Green Light with Chris Long - Kyle Hamilton! Baltimore Ravens, Lamar Jackson & Pass Rush Moves As A Safety! Deebo Samuel, Matthew Stafford & Darius Slay!

Episode Date: March 4, 2025

Kyle Hamilton and NFL News! Chris Long reacts to the recent news around the NFL as the league moves closer to their beginning year. The San Francisco 49ers trade Deebo Samuel to the Washington Commanders as Jayden Daniels gains a trusted wide receiver to continue his accession in the NFL. Despite rumors that Matthew Stafford would help elsewhere for this upcoming season, the Rams can't quit their QB. Stafford stays put in LA for another year with McVay. And most recently, the Philadelphia Eagles have released Darius Slay to save some cap space. Could Slay sign elsewhere or could he end up back in Philly on a new deal? And then, Kyle Hamilton joins Chris in a recorded interview from New Orleans during Super Bowl week. The fellas cover the Baltimore Ravens, Lamar Jackson's leadership, Derrick Henry as a Raven, Kyle's defensive abilities and his developing pass rush moves as well as the best young QBs and WRs in the NFL. (00:00) - Intro (2:51) - Chris' Offseason (9:27) - NFL Combine: Jalen Milroe's Hands and Isaiah Bond's 40 Yard Dash Time (16:42) - Deebo Samuel (30:07) - Matthew Stafford (38:31) - Darius Slay (44:02) - Legality of the Tush Push (59:13) - Kyle Hamilton of the Baltimore Ravens on Lamar Jackson, Derrick Henry and Developing Pass Rush Moves Have some interesting takes, some codebreaks or just want to talk to the Green Light Crew? We want to hear from you. Call into the Green Light Hotline and give us your hottest takes, your biggest gripes and general thoughts. Day and night, this hotline is open. Green Light Hotline: ‪[phone]‬ In need of sweet threads to vibe like Chris and the fellas? Check out https://greenlightpodcast.org/ for everything merch wise and then some! Also, check out our paddling partners at Appomattox River Company to get your canoes, kayaks and paddleboards so you're set to hit the river this summer. https://paddleva.com/ Green Light's YouTube Channel, where you can catch all the latest GL action: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgxWFAA-wuB7osdiAJyLOcw Green Light with Chris Long: Subscribe and enjoy weekly content including podcasts, documentaries, live chats, celebrity interviews and more including hot news items, trending discussions from the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, NCAA are just a small part of what we will be sharing with you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

People lead in a different kind of manner. Some people are super raw, raw, super motivational speeches, whatever may be. And there's nothing wrong with that. I just think the way Lamar was brought up and the way that he just knows how to play football, is just like, look, like, this is what it is. Like, I'm not going to sugarcoat it. Yeah. Like, I don't care about them at all.

He's going to say that to the media. It's like, I only care about you boys, I only care about winning a Super Bowl. Yep. And all the, like, high speech, you got to figure that out of yourself. He's like, look, just be ready to play. Yeah. And, you know, that kind of takes all the Disney channel out of it. And it's just like, let's just play football.

It doesn't have to be, remember the Titans. Like, you know, we're going out there. We're going to get a win. The Greenlight podcast presented by BetMGM. If you haven't signed up for BetMGM yet, use bonus code Greenlight. And you will get up to a $1,500 first bet offer on your first wager with BetMGM. Here's how it works. Download the BetMGM app and sign up using bonus code Greenlight.

Deposit at least $10 and place your first wager on any game. If that bet loses, you will receive up to $1,500 in bonus bets. Just make sure you use Bonus Code Greenlight when you sign up. Welcome to the Greenlight podcast. Thanks for tuning in today as Chris jumps back into the saddle. A couple weeks off as he's been enjoying his tractor in the Virginia Sun, as you'll hear in a couple minutes. But a wonderful episode to slide back on Kyle Hamilton is the guest.

Chris and Kyle have a great conversation that they recorded in New Orleans during Super Bowl week. They dive into the X's and O's of what makes Kyle a great defensive player. They talk about the Ravens, Derek Henry, Lamar Jackson, playing Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes, and some of the great young quarterbacks. But to start the episode, Chris gives an NFL update, runs through some of the news that's been happening around the league last couple weeks. We talked the NFL Combine, Debo Samuel, heading to Washington, Matthew Stafford, staying put in L.A. and the Eagles moving on from Darius Slay, along with a tush-push conversation from Chris.

The main theme coming out of that conversation, just stop it. Just stop the play. A great episode, thanks for tuning in. Make sure to go check it out on YouTube. And we'll see you later this week with another great episode. Fellas. You.

How we doing it? What do I do? I talk into this thing? Dusted off a little bit. Oh, man. I think I've been going through a midlife crisis. you know 40's coming up this month and i think my midlife crisis doesn't involve like uh Ferrari it involves um investing in a local river company and uh and feeling like i never wanted a podcast again

um took a three week break it was uh it was restorative it was great i mean i still today woke up this morning i was like ah i got a how do i do like what do i do i say i just regurgitate the fact that debo samuel got traded until you was for a fifth and that uh you know san francis is going to have to eat a certain amount of the salary and do all that i don't know like what do you want? Like, what do you want for me during the off season? I mean,

you talk about Matt Stafford? The Combine? Here we go, guys. We're back on it. What did I miss? The legality of the tush push? Legality of the tush push. That'll play.

You know, I think part of the problem with the off season is there's so much. information without tape and so you really become like a guy doing a book report every week right and um you know i i think the conclusion i came to towards the tail end a little bit of personal news as i put a bow on this whole like hey i need a break thing i'm burn out which i've alluded to a few times like at the end of the season and again i'm not working in a fucking coal mine okay this isn't you know i in the off season i want an off season i want to be able to relax i don't need to know every fifth round tender that was applied you know like i i i don't i don't i don't want to be the

guy every week that's held to the standard of not knowing you know who the seven defensive end is at a ball state i don't care so that's just where i am during the off season i'm going to try to take some time to myself to do things like drive my tractor around which i did the other day for six hours and it felt amazing i was happier doing that than i was preparing for a football podcast any football podcast over the last calendar year and that's okay that's perfectly, perfectly natural. That doesn't mean I have to quit this job. But what that does mean is that in the off season, I will be taking time, uh, to myself. And so, uh, I sat there and I was like, man, can I really do this job if I'm not like obsessed with every transaction with every roster move?

If I don't know, every person on the roster, you know, the, the first weekend after the draft. And, you know, part of me was like, ah, man, you know, you really shouldn't cheat the game. And then I turned on the TV this week and saw Colin Coward with Terran Armstead on his show. And he was like, so we're talking about one of the richest guys in sports here who's been at it a long time. Who's got his own TV show. He's basically does what I do, but he has his own TV show. And he's like, yeah, Taryn, you know, if you, uh, somebody calls you, would you go back to work? If a good team called, would you get, you know,

Could you play two more? And Tern Armstead sitting in the studio with a Dolphins graphic behind him who's physically in the studio. This must be what it's like to be successful. You've been doing it so long that like, hey, I got a fucking Pro Bowl tackling this morning. Like, I don't even need to read the write up. He must be retired. If a good team called you up and said, dude, two years, would you go play? I'm on a good team, so no.

So you're not going to play? I'm on a good team already. Well, I know, but I mean... So nobody else can call me. You would, you're... This is it. I'm, yeah, dolphins only, yeah. And that's it. That's it.

But you're kind of pausing. I'm not. I think it's natural pauses in a conversation. You know what I mean? That's funny. So when I look at things like that, I'm like, you know what? I can take a couple days off every week. It's okay. I don't need to know everything.

That was unreal. That's the kind of groove that I want to sink into during the offseason. It's not that I hate my job. I just hated the way I was doing my job. You know, I think the season is always going to be a grind, but I absolutely need the offseason and kind of take some time. And so, you know, you're going to be getting a lot of content this off season. Some of it's going to be, you know, more interview-centric.

And we're going to get the pods where we're all. hanging out and shooting the shit and the whole whole gang's involved but like you know i'm i'm going to tape from home more um i might tape an interview with zach earths this week and then fuck off for the rest of the week and you might see it a couple days later and i might be riding my tractor turning my phone off not reading pro football talk every day right like i i with all due respect to a Lerick Jackson, who I think is a very good tackle in the NFL. I don't need to know every detail of that fucking, that deal. I don't.

I'm good. I'm all right. I do know it helped get, you know, get Matt Stafford back probably, right? Who, by all accounts, is still a ram. Now, I got a few things I want to catch up with you on before we get to Kyle Hamilton. First off, the combine. these were the main things I took from the combine. I'm consuming the combine just like you.

You're probably watching more of the combine than me. Let me level set expectations there because I'm not watching the combine, but I am reading about the combine. And I heard that Jalen Milrose's hands have grown in a month since the senior bowl from eight and three quarters to nine and three-eighth. Now, I got a 10-inch hand. no big deal but this milro guy his hands are different they're growing he might end up with an 11

inch hand at this pace his hand grew do the math here what's a quarter plus three a's i don't know but five it's about a half an inch or right five five eight half inch of an inch in 28 days Yeah, five A's doing fractions. Fucking fractions. All right. Now, it's plausible that he wasn't measuring his hand correctly at the Senior Bowl. That's probably the most likely. That's the Occam's razor.

Because when I Googled this morning, I was like, yo, when do our hands stop growing? I feel like Theo Vaughn in that podcast where he's like, how far can people see? Dude, most people can't even see that far. How far can people see usually? What do you mean? I'm just saying like, how far can somebody see? I was like, when do people's hands stop growing? So I looked it up and they stopped growing after puberty.

So one or two things, either Jalen Milrow is still going through puberty, which is pretty impressive at 22, 23 years old, or he didn't flatten his hand properly at the senior bowl. Either way, it is good that he cleared the hurdle of nine inches, which for NFL quarterbacks is kind of the hurdle. Or he has some kind of secret, some sort of limb growth product that I can assure you he has a billion dollar idea. Oh, it's a big, big idea.

Guys with small hands, I'm Jaylen Milro for Diggerow. It could grow. Ad men. Can you imagine if there was a product to grow people's hands? They have leg lengthening surgeries now for the homies who are not so tall,

vertically inclined. You can become taller in the year of our lower 2025. They just put some fucking rods in your shins. And in the beginning, you're walking around like forest gum, but then you shed those babbles. boys and you start looking like you know

I'm a new bowl out there so you never know they might be hey there might be a product here you know that Jalen Milrow is going to be rolling out there are exercises a lot of dudes with small hands there are exercises you can do that the internet says that you can make your hands larger like squeezing a soft tennis ball or a stress ball

making a fist and release and working with clay. So maybe... You think he did a lot of working with clay over the last couple weeks. You know, his agent could have been like, hey, let's just head to this art studio and let's get to work.

What do you guys... Are you guys aware of what's called mewing? You are. You guys mew. Look it up. Because I'm going to butcher the... Because I don't need to mew. Is that the...

Mewing is a technique that involves pressing your tongue to the roof of your mouth to change your jaw line? yeah try to get a jawline going which i don't need i don't need to mew i don't need to i don't need to i don't need to i don't need to sleep with a ball of clay you know dudes are sitting around all day going looking stupid as fuck trying to try to become better looking trying to mute uh shout out to jalen milra who's hand grew and then the other one was uh isaiah bond who he might be the hollow of the whole thing. He's like, I'm going to run a 4-1, which is ambitious. And if it weren't for like

the Xavier Worthies of the world, who also went to Texas, this kid, Isaiah Bond went to Texas, although him and Worthy didn't play together. If it weren't for a guy like Xavier Worthy, I wouldn't know that was possible. Like when I was in the combine, 4-4 was still the gold standard. Right? Like, hey, that guy runs 4-4. Now it's like, yeah, that guy runs 4-2. it just it things have changed like athletes are getting better and bigger faster stronger you know and it's accelerating in my eyes at least within this little era you know like it felt like there was a rate of acceleration for athleticism and size and all that stuff and it kind of like was it was just a steady steady ascension into like man all of a sudden we have these superhuman guys out here not to say there

weren't guys like that in the last generation of players. But now it feels like in the past 10 to 15 years, that accelerated even faster. And we made a jump to like guys getting made fun of for running a 4-4. Like this Isaiah Bond guy, yeah, he fell short. He didn't land on the moon. You know, but he ran a fucking 4-4 at the NFL Combine, which that that time, should be like, hey, now I go party. Because like, that's a success.

But instead, he's getting big brothered by Xavier Worthy, who's like 23. And the quote was, respect those who come before you. Like, how dare you, child? The worst part is, as I said, he's a Texas guy. And

this guy, Matthew Golden, who said nothing of the sort, ran a 429, who's also a Texas guy. So, you know, I guess what I'm trying to say is I feel bad for Isaiah Bond. Took a big swing and he ran a 4-4, which should be perfectly fine. But instead, he's like the butt of a joke. Fast guys are assholes. Worthy was born in 2003.

Respect your elders. Respect your elders. Respect your elders. What do you know about Y2K? Well, I've heard stories. You read about it. Yeah, I read about it. I wasn't there, but

sounds like somebody I know. Okay, that's the combine. How about players on the move? We got Debo Samuel. That's the biggest news. Debo Samuel headed to Washington. I think this is really interesting because it makes a lot of sense.

I mean, you could tell that Washington was quick about this thing. And so was San Francisco. Like, let's just do this thing. We'll give you a five. How's that sound? And the Niners are like, yeah, no problem. Let's get them off the books. I think from what I understand it's going to help.

It's going to help the books even more in a year. But this year, it gives them an opportunity to kind of spread things out a little bit. And like, no pun intended, because they will spread things out a bit on the field. I think that's, I think that's, I think that's. that's the way things are going to go. I think for San Francisco, you're going to see more of a spread offense, not exactly like Washington's, but for the sake of the point and the exercise,

like it's almost like these two teams are going to exchange schemes a little bit. You know, you figure Washington's going to at least build in some more of these West Coast elements to accommodate a guy who's a Swiss Army knife in a West Coast system in Debo, Samuel, who's got a skill set totally different than Terry McLauran. who's got a skill set different than almost any other wide receiver. He's so different, or in his prime he was so different, not taking anything away from the player he still is,

that he's the guy people are compared to when they're outliers, right? Like, he is the guy from our generation that everybody said, well, he's a, he's a Debo. He's a Swiss Army knife. Like you use him like Debo. That's how great he was at his best in San Francisco. And I think like when you look back at like the, 2021 season i think it was he was unstoppable i think when you look at debo now you know there is a risk

that the wheels are going to fall out from under him at any point and i mean that as a as a compliment to the way the guys played the game he is a rolling ball of butcher knives he is a wrecking ball he's a guy who you know he's going to run through something and um you know he's never been a great man separator not a great route runner you know some people will pejoratively call him a running back i think that's what c scho carter johnson did this week but he's a football player i respect and you know he's earned more than my respect i mean everybody should respect the way he played the game in san francisco and he's a guy that even if the the bottom might fall out at some point over the next four or five years and it probably

will because he's being used remember when he was like yeah um i'm a running back and a wide receiver like so you should pay me like both add them up there's a kind of good point but you also have to take into consideration i said this at the time like if you are running back in a wide receiver you're getting a running back you're taking running back beating as well and so like at some point we're going to look up and you know like any of us your legs aren't there anymore or you know these injuries pile up to where you can't do your job the way you used to do it i don't think we're there yet. But over the last two years, it's trended a little bit that way. I still like Washington making this move because Washington had to make the move. You know, you look at their roster right now.

I think they got like three or four wide receivers on the roster. And, you know, Brown's up. Diami Brown, you know, McCaffrey's on the roster. McClorin's great. But, you know, Zakias and those guys, like you'd like to upgrade. Yep. You know, and I thought they, they produced admirably. They they performed admirably considering who this cast of characters was i think it's a credit to not only cliff kingsbury and what he did this year but very obviously jaden daniels right who kind of slid into that top five six spot uh or that echelon in a lot of people's eyes at by the end of the season now there's going to be some people that say and it might be you sitting here watching this and i totally respect the the point of view um you know don't put the car before the horse

look what happened to CJ Stroud. You know, I can point to a bunch of instances of a quarterback getting hot the first year, taking the league by storm, and then the second year, there's kind of a slide, you know, and there's an adjustment period, and the scheme gets stale, like with Bobby Slowick this past year, and people are questioning CJ Stroud. I think to avoid something like that happening, you have to be aggressive in year two. But obviously that's not enough. That wasn't enough for Houston.

Houston was aggressive from a personnel standpoint. people like me jumped out of the gym for it thought hey they're doing things right you got a rookie quarterback and a rookie deal he's about to be a second year player this guy's a stud i still think he's a stud but that wasn't enough injuries derailed it and i think more than anything scheme a lack of scheme a lack of building up front um the offensive line not playing together um not picking up free runners all year like that's going to be on cliff to take care of that stuff but i think from a macro standpoint, adding a player was like, hey, that's a tourniquet coming for a fifth round pick where it's like, let's stop the bleeding and anything that happens after this,

like whether it's through the draft or free agency or whatever, we still got 60 million cap room. We can do whatever we want on defense to improve things. We can go get Miles Garrett if we want to, right? Like if we really were feeling froggy. And we've added a bona fide number two or number three receiver who's a gadget guy. I don't mean that pejoratively. He can be your gadget guy as well.

You know, he can be the guy that takes a jet sweep to the house. He can be the guy that when he goes in motion, everybody's eyes are occupied. And, you know, he can justify you using more motion. He can justify you running more of a West Coast offense. And I think running a different offense, and I'm not saying 100% of it has to be different, right? But just infusing some elements that keep people up at night. Yep. Like that's what the name of the game is.

And that's when you talk about an offense getting stale year to year, like scheme. Sometimes adding a player can open the scheme up a little bit, right? And so I think for Washington, this is trying to stay ahead of the curb. It's also stopping the bleeding, getting a bona fide guy in that receiver room, raising your floor. And it's going to cost you $17 million. And it's a one-year deal, right? So it ain't like you're grabbing Debo Samuel and having to pay 28-year-old Debo-Samiel. or whatever it is, who's got all this mileage.

He's a high mileage vehicle. There are a lot of guys on San Francisco because of the way they have played the game and how far they've gone in the playoffs every year that have accrued high mileage for that making model, so to speak. Like, Debo, you know, I'd like to say he's like a Toyota. He's going to run forever, but we don't know that. But they're putting Toyota miles on him. And, you know, Kittle, he's blocking.

It's like a car accident. And every time he's on the field out there. And he only knows one speed. McCaffrey, they ran him into the ground. There's a lot of guys there in San Francisco that are high mileage guys and that put the window in San Francisco into kind of a volatile position. Because you have to project how long they're going to be in their primes. They also cost money.

Iyuk, you paid him. It feels like there's already a bit of a buyer's remorse there. There's rumors that they might move on from him or something like that. I'm not going to give any credence to those rumors because it's just words on a page to me. I don't really know, you know. But I'll tell you this, I did hear John Lynch say, hey, we've spent too much money, or we've spent a lot of money now.

It's time to reset a little bit. So I could see them in preparation to pay Brock Purdy trying to go through a bit of a moving reset here. And, you know, this guy was absolutely central to everything they did offensively in this era of Kyle Shanahan in San Francisco. And he should be commended for that. and I think this is going to be a fun move for them. Not saying it's necessarily going to bear fruit.

You never know a year two for a quarterback and like they were really upstart team. You're going to get everybody's best fucking shot next year. That's kind of a cliche thing, but it's true. You know, like it's not that we overlook shitty teams in the NFL, but teams with six and a half win totals like the Washington commanders last year. They do sneak up on teams a little bit. They're not going to sneak up on anybody. You know, like every player sat there during the play.

playoffs and watch that Lions game, right? Like, they know this team can play. And now they've got Debo Samuel. They're not done. They've got 60 million cap room plus. And I think for the Niners, you know, like we said, they're going to change the way to do things a little bit. And I'm interested to see.

You know, this is a big test for Kyle Shanahan. It really is. I love Joanne Jennings. I think he's an absolute dog, you know, a very dependable player. You know, we talk about some of the other guys they have there. Pier Saul showed some promise this year. Yep. I made a boatload of money on a first touchdown bet with him one Monday night.

It was amazing. It was only one Monday night that he scored in, I think. So it probably narrows it down. I think it was a Detroit game, which is a wild game. But Pierceall, whose development was kind of like pushed down the line, right? Because the gunshot wound, he might be even better than we think. So we'll see. Now, the one thing the Niners have going for them,

where they've got a lot of things going for them is, you look at what they've done with fifth round picks. I don't know if that, you know, if that's a coincidence or not, but it almost feels like, yeah, sure, we'll go grab another whofongo, Lenore, Greenlaw, McKivitz, DJ Reed, who's not even with him anymore, George Kittle. Like, they're pretty good in that spot. So when you look at the fifth round pick, another thing is I think it's the Saints pick,

which ends up being even better for them than if it were the Washington pick. So, you know, we'll see. We'll see what they do. Definitely going to alleviate some heartache from a standpoint of San Francisco's financials. And I think it's going to definitely raise the floor in Washington, which is already pretty high with that quarterback. So, and fuck, if I, like I said, it's a one year rental. And I don't know if there's, there's no security deposit on a player, right?

Like, it ain't like when you move into an apartment, your senior year in college with five dudes and you wrecked the place and then you got to pay for the holes you put in the wall when you come home drunk and headbutt the wall. Not that you guys would have done anything like that. But, like, Debo Samuel is a football player. It's kind of, it's kind of, I don't know. know what the word would be course of me to say. C-Rass. I don't know which C-word it is. But like, wreck the truck up, dude. You know, you got him for a year. Play him at running back. Like, put him in the backfield, you know, give him a million touches. Yep. 30-year-old Debo is not your problem. And so I look forward to seeing him get a lot of touches there. The other thing,

and this was a total, this is like March rumor central. Like this is the most marchiest rumor and watch it happen. But like I actually read an article. I have a buddy who's a Niners fan. He sent this to me. It was like, there's an article about, you know,

the Niners possibly acquiring the number one ever all pick for Brock Purdy. Of course, that pick is held currently by the Tennessee Titans. And I just, no. Like things like that. You know, like things like that are why I'm like, this is most of what we get in the off season, you know, like we get a bunch of, you know, hey.

And so am I going to get up here and weigh in on whether I think that's going to happen or not? I don't think that's going to happen. I don't think Brock Purdy. I'm just illustrating how ridiculous some of the, some of the boredom can breed some of ridiculous rumors, is all I'm saying, that the Titans are going to send. the first overall pick to San Francisco for Brock Purdy, and then they have to pay him and forego the hall that they probably get when like Cleveland jumps Vegas to get Cam Ward with the first pick. Then the other side of it of the Niners, like we could call me one of the luckiest picks of all time. Yeah. Yeah. A franchise guy. Like let's just spin the wheel again. Let's do it. But this time,

let's do it like let's do it in the top five which is something we haven't done real well lately right right you know so there's just it can be wacky some of the shit you hear these days man you know and by these days i mean this time of year so um there's that you know the niners uh the niners have a picking every round now so that's positive if you're a crestfallen niners fan after seeing that information. Also, surprise, surprise. Matt Stafford is back in L.A. I'm not saying I'm surprised.

Like, to me, I just want to make people, I want to make sure people understand the Rams correctly. Because I think, and at times over the last couple years, I have not understood the Rams correctly. I have said, hey, sell your parts. Like, hey, transition into whatever the next phase is.

you know, Cooper Cup, it looks like they'll probably trade him, right? Like they're openly shopping him. And yeah, Donald retired. But you still got Matt Stafford. And when you have Matt Stafford, you have a fighter's chance. And I watched him this year. You know, there were games like the Jets game where you kind of wonder if towards the end of the year he's battling through some stuff, which he always is. which players do towards the end of the season.

But then there's games where I'm like, it's the same guy that made a Super Bowl run a couple years ago. Like he, his ceiling is still super high. And 37 years old, when you talk to former quarterbacks about like, how long could this guy play? How long could this guy play? I was tell the story asking Jay Cutler, how long, I think it was Matt Stafford.

How long do you think Stafford could play? This is two years ago, and I thought maybe, like, at some point, they try to get something for him. And he was like, he'll play until he's 40 easy. Guys got a, you know, RPG on his shoulder. So, like, when you think about the guys that age well, strong-arm guys, you know, guys that don't particularly rely on their mobility, right? You know, Stafford. I think he's got a couple more good ones in him. And the thing that I, that kind of drove me crazy, well, it didn't drive me crazy

because it's an aggregator. You know, I'm looking at these kind of like what ifs on my timeline and they're posed by aggregators. And, you know, I saw something to the effect of like they put Devante Adams and Aaron Rogers and Rams uniforms. And it was like Dov climbing. So I'm sorry. But like, it was like instant contenders.

and I'm like, oh, that's interesting. Because I could have swore this year there were contenders. Like, I don't know if you realize this. This is why the Jalen Carter sack, I saw a list this week of the best Eagles plays of all time, the biggest Eagle plays of all time. I think that plays got to be up there. You know, I mean, Matt Stafford and the Rams are at the gates in the snow with a chance to beat your football team.

And I think if they beat that football team, I think they might win the Super Bowl. Like, I think they beat the Chiefs, which I can more comfortably say that now out loud because you saw what happened to the Chiefs. And like that veneer washed off a little bit where I could say like, hey, listen, Chiefs, all due respect to him. But the point is the Rams could easily have gone toe to toe to toe with that team. You know, and you talk about it's not who you play, it's when you play them. They played the Eagles when the Eagles were really rounded into form. Get ready to go bludgeon two teams that made deep playoff runs. They were a player two away.

So the Rams were already contenders. Not only does that not make them hypothetically becoming contenders novel. I think them adding an Aaron Rogers and Devonte Adams is a downgrade. You know, and I'm not saying Rogers can't play anymore, but what I am saying is Matt Stafford's still a bona fide dude. Drives me crazy when you talk about the elite quarterbacks in the NFL when you leave out Matt Stafford. And I'm not talking about top three, four. What I'm talking about is that core group. You can draw the line wherever you want, whether it's six, seven. I mean, these are the best guys on the planet he's still one of them you know sure he's not my homes or allen right now or you know like hey

shit you can make an argument jalen hurts with everything he's done over the the past couple years should be considered elite fine but matt stafford needs to be in that conversation um and so yeah that team's still a contending team i think they'll look at a tight end i think they'll look at a corner i think linebacker's always a position they won't they could upgrade. I mean, it feels like they're still kicking themselves about letting Ernest Jones go a couple years ago. And, you know, some of the guys they've had out there, I think they could be upgrading on.

But overall, man, you got that tackle locked up, Alaric Jackson, right? He's spent like a whole day researching that situation. And Matt Stafford back in the building. So, listen, Cooper Cups probably going to get traded. I like Dallas. you know i like dallas because i really can hear jerry jones saying cooper cup over and over again like it's just the most jerry jones sayable word of all time sayable name i can you can hear it i can hear it i can hear it in my head and you know what the craziest thing is i know mark my words if they trade for cooper cup

Cooper Cup He's going to say We really like Cooper Cup Back in 17 You know We actually were in love with him But we ended up Who'd they draft

I texted you this last night Nolan it was Who'd they draft? They drafted a woozier A few slots before Cooper Cup So what they'll say What Jerry will say is You know I really loved him

But you know We ended up taking a woozier And then we were going to take him next but then I ended up taking Ryan Switzer. That was going to be Cooper Cup right there. You know, like there's going to be some origin story like that. And do I think he can still play? Yeah, I do.

I think, you know, he's not what he was, but it's not unlike the Debo-Samuel deal where it's like, yeah, sure, he's not what he was, but he's still a piece, man. And yeah, that would be tough for them to replace that guy, not only on the field, but in the locker room. but they're going to have to do it. And you keep the quarterback and you continue to build, man. As long as that quarterback's in the building and playing at this level, they are contenders. Yeah.

And it's a young defense that the core of that group is intact. You have coordinator continuity there. They're going to get better on that side of the ball too. No question. So Stafford stays in town. They nailed the defensive line. A year removed, as you just mentioned, everything they did defensively last year was the most impressive part to me, right?

Because you knew they'd have to improve defense. while showing the greatest defensive lineman of all time, possibly the door, and saying, hey, happy trails in retirement. And we're going to go out and, like, fill out this, this really fearsome young group of rushers. And that was very impressive. And I also thought they got really good play out of some guys in the secondary. Like, like, I thought Lake did a great job last year. Yep.

I do. And, you know, you can't talk about that Rams defense without talking about Giff Smith. the defensive line coach everything he got out of that group you know it's going to make things a very hey listen if you're a corner and free agency i'm not saying they're going to be out you know trying to spend money in free agency necessarily it's probably going to be through the draft but you know if you're somebody who wants to go play in l.a like and you're looking at that thing and you're somebody in the secondary like yeah i'd love to play behind that group you know up front and if you're a skill player you know looking to join in that offense i'd love to

catch balls from Matt Stafford. Like they really have done a nice job programmatically. And I think Lesneed deserves a lot of credit as well as Sean McVey and that whole group. So Stafford stays. Darius Slay in Philly has been released. Cap Casualty. It's not about his play. You know, it could be a, hey, we're going to sign him back for cheaper.

Like you really don't know that for sure. Like, and I haven't talked to anybody. This news dropped right before I was going to get on. and you know i'll leave it up to imagination a little bit i'm not going to pry um at this point i i thought he played really well this year it wasn't a think thing he did and i thought he rebounded a little bit you know because i thought last year was a little bit up and down you know you had the scheme issues um i also think when you're older in the nfl like sometimes you're dealing with things and we might not know i thought he looked really healthy this year i thought he looked really

quick springy um motivated man you know like happy in that defense his leadership kind of shine through you talk about bearing fruit like he was a big part of getting this this second ring i mean it really was and so you know in the spirit of him not ending up in like a bradberry situation where you you stick around too long right or you know as as a front office you're always trying to like when they cut me they can cut me but like when when when team sour when the Eagles soured on me late right to the point where you know my role was going to be like they had a way of thinking about things where and I think a lot of it was like part of the coaching staff hey we're trying to we're trying to get out on a player before he falls off the ledge right like

that's the game you're playing when you're dealing with quality vets and slay we're was playing at a really high level i don't think there's a high chance of him falling off a cliff next year but you know you only have so much cash and you could be clearing space for something bigger to happen i mean like there's a universe where they are moving things around so that there's room for miles garret and that that sounds like fun to me and if the miles garret things happen i swear to you I did bother Howie Roseman midseason about it last year. I was like, do it. I was like, do it.

What's stopping you? Do it. Turns out he didn't need Miles Garrett to win a Super Bowl. But if we know Howie, he's never done. He's just never done. And so, like, I don't know. Maybe I got the math fucked up and this really doesn't matter when it pertains to that deal. But it is a decision where,

I think you're trying to make sure he's somewhere else before you know you sell him high so to speak not to make players sound like total assets but they are and then it's also a deal where you're like hey we could use this cash to maybe do something that's impending that nobody else knows about which is always exciting I always think it's a bittersweet thing when a team lets a player go and you like that team and you're like I'm really going to miss that player but what the they doing with that couple mill? Like, it could be really fun. But at the same time, I just think Darius Slay deserves a lot of credit for his

runner in Philly. And I really enjoyed his, when he came on, on the show, it was last year, a year before. I thought he was great, man. So I'm hoping he ends up somewhere where he's happy and can finish his career on his terms. And maybe it's Philly for less money. You never know. Made some big plays.

Big play Slay. Super Bowl champ. Super Bowl champ. That's why you keep waking up in the morning and fucking putting your big boy pants on and going to practice when you play in a place like Detroit for all those years. And you deal with all the bullshit that somebody like he would have had to deal with.

And I'm not talking about necessarily Matt Patricia. I'm just talking about the losing, man. The ineptitude. As somebody who lost a lot of games in St. Louis, not a terribly different place from Detroit, like as far as the way things were going um in those two buildings like i can i can definitely um sympathize with what it took for him to get to philly and then for him to cash in with a super bowl trophy also i want to shout out james bradbury um who a lot of people probably forgot

was on team this year right like and i'm not being funny but that was a really good player a couple years ago and i think he's a perfect example of and there's so many many. I mean, like most of the league, if you play a long time, like there's a ledge. And we watched him go off the ledge, but he never, ever complained. He wasn't publicly embroiled in any bullshit. He was always like, he was invisible in the best way this year. But I'm sure he wasn't invisible to the guys in that, in that room, you know, they had one of the best rooms in a league, one of the best defenses in recent memory. So whatever his role in And that was, I just want to tip my cap to him because somebody like that hadn't necessarily had that success getting to enjoy it.

That's awesome. So maybe happy trails to Darius Slay. And then lastly, Eagles related. It's like clockwork, man. This tush push thing. And I'm not like, hey, this isn't me being a homer. Like, really, I could care less. Like, I really could care less.

Really don't care. And you're going to be like, oh, if you stay fine. times you don't care it doesn't mean you don't care i get it you think i'm just this is an eagles thing i don't care who's running the push push like if it were the if it were virginia tech and they thought of something like this and they were just exploiting the fuck out of it i would be on their side like seriously beat it stop saying things like mark murphy it's a no skill play obviously there's some skill to it. And if you don't think there's any skill on the field being employed,

then maybe the front office needs to be more skillful. So you can get guys that just do what the Eagles are doing. Go find. No skill. Some skill in finding a six foot eight rugby guy who spent some time in a scrum. Some skill in getting a six foot seven guy from Alabama who legitimately looks like he is the poster child from what I would think a giant human being from Alabama looks like the motherfucker gets six inches off the ground like that's a skill they've gotten these 13 feet between the left

side of the line in height 13 plus they're both like six seven they've gotten both these guys to continually dig out the right side of defensive lines guys much shorter them with shorter levers with more leverage lower to the ground dig these guys out and then lift them up so that the second level defenders can't just jump over the top of them and stone jalen hurts like this is a skill and if it's not a skill and you're arguing it's just sheer size then go get you some of these fucking jordan milada looking guys dude you know i understand like hey most most centers look like they just stepped down from peterbilt like a long way down right like they look like truckers they look like average americans most most centers and i don't mean

that to be an insult like it's kind of endearing shout to my boy scotty wells just like if you saw scotty wells walking through a mall you'd be like guy drives a tow truck he's here on break if you didn't know jason kelsey was a pro football player and he wasn't on everything so you knew his face you wouldn't know Jason Kelsey was an all-world offensive linemen. Centers are not huge. Cam Juergens kind of looks like a WWE guy. He really does. He's not like the size of some of these tackles or anything or the guards necessarily, but he's big enough to play guard in the NFL. He's done it. And, you know, I think when you put these factors together, they've got three massive guys, you know, that don't get exposed for being massive in every other fast of the game, right? You could draft guys

just for the tush push. You know, hypothetically, you just get the biggest guys in the world or the guys are the best leverage in the world are sumo wrestlers. But then every other play, they're going to be dysfunctional. You know, like if their specialty is the tush push, this is an extra credit course for these guys. They turned Jordan Milita into an all-world tackle. They didn't bring him in just to do the tush push. They taught him out to do the tush-push.

Same thing for Diggerson. Same thing for all these guys. So some of it at least is chalked up to Jeff Stoutland, skill development. Some of it is chalked up to, hey, being the first team to really commit to it and do it. Some of it is just chalked up to the other teams just aren't ready for it. And I think what's so interested in me is in the NFL, teams and departments and coaches spend decades like eons trying to think of ways to counter what offenses are doing. for instance. You know, like there's something like RPO's comes along

and there's an adjustment period and there's some teams that run it better than other teams, right? But like everybody can run an RPO. If you set your mind to it and you've got a quarterback can make quick decisions and you've got coaches that can take advantage of numbers games and leverage. But with the tush push, there seems to be only one team that can run it.

And so somebody's got to explain that to me. You know, before you stand up here and say, is not a skill play you know um it's an injury play which which to me is bullshit i mean like no one the league investigated it nobody got hurt doing push push you have better chance you like statistics you have a better chance of being hit by lightning than getting hurt during the touch push pretty crazy you have a better chance of getting attacked by a shark than you do getting hurt doing the tush push. You know why?

Because nobody's ever got hurt doing the tush push, according to the NFL. Not this year. So that's bullshit too. And so for people like Sean McDermott to be like, it's always been an injury risk with that play, but I'm going to run it when my season's online and fail at it. Come on.

You just don't have the guys. So you need to walk to your scouting department and say, hey, I need guys that can run the tush push. And then you've got to hope they can protect too. And you got to hope they can protect too. And you've got to hope that they can pull and run some of that gap scheme stuff you guys run. It's just too hard to do that the Eagles hit it out of the park with the guys that they've drafted and developed up front. And they got on this train before you and they're really fucking good at it.

And it's available to you as well, but you can't perfect it. And I'm not talking to Sean McDermott. I'm talking the whole league. I'm talking about Rahim Morris, who was complaining about it as well. I'm talking about Mark Murphy. I'm talking about anybody who's complaining about this play. just stop saying if you're going to say you want it gone just say out loud they're too good at it and we can't stop it just say that or get you a verne troier looking motherfucker and and get figure it out

you know like take up if it's so important cut a couple safeties and bring in some sumo wrestlers you know like and as nolan and i were sitting here like talking about because i really thought about it for like a day. How would you stop the tush push? Other than getting super aggressive on second down on like second and medium, so you never get to third and short, like that would maybe be my way of doing things. But good luck with the Eagles, like manning up and getting aggressive because they'll just throw a deep ball outside the numbers, which is probably the cheat code that makes the tush push so great. You can't keep them out of third and short by being a great because you can't be so aggressive on third and medium like third or second and five, second and four, like, like,

you're playing with fire then too the point is the solutions to the tush push the only stuff i can dream up is so outside the box like it's not even football people are saying it's not a football play you almost have to think about like the solutions not being football plays like i had an idea get one of those colin sanders from the saints you remember him from his cameo with the football this year which was just an absolutely electric five seconds But he's got to be 350, right? Or get somebody of his ilk and get Fred Warner and Dre Greenlaw right before the snap to pick him up in the air like this. And then just like stand at the line of scrimmage and drop him on Jalen Hertz.

Because the problem is it doesn't matter if you do, if you try to meet their force with force, they're going to win. number physics right physics are fucking undefeated it's a physics problem you're not going to be able to stop these guys trying to go this way you might every once a while but not a lot so you got to pick up one of these Colin saunders looking guys and drop him on top of jalen hurts so that he just goes down to the ground or get the biggest guy you have lay him down parallel to the line of scrimmage like three inches from the ball and when the ball snapped just start rolling just start rolling you know like that that's all i can think of yeah legitimately what what they already got everybody at the line of scrimmys they have overhang players trying to try to take care of the edges they got

two guys three jumpers they got guys digging out like the problem is the eagles are running this thing perfectly where they'll dig under it's like a shovel they dig under and then they lift up and so like there's just no with that kind of space you're fighting over there's no way i think you're onto something with the sumer wrestler and that's actually viable taking a page out of the eagles playbook with them going to australia to get my lot of through the international player uh pathway program the uh the top sumo wrestler in the world just retired actually uh turuno fuji um herroo we talked about him six four four 388 dog like i said uh your downward force i don't know if the nfl would okay this but i'd be okay

with it even if i'm an eagles fan like it would kind of be a little bit pro wrestling ish but you get one tush push stopper he's like we we we we hold a combine the nfl holds a combine international combine can you stop the tush push okay once we find that guy is probably a guy named like haystack somewhere in iowa he looks like butter bean probably and that guy travels around the country playing the eagles every week he's a league employee he's the heel or the hero depending on who you're who you're pulling for and like one week he runs out of the tunnel in a Dallas Cowboys uniform and he's employed on that he's a he does not count as a roster allotment because the play is so unstoppable I am all for like a contracted tush push killer give us your best

shot like anywhere in the world find me a guy and he just joins whatever team is playing the Eagles that week and tries to stop the tush push everybody knows that haystack comes out on the field on fucking third and short. The place goes not. You know what I mean? He's like a Marvel character. Yes, but he's like he's on every team. He's on whatever team's playing the Eagles, bro.

You know, like this dude's job would be incredible. Oh, yeah. He'd be like a rock star. If he was actually good at it, he'd be like a rock star. Traveling city to city stopping the tush push. Roger? Your move, man. But you can't just outlaw this.

the fucking thing and be like, oh, oh, it's not safe. Eight years ago, we used to run people down into wedges. I'm sorry. Are you the same coaches? I mean, like, come on. Talking about player safety. Nobody's gotten hurt. Your ego is bruised.

The tush push bruise my ego. Get more aggressive on second down, Sean. And I would tell it to his face. I met Sean at training camp when I went up to, I love visiting Buffalo, bro. You know I love the bills, but I would say, hey, Sean, bro. Like, just say you can't stop it. Just say that. And say it's really frustrating that you can't run it and you've got a six foot six

monster of a quarterback. That's how specialized and how good the Eagles have become at it. They've mastered something seemingly. very simple. Why is that? All right, well, enjoy Kyle Hamilton. I'm going to go back to enjoying my day. You're going to have Zach Ertz later in the week. That should be fun. You know, arrogant bastard. Fucking married to a, you know, Olympic athlete. He just bounced around from team to team on nimbly bimbley, catching balls and giving speeches in the playoffs, ripping off my speech and giving it to the commanders you know i got a phone to pick with this guy oh good looking

and shit listens to gospel and his buick that buick paid for i i don't like zach hurts rethinking this whole thing looks like fucking channing tatum oh i look like channing tatum you know on second thought i'm going to get colby parkinson on the fucking podcast or something this week fuck zach y'all take care y'all take care here's Kyle Hamilton what is up it's the butter king dairy expert this episode of the green light

podcast is brought to you by dea pizza featuring dairy free cheese now made with dea oak cream blend let's talk about foamoo fear of missing dairy it's real we've all had it the butter king has certainly had it I know when you hear about dairy free cheese you get a little

skeptical especially if you're a cheese and butter lover like me but day is set out to create the ooiest, guillious, dairy-free cheese pizza there is with absolutely no trade-offs. Dea pizzas are dairy-free and still deliver the rich, savory taste and total satisfaction that everyone craves and demands when looking for a frozen pizza to take home. Dea pizzas hit all the marks. Thin, crispy crust, flavorful toppings, including meatless options that taste meaty and cheese

that's rich, stretchy, and melts just like dairy. All thanks to their innovative Dea-oak cream blend. Dea has cured my faux moo, and now you don't have to fully commit to a dairy-free lifestyle to enjoy it. Thank God. So next time, I'm in the great state of Wisconsin, home to a lot of great dairy products. I might actually trick everyone and have some dairy-free cheese pizza. Make your next pizza night, faux-moo free with Dea. To learn more about Dea, please visit www.com.

Check them out on Instagram and TikTok or visit any major retailer across the U.S., including Whole Foods, Kroger, and Walmart. Coming soon to select Publix and Sprouts. All right, I'm here with all everything, safety. Pretty much, I think you can play my position. I think you play defensive end if you had to. Kyle Hamilton, Baltimore Ravens. How you doing, Kyle?

I'm doing well. Thanks for having me. Dude, great having you on. The number one thing I wanted to talk to you about was, with all your accolades, I think the most impressive one, is you are a Mensa member. Yeah, I was talking about this before we got on the pod, but Korean mother was not messing around when it came to academics.

We always played sports. My dad played basketball professionally, and my brother was older than me playing high school basketball, AAU, all that stuff. And she was like, that's good and all, but you need to make sure that you're academically the best. So she tested me in immensely when I was younger, and I think she's kind of been clinging on to that ever since.

So has that helped you in football? Do you feel like you were able to learn coverages and defenses easier than most guys? because of your academic success. Yeah, I would say so, especially like freshman year, college and rookie year in the NFL, like kind of just taking those, you know, they're easy installs, but to a new guy, it's just like, what am I looking at? So I think taking that into the meeting room and then actually applying it out into the field, just, you know, kind of being a little smarter, I think helps that a lot.

What do you think about, like, you know, for us from the outside looking in, y'all made such a turn at the end of the season to playing like an elite team. defense. And, you know, I know in the middle of the season, there were some explosives. There were, you know, penalties and that sort of thing. Was it as simple as you move into safety and being in one spot more? I know we talked about a little bit before the pod, but can you tell us what the big difference was for you all making that turn? Yeah, I think it's just communication, honestly. And, you know, how important that is on a football field, like from whoever has a dot getting the call out to then getting the checks out. And that was something I think we were lacking.

having 10 guys playing one thing and one guy playing the wrong thing. And now we're looking at the bulk over our heads. And obviously not acceptable, especially at the level of football that we play and the standard that the Ravens uphold on defense. And I think our DC, Zach Orr did a good job. We kind of, we kind of had like a keep a real meeting. I'm sure you've been in one of those before. It's just like, look, this is what you're doing wrong, you're doing this wrong, you're

doing that wrong. And coaches were like, I'm doing this wrong. So it wasn't just, they were just berating us with insults. It was kind of just like, we all need to figure it out, look ourselves in the mirror. like what's the problem and um i mean communication just execution got a lot better from that point on zack being so young did you see him kind of grow through the year yeah for sure i mean you know raven's fans have been spoiled to winning seasons for most of the existence of the raven so it's like when you when you come out of the gates owing two and your defense not doing well it's kind of like all right well

who do we need to fire yeah and they were looking at zio like everybody's just on zio from the start and you know he's he's played the game he was he was all right all pro so he knows what it's like to have these ups and downs and you know fans are going to be fans by the same time nobody in the building really wavered and we all believed in him he has great people around him doing a good job so I think he kind of took that in stride and we were better for it what did dean P's ad did you spend a lot of time with him when he came in the building yeah I actually interviewed the Falcons when Dean was there coming into the draft so I'd met him then and then he he came in was helping with the DBs a good bit yeah I think they were kind of just like all right

they're struggling the most like let's just put you in their room and help you help them figure it out but i think he did a good job just coming in and just simplifying everything like he he even showed showed us some like old film of ed reed running a player that we would install and we'd run it next week and it would work and um i think having good football minds like that around the building just helped in general we were talking a little bit about how difficult it is to playing the a fc you know um having to go through josh having to go through patrick Going back to the last game you played in, what makes Josh so difficult? I mean, everybody knows he's a tough tackle.

Yeah. And everybody knows you have to take away his ball hand side or he could kill you outside of numbers. But what is it about him? Do you think it's his vision? Do you think it's kind of like just the explosiveness? What makes him great? Yeah, I think everything you just said.

But in our game, he didn't have like the best game ever. I wasn't like that. No. Yeah, I think what makes him so good is like those got to. I have at moments. Yeah. He makes them most of the time. Obviously, it didn't go their way in the AFC championship.

But, like, fourth and one, we all know who's getting the ball. It's just like he's just forced to be dealt with. And the offense operates so quick and efficiently with him in there. And he trusts those guys around them. They everybody in the media is talking about how they don't have anybody around him to make plays. But they kind of, they do, though. I think it's just because they don't have that one guy who's all pro, whatever.

Like, they have everybody, all the person. receivers. You know, Mark Cooper comes in there doing his part. They got three, four good running backs who they just rotate in and out. They use them out of the backfield too. Yeah, for sure. And the O line plays great together and it's just, you know, Josh kind of keeps that whole thing going. So outside of all the freak stuff that he does, I think he just operates at a really high level. No question. The run game's a big part of what they do now. Yeah. I think that's one of the most underrated things about them. All the gap scheme stuff. They're so physical. And Cook, I mean, you coming from the second level, a really explosive cut guy.

Yeah, yeah. You know, who's the guy in the NFL in your first couple years that you've been like, he's the toughest tackle? It could be a slot receiver. It could be a back. Zay Flowers is up there. I haven't had to actually tackle him. Right.

You're just seeing him every day. Tagging him off in practice. I'm like, it's annoying. He's literally like, his stop start is one-on-one. People who have actually had to tackle, probably Seekwan. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know, he's built, like, super thick, but he doesn't really move like that. Like, he moves, like, Jemir Gibbs in a Sequan build.

Like, it's kind of crazy. And, like, he's just got a second gear. Like, once he sees the crease open, and you got to make sure your angle's right. Because if it's not, like, it's... Yeah, I had to tackle against them. He really almost should have broke it. Like, I thought I was going to come and, like, get a clean, like, we call it, like, a profile tackle. Like, just clean shot.

and he just kind of exploded through there. I'm like, damn, I kind of got lucky with that. But yeah, he's just, he's kind of a different beast right now. Because he can kind of make a cut at full speed. Yeah. You know what I mean? He's not dropping his pads to make the cut. He's going to make a cut at 20 miles an hour.

Right. Nobody at that size is moving like him. Right. So, yeah, I mean, no surprise he went for 2K. And the guy, yeah. And the guy who you had to line up across from in practice, Derek Henry. Yeah. Who it's hilarious when I watch all 22 of y'all.

and it's the angle behind him. He looks bigger than all the defensive players. Right, right. DeLignment included. Yeah, it's crazy. Definitely the backers. Did you all do any live stuff in camp? Did you have to fit him up yet or just thud him up?

Just thud him up. What's that feel like? Yeah, I know. It's kind of funny. You know, he's honestly kind of chill in practice because he knows that like, he knows nobody really wants to, like, throw him up for real. So I thought him up one time. I thought it up pretty good.

And I think he went to the ground. And I think after practice, this is like one of the first camp practices. After practice, he was like, yo, Cam, like, I'm not going to run you over, bro. Right. I know, you know I'm big, like, whatever. I know you think you got to bring whatever you got to bring to thud me up. But like, let's just be professional. Like, just thub me up, let me go, whatever.

I was like, okay, I got it. But everybody kind of had to, you know, get over that hump with DeHen. And he doesn't wear down. No, no. I mean, year to year, week to week. Yeah. It's almost like he builds up throughout the game. Yeah, it's scary.

Yeah. I mean, it's scary as shit thinking about playing a guy like that. And then Lamar, obviously, like, one of my favorite players in the league, but what I love about him, and maybe you can speak to this is his leadership, like the teammate he seems to be. You know, like, we were cracking up when he got on the plane and Marlon had him on live. He's like, bro, like, you know, moments like that to hearing him talk before that game, like, it's dead serious. like we're not making friends here like he just seems like kind of he's got a position player

attitude but he's a quarterback yeah no i think everybody kind of feeds off that because you know people lead in a different kind of manner yeah some people are super raw raw super motivational speeches whatever may be and there's nothing wrong with that um i just think the way lamar was brought up and the way that he just knows how to play football is just like look like this is what it is like i'm not going to sugarcoat it like i don't care about them at all he's going to say that to the media it's like I only care about you boys. I only care about winning a Super Bowl. Yep.

And all the, like, high speech, you got to figure that out of yourself. He's like, look, just be ready to play. Yeah. And, you know, that kind of takes all the Disney channel out of it. And it's just like, let's just play football. It doesn't have to be, remember the Titans. Like, you know, we're going out there. We're going to get a win.

You know, going back to the playoffs, like, I think sometimes it's as simple as, like, it's hard to win a damn Super Bowl. And you're just not going to get there every year. And it's going to take some time. But I also feel like, and you tell me if you think this, accurate it's not that y'all aren't good enough it's just there'll be a moment in the game where you don't realize until later but it was a big moment the big moments i feel like y'all got those like Lamar gets the ball at the end of the game you're going and score right that's the big moment

but it's like the little things what do you all have to do to get over the hump in the playoffs and get to that next level yeah i think you know if the fast starts one because a fc championship last year i think i think they got the ball first and went down like 14 play drive got two four downs like scored touchdown yeah and we were we had like the best defense in the league that season and then the next drive they come out the chiefs that is next job they come out and score another touchdown now we're on the side of then like shit like we haven't experienced this all year but to our credit we locked back in and they scored like three points the rest of the game our offense responded after the first touchdown we gave up last year and came out

and scored and it's just like now we're playing catch up yeah we can't can't do that and then this year you know offense came out fast scored a touchdown defense had a pretty bad drive you have up a touchdown and then we turn the ball over and now it's like all right they get the ball after half and now we're playing from behind so that middle eight is a big deal super important coaches talk about it and we talk about as players but i don't think people realize fans how important that that time is before the half and straight out yeah they um the bill scored a touchdown i think going in a half time so it's 21 7 and a half and they get the ball or something like that yeah and they get the ball like it could it got ugly and defense was like we got to go one drive at a time so i think we got a three an hour

they got one first down coming out of halftime give the ball back to our offense they go score and we get another stop offense scores like if we if we weren't locked in on defense like that could have been yeah no but you're locked in the second half yeah we locked in and get ourselves a chance to win just no question go our way when you're playing the chiefs man i know you've had some matchup assignments with kelsey and there's you know even as an older guy there's very few as good is him. But what makes him so great? Because like if you man him up, you know, that's one thing, but in zone, it feels like he really, it's those basketball instincts and the unspoken language between him and Mahomes. Yeah. What makes him so great still at this age? I think it's what you just

said. I was actually talking somebody about the other day. Like, I think your best bet against him specifically is playing man. You have to. Yeah, you just got to win in man because you play zone against them. Like him and Pat, like it's just like from when the ball snap, they both know what coverage you're in and Kelsey's just going to break his route off to beat whatever coverage you really can't do anything about it like we were in cover three I remember this a FC championship and I was Carl Flat player buzz out to the flat like got to my drop I'm 12 by one outside the numbers and Kelsey sees me going so he's running a sail route and sees me and just turns around and stops right in the hook and you know Pat just

dots it right to him and you know that we had the right coverage it's just yeah he He changed the route mid-play, and it's just stuff like that. Two guys have been doing it for a while. It's just tough. How different is that from, like, seeing a rookie quarterback in his set of receivers or whatever? Like, there's not that improv as much with other teams? Yeah, for sure. Like, somebody like, Bo Nix, who's super talented.

I think he's going to be a super good quarterback in this league. Like, he's, he made it, like, good plays against us. He's a big Broncos fan. Except I don't think he liked what y'all did to them. No, yeah. That was a great. Yeah, no, I think, no, Bo's, we came out of high school together. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.

Cool dude, good quarterback. Y'all are going to be good years to come, but, uh, happy to hear that. He's real happy. Patrick Sertan was, Pat Sertan was at the party last night, and this dude didn't get to go to the party. No, he was freaking out. Yeah, I'm sorry. But, yeah, Bo, like, I was super talented, but I think they're going to give him a few deep shots a game that are just like, yo, throw it up like third and long. Especially sudden.

Right. Yeah, if it gets picked, it's a punt or whatever. But other than that, I think Sean Payton did a good job of, like, run the offense through him. But it's just like, if it's not there, check down. Yeah. It's not there, check down. Like, be smart. Let's keep the ball, especially when you got Lamar and Derek Henry, or other.

out of the ball like all right let's just keep the ball out of their hands and whereas like kind of guys like pat josh allen there you can be like okay well i've seen it all so yeah you got to do with me kind of thing no question i you talk about kelsey you know and is it accurate to say that if you're playing zone match you're going to be able to get the matchup you want if you're andy reed like if you're playing the eagles you can move kelsey around and dictate your matchup is that kind of why you would rather play man on him, not just the other stuff, but also knowing who your assignment is. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I think just from a defense perspective, like, man is probably the hardest physical coverage, but the easiest mental. I got this guy, I got one of my one-on-one.

And the chiefs do a lot of stuff messing with your eyes, stuff like that in zone. Like Andy Reid's probably one of the best, if not the best in the league, drawn up stuff to mess with you. You could have busted coverage in week three, and it comes up in the Super Bowl. Right. And it's like, if you haven't fixed it, it's touchdown. like those return motions in the red zone that they recycle in the Super Bowl. Yeah, it's like, we're running to you. And by the time you realize, oh, yeah, it was that play two years ago, they already scored. Right, it's on Twitter.

It's on Twitter. After the game, yeah, you don't find out until then. But yeah, I think, you know, if you have the guys that can do it, you kind of man up across the board, I 100% just play man against them because it keeps everybody's job simple. It can keep, you know, we can keep a backer in the box to give us, like, help underneath or go spy pad if we need to. whoever is a quarterback. But yeah, it just kind of simplifies everything.

When you talk about the Eagles, you know, I look at this group and I wonder, like, are they going to be able to stop the run? You talk about the challenges of facing this offensive line. Not only that, but having a quarterback run element, which you guys have on your team. For somebody at home that doesn't exactly understand why it messes up the allocation of resources, having that unblocked player or that, you know, that unaccounted for a player, can you explain to people why the quarterback run game adds an element of uncertainty as a support player yeah it's especially in that rezone stuff that they do a lot of the time sometimes their design keeps

yeah but it puts that end and a bind and you know unless you got a like a crash call where you're automatically tackling right back or a crash call yeah or a cue call where you're you know faking like you're on a runback going to just quarterback if that if that d ends just playing like a surf technique You're trying to play both. You're going to be late on both of them, honestly. Like, you're not going to play the dive as good as you want to. You're not going to play the keep as good as you want to. So I think – and then you've got to bring the safety into it.

Now you can't get to a lot of your stuff that you want to get to kind of handicapping your defense. And honestly, like, I gave up a touchdown this year to Goddard on, like, a simple RPO. Yeah. It was like an RPO slant flat to the boundary. And it was gun near. and, you know, Hertz had the RPO going and then pulled it like he was going to run. And I'm triggering, like, I'm a man on Goddard, and I see him threatening to run. I didn't feel like I had helped to go tackle the run.

So now I'm kind of look at him and then he just throws the ball out to Goddard, turns up the sideline. So it just puts everybody just kind of in hesitation. It's a numbers game. Yeah. I mean, it really is. Yeah. And, you know, I was watching, gosh, who was it that was splitting those guys out? Washington. Washington will put those two stacks out wide and just get you to, you know,

kind of show yourself. Right, yeah. And you have to defend the whole damn field. And I think that's the way offenses are going. It's like the scariest thing for me is, as my career went on was everything was more lateral, you know, like souped up West Coast offenses. You got to cover grass. Who do you think is a coordinator in the NFL that uses the whole field that maybe doesn't get enough credit that you faced? That's a great question. Honestly, I mean, I mean, commanders. Yeah. That's probably the main one.

Like Kingsbury and their offense is just like everybody tried to kind of downplay it. It's like a college offense, whatever, but I mean, it worked. So you can't really say anything about it. There's a lot of college elements into his game. Yeah, no, for sure. But it's like he's going to get you to show your hand, especially with a rookie quarterback, it's going to help get you out of your disguise, kind of give him a better picture of what's going on. And then, you know, I think he did a great job of catering the offense to his players.

He's going to give Terry quick stuff to start the game. Just get him in the flow, get Jaden in the flow. And then you got B-Rob, Eckler, good third-down backs. And then a bunch of other guys like Ertz had a great year. My old buddy, Ertz still doing. No, he's still going. He's still going. And then O-Lon's playing well together.

It's like once you have those pieces and they all trust each other, like his offensive system, I feel like it's like water, like kind of just flows. And, you know, they did a good job this year running it. I mean, they lost that NAC championship game, but they still put up like 30 points. And they turned the ball over three times. Yeah. I mean, you know, and they, credit to the Eagles,

they took it away. But you just can't be in that game. Yeah. And, you know, they go down the first drive of the game and they go on fourth twice. And then they lay up. Right. Like, to me, I'm like, you don't want to chase points in that situation.

Yeah. Jane Daniels. Mm-hmm. Is the kid, I mean, I think he's special. Yeah. Like, like, I think there's four guys in the NFL. who are the Mount Rushmore quarterbacks. You know, it's your guy, it's Josh, it's Patrick, and it's Joe.

And unfortunately, they're all in the AFC. But I think he could be the fifth guy. Do you feel that way about him, or is there somebody else that you think is next? No, I feel that way about him for sure. He's definitely going to be in that conversation. I think the biggest thing I saw from him this year is just like his demeanor.

Yeah. I feel like all the guys you just named kind of have that. Cool. Yeah, like you're not really. gonna mess with me mentally whatever i'm gonna do what i do you gotta defend it so especially like all those guys josh lamar pat all those guys joe it's kind of just got this like swagger about him and jaden has that and you can see it and um had a good great year obviously you know he's probably in top six conversations right now so um he's only gonna get better from that and who's that other who's the other guy in the

six because you know people say herbert and and you know like i think he's got that ability. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I think just based on success, you just got to go Jalen. Jaylin. Yeah, because he's there. Yeah. I mean, people talk down on him a lot. Yeah. I mean, he's been to two Super Bowl. No question. He's on one of the better teams in the league every year. So I respect winning and were you out in January, February a lot. So, I mean, I got to kind of give it to him. No question. Talking about your height and just how unusual your profile was coming into the draft and we were shooting the breeze outside talking about how it almost worked against you. Yeah. Did you have to do anything at the combine to mitigate that?

Yeah, no, I was, you know, obviously everybody weighs in and does the measurements at the combine. I was probably, well, I was 20, so I was 20 years old at the combine. Damn, you were young? Yeah, no, I was young. So what was your, how old were you, your freshman year? I was 18. Okay. And you left a little early. My boyfriend. birthdays in March so okay what's your birthday March 16 okay yeah same as same as same as should I should know this my mom and I'm the 20 I'm the 28th sorry mom yeah yeah I got like five birthdays in March I got a seven March wife in March so yeah you were young yeah no but um but I was still like growing so um honestly think I've grown a little bit since I've been in the league but

so I'm at the combine and we're doing the measurements in front of all the teams and get up there and they're patting your hair down doing the height thing and I'm like, crunching my neck down like this. Trying to be like 6-4 at most. That's the dumbest, I mean, that you have to do that. But I'm like, everybody's already thinking like, oh, is he too big to play safety?

He's going to play a linebacker. I'm like, I'm not a linebacker. So I was like, I can play safety. But, you know, how things go with the combine, you know, narratives start getting thrown around. And then you become what the narratives are. But honestly, I ended up getting trapped to the perfect place.

and they put me in a great position. Did you feel like there was somebody else that was close? Were you talking to other teams that you thought you might end up with? So, Philly. Philly. Come on, Howard. I knew that Philly liked me and draft night. It's like, so Houston had picked 13.

And my agent, I think, was talking to Howard or something, somebody from Philly. It was like, if you don't trade up, because they had 15 or 16, it's like, if you don't trade up right now, Houston's going to pick them. And so Philly traded up. And I was like, oh, I'm going to Philly. And then they drafted Jordan Davis.

Yeah. I was like, oh, this is like, that was like my draft night moment where I'm like, I literally thought I was going to get picked. Like, and then it just sees, I don't get a call. I'm like whatever. And then the next pick Baltimore pick. They were OD on D Lyman, man. Yeah.

They're just picking Georgia Baltimore. Yeah, no. I mean, it's been working out for him. It has been working out. It has been. What's your, favorite coverage to run that's a little bit exotic i love a good like third down fire zone like freaky look kind of pressure like give you something that we showed you in week five and then

pull it back out week 12 or tweak it a little bit and i love just seeing like dns drop to the right spot and then no offense i know you don't know we don't know where we're going at yeah yeah yeah over there in the flat like generally yeah somewhere over there what happens if the play goes longer Yeah. But no, it's just like when everybody's mugged up and then post-snap, it just looks like something completely different. And then we get off the field. Like we had one against, talking about just turning the Chiefs podcast, but we have one. You can't get away from these guys.

We had one against the Chiefs last year. I think it was in the second quarter. And then Pat always does this cadence thing. It's like, whatever. I don't want to give up the sauce. But, no, I want them to keep doing it. Spread the gospel. but uh no so we we got him on the cadence so like the first one patrick queen's showing like he was

gonna loop around like to the left side and balls on our left hash they're right and i held the look like pretty good like i was at nickel overhang like i was gonna play like scene flat or something so he makes a protection slides the line protection to the right and then i time up the second one and then pat drops out Kyle van noi drops out um um blitzing and now we got overload to the right and then we got off the field and it was like a great feeling. Do you love rushing when you get to do it? Yeah, it's...

I feel like you could probably rush as well as any second level player because of your gifts. Yeah, I've actually been working. I don't know if you know if Chuck Smith is... I know Chuck, yeah. So me and Chuck get some pass rush stuff. He's down in Atlanta, right?

Well, he was actually with the Ravens past couple years. Because he was based in Georgia? Yeah, he did private sector. I think he still might do it. So they brought him up to work with the Ravens. Yeah, so he's like pretty much pass rush. So what kind of moves you?

pick up so far cross chop i love it i'm trying to get my spin down at some point i how are you doing the spin right now um i don't know the full terminology but i like fake how do you think i feel talking coverage with you guys go ahead whatever y'all say the ice pick yeah you got an ice pick so i'll like go over with the opposite arm and then like i'm trying to cross chop yeah and then spin back that way i don't know if this would ever work for you but i used to love spinning off a post so like you come in you put your hand on their outside pad so they start to settle into an anchor and then you you whip that ice pick around which is a nice change up I might have to come move and then and that's chuck about it I want to step on Chuck's toes and then if you can get a swipe down yeah two-hand swipe

I do that a lot to backs like I feel like backs and tackles I'm mostly rushing against backs and tackles right exactly rushing up on the on the edge I actually have gotten a good bull because they don't really expect the tackles. Yeah, you bowled a big guy. I did bull somebody. No names? No names. No names.

You don't want the next time you come in there. No names. He's going to remember this podcast. Right. But no, I got him with a bull. And, you know, it's kind of funny. Me and Chuck, it's kind of like a little thing that we have. Yeah.

I'm the only one that he really works with all pass rush. Like, I'm a DB. But we just get a little stuff here and there. I'll try to pull it out. I'll tell you what. Back in the day, back in the day, seven years ago, when I was with Philly, Jack, Malcolm Jenkins used to come over every day in rush with us. He's useful.

Yeah. And like the most, the best advice I got from past rushing is just like, you got to have a plan. Yes. Because there's been so many times where I run in there, I'm like, oh shit. He didn't fall for that. And now I'm on my back. Got to have a counter. Yeah, for sure.

You got to have a counter. With your rushers, man, I thought Kyle was, and I play with Kyle. I love Kyle. I thought he was such a shot in the arm. It seemed like from the outside end from like a leadership standpoint and just like a like I know where you're supposed to be up front because it feels like in y'all's defense it's all about being exact and you know like when when we're in new england that's a complicated ass defense did he give you guys that boost up front that it appeared like he did from the outside yeah for sure

and you know we we're super talented up front like we got super talented young guys like dafeoay and medibke um and kvie you know he had double-digit Texas year yeah he did and a bunch of you guys contributing in that room and you know kv's there calling the games and stuff like that on third down or whatever we're doing when we give a just rush call and then you know being coordinated in that rush especially against the quarterbacks we're going against like yeah josh and um bo nicks like guys were trying to keep in the guys we're trying to keep in the pocket same guy if you don't have people in their rush lanes like it's just going to be a terrible day so i think he did a good job kind of orchestrating all that and also you know getting sex too who's next on that do you

We saw some guys step up this year. I thought Washington played really well. Yeah, no, yeah, yeah. Shout out to Ardares, Washington. He made some big plays. Yeah. That played down at the pylon and Houston. Yeah.

Like that's the difference between that being 51 to 2 and it being 2720. Right. You know what I mean? Yeah. He's the only person on the field who doesn't know how big is. Yeah, he plays like it. Like he plays like he's my size.

Yeah. And it's awesome. Nobody told him. Yeah, he doesn't know. He doesn't know he's 5'9 on a good day sorry AD but he he throws his body in there and it's gonna hype everybody else up and seeing somebody like that and he's way it his turn to kind of have his shot and he took advantage of it answer your question though one guy I think it's gonna be really really good is

Nate Wiggins yeah yeah he's a stud and he's one of those corners just like if he could line up every single play and play man he would do it right just coach leave me alone I just want I just want to lock this dude up yeah and you know it is awesome to see that competitor and a young dude like that, and I think he's going to be really good. I want to ask you about two guys before we wrap up. Receivers, do you play a good bit? Number one, George Pickens, who I feel like can be special. I mean, he shows those flashes.

How hard is it to play a guy who really understands laid hands? He probably is the best in football right now at that. Honestly, he's probably the best fayball catching in football. Just based off that, he's 6'4, super athletic. He got crazy body control. He doesn't move, like, anybody I've ever seen move on football. I'm with you, bro. It's weird, like how he moves.

Like, it's kind of hard to tackle him just because he's, like, his vision and his way he moves. But I was watching Hardnogs, and Mike T. said, like, throwing him a phase, like, throwing him a hitch. Yeah. I'm like, honestly, he's not lying because, like, it's, like, he's going to draw the P.I just because his hands are so late. You don't know when to swipe. Or you can turn and look from the ball, and he's going to dunk on you. Like, he catches those fade balls. Like, that's a big part of our game plan, just taking him out the game.

Super talented, a good dude, too. Yeah. And how about Higgins, man? Because I think if he's in Cency or if he's somewhere, if he goes somewhere else, you know, there's some number two, so I'm like, could he be Batman at his next stop? Or is he going to be right? He's Batman. Yeah, he's just have two Batman's.

You know what I mean? That's what they have right now, too. Yeah. What makes him great? Is it just the size or just the elite hands or, you know, because for you, you don't run up on too many people that got the same radius. Right, yeah. I'd say a lot of that.

I think it helps having. Jamar. Yeah. Because we got to take care of him. Yep. At the same time. And, you know, they both compliment each other really well. And you got Joe throwing the ball at the same time.

But with T, you know, he can line up inside, outside. He can run any route. He's going to run over the middle, get hit. He doesn't care. Great hands. I think he's kind of underrated in his just, like, how smart he is in terms of like running routes and his awareness of where he is on the field. Yeah.

I think that's kind of underrated as a receiver, just knowing where you're at. Knowing where your quarterback wants you to be when the play is over. I think that's why you see a lot of times in the red zone when and Jamar is good at it too. Like when they're doing the scramble drill, like they're always catching touchdown. In the corner of the end zone. It's crazy. Like on third and whoever, third and however long, they're usually going to T. Right.

T can go get you whatever route you want to. And, you know, you're going to focus on Jamar too. So I hope he's not a sensee. You can say that out loud. Yeah. I hope he's not a sissy, but I'm sure they're going to try to get him back, but he's another good player. I know you don't maybe enjoy playing them as much as I enjoy watching those games, but they are fun. Yeah, no, it's always fun playing.

Yeah. All right, last one. You hear Super Bowl Week, man. I think you guys get there. I think you get there soon, and I think you get one. And I'm wondering what kind of visions in your head you got when it comes to, like, imagining that day. Because I just remember for 10 years of my career, wondering what it's going to be like, do you have thoughts of, like, what it's going to be like, do you have thoughts of, like, what it would. would be like honestly I think that's kind of I was just talking my girlfriend about this like

Super Bowl is like the one thing that I haven't really done like in terms of football I mean I haven't won national championship college but like I was all American high school all American college I've been all pro in the NFL and like that's all good and well like tell my grandkids that but like winning a super bowl is like you literally reached the pinnacle of what you've been doing since you're five years old But like you can check that bugs. Obviously more work to do after, but like Super Bowl champion, nobody can ever take that way from you. So when that day comes, I don't know, I'm not a cryer.

I didn't even get close to crying at the draft. You're going to cry. But I don't know. I might. You could cry. If I cry, then everybody else is going to start crying. It's going to be an ugly Super Bowl celebration. Really?

I just started. I couldn't stop. Yeah. My kid was on the field. He's picking up confetti. That's probably crazy. And that's the, it's the little things like that. You get to scoop up some confetti.

I got it in my office. Yeah. The parade, man. You're like a little kid again. Oh, you know, it's the one moment where you're just like the king. Like everybody's the king. Everybody knows floats is we had a million people. I'd never seen a million people in my life in one place.

There was a million fucking people in downtown Philly. I'm looking at them all. I hope you get that, man. I hope so, too. It's going to happen. Baltimore might burn down. Yeah. Baltimore might burn down.

It'll be a fun parade, though. Yeah, well, I wish you the best, man. I appreciate it. It's fun to watch you play. Thank you. When I watch you, I say, what must it be like to be able to get anywhere on the field very fast? And take, like, three steps. I appreciate it.

It's fun to watch, man. Thank you.