some of the best times were right after the game in the players lot, the linemen,

they would always crack open beers and they'd just sit there and all their families. We'd be in the parking lot like we're tailgating after the game drinking a beer. That rocks. That is a beautiful experience, especially like you have the one, Brandon Sheriff. I don't know if the name sounds familiar. In my opinion, would have been a Hall of Famer if he didn't spend most of his time with Redskins. just an absolute horse of a human and he would always,

and my last year in Jacksonville, we would always stay in the, and he would just pack a cooler the night before. We sit there and, you have to drive home, so you gotta be cognizant. Yeah. But of course that beer for you was always Labat Blue.

Always Labat. It was always Sam Adams. But we could always have a beer together. Yeah, that's nice. That's nice. That feels good, doesn't it? It sure does. Man, had a blast, bro.

Brother, I appreciate you, man. I appreciate you. coming on and you said you're a fan of the show. I'm always a sucker for Lyman as a former quarterback. That's the guys that I love to hang out with the most, love to eat. They were always the coolest humans. It's been a pleasure to get to hear your story

and appreciate you coming into the house, dude. Dude, I appreciate it. Let me enter your humble abode. See how the juice is made. And also like, this is like not to pander, but in the outside looking at you guys got something special. the chemistry in here is kick ass. The altoyds in the bathroom really made an impression on me.

And I appreciate, let me come in here and chew the fat, man. This has been a blessing. Let's go. Let's go. Appreciate your brother. It means a ton. Oh, hey, bro. It really does.

What is it like to learn an NFL playbook? What's it like to learn an NFL playbook? Well, it's, it's, you're back when I came in, they give you the three-inch binder. I was actually a binder back then, right? Three-inch binder, which is the big boy, or what is that, right? And three inches is huge. Yeah, three inches is a big one. It's massive.

Yeah. And so they would give you that and there'd be a table of contents. There'd be, I mean, it was laid out profession. This was the pros, you know. And you had like at the top, you had special teams slots. Then you had the offense install slots. And then when you get into offense install slots, that would break down to, you know, a whole bunch of things from formations, personnel groups,

splits, in formations, they would have protections, they'd have all the site adjustment rules, they'd have all the hot adjustment rules, it'd have everything, everything was broken down fundamentally on there, on, like you could find it in the, in the playbook. Now it's transferred now to the iPad, which it's probably way cleaner and way awesome. And I remember we did that later in my career for the younger guys that were coming in. But I mean, it's just a, it's literally like the encyclopedia of everything that the offense is about. I mean, it goes, you have, we have an example up right here. That's exactly how it looks.

It'll have the basic. And then it'll have like the defensive line. they'll have like how each play goes against each line. It'll break down each coverage. It'll break down everything that the defense does. So you can communicate. Like what did Gruden say? Recognition.

Communicate execution, RCE. Yep. So you'd have to recognize what's going on after you learned your formation personnel group split, potential motion, potential shift. Like all those things. That's in the beginning.

and then it goes into how things change against the defense. I mean, it's a, it's a, it's a, literally, it has every single bit of information that the coach will explain to you. And it's much like the textbooks when we were kids where you could read that. And if you could do that, it'd be great. But I was always a guy that would, you know, I had to study it. I would look at it while we were installing it while the coach was addressing the class, room, you know, you would go through your playbook and you would kind of highlight. And then for me, a lot of guys for like guys like me, receivers, the receivers always, I was a guy that

used flashcards for personnel groups because there's like 60 different personnel groups. So, you know, on Rangers, that's what is said before the play. That tells everyone who they are. Rangers, the personnel group. Our Rangers is an 11 or 11 personnel group. were example. Danny goes to the F. I go to the Z. LaFelle's on the X and Gronks at the Y. So there's three receivers, one tight end, and then whoever's in the backfield is in the backfield. Then you would have regular. Regular was a 12. So then regular puts me at Z, LaFelle at X, and then there'd be two tight ends that would come in. So you'd have to go over that. So I would always flash card personnel groups and formations.

Because if you fucked that up, you weren't getting a rep. We'll be right back after this quick break. Pride is like love. You feel it in your heart. IR. Radio. Canada's number one streaming app for radio and podcasts, including IHart Pride Canada, your favorite hits and must have party bangers, plus personalized and curated playlists. Like back in the day pride. Come together, celebrate love. Take pride with you.

Anytime, anywhere. Just ask your smart speaker to play iHeart Pride Canada. Stream us on your phone. Or listen now at iHeartRadio.ca. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast, Point Game is about defying the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed.

And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before. And he knows. Without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nas Reid.

He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nash would get that thing. That man, hell get to get the flying. He running up the court, licking his fingers, why he got the ball. Like, you go through a training camp with that Isaiah, you figure it out real quick. Get your ass up and down the court and you're going to get the ball.

So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. How often are you shifting between these? So is it beginning? When do you find out that you're like the Z and Ranger? That's how often does that change? That's how often does I find that out through the coaches? Like weekly? Weekly.

So if they'll give you a group of personnel groups that we're going to highlight this week, we're going to use these six, these six personnel groups, Rangers, sub, half, and another one. Regular or something? No, regular is a two. Those are all 11 personnel groups. Okay. So these are all, these could be the same. This is, there's three receivers, one tight end, two.

one running back. Like sub half Rangers Army Marines. Those tell like every guy which spot they have to go into. So you could make a play for a guy

instead of changing the whole concept, you could just change the personnel group. So if you're trying to get what's is, you're trying to get Danny at the F instead of putting him at the F you just change the personnel group and say now Danny goes, you know what I mean? Right. That makes sense. And then tag it from there.

Tag it from there. You would never tag. You just say Rangers. Okay. And that would tell everyone where we all go. I'm at F. I'm at Z. He's at Z.

He's at X. All right. And half. I'm at, I'm at F. He's at Z. Half again. I'm at F.

But maybe half and sub. Everyone's in the same spot. But the tight ends change. There's a new tight end in. You know what I mean? So the personnel groups are fucking, they were a bitch to learn. I was going to say.

Then there's a formations. So then there's a formations. So then. the formations, they would break it down. All right, guys, we'll have these eight formations and these personal groups. And then we could have these seven empties. And empties were, you know, whenever, you know, the quarterback is empty. And there's five guys on the line of scrimmage, five receivers.

And so, like, you'd have to learn what each formation was because you'd have to put the F in here. The X goes outside. like if you're an empty and it was just a whole lot of studying. And so once you got those down, then you'd have to learn defenses because when you, things could change or, no, then you learn your concepts.

So you go personnel groups, formations, and then you learn concepts. There was concepts that were two-man concepts, then there was three-man concepts. So like Reed. Reed was an in-cut from by one, and number two has an option route to the outside.

And so conceptually, you were trying to high-low this backer. So that's read. Now, a three-man concept, or ICE is another one. Ice was where this guy has an in-cut and this guy has a cross-rout. So you'd learn those two-mans. And there would be three-man concepts. And so you're basically learning how you're building in your mind, how the quarterback calls the play.

So first thing you're going to hear is personnel group. then you're going to hear formation. Then you got to learn your protections because after your formations and concepts, you got to learn the protections because the protections could, it could change your route. If you are a side adjusting or if you're depending on if you can get it protected, the receivers would have to know because if it's only a five-man protection, there could be a hot and a side adjustment if you're in an empty.

So you'd have to see where the mic point is and communicate with the quarterback the quarterback was set, he would set the protection. He go, Mike 52, which is the front side backer. You go, check easy, check easy. We're going to Mike 54. He'd change the protection and he would look at me and he'd say, Jules. So that makes him the mic. He's the mic.

He's the will or the will because or the Sam. And then the next guy would be a different slot. The Jack, you know, to Jack. And so then he would look at me and say, these two. If those two guys came, if he said two, then I'd have to break my side adjustment. Now, if he looked at me, Tom could look at me and he could say, hey, Jules. If he did that, that means one or the other. If any one of those guys come, you got to break.

All right. But if they said to it, you got to go when the two guys come. And sometimes they would come and one guy would jack out. So you'd have to get en route. All right. And then so another one, he could look at you and he could sit there and you see your guy on your face coming. But Tom would change protection all the way over here. So he'd make that guy the mic who's over me, the star or whatever. And he would sit there and he go, Jules, you're locked.

So if he, regardless, no matter what, whoever came, you're locked on the route. So that's when you'd have to study your protections. So you go Personnel Group, Formations, concepts, protections. And that's kind of, then you'd break into how defense was involved.

So if you're locked on the route, that means you run the route. No matter what, it's the plague call route. You run it, as it's drawn up, okay. You mentioned site adjustment. And hot, what, explain the front of that? Hot is to the strong side. Okay. So when the Sam, Mike and Sam come,

that's a hot. Okay. The site adjustment's, to the weak side. So it'd be like a will and a weak safety. So like if this guy, if, so you have your Mike, Sam,

Will, right? You always see the quarterback making the point. So what, what he can do is though he could change. Well, we always think that this guy's the mic, right,

because he's near the tight end, the strong side of the passing strength. Yeah. Well, he could change and make that guy the mic. Yeah. So then it would make him the mic, the guy to the right of him,

who is the star, would be the Sam, meaning that the lion can get it protected, and then this guy who we think is that it looks like the Mike is now the Will. Okay. So the lion could take care of the Mike, Will, and Sam. You know, when other guys get involved,

that's when, that's when side adjustments and hot, hot, get involved. So then side adjustment is like a... To the weak side. It's to the weak side. It's to the weak side. It's a changing the route based off of the formation. Changing the route.

A hot and a side adjust could be the same kind of thing for the receiver. but it's just telling which side they go. So if it's to the passing strength, that's a hot. If it's to the passing. So if, so if I'm sitting here, right? And we got, we make him the mic. He's the Sam.

So whoever comes off here, you're hot. So you're going to fill that space where they were. Would it, depending on what the hot is. It could be a, it could be a burst. You have to, like a five-yard hitch, full speed. You can't lolly-gag it because then they, they sniff that and they'll break. So you got to come on. off the ball hard every time. That was like the number

one coaching point to any kind of side adjustment or hot. You got to come off because defense is fucking smart. Oh yeah. You know, they'll sniff that bullshit out if you come lolly gagging off and then they break and it's a pick six because they got a guy coming to that area. But if you're sprinting,

that guy doesn't know where you're going. So he'll he would be all scared and he'll be less hesitant or less aggressive to break. So getting back. Strength is hot. So to our strong side, right? So this guy, we make him the mic.

Anyone come off that, Sam, you're hot. Anyone coming off the will, you're sighting. And then you just have to read if they're coming. Well, yeah. Yeah. But the quarterback in our system, we had Tom Brady. So he was the ultimate reminder. And he, when he was dishing out his protections and getting stuff,

he would tell you. And the good quarterbacks do that. If you look at like Peyton Manning and all those boys, they would sit there, all right, I'm locking you, I'm locking you, because he changed the protection. And it's a fat, the protections are the most fascinating things.

That's why offense alignment, like they have, not only do they have to be choreographed in such a great manner together as one, like they're dancing, but they have to be able to see shit, body language of the guys, they got to be able to break down the defensive fronts.

because things change. The protections change if there's a three down or a four down. That's when we got to start, you know what I mean? But that's more of the defensive offensive offense aligned. You really only need to know the backers. Now, if it's a run play, are you a part of the protection call too?

Or how does that work? So run play on certain run plays, depending on the mic call, you would always have like the six man in the box. Right? So the sixth man on the box, or is it the seventh? It'd either be the strong safety coming down or the star, or it would be that corner.

If that, if one of the safeties dropped into the box, you'd be responsible if it was a six or seven, Chadio is going to kill me. So, but a lot of the times, if the court, on certain plays, run plays, the quarterback would lock you on, on your guy over your face.

because they have a line, like on a trap play or something, you wouldn't come down and get the force because we're having a lineman come and pull to get him or the line is adjusting up to that guy. You know, you'd always, for the most part of most of the time for receivers, they're blocking skill guys, safety's corners. Now, when you see the guys on the bunches, the receivers on the bunch, a lot of times you're seeing with like the lion, San Francisco,

they'll have their receiver, St. Brown, he'll set the edge and he'll take out at the end and then they'll pull the tackle and the guard on those toss traps. But like that's, those are like one-off plays and they'd have to be condensed down. You're not really going in and getting linebackers because that's usually for the line. There are certain occasions where like in Seattle,

the Seattle Super Bowl on the back side of this, I forgot the run play but there was a backside play where I would go up and I, the linebacker would be in my face and I would go up and go to the safety and you could fully get them

but then there would be times where they could lock you and you'd have to just get in the, if you're on the backside you'd have to get in his way and get in his way to cut them off for the front side of the run. but most of the time you're playing you're going against the smaller guys unless it's one of those

specialty plays. The playbook, I mean this and everything for the offensive line and you have everyone's You have all of it. You have all of it. Okay. So you could go through the offensive line part

and see, you know, the shades because like they have a bunch of stuff on like on, you know, they divide the guy one, two, three, what shades they are. and you could learn all that. You know, the, I mean, it's, it's like an encyclopedia of everything fundamentally. They have in your playbook, they have a whole section on just your, the cadence and the snap counts.

Wow. You know what I mean? The, the going on two, going on three, color this, color that, you know, gold calls or, you know, to change plays. There's an audible section. how you every way to communicate anything it was in the playbook that's incredible you know if you got say how much was getting added or like say you install a play from week six that those are all the fundamentals now once you get in this is this is all training camp right right and there's a lot of his test to see who can retain what and you won't even have to get if you

listen to the coaches you you're not just going to sit there and be a guy that I mean they're smart guys that'll sit there and read the playbook and they can digest it. But if you go along with the coaching, you know, that'll, that'll help you the most. If you're paying attention to class, you don't have to read the book. You don't have to go do homework. Yeah. Well, it's good to reference it. You know what I mean? It's just like school. It's fucking just like school. That's crazy to think. There's some guys that can sit there and read the formations and do it. I mean, I had to put them on flashcards and concepts. And me and Hoyer would sit and bounce them off of each other because, you know, when your young football player,

a lot of the, a lot of the evaluation of you is how much you can retain. How much can you take from the classroom to the drills to the team periods? That's like,

that's the huge, like one of the biggest evaluation processes of these young football players. Because once you get to the regular, to get to your point, once you get to the regular season, okay, that's all fundamental. Now new plays, game plan plays,

come in. and so you're going to have to be able to install 10, 15 new plays each week, potentially on what that team's weaknesses are. Are those getting sheets to go into the playbook? Yeah, so each week on a Wednesday, so you have your big-ass book, and then when you come in, then you get back in the day, they would give you sheets, just like those sheets, and you'd have all your past concepts on there, all your run concepts,

to install for that week's prep. And so some of it could carry over to some of the stuff that we already learned in training camp and in the install, but some of it can be completely new and completely different. But if you lean on your fundamentals of what you've learned in training camp, you'd be able to communicate and understand it because it'll still be this. It could be the same language, but it could be a different concept or a different protection or a different personnel group that's incorporated into it. So it's just like finding out the puzzle.

So to simplify the playbook, the organization of it, you mentioned personnel, you mentioned formation, protection, concepts. Concepts. You'd have snap counts. Snap counts. That's usually at the beginning. You'd have splits for receivers. What is that?

Splits are, so in certain formations and certain plays, and certain concepts. So like on a, say ice, if you're the outside receiver, which ice is an in-cut and a crosser, if you're the outside receiver on ice, you have to have a plus four split from the number. Yards? Yes.

Then there was also a plus two split on certain concepts. Then there was, sometimes there was a minus two split. And then when you get into like certain formation buzzwords, like nasty nasty tells everyone that you're condensed so then you'd have those in the playbook

on buzzwords for buzzwords for formation splitting you'd have then you'd have a whole section on movement

so movement is shifts and motions so for us if you heard if there if the suffix was I-N-G-ing, then you're coming in. If the suffix was AP app, you're coming across.

So if you're the F and you hear Fing, you're just coming in for a pass play. Oh, because the thing is F-I-N-G. The F-I-N-G. So if you hear Zing, the Z is coming in. Ying. So Z-ing. What if you're F-F-F-P? You're going the other way?

FAP, because it's AP, right? F-A-N-G-F-P? would be across for a block of blocking for a like a run play fap if it's fact AC then then you're going across for a pass play or something okay then there was zing uh zigigigig ig you hear a lot of that with the slot that's going into the guard and back out so that's a formation indicator you're seeing what kind of coverage you can get then there would be the why ship All that's telling you is when you hear your letter and shift, you're starting on the other side and you're shifting over

and we're resetting the play to that. If you hear H home, that's just telling the home is one of those buzzwords for a shift for the H. Home, he's coming from all the way outside the receiver back into the home spot. So there'd be a whole freaking A table of content Or what is it? A chapter on that.

Yeah. You know, so I mean, it goes into everything. Then you have. What else beyond that? I want to hear all the different segments. There was Fing.

Fack. There is a Fing Fack. Zig or Zieg. There was Z shift. Then there was H. Home. You could use all the other letters for that.

You have, and I'm probably missing one. Yeah, that's, you'd have, and there was probably a couple others. Then there was, there would be, what was this, there was a fast one, like a fast motion. We started doing that. Oh, that's that Mike McDaniel with like, yeah. There'd be the fast, it's like a rabbit zing or there, there's, there are certain buzzwords for that. If I heard it, I'd be able to do it.

What other, like, chapters outside of, like, movement? So we got personnel formation, protection concepts, snap count splits, movements. Movements and motions. We'll be right back after this quick break. Pride is like love. You feel it in your heart. IR Radio. Canada's number one streaming app for radio and podcasts,

including IHart Pride Canada, your favorite hits and must have party bangers. Plus, personalized and curated playlists. Like back in the day pride. Come together, celebrate. Take pride with you. Anytime, anywhere. Just ask your smart speaker to play IHeart Pride Canada. Stream us on your phone.

Or listen now at iHeartRadio.ca. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast, Point Game is about defying the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smart.

player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before. And he knows. Without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nas Reid. He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nash will get that thing.

That man, hell get the flying. He running up the court, licking his fingers why he got the ball. Like, after you go through a training camp with that, Isaiah, you figure it out real quick. Oh, yeah. Get your ass up and down the court, and you're going to get the ball.

So listen to Point Game on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So it's like, it's a misnomer that there's actual plays in the playbook. Well, and then you go concepts. And then concepts. Then concepts. and routes. So then you'd have

every single route, you know, like a go route, a in-cut. Then there was the 14-yard in-cut, the 12-yard-in-cut, the 20-yard-in-cut. There was, you know, there was a stopper route,

which is a 25-yard, like, comeback, but you open in and come back down the line. There was a comeback at 16. There was a comeback at 14. There was a 10-yard out. there is a five-yard out or, you know, six to 12, usually, you know, you have your slot routes, which were, you know, then there's tosser, two slants, there's hook, which is a three-man concept.

The three has the hook, the two has the diagonal, something that you always see, and the guy has an M-O-R, which is must outside release go on the outside. I mean, we're going off to just the knowledge of my brain and, you know. A lot of knowledge, baby. I mean, how, see, I'm always curious going back to a lot of these. Like some of these often don't ID the mic is crazy to me. I think a lot of them do. It's just who, depending on who's identifying the mic.

Okay. It's either, sometimes it's the center. And a lot of systems. Right. Like a lot of the younger quarterbacks in the West Coast systems from what I've been told. Right. What I heard, the center makes the call. Okay. That makes sense.

But then, and then you hear some of these ones where, like, I mean, of course the Patriots are the outlier here and what you know more than anybody. But, like, how simplistic are some of these off? Like, you know what I mean? You hear some of these where, like, a guy comes from, like, a really simple system. And it's like, how different is that from, like, the most simple NFL one to, like, the Patriots? I would say simpler offenses are just offenses that don't try to get into the right play and call a play and run that play. and there's no adaptation to that play according to what the defense is doing.

Which do exist in the year 2026 in the NFL. Which do exist. Okay, that's crazy. I mean... Isn't that the whole thing with the Patriots offense? But sometimes when you got guys, so that's the fine line. Right.

When you got guys, what a coach's job is to do is to make the player play as fast as you can. And sometimes when you flood the guy's minds with too much, then they're thinking they're not. going to be able to play. Totally. So, you know, it's harder to get a lot of these complex advantages and complexities of change during play, during pre-snap, during post-snap,

because a lot, you know, then a lot of guys got to be on the same page at the same time. And sometimes a lot of teams don't have the luxury of that guy gets hurt, young guys on offense, young quarterback can't get it up. Like that, that that's very hard to do. Right. So personnel is going to dictate so much of that. Personnel dictates what you can do. That makes total sense.

Was there a specific player concept when you first started that just fried your brain? It just couldn't. It was the hardest one to grasp. They used to have this thing called the wiggle route. And I used to hate it. And West was really good at it. The wiggle route was like,

in a West Coast system, it's called like the basic. The basic is they would do like, but it was different. the basic. The basic is like a 12 yard incut. It's usually the slot guy runs a 12 yard speed in cut and he goes. Well, the wiggle route was kind of like that 10 to 12 yard incut and you could, but a verse man, you had to break it down and give him something at the top and break flat to downhill. If it was

one man, if it was cover five, which is two man, you could run the end cut, but if he was walling you off, you could pull it out. And then if it was zone, and it was to Tampa, you would find the zone. So there was like three different things,

and I always struggled on like the cover five one. I don't know, because I always wanted to whip it out, but if you could win in, you could keep it going, and there's a lot of indecision. And that's the worst thing for a quarterback to see in a route.

So you, you know what I mean? So you had three routes and, you know, it took me time to like figure out how to do it. So the wiggle route. Oh, wiggle. And then there was like the queue route, which was kind of like the outside version, which the old cue was,

if it was rolled, rolled meaning covered two. You had, this guy was letting you go and there's a half-field safety you run, you know, you run the bow route where you get inside, you reset your vertical stem to about 14, and then you hit a high 7 and let the quarterback flatten you in between the half-field safety and the flat zone defender, right,

versus cover 3 it was like a I think it was like a curl route and then if it was man if it was man you press you had to get inside

and then you'd run and then you'd hit like an inside stutter where you could take it it's almost like a post corner it was just it was the same kind of three routes with in one route according to coverage. And it was before, like, I was comfortable reading coverage post-

I mean, I was always actually pretty good at reading coverage. It was just the running of the route for me. And being able to make them all look the same and not dictating. Because, like, these dbs, man, they know they're bullshit readers. But you know, baby, Pacino. You know what I mean? They could feel if you're hesitating at something, they feel it. and they break and they make the plays.

They're extraordinary athletes. Was there a moment where you feel like it clicked? Or like when you felt like, I can actually use my physicality versus my, like, became instinct versus like thinking through it? I mean, I would say after like my third, my third year, like it was just clicking in spurts,

kind of like my golf game. You know what I mean? And then by year three, you know, I had enough reps. of actual feeling it in practice, you know, doing it in the offseason with Tom. You know, the amount of reps that I had at that point helped me because I felt every situation at that point.

You weren't topping the ball or slicing that thing in the woods. Yeah. And I got one last question. Unless you got anything else. I think to Kyler's last question, a quick follow-up, but like at what point not only were you grasping that thing, were you and Tom like mind-mail? did like fool his brain's my brain.

Like we're seeing the field the exact same way. That's like probably year five. Okay. That's, I figured something like that. Or five when Walker left. Right. Get those extra first team route.

Yeah, that and it was, you know, he had to start trust in me. It's hard for those guys, you know, when you have a guy, when you're a quarterback, you know,

and regardless, water flows downhill. Water flows downhill. One other one, Kajai. I swear, I was trying to look this up over here. I swear, I remember, maybe my mind's playing tricks on me. I swear someone on the Patriots left their playbook at the hotel on the road in like a preseason game against a $5,000 fine.

$5,000. I was just going to ask, what's a penalty? It could be conduct detrimental. That could be like a $35,000. Wow. Yeah. Because you'd bring on the road with you, right? Oh, yeah.

And that thing. But when you're in, when you're like now, the iPads and stuff. When do they switch to the iPad? I want to say like my fourth year. Okay. So, oh wow.

Yeah. Third, fourth year. Or Microsoft Surface. Service. Yeah. But the thing is, with the iPads,

they have more power. The team. Oh, so they would collect iPad, like during camp and shit, they would collect the iPads after games or during games. You know what I mean? They would collect,

there would be a fucking big ass like home thing. And you'd have to go and turn your, your iPad and you know there'd be a coach coming hey you don't you didn't turn your iPad and update stuff better update or they could just wipe you they can also keep track of how much you're using oh they they keep track of how much you're using big brother oh gosh can you go to like websites and stuff on it or no no no it's pretty long i mean my boy jared had my my shit I had my you know my jail break the jailbreak jail broke yeah yeah no bro I just that you know what jail broke me being able to look at the news.

There we go. Like the fact that I can look at the news. We couldn't even get on Google. Oh my God. You'd be there getting on news and be like, oh, shit, hell yeah. Get to see some articles. Just reading, keep it up with the world, baby. That's hilarious. And one last question. So you were a quarterback in college. And so now, though, the playbook, with the iPads, it's so awesome because you

could go through all your thing and then you could see it. You could press a button and see an example of the play. against that. Oh, with the footage? Oh, that's huge. Yeah. So, yeah. It's a little bit more of like a multimedia experience.

It's insane now. You have it all on your iPad. So you were a quarterback in college. Do you remember like, remember a specifically complicated play from your time at Kent State? You know, I've been trying to do that. And I remember like, I don't remember the play calling, but it was a West Coast. So there was like 84. I'd have a protection or 73 or,

I'd have a 60s, 70s, and 80s. 80s were like, I was fully protected. Then there'd be some like kind of get open, wide, shallow look. It was like a West Coast spread. I've really, I got to call up old Dougie fresh. Who should get him on the show? Doug Martin, yeah, I should. Shout out, we should.

I think he's at Elon right now. Let's go, baby. Let's make a trip down to him. Let's go over to Burlington, North Carolina and pull up on him. His wife's, she used to kill it in the real estate world. She's like killing it. She's probably running Burlington right now. Probably.

I love it. Hustling. Shout out. You don't remember like a play call? Like you, I just remember, I remember the concept. I remember my favorite concept was poker.

I don't remember like, because, dude, after hearing all, it just gets wiped out. It gets wiped. It gets wiped because I've heard. And then I remember doing that, but like,

because early in my, my, early in my career, the protections were messing with me. because 70s, we used to have a thing called Scat protection, whereas five-man protection only. And that was the same as like your 70s protection. So like I had a lot of that where 80s was the same as my 60s in college.

So then I kind of wiped it. Yeah. You know what I mean? Can you give us a quick John Gruden-esque play call? I don't really. Like from the Patriots. From the Patriots, you could go like sub, home, home, to Fing

Home Home It could be home F right Fing Right 134 Fbo

ICE Alert Ride 1 30 or alert 34 Gap or or something Or you could

The thing is it gets wordy when you would get like two or three play calls So all you got to do is say two fucking plays alert

And so And by the RU by the time you're in it, when I hear the play call when Tom would say, I heard, I would hear the protection, I'd hear the concept, and then there'd be a couple buzzwords.

You know, you're sitting in the huddle, you hear, all right, all right, all right, all right, I got a thing, right. You know what I mean? No, that's when you're like, and how to say the play would be in the playbook. You know what I mean? Like right there, home, what I say, I told you, the H started out, home to F right.

So wherever he is, he's, we got to get to F right, which is the formation. and then Fing, telling me to Fing in, ride 134, which is the protection, play action, F, bow, ICE, alert, ride 130, or alert 34, alerting to just the run, if it was two safeties. You know, I mean. You got a wayboard.

I'm not a fucking, I love that. Yeah. I was never like, I mean, I, you know, I was never like, you hear all these backup quarterbacks like Hoydog and Orlau, ski, like those guys, they could recite their whole thing because they were communicating it. Yeah. You know what I mean?

When, and I remember that struggle from when I turned to quarterback to receiver, hearing a play was different than saying the play. Yeah. Like, it took me a while to learn how to hear the play and know what to do than when I used to, when you say the play. You know what I mean? Yeah. Oh, for sure.

It is, it's so stupid for me. but I mean the backup quarterbacks, they were always like, they had to know everything. Yeah, and they're getting mental reps like crazy. They're getting mental reps. You're not out there running a slant with a clipboard in your hand.

Yeah. And you know what I mean? And when she get out, I mean, if I were to go back for, like, that's why I love going back. You know, you go to the Patriots, you can go to their meetings. Like, they let me come sit in on their meetings.

Rable let me sit in or whoever the coaches were at the time that I've gotten to sit in on all of them. That's when it refreshes. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's like, oh, shit. Okay, now they're doing this. You know, and Josh, getting to sit in Josh meetings.

McDaniels, you know, I could, he, a lot, you could see where the, the, the, the, the, the, the play callings evolve because now that they're making them less wordy and they're having buzz words tell, like, a lot of guys what to do. So there, it could be, like, only three words, but those three words could be protection concept. That's cool. You know, seeing that evolution's got to be crazy. Yeah. And then we'd have, like, a NASCAR. package in the playbook where it would be that, where one word would tell everything.

So that would be a lot of the things when we were installing weekly, the coaches would say, you know, all right, we're going to do these four NASCAR plays. And they'd break them in. We'd only do it for like those three days or two days. And then they would say, all right, we're adding four more NASCAR plays. So they'd expect you to, you have to already know those ones. And so you're at eight by week, you know, day,

and then after day seven, they'd give you four more NASCAR plays, so you're building your book. You're building, you know, that's how they would install it, you know? And so, just for the audience, NASCAR is like a hurry up.

NASCAR would be no huddle. And then the play calls like one word and you have to know. One word, everyone goes. You have to know all of it. What's a, one, a word? Like Jordan was like a,

Jordan. It wasn't Barclay one too? Barkley was, what was Barkley? Berkeley was Charlie Sheen. So the Charlie, Charlie program was a certain protection. So we had Charlie Sheen. We had Charles Barkley.

I love it. There's Mariona, which was stopper. You know, on the outside, he was the best stopper of all time. We have Jordan. We had Ollie, which was, those were our like go-toes that we always run. It was a fundamental play. It was empty, right?

or bonsai right Haas Z juke which is you know Haas and the Z has a juke route Jordan would be to the right Ali would be the same play on the left you know you'd have Jordan and then there'd be like man I'm gonna get exposed for not knowing my play

You know these things and like this is like you guys were lining up or like you're going from We can run a play you're running up Jordan Jordan Jordan Jordan You just hear Tommy or Tom will be like, Jordan, Jordan, NASCAR, NASCAR, Jordan. Everyone gets to the line of scrimmage, everyone knows what to do. So like someone like Ray Lewis that might have a lot of experience against you guys might have some film, might have some tape on like some of these NASCAR plays. Could.

Yeah. But if you're going fast, they can know what you're doing. But you still got to execute. You still got to execute. That was my thing. And then you could go Jordan. He could go, Jordan, Jordan. And we'd all set up in bonsai.

And then he could sit out there and look at us and give us hook. he could, and we all have to look. And if he goes like that, then it changed all three of us what to do. There was nonverbal comms or you can go, what you could do is we call a play in the huddle and you can go, Xerox, Xerox, Xerox. And Xerox meant same exact, same exact formation. And there was no play. Making copies. And so you're making copies.

And you go sit there and there'd be no plays. And then all of a sudden he would get us into a play. based off of how they line up. Of how they played. That's so tight. That was called molasses. That would be in the pre. There would be a pre snap,

a pre snap menu, which motions and all that cadence. Melasis was there was no play call. Mo Mo. So he could sit there. All right, it's on Mo. It's on Mo.

You had to hear gold color or like the buzz color for the play to be in. So he could sit up there. And this is how you try to get the defense, you know, show what they were doing. He up there. Why 20?

White 20. Had hot, hot, hot. Hard, heart, heart. Black 88. Like 88. Had hot, hot, hot. So sometimes. And then you go.

Gold 30. Gold tells everyone plays on. Goal 30. Oh, that rocks. Even on those like hard cuts, there might not even be a play call. There could be audible out of it. Just let's see what you got.

Let's see what you. We're just trying to get a tell out of the defense. How often does that happen in a game? I mean, depending on the defense you were playing, who's a disguised defense. Man, if John Gurdon just heard you do that, oh, the hair on the back of his neck would stand up. Why? 20, sad. Hot!

How, I mean, great call, baby. You wouldn't know, but how often do you think, like, McDaniels is in Brady's ear on there? He's in there until 15 seconds. So that's why a lot of a NASCAR. So that's why that's, so when you got to say you have a really good defensive line. We'll be right back after this quick break. Pride is like love. You feel it in your heart.

IR. Radio, Canada's number one streaming app for radio and podcasts, including IHart Pride Canada, your favorite hits and must have party bangers, plus personalized and curated playlists. Like back in the day Pride. Come together, celebrate love. Take pride with you anytime, anywhere. Just ask your smart speaker to play IHart Pride Canada. Stream us on your phone.

Or listen now. at iHeartRadio.ca. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast, Point Game is about defining the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before.

And he knows. Without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series. because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nas Reid. He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us

on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nass would get that thing. That man, hell get the flying. He running up the court, licking his fingers while he got the ball, like, after you go through a training camp with that, Isaiah,

you figure it out real quick. Get your ass up and down the court, and you're going to get the balls. So listen to Point Game on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And what NASCAR would do is, NASCAR, if you could run out a sub, which is three receivers,

or you could run it out of regular. But that's hard because then you got guys going in different spots, right? So when you have a good defensive line, fast guys, NASCAR, what it does is it doesn't allow them to substitute. you're just huge. And you can go fast. And so if you get to the line of scrimmage, you get to the line of scrimmage with the most time as you possibly can,

then Tom and Josh can communicate until 15. So as soon as the other play is done, the 40 o'clock starts. That's a lot of time to talk. 40 o'clock starts, right? So if you're done, say it's a long play downfield, then everyone gets to the line of scrimmage. You use your NASCAR term. All right, we're going Jordan.

All right, we're going Charles Barkley, Charles Barkley. Everyone gets into Charles Barkley. You're there with 28 seconds. You got 14 seconds. If you got there in 10 seconds or 12 seconds, everyone gets to line scrimmage by 15 seconds. You got 10, 12 seconds to communicate with Josh. So then they could sit there.

Tom can't talk to him, but he can hear them. You know, so then we used to do like muddle huddles. I love that. Muddle is kind of like a fast huddle where we're not getting back to the huddle. We're kind of getting back and we're getting near the, line of scrimmage and we're yelling out NASCAR terms, but it's not NASCAR. NASCAR means we're going fast.

Yeah. So muddle huddle is different than NASCAR. That would be in the pre-pre. It's so, it'd be so crazy. The gold term, you have like the buzz terms and Black 88's, Black 88 would be on three. Full master class right now. You're saying the kids at Phillips Andover with Ernie

are fucked. No, because good coaches simplify, you're going to adapt. They know how to simplify. Good coaches, simplify. And a lot of the evaluation of training camp is to try to get guys to be anxious about how much there is to see how much they can handle and see that, hey, you don't have to know all this. If you listen to the coaching staff, you know, this is what we're going to go over, learn those, you know what I mean? It's all part of everything. The evaluation process of how you're building your team. 100%. But like to go back to what we said earlier, it's all about like

personnel dictates so much of this. Like when you got, when it was you and Dolan, Gronk and Jojo and it was just clicking and you guys could go no huddle so often. Oh, that was the best. That was like the strength of, you know, with Chris Hogan and Malcolm Mitchell and Dolah. Like, we weren't like the most explosive group, but the strength of that team was a smart. Everyone's all the same thing. Everyone was smart. It's the beauty of the Earhart Perkins is when everyone, got it. Everyone's,

everyone was on the same page at all times. That was the best to watch. Oh, God, I loved it. Man, that was awesome.

Guys, keep, keep tossing these in there. You know, we should do people, leave comments on YouTube. Maybe we'll get a whiteboard and, like,

pick up, pick a playup. I got to get my playbook. I have a playbook, so maybe we should just expose it. Oh, fire. Let's go.

Speaking of exposing in playbooks, I always think back to that, like, when you, go ahead. You remember when Chris, Chris Cooley got in trouble in the early days

of, like, he took a picture. It was like in the preseason like crack and open the playbook and he was studying the playbook naked so you could see like the tip of his chunk

in the Instagram picture. He said like three like penis related Yeah, Chris Cooley. What a wild man. Keep going on those. Sorry, Jules. Who's Chris Cooley? He was a tight end for like the red skin for a little while.

I remember he was actually a good play. 47 I think. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know why that's in my taking up space in my brain. Yeah. Three inch binder.

Yeah. That was a good one. Three inch and three inch binder. Oh, that was awesome. Let's do more that. That's fine. Keeps in these. We love pulling back the curtain, man.

Because that was playbook, but that got into a lot of different stuff. And I've always wanted to know how you don't answer it. We'll do it another time. But like, how you know personnel from the sidelines, when to go in and how that works. There's also signals. Yeah. I'm with you.

So like, I'd be so bad at that. And that goes into like, you practice. That's what practices for. You know, like all the receivers are in with the receiver coach on the sideline. All the running backs are with the running backs. And you have to practice those things. Your communication. coming in the field with your signal.

There were certain signals, half, your sub, army, army. We all had signals at receiver, which probably change, you know, but... Right, you have to cycle through anything that's going to be on tape, signals and whatnot.

You know what, but, like, it didn't really change that often. Really? So, like... One of those things, like, that's our best shot. Man against man, we're going to beat you. I mean...

Yeah. I don't know. The personnel groups. Man, what a game. 13 second game. All timer. All timer. All timer.

Thanks again to Mitch Morris. It was fun to hear his perspective because he was on both those teams. Takes a big man to come in here and talk about that loss. It takes a big man. Respect, bro. What a guy. Likes pain. He does.

He likes pain. He sure does. Just like us. Hey, he's one of us, baby. Man. And that's been another episode of games with names. subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen to your podcast,

comment a game you want us to do and remember, rate and review and leave us a five-star review on Spotify while you're there. Remember to follow games with names on social, YouTube, Instagram, X, TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook, and leave a message on those YouTube full episodes. We'll read the best ones in the future episodes.

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Far Jackson should absolutely positively get nominated for his portrayal as Michael Jackson. Listen to I Am Rap Report on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. He kind of showed me out of away and said, move, and he went out the front door, and he jumped in a car and drove off, and that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

your podcasts. June is Black Music Month, and on the Drink Chams podcast, we're speaking with the hottest names in the culture, like Sway Lee. Do you realize how legendary you are? I appreciate that. I'd be seeing it, but I'm like, man, I still got, like, so much more to do. Like, Prince, he dropped, like, 30 albums. We drop like five right now.

That's the rate we got to be going. Yep, that's a good attitude. No matter the era, Drink Chams brings you the biggest names and the most unfiltered conversations. Listen to Drink Chams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Here's something that should not be as complicated as it is, getting a racist statue removed. And here's something that should be a whole lot easier than it is, getting a new one put up in its place. I'm Akila Hughes. and Rebel Spirit Season 2 is about both of those things. As I was watching these statues come down, I was thinking about what it meant

that I grew up in a majority of Black City in which there were more homages to enslavers than there were to enslave people. Listen to Rebel Spirit Season 2 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.