Pardon My Take - CFB w/ Andy Staples, NFL with SB Champion Mitch Schwartz + Hot Seat/Cool Throne

Episode Date: December 1, 2021

MNF recap and the WFT has been upgraded to goodish while Russell Wilson continues to get a pass for not being good this year. CFB craziness and playoff rankings(00:02:29-00:27:50). Hot Seat/Cool Throne(00:27:50-00:44:58). Andy Staples joins the show to talk about the wild last 48 hours with Lincoln Riley and Brian Kelly, plus what dominoes will fall next and picks for CFB Championship Saturday(00:46:55-01:35:05). Super Bowl Champ Mitch Schwartz joins the show to talk about his career with the Chiefs and Browns, offensive line play in the NFL, what teams are playing well, letdown games, and tons more(01:36:36-02:18:07)You can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/PardonMyTake

Hey, pardon my take listeners, you can find every episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. On today's part of my take, we've got a football too for great interviews. We have Andy Staples on to talk college football, the madness that has occurred in the last 48 hours in the college football landscape, as well as championship Saturday and college football playoffs. And then we have Mitch Schwartz, first-time guest, a four-time pro bowler, Super Bowl champ for the Kansas City Chiefs, talking O-line, talking the NFL right now, what's wrong maybe with Russell Wilson in the Seahawks, who's playing well, great interview with him. We're going to recap Monday night football,

we'll touch a little college football before the rankings come out to our best guests. And then we have Hatsi Kulthrone, a great show for you and we're brought to you by our friends at Tostitos. Tostitos, the official chip and dip of the NFL. If you're watching football with your friends, you need two things, a TV and some Tostitos. End of list, no get-together is official until some Tostitos. The official chip and dip of the NFL get served. Maybe you're hosting the game, maybe you need something to snack on while listening to us. Doesn't matter, the occasion, if I was a betting man, I'd say, and I am, I'd say odds are you have a bag of Tostitos and some salsa in your kitchen right this second. If you don't, you're missing out. Plus they got all the

flavors for everyone, hint of lime, they have hint of guacamole, they have habanero, they have everything. Tostitos is the best. We love Tostitos. If you're watching football Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, you're eating Tostitos. You have to be eating Tostitos because it's the greatest chip and dip combo in the world. Fans can get in the game with a custom recipe for their favorite teams at Tostitos.com slash recipes. Tostitos, the official chip and dip of the NFL. Thank you very much to our friends at Tostitos. Okay, let's go. Welcome to part of my take presented by Tostitos, the official chip and dip of the NFL. Today is Wednesday, December 1st, and we did it boys. We all won our games this week. Week

12 goes down in the books. Slap it off. Scoregami of sorts. First time ever in the history of the show. The history of the show. Washington football team won Monday night to cap it off. The Bears started it on Thursday. The Jets, the Dolphins, the Patriots, a five and oh sweep. What would that have paid? Probably pretty nice. That's a good question. I think Billy's got the answer. Billy. I think I saw that for $100 bet it'd be $2,000. So you'd still be very, very far in the negative if you had bet that every single week since 2006. That's fine. It happened this time. We're all in a one game winning streak for the first time in history of the show. That's pretty impressive, guys, especially considering that we have to do this with the Jets, the Bears, the Dolphins,

and the Washington football team. Yes. Hank. I think that stat might have been wrong, by the way. I think it might be more. I think it's got to be closer to 20. Yeah. It's got to be more. I'm just doing the math in my head because the Bears were a short favorite. The Dolphins were a short favorite. Yeah, it's 2000. Oh, okay. All right. So my apologies, Billy. You still could have, if you'd done it just this year, you would be up. There it is. Exactly. The 2021 prop bet of the part of my take parlay is it's an earner right now. Let's do it. Let's do it again. I feel pretty good about it. I feel dangerously good about the football team. In fact, I feel so good about the football team that I'm starting to now feel bad about the

football team because I should never be confident with this franchise. It's been, I think, three weeks since an embarrassment. Yeah. That's shocking. Well, I actually think that if you're talking about the entire teams of this show, we are the Roy G. Biv. We're the colors of the rainbow in terms of football teams. You have the Patriots that are bona fide good. I think the Washington football team is good ish. I think the Dolphins are getting good. The Bears are bad and the Jets are awful. You have the whole spectrum of where our football teams lay. It feels good right now. I'm just getting the sneaking suspicion that the hairs on the back of my neck are starting to stand up. And this is just through years and years and years of learned experience, which is when things

start to go good for this team, eventually something bad is about to happen. I hope I'm not jinxing the team. The RG three hat is three and oh now I found that for five bucks in Times Square, but it's running into maybe an unstoppable force this weekend against the Raiders, which is the coin flip guy that posted this on Reddit. He's got the coin flip guy has won every single game this year based on his coin flip that he did before week one. And now he's got the Raiders beating the football. I don't know if I can beat a coin that actually reminded me. Do you know that on someone alerted to me to this after the Bears won on Thursday on Red Line Radio, the preview of the season, we went through the schedule. I'm 11 and oh, I'm 11 for predicting

Bears wins and losses. That's pretty impressive. I have though a win going against the Cardinals this week because I thought the Cardinals weren't going to be that great. So it's probably going to end this week, but I'm 11 and oh, I'm the coin flip guy. I'm the human coin flip guy. It's also the Dennis Green game. Yes, which just that the uniform matchup. It always brings back to 2003, 2004, 2006, maybe a little bit later than that. The Matt Liner game where your defense just kind of like came alive in the second half. But yeah, I'm I'm happy with the way that the football team played against the Seahawks on Monday night. Yeah, they're good. I thought we that was like an imposing of our will. It wasn't a whooping. It wasn't a clown and it wasn't a beatdown,

but it was kind of an imposing of the will. We should have won that game a lot more easier than we did where at the end, you know, obviously we had a left footed punter that was in as our kicker who was one for six lifetime on field goals in college. So we didn't want to kick a field goal to go up 11 points at the end. We still ended up with 42 minutes of possession compared to 18. That means you're it's 23 and oh no, which yeah, which means 23 and oh, I feel pretty good about about how we looked last time. But the right now I'm kind of realistic. The ceiling on this team is kind of where you were last year, losing the Nickelodeon game. Yeah, that's what it feels like it's all culminating to honor and a privilege to lose the Nickelodeon games. The other story

out of this game, I do think the Washington football team, they are good ish. They are not good like yet. I think if they win next week, if they went in the Raiders, now they're like, OK, that's four in a row. Like you can't you have to be a good team to win four in a row in the NFL. So they're good ish trending towards good. And it seems like, you know, we've talked about it ad nauseam, but with seven teams making the playoffs, everyone's kind of in the hunt. They're in the playoffs right now. We're in the playoffs right now. So the other story, though, coming from this game is Russell Wilson. I mean, incredible that he's come back from this injury. Maybe he came back a little early. Free DK. I'm with you, Hank. Free DK. It was it was

tough watching that last night because they didn't even target him in the first half. DK Metcalf is an elite receiver. He would have broken my heart if he had done the dog piss celebration, which I think he was wide open on the two point conversion. He was wide open. I actually I text him before the game. I was like, so you know, if you do the dog piss celebration, I have to pay your fine after you beat me friendship over with DK. And he's like, don't worry, bro. I'm not going to even get a target. So it's like the fourth quarter. Someone pointed out that Russell Wilson just hasn't thrown the ball to him since the only fans thing happened. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Russell Wilson. Is he the the guy who gets the most excuses made for

in the NFL in terms of quarterbacks? I feel like Stafford. No, but people clown on Matt Stafford. Like Russell Wilson. How many times do we have to hear this? Oh, line's bad. How many times do you have to hear that, you know, he's injured right now? Like he he is not playing good football. He's not been playing good football since week 10 last year. He's had some playoff bus like Peyton Manning. It's weird to me maybe because he's so he's so nice and like positive, but it's just very bizarre to me that like Russell Wilson, he's not a top five quarterback right now. No, he's not. He's not. It's probably I think the injury does have a lot to do with it. But but then you was bad last year at the end of the stretch. I think the injury has a lot to do with

it, but you also have to ask yourself. You just made excuse for him. No, but wait, you let me finish. Can I finish? Yeah. He is also the person that decided to come back four games too early from the injury. Correct. So that's completely on him. But I'm talking about before that too. Like he wasn't, you know, he he had basically last year, the beginning of the season, everyone's like, how has he never gotten a MVP vote? Then they had that clunker member in the playoffs against Jared Goff, who's like was playing without a thumb, which everyone's like, how did this happen? They were a home game in the playoffs. Obviously no fans, but it's, I don't know. Maybe I would assume they're going to pick him over Pete Carroll in the front office, which is the right decision.

I just think it's more, it's how we frame everything. Russell Wilson is still a very good quarterback. Russell Wilson is someone that you'd love to have on your team. But Russell Wilson does get in the conversation of the top level guys. And I don't think he's a top level guy. He's not Aaron Rodgers, Patrick Holmes, Tom Brady. He's just not. I don't know if you heard this big cap, but Pete Carroll is the oldest coach in the NFL. Pete Carroll is 70 years old. He won't change his ways. He won't change his ways at this point. But his way, his way is typically worked for him. His way is to have Russell Wilson on his team, have a good defense and then have a good running back. And he's a guy that, like the culture,

he can keep a good, he's a positive guy. I think people want to play for him, but it's more helpful when you have good players that want to play for you than when you have bad players that really want to go out there and play for you. I just think it's, it's, it, Russell Wilson, every time I think, every time I bring him up, everyone's like, well, no, there's this and this and this and this. Again, he's a, he's a, uh, very good quarterback. But if you're talking about like the guys that are difference makers, week in and week out, he's not that. He hasn't been that for a little bit now. Right now, right now, I joke about Taylor Heinecke, how he's Brett Farrer with a bigger dick, but he is actually playing much better

than Russell Wilson right now. I would rather have Taylor Heinecke on my team right now, moving forward than Russell Wilson, which it sounds insane to say, especially thinking back like four or five weeks ago when he looked so bad, but he's, he's legitimately fun to watch. You don't know what you're going to get when Taylor Heinecke steps out there with Russell Wilson. Again, kind of like last week, everything is just boring now in Seattle. Please don't bore me. Yeah. People were trying to do the, the Seahawks have never played a normal game after last night's game. It was actually a very boring game. Well, except for the blocked extra point return for a two-point conversion. But like that, like there wasn't anything truly remarkable

about that game. It wasn't crazy Seahawks. The onside kick recovery at the end, if they had didn't count, if they had actually recovered it and kicked a field goal, that definitely would have counted. Yeah. If the Seahawks had obviously missed a two-point conversion, but if they won that game, yes, and the ball for like 10 minutes, that would have been a crazy game. Yes, that would have been crazy. But it felt like it was going to happen in the moment. It really did. I was, I was having heart attacks. My body was, I was looking at my body from an out of body, my brain was in the bathroom puking and my body was dead on the living room floor. Damn. That sounds severe. I mean, it was bad. It was, it was, I was going through, like I've

seen this movie before and it's going to happen again. But yeah, as a Washington football team fan, I'm ecstatic with the current state of the franchise. But again, it feels like, I was joking earlier. I said, it feels like we're peaking too soon and Bubba was like, you're five and six. Like that's, and yes, that is peaking too soon. As far as my standards go, is looking at the graph on ESPN of the playoff simulator and seeing that we're in the seventh seed in November. That is by definition peaking too soon. We shouldn't be there until like the last two weeks, 17 is when it feels about right for me to slip into that. But I'll take it any way I can get it. I get to look at that playoff simulator all week and see the little yellow W on there.

And then I feel good about myself. Yes. I want to play a quick game then about Russell Wilson. How many quarterbacks would you take going forward? So not even right, like just going forward for the rest of their career. Where would Russell Wilson rank in terms of quarterbacks in the AFC North? Hmm. I would take Joe Burrow, Joe Burrow, and Marjax. Everybody except for the Steelers kicker. No, but seriously, what would you like? It's just, it's interesting to me that he, it's weird. It's a very bizarre thing that, and I think a lot to do with the fact that he's a really nice guy and he's never done anything that's been bad. But he's not playing at a level that he gets talked about in a level that he's

not, it doesn't look like that. Are we, are we taking into account his contract or just his play? No, just, just say his play. Like I take Josh Allen ahead of Russell Wilson. Yes. I would, Mack Jones. Yeah, yeah. Lamar. Definitely. Yep. Joe Burrow. Yep. I'm going down, not Carson Wentz. Mahomes. Yep. Herbert. Yep. Yep. Dak. Yep. You said Heineke. I would probably if we were going the rest of career, maybe not. Yeah, maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe not. I wouldn't take, I would take Russ obviously over Jalen Hurts and Daniel Jones. Rogers I'd take Russ over. Brady. Wait, you'd take Russ over Rogers? No, Rogers, Rogers I'd take Russell. Oh yeah, you said Russ over. Yeah, Rogers I'd take over Russ. Well, here's the real question, Kirk Cousins.

No. Yeah, me too. I'm still, I'm still Russ above Kirk. Kyler. Stafford might be where I draw the line, but there's a lot. That's like, I mean, if you, if you listen out, he's probably playing around a 10 to 12 level quarterback right now. He's playing at like, at Turbo Tana Hill. Yeah. I'd rather have him than Tana Hill, but not by a whole lot right now. He's playing at somewhere between Turbo Tana Hill and Drunk Dak. Yep. That's, that's where, that's where he's at. That's actually kind of fun. Yeah. That's a good spot to be in. That makes him sound a lot more entertaining than he's been for the last couple of weeks. All right. Let's talk a little college forward. We have Andy Staples on. So we're going to break down everything, but it was a crazy 48

hours. Lincoln Riley to USC, Brian Kelly to Notre Dame. Everyone's leaving everywhere. People are being shocked that coaches could leave their players. We got the Brian Kelly text message. That's how his players found out, which does it suck? Yes. Is it shocking? Absolutely not. I actually think that's the most common way for players to find out right now. Can you imagine how crazy it would be if Brian Kelly got hired by another school and he was able to tell his team that before anything ever leaked out? The text message is the way to go. It's also just very funny to me because the way the media works now, if anyone knows, everyone knows, right? So like the argument was being made while Brian Kelly was recruiting a week ago. Well, a week ago,

he was still the coach of Notre Dame. If he stopped recruiting, everyone would know that something was up. It kind of just shines a light on what college football is when the coaches that are with Brian Kelly at Notre Dame say we found out via text after, or for media reports, after we just left a recruits house trying to recruit them. So we look like assholes. It's like, yeah, that sucks. But that's kind of how it happens. If you're at the top level of the game, you're going to have to be making secret backroom deals all the time. All the time. And this is just, it's the reality of the situation. Also, finding out via text, yeah, that's how everyone finds out everything these days. Every bad news. No, just everything in general. People don't

actually do anything anymore. They don't actually work. It's just why I text somebody something and they text somebody else something to make something happen. And then they text me back saying, yeah, we took care of that thing it's taken care of. And then I text somebody else being like, Hey, we're doing this. No one actually like gets out and does anything that's not related to texting. We live in the cloud constantly. But yeah, it's the whole the whole world is upside down in college football. It is crazy that like the the power five to power five coaching movement that never really happens. And then it happened in two consecutive days with four blue blood programs. People are mad at Lincoln Riley in Oklahoma. I don't again, you can't like I would

feel a lot worse. I felt worse about it like years ago when or not even years like a few years ago, when players couldn't transfer openly and free as freely as they can now because that did always suck when it was like you go to a school for a coach, the coach leaves, then you have to sit out a year if you want to go anywhere else. Now guys can move around a lot more freely. So it's the game is the game. Brian Kelly is a habitual see you guys later. He did it at Central Michigan. He did it at Cincinnati. He did it Notre Dame. He probably will do it again. He needs a good nickname because you remember people used to be like suitcase Saban. Yeah, for Nick because he always used to transfer play. You would never stick around. Brian Kelly. He is the exact same

thing. He just doesn't have a cool nickname like that. Yeah, it's also very interesting to Brian Kelly leave. There we go. Done. Nice. That's that was it. Yeah, stick. It's it's interesting to me that all the hand wringing that everyone did about how the NIL was going to like shake up college football and ruin college football and the thing that shook up college football and I would say kind of ruin college football was just done by the administrators as always with conference realignment like Lincoln Riley stays in Oklahoma if they're in the big 12. I believe probably yeah I mean like that's the thing that I think irritated most Oklahoma fans is they're not used to having coaches leave right. They think yeah they they're one of those programs that think we are the best

program we're the best job if you take a job at Oklahoma you're here for life and so to have him leave to USC like scram it shook up their brains real quick and they're like wait this doesn't happen to us and then that's really the only way that we have empathy for anything these days in America is when something bad happens to you then you understand hey this sucks right it sucks I'm sorry that I didn't care what happened to you but now that happens to me you're right this sucks so now Oklahoma fans are like wait this shouldn't this should never happen. This is illegal. Yeah Did you see that on the message boards? There was someone who was trying to claim that Lincoln Riley bringing his entire staff to USC was technically illegal because they are

state workers. It's violating interstate commerce act. That's that's the level of panic Oklahoma fans were in they were like they were essentially the angry challenge flag when there's nothing there's nothing to challenge but you just want to stop the game for a second let everyone know that you're upset with how it's going and then reset the game. I saw one guy say that he left because he's a Lib and he wanted to get out of Oklahoma and move to California. California? Yeah yeah yeah right yeah just be under stricter mask laws. No he wanted to pay more taxes right right which is why he left. He wanted to make sure everyone was wearing a mask during his recruiting business. Yes exactly. Sick of all this. All right college football playoff real quick

I so we're taping this in the afternoon I believe it will be Georgia Michigan Alabama since the Oklahoma State as a top five maybe since he jumps out but they probably won't have since he jumped Alabama but it feels like Michigan will hop into Ohio State spot it too. Yeah is there any possibility that if Alabama just wants the shit out of Georgia which I don't think is going to happen but if they beat the fuck out of Georgia is there any possibility at all that Georgia drops out. No. If in the most chaotic scenario. No no no no no I would they would be. I agree with that unless like the Georgia no no chance. I agree with that. None so they end and the way it's set up is that Georgia and if Alabama beat Georgia Alabama would probably go to one and Georgia would

go to two or three so that they wouldn't have to face each other. The Oklahoma State the best part about all of this like news in the last two days is that Notre Dame still has a decent chance to go to the college football playoff and Brian Kelly it would be if you a lot of people hate Notre Dame I'm not a fan of Notre Dame but if you're a fan of just objectively funny things you should be a fan of Notre Dame winning the national title this year because Brian Kelly leaving Notre Dame being like I can't ever win a national title here I got to go to LSU and then watching his team and his coaching staff win a national title without him would be one of the greatest sports stories of all time. Does Brian Kelly get a ring if that happens? I think he probably would demand

one but I don't know if you give it to him but it would be like imagine that like his legacy is is he doesn't he didn't actually ever win a national title even though it was his team and his team all year and he just left that's what everyone in the world should be rooting for and again it's not great it's like pretty much either Baylor and beating Oklahoma State in Iowa beating Michigan or Georgia beating like there's not it's not that crazy for Notre Dame to sneak in. So the weird part about Notre Dame is they they don't have really a plan for who's going to coach the team yet unless I've missed it unless they've just announced it. No they they I saw I watched the press conference this morning. They said like we're going to do something maybe unusual.

A little different. I don't know what that means that's what I'm saying Hank is there's a there's the best interim coach of all time. Correct. Is out there right now. If you're looking for an interim coach like there's no this is a better story than Rudy. Yeah. If coach Joe as interim Ed were to go up to South Bend and win a national championship with Brian Kelly's players as Brian Kelly took his job at LSU. Yep. Hollywood would shoot you in the face if you brought that script. It would be incredible. So root for Notre Dame to make the playoffs root for coach O to be the coach of Notre Dame. And yeah it really would be so awesome if Notre Dame won the title this year right in Brian Kelly's face. I realistically don't know who Notre Dame is going to have coached it's got to be

like an it's got to be somebody that's been it's their assistant Freeman is the guy everyone's rallying around and wants to be the coach. That's what they're saying. That's what they're saying but you would think that they would make that announcement right. The fact that they haven't said anything and that they've been kind of cryptic with it. It makes me think it's not going to be well that they have the benefit of they don't play in a conference so they don't have a conference title game so they don't really have to decide for a few days. It's just weird. It's weird. They probably just waiting to decide of like if they go to the college football playoff maybe it's this guy if they don't maybe it's like hey we're just not even going to name anyone we're just going to

play whatever bowl game and see how it goes. Well because the thing is if it is if it is a top assistant that gets there if they go to like the conference playoff and then they lose resoundingly in that first playoff game it would make it tougher for them I think to sell the fact that they're going to sign that guy as the head coach for the future. Right. It's like you don't want to you don't want to poison them right off the bat. Yeah make a special team guy or like the equipment manager your head coach just do that. Or I mean Bob Stoops went back how about Lou Holtz. Yeah Lou Holtz. Bob Stoops is doing the Barry Alvarez special where just catch catches like a two hundred fifty thousand dollar check to coach the team in bowl season. Lou Holtz

we just need more of him. Charlie Weiss. If you never watched the show on ESPN I forget it was like it was a college football live that was Lou Holtz and Mark May and they would just scream at each other and they get into these debates and they'd both be wrong but they'd be wrong in different ways. It'd be incredible. It was the best television. It really was. It really was. Why not. Charlie Weiss though. Bring him back. You're already paying him probably. He doesn't have Sol Fuego passed away. He doesn't have his parent living at home that he has to take care of. Antagonize everyone. Yeah so the last thing I had on Notre Dame was Brian Kelly met with the team for 11 minutes. That made people very upset at 7 a.m. What's the what's the how many minutes.

I think I meant so we like I think a little job Brian Kelly 11 is almost too long 25. No no no because then you get it 25 minutes in a breakfast meeting. No. No but I'm saying to to to be acceptable for the masses for the mass. I guess maybe I'm in the minority on this because I would rather coach just text me. Yeah. No I get to sleep in a little bit. Yeah. I think 11 is a long time. 11 is almost too long. There's no meeting. I would submit that there's no work meeting that you should ever be in that should be longer than 11 minutes. That's like that's once it reaches the level of being counterproductive when you're in a room with somebody talking about something that could be an email for longer than 11 minutes. It should yeah it should have

been a text message should have been one of those text messages you get like for bill pay where it just says reply Y or N. Did you receive this message that Brian Kelly is leaving for a ton of money and does not actually care about you like sons yes or no. Yeah. There's really no reason to have the meeting. I think he had like keeps up appearances a little bit and he gets to apply he gets to feel good about himself. I'm wondering what the percentage of players that attended the meeting was. Can't be a ton. Although Notre Dame I mean they like they make all their athletes go to class and shit. The other thing a lot of people are saying and I agree it's bullshit but football players have to wake up at like 6 a.m. every day. Yeah.

Like them them having a 7 a.m. meeting isn't that crazy for most people like I would never get up at 7 a.m. but Billy can you know confirm that pretty sure like athletes they have to lift and shit at like 5 a.m. every day. Yes. It's probably like a pre lift or post lift. Yeah. 7 a.m. they've been up for a couple hours. Right. Yeah. Yeah. We see that the regular America season like that's fucking ridiculous. Oh yeah. You forget it takes a lot to be a high level athlete. It'd be pretty funny though if if LSU like Brian Kelly goes on and he makes them raise their standards for admission immediately. Yeah. Brian Kelly probably just saw like all the sick players that he could be getting at Notre Dame. Yeah. He's like I don't care what their

ACT is. I really don't. Right. Notre Dame used to have like rules not even I don't even think that long ago. I think it was maybe when Brian Kelly started where like the players had to eat with all the regular students and like players would miss meals because like the dining hall would close and like they didn't they didn't get to eat like at the facility and shit like that. Notre Dame Brian Kelly got them to a place where they had not been in a while and we'll see what happens you know going forward but Notre Dame is a little bit antiquated. You can say that. Yeah. The selling point of Notre Dame for a long time was we don't want you if you don't want to be challenged when you come here. It's like we want players that want to exist in one of the worst

environments possible for an athlete. And I don't obviously there's some cool stuff about Notre Dame too but like we're not going to do anything to make it easier on you. So we don't want players that want to cut any corners whatsoever. Turns out that cutting corners is sometimes really good. Yeah. And it gets stuff done for it's easier. Yeah. Which is why people like it. And Notre Dame is like if you go to Notre Dame I always assume like the Notre Dame alumni takes care of themselves better than probably any other alumni. So it's like that's a good selling point in terms of your future jobs if you're not going to be in the NFL. But yeah there's definitely some things at Notre Dame that are not the same at LSU or Alabama or Clemson or USC. Like they play it a

little bit different and it's probably frustrating at times. They're convening right now that the Council of the Golics and their pugs to make the Council's decision. Do they like smoke like the Pope. I did feel bad for Mike Golic Jr. He did sweet out that he's going to have to do so many phoneers this week. So thoughts and prayers. Thoughts and prayers. You got this though. Notre Dame is maybe going to the college football playoff and that would be awesome. All right. Let's do Hot Seat Cool Throne. Hot Seat Cool Throne is brought to you by our friends at Coors Light. A little more chill in the air can only mean one thing. Beer Man is back in town. It's all part of Coors Light holiday mission to bring the chill and make spirits bright. Beer

Man's here to remind you that your chill is out there this holiday season and you deserve a cold one. Make it a Coors Light. The mountains on the bottles and cans even turn blue when your beer is cold. That's how you know it's cold. And Coors Light is mountain cold refreshment made to chill. Literally made to chill. Coors Light is cold-loggered, cold-filtered, cold-packaged. It's literally made to chill. It's as crisp and refreshing as the Colorado Rockies. Perfect for a moment to unwind. Coors Light is the beer that you want to have when you're sitting on the couch, when you're at the bar with your friends, when you're watching football, maybe holiday party. Nothing better than an ice cold. Coors Light. Go to CoorsLight.com. Here's a little tip. Holiday parties. One of the

worst parts about holiday parties is you wear like a sweater and the heat's cranked up and it feels gross. You know that heat when your skin kind of itches? Coors Light will fix that. Nice cold, ice cold. When your forearms get sweaty. Yeah. That's the worst heat. Yes. So go to CoorsLight.com. Take right now. Celebrate responsibly. Coors Brewing Company, Golden Colorado. All right. Hot seat, cool throne, Hank. My hot seat is John Wall. Uh-oh. I don't know if you guys have been following this story too closely, but John Wall has a crazy high contract thing. It's like $40 million. It's a lot. It's a lot. Super max. And the Rockets are rebuilding. They're trying to grow their youth, rebuild, do that whole thing. So John Wall was injured.

He's now healthy. He's trying to play and the Rockets are just saying no. I love it. So he is getting paid like $40 million is saying he wants to play. He's ready to play. He doesn't want to be, you know, come off the bench. He wants to be a starter. He's an all-star and they're just saying no. I really don't understand NBA contracts at all. This really packages it up nicely for me because they traded for John Wall. They knew what his contract was, right? And now they are paying him money to not play basketball. Correct. But this somehow benefits the Rockets long term. They don't want to get too good. So they want a player who's good that they'll pay a lot of money to. That they can then trade. And then have him play. Yeah. And then have him sit for a while and then

trade and be bad with worse players and then in five years be good. Right. Is that essentially what's going on? Pretty much. Yeah, I still don't get it. His contract goes through 2023. So two more years. Yeah, they're saying I guess so Kemal Walker got benched for the next because he doesn't play defense. And they said they're going to try and trade him maybe to the Rockets. So John Wall in New York would be fucking sick. John Wall is nasty. If you want to go to New York, just get really fat, John. Do the James Harden model. Build that wall. Just get really fucking heavy and then they'll chip you out of town and meet whatever demand you want. Do you want me to tell you a crazy stat? We are 20 games into the NBA season, a quarter of the way through.

Yeah, that's crazy. That's crazy, right? Well, time. NBA season to me, I've been watching, I watched the Bulls, but I haven't watched pretty much any other NBA. It starts on Christmas Day. That's when NBA season starts mentally. Yeah, I agree. I mean, it's kind of like, it's like NBA games. It doesn't matter to the third quarter. Right. It's just like Christmas Day. It's like, yes, here we go. It's just really dive into this NBA season. When it's still football season, it's very hard to just, you know, you only have so much time, right? Exactly. I absorb my NBA news, just strictly what they show me on sports and at this point. Yes. All right, your cool throne. My cool throne is Mike Tomlin quotes. Oh, he dropped this nugget today. Mike Tomlin

on Chase Claypool's suggestion to play music at practice. Yes. Claypool plays wide out. I'll let him do that. I'll formulate the practice approach. I think that division of labor is appropriate. That's nice. Basically like a very quotable way to tell his player fuck off. Fuck you, dude. Yeah. Chase Claypool was like, maybe we should play, I think his exact quote was like, we play music during the warmups. Why don't we do it during the entire practice? I don't know. Because you got to practice? Yeah. Probably have to hear what other people are saying at the time. They don't play music during the games. Just actual games. Compromise, be like, we'll put music on a practice, but Big Ben gets to choose the playlist. Oh, geez. And it's just that

the Pornhub intro music on repeat. Luke Bryan, all the time. What was it? What was the Christian rock band that he went to the concert? I can't remember. DC Talk, Veggie Tales. That was sick. All right, P.F.T., your hot seat, cool throne. My hot seat is Posers. Posers are on the hot seat because Kim Jong-un, Dictator of North Korea, banned everybody else in the country from wearing his leather duster that he likes to wear because too many people were copying him. So sorry, you can't pose North Korea anymore. That's such a flex, isn't it? To just be like, this looks so cool that I'm the only one in the country that can wear it. I think he did it with haircuts a few years ago. His haircut. That might be just a natural side effect where it's like,

you know my great haircut that everybody loves? No one's allowed to get it. And it was like, yeah, man, we know. No one was getting that. He has the power to do it. I also think that that's not Kim Jong-un. Who is it? He died a while ago. Remember when he almost died? That's right. And then, but if you look at a picture of him now, it doesn't look like he was on the train that he takes everywhere that has his own private restroom. Right. Yeah. And he died. He died. And then we just, he then came back to life and he looks different. It's just a hologram. I'm just saying. I just like Billy look, look into a couple of replies from me on that. He did disappear for a good amount of time and came back looking a lot skinnier. Yep. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

That's not how diets work. Case closed. Yeah. Are you a Cool Throne? My Cool Throne was going to be Mike Tomlin quotes, but Hank got to that already. So I'll just say Connecticut. I'll just say the state of Connecticut. Pup Punks playing there on Friday night. So come out to see the show. It's at Toad's Place. Toad's Place. New Haven. Legendary venue. Shout out. Legendary venue. Bob Marley, Bob Dylan, Rolling Stones. The Blackout Tour. The Blackout Tour. Now, Pup Punks Friday night. Holden's going to be out there. You two. Yeah. Bono. Play to Toad's Place. Yeah. Wait, you two is the artist that really did it for you? I don't know. Not the Stones, not Dylan, not Bob Marley. You two was a shocker. Yeah. You love you two. Who doesn't? Bono? You're probably that first

generation where you got YouTube. They cured AIDS. You got YouTube program. They did. On to your iPhone. No, listen, I have a fuck you to send to Bono, because where the fuck has Bono been through coronavirus? Bono, you remember him? He was on the cover of Time Magazine back in like 2005. He was like, can Bono save the world? He did. Bono, we could have used your fucking help for the last 19 months, you prick. He sat this one out. He was like, I already did. I already did the AIDS thing. Like you guys figure this shit out. Bono and his fucked up glasses were of no help to us. Once you saw the Imagine song, he was like, fuck. There's nothing else I can do here. Yeah. So yeah, Friday night, New Haven, Quinnipiac. We are Big Cat and I are

professors emeritus at Quinnipiac. Love it. Love it. So yeah, you guys in Yale come out to Toad's Place. We'll see you. All right. My hot seat is me. They put out the schedule for week 14, and they're not flexing bears, packers, Sunday night football. So that's going to be fucking terrible. Is that at Lambo? Yep. Yeah, it's pretty bad. I don't know. I'm not flexing that out. I was trying to look for a ray of light for you. No, you're fucked. No, it's going to be so miserable. What'd you predict in your predictions for that one? A loss. That's unfortunate. Probably. That one's going to hit. I got a feeling. If the bear's beat the Cardinals this week, then I think that there's like, I have higher powers because then I'd be 12 and 0 on picking wins and losses.

Like they beat a couple teams that, you know, they beat the Bengals who are kind of good. They've lost some weird games, whatever. That's going to suck so bad. I'm so much dreading it. I was actually, yesterday I was searching when they flexed it out because I was hoping they would and then they just didn't because they don't want to. They want to see the bears suffer. All right. My cool throne is messy because you want another one of those balloon things. Balloon. Yeah. Best soccer player in the world. No big deal. Seven of them ballooned a door. That's, wait, but Ronaldo has more than that big gap. Nope. He's got five. Tough. That's now where you're right there. And he's running out of time. The ballooned a door.

Also, how do you pronounce it, Jake? Ballon d'or. Balloon d'or. All right. I gotta look. All right. Thank you. What are you going to say? Ballon d'or. No, I was going to make a tasteless joke about Ronaldo, but feel like the moment has passed. You can go for it. What a rip. Hey, he's a rapist. Oh, okay. Yep. I wasn't the, I was going to make a joke. That's just a fact. That was the fact version of the joke I was going to make. That was the skeleton of the joke. Yeah. I mean, it was satire. Yeah. But I mean, Messi hasn't been charged with anything like that. No, just tax evasion. Well, everyone gets charged a tax evasion. Yeah. Like major tax. Who cares about tax? But like, that's actually the most relatable thing ever. To not pay your taxes.

You're going to pay them what? Once every four years? Basically. As long as the government owes you money, they don't care. If you move countries, you don't have to. Right. That's true. I think that's what happened to him. Right. If you, if you spend enough time on an airplane, you actually don't owe taxes. Mm hmm. Maritime law. Yeah. What is it? Balloon to door? I can't find anything official. So I don't want to, I mean, I, I'll tell you right now exactly, but it's Ballon. I would guess Ballon door. Yeah. Definitely door on the end. Got it. But I don't want to say anything without confirming. I want you to say it. It's Ballon door. Unofficial Ballon door. Balloon door. Ballon. There we go. That's it. Balloon door.

I feel like the guy at the spelling bee with the multiple pronunciation. Yes. Using a sentence, message us one another Ballon door. Message us one another Ballon door. Mm hmm. I don't know. Also, Big Cat, this people have been, we put the music video out. Big Cat seen when he puts the gun and is about to shoot himself was improv. People, because I saw some people being like, this hilarious doesn't really make sense in the story. You did improv that and by doing that, you've now set yourself up for. Yeah, but don't get banned from Twitter. Yeah. You're talking about the at the bank video. At the bank music video on the part of my YouTube channel. It did make sense because at the bank, they robbed the bank by, by bringing more money to the bank and,

and I couldn't handle that much money as the bank manager. It was a reverse robbery. Yes. And to the point where we overloaded the banking system. Correct. I wasn't going to be able to handle it. I thought it was like you shot the security guard and felt bad. So you shot yourself. You being the security guard? Yeah. I felt great about that. No, definitely not. Billy became the real life soldier protecting the sleeping kid meme. This is great. Yeah. You did a great job. All right, Billy. What's your hot seat? Cool drunk. My hot seat is the Patriots playbook and the Mercedes Benz Stadium away locker room. So I got a little tip last night. Donda, sounds like a reply guy. It actually kind of is a reply

guy. This is a legit tip. Turns out there might be someone. Wait, is it a legit tip? Like you allegedly got this tip or it's a tip that's alleged. I found some tweets about some guy who posted a picture of Mac Jones' wristband playbook. Okay. First question before we get too far down this road. How do you know that that's actually a picture of Mac Jones' wristband? Because it was four playflips deep and there was other corroborating stuff. Okay. Again, how do you know that that's actually Mac Jones' wristband? Was Mac Jones' arm in it? And not just a picture of a wristband playbook. Because there's tons of play stuff and a lot of the terminology. It could have been totally faked, but this is alleged. Now we're getting some of the same alleged. So there could like,

you know, that armband is probably worth a lot of money to many NFL coaches. But it's the same locker room where Tom Brady's jersey went missing in the 2019 Super Bowl. So it might be sort of connected that there is someone going into that locker room or some sort of troll living in the walls. Basically, or someone working there who's taking stuff. Among the other stuff stolen was stitum socks, which is weird. It's a creepy situation, but something to check in on if, you know, the Patriots get blown out in the coming weeks. But they are also apparently planning to steal Tom Brady's Buccaneers jersey. It was just there was a leaked conversation with the person who's doing it. Oh, because they play there next week. Got it. Something to check on.

My cool throne is robots. Something to check on. By the way, I got a DM from somebody the other day that said, Hey, I've been posing as an archaeologist in Billy's DMs, and he's been asking me all sorts of questions. How can we lie and use this against him somehow? Okay, there's several archaeologists that I've been consulting on a pair of figurines. If you're an archaeologist, please DM me. A real archaeologist. A real archaeologist. Also, robots, they lost their virginity. Not much more that we need to explain there. Robots can reproduce now. They just released there was a scientific research experiment. There's a scientific research that created. It's a thing. It's a thing. Got it. Also, cool throne, big cat, because if you don't like pictures

of you on Twitter, you can get them removed under the new CEO's guidance. Yeah. What was that? I was looking at that. It's private pictures of private individuals. So if you consider yourself a private individual, you can get a picture you don't like taking off Twitter. That's what it sounds like to me. I don't know if Big Cat would qualify for that. No, I don't think so. Anyway, if you don't like it, take it off. I mean, it would be very helpful in Big Cat's case, especially when Hank puts out unflattering pictures of him. Yeah, just a little eagle. He got Hank kicked off Twitter. Our rest is ass. Last cool throne. Jokic brothers. They were in Miami and they started playing the Serbian National Anthem in the club they were partying at. Hell yes. I think

the club probably just did that out of respect when they saw them walking in. Exactly. Or they did it and no one's going to turn that off. Hank, sorry. Whoa. Jake. Jake. My hot seat is baseball writers. It's officially that time of year. They tweet out the scantrons heard around the world and they get roasted. Yeah. Who's getting roasted the most? I saw Dave Williams. Yeah. Voted writer. I think he's, I don't know if it was this year. He tweeted someone who voted for nobody and tweeted that they voted for nobody and that person got roasted. Yeah, White Sacs, Dave, it's like the yearly tradition of him texting me being like, can you retweet my ballot? I'm like, yep, because I love it. I love the responses that

people give. Also, shout out baseball for actually doing free agency. That was my cool throw in the Mets. Yeah. Shout out the Mets. They got Max Scherzer. Max Scherzer. And like, remember last year when baseball free agency just didn't happen for three months? People were saying that wasn't going to happen this year because there's about to be a lockout in like a day. Yeah. What happened to winter meetings? They were saying that they're going to lock out the players just, you know, before free agency really gets started. Turns out that some players really wanted to get paid before that extended lockout. Got it. So they would know where they could move their families to over the winter time. So yeah, Scherzer got a shitload of money. Yeah. And he's

worth every penny. Baseball is like, as a sport at this point, they just, they randomly check in and no one really knows the schedule anymore. And they're just like, oh, hey, here's the MVP. And also free agency started two days ago. Winter meetings are next week in Disney. So I guess they're just ahead of the game. That makes sense. So to get paid, get locked in before. So the Mets are going to have DeGrom and Scherzer as their one team next year. Congratulations to New York Mets on winning the 2022 World Series. Yep. And they've already, that's unstoppable. They already know how to celebrate because they did that practice celebration last year. There you go. Merlin spring training. That probably is the best one, two combination. If you look at the

totality of their careers in the history of baseball. Yeah. I mean, it's with DeGrom, it's always, DeGrom is injured all the time. But they don't score. And they don't score. And Javi is now on the tight. Yeah. And Corey Seeger to the Rangers. Okay. Robbie Ray to the Mariners. Are they going for it? What about the Yanks? Yanks are quite. Yanks are what they call a P franchise now. Good old poverty franchise. You got Clint Frasier or closing it on it looks like the Cubs. All right. There we go. Oh, also with baseball. With baseball writers, Jake. John Heyman just tweeted this out. So somebody said that Andrew McCutcheon was going to go back to the Pirates and then he just tweeted the cap emoji back at it. And then John Heyman says,

Cutch puts a cap on Pirates reunion rumor. A cap apparently means there's nothing to it. Love it. So shout out John Heyman. I love it. That's incredible. Everyone knows what cap means. All right. Let's to, uh, we got two great interviews. We got Andy Staples breaking down all the college football madness. And then we have Mitch Schwartz afterwards talking NFL, talking offensive line, Patrick Mahomes, Russell Wilson, all of it. Before we do that, PFT, you had a quick word from one of our sponsors. Our great friends over at movement want to remind you that holy shit, it's almost the holidays and at movement, the original watch brand to break all the rules started by two college dropouts who didn't want to overpay for a nice watch

as you covered. They're bringing you the sleekest, most quality gifts of the season with hundreds of watches, blue light glasses, sunnies and fine jewelry styles to choose from. Stuff your stockings and press your family while your partners are treat yourself with the perfect gift from movement. There's actually something for everybody. If you're looking, if you want to do something nice for your family, for the people that you care about, but you don't want to spend a lot of time going to different stores or looking up holiday gift guides, uh, movement is actually a perfect place to take care of everybody's gifts and their great quality. They will love them. You won't break the bank, but you're not

cheaping out either. Movement is making it easy. They have beautiful curated gift boxes, his and hers gift guides and free and quick shipping right to your door just in time for the holidays. I love all my movement watches. They got some really, really nice designs that I've purchased over the last couple of years, gave my family the gift of time, gave them watches. They really enjoyed them. I looked like a hero movement watches are designed in house. They're super sleek. They're clean and they won't break your bank since they start at just $95. Movement has clean minimal designs and quality products. If I had a nickel for every time somebody had been like, Hey, PFT, is that a $600 watch?

And I'm like, no, it's a movement. It's just $95. I'd have enough money to buy like five more movement watches. Movement has sold almost 2 million watches in 160 countries. Be the big winner of this holiday season. You get a gift for movement. Go to MVMT.com slash pardon MVMT.com slash pardon. And you can join the movement there. Load up on gifts for the holiday season. And now here's Andy Staples. Okay, we now welcome on our good friend, Andy Staples. You can find him writing on the athletic. You can also find him on his podcast, the Andy Staples show, also on S X serious XM college football radio. He knows everything about college football. We figured we had to have you on not just for conference championship week, but one of the craziest

two days I would say in college football history. And that might sound like it's, you know, a little bit hyperbolic, but just to set the stage, Lincoln Riley goes from Oklahoma to you to USC and you actually said, this has not happened before. You saw Jim Boe Fisher go from FSU to Texas A&M, but that was the writing was on the wall. And it's like, this doesn't happen. And then not 24 hours later, the same thing happens with power to power. Brian Kelly going from Notre Dame to LSU. Let's start with that one. What are your like initial thoughts Brian Kelly to LSU in terms of just the entire landscape? My initial thought of all of this was holy shit. I mean, so I talked to somebody at Oklahoma because I had been told Lincoln Riley

was giving people weird vibes at Oklahoma late last week and, and there were thoughts that he might leave. I thought we were talking about LSU. So I talked to some people at Oklahoma late last week and I'm like, so what's going on? Are you worried? And they're like, yeah, we're worried. And I'm like, and then he says on Saturday night, I'm not going to be the next LSU coach. I'm like, okay. All right. I believe you. I didn't even think about USC. I thought USC would go after Kelly. I thought if anybody was going to go after Kelly, that that would be the, the, the fit. So the fact that they kind of swap a route on that just really, I mean, just, it's mind blowing because I had asked some people around Brian Kelly earlier this season, I said, would he ever

consider, and this is after USC open it, would he ever consider maybe going somewhere else where the ceiling might be a little higher, where you're fishing from a little bit bigger recruiting pond and you can get more people into school and it's easier to keep people in school. And the answers were always, no, as long as Notre Dame keeps doing the things that make him happy, he's going to stay. But I really do think both of these moves were about finding a place where it's easier to win the national title than where you're at. And Nicole Auerbach, who I worked with at the athletic group, we're talking on the podcast last night, she made a good point. She's like, so this is more about winning the playoff than getting in the play. Because you have two guys

who could get in the playoff, but couldn't win it. So they both went to places where they think they can win it. Like Lincoln, Riley to Oklahoma. Okay. Oklahoma is about to go in the SEC. USC will have a much easier path to the playoff because the conference is easier. Now you still got to deal with Oregon, you still have to deal with Utah, but it's easier than dealing with LSU, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Auburn, you name it. Right. So that's what that move was. And then Kelly to LSU, I think Kelly's hit the ceiling at Notre Dame. Yeah. I think you can't build the depth and especially if the playoffs going to move to 12 teams, like at Notre Dame where you can't win a conference championship, so you couldn't get a buy, you would have to win four games in a row

against those kinds of teams. I'm not sure you can build the depth in Notre Dame to do that, but you certainly can at LSU. Yeah. And also money is a big factor too. At the end of the day, like would you rather get paid, you know, twice your salary to move from Oklahoma to Southern California and coach there? I think that I don't think that's as big of a deal. Oklahoma would have paid him almost that much. I think Notre Dame would have paid Kelly almost that much. I kind of agree with you, Andy, that the money is obviously great, especially the Kelly to LSU. Scott Woodward is going to, everyone knew Scott Woodward. If you don't know the 88 LSU, he's a big game hunter. He brought Jimbo to Texas with our puns. Yeah. He brought Chris

Peterson to Washington. So that's what he does. He was going to make a splash. But I agree with you that even with the 12 team playoff, essentially what these, both these moves are saying is that the difference between getting in the playoffs and actually winning the national title, like there are only a select few teams, schools, programs that can win the national title and Notre Dame in Oklahoma, because Notre Dame was recruiting at a level they hadn't recruited at before. Oklahoma was pulling guys from California in the South and all these things. They basically were like, no, we can't do it here. We're at the ceiling. We got to go to one of the five spots in the country that actually can do this. I absolutely love it when people are saying that

Lincoln Riley is being a chicken shit because he's getting out of the SEC, which, yeah, I think that makes him smart actually. Yeah. That's like a good thing to do. That's a good strategic move. Why would you ever want to go and compete against the SEC in terms of recruiting and then all the in conference games? It's a tough schedule out there when you can go to live in Los Angeles, make a shitload of money and play away easier schedule and have a great recruiting base right in that area. I believe that the phrase is he's scared, Paul. That would be the phrase. Yeah. And where I live, that is exactly what everybody's saying. Oh, he's scared of the SEC, Paul. He, he don't want none of this. He don't want that smoke. Yeah. And that's, that's really what it is.

But you're right. There is an easier path. Now, he has to rebuild USC, especially along the line of scrimmage. They weren't particularly great at doing that at Oklahoma. That was what they ran into every time when they got in the playoff was they didn't have dominant line of scrimmage talent. USC can get that. They have to develop it and we'll see what happens. But that's where I think that that move may in hindsight may not look as, as prescient because I do think Oklahoma joining the SEC will allow them to get those kind of players because a lot of those D linemen. Yeah. That can grow into like NFL D linemen. They'll go to Ole Miss or Mississippi State before they'll play in the big 12. Right. But they'll go to Oklahoma if they're going to be in the SEC.

So whoever gets that job, I think is going to be able to build an SEC roster. Brian Kelly's just going to inherit one. Right. He's, he's already got it. And they, they had a good recruiting class coming in. Your, your boy coach Joe was selling LSU right up to the last minute, which hell, if you want to give me $16.9 million, I'll sell it too. Yeah. The best part about LSU and what people, uh, when LSU gets mentioned is one of the best jobs in the country and people will say, well, the last three guys won a national title. I think the crazier part about LSU and why it is might, you might actually make the arguments the best, uh, pro, uh, job in the country. LSU has, I think like two or three, five star commits that they have stayed committed

to LSU. They're from Louisiana. They've stayed committed to LSU and they don't have a coach. They didn't have a coach for two months. That's a big commit to a school. Right. It's a huge commit to a school, not a coach school. Right. Like you, you grew up in Louisiana dreaming of playing for LSU. Right. You're not, you're not carrying who the coaches you want to play for LSU. You want to be in Tiger Stadium. Now, is Brian Kelly going to know what the drain is for on the porch, the patio outside the coach's office on the second floor of the LSU football building? No, he's not, but you guys know what that drains for. I'm sure coach Joe told you, right? Well, you can, that's when you got the, the crawfish pot and you need to dump it. Yeah.

It's a cultural weird fit, but he's a smart, like, listen, we love coach Joe, love coach Joe, but I think it's not crazy to say that Brian Kelly is a better X's and O's coach than both Les Miles and coach Joe and they both won titles in LSU. Like he's a really good dramatic understatement. Yes. Right. I said it as nicely as possible. He's a really, really good coach. Yeah. No, I have no, the whole cultural fit thing is dumb. Like urban Meyer had never worked in the SEC when he came to Florida and won two national titles. Nick Saban had never worked in the SEC when he went to LSU and essentially created the blueprint for all of these SEC programs to win national titles. So none of that matters. Wow. In the SEC,

they only care if you care about winning. Yeah. And Brian Kelly clearly cares about winning. So as long as he wins to their satisfaction, which let's be honest, that's pretty hard to do, they'll be happy with him. And as soon as he doesn't, they'll turn on him. That's, that's how it works. I'll just say one name for the cultural thing with LSU though. They don't want another Jerry DiNardo. That's not Brian Kelly. But when you bring a guy from Queens, New York to Baton Rouge, that might have been a different cultural fit. I don't, I don't think they, they had no problem with where Jerry DiNardo was from or where Jerry DiNardo's accent sounded like. They had a problem with Jerry DiNardo getting his ass kicked. Yeah.

And that was what they had a problem with. Yes. So, so what happens at Oklahoma now? What's, what's going to go on there? So they're a great school at, at taking guys that are familiar with the program that like buy into the whole culture in Norman because I don't, I don't know if you know this, but Norman isn't really a destination city. It's a place that you grow to love after hating it for a while. And I'm not like, I'm not knocking Norman entirely because James Garner is rolling over in his grave here and you talking bad about his hometown. Listen, I don't know if you've been to, to Norman lately. I live in, in Gainesville, Florida. I live in a tiny college town. So I understand tiny college town living like,

Norman's, Norman is a bedroom community of OKC. It's, it's not, it's not the hinterlands. Still water is probably closer to that, but that's not it. I think Oklahoma's going to be fine. I really do. If you think about it, they've had maybe three iffy coaches in like a hundred years. And they all kind of came in a row in the nineties and then they hired their current athletic director, Joe Castiglione. And one of his first orders of business was hiring Bob Stoops. The, that would be the tequila salesman who is currently coaching Oklahoma in its bowl. So I think they're going to be fine. This is a job that, that lots of coaches are going to want, but I am curious how that job is perceived. Cause I heard a lot through the year as, you know,

we were all getting ready for this crazy coaching career. So I didn't think it was going to be this crazy, but we kept asking people, okay, what would you want? What would you not want? What would your guide like? You know, where would you guy want to coach? And you heard a lot of, well, I don't want to coach in the SEC, but Oklahoma is an SEC job and we have to look at it as such, because whoever gets hired is going to spend most of their time in the SEC. I'm curious if you're Matt Campbell, who was not one of those SEC, he was, he was one of those, I don't want to go to the SEC guys. Is it different cause it's Oklahoma? Because there is this, this among the coaching community and in, in college athletics, like

they look at Oklahoma as kind of the model of alignment, like the president and the AD and the coach are going to get along. Everybody's going to pull in the same direction. You're not going to be dealing with a bunch of crap from boosters. Basically you're going to be insulated from all that stuff. And so I do think there's going to be a lot of people who want that job. The question is, you know, who do they choose? Is it somebody with Oklahoma ties? Is it like, I know Mike Leach has a lot of internal support. There's a lot of people who love him. Barry Switzer is, is Ray, you know, hand raised higher, higher the pirate. But you've also got Mark Stoops, brother of Bob, who's done a great job at Kentucky. You've got Matt Campbell out there.

I think with Notre Dame open, you're probably not in it for Luke Fickle. I have shot Notre Dame. Yeah. Luke Fickle doesn't feel like he's leaving Cincinnati or Indiana, like the state of Ohio or Indiana area anyway. Well, he had this, this coaching carousel has been so crazy. And remember Luke Fickle's team, as long as they beat Houston, which I know you guys are close to Dana Holgerson and probably have a very vested interest in that game. Yes. But if Cincinnati beats Houston, they're in the playoff. So I don't think Luke Fickle would leave his team for the playoff. I don't think he would take a job and then say, well, I'm going to coach my team in the playoff and leave. I just don't think he's that kind of guy. That would be hilarious.

Brian Kelly. How about this? That'd be funny. Brian Kelly just did that. I'm ready. Yeah, but Brian Kelly's already done that. No, I know. I know. I know. I was actually pointing that out to Notre Dame fans. Like you, it's, it's complaining like cheating on your wife and then the person you cheated on, like then cheating on you, you're like, Brian Kelly left a 12 vote Cincinnati team right before the sugar bowl for Notre Dame. He's, it's not like this is, oh my God, how could Brian Kelly do it? If Luke Fickle did it, that's different because Luke Fickle seems like a guy who preaches loyalty and family and all that stuff. Brian Kelly has proven that he will do this and he just did it to you, which is how you got him in the first place.

Yeah. If, if, if you're with a person who was cheating when you two first hooked up, right, don't be shocked, right. But okay, big cat. I've got, this is my, this is my nuclear. Oh no. Coaching carousel scenario for you that I think is, I've specifically tailored it just for you because I know you have invested interest here. Fickle's not the kind of guy who's going to leave a team before the playoff, but what if something came open after the playoff? What if Ryan Day was the next bears coach? I knew you're going to say this and Ohio State opened up. Yeah. Yeah. And then Urban Meyer went to Notre Dame, which can you tell me, just tell me, I made the video this morning. Is it, it's not a zero percent chance. I would say it's pretty close. No, don't

say give me a zero percent chance. Sometimes you got to go back. Well, I just don't know that Father Jenkins is a big fan of, of what happened in the steakhouse. You're right. The Catholic church, they hold themselves to a higher standard. They won't tolerate touching somebody younger than you. It is always funny when the door opens. You just go to a bar or you just go to a priest and you say, Hey, I fucked up. I grabbed a co-ed's ass and they're like, okay, say a Hail Mary and you're good in the eyes of the Lord. Listen, it's beautiful. Notre Dame is its own institution and not to go deep down a road, but it is very funny when, when, when Notre Dame alum are like the cat, like we as Catholics would not take Urban Meyer like what, huh? What are we talking

about here? I think you take a national title. That's my guess. I think it's a two, but I also think Notre Dame is one of those jobs. There's so many people that would want it. Now there is another NFL coach coincidentally represented by the same agent as Ryan Day and, and, uh, and Brian Kelly who things aren't going that well for him. He's got a quarterback who, uh, everybody thought was back and then, and then he wasn't and his best player just went out for the season. If Matt rule didn't want to coach in the NFL anymore. Now that rule never struck me as a guy who would Bobby Petrino on his team, but that's a guy who would kill it at Notre Dame. Yes. Yeah. Wait. Can I throw out a couple more names for Oklahoma? Um, you mentioned Mark Stoops.

Obviously the third Stoops brother, Brent Venables, that feels like, uh, what would be a home run hire. Do you remember they did refer to him as a third Stoops brother when they won the national title? They didn't, and then they forced him out so Mike could have the job. So I think he was the fourth Stoops brother. He's, he's, there's a little baggage there. It's not the same amount of Matt not the same amount of baggage as Josh Hyple and Oklahoma. Like there's, there's way too much baggage on both sides. It sounds like for, for there to ever be a reunion there. But yeah, I think Venables is, is one that I would at least look at, but he's been pretty hesitant to take a head coaching job. When you make two and a half million dollars as a coordinator, I think that

that probably does limit your options, uh, in terms of steps up, but this would definitely be one of those. All right. I'm going to throw out a couple of more names for Notre Dame, next head coach. Tell me what you think. Um, obviously urban, you said zero, you didn't say zero. You said, you said close, you say close to zero. Yeah. Uh, Tommy Reese, slightly above zero. My guy, Tommy, Tommy Reese, Tommy Reese, Tommy, I think Marcus free. Oh, I see. That's right. He has time now. I think Marcus Freeman would get it if they're going to, if they're going to go with somebody on the staff. I, the DC just got hired this year. There, there seems to be a ton of internal support and players certainly want it. I know they're never going to listen to the players,

but I do think that's a guy who has shown that he is a future head coach. It's probably not the same situation as Lincoln Riley at Oklahoma. Cause he had a little bit longer to, to show what he could do, but Jack Swarbrick, the AD at Notre Dame has had a year to watch Marcus Freeman operate. And if he likes what he sees, then I think that's a, that's a good fit. And he's a tremendous recruiter, which is a big, you know, Notre Dame has stepped up the recruiting recently. And you want to try to find a way to stay on that par on that level, because you're never going to win a title if you don't recruit as, as your co-host says Ari Wasserman stars matter. What's your other one? Well, I had a couple more. Just tell me,

tell me it's not a no for Greg Shiana. It's a no. And I don't think, I don't even think they're going to sign him to a term sheet and then they'll have the fan revolt and I'd say that's probably the whole Penn state thing could be problematic for the Catholics. Yeah. I don't think so. That was a, that was, that was more of a Tennessee creation to bolster their case of they just didn't think he'd succeed there, which by the way, they were right about the not succeeding part. Like he would have hated Knoxville. So they probably did him a favor and he probably got paid for it. All right, Lane Kiffin. I would, I would love that. It would be so awesome. They will never even think about hiring him in a

million years, but can you just imagine the tweets? Oh, it'd be amazing just to see Lane Kiffin, you know, and he's kind of changed the way that he does things. He's kind of like, he's bought into the whole image around Lane Kiffin and used what people used to use against him as a weapon now for himself because he's like, Oh, you're going to make fun of me for being like the swaggy guy that's going to flirt with every mom that walks by. Yeah. You know what? I'm going to put out a million tweets where it shows me like, you know, basically acting like the character that you think that I am. Well, he's going to send a tweet showing his son doing it. Yeah. Yeah. So that the tweet of his son in the grove when everybody went, when all the ladies walked by

and Knox is like, Oh, yeah. So is he going to, is he going to stick around? Because I feel like if you're laying Kiffin like every job is a stepping stone and he's got, it feels like he's had his next move planned out all along the way ever since he got fired in that weird press conference by the Raiders. It seems like he's been on a clear trajectory that he's known what he's doing all along. And I can't imagine the old miss is going to be the destination for him. Unless somehow he gets Arch Manning to say, I'm going to go to Ole Miss with Lane Kiffin. And even still, Lane could move and then Arch could decommit and follow him. Well, well, also could he have a guy like, I know like Dylan Gabriel from UCF just went in the portal. That's a really

good quarterback who needs a home for next year. Like, could you get Dylan Gabriel as a bridge here to Arch Manning and Ole Miss? So when Miami fired its AD, my thought was they're doing this so they will move on Manny Diaz and then that they will try to hire Lane Kiffin. But as, as we're recording this right now, Manny Diaz still has his job. So if Miami doesn't open, I think Ole Miss is in the clear. Although who knows? I mean, the dominoes of Oklahoma and Notre Dame making their choices could be incredible. So there may be another job that that would pique his interest. But I think Oklahoma or I think Ole Miss is pretty safe right now. It really is amazing that we spent the last month and a half being like,

when is USC and LSU like these two blue bloods going to be open at the same time? And then we just switched it to Oklahoma and Notre Dame are now open. We're going to get back to our good friend Andy Staples in just a second. But before we do want to talk to you about Pepsi and their new recycling initiatives, PepsiCo has some exciting things happening right now on the recycling sustainability front. It's the Pepsi Trash Talk Sustainability Platform. The Pepsi Trash Talk Sustainability Platform, you know what that is? That's when you can talk trash to promote PepsiCo's sustainability initiatives by highlighting plays that were absolute garbage, the trash that you're ready to throw away. What was it?

What was a trash play this week in the NFL? I'll get started. Oh, yeah. Zach Wilson's shovel pass. Yeah. That was a trash play. Absolutely. Well, it was actually a recyclable punt. It was sustainable because it kept your team alive. I think that the game plan with DK Metcalf, that was a trash game plan. DK usually enjoys having way more than two people guarding him at any given time. What's a good recyclable play? Good recyclable play for this week. Shark Wheel.

Well, we had the one year anniversary of the run. The one year anniversary of the run. I was going to say Odell Beckham. Odell Beckham was freed. I'd like to see more of that. Keep Odell, free Odell. Pepsi's Trash Talk Sustainability Platform wants you to know the difference, make a difference, be a team player and recycle. It's super easy. Just take a can, put in the recycling, put in the blue bin. Don't put it in the trash. This is brought to you by Pepsi's Trash Talk Sustainability Platform. Know the difference, make a difference, be a team player and recycle. You know what I did over Thanksgiving? I went out of my way to find out where they kept the recycling instead of just

tossing it in the trash underneath the sink. I found the second bin through the can in there. It felt like a million bucks with my ice cold Pepsi. Pepsi wants you to be a team player and recycle. Now here is more Andy Staples. I have a question back to Lincoln Reilly because I have this debate a lot. You know, college football is the one sport where in the back of your head, you kind of have to root for your conference at times because it is a rising tide lifts all boats. Lincoln Reilly going to USC. I've always thought that USC, Oregon's nice, Cristobal's recruiting at an unreal level. They're playing well, but USC is the portal to the Pack 12 being back, similar to Ohio State being a powerhouse. If USC is a powerhouse again,

the entire Pack 12 will be lifted. Is that fair to say? I think it will help. I don't think it, it doesn't suddenly make it the equal of the big 10 of the SEC, but they need somebody who can be near the top every year. And I think there's room for USC and Oregon to both have great rosters that can be competitive. And that's good for the sport because the problem was that the great rosters were pretty much concentrated in Ohio State, Clemson, Alabama, Georgia, LSU, Oklahoma. It's kind of it. And it needs to spread out a little bit. And I think you're starting to see it spread a little bit. Like Texas A&M's roster is going to be amazing the next few years. Notre Dame has recruited at a higher level. So you're seeing it spread out a little more,

which should increase parity in the sport. I mean, I think we're seeing it with Alabama this year. What we're seeing in Alabama is the result of one or two guys a year getting picked off by Kirby Smart. We're getting picked off by Jimbo Fisher. And suddenly they can't reload the same way they used to be able to. So I think it is possible for USC to do that. And suddenly you have two potential national title contenders in the league, which after years of having none, I would make it so much better for them. And it's not a stretch to say that USC will be back relatively quickly because it's not like he took, this is going to be a shot. And I apologize because I actually love the way they fought this year. But it's not like Lincoln Riley took the

job at Nebraska. California has insane talent. Like just think about it this way. The two, the two Heisman contenders right now, who everyone thinks is going to win the Heisman, is either going to be Bryce Young from Alabama, who's from California or CJ Stroud at Ohio State, who's from California. And then Malachi Nelson, who was going to go to Oklahoma now, 2023 player. Yeah. Decommitted and probably going to go to USC. Like California has insane talent. So it's, oh, it always has sucked to me the last few years where it's like everyone has picked off all their talent in the pack. 12 has become irrelevant. Skill talent has never been a problem at USC though. Yeah. Their problem is on the line of scrimmage. Now they've gotten highly ranked

recruits on the line of scrimmage. They didn't develop them very well. So that's, that's Lincoln Riley's mandate is develop those line of scrimmage players, keep a few of them away from Mario Cristobal because he's been pretty good about going and getting those guys. And if you do that, yes, you can create a national title contender at USC within the next two years. But that is definitely possible. But I heard you say that Heisman thing. I want to get on my stump. Oh, yeah. A big megaphone. I'm a Heisman voter. Oh, I've talked to, you know, a lot of other Heisman voters. I don't like it when people assume you have to pick a quarterback or a running back. And I just want to talk to my fellow voters here and ask them to think about one thing

as they, as they cast their ballots here in the next week. If a player isn't the best player in his own county, he cannot possibly be the best player in the country. So price young, not the best player in Tuscaloosa County. That person's name is Will Anderson. Will Anderson has 30 and a half tackles for loss. He has saved the Alabama defense this season. He's the best player in the country. It's not close. Like, don't just assume you got to pick a quarterback. It is, you're absolutely right because we're going to get to, when we get to the college football playoff, you could make the argument or you could even make it right now. The top six teams, like the best player on each of these teams is a defensive player like Michigan one.

Hutchinson. Yeah. Jordan Davis. Right. Jordan Davis. Just, he is one of those guys that you look at and you're terrified. He just scares you. Just imagine a person exists who's that size. 340 pounds. Yeah. There's that clip of him running down. I can't remember what quarterback, but he, he ran down a quarterback and like was faster than the quarterback. That's not fair. Billy said he ran a four, five. Hutchinson destroyed Ohio State's offense. Yeah. Destroyed Ohio State's offense. Completely. All right. So, I mean, yeah, you're right. You're right. You should, you should vote for, I agree. It's, it's the one year where it's like both these quarterbacks even coming out of the iron bowl when everyone was like, that was Bryce Young's

Heisman moment. He was like 22 for 50. Like he had a great drive. That was a great drive. 97 yard drive. Great drive. But it wasn't like he was lighting the world on fire all game. Yeah. Now it wasn't, it wasn't one of PFT's bucket of beer special games. Yeah. But it was, I mean, yeah, if you're under 50% completion percentage, you didn't have your Heisman moment. Right. Right. We're just trying to wheel it on these quarterbacks. Our brains are very simple. If it, if it does not divide by two, then I know it's a bad game. Like that's all I need to understand. If it's like slightly above 50% then I can be like, yeah, he's a gunslinger. He took care of business. Yeah. It's interesting that you brought up the USC line theory because I've had, I've had

a thought behind that for a couple of years now, which is just that the food is too healthy in Southern California and you can't get too much avocado. You can't get the kids big enough out there. Whereas you go, you know, some of the Southern schools, everything's fried. You got casserole's. You got stuff with butter, mayo in it. And I don't know, maybe Lincoln Riley is going to bring out some of that world famous brisket that he cooks. And I knew we were going to Lincoln Riley's brisket. But Lincoln Riley's brisket isn't going to make anybody gain weight because nobody's going to eat it. I know that that might be an issue. So I mean, is there any theory at all? Is there, does that hold any merit whatsoever that the lifestyle is almost too hard?

I wrote a story 10 years ago, actually more than 10 years ago now, because Chip Kelly put me on it. When Chip Kelly was coaching at Oregon, I asked him, what is the hardest player to find in recruiting? And he said the ready made interior defensive linemen, they're just so hard to find. So I kind of moved it out a little bit. And I looked at where every NFL defensive linemen at the time had grown up and made a map of it. And I called sociologists, I called anthropologists, I called all kinds of different people trying to figure out what's the connection? Why is it these particular places are the hot beds? And you've got like, obviously the deep South, there's a cluster in Utah and

the Pacific Islands for sure. And I couldn't find any sort of commonality until I overlaid the US obesity map. There you go. Yep. And it matched completely. It was perfect. So look at the obesity map. That's where the defensive linemen live, which should not be that hard to figure out. The big people live where the big people are. Yeah. It's like the South Wisconsin. It's Barry Alvarez when he is introductory press conference at Wisconsin was we have a lot of big people in the state of Wisconsin. We've got to keep them here. Like that's what he said. He basically called the entire state of Wisconsin fat to their face. And then he built a program around it. He wasn't wrong. No, he wasn't wrong. No, it makes a ton of sense when you think about it.

What about, I mean, I noticed that you haven't talked about your school, Andy, is that a situation where like you got the guy that you thought you wanted, right? You thought you wanted Billy Napier. But then now all these, you know, all the blue chip dominoes start to fall. Are you just reminded like sadly to yourself, like, yeah, that could have been us 20 years ago in that discussion. I can't ever imagine Florida doing that. Like now they didn't, they did go after Urban Meyer and get him and he was the obvious number one draft pick among coaches. But that was a different time and he was coming from Utah. It wasn't like they were going and getting Pete Carroll from USC. So just knowing Florida's history, I can't, I can't picture them

going that, that route. The Napier thing's interesting because all the Florida people were laughing at LSU about 24 to 48 hours ago saying, well, you could have had him. He's right there in your backyard, but you're too snobby to hire him. And you should have, you should have hired him. Well, no, they had their own plan. But I will point this out because I, everybody gets mad at me and like the Texas A&M people hate me when I say, don't guarantee this much money because these things usually end badly and they do. But I will remind everyone that the coach of the best team in college football right now was a defensive coordinator when he was hired. The coach of the team that won the big 10 most

of the years until this one was an offensive coordinator when he got hired. The coach of the team in South Carolina that had a down year this year, but has two national titles in the past five was the wide receivers coach when he got hired. The coach who won with the best, probably the best college football team ever assembled, maybe them or 2001 Miami, but 2019 LSU was the D-Line coach when he got hired. So you can say, oh, this, this gives us a better chance. And maybe it does give you a, an incrementally better chance of getting what you want, but it is all a crapshoot. It is all a complete crapshoot. Yeah. I'd like to just really quickly break some news to you. So this might affect the coaching carousel. This was just filed to ESPN,

Mike DeRocco. I saw Urban Meyer. Per League source Jaguars coach Urban Meyer has no interest in taking another college coaching job and remains committed to rebuilding the franchise. So I guess nobody was answering his agents calls. And so, you know, class act, he's returning. Well, listen, he's doing the right thing. You just got to make sure, they got to make sure Jackson DeVille stays healthy pregame. You can't, you can't lose a mascot and then lose to the Falcons. All right. So let's quickly do a little conference championship. So I was texting you last night, SEC championship game. I've already put my bed in because I didn't want to overthink it. I do not know how Alabama blocks Georgia up front. I think Nick Saban told everyone,

told the world last week when he did his speech about when I got here, we were happy to win a game. Now you guys are complaining. We didn't blow out LSU. I think Nick Saban's telling the world, Hey, we don't have the team this year. How do you see that game going and other any other conference championship games that you're like, Ooh, this one's going to be interesting. So I was on the same kind of path as you when I covered the, the Florida Alabama game in Gainesville. And when I saw Nick Saban talking after that game and how kind of giddy he was to get out of there with the 31, 29 win against, against the Florida team that wound up getting his coach fired. I, uh, I was like, who this, uh, this doesn't seem like Nick Saban. Like maybe he knows

what his roster is relative to what his other rosters that have won national titles looked like. And maybe he's kind of trying to manage everybody's expectations right now. And I do feel like that's where they are. And I feel like Alabama has probably overachieved by getting to 11 and one, but I'm with you. I, I think Georgia is, is going to be very tough for them to deal with. They're going to have a hard time blocking Georgia, the hard time scoring on Georgia. We don't know about Georgia's offense. You know, will they be able to score in Alabama's defense? Will Will Anderson terrorize Stetson Bennett? I do think Will Anderson is going to make life pretty miserable for him, but I think Stetson Bennett's actually the right choice of quarterback

in this situation because he can move. And everybody keeps assuming, oh, they're going to bring in JT Daniels and he'll save the day. No, no, no. Stetson Bennett probably is better for what they're trying to do right now. And George Pickens is their best offensive player. He tore his ACL in March. He played some snaps against Georgia Tech. He may be ready to come back. The other thing about the, the, the George Alabama dynamic is Georgia doesn't have to win this game. And I think that's worse for Alabama than if Georgia did have to win this game because there is no pressure on Georgia whatsoever. So you can either get over the Alabama hump now or try to get over it later, but it doesn't matter, which means you're probably going to get over it now.

And it's still the emotional angle of it. Like Georgia still, people are like, oh, they're in no matter what. They, they very much want to beat the fuck out of Alabama because it means a lot. Yeah. I said, everybody, everybody's like, with the playoff expanse to 12, nobody's going to care about these games. No, no, no. All the psychological damage that Alabama has inflicted on Georgia and a lot of these players were on roster for that. Like, no, no, they want they want to give it back in kind. Is there any possibility in the world that Georgia wins this game 45 to 42 and Alabama still gets in the final four? The only, the only way I can imagine that is if it's like a four over time game, Alabama loses on a terrible call that we all know they

got screwed on. Maybe then, but I think that's the only way. I don't think Alabama's getting in if they lose. They would also, I think need chaos. Like they would, maybe not chaos is the right word because it's actually not that. Most of these games, Baylor to win, Houston to win. Right. They would need, I don't think they'd get in over Notre Dame. Well, one lost Notre Dame team. I don't think the committee would do that, which I'm rooting for Notre Dame, by the way, to win the title because it would be nothing would be funnier than Brian Kelly sitting in Baton Rouge and watching his team watching the title and being like, Oh, whoops. Like I, my whole idea of going to LSU was I couldn't win a title at Notre Dame

and then they won one without me. And then Luke Fickle is the interim coach at Notre Dame, winning that championship. Yes. Yes. Beating Cincinnati. That would be amazing. They beat Cincinnati for the title. Matt Campbell in Cincinnati. Yeah. He's got a lateral move. Open Matt Campbell at Cincinnati. That's it. Let's just do it. All right. So any other, any other, nothing, nothing would surprise me at this point. Yeah. No, nothing would surprise any other games. I think Michigan's going to probably roll. Who do you have in the Baylor, Oklahoma State game? I think Oklahoma, Oklahoma State wins this one. I've loved watching their defense play all year. I do enjoy that this has been sort of the, the renaissance for defense,

not just in the big 12, but everywhere. I mean, George is winning with dominant defense as well at the top of the ranking. So I think, I think Oklahoma State just has played so well the last few weeks. They've really hit their groove. So I think they're going to win and I think they're going to make the playoff, which for the remaining schools in the big 12 who got the news that Texas and Oklahoma were leaving, I'm sure that's vindication for them for Oklahoma State, especially, which is getting left behind by its rival. It's got to feel pretty sweet. Actually, that's now what I'm rooting for. Let me, let me say it this way. I want Brian, I want Notre Dame with no Brian Kelly to beat Oklahoma State because then Oklahoma State

would have gone farther than Lincoln Riley ever did with Oklahoma, proving him wrong as well. The prove it wrong. My gun, my gun, he has a lifetime contract now. So he can't even get involved in the craziest coaching carousel ever. And every coaching carousels had my gun. He involved him. Yeah. But wait, so you say it's a lifetime contract, but I mean, we've seen the contracts that these coaches coach on, which are true. These are the worst contracts ever written. In fact, it's like so lopsided. All the power is on the side of the coaches. None of it is on the side of the university. The university presidents should start a union against their bosses, the college coaches, and be like, we're not going to hire any coach that doesn't put a non-compete

clause in their contract. Oh, it, it's funny because everybody, everybody loves it. And it's just college sports turns everyone who believes in capitalism into a raging socialist. Like when, when, when people are trying to argue against the players making money, it was, it was, well, it's not good for them. No, it's great for them. As you've seen, the game has not fallen apart. Nothing has fallen off the face of the earth since players have started getting paid. And then they say, well, you got to put a salary cap on coaches. No, you cannot do that. In fact, schools already tried to do that. They got their butts kicked in federal court in like 1998. So it's never going to happen. Somebody's got to exercise

self-control. And the thing I keep coming back to is I don't, I don't know that college ADs understand the concept of replacement value. It's not, my problem is not with Lincoln Riley getting paid or Brian Kelly getting paid because those guys are, they've demonstrated success. They are the closest thing you can get to a sure thing. So absolutely you pay them as much as you, you can possibly pay them. What bothers me is when you get these extensions for these guys that are going eight and four and seven and five, because they're worried they're going to lose them. Who cares if you're going to lose them? You can find somebody else who can give you eight and four, seven and five. Yeah. Yeah. It's all great. It is. It's crazy to see that there's, you know,

there's these coaches that are making now what, like a hundred, eventually there's going to be a cap at the top end though, right? No. Yeah. No, shout out Mel Tucker, by the way. He's the one in Matt ish, but in Michigan state for making this all like go nuclear. Oh, I do think that, that drove a lot of it. Look, aren't you guys up to like $106,000 an episode now? Well, yeah, before taxes and also we can't buy milk anymore. So what are you going to do with all that money? There's also the cost of living in New York. Like if you lived in Gainesville, Florida, your money would go a lot farther. I'm just saying true. Yeah, true. I'd be the king, but I would own seven publics. Well, and you'd have a mode around your house. That's what

really matters with alligators in it. But no, I mean, there's no cap. You're worth whatever someone's willing to pay you. And until one of these guys realizes, hey, my chances of winning a national title might be just as good with this defensive coordinator over here as this proven head coach, you're going to see the salaries keep going up. Yeah, there might be a bunch of presidents that, that, you know, they're not used to get getting bullied around and pushed around at the negotiating table. And, you know, they've come up in their own right. They think that they're the most powerful person that town. There will be some of those guys that decide, okay, we're done. We're done with this exorbitant stuff, unless they're going to pay, unless you're

going to put a clause in there saying that they won't leave. And then there will be other schools that just say, fuck it, we don't care. LSU exactly. There'll be the teams that really want to win that say we're going to win at all costs and we don't care what everybody else says. So it's going to almost be like more of a siloing of power. It's a beautiful sport in that way. But what's funny, and I go back to what I said earlier, like, nobody thought the wide receivers coach with the funny name at Clemson was worth anything. Yeah. And suddenly he turns them into one of these power programs. So the, the beauty of it is it is so unpredictable. Large groups of 18 to 22 year olds are incredibly unpredictable. The sure thing can fail. The long shot can succeed.

And it really doesn't feel like there's that much difference in the chances. And the best part about all of this is as we talk about how it's so hard to crack into that group and Georgia will probably win the title. So it still is so hard. We will potentially have a college football playoff with Cincinnati, Oklahoma State and Michigan involved, which if you said at the beginning of the season, you wouldn't believe that. And it makes the season so much more interesting that people have been more engaged. When Michigan beat Ohio State, it was like this massive catharsis. And it's not like everybody's a huge Michigan fan. I think most casual college football fans don't like Michigan. They, you know, Michigan's one of the winnings

programs in the sport and their, their view is kind of snobby, but they'd been beaten down so much by Ohio State. It was refreshing to watch them win. It was refreshing to see them give everyone else some hope. And I think this season's been amazing and having fans back in the stands and it's just, it reinvigorates the interest in the sport. You know, we kept talking about, well, if it's same over and over, it's going to get really boring. And I think they're going to probably vote in the next few days to, to go to 12 in the playoff. I think that'll help too, because when we're sitting there in, in mid to late November, and there's still 20 teams that have a chance to make the playoff, there's a lot to talk about. That's a lot to get excited about

for different fan bases. We're going to be able to do bracketology for college football all year round. I'm just going to get to be even more devastated when Wisconsin loses late in the season, because it will bump them out of the playoff. No, they'll be like an 11 C most years, I feel like it's that Minnesota win would have destroyed the playoff. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. It would have been just chef's kiss for, for everybody in Minnesota. Wisconsin will be perpetually on the bubble for the play for a 12 team playoff and it will, it will break my heart every year. But, um, all right, Andy, we've taken it. Yes, exactly. I do have one last thing though. So we talked about, you know, the rinky dink award, the Heisman trophy earlier, the most important

trophy. We're going to announce that I believe next week, we're going to announce the finalists on Friday of this week. So I wanted to get your top three nominations for the low man trophy, the nation's best college fullback. I have my own opinion. I think that there are actually like three realistic options as far as I'm concerned, but one guy is head and shoulders and neck roll above the rest. So I want to hear your take on it. Yeah. Cowboy collar above the rest. Absolutely. I want to throw one in there from a small school. Just make sure he gets the recognition he deserves because he's the, the kind of athlete that the fullback position I think is, is evolving into. Zach Angelo from Northern Colorado, a fullback who can just straight up hurdle people.

There are not many, not many of those around. So I appreciate that. First value nominee. Your, your school fullback keeps the fullback flame lit. I think that's, I think that's very honorable and noble. So Josh and all definitely in there. It's only 25 bucks to hire him for a cameo. So if you wanted to say happy birthday, lead block for you. That's a bargain, but, and we'll keep this in the big 10 West. Got to keep it in the family. The greatest mullet in college football. He's probably missed cast where he is. He probably needs to be playing for coastal Carolina. Yep. Money pot a bomb at Iowa. Also a name that sounds like he played college football in the 1930s,

where he would have been also a fullback. I don't think you can beat that. I love it. Yeah. They got the bomb squad in Iowa. The combination of fullback and center out there. Of lender bomb and pot a bomb. It's the most Iowa football thing of all time. I think that's a pretty good list. I'm not going to give my other two that I would put up there. I did look up Zach Angelo Angelo, excuse me, on Twitter. His pinned tweet is who's back of the week fullback hurdles. He tagged us in it. It seems like it's a little too self-promotion to me. A little too on the nose. It seems like he's, you know, he's going out there. He's trying to make headlines for himself. I think I think the, the spirit of the little man trophy is. Yeah.

You let us talk. I mean, if he, if he, if he'd known how to fix his team's bus when it broke down before a game, I think Billy would have had him and nominated for football guy of the week. And that probably would have elevated his candidacy. But I appreciate somebody getting the word out. It's an underrepresented position. So as much publicity as you can bring to it, even if you got to bring it yourself. We like our fullbacks though with a Twitter account and maybe 25 tweets total. And the last time they tweeted was when they committed to the school they're at four years ago. Yeah. That's kind of money. Yeah. That's money. I believe, I believe he's got a senior year highlights pin. Yeah. Right. Did they lose the password to this thing?

Like, you don't, you just can't even, I want to pull back with no internet whatsoever. And maybe he follows like four guys on a Twitter account, his parents set up for him when he was recruiting. Yeah. And he follows like, he's still an egg. Yeah. He follows like Eric church and Kroger. Yeah. And that's it. You know, no, no, he follows Luke Brian. Let's be honest, fullbacks, definitely are Luke Brian. All right. So I'm watching some of Angelo's highlights. I'll take it back. He looks like, he looks like he's a player that is kind of that's an athlete. Yes. That's an athlete. This guy's good. All right. Oh, and his, uh, when Jordan Davis or Jalen Carter get a little, do they have a chance? Cause like Jalen Carter will get put in there to block sometimes

and then Jordan got a handoff. He scored on a dive. I'd say it's a possibility for guys like that. Like you run into the conversation like is Jeremiah Hall. Is he really a fullback? I think he is really a fullback. See, I have, my thinking is that there should just be no real difference between tight ends and fullbacks anymore. You could like, if you have a really good blocking tight end, there's no reason you can't motion him to be right behind the quarterback and right in front of the tailback and run a lead with it. Like why not? What's, he's a little tall for it, but he can, he can, if he's a knee bender, he'll be all right. Yeah. Big people are big people. It doesn't matter where you line them up. He also, Zach Angelila has big cats tweet

fullbacks matter as his header. There we go. So he's, he's definitely listening to us talk about him. So I'd like to apologize, Zach. Yes. Love him. Like a good guy. Love it. Um, Andy, thank you so much. I'm sure that during the taping, this like four more jobs have been filled. Uh, but we appreciate it and I will hopefully see you soon. Thank you guys. Thanks Andy. Thanks Andy. That was Andy Staples. And before we get to Mitch Schwartz, want to talk to you better, great friends over at SimplySafe. If you've ever wanted to make your home feel safer, there's no better time than right now. This week, our friends over at SimplySafe are giving part of my take listeners early access to all their holiday deals, 40% off their award winning

home security. We love SimplySafe. It has everything you need to make your home safe, indoor and outdoor cameras, comprehensive sensors all monitored around the clock by trained professionals who send help the instant that you need it. SimplySafe was even named best home security system of 2021 by US News and World Report. You can easily customize a system for your home online in minutes and even get free custom recommendations from SimplySafe. There are no long-term contracts, no commitments. It's really easy way to start feeling a bit more peace of mind. And right now you get SimplySafe's biggest discounts of the year. You can get a complete home security system starting at just over a hundred bucks. SimplySafe is everyone's favorite

home security and I'm no exception. Setting up technology is normally a huge hassle. With SimplySafe you can get that system set up and running in no time at all. You can sleep better at night knowing that your family is protected day and night with SimplySafe camera with a built-in spotlight and night vision. Take advantage of SimplySafe's holiday deals get 40% off your new home security system. Just got to go to SimplySafe.com slash PMT. Again, that's SimplySafe.com slash PMT get 40% off your entire system. And now for something completely different. Okay, we now welcome on a very special guest. It is Mitch Schwartz. He's a Super Bowl champion. He's a four-time all-pro offensive tackle. Is he retired? That's my first question, Mitch. Thank you for joining us. Are you retired?

Because I can't figure it out. Coming out with the hard-hitting questions right out of the game. Yes. No, I'm still recovering from my back surgery. I had that in February. Unfortunately, the nerve is taking a little bit longer to get right than I would have liked. So we're still waiting on that guy to kind of come through. But we're getting there. It sucks to have nerve pain down your calf every day. So one of these days it'll turn the corner and start feeling a little bit better. That really does suck. So that was a bad question by me. But I have been wondering because you were such a good player and I've seen your rehab going on. And I'm like, is he coming back? Is he what's going on? But that's good to know that you still might be playing football.

Yeah, it's still on the table. I wanted to get back to where I was fully healthy and feeling good and then figure out what the future holds. It's not, as I said, super exciting to have back pain every day as people who have back pain know. It sucks and it's something that you just think about and it kind of runs your day to day. So once I can get through this last push and get back to feeling good, I can make that determination on the future. But yeah, rehab a few times a week and when that gets boring and monotonous and doing the same activities all the time. And as you know, as a bigger guy, you can only do so much core activity throughout the day. And it just gets pretty crappy. So hoping to turn the corner and then I can get back to the fun stuff.

And is it Mitchell or is it Mitch? If you ask my dad, it's staunchly Mitchell and never Mitch. But if you ask my brother, it's fatty. And if you ask most other people, it's Mitch. So any one of those three works. Okay. Yeah. So you were obviously a very good player for a long time on the Browns and on the Chiefs. And it's your first season without, you know, having that week to week day to day, you know, guardrails of being in a locker room and going out there and playing on Sundays. Have you experienced for the first time sitting down watching like Red Zone on Sunday? Have you become like a football fan? Are you just taking time away from the game? I've always been a football fan. You know, I used to like design by weeks around being at home on

Sunday. So I could have my two TVs and watch the games and flip channels and stuff. I've always enjoyed it. And I don't love Red Zone channel because I like the flow of the game and picking like the better games and just kind of enjoying it. I don't like all the jumping around like, oh, now this game, oh, this game. And then, you know, I don't play fantasy football. So I don't really care. The fist ring running back is about to score touchdown. So for me, I like having both clickers, usually like a four game combination, you know, changing the channels, watching the games. So that has been really fun for me this year, being able to, you know, watch football every week. You are right. Red Zone, we all love Red Zone, but then you realize like we, how we watch the

games, we watch it all of us together. We have six TVs. So we have five games and Red Zone. And every time they flash to Red Zone, you're conditioned to think some big play is going to happen and you never get a flow of the game. So I, it's just like it goes and it's Jets Houston and it's like third and A and the guy takes a sack and they're kicking a field goal. It's like, we didn't really have to cut to it. Yeah. Right. Money shot compilations. Sometimes I like to see a little romance. Yeah. We want to see the plot, you know, and how it progresses. All right. So I want to, you know, like I said, appreciate you coming on because I've listened to you. You've been doing some analysis. I think you're really, really great at what you do in terms of talking

about offensive line play and how these teams are coming together. So I wanted to talk about Monday night football that we just watched Russell Wilson and the idea, because now I don't, I'm not going to have you say anything bad about the chiefs, but the idea, the quarterbacks, when they sometimes get sacked, it's their fault for running out of the correct blocking. How often do you think that happens in the NFL? It happens a decent amount. You know, obviously offensive line, Twitter would like to make you think it happens every single time there's a sack. Right. But as a lineman, you're blocking for, you know, a specific spot for the most part, the quarterback is like seven to nine or 10 yards deep in the pocket. There's a general timeline of,

you know, when you're supposed to be blocking for, and once it gets past three or four seconds, like that's when you see guys kind of shut down and stop, and they assume the ball is gone, because normally the throw is gone. So if the quarterback's in that general area for a few seconds, it's usually fine. I mean, when a guy starts to bail the pocket or he sets too deep, that's when it gets to be more the quarterback's fault. Like I would say a coverage deck isn't the quarterback's fault or the O-line's fault. It's more, you know, the defense played it well and the receivers couldn't get open. Like if the quarterback is pinballing in the pocket and trying to break in, because no one's open for five seconds, I wouldn't put that on him

either. So there's less times than, you know, people think that it's truly the quarterback who just like completely messed it up and ran into a pressure or something like that. But it does happen and for the most part, any sack tends to get blamed on the offensive line. So that's what we don't love to see. So in particular with Russell Wilson, their offense looks a little broken right now. Is there any truth to the statement that Russell Wilson sometimes will, instead of stepping up in a clean pocket or maybe even leaving a clean pocket, will start trying to make a play with his feet that will then get him into more trouble in terms of the offensive line and what they're trying to do? Because it's always been said Seattle's offensive line has been a weakness

and they have not done a good job of protecting Russell Wilson. I'd imagine he's a harder guy to protect than like a Tom Brady or an Aaron Rodgers, someone who wants to stay in the pocket and step up in the pocket. Yeah, it seems like Wilson tends towards holding on to the ball or, I mean, obviously we've seen all the crazy plays outside of the pocket and so he likes to flush the pocket when he can. You know, there's some of the statistics on how long he holds on to it and stuff of that nature. It seems like in this particular moment that offense is, you know, I don't know if broken is the right word, but there's something like fundamentally wrong with it that I don't think they're flowing together. They're not like trusting each other

and a quarterback in that situation obviously has a ton of belief in himself as we all know. You know, he thinks he can make the play at all times and so he's the one that's going to hold on to the ball and say, all right, I'm going to wait for this guy. I'm going to throw this guy open. I'm going to run for it. So yeah, a quarterback is definitely getting to that mentality and it is, you know, tough for the O-line. There was a stretch there. They did a pretty bad job of like drafting and developing offensive linemen. So there's a give and take. It just seems like right now a little bit of, you know, trust broken through that offense. He has Mr. Unlimited. He can make things happen. You're right. He believes in himself and that's what kind of time in the

pocket is what he requires. Yeah. So he's, he's been great over the years at, at making those plays where he's running around, keeping his eyes downfield and finding a guy who gets open because you can't cover a wide receiver for five seconds. You know, after the play breaks down, if you have a quarterback that's willing to make that pass instead of, you know, trying to run for four or five yards or, you know, take what they can get and keep their eyes downfield. That's, it's an asset to have that at the quarterback position. He's been good at it, but maybe, just maybe the problem is like he did kind of come back from a six or seven week injury in three weeks because he is built so different that he is like, you know what, my finger is better because I'm Russell Wilson

and my body heals faster than any other man on earth. And so maybe it could be injury related. I don't want to like give all that to Russell Wilson because part of it's on his game too, but there were, there were definitely times in Kansas City where there's a guy, his name rhymes with Mattrick Pahomes who would, who would drift sometimes. And I had a theory that he would drift to your side more frequently and then you would get more of the blame for not being able to hold a pass block for, you know, seven seconds at a time. He actually held me out more often than not because he, I mean, he's right handed. So he likes to go to his right to be, you know, more naturally running to the right and throwing on the run. And so he could kind of play

off my block. If I, you know, push the guy inside, he could go around. If I was giving him a pressure around the edge, he can kind of do like step up and like lean his shoulder and duck around and kind of break and tame. So he definitely helped me out. You know, I know he gets knocked a little bit for being too deep in the pocket or for doing these other things, but like, he has such a crazy sense of everything around him. And we've seen it in his quarterback play, but in terms of, you know, if you go back to the Super Bowl, the WASP play that everyone talks about, you know, he's saying, Hey, do we have time to run this before the play? Like our line was having a tough time with the 49ers front four. So like, he knows that that's a play he's going to have to,

you know, take a little deeper drop and buy some time in the pocket. And then as the play's developing, I mean, he dropped at 13 or 14 yards, but there was pressure on the left side on the inside. And so if he stayed at, you know, eight, nine, 10 yards, they would have gotten home. The fact that he dropped to 13 or 14 yards allowed him the time to like complete that pass. So he's got this insane feel for things. And, you know, he's always looking at getting better and trying to fix it. There's a couple of plays a game and he's like, Hey, I was a little too deep on that. You know, he's honest with himself and with the alignment. And he tries to help you out as much as possible. But I guarantee you he helped me out a lot more than I helped him out. Did you

ever tell your brother, Jeff, like, Hey, cool it, man, you're like Odell Beckham, senior here, criticizing Mahomes going too deep in the pocket. No, I mean, I don't think he ever made a compilation set to like incredible music showing off all my best plays. So, you know, he just, he had his, I did tell him for his breakdowns, you know, he used to start and just go into like super slow mo and take forever to talk about the play. I was like, dude, you should show the play in full at the beginning. So people see the play and then start breaking it down. So, you know, got to get myself a shout out there for helping us. It's smart. It's smart. It's smart. But it's also in a way not smart because you don't want to give that away up front. You want to make us keep

watching the video until the end because when I see somebody like Baldi breaking down a play, it starts in slow motion and then he just starts screaming about like the offensive lineman's leverage and how amped up it makes him. Yeah, but you're watching for like Baldi's excitement, honestly, more than like the play itself. So that's a little bit different. I mean, let's not sell Jeff short on this one. Like he gets amped up too. You guys are like the Cuomo Brothers. He's always out there protecting you. Yeah. Yes. Yes. All right. So I'm very fascinated with the human element of pro football. This year, it feels like no one is great and everyone, there's a few teams, Cardinals, Packers, Patriots look like they're starting to get great,

but it seems like week to week you see all these teams, you know, the Titans lose to the Texans. How much of like a let down game is real and how much of it is a media narrative that we just kind of throw out there when a bad performance happens? No, it definitely happens and it, you know, sucks to deal with. I'd say teams didn't have these let down games more coming off success and then thinking they've figured it out or they have, you know, the secret sauce or you are maybe playing that lesser team for a specific week. You know, the idea of the trap game, I feel like that gets talked about and it's, oh, well, this team was looking ahead to the next week. It's like, no, they were just coming off a big win and they're playing, you know, the Texans

and they think, oh, they're not as good. We got this. We can handle it. And they don't prepare the same way, you know, they don't practice with quite the intensity and focus. And maybe guys are, you know, joking around in the hut a little bit more. So those games happen, you know, for the good teams, it's been odd to see this year, like beat downs happen. Like the bills, you know, the first week against Pittsburgh, obviously the New Orleans green bag game was nuts. But like all these good teams, for the most part, have had one or two really bad games. And that's what we haven't seen in the past. You know, the good teams typically, you know, at this point, they're nine and three, and their three games are close to contested, maybe one kind of odd loss by nine

or 10 points. But the variation week to week is pretty crazy. And I don't know if it's, you know, just the longer season, there's like a weird mental component of it just feels so much longer. Like, to me, it's nuts. There's still like six weeks left. It seems like football has been going on for so long. So I wonder if, you know, there's longer stretches between bi weeks and between Thursday games with the minibi. It's just hard to keep that level of focus that high for like 12 straight weeks. Yeah. What was it like going from Cleveland to Kansas City? Because Cleveland was obviously, you know, they were the Browns. It was like the peak of the Browns being the Browns when you were there. And you were a really good player for that team. But I mean,

it was like a coaching carousel you had, I don't know how many quarterbacks you had. Can we do that game where like Aaron Rodgers plays like here all the different wide receivers I've thrown a touchdown to. Can you name all the Browns quarterbacks that you've blocked for? Yeah. In the regular season was Brandon Whedon, Cole McCoy, Thad Lewis, Josh Johnson, who I think everyone's blocked for at this point, Brian Hoyer, Jason Campbell, Josh McCown, Johnny Manziel, Austin Davis, Connorshaw. Damn, that is a tough list. It was a lot of guys. So I committed to memory because it's kind of a whole party trick. But in four years, I had two owners, three head coaches, four offensive coordinators,

four general managers. So a lot of turnover. What was the best year in Cleveland? The best year was 2014. We had Kyle Shanahan. We started the year seven and four first in the AFC North. We promptly lost our next five games, finished seven and nine and didn't make the playoff. That was really exciting. But there was a point there. I think it was either we 10 or 11, but we were five and four. We went to Cincinnati on a Thursday night. I think they were number one in the division. We beat them and we smoked them. It was like 31-10 or something like that. Brian Hoyer, native Ohio guy. There were enough Browns fans in the stadium. Then the fourth quarter, they were chanting his name in Cincinnati. That got us to first place in the AFC North.

Of course, we had never experienced success like that before. It was one of the cooler feelings of my life at that time, obviously trumped by the Chiefs years. But that was by far the best year we had in Cleveland. So then you go from Cleveland to Kansas City. Was there an immediate difference? What was the biggest thing that you noticed about getting to Kansas City? You're like, wow, this seems to be competent. Yeah, I'd say that. It's more the staff all trusted each other. This is how it's going to be. The head coach, Coach Reid, doesn't have 20-minute team meetings every day. He doesn't have to get up there and establish the culture and talk about accountability and discipline. Again, I had three coaches in four years. Typically, it's a newer

coach trying to establish what he's doing so they like to have meetings. They like to talk a lot. The better coaches, these are the rules, easier expectations. Meet them or you're not going to have to be here. They bring in the right people to give you the space to trust that. Players handle some business and there's accountability with each other and they treat you well. It's not like the GM is trying to surpass the head coach and then the business guy is trying to get into the owner's ear to say, oh, we want this to be the traffic. The good organizations, it doesn't run that way. The owner hires either the coach or the GM. They hire the guy below them. They hire the guy below them. There's one common goal. Everyone trusts each

other and they're all working together. That was the major difference in Kansas City. Yeah. Dysfunctional organizations. It always feels like everyone's out for self-preservation and you can tell when they're all making moves that are just, I'm trying to keep my job here. Your team doesn't know anything about that. They've had a clean couple of weeks here. Yeah. Hey, we're off. One win in a row. No big deal. Matt Nagy. He's probably going to find a way to make the playoffs and then they're going to give him an extension and I'm going to go through hell again. Biggest freak in terms of guy that you had to block and maybe also give me offensive line freak too. I love hearing about the guys that it's just different. Their power is

different. Their speed is different. You're like, oh, fuck, this is going to take everything today to block this guy. The biggest one that I noticed on the field was Khalil Mack. We faced him. I think when he was a rookie, I was in Cleveland and we played Oakland that year and he's massive in person. You've probably seen him in person at this point. He's huge and on film for whatever reason, he doesn't look like 64, 270 and just huge thighs and completely jacked. He looked slightly smaller and then you see him in person like, holy crap, this dude is different. Even Joe, after playing that, he would take two steps and just vortex to the inside and you wouldn't even see him and he's already passed you. You're like, oh my God, how is this happening? Honestly, what Michael Parsons

is doing this year reminds me of what we felt like going against young Khalil Mack is the change of direction and how quickly he can go from outside to inside or inside to outside. It's just completely nuts. That was one that we both talked about. The old line guys, Tyron Smith has been the one everyone talks about for forever because he's 66, he's 308 or 310. His body fat's no joke, probably like six, seven, eight percent. He's cut and built an awesome defense alignment and he's just got these huge limbs. I'm sure he wears a size like 32 pant, which just fucking sucks, is another offense alignment to know. You assume those guys aren't strong because they're leaner and stuff, but he gets his hands on you, the plays over. He's super strong. Tyron Williams is a freak

and he's the best guy this year. He's 65, 335. He runs like he's 235. He combines just insane quickness, agility. Obviously, if you're 65, 330, I think he legit ran like a 46 or 47 at the combine. That's just pure power and force. Another guy like is Trent Brown, who is with the Patriots now who's like six, six, 10. I mean, I'm going to be nice to him and say 370, 380. You know, he's just like, there's no one else who looks like him in the NFL. So it's like he has to figure out what to do because he can't look at other guys and say, Oh, that works for him. And like, I can't look at him and be like, Oh, I'll block the guy the same way he did. Like it's just so different. It's fun to watch a guy like that. He's an insane, insanely large human being. So I noticed when you say

Michael Parsons and Cleo Mack, obviously Cleo Mack has a ton of power and strength, but is it harder? Are you, are you more worried about speed than strength when you're blocking? Well, that was the issue I had when I was younger is you see the quickness. And like I said, you like feel the quickness. He gets on you super fast and he's able to, you know, get inside or get the corner quick. But at the end of the day, I think he relies on his power and, you know, bull rushing or we've seen all the clips of him tossing offense alignment and, you know, slipping inside. So the power is like the root of his game, his literal strength. But as an offense alignment, you feel the speed and you feel panic more from the quick twitch, you know, that you're seeing on,

on film or that you're feeling. And so that's what he uses then to like throw guys, I said, like I said, upfield, like an offensive tackle is setting too deep and his weights on his heels and Mack just like stabs you on the inside shoulder, you go flying and he gets a sack. So figuring out like the right style to block a guy and, you know, what they use is their strength is pretty difficult for, you know, offense alignment. And he's one that's able to blend the two. And that's why, I mean, he is the freak that he is. Yeah. What about a unit this year? Like an entire offensive line that's playing really well together. They might not have the most talented guys, but they're just, for whatever reason, they've gelled correctly. What's one team

that jumps out to you? I mean, right now, especially in the run game, Philly, I mean, they look awesome. Obviously, if you follow Baldy, like that's the first team he breaks down every week. But those guys have, you know, gelled together in a way that very few have, especially with a couple injuries. You know, it's not just like, you know, New England is another one who when they're all healthy, the offensive line has looked awesome, but they've had a couple injuries and it hasn't looked as good. Like Philly's dealing with injuries, both of their starting guards are out right now and they're doing this. And so seeing a left tackle who had never played football until like three years ago, become one of the best left tackles. He's another freak too.

Six, eight, three 65. There was an interception this past week and he like ran full speed and destroyed the guy. Honestly, the guy, he went to the hospital. You might have had like a crack rib or something. Like my lot of absolutely, it was crazy. And just like seeing a guy that big moved that fast, you know, obviously it's the right tackle. I've always liked watching Lane Johnson. So that's a no line. That's really fun to watch. And you get to see some, you know, cool stuff that other teams don't do. Was that ever tough for you out in Kansas City? Because they, you know, the knock that we give sometimes to the chiefs. And again, when we, when we talk badly about the chiefs for the most part in the last few years, it's been because they're so good

that we have to find something to nitpick. But sometimes they tend to get a little cute with it. You know, they don't, you don't see the, the, the offensive line really rolling together in terms of like running power down people's throats. Is it tougher to gel as an offensive line when you're, you're passing attack is really the key to demolishing these teams. And you don't really get to get downhill and mall people together. It is a little bit. I mean, again, that equals a line somewhat proves the point because they were throwing the ball and, you know, Philly was chanting, run the ball in the crowd. And all of a sudden they just decided, all right, we're going to run the ball. And you've seen the offensive line take off and the

confidence they can get from just deciding like, Hey, we're going to run it 45 times a game. And there's like a confidence and a flow that you get into as an alignment when you're running the ball, you know, this particular week, you know, there's a couple of videos floating around of, you know, Frank Reich from Indy, he's talking about their philosophy on running. And oh, we call it eight plays for Jonathan Taylor, but five of them were RPOs and we ended up throwing it, you know, which was the right decision by the quarterback. But those eight plays that, you know, you're calling RPOs, the O line is blocking run. And on five of them, all of a sudden the defense like stops and runs in the other direction. And you're either like, ah, shit,

we had an awesome play here. He didn't hand it off. Or it's like, oh, well, you know, we didn't really run the ball. And you don't quite get that confidence of knowing like, yeah, we just ripped off an eight year run. And I got to, you know, drive my defense to tackle over the pile as he's trying to tackle the running back. You know, there's that like confidence in the run game that you don't quite get if a place called as a run, but it's still thrown and becomes a pass. And so that's something that, you know, kind of the spread RPO teams have to deal with. It's not that the line isn't physical or they're not capable of it. You just kind of lose sense of that feeling and that flow of the game that,

you know, a true, Hey, we're going to lean on the run game. That's going to be the point of emphasis team, you know, gets to feel throughout the course of it. It is awesome when a team, when you know a team is going to run the ball, actually Michigan, Ohio state, we talked about that on Monday because coach Harbaugh said that John Matten texted him and said that was the best O line plays ever seen played. There's something about watching a team, being able to just be like, we're going to run it down your throat and there's nothing you can do to stop it. Have you been a part of that type of drive or game where it's like you knew that the defensive line had basically given up because there was nothing

they could do. You just kicking their ass and going forward constantly. Yeah. Going back to Kyle Shanahan and Cleveland. That was the first time I experienced that at the pro level, you know, we, the first game of the year we went to Pittsburgh, we were down, I think 24 to three at the half, which is not super surprising for, you know, Brown's history and the Steelers at the time. And the way we came back was just running the ball. Like he has a super up tempo, no huddle offense. And a lot of that is just running the ball and tiring the defense out. And we're able to, you know, run on them in a way that most teams weren't able to. We came back, we tied the game, you know, Pittsburgh beat us by three,

but being down, I mean, especially, can you imagine right now, like you're down by three touchdowns and how do you come back? You just say, fuck it, we're just going to go up tempo and run the ball. Like that doesn't really happen. You know, we're running those outside zones, the linebackers have to, you know, run a much longer distance. And so, you know, Shazir was tired and guys like that, they get tired. The D line definitely doesn't want to deal with, you know, cup blocks and, you know, the stretch in the ball all the way down the field, like, like we did. So when Shanahan gets the run game going and you're going downhill, it's a lot of fun. And you can definitely, you know, tell that it has an impact on the guys

you're going against. Yeah. I love it. I love watching like the Niners. Even, I mean, they, they Kirk Cousins ended up having the ball twice with a chance to score, but there was a moment in that fourth quarter on Sunday where it's like they're up eight points and they're just running it and they're running it and running it and running it. And there's nothing that like the Vikings know they're going to run it. The Niners know they're going to run it. Everyone in the stadium knows they're going to run it and they still can run it on you. I have something just like, maybe it's primal about it, but like that's football. Yeah, it is primal. I mean, that's what it gets down to is kind of that like animalistic

instinct and your desire to, you know, dominate another person. Like that's the only way you get to do it in a, you know, reasonable civilized manner for the most part is on a football field. You know, that's what I don't really trend towards like feeling that desire or need that often in my life. So, you know, this year, I haven't like missed that about football, but that's what guys miss is being able to be physical to impart their will. You know, some of these kind of crazy guys who end up getting into fights and stuff down the road, because they've got this, you know, outlet to, you know, kind of get rid of their physicality on a football field. And, you know, once the game's taken from them, they're not able to adjust.

And so yeah, it is that, you know, pure, just like animalistic instinct to dominate. Yeah. Human body craves contact. That's what Jim Harbaugh says. Yep. You're pretty, pretty like even keeled guy though. Like you're pretty mild mannered right now. Would you snap into animalistic Mitchell when you get on the field? Like, do you think back at some plays that you made during games? You're like, wow, I was really a psycho there. No, they used to joke. If I gave like any sort of signal of like excitement, they're like, oh, wow, emotional outburst for Mitch. Like I keep things pretty, pretty even. That was something I also learned from, you know, Joe Thomas and Cleveland is, especially for the tackle position,

I feel like more than like garden centers is maintaining that like consistent mindset and attitude. You know, I was always one that like, I'd get overexcited or over anxious. And I tend to like throw my hands and lunge a guy's and technique wise, that doesn't really work. That doesn't benefit me. So staying within myself is, you know, something that benefited me and like even pregame, I'd sit at my locker and like have my eyes closed, visualizing and people just assumed that I was asleep and it wasn't really into it. So yeah, I've always been, you know, definitely on the more even keeled side. What team right now do you think is playing the best football and will be in the Super Bowl? The team right now that's playing probably the best football overall

is New England. I don't think they're going to, I mean, the Chiefs have one of the easier schedules for the last five or six weeks, over long the season has left. They have played a lot better in the past month and everything is trending in the right direction for them. And I think they're poised for like the run we've all been waiting for. It's interesting with Arizona because they have the best record. They've won good games with a backup quarterback, which should give them like more credence. And for us to say, Oh, wow, this is a deep team. And this is the best overall team. But it feels like no one wants to believe that they're actually the best team. So it's a little bit interesting there. It sucks to say, but like Kansas City, New England, Tampa Bay, Green Bay

right now, it's like all the teams, no one really wants to have a lot of success. And it's just like, Oh, well, they're kind of the best teams again. Wait. So to Kansas City, explain to us how it went from the worst defense in the league to, Oh my God, they can actually play defense. How did that happen? Like what changed overnight? Well, they didn't have to play Baltimore and, you know, Cleveland fully healthy. And again, some of that is schedule based. I mean, it sounds stupid to say, but like they won against some of the better offenses in football the first month of the season. You know, Chris Jones got fully healthy and they started playing him in his correct position at a defensive tackle, not a defensive end. They got Melvin Ingram, who's still a stud as a past

wrestler on the outside. So now he gets to compliment Chris. Frank Clark was injured all of training camp and missed a few weeks. And so the first four weeks he was back, he didn't really have success. Well, like that was his training camp. He was getting into game shape. Now he's in game shape. He's feeling good. He's healthy. So all of a sudden you get, you know, your three best defense alignment, healthy in the right spots and feeling good. Like, yeah, that's going to have an impact. I mean, you guys, when Cleo Mack and Akeem Hicks are out, like it looks a little bit different. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, maybe it is that simple. It's just, I love when teams can change like their entire, like we go into the season, we watch team for

the first half. We're like, this team sucks for this, this and this. And then they figure it out. That's always the best part of like sports is like the teams being able to fix, fix it and adjust it. Whereas like a team like the Rams who we're watching right now, it feels like they went into the season with a plan. They have not deviated from the plan and it's starting to show diminishing returns. And you're like, well, this kind of sucks. They stink. Yeah. And there's some interesting stats on like McVeigh teams after week nine, just like completely taking a nosedive. I guess the prevailing theory is that like he's awesome in the off season of figuring out what to do for the upcoming season. And they run the crap out of it for the first two months of the

year and it looks awesome. And then he doesn't adjust as much as teams adjust to him. And so I think we're running into that a little bit. I mean, obviously Stafford seems hurt. I mean, you've seen more Stafford than most of us. And so this seems more like the Lions version, whether that's who he actually is, or whether that's the injuries taken at all. It's kind of hard to discern that. But yeah, they change their offense dramatically. I mean, they're doing so much more shotgun stuff, so much more, you know, downfield passing. They're not just like under center running the same two runs and the same two play actions over and over. Like it seems like maybe they need to shift back more to that a little bit. I mean, that

elevated Jared Goff into, you know, almost a Super Bowl winning quarterback. So maybe go back to making things easier on your offense. Yeah. I mean, Jared Goff had a better season in Los Angeles than Matt Stafford's ever had out there. I think we can say that as concrete fact right now. You like Jared, right? Yeah, he's a Cal guy. So of course we like each other. Yeah. Andy Reed, have you ever seen him not wearing shorts? You mean I've ever seen him wearing shorts? No, no, no. I thought he always wore shorts. No, well, we always see him at practice. And so I've seen so many pictures of Andy Reed at practice wearing shorts when it's like 25 degrees outside. That made me think of road trips where he's wearing like his, you know, get up. And so

he's got to wear pants in that nature. But yeah, he if he has to for, you know, business trips, he'll throw on a suit and he'll, you know, keep the calves concealed. But yeah, for the most part, he likes his shorts. Obviously, he's a big man. So he likes the Tommy Bahamas and keeping things loose and casual. Yeah. Is he just like a day to day Hawaiian shirt wear? Doesn't matter if it's like November, December, he's wearing, he's wearing a floral print. I think so. I mean, you tend to wear like big man friendly clothing, you know, especially when you're lounging. You don't want to be like encumbered with something that's too tight and you know, you're, you're feeling self conscious about yourself. So, you know, he keeps things

light. And that's why it's nice to have him as your coach when you're in offense alignment, because like he understands what you're going through and he gets it. And there's always going to be good food around the building anyway. So that's a definite plus. Yeah. So I want to bring up food. So this has been awesome. We'd love to have you back on anytime. But we want to you, I follow you on Instagram and Twitter. You have, I would say some of the best like food, Twitter and Instagram stuff that's not, there's a snobby way to do it and you do it the way that's not in your face snobby. What, give us, give the people at home, because it seems like you're, you take it very seriously. Give the people at home a trick or a

tip when cooking like steak or any type of meat that you have found has worked. The biggest one for steak is just to use a thermometer. I think people think that like, oh, I'm a cool guy. I can like poke at my steak and I'll know when it's done. It's like, no, just use a thermometer. Like you're not that good at cooking a steak. All the good places do that anyway. Like you're going to have different cuts of meat. You know, people for the most part aren't buying like the same steak from the same place every single time. So, you know, if we made a steak out of you and went out of PFT, like they're going to be pretty different. One's going to be a bit leaner. One's going to be a bit, you know, more buttery like Wagyu. And so you can't just go

touching those and expect them to both be medium rare and they're going to feel the same. They're going to be different, but temperature wise, you know, 132 medium rare. That's 132 every time. So, I definitely say, you know, if you're cooking protein and meat, use a thermometer, you know, it doesn't mean that you're not good. People are going to appreciate a properly cooked steak over you thinking, you know what to do, but you're serving them something that's, you know, way too cooked. Now, do you actually season the meat or do you let the meat talk? Because Billy just likes to put stuff on the grill and on his pan. Just, you know, nothing, just like right out of the packaging. You can still taste the shrink wrap on it. Yeah, you're like a serial killer if you're

doing that. For me, I don't like rinse or wash meat, but if I take it out of the pack, I pat a dry with a paper towel. You also want to get stuff dry because if it's wet, it's going to take a lot of energy and a lot of heat to like convert that and basically boil it away before you can actually sear the meat and the sears where a lot of good flavor comes from. So you want to pat this steak as dry as you can with a paper towel and then absolutely you need to season it. You know, for the most part, if anything doesn't have, you know, salt, it's going to taste kind of shitty. Like that's why you go to a steakhouse. The reason the bread and the butter is so good is because they salt the shit out of the butter. Yeah, that's why the butter is good. Here's another tip for

anybody at home cooking meat. Take a picture of it in black and white and then post it online. And then everybody will get mad at you because they can't, they can't nitpick how improperly cooked your steak is. Or if you cook brisket, definitely post it online because, you know, everyone loves to see a nice dry brisket and talk shit on them. Absolutely. Actually, a real tip is to just let the meat rest. If you're cooking a steak, make sure to let it sit for how long do you usually let it like 10, 12 minutes? Yeah, at least five. Typically you say 10 and people can't really judge time. So 10 means like three in their world. But yeah, the idea there is like, as things get hotter, they tend to like bounce around more. And you know, if you think of getting in a hot tub,

like you get some blood flowing. But once you go into a cold tub, it kind of like seizes up and things start to cool down. And so letting the meat rest means, you know, the juices tend to slow down. And as you cut into it, you aren't left with all of them on your plate. Yeah, because you want to cut into it right away. But when you do, all the juices go out and then you have a dry piece of meat. Whereas if you had just been patient, boom, you would have had like the steak of your life at that point. I have one more I've one more brother related question for you, because this is always fascinating me about Jeff is he says that he he likes to go to EDM concerts, which is bizarre to think about Jeff at an EDM kind of like a rave. But he doesn't dance. He doesn't like

get in the crowd. He brings like a folding chair with him. And he sits down and calmly stares at the stage and watches the DJ during EDM. Is this true? Is he a psycho? I was more surprised that he got into the whole Peloton Revolution, then he was going to EDM concerts. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's an odd one because he does he's not like an EDM guy. I think his wife was big into it and dragged into one at one point. And he's like, Oh, this is kind of cool. But, you know, I'm not going to be like all these other people. I'm still going to be, you know, six, seven, 350. So I'll take a chair and bring a nice snack, you know, sit down, go into a trance and just snack my way through it. That actually sounds kind of fun, just like getting hypnotized by the music

and eating a shitload of food. Yes. Yes. Yes. All right. So Mitch, I had one last question. It's the rowback question promo code take. We're going to send you some polo's Q zips. You can get them for 20% off with promo code take R H O B A C K dot com. The perfect gift for the holidays. Make sure to jump on the newly dropped performance hoodies. They are awesome. All right. Last question. This has been great. So everyone, whenever we ask someone what the toughest place to play is it usually a Seattle or Arrowhead? So for you who called Arrowhead home for many years, what is the toughest place to play in the NFL? You can't say Arrowhead when, when, when you were at the Browns, the sneaky, like the latest game that I experienced was old Minnesota.

Because of the dome, it was super loud. You know, we went there. I think it was like week two or three, maybe four. I was in Cleveland and we were competing and we got down in the fourth quarter and we had a two minute drive to go win the game and we actually did win the game. But that crowd got like full force and it was super loud. And the last play of the game that we threw a touchdown between the O line and the running back, we were blocking three different past protections because we couldn't hear. I think it was whole year at quarterback. Like we couldn't hear him. And so we didn't know what to do. So one side of blocking one thing, another was blocking another and the running back was just like doing his thing. We ended up throwing a touchdown, I think,

to like Jordan Cameron in the corner or something. Like it was so loud, we couldn't hear him. So that one is sneaky. You know, we went up to Seattle and when I was in Cleveland and you don't really get to tell a crowds, you know, make up when Cleveland rolls into town, they don't get super juice for that game. So going there when I was in Kansas City, I think we played a night game up there. That is very loud and definitely lives up to the billing. But yeah, Minnesota and like 2013, whatever the stadium was called, that one was like sneaky, super loud. And it must suck a lot as an offensive line to like have to deal with that stuff. Yeah. It's not ideal. I mean, for the most part, they don't get that loud every

single time. It usually does come out in those, you know, higher leverage situations, but that's why guys say Seattle so difficult because they maintain that level of noise pretty much the whole time and including while you're in the huddle, you know, a lot of, you know, stadiums play the music on third down and, you know, fans know, Oh, Hey, it's third day. We should be really loud now. But being loud on the huddle is actually harder on the line than being loud with the line of scrimmage. Like most of the conversation and all the important stuff has already been given to you by the time you get to the line of scrimmage. So, um, yeah, Seattle definitely lives up to the billing there. Yeah. Um, I've watched that play right now. That was a sick

touchdown pass and it does look like the offensive line is doing. Yeah. You can actually see a couple of guys go forward and a few guys go backwards. Wow. You get some serious film archives there, huh? Well, I just Googled, George, you, I mean, you have a good memory. I just go Google Brian Hoyer to Jordan Cameron. Uh, game winning touchdown and boom, when you have so few wins and one of them is on a really exciting last second play, uh, you definitely tend to remember it. Yeah. I like how you said, like, you're like, yeah, we were actually competing. Um, which is two years in Kansas city and I had more wins than four years in Cleveland. Yeah. I mean, you make a good point

though that when you're on a bad team, uh, you don't really get the sense for what each city is like. You don't get the true Seattle. You probably leave Seattle being like, you know, it wasn't that loud there. I don't know what the big fuss is and it's because, well, yeah, they were, they're beating you like 28 to nothing without, you know, they didn't need the crowd. Yeah. Another advantage of being on a shitty team from like a very selfish offensive line perspective is that in the same way that like the fans don't give you the same game and we talked about like the low game earlier, the team isn't giving you, you know, they're 100% like playoff effort right out the gate. Maybe in the third or fourth quarter, it's a tight game. They know

they have to turn it on, but like you're not getting playoff level intensity from the get go like on the chiefs, especially once we got my homes and we were rolling like every team, that's their biggest game of the season. That's the one they get up for. And so going into games and, you know, facing a Seattle front four, that's maybe at 92% of, you know, they're 100%, like that's a big 8%. That makes a big difference for you up front. So you definitely get a little bit of an advantage, you know, from that perspective of being on a shitty team. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much, man. We would love to have you back on any time. And I think it would be good too. We just keep having you on and we just never let Jeff on. That'd be

kind of a fun running gag. Yeah, I agree. I think, you know, you can only have one brother as a recurring guest. And so I think you've obviously chosen correctly. Yeah, you beat him to it. Thanks so much, man. Best of luck in the rehab. Thank you guys so much. I appreciate it. Okay. Thank you to Annie Staples, Mitch Schwartz, Billy, any wrap up before we hit numbers and send everyone on their way? Yes. The part of my take, NFTs are now live at theopensea.io-barstool. Do your best, hackers. Try to steal these. Try to right click. Actually, if you right click it, Billy will hunt you down. I dare you to try to right click any of these NFTs. There's no way you can steal these. And Billy did a project.

Human kids can regrow fingertips if they're chopped off, but adults can't. Why'd you say that? I don't know. A little animal fact. Humans are animals. About the cult? Just saying. Interesting. Stem cells. Also, just a little heads up. I don't know if you guys have taken a look-see at week 13 schedule. Not so great. I did, actually. Not so great. It's pretty bad. It's not so great. I think Charger's Bangles is the best game. Oh, yeah. There we go. We'll watch that instead. We'll put it on all six TVs. Fucking love it. Rick Petino, Love Week. See you on Friday. Yeah, that's right. Love week. Yeah. Oh, numbers, numbers.

$6.84. $8. It's a PFT. The Quinnipiac students can go to your show Friday and watch their game Sunday. There you go. I love it. Nice little bookend. We'll get you. We'll get you warmed up for Rick Petino. Yeah. I need a new number that's never been pulled. Jake. 20th to 29th. 27th ever been pulled. What is that? 97. 91. 91. 91 is the second timer. We have 620, 22, 26, 27, 29, 49, 51, 76, 78, 81, 88. A lot of the 20s. I'm being 81 guy going forward. 88.

Love you guys. 88 degrees. Coming for your love of King. Take on me. Take me on. I'll be gone in a day or two. Needless to say, I'm all to send hits. But I'm being stolen a little way. Slowly learning the life is okay. Say up to me. It's no better to be safe than sorry. Say up to me. It's no better to be safe than sorry. Take on me.

Take me on. I'll be gone in a day or two. All the things that you say isn't liable. Just to play my worries away. You're all the things I've got to remember. You're shying away. I'll be coming for you anyway. You're shying away. I'll be coming for you anyway. Take on me. Take me on. I'll be gone in a day.