Pardon My Take - Former NFL GM Mike Tannenbaum, Football Is Back + Mt Rushmore Of Pizza Toppings

Episode Date: August 6, 2021

Football is officially back with the Hall of Fame game (00:02:45 - 00:13:34). Olympics talk and Lebron is starting his narratives again (00:13:34 - 00:26:41). Mt Rushmore of pizza toppings (00:26:41 - 00:37:57). Former GM of the Jets and current ESPN Analyst Mike Tannenbaum joins the show in studio to talk about how NFL front offices work, what mistakes teams make, diva quarterbacks and tons more (00:37:57 - 01:19:35). We finish with Fyre Fest of the weekYou 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 have former GM of the Jets and former vice president of football ops for the Dolphins, Mike Tannenbaum, same guy. He now works for ESPN. He was in-person, great interview, little different because it was a lot of inside the NFL, how a front office works.

We also held his feet to the fire on a couple of his takes against Baker Mayfield. So shout out Baker, we got your back still. We have football back officially, little Olympics talk, USA basketball is back, fire fest of the week, and we're going to go back to basics with our Mount Rushmore. So we did a couple outside the box. Now we're coming back down the fairway here with Mount Rushmore of pizza toppings. We're going to do all of that in a second. We're brought to you by our friends at Coors Light.

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Love Coors Light. Okay, let's go. It's part of my take presented by Barstool Sports. Welcome to part of my take presented by Coors Light, the beer made to chill. It's the beer for the summer. Send us those Blue Mountains. It is the weekend. It is Friday, August 6th, and football is officially back.

We got football, baby. We're recording this earlier in the day. It's 12.10 in the afternoon, but I can tell you what happened at the Hall of Fame game tonight already. Ben Roethlisberger was there, he was on the sidelines, sunflower seeds, no, gum. Actually no, jerky. Gum, how about it would be like Kung Pao chicken flavored gum, you might have just been Kung Pao chicken.

You might have had just a PF smoothie, just a mixture of all the appetizers blended into one creamy drink, but Ben was on the sidelines, he looked, some people think that he looked good tonight. Yes. So when people shit on the first preseason games and the Hall of Fame game, they don't realize what this does for us. Tonight is all about just getting your eyes used to the colors on the screen, a ball moving back and forth, the helmets, the score, all that stuff.

It doesn't, we know the game stinks. I think the over and under was like 32 and a half tonight. We know that it's the Hall of Fame game has changed where it used to be, you'd get maybe like a series of the starters. Now we get nothing. We get like all backups all the time and I get it, I understand it. It's about just getting yourself in the motion, feeling like it's a practice swing. It's not even a practice swing.

It's looking at the pitcher timing the pitcher mentally from the dugout. The practice swings are like week three of the preseason. This is going to be important tonight for a couple of reasons. We get Gucci D'Nucci back on the field. It's actually better. I like the fact that we've got Ben D'Nucci playing quarterback tonight because it feels like he's a starting quarterback in a weird way because we did see him start a primetime game last year.

So it's like, oh yeah, this means more. This Hall of Fame year, I recognize that guy. So we've got Gucci D'Nucci and then we've also got whatever new curve balls that Fox is going to throw at us with the scorebugs and like the different graphics on screen. This is our first time seeing that. Is Fox tonight? I was going to say, it gets you back to Joe Buck. Joe Buck?

Yeah. And Tom Rinaldi back on the number one team. Love it, love it. Is the goose going to be on the sideline? No. Bring him back. Bring him back to the goose. Akeman, Aaron Andrews, and Tom Rinaldi.

It's fucking disgusting that we have to, we have to be begging Fox to put Todi Sergusa back on the air. In a small hat. In a small hat. In a big coat. Just wearing whatever he still has in his closet from when he was, when he had his cameo on the soprano. Looking like a bear.

Bring him back there. But it is going to be interesting to see like what weird like flag graphics they have for us. Yeah. Player intros. Get mad about that. Yeah. It's just stuff to get mad about in the new broadcast.

And you know what? It's also stuff where once the actual regular games start happening and people start complaining in week one about things, be like, dude, I was mad about this a month ago. Yeah. Listen, you're casual. You miss one very important thing that's happening tonight. This is time traveling night because the cowboys are on hard knocks. Hard knocks starts on Tuesday, which we will obviously be reviewing, uh, right after every

show or after the hard knock show. So we get to watch things happen in the game and be like, ooh, I bet that's going to be on hard knocks. It's usually the first preseason game. You get one guy who's like the 85th guy on the roster who returns a punt. You're like, ooh, maybe he'll make the team. Probably won't. But for at least a little bit, you'll think maybe he'll make the team.

I love trying to figure out what's going to be on hard knocks and then seeing it be like, oh, fuck, it's the, um, verbal meme Leo Leo's pointing at the kid at the TV being like, I saw that. I remember that because you get to see it on the, on the fancy cameras. Yeah. I remember when I saw that in real life. You saw it on the television cameras. Okay.

So it's Jerry Jones. Going to be there. No owner's suites as far as I know in this stadium governor suites, excuse me. Yep. So is he going to be on the sideline the entire time or is he just going to be parked in his bus with like a pair of binoculars? He's got a big part. He throws a big party.

I think every, every hall fame, huge party. Yeah. He throws a big party every weekend. Jerry might not be there, but I do think that Mike McCarthy knowing that the hard knocks cameras are going to be on him and he knows that Jerry Jones is going to watch every episode of hard knocks. Yeah. Jerry's a big like flashy TV guy.

I want to see what the media is saying about me all the time. Mike McCarthy, I think this preseason is going to really kind of let it all hang out. I would like Mike McCarthy, uh, noted watermelon smasher to use it as a preseason, maybe smash like a single grape before the game. Yeah. Just in between his fingers. Yeah. I just like, look at this guys.

Make some wine. Yeah. I don't know. For that reason, I'm going to take the Cowboys in the game tonight just because I think that McCarthy, he knows that Jerry Jones has his like Emperor Palpatine breath, breathing down his neck all the time. So he wants to set a tone and he knows that he's on hard knocks. What's that?

What's that Hank? That came out of nowhere. Just because I haven't ever watched Star Wars doesn't mean I can't make the references. Fair enough. Sick reference. I've also never watched Star Wars. Um, does he look like Emperor Palpatine or not? Yeah.

No, he does. It works. It was. I was just taking him back. Let me cook over here. No, I, it was great. I was like fully supportive. Um, all right.

So yeah, football is back. We also, Joe Judge is now, it's arms race between Joe Judge and Dan Campbell who, who can be more hilarious in their football guy ish, uh, you know, characteristics. So you had Dan Campbell talking about, uh, fighting. You had him talking about like the, like 200 milligrams of caffeine that he consumes every morning. It was more than that. It was insane.

But then Joe Judge comes over the top. We, we talked about the, uh, scrum, the fight that happened at Giants Camp on Wednesday, I think it was, or Tuesday. Joe Judge then came out afterwards the next day and he said, I'm not going to lie. It turned me on a little, seeing the guys that passionate. So he is, and I'm just going to say that's a, he's lying. It turned him on a lot. Yeah.

Like there, there's no way it was just a little, no, he's, he was full mass. He's, he's bonking himself. So just to fact check your stat a little bit there, big cat. You said what, 200 milligrams? I don't know. I didn't know. It's 1100 milligrams of caffeine. It's insane.

So I think it would kill him. I don't think there's any way it would, it would kill most like small gorillas. Yeah. I think that. So 1100 milligrams of caffeine. We'll put the clip in right here. Yeah. What's the, okay.

Put the clip in. Well, to normally what I do is I get, I'll get too vinty, I go to, you know, Starbucks to get too vinty of the pipe with two shots in them. So black eye and both. That's what I come in with. That's how I start the day. So. So in perspective, like a C four, a C four energy drink that you drink before a workout,

that has 300 milligrams of caffeine. So this is nearly four C fours. How much? Three morning. Uh, listen, I believe that Dan Campbell can process it. I think that. I'm going to figure out how much caffeine I drink a day. If you or I did it, we would die.

Okay. Like literally, literally die. I just based off of Googling, like how much in a large coffee, I probably have about 600 milligrams of caffeine a day. Yeah. I drink about two large coffees and a cup of coffee in the morning. Okay. So that's, I'm still halfway of what Dan came and I'm always careful.

So I'll drink a C four in the morning if I'm going to the gym and then I'll drink a cup of coffee at around noon with my lunch. So that brings me to about 500, 450 per day. So combined, we're not drinking as much as Dan Campbell will combine. We're not drinking as much caffeine as Dan Campbell does before eight a.m. Jesus Christ. Guys. Football guy.

Yeah. He's just ready to roll. I actually think that Dan Campbell would have his testicles replaced with little mini footballs. Yeah. Well, depending on how he's done having kids. Yeah. Well, you know, that's his team at home.

Yeah. You're right. You're right. You got to wife as a coach at the house, you know, you got to take care of your team at home. Um, all right. We also have Olympic, Olympic fever. Where are we at?

USA basketball is good again. So that's good. We have the, the, the finals against France. We should. What are you going to say? Memes are our fact checker on the booth here just said that the Joe judge quote is from a fake account. No, everyone ran with it.

Damn. Oh, it can't be from a. There's multiple blue check marks that ran with that. That sucks. I'm not going to believe that. That's one of those ones that it, even if it's fake, it's almost like the Waffle House guy. Even if that's fake, it's good enough that I'm running with it.

I think that it's real. Yeah. I saw enough blue checks get duped by Billy Billy's here. Billy just walked in. Thanks for telling me we moved it up. Whoa. You. Whoa.

So you come in and hold on. Hold on. Let's unpack this real quick. So I said 1145. One o'clock. No. Never. I thought 1145.

Can everyone. Can everyone have my back here? Was this conversation had when I was here? Because I had to leave by one o'clock. We said one o'clock. I said noon and then I moved it up 15 minutes and we actually waited until 1207 to start. So we gave you seven minutes. Okay.

There's a miscommunication. Wow. I don't know. I came 45 minutes earlier than I thought I was supposed to be here. How did you think we all got? How do you think we all were here though? Wait. Pincat.

You're missing the very important fact that Billy was 45 minutes early to being an hour and a half late. I wasn't. We weren't even mad. We were just like this is we looked at your last was his last tweet. No. So I checked. I was like I hope Billy's okay.

Let's see what his last tweet was. And it was black bears are scared of cats. Did you check the newest one? We waited till. I'm sorry. No. You're fine. I think you guys are the whole saying there was a miscommunication which was not true.

I'm not mad at you. No. We're not mad. No. I'm definitely not mad. This is not a beat up on Billy. We're having a great show. This is actually like 12 hours earlier than we normally take on a Thursday when we.

Yeah. So you're super early. Oh. If we were in Tokyo you'd be on time. Time zones man. Time zones. Time zones and ooey gooey delivery cookies really messed you up. You were also thinking that you were you were just hung over from too many sweets last

night. I did imbibe in some very good cookies. Yes. Billy you've been crushing it so I have no complaints. Don't worry. I'm just I'm more frustrated with myself. That's okay. There you go.

That's yeah. You what is it? What's the old saying when you have when you're pointing a finger four fingers are pointing back at you. Yes. She's not actually true. Three. No one three.

Yeah. No one points with. Well it's something if you point with your thumb. How can you point like Frank kind of points with his thumb when he gets tired. When his thumb gets tired. You can do the the Polly Walnuts which is that one. Yeah. That's two back at you two at you two at me.

Very efficient guy that Polly. All right. Olympics. We were talking Olympics the so the U.S. men's basketball team is back. They better win gold. And you know what then we can do the whole like oh I can't believe we doubted them. Speaking of doubting did you guys see LeBron he's he's laying the what well what I tried to look last night.

He deleted it right away back and confined he deleted it right away. He do all right. I'm going to pull it up. So he deleted it. I saw someone say that he does have it right here twice. Yeah I have it right here. He said keep talking about my squad our personal ages the way they play. We're past our prime in this league etc etc etc.

Do me one favor please all caps. And I mean please all caps prayer hands emoji. Keep that same narrative energy all caps when it's begins. That's all I ask hashtag thank you King emoji. And I told him I was like don't worry. I absolutely will keep that same energy but I just want to point out that the Lakers are the odds on favorite to win the West and they have the second best odds to win the championship.

They're not. I don't think they're I don't think they're odds on. They are favorites. Yeah. Favorites to win the West. Yeah. And their favorite and their second favorites to win the championship. And I'd like to point out that when he runs through this list of things he's very clearly

just singling out individual teammates that he has with every line that he delivers. So he's saying yeah keep talking about our personnel ages. So that's directly pointing at himself the way they play that's Westbrook excuse me Westbrook we're past our time in this league Carmelo Anthony and also personal ages Dwight Howard. Yeah. So he's he's he singled out with each line who we should be attacking for him please me a lot of time on that one please all caps.

I'm going to keep that same energy. I promise this is my isn't that the name of his school. I promise I promise to LeBron. I will keep that same energy. You're welcome. Hashtag you're welcome. This is the part of my take promise cat. All right.

So we will fulfill that. Let's talk about Olympians that are actually playing in the Olympics and actually like care about our country. So yeah the basketball when is that game anyone. I believe it's like 10 30 Eastern tomorrow Friday night 10 30 Eastern PM Friday night correct. But something along on so we can watch it on T on the cock. I'm not sure.

Also I had an epiphany today. I just maybe it's the time zone. Maybe it's the no crowds but so our four by one hundred team socks and there were like a lot of people who were like this is a debacle. How are we so bad at this. I was like I really just don't care like I want us to win. But if we don't I don't lose any sleep over it. Well I don't lose any sleep either but I would I would like to see them win just because

I remember growing up that four by one hundred relay team was so good. And now what do you know how to pass a baton to each other. I pretend to care every four years in the Olympics. Yes. Yeah I guess I was sick about that. Right. And I was sick. The baton was bad on our shop putters were sick or awesome.

They were those guys are they need them all in the WWE. It's their fucking beast. It's so sick after they throw the shop putt they'll scream they make tennis players look like giant P words because they'll just scream out and they'll they'll say things like a professional wrestler would. There was one guy the dude from Oregon that set the Olympic record last night. He throws a shop putt and then he goes like oh yeah yeah no they're wrestlers. They are wrestlers that just aren't wrestlers yet.

I also just love any sport that you can keep your shirt on the whole time. They're just wearing t-shirts. Yep. That's the best sport that's ever been created. There was a little suggestion for how to fix the four by one hundred relay team. It's actually pretty simple. Just practice with a tic-tac practice with something smaller practice than the it seemed like they didn't practice.

Yeah. At all. We can take that back to square one say just practice with each other. Carl Lewis just roasted them. Yep. Man. Yeah. And then the only other fix I had was I was watching the climbing.

You can't have ropes. You just can't like they just they what they just go balls to the wall up the wall like they there's no fear of death or injury or anything. It's just not real. I need them to climb. I need them to free solo up the wall back to the U.S. basketball team real quick. If you saw the first half of the game last night I thought we were going to get our asses kicked.

It was it was as bad as it's been. It was to the point where it was our offense was just if you if you happen to get into a half court set just either give Katie the ball or give Dame the ball and then hope that their shot goes in. Fortunately Katie is good enough where he kept it close but like we were fucking awful in the first half and half time pop was probably like whoever whoever loses this game has to claim Kyrie Irving. And then they're like OK fuck we better step it up.

Yeah. I listen. I doubted them but actually no way. I don't think I doubted them and then I found out they were all just drunk the whole time in Vegas. So then I undoubted that. Well they looked like they were high for the first half last night. It was it was really really bad and I think I don't know there's absolutely something

to be said for a team that has practiced more than like a week together. Yes. Playing in an international competition to the point where I think I feel like the winner of the basketball tournament could have put up a better performance in that first half than USA. A little tip that the third place game between Slovenia and Australia Australia this group of Australians have never meddled. They're going to have some extra motivation and Luke I think got maybe a little dinged

up. I'm just saying OK to lock the century Australia third place game. You got to find the teams that actually it's like bull season. It's mini bull season. You know deli's going on. Yeah. Like what what's the motivation here. Luca just carried his team to the semifinals and now is he going to be like I'm I really

want a bronze medal. Australia that group together has never won a medal. So it might be the only time that Luke is ever going to be in a semi finals. Oh that's true. Never gets out of the first round. I can't wait to start that narrative next year is Luca. Is he a coach killer. That's a good question.

Is he a franchise killer. Mads had some issues might be all right. Anything else before we get to our Mount Rush. Yeah. I'd like to I'd like to apologize to Bryson DeChambeau. Oh yeah. Can I apologize. Yeah.

Bryson I'm sorry. We you know we may have pointed some fingers Billy especially saying that hey maybe you just pretended to have COVID so that you wouldn't have to get drug tested at the Olympics where the standards are much stricter. I'm sorry for saying that it turns out that Bryson he's not sure how he got COVID. He doesn't have the vaccine but he said that he didn't take the vaccine because he didn't want to take it away from someone else who might have needed it so how how many lives do you think that Bryson DeChambeau saved by pretending to get COVID.

When I read that quote I was like is this quote from from December. Yeah. Like it made no sense. You could if you walk down the street in New York you will get you will get propositioned with the vaccine every other block. Yeah. I literally got the vaccine Grand Central Station. Right.

Yeah. You could get it. You just you stumble into the vaccine. But Billy how many people. But Bryson held for him. How many people did you kill because you selfishly took the vaccine. I think there was more vaccines getting wasted. Did you see they're going to start paying influencers a thousand bucks to talk about the vaccine.

I know you're a big vaccine guy Billy. I become a vaccine influencer. Yeah. I think that'd be great. But you have to believe it. I will. It's called. Oh you will.

You have to get it again. You'll believe that it's good. I will get waxed up six times. Like once you get Vax it's breaking the seal. We actually believe we might have to get Vax again. I will get six vaccines. We might have. It's a hundred bucks each.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. But if you talk about more you'll be an influencer. And I think if you have like between a thousand and like a hundred thousand Instagram followers they'll pay you like a thousand. Yeah. We should get a promo code promo code Billy.

If you show up and ask for the vaccine promo code Billy. Billy gets five bucks. Oh that big pharma money. You can use all your pie energy into this. Yeah. Perfect. A couple other things that I had. Ben Simmons.

Yes. Says that he wants to play for the Warriors right now. So do I. Apparently he's cut off all communications with the Philadelphia 76ers and says that he wants to play for the Warriors. I have I have three words. Two words actually. Shoot or shoot.

Shoot or shoot. And he when I saw as like yeah dude we all do. We all like to play with stuff. I also I feel like he cut off communication with the sixers a long time ago. They just happen to get to that now. Right. Communicacies are still still got off. Yes.

Yes. And then the bidding war is over. Arcury. Yeah. In the NFL. Yeah. I mean there's been a treaty signed. A peace treaty between Fox and ESPN he's going on ESPN but there's an out in his contract

that says that if he gets signed to an NFL roster. he can leave ESPN mid-season. So let's get RG3 back in the NFL. There's also two other things that just popped in my head. One, Phil Rivers opening the door or not closing the door on his career was the best news ever because we can, hope is a dangerous thing,

but it will carry us for at least a year or two thinking Phil Rivers may show up somewhere and we get him back in our lives. And then the clip of James getting just ragdolled by the, by the pads. I am so, so excited for James Winston on Sundays. Like I'm, I, we, I think we have to slow play it though. We can't root for him to be full, hilarious,

James throwing pick sixes because we don't want him to get benched. No, I want him to come out there and set the, set the league on fire and then have one or two slapstick worthy plays per week. You know, but while he's still playing well, there are two quarterbacks in the history of the NFL that I think could have fit in seamlessly

in the three Stooges. One is Eli Manning and the other is James Winston. He's just, he's hilarious to watch. He's got the best unintentional like Pratt Falls ever. It's the best. So get excited. We want him to play well. And with the Phillip Rivers thing, he said,

he went out of his way to say, I'm going to finish the season coaching football for my high school team. And then afterwards I'll come back. So he's, this is actually, you know what, it's going to be Phillip Rivers doing another fourth quarter comeback, but this time for an entire season.

I'm excited. And it's very clearly just an example of like, he went home and he had to be a dad to nine kids for the first time in his life. And he was like, yeah, I don't think I'm retired yet. This is a lot. I think I probably could use some time in the office. Yeah, right at the end of summer,

when school hasn't started back up and he should be at camp. Yeah. And he's like, oh man. Yeah. Okay. I kind of miss sleeping in a door. Yeah, this one's tough.

All right. Let's do our Mount Rushmore. And then we have a great interview in person with Mike Tannenbaum talking about NFL front offices and how they work and everything behind that. Before we get to our Mount Rushmore, Cross Country Mortgage,

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or refinance your current mortgage today, crosscountrymortgage.com slash Barstool, Cross Country Mortgage LLC, NMLS 3029, all loan subject to underwriting approval, www.nmlskonsumeraccess.org. Ball, 68. All right. You're going 68?

No, no, no, if you just threw me that ball. Okay. All right, so. So the Mount Rushmore of pizza toppings. We're going back to basics. So we had a couple outside the box ones. Now, we did do, I tried to look it up because I didn't want to have a repeat,

which we might have done on Monday by accident. We did the Mount Flushmore of pizza top, toppings in general. So we have not done Mount Rushmore of pizza toppings. All right. Hank, your number? Four. Big cat.

Which yours? I'll go 71. 69. 96. Okay. Oh boy. Oh boy. I think I have PTSD from just trying to say it.

71. That was my guess, right? You got 71. I got it exactly. God damn it. Look at that. That's such a fucking waste. You got to be kidding me.

All right. There's a few that are good. Wait, what order do you want to go? I'm figuring it out. I'm figuring it out. Let's go, let's go Hank this way. I think I can get what I want on the third. On the comeback?

Yup. I'm starting. Hank, you start. Pepperoni. Okay. That was maybe a mistake. That was one, one overall. That was maybe a mistake.

Hank, how are you feeling about your Mount Rushmore? I feel great. I feel great. Yeah? I've been in the lab and working with my team. Got a whole new strategy. When you was pointed out that your last Mount Rushmore,

you just picked a bunch of teenagers and maybe some even younger. Yeah, underage. You want to hang out with a high school girl? She's 18, first of all. But the second of all, I watched the cartoon when I was like 12. So when I was 12.

She was older. She was older in context with people like, dude, like you're trying to pick out. I was like, yeah, I guess whatever. But I think context matters with that. Okay. Okay. Billy, your first pick.

And they're fucking cartoons. Like parts, whatever. Yeah. All right. So for us New York guys who get real good pizza and don't really need toppings, oregano. Oregano.

What? Like shake? Yeah. A little oregano. Okay. Okay. I don't hate that. I don't hate that.

Oregano. All right. I'll one up you then. Oregano. I'll one up you for the people that don't need toppings. The topping would just be cheese. Plain. Plain.

Plain would be my, yes. Plain. You can take plain anywhere. If you can do a plain pizza right, then I think that you can do everything else right. Exactly. Start with the basics and build off that. Mr. Pizza Guy, Dave Portnoy picks plain.

You don't think that's topping? You call a pizza place. You say, can I get a pizza? No toppings. All right, fine. I'll throw it out. No, no, no. No, I'm just, that's the only thing I'm saying.

Cheese pizza. Cheese pizza. Yeah. All right. It's not really topping though. All right, so then we won't do it. I agree with you. I don't want to be like.

I'll do something else. No, no, no, that's fine. It plays, it plays, it plays. It's easy to the topping because if there's no cheese then it's just tomato sauce. I don't know, but that's a different topping. No, no, no, no. Wait, I have a question.

I have a question. I have a question. What, like, are different types of pizzas toppings or? All right, I'm gonna change it. I'm gonna change it. Talking. I got that question once. I'm gonna pretend you didn't ask.

No, I'm like white Ninja Turtles again. I thought we were doing a basic Mount Rushmore. I might've fucked it up. I'll take 50% ownership. Wait, what about white pizza? Wait, no, white pizza? Yeah, that's a good point. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

because you're asking if removing a topping counts as a topping. No, it doesn't. Right, it's an anti-topping. All right, I'll do, I'll change. I'll do, I'm gonna get a lot of heat for this one, but I don't give a fuck. Pineapple.

Fuck you, big guy. I don't know, Hawaiian, dude, Hawaiian cuisine, that's pineapple. I was gonna go with ham and pineapple. People love to hate on pineapple. Hawaiian pizza is delicious. Yes. So now I gotta do an audible

because I was just gonna create an entire Hawaiian pizza. All right, I had to do an audible because I was gonna create a plain pizza. That's fine. I'm gonna go with ham. Okay. Ham's good topping. Ham is a very underrated pizza topping, I think.

And then I'm gonna go with, what, what, Hank? I literally nothing. I am literally looking at my list, like not, I didn't make a facial expression. Yes, you did, I just thought, did you make a list for this one? Yeah. Okay.

Hank literally just went like this. No, no, literally no. Hank's gotta tell. You guys are like. You just took out an Oreo and he listened to it. You guys are like trying to, I don't know. Okay, all right, all right, all right. I'm literally just like.

Let's keep going, let's keep going. Okay. I'm just resisting in the studio and everyone's coming at my neck. I'm gonna go ham and then, since I can't go with pineapple. Sorry. I'm gonna go with,

I like black olives. Ooh. I had it on my list. I had it on my list. Black olives have the most, the most flavor for surface area of any pizza topping. I can't believe this lasted this long. I'm gonna take sauteed onions.

Or just onions. Do you have to, do you have to clarify? Just onions, I think. Onions, all right, fine, just onions. Put it in as onions. Especially if you come, if you took ham, pineapple and onions,

then that's a pizza fit for a king. Yes, it is. All right, Billy. Or Jake. Jilly. I was gonna do onions and peppers, but now we're just gonna do peppers. Okay.

Like, you know. Nice. You were gonna do peppers. He told us you were gonna do onions and peppers. Because onions and peppers is a great combo. That is a good combo. What color, or what color peppers? Good question.

Red and green. You gotta do one. Billy, you gotta do one topping. That's one topping. I think you get all peppers, but I'm, it's more of a question of which one, if you, if we made you pick, what would you pick? I don't know, usually they're both on there.

I think they're usually green, right? They're usually both. They're green. Okay. Which ones taste better? But you're talking about mild peppers. Right, right. Not spicy peppers.

Not spicy peppers. Not spicy, not spicy. Red tastes better than green. Okay, okay. Hank. Sausage. Sweet. I don't know how that got back to me.

I thought they took sausage. What's your first pick? Oregano. Oregano. Fuck. I took ham. Okay, okay. Isn't ham the same thing?

Yeah, I fucked that up. I have that written down, I fucked that up. Barbecue chicken. Fuck. Okay, I could use that with my pineapple. That's fine, that's fine. Okay, next. All right, so.

Good pick, Hank. I don't know if you guys know this, but, or you do know it, but I try to eat healthy as much as possible, bringing salad every day. Yeah, you do. So with pizza, I want to have some sort of vegetable in to make me not feel too guilty. So I'm gonna go with spinach.

Okay. I actually think that's not a bad pick. I go to, I have a pizza place I go to and they have like a big, is it spinach that's on there? Yeah, no, I think it's spinach on there, right? Spinach, what's the green thing they put on the pizza? Oh, maybe basil, basil.

Oh, that's my pick, basil. So what I usually do is I'll order basil and tell myself that it's spinach. Okay, I'm taking basil. And this chest is healthy. I'm taking basil. They're like brothers. Yeah, I thought, this shows how much greens

that I've been eating that I don't know the difference between spinach and basil, but it's definitely basil. I like those like, you know, I don't want it. It's like on a margarita pizza. I want like four pieces of basil on a big pizza and you get like a couple of bites of it. I like a little bit more basil than that.

I had basil on my list for sure. Okay. My next pick. You got two. Jesus, I think I'm gonna go with green olives. I like doing a mixture. I like doing both green and black. Corner the olive market.

Yeah, for me. I mean, it's actually not bad strategy in terms of voting. Like all of people will. If there's one olive person out there, fuck. Now I want to change my pick. No, no, no. You can't change it. I don't think.

I'm too relying on olives, I think. All right. Mushrooms. Mushrooms. Classic. Mushrooms are really, really good on pizza. I don't like them or care for them that much in anything else, but on pizza or maybe in some pasta really good,

especially if they're sauteed in butter. Now, can we do different cheeses? Fuck. Can we? No? Yes. Okay. All right, my last pick will be ricotta cheese.

Ricotta cheese on my pizza. Yeah, that's a fair piece. That's different than regular cheese pizza. My only complaint about ricotta is sometimes the circle of ricotta is way too big. Yeah. I can't believe this one lasted so long, but anchovies. Yeah, Ravel, come on.

Dude, it's such a good one, right? I mean, there are people, I feel like people who love anchovies will swear by it. They'll fucking go to war for it. It's a panda pick for the anchovy cult. Right. Because they go hard. So, anchovies actually, I think they have more flavor

than olives do. Yes. Anchovies are delicious. But I don't know, it's tough to get them on a pizza because you really have to know what you're doing for me to order like a full fish from you on my pizza. I'm not gonna do that. Papa John don't necessarily trust him.

Okay. Hank, your last pick. In a miraculous turn of events, all my top four are still available. Nothing got taken off. Bacon. Wait, did you go all meat? Yeah.

What'd you get? Pepperoni, sausage, barbecue chicken, bacon. You made a meat lover's pizza. The best pizza. Put it in a pop of D and you got the perfect pie. You know what though? I don't think the listeners are gonna like. There are vegans out there that listen to this show.

There's at least one. Stop listening right now. The Billy Stans. Stop listening. Get those fuckers out of here. Hamburger? Anyone likes hamburger on their pizza? Sometimes.

Sometimes. Buffalo chicken. Buffalo chicken I had. Buffalo chicken. Meatballs, that's a miss. Trashuto. Oh, that's a miss. Masadella.

Peniala vodka on the pizza. That's good too. Sun-dried tomatoes. You know what's, now this is getting crazy, but there was at Wisconsin Ian's Pizza, they had waffle, I'm sure everyone has this, but waffle pizza, chicken and waffle pizza. That was fucking good.

You know what we missed? Really good. Big time. The stingers. The hot peppers from Colony Grill. Dude, Colony Grill, could I've done hot oil? Yeah. Fuck.

Hot oil's my favorite. All right. I don't really love my draft, but we'll see. Yeah, the two olives might be tough, but I don't know. I hate good pets. I'm pretty confident. We messed up.

I think you guys probably second. We'll see. I don't know. I think that. Cheese pizza really fucked me up. I think that people look at Hank's Mount Rushmore and be like, he should have had at least one non meat ingredient in there.

It's true. Should have thrown in a teenage girl. It's a good thing I don't do my picks for the people. I do them for myself. Wow. Wow. All my picks. All right.

Let's get to our interview with Mike Tannenbaum. Awesome interview. Before we do that, quick word from our friends at Simply Safe. When Simply Safe home securities founders Chad and Eleanor Lawrence designed their first security system in their kitchen. They did it for a very personal reason.

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when you sign up for interactive monitoring service. Just visit simplysafe.com slash PMT to customize your system and start protecting your home and family that's simplysafe.com slash PMT. Okay, here he is, Mike Tannenbaum. Okay, we now welcome on a very special guest in person is Mike Tannenbaum.

He is works for ESPN now. He's the front office insider for ESPN. He was formerly the Jets general manager and also worked as executive vice president of football ops for the Dolphins. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for coming in. I'll do the hardest question first.

PFT and I as diehard football fans, how easily could we do your job? Oh, very easily. Okay, that's what we thought. GM, yeah, like we could have done that, right? Yeah, we could do a little like job swap, right? You know, you sit back, you give out orders. If it's right, it's your decision.

If it's wrong, it's everybody else's. Actually just talking on the show the other day saying that the best thing that general manager can do is to draft a new quarterback. And then if things go badly, you just blame the new quarterback for being bad. And then that kind of lets you skate a little bit. Do you feel that's,

we have an accurate representation of what your job was? Yeah, it all serves us in the Jets Draft Room. We used to have a sign that said, success has many fathers and failures and orphan, which was like, hey, everybody wanted to draft a rail reuse, but Vernon Golston effing Tannenbaum. Can you believe he did that? Right.

So yeah, it's definitely one of those things where you're sitting in the seat and you're gonna get the blame or the praise depending on the move. Yeah, I might have a more difficult question than that. Why the fuck did you cut Danny Woodhead? That's a great call. That was a egregious mistake.

Yeah, he's my favorite person in the entire world. I would have just kept him around just to have that personality in the locker room because he's like the nicest person that you'll ever meet. But also to your credit, you did cut him, but you did find him too. So I guess at that, you deserve a little tip of the cap for that.

Actually, man, Jeannie found him. We were at the end of the draft and we were looking for guys, like you're looking for attributes. And this guy had unbelievable production, short white guy, great ball skills, great kid. And it's just one of those things, like you're making that decision.

And one of the things I think people don't understand is like, oftentimes like your counting heads, like, hey, is it gonna be four running backs? But a lot of times the tiebreaker is gonna be about special teams. And we kept like a DB, it was a dumb, dumb decision. So like as a GM or front office in the NFL, what is the number one mistake that you see happen

time and time again? Like what's the thing that you're like, listen, people keep getting tripped up at this point. What you've been on both sides, what is that? Yeah, I would say like sometimes we scout with the ending in mind or we have like these preconceived notions. And one of the few I tell you, like I got right

was Justin Herbert. Like I scouted him for two years, I go to ESPN and I'm standing on the table, like I want this guy. And I'm watching like in the media, like we all have these incredible biases. And I said it, which was if Justin Herbert played in the SEC, he would have been the number one pick in the draft, but he's quiet, he's in Oregon.

A lot of people just didn't watch him as much. So I think what happens is, you know, Joe Burrow, like incredible year, great guy, leader, to, you know, Nick Saban standing on the table for two. It's hard if you're running a team and your job's online and Nick Saban says, hey, this is the guy you need to draft. It's hard to not let that influence your decision. But if you went through the process,

like there were so many things about Justin Herbert, he was the biggest, the fastest, the smartest, very competitive, like sometimes we overcomplicate it. Right, okay, that makes sense. So how long do you give a quarterback typically to be able to tell is this guy gonna make it or not? Cause we've talked to a few people and I think we both kind of used to be at the mindset

that sometimes it can be good to let a guy sit for a while because if he's not in the right situation, you could spook him, you could give him some bad habits and he could kind of ruin himself if he's not put in a comfortable situation. But then I think we were talking with Slareth, right? And Slareth said that if the guy is gonna get too spooked by coming into the wrong situation,

he's probably not the guy for the long term. So if you have a quarterback like Tua, how long do you give him to kind of prove that he's gonna be able to pan out before you start thinking about the future? Yeah, PFT, like we literally talked about that this morning which is like, if you go back like five or 10 years ago, like we would give these guys, you know, five years,

like Chad Paynton sat for two years before he ever played. You know, now like we're calling Tua a bus. Like Tua had major hip surgery a year ago, basically an abbreviated off season. Like we gotta give the guy a chance to see like what he has. Like I thought they did a good job of adding Jalen Waddell. Like they got two guys that could run in Fuller and Waddell. So I think he needs a lot more time

and in another year we'll know like obviously this is a consequential year, but I think sometimes like we move on from guys way too fast. Do you think that's because sometimes it's fun to just say that guy's a bust? Like it's fun to just slap a bust label on him. There's nothing fun about that. No, it's fun for us.

It's fun for us, yeah. To slap a bust label on him. Oh yeah, oh yeah, of course. If you drafted him, it's probably not as enjoyable, but for us, it's nice to just like have a nice clean label and be like bust, then I don't have to think about him anymore. Well, what happens when he comes back to life? Then you know what?

I was originally right about the quarterback being good before I slapped a bust label on him. You definitely should be a GM. I mean, you have all the traits of a really good GM. What, so I've always thought that from looking from the fans' perspective, the thing that really trips up front offices and organizations is everyone is very competitive.

The scouts are competitive. They want to be of GM someday. The coach is competitive. He wants to keep his job as long as possible. So everyone's out for self-preservation. Is that way off? Or is that kind of how a lot of front offices, especially dysfunctional ones,

operate where guys are kind of looking out for themselves? You hear it all the time where a GM will come in and it'll be like clean house because they're not his guys. Is there that type of territorial thinking? Yeah, there is, to a certain extent, Big Cat. I think that's fair. When I went to Miami, I was bound in the tournament. We could win with the people here.

I literally brought one person from outside the organization. We promoted Chris Greer, who's still there. We went to the playoffs. I thought there were a lot of great people there, but generally speaking, that is definitely true. I know for me, sometimes I had to check my own competitiveness. I'm sitting there for years.

I'm banging my head against the wall. I want to beat Tom Brady. What else can we do to beat Effon Tom Brady, whose birthday, by the way, is today? And so your competitiveness, you almost have to check it because if not, you can go from being aggressive to reckless. And sometimes that line's pretty fine. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so I would imagine that focusing all your energy on how to defeat one person in your division, under most circumstances, probably wouldn't be worthwhile. That person would be just living rent-free inside your head. But when it's Tom Brady, who's dominating the league for 20 years or winning multiple Super Bowls, then you have to start to think about building a team that can specifically attack him.

Let's be really clear. Tom Brady isn't living rent-free. He moved in, built a fricking neighborhood. Both at the Jets and the Dolphins. And in all seriousness, that's why we made the trade with Farve. You won't find a better human being than Chad Paynton. This guy is a pro's pro. He was a good player, took us to the playoffs multiple times.

But at the end of the day, we made the honest, sober calculation. Can we get to where we want to go having Chad Paynton compete against Tom Brady? And we all said no. And that's why we took a shot at Farve. And then after Farve, you have Mark Sanchez. You go back-to-back AFC championship games. Now, was there a feeling like we're on to something big

or we're farther away than maybe the AFC championship game? We just got a couple breaks along the way. Yeah. Kaley, that was another mistake, which was it's such an unusual fact pattern. Sanchez comes in. We won four road playoff games. We beat Tom Brady, Paynton Manning,

Phillip Rivers on the road. We extend him. And he plays worse. And you bring up a great point, Big Hat, which is you've got to evaluate your own correctly. And no one does that better than Belichick for all his superpowers. If you look over the years, he'll

move on from a guy a year too soon, then too late. And he deserves a ton of credit for that. Can we go back real quick to how you got started in this business? Because I heard that it took Bill Parcells a couple of different phone calls to convince you to come work for him. Initially, you didn't want to do that. So how was he able to talk you into starting?

Gosh, I don't know how you got that. But that's the source. I'm a reporter. Yeah, no, that's very few people actually know that. So I was an unpaid intern, graduated from law school, worked for Coach Belichick. Belichick goes to the Patriots, Patriots to the Jets. Belichick recommends me to Parcells.

They put in a permission slip. My boss says, you can't go. I call it Parcells. I never met him. I grew up in the Northeast. I was scared to death of him. And I said, hey, Coach, I just want to thank you for showing interest.

And they're denying permission. I want you to hear from me like, thank you. He's like, well, I'm going to make this real easy. I'm not interested in interviewing you, the job's yours. So you quit, walk out the door, and get on the plane. So I'm like, hey, Coach, thanks for knowing that. I panicked. I hung up.

Oh, really? I hung up. And I was like, I thought I was a saint. I was making $27,000. They offered me an extension starting at $35,000. I think I made it, man. Like, four-year deal, making $35,000 in the NFL. Coach Parcells calls him back.

He goes, hey, he goes, why won't you get on this plane? Like, tell me what it's going to take. I'm like, it's not about the money. I want to be a GM. I have this dream. He's like, well, why won't you come here? I'm like, because I am scared to death of you. Like, I grew up in the Northeast,

and you scare the shit out of me. He's like, well, why can't you live your dream with me? And we had this great conversation for the next 45 minutes about life, dreams. I'm like, you know what? I'm going to get on the plane. There it is. I just walked out of the Saints facility, got on a plane,

and then the rest of his sister. He sold you on it. What did he say to make you no longer afraid of him? PFT. He had a line that I'll take to my grave. He goes, you're either one of us or one of them. And he goes, my expectations are you're going to come up here and get those son of a bitch assigned.

When a trapper comes off the side of the mountain, you don't have to say, is he a good hunter? He either has pelts on his horse or he doesn't. So Mr. T, we're going to go by what we see. And either you sign those son of a bitches and you get to stick around, or I'm going to ship your ass back up to Boston. Now, what are we going to do?

Wow. I'm like, let's go. I love it. Damn. So he kind of said, if you don't sign with me, if you think I'm scary now, you'll think I'm a lot scarier if you're a son of a bitch that doesn't work for me.

Yeah. And I was like, you know what, I'll bet on myself. I'm not going to be the guy. And I always, as I work my way up the ranks, I always said, all right, I'm going to look to my left and to my right. And I'm not going to be the guy that sends us home. I don't care if I'm driving people to the airport,

which I did for Belichick, running in the organization. I'm not going to be the guy to fuck it up to send us home. And Coach just challenged me. He's like, I got the keys to this franchise for Mr. Hess. I need one person to sign him. I think it's you. Maybe my expectations are too high for you. I'm like, I'm coming.

Wow. That's great. So what was, so in your role and through the years, what are maybe give me two guys, offense and defense, the ones that got away, the ones that you were like, that was the guy that I had scouted, that I had looked after, that I wanted. I knew he was going to be great.

And for some reason, we weren't able to get him, whether it be via trade or the draft, however it may fall down. Yeah, I mean, there's, I mean, I could just, we could talk about the Tom Brady story for a second. So this is incredible. So at the time, you guys may remember, the Jets facility was at Hofstra University.

We take Chad Paynton round one, one of four first rounders. In the third round, Bill Walsh drafts, Carmelo, Carmelo, Carmazdi, Giovanni, Carmazdi. Yeah, from Hofstra. And we're like, God, we fucked it up. Like Bill Walsh, the greatest quarterback coach of all time, takes a guy that's on our campus. And we draft Pennington.

And in the fifth round, we had a scout, Jesse Kay. He is standing on the table for Tom Brady. He's like, I'm telling you, this guy is great. I started to get Syracuse. He has rare leadership. And we're all like, come on, Jesse, we just got Chad Pennington. And if we were going to take another one,

it should have been Carmazdi. Like Bill Walsh takes Carmazdi. And like we had a conversation about Brady a little bit in the fifth round. And one guy, Jesse Kay, was the guy that was like, this is a guy that has a chance to be really good. Wow. I like what you just did there,

because you gave credit to one of the scouts that was in the room. If I don't know what your future plans are, but if you want to get back into the NFL, what you should have said right there, so we could get some good headlines. When Big Cat asked you the two that you missed out on, you should have just said Tom Brady, Patrick Mahomes.

I had him both at the top of my board. And then we put out a little quote card that would have your name and face on it. And then everybody would be like, wow, anybody really knows the stuff. That's crazy though, Tom Brady. So what ended up happening to Jesse Kay? Where is he now?

He's retired. He was a dying-the-wolf scout, long time, like great guy, a little bit of an old-school feel guy. And again, if you think about Tom Brady's narrative, couldn't start at Michigan, slow, right? What's the attribute about him? If he can't beat out Drew Henson at that time, like Chad Panthan was like the golden boy.

He had Randy Moss and we were shocked. Tom Brady, Chad Panthan thought he was going Pittsburgh. Like the Steelers gave every indication that he was going to go eight. They took Plexico. Like we were doing backflips that he was there at 18. So you just brought something up. I wanted to talk about the feel verse,

like maybe numbers or analytics. How much is it feel when you're talking about drafting a guy? I think, so here's my view on that guys, is we want to use the numbers to, and Belchuk's a little bit like this too, like let's define the fairway. Now we could go outside of it, but let's make sure that we are.

So you look at any of those guys, like Wes Welker, Danny Amidola, even like Woodhead's a little bit like that. Although Woodhead was a little bit faster straight line, those guys all had a redeeming characteristic. They were great change of direction three cone. But my point was guys, we could go outside of like the parameters,

but if we do, they have to have a compelling reason. And in some of those cases with the slot receivers, they had great change of quickness. But I wasn't going to go outside those parameters because someone's like, yeah, I think he's going to be really special. But why, tell us why he's so special. See that would be where I would get tripped up with GM thing

because obviously as a gambler, someone would just say like, hey, this guy's going to be special. I'd be like, you know what? That's my lottery ticket, let's go. And it will probably fail every single time. But that's okay. And like Tunsel is a great example of this.

Like we got Tunsel right, because like it was a little bit of a gut feel, which was the video is unreeling, right? National TV. Yeah, what did you think in the room? Yeah, so I'll take, I'll take you right into the room. So these Laramie Tunsel for people don't remember that obviously the Bong face mask and everything.

Right. And so we have Brandon Albert, a good, not great left tackle. We are convinced that Tunsel's originally going to go one Tennessee, but his floor is five. He's going to go to Baltimore. So gas mask, whole thing starts and gets to five and they take Ronnie Stanley. I'm like, damn, like Ozzie Newsom.

Like he's a little bit of a risk taker. Like Ozzie doesn't care. Like he just wants good players. Like eight, nine, I'm like, oh my God, like there's no way he's going to be there. So we brought in our area scout, Matt Winston, whose brother was the NFL PA president, Eric Winston. Great scout.

He'll be a GM one day. He's like Tunsel's a great kid. Like great mom, great teammate, academic advisors, equipment guys, they all love them. And obviously, like if you're going to take, if you're not going to take somebody because they're smoking weed, like there'll be eight guys on the board, right?

Right. Like he just happened to get caught. And so he's sitting there at 13 and we were all like, look, like he's a great kid, made a mistake and it was a great opportunity for us. So it was a field thing, big cat, but like we had a great scout who like went in there in the fall and we knew exactly what we were getting.

Yeah. I don't even think it was that big of a mistake. The video was pretty cool in retrospect. Like I kind of wish I had a video like that out there. Actually, it gets even better. So like. Not a drug guy. Not a drug guy.

I go back to my office. I am doing backflips. I'm like, we just got the first guy in the draft and we didn't have to trade out. Like this is unbelievable. I caught my wife. I'm like, Michelle, can you believe how unbelievably lucky we are?

Like I can't believe, like I am so pumped. She's like, you got a problem. I'm like, what are you talking about? She's like, we had young kids at the time. They're like, they're scared to death. And I'm like, can you just handle it? She's like, no, you're going to handle it. And I quickly went from being a GM

to like a very concerned father of like, like what kind of role model. And like, of course, like the next day, like good people make mistakes and you know, like the whole spiel. I think it was mostly because it was an intimidating looking mask. It was like kind of scary.

So kids are like, wow, why'd you draft a stormtrooper? Exactly. And I think that if that had happened a couple of years later, just in the last three years, the narrative has changed a lot around marijuana where, you know, a lot of states have legalized it. So I don't even know if he falls to you. That was like the perfect timing for the dolphins

to capitalize on. Do you think he would add an endorsement on that? Yeah, probably. Yeah, yeah, would have been like three chi. Sign them up. Laramie Tunsel. Yeah. All right.

So other thing that I've always just wanted to ask a GM, your time at the end of your, your Jets tenure, was there a feeling of like, I'm a dead man walking? How does that work? Cause we see it all the time where we know, we could point right now to the 32 teams, the NFL. You could probably say five to 10 of the GMs right now will maybe get fired if things don't go well

and they have to feel it. Yeah, absolutely. And like with privilege comes responsibility. And like these are not jobs you're going to retire in. And it sucks. Like when you see your name on the back page and you know, like your day is coming and there's not a lot you can do.

And I always felt like, you know, I'm not going to change. Like I'm going to be the first guy in every day. And I feel like my motivation was slightly like, there was an insecurity. Like did I ever really even deserve this job? Like I replaced bill part. Like who am I? You know, like, so I was always like,

I'm going to be the first guy in the last to leave. And even like when I knew those days were coming, I'm like, I can't change. And you know, and then you look back and you're like, you know what, we stood shoulder to shoulder with the best of the game and we held up pretty well. Yeah. So one of the best guys that you drafted, Darrell Rivas,

one of the best cornerbacks to play in the last, probably in the history of the NFL. So that must have felt pretty good. But at the same time, you knew that every off season, it was like, OK, Darrell Rivas is going to work me over for more money. And as a general manager, you have to balance that against what you're

paying out to the rest of the team. Do you like, is there a part of you that kind of regrets having him on the team and made your entire off season such a pain in the ass? PFT, those are good problems to have. Like we'll sign up for those. Yeah. Coach Parcell has always used to talk about, Mr. T,

let's worry about write-ons, not write-offs. Everyone's always worried about, get the money. Get the money, and we'll figure out the rest. So those are good problems to have. Yeah, he was a great player. And I actually think he played the system as a player exactly perfect. He maximized his value while he was in the league

in the way that he would renegotiate all the time. But that was always like the constant storyline in the off season. Did you ever feel like you had to be prepared in advance for those negotiations even right after he signed the last one? No doubt. And what most agents don't understand, guys, is the most effective pressure that a player could put on

is from within. Now, with Rex, everything about Rex is true. The good, the bad, the ugly, and I love him. But when he's out there every day saying he's the best player in the sport, and we couldn't line up without him, that is not exactly negotiation 101. And his agents, certainly, to their credit,

we're going to use everything that Rex said. But the amount of pressure that was put on internally, we could not function without Dorrell Rivas. So that was the holdout. A player that's actually willing to hold out and is a talented football player, that's the best strategy, typically. That's the way to maximize value.

Yeah, and you have to convince the front office that you're going to miss games. And I've said for the last year on ESPN, with Aaron Rodgers, Green Bay will not blink or even think about blinking until he doesn't show up. Now, when he doesn't show up, now they're going to take a half a step back and say, hey, can we get three ones from Denver?

Really, what do we have in Jordan Love? Can we get Nick Foles for a year? All those other discussions, the day he doesn't show up, those discussions begin. But until then, they're going to assume that, hey, he's bad like a lot of us are at his boss, but when a rubber meets the road, he's going to show up. So in your mind, that entire stare down

never really was a stare down, because there was never a day that he didn't show up. Big Cat, I said for a year, until he doesn't show up, he's a Green Bay Packer. And they know that. And you're praying that his competitiveness, and one of the things that I admired from what Rodgers said was, it was really clear,

like he's a good teammate. Like for him to go, if you guys notice, he had no notes. When he was talking about guys like Charles Whitson, he's gone back four, five years, and he's talking about details, like you could tell this guy in his own way, maybe not your style or my style, he's a good dude and good teammate.

And if you're the Packers and you know that, you're assuming he's going to show up and we're going to be okay, because he doesn't want to let his teammates down. He may be pissed at us, but he'll be here. So we had this discussion on Monday's show. When you have a generational talent, like Aaron Rodgers, when you have Patrick Mahomes, how much do you think the game has changed

where what he said was essentially like, I want to be part of the process? Do you think the GMs have to start doing that more for their quarterbacks? Why wouldn't you? I had Chad Payton and Ryan Tan, he'll be part of the coaching search. Why wouldn't you?

Like they're going to see things I can't. And by the way, like you thought Witte was a bad decision. I'll give you a worse one. Like we cut Jericho Cotry, who was this great dude. He was speed deficient at the end, tough and smart. I remember the day we cut him, I thought the quarterbacks were going to kill me and they were right.

You know, there's certain things players are going to see that you never can. The object of the exercise fellas is like, we got to get this right. So why wouldn't you at least listen to Aaron Rodgers and say, hey, we're going to cut the receiver you like because he can't cover kicks. So here's our decision.

You could be mad, but you should understand why. Yeah. Maybe give him an opportunity to object and say something that you hadn't considered. Yeah, why not? Right, all you, you want to get it right. It doesn't matter where the answer come. It could be from Jesse K or Aaron Rodgers.

Let's get the answer right. Let's get all the information in and then we'll make the best decision for us. Yeah. We're going to get back to Mike Tan and Bob in a second. But before we do, this interview is being presented by our great friends over at RomanReadyED. Now that the world is opening back up,

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Now back to Mike Tannenbaum. Do you understand the salary cap? Yeah. You sure? I think so. I mean, I don't think anyone does. Can you tell us how the Rams are just able to do everything whatever they want

and there's no salary cap? Yeah, I don't think it's gonna pay off for them. I think they're like a great sort of like science experiment. And here's what I'm talking about guys. We always talk about football as a consummate team sport. You got to spread it out. Maybe they're right.

They're saying F that. Like we're gonna get Jalen Ramsey, Aaron Donald. Like we're gonna go play five against 11, but our five are so good, we're gonna win. I think when you look at their offense line guys, they are paper thin. And if anything happens to their starters, especially a guy like Whitworth and his age,

they could be in big trouble. And look, I thought, you know, when you look at their running back situation, they were gonna be a little thin there. I mean, it's a tragedy what's happened there obviously, but it's a huge calculator risk that may pay off. But if I had a bet, I'm betting against it. Yeah, so I asked the cap question

because it seems like every year, like the Saints for example are in salary cap hell. They do two, three things and boom, they're fine. It doesn't mean anything. But like Cam Akers is a great player that can't be replaced, right? So it just, there's ways to minimize the cap charges, move them around.

But the fact that the Saints couldn't go out and sign a player of Breeze's caliber is the salary cap action word. Oh, they have James Winston. Yeah, by the way. You love him. I think he's gonna play well. Yeah, you said that he's, who did you,

oh, you compared him to Vinny Tessa Verde, right? I did. I liked that. Yeah, I'm surprised by the fact that you don't follow me on Twitter and you knew I said that. Well, I did some research and basically I just figured out like, has he said anything mean

about Baker Mayfield you have? Has he said anything nice about James Winston you have? I didn't say anything mean about. Yeah, you did. I was, it's about the fact. Yeah, I call him height and speed deficient. Okay, hold on. I think you said you can't,

you don't pay a deficient quarterback like Baker Mayfield. A height and speed deficient. That's not mean. That's fact. Russell Wilson you might say is height deficient. Yeah, you're binding yourself to mediocrity. Yeah. Is my Tannenbaum quote about Baker Mayfield.

Is that nice? Huh. Is that a nice thing to say? First of all, that one's tough to come back from Mr. T. Well, like I said, I will go back to my first thing but you guys don't even follow me on Twitter. So I'm really that right now. I'll follow you.

So I follow you on Twitter now, address your Baker Mayfield slander please. Okay, let me ask you this. If you were the president of Barstool Sports, right? Big Cat and you walked into this room and say, hey fellas, guess what? We just had one heck of a day. We just signed the seventh best podcaster on the planet.

Okay. They'll be like, what the F? Like we want to be the best, right? Right. So if you- Baker's not the seventh. You're saying you're the seventh. So draft the AFC quarterbacks.

Yeah, I mean we already have Brandon Walker working for us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sit here. No, no, draft the AFC quarterbacks. What do you mean? In order. In order. Yeah.

But wait, but you still need a quarterback. Right, but my point is, if you're going to pay Baker Mayfield, you better pay him contextually so you can keep Nick Chubb, Denzel Ward, all these other really good players you have. In my opinion, he's somewhere between the sixth and eighth best quarterback in the AFC.

How are you going to win a championship? And what do they pay him? But that's every quarterback. Every quarterback who gets a new deal gets the highest paid deal. But- The cap is just bullshit. But big hat, hold on a second.

Those other quarterbacks, you could win championships with. Like could you win one with Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, all these other guys, Matt Stafford, you would say Carson Wentz if healthy. You could certainly have that argument. Like mentally healthy. You have Carson Wentz ahead of Baker Mayfield?

So let's do this, right? We're going to take Mahomes. Okay. Certainly Josh Allen. Josh Allen, Lamar. Lamar, yes, but there's clearly like Lamar has issues when a team knows he's going to have to throw. No problem.

Okay. I'll take Herbert, Tannehill. Tannehill over Baker. No, not Tannehill. That's, you got your Dolphins goggles on right now. Yeah, I don't know about that. Right, Tannehill has the best offense in the NFL since he's been in Tennessee.

Okay. A counterpoint, Baker Mayfield almost won the AFC championship last year. And he wanted to play off game with the Cleveland Browns. So that's the other thing you have to take into account is like we're grading, you have to grade on a little bit of a curve when you're talking about Cleveland.

It's been so long since they've had a quarterback that's even approaching mediocrity. And you've got Baker Mayfield, who's actually good at the position and the franchise has played well under him. There's something about him that makes him elevate that friend. Even when he doesn't play that great, you know that you still have a chance sometimes with Baker.

Right, but here's the Baker Mayfield is a guy that is just objectively short and slow. So when you look at guys like Russell Wilson and Drew Brees, they are the exception. And my point is you can't pay him $40 million a year because you got to keep Chubb and Ward and all these other guys because that's gonna give you a best chance to be successful.

If you said you could get Baker Mayfield at 28 million and keep all these teammates, I'm all for it. I would not pay him at top of the market. And guys, remember this, he's under contract this year, next year, and you could tag him the year after. Yeah, that's what's so funny about the Baker talk. We addressed this a couple of months ago where it's like, it felt like it was the middle of the summer

and there was nothing else to talk about in the NFL. So people just smashed the button that said like, let's talk about a contract extension for a quarterback that doesn't even need one right now. So what do you think about Dak? Dak at 40 would probably fall under that same category, would it not? I think he's a better player.

I think you could. Yeah, but that's a lot of money. He's the second highest paid quarterback just on paper right now. Again, none of these contracts mean anything. Right, but two years ago, I said they should have signed him over Zeke. Zeke was in the fourth year or a fifth year deal,

plus they could have tagged him. So if I was Dallas, I would have just let Zeke play the whole thing out, sign Dak back then, which was like 32, 33 million, Goff and Wentz. And obviously that market's gone up to 40. So you really like Carson Wentz still? No, Orlowski and I were arguing about this today. Well, Orlowski's literally like,

I think he's his best friend is Carson Wentz. He almost cried when Carson Wentz, like he did, he notes out. Either that or Stafford, right? Yeah, him and Seas, exactly. Stafford as well. But he's got a bias with Carson Wentz, which is fine. We have a lot of biases ourselves.

We just admit that. Yeah, so my point about if you read, if you Google Bill Parcell's quarterback commandments, one of the things he talks about is you want a battlefield commander. You want somebody that is gonna lead the troops. And we argued about it today. If you're worried about Nick Foles as your backup,

you got the wrong guy. Like you think Brett Farr, Dan Marino, Patrick Mahomes, Tom Bradycared, who their backup was? No, they're gonna go win championships. And that's the part about Carson Wentz that he may be lacking. Right, yeah, you're right. If you're afraid of Nick Foles,

like it says something about your own security and your own leadership abilities right there. How much do you think like NFL philosophy and front offices is just based on Bill Parcell's quotes? I mean, he's an influential guy. It's because he is like, he hasn't coached in 20 years and people still quote him like he's coaching today. I'll tell you what, and I have the great fortune

of being friends with him, see him fairly regularly in Florida, it's shocking. I would say at least 30% of the league still calls him. Like if you're right with him, like, and by the way, dinner is at 455 back table. I love it. And if you're not there like 10 minutes early, like you're late.

It's a testament to him and his career that I mean, I do think that a lot of guys obviously still listen to him, but it's just funny because he's probably the most quotable coach, right? And when you talk about guys like obviously Belchek is his own greatness, but like the Zimmers, the Champagnes in the world, like those are guys that like they still like engage and learn from him.

And you know, the thing about Bill is he has so much wisdom and a lot of times they'll be like, oh, I'm a dinosaur or I made this, like he is a very like reflective guy, very insightful. You are what your record says you are. That was like, if you draft the wrong quarterback and set you back 10 years, that's not true. If you're gonna let me cook dinner,

you should at least let me shop for the groceries. Yeah, like he's got all of them, right? Yeah, maybe my expectations for you are higher than those of yourself. Oh, okay. That's good. Yes, very good. It's very hard to come back for that.

Yes, that's better. But yes, I'm not mad, I'm disappointed from your boss. Yeah, but like working for him, like there were times and he was a morning guy, like I would leave a note on his door, like 5.15 in the morning, like coach, I screw that up, it will never happen again. Thinking like he's gonna fire me. And the next day, like there was a Hooters,

like a half a mile down on Hempstead Turnpike and we'd sign somebody to be like, hey, Mr. T had a great day, everybody let's go eat some wings. Like he was, like he kept you on your toes, but at the end of the day, like you would like walk on glass for him. Yeah.

You talked about the job of driving prospects and driving free agents to and from the airport. I feel like that's a starting position for a lot of people in the NFL that are looking to work in front offices, or you know, the airport pickup guy. Is, was there any instructions that you had from above like, hey, keep your mouth shut,

don't talk to them? Or were you expected to like, what makes you feel like you did a good job driving them to and from the airport? Yeah, actually this is one of my big philosophies in life, like who you are is how you treat people that can't help you. The bus driver, the waiter, the waitress,

the equipment guy, one of the reasons we drafted to Rel Rivas was like, how respectful he was to our intern, who he thought was a driver. And for Coach Belichick, when we would bring guys back, he'd be like, hey, tell me about that guy. And again, his whole thing was like, if this guy is an asshole, when we give him $10 million, he's gonna be a bigger asshole.

Now, as Rex would say, if he could rush the passer, that's okay, he's our asshole. But at least we know what we're getting, right? And so for Belichick, like there was a bunch of times like we'd run guys for physicals, hey, tell me about him, what kind of guy was he? Did he tip you? You know, like all that stuff.

Is there an allotted amount of guys on a roster that you're like, all right, we can have X amount of assholes. Yeah, so in every single GM's office, they have one mathematical equation, production equals tolerance. And you know, Parcells and Belichick used to argue about LT because LT never showed up for the off-season program.

That was really important to Parcells and Belichick's like, okay, so like how long are we gonna bench LT? And there's just like a lot of wisdom in that discussion. Like you wanna have standards, protocols and culture, but you know what, like, hey, if Tiger Woods is not in the off-season program, like he's still going out there, you know, as one of our guys.

Right, and they always said that like, you know, Belichick treats everyone the same. And I believe that in film study, but there's no way that he treats everyone the same in terms of the tolerance, you know, what they would do and whether he'd bring up, like Gronk was obviously different than some other, Gronk's a Hall of Famer, you know?

And there's a legendary story that Merino loved to tell which was Jimmy Johnson's first day on the job. He's like, look, Dan Merino, you fall asleep in one of these meetings, I'm gonna wake you up. Back up corner, you fall asleep in one of these meetings, we're gonna cut your ass. Yeah, yeah.

And that's just life though, right? Right, yeah, it's true. I'm gonna give you kind of two options, which road you wanna go down on this question. I have one question that's about some inner team strife that you had to deal with. And then another one that's about team to team strife that you had to deal with.

Is there option three? No, no, those are the only two options. Well, let's go inner team for 200. Were you, was there a part of you that was like, okay, thank God that made my decision a lot easier when Geno Smith got punched in the face? I actually wasn't wanting to make more of that happen. Oh, you weren't, okay.

Yeah. All right, well, that's good. You were with him for Tebow though, right? Yeah, someone was dumb enough to trade for him. Yeah, so the Tebow decision. Let's talk about that because he's back in the league as a tight end. Did you ever think about like,

okay, Tebow, you want to go out and run some routes for us? Yeah, I mean, that's really why we got him. We lost a guy named Brad Smith. You guys may remember him. He was a great quarterback at Missouri and he kind of did a lot of different jobs. And one of the great things about where I sat for so long was just learning

and listening to the game through. The head coach I was with, so Rex always was like, I'm just telling you, Mike, as a defensive guy, I hate when the opposing quarterback can make plays with his feet. And when we lost Brad Smith, it was like, hey, we got to replace him. So on paper, it made sense to say,

all right, we could get Tim Tebow for a fourth round pick. He's making $2 million. And like, I think that's one of the mistakes I made. It was like, all right, on paper, that's very logical. He just brings so many more eyeballs to it. I'll tell you a really funny story. So in my house with our kids, we have a thing, you have to earn your dessert eligibility.

You have to do something nice for somebody else. Football guy of you, yeah, to have that. Yeah, so we have Tim come in and we're having dinner and it's like, it could not have been more awkward. Like you have Tim, you know, he's an icon, his agent. We have our trainer, his family. I got my mom in town from Boston and my two kids and it's like, okay, like, you know,

my 70 year old Jewish mom and Tim Tebow, like how in the world are you gonna make conversation? So I'm like, you know, hey mom, like, what'd you do today to earn dessert eligibility? So she's like, you know, I bought my coworker, Turkey sandwich, I'm like, great mom, like you got a chocolate chip cookie. So we kind of go around the table.

So we're finally against the Tim. It could not be more awkward and stiff. He's like, well, Mr. Tannabon, we have seven pediatric cancer centers. We're buying two women out of sex slavery. I'm like, all right, let me get a cookie. All right, like my mom's Turkey sandwich, they ever look so feeble.

That's amazing. That's awesome. He is a hell of a guy. All right, so I have one last question for you. This has been awesome. We really appreciate you coming in. You had a post about Coach K when he decided to retire talking about social media and how his first three seasons

didn't go so well and he probably would have been fired. What about the season that he heard his back and decided not to have any of those records count against his overall record? What about that? That's a fair point. Thank you. Thank you.

My point about that was like, I'm as guilty as it now, but we're in this sort of like instant evaluation. No, you're absolutely right. Obviously the post is about the fact that every team, every fan base wants a revolving door. And a revolving door, like I wanted the Bears to fire Matt Nagy, like, you know, whether that's right or wrong, there probably is some benefit to the content, you know,

having the same guys in the front office and the coaching staff for a few years. Big Cat, just to put a ribbon on our conversation, Bill Parcells, 3-12-1 first year, he thinks he's gonna get fired. The late George Young's gonna hire Howard Stelenberger to be the coach. He gets back to him and he said publicly, privately,

that he's like, F this, like, if I'm gonna go down, I'm not gonna be everyone's friend, I'm gonna try to be the best coach I could be the way I know how, and I don't care if people like me or not, and that launches Hall of Fame career. Wow, okay, so there it is. Have you officially changed your tune on Josh Allen? Hmm, good question.

Well, the context is this, he is a very good player and historically he has done something that no one else has in terms of improving his completion percentage. With that said, he did get hurt at Wyoming, and if we were running the bills guys, look, we would sign to an extension, I'm not saying we wouldn't, but I would be scared to death

that because he's such a big guy and he plays the sport the way he does that, will he make it through another five years? I hope he does, but like I said, he's been hurt once and that would be- That's a cop out, you just did a cop out. Why is that cop out? Well, he's good, but the injuries.

Just say he's good. Okay, but then you put your name on a $200 million contract. Done, done. And you would have no concerns. None. I'll make it 220. Because the cop doesn't mean anything.

He'd cut him after a year if he had to. So I like him, he's gotten better, but that would worry me. The way he plays, I hope he doesn't get hurt, but like I said, he already got hurt at Wyoming. All right, so- But if he goes to the Super Bowl with the bills, they had a great season last year, if he takes the bills to the Super Bowl at that point,

you're like, you have to change your tune at some point. Yeah, no, absolutely. And he, again, if you look at the history of our sport, his increase in completion percentage is historically good. Like people don't leave college football and become as accurate as he has. The way you're saying that makes me think that you think it's an aberration.

It is. I mean, that's the- But you think that it's not gonna keep going? No, no, I would bet on him because his character, he's a great kid. He has a much better sense of humor and he's, like we got to know him in the pre-draft process, he's a great kid, but he's really the exception.

Yeah. Okay, so I guess, which is the aberration? Josh Allen's, are you saying the aberration is his increased completion percentage from college? Or are you saying that last season was an aberration for him? No, no, I would say his aberration going from college to, and I think his trajectory will stay where it is, but- Okay.

Like one of the things we would talk about if we were to draft for him, we'd say like, why would we take a guy from Wyoming who was not very accurate and he didn't like lift Wyoming to greatness? And to Buffalo's credit, they identified it. They won an Idaho Potato Bowl. I got a couple of reasons.

I did. I mean, that flag flies forever. Rocket arm. Yeah. Looks good in shorts. Idaho Potato Bowl. Tall. Tall.

There we go. And tall. Drafted him. All right, well, you know what? We'll just, we'll end it on, you know, you don't like Baker Mayfield, you don't like Josh Allen, but you like James Winston. We can deal with that.

We can deal with that. I'm okay with Josh Allen. And if you- But not Baker. I know, I'm just saying, hey, big cat, if you want to be the seventh best, then I think you should go sign Baker Mayfield. We'll give you some-

All right, we'll leave on a positive note. In the context of James Winston, tell us something that we have to look forward to why you are a believer in James Winston. He is someone that bent on himself and showed great humility a year ago by sitting behind Drew Brees. And that's hard to do when you're the first pick

in the draft. Now we have to go see it pay off, but I thought what it did was really be selfless and take long-term view. And not a lot of guys on the planet who are 27 that have started 70 games in our league. Yeah. And you got a nice, a guy's surgery too.

Yeah, there we go. You can see better. Yes, absolutely. All right, well, Mike Tannenbaum, you can catch him on ESPN. He's the NFL insider, front office insider. We appreciate it. Appreciate you having me, guys.

Yeah, you're welcome back any time. All right, thank you. Firefest of the Week is brought to you by our great friends over at Mattress Firm. Love Mattress Firm. You need to unjunk your sleep. A lot of people have a problem here in America. Everyone's exhausted.

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All right, we're gonna wrap up the show with Fire Fast. Can I just say I'm reading the list right now of Mount Rushmore's that Jake just sent to us. Okay. There's some tough ones on there to read. They look worse. Mine doesn't look so good. They look worse in word format

than they did when we picked them. I do think Hank has too many meats. He does have too many meats. You're a meat lover. Yeah, who amongst us isn't? I thought they took sausage. I don't know why I fucking thought that. Oh, right now.

I know. It's a classic. It is a classic. It brings out the real flavor of the pizza. I made a mistake. I should have gone ricotta. I don't know why I did that. Is that the cheese that tastes like kind of sweet?

Yeah. It's like a cottage cheese. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't like ricotta. No, fuck that. I do. I've also learned during this process that I don't know what I get on my pizza.

Like I didn't know what basil versus spinach was because I usually just get a pepperoni pie. Yeah, I think when Hank took pepperoni, one more. I should have gone more. He threw all of us off a little bit. Can we order pizza? Yeah, she really wants some.

My firefuss is pizza related. All right, let's start it. Let's go. Firefuss of the week. And we got some great interviews coming next week. And then Grit Week, the week after. So get excited. We will be out and about.

We're also gonna figure out a way, just a little announcement. We're gonna figure out a way. A lot of people ask us to do their fantasy draft orders. We're gonna streamline it. So we're probably gonna have Billy just go on the part of my take YouTube and do all of them. Billy, are your DMs open?

My DMs are open. All right, so if you need Billy to figure out your fantasy draft order, just start DMing him all the names that you have right now. As you know, email me. No, DM is best. Yeah, DM me. Yeah, and make sure you DM on Instagram and Twitter.

Just to make sure. Right? Well, which do you prefer? Could you email me at BillyFootballPMT at gmail.com? Wait, your email address is BillyFootballPMT at gmail.com? Yeah. It's to throw out your bar stool. Email too.

Okay, BillyFootball at bar... No. Follow me on Twitter, BillyHotTakes. BillyFootballPMT there. BillyFootballPMT at gmail.com. Yes. Instagram's B1LLYFootball. All right, now you're just gonna get them everywhere.

All right. Well, at least I got it the right way. All right, so FireFest of the Week, Hank. Last night, I got a pizza, but now I delivered pizza to Giorno, made it in my oven, took it out, was starving. It's a process, you know, like 25, 30 minutes to get it, get it finished.

And I was starving when I put it in, so I was just waiting for it to come out, finally got it out, cut it open, had the little pizza cutter, and then I just absolutely torched the roof. Yeah. Like, I literally, I should've waited probably 10 minutes and I just ate it.

What's worse, biting your tongue or roofing your mouth burn? Roofing your mouth, because it's still... Yeah. Everything I eat, I just feel this burn on the top of my mouth. That's really tough. It was the hot cheese that got you. Yeah, the hot cheese, it like,

sticked there for a little bit. You were doing a little research. Yeah. Fuck. And you were like, you were closing your eyes, what would I love to have on this cheese pizza? Hmm. What do you think is worse, biting your tongue

or biting your cheek? Cause I've been on a real tear, biting my cheek the last week. Well, and like, or lip, if you get the lip bite, and then it's bigger, and then you keep biting it. Yeah, and then you're like, no, it's not a herb. No, the tongue, the tongue bleeds more. Okay.

Okay. That's good to know. Is that true? Yeah. There's more circulation? Yeah, no, you bite your tongue. You just say, now I just believe it. You can bleed out if you bite your tongue.

Hard enough. You can die by biting your tongue. I don't know about that, but I bit my tongue once I was bleeding for like three hours. That's what it's based off of? Yeah. You can bleed out. I think it might be possible.

I'll do good. Yeah, please do. Oh man. Yeah, that's tough, Hank. So still burning right now? That's prayers. Yeah. Yeah, that's brutal.

I can feel it. Yep, you gotta eat more ice cream. Get rid of that burn. Get away from it. That's actually a good call. I'm gonna have to do that after. Yes. Take care of yourself.

Take care of your mentals. Take care of each other. My, my firefest. Peace and love, baby. I've got two firefests, and I've been a little bit public with both of them, but my first is that my apartment is just a complete and under war zone.

Looks like people are negotiated with RG3 in there. It's got, the ceiling has been all peeled off. It's got mold that's coming, because the apartment directly upstairs for me has been having renovations done on it for the past, I don't know, like three, four weeks. Yeah. So every time it rains,

they've done something where it leaks through, and the rainwater from the top floor, because I'm on the JV penthouse, no big deal, it seeps down into my ceiling and starting to form cracks and brown spaces. And I got back from the shore house last weekend, and I looked up at my ceiling, and it honestly,

I could not recognize my own ceiling in my apartment, so I'm pretty sure that I'm just breathing in mold 24 seven now, and I heard them trying to work on it yesterday, and it was seriously the sound of a man walking around upstairs, and what sounded to be like eight to 12 inches of water. And so I'm just, I'm just waiting through water.

I'm assuming that I'm just, I'm completely fine. Can I spin zone? Yeah. For all the drugs that you don't do, kind of like a new trip staring at your ceiling. Good point. Like it's a totally new experience.

And it's probably increasing the humidity in my apartment for all the drugs that I don't grow. Correct. Correct. Okay. It would actually be a, if you can maybe black out your shades, it sounds like a perfect environment for mushrooms.

A trip to grow. I've got new trip changes. Yes, yes. Yeah, but it honestly kind of does suck, because what you pay to live in New York city. You showed pictures, it definitely sucks. It sucks big time. And then you try to get in touch with your super

and your landlord and all that stuff. And they've got a million other things to do with their slums that they manage. So it takes forever to come out. It's just, if I don't show up for work one day, you'll just know that the mold got me. Yeah. Okay.

My other fire fest is that nobody wants to come see Limp Bizkit with me in this room. Yeah. But that's why. Well, I have a, You're going to be out of town. I'll be out of town. Hanks taking care of his mentors this weekend.

Yup. Billy and Jake and Liam just all just, you just ghosted me. I gave them an. I take full accountability, hand up. Yeah. I apologize. I extended an invitation to you guys

to come to my luxurious store. You could have just downloaded the text. Yeah. You don't actually want me to come there. I would not have invited you. Are you, is that a statement or is that a question? I know it's like a polite invite to invite me. So thank you.

But I'm not going to actually pressure you and go. If you want to come, just say that you want to come. No, it's cool. Like thank you for including me. That was nice. But I'm not going to be like actually take you up on it. Yeah. All right.

You put yourself out there. I did. But you also put yourself out there knowing two, a quarter of the room was going to say no, no matter what. Hank had already said no to me privately. And you knew I was out of town. Yeah, yeah.

So you kind of set yourself up to fail. Well, I would have expected a response. If I was around town, I would have given you the courtesy. Thanks, but no thanks. I would have expected a response at least from Jake. Yeah. Hand up. But Jake.

I should have answered and said no. I'm sorry. Maybe my expectations for you are higher than your expectations for yourself. That's true. If I didn't still have moving boxes all over my house, I probably would do it. But yeah, I got it.

I got to do it at some point. No, I feel awful. Thank you for the invite. All right. My firefests is I am going to be out of town. I'm going on a bachelor party. I'm very worried about that and the hangover that we'll ensue. But more than that, it's the firefest

that I am halfway through Outer Bank season two. And I just want to finish it. Like, I'd rather just finish it than go out of town. What time zone is this bachelor party? It is in the central time zone. Shit. Be careful. I will be careful, Hank.

I will be very careful about this. Outer Bank season two kicks ass. Dude, I just want to finish it. It's so good. Rafe might be my breakout star of the century. JJ is maybe my favorite character in any television show of all time. And I love one of the things I like the most about Outer Banks

is they'll just like somebody will be getting strangled. And then they'll cut to a completely different scene somewhere else. And then they'll talk for about five minutes. And then they'll go back and the person is still getting strangled. Yes. And they also just have the premise,

the canon of season one was like there's no cell phones. None of these people have cell phones. They all have cell phones. That's how they're all. It's a great show. The writing is super tight. This isn't a spoiler, but if you watch season one, they happen to just go from a shipwreck to a boat that just

took them two feet from Sarah's house. So that was convenient, wouldn't you say? The writing of the show is so strong that it doesn't even bother me that the show clearly doesn't take place in the Outer Banks. That obviously takes place in South Carolina. It's a great show. I also think Rafe, they might be, what is it called,

character acting? He might just be high on coke the whole time. Because in real life, that's how good he is playing a coke head that's lost his mind. I just love murderous coke head. I love JJ's plans. JJ has a plan for everything. Yeah, he does.

Everyone needs to have a friend like JJ that's willing to go all out for him. I also, I'm starting to get annoyed. Why is he John B? What do you mean? Like, what is his last name, B? Yeah. But why do they call him that?

It's B-E-A-U-G-H. Right. But why? John B. I thought B was his middle name. No, that was a joke, yeah. I don't know why they call him John B. It's funny because somebody would be shooting a gun at them.

And they'll go, watch out, John B. Yeah, right. I love it. But even if like, but Stephen A. Smith is Stephen A, right? But if you saw him and you were like hanging out with him, you were best friends with him, you wouldn't be like Stephen A. I think I would. I think I would, too.

Yeah, I would. I think it's a sign of respect. Stephen A. But yeah, just don't watch the show if you've ever looked at a map or a globe. Or you like things like dialogue and plot lines that make sense. Continuity.

Yeah, don't turn your brain off. Jake, your firefest. So another salad-related thing. Oh, man. So I ordered a head. What a sentence to start that with. Yeah, on the restaurant, rhymes with sauce, Jallit, no free ads.

Suss Jallit. Yeah, yeah. So I ordered my salad ahead and I ended up ordering it ahead to the one next to my apartment. There's one right here. They said they didn't order. And I had to pay double. They wouldn't transfer it over.

Damn. $23 salad. That's a tough week, dude. That one legitimately has the worst customer service I've like of anywhere I've ever been. I mean, I'm not controlling them under the bus. The people legitimately just ignore you when you walk in. I actually respect that.

Yeah, they care so little. Medium customer service pisses me off. But when you walk in and it's just like, we don't care. I kind of am like, you know what? That's fucking bad ass. Like, you're aloof. I mean, I'm there every day. So I develop some sort of eye contact relationship

with people where they kind of know who I am. Well, clearly not, because they have a free salad. So I've paid double. Do you have a usual if you walk in? No. Will it be the usual, sir? No, because I ordered a head. There's like Jake?

Like, yeah. But I agree with Big Cat. There's something almost French about that type of service, where like, I don't know if you've ever been to France or experienced a Parisian restaurant, but you walk in and they're just like, oh, this guy's lucky enough to be dining with us. Right.

I'll get to him. Actually, the worst was one time I went to an outdoor cafe in Paris, and they came over to me. And I didn't say a word to them. They just immediately took the menu off the table and then put the English menu in front of me. And they took away the ashtray that was there. And I was like, that was a lot of assumptions.

And they nailed them. And they were right. So I got mad. And I went to the store next door and bought a pack of cigarettes just to be like, I need the ashtray back. Show them. It's the same, because I'm a loyal customer there, but. Yeah, you are.

Yeah, it's tough. It's tough week. All right, Billy. My first firefest is I'm sorry that I brought some bad vibes into the room when I first came in when I was late. No, it was great. The show was awesome. No, it was actually a perfect peek

into basically every Billy interaction. Come in, blame everyone else, then be like, you know what? Actually, it was my fault. Anyway, that was my first firefest. The second firefest is I forgot to bring underpants to the gym for when I changed. So I had to go to Mando the other day. Sir, wait, are you commando right now?

The other day. OK. Wait, no, he's commando right now. He's commando right now and he's blaming it on another workout. No, I'm not. Show us your underwear. What color underwear are you wearing, though? Show us your meundies.

I just, you can't do it. That's a hippo violation. No, you're not wearing underwear. No, I'm not asking you to show us your balls. It wasn't. Show us your underwear. Show us your underwear. George Kittle.

No, just pull your underwear up on the side. My other firefest is that I started. Here's my underwear. I started. Here's my underwear. I started a new show. Wait, wait. Look, there.

I started a new show. Wait, wait. I started a new show. And I can't tell anybody about the show because I'm scared they're going to spoil it for me because it's a really old show. But it's a really good show. But I want to talk to someone about it who won't spoil it for me.

The wire. It's the wire. It is the wire. No. Yes, it is. That's not Walter White dies in the end. No, it's not actually. But yeah, that's my other fire.

Bram's King. Yeah, and it's lame. No. But it's a really good show. It involves planes. Michael Scott quits and then the show sucks. Oh, are you watching Lost? He's watching Lost.

Actually, no. Whoa. What other plane show is there? Wings. It's old. Top Gun's not a show. No. It's a movie.

No. Mash. Billy's definition of old, though, is like when you guys work together. Yeah, that's true. That's what you guys have to think of. What show involves planes? It's actually not that old.

It's like, it just came out. Yeah, not that old. Five. Oh, flight attendants? You said really old show. Is it the flight attendant? No. That's a good show, too.

Are you watching Catch Me If You Can? No. OK. Anyway, that's my fire first. Can you write it down? Everyone guess what show Billy's watching? Then spoil it. We'll make this a real fire first.

Fuck off. No, please don't spoil it for me. I'm really invested in it. Why did you bring it up? Like every time I've done that, I've just watched the show. And then at the end, I'm like, hey, I just watched this show. Well, anyway, back to there's a huge. You just tempted everyone.

I did. Yeah. OK. But also, didn't have to show my underwear. So there's a huge, are we on to the recap? Yes. So there's a huge debate online about LeBron James Stans saying that he could knock out Mike Tyson

if he was training in his prime. Are you watching Manifest? What? Yes. No. Yes, I am. Yes. I've never seen it.

Fuck. It's not old. They literally just had the last season. It's 2018. 2018. I just searched show about planes. That was season one. I've watched it, too.

I searched show about planes popular. That's the worst one they gave up. It's really freaking good. OK. Anyway, so we're talking about how the Olympics is breaking a bunch of track records recently. Wait, go back to the LeBron James and Mike Tyson thing. I'm pretty sure that was just bait.

Yeah, let's click bait. LeBron James would obviously beat up Mike Tyson. He's way bigger, Billy. Dude, he's a reach. He's a reach. Mike Tyson. Yeah, but LeBron James is like 6'9". And LeBron's tough.

He's never flopped. And he weighs more. Mike Tyson has knocked out 50 Street Fights. Mike Tyson is like 5'10", and weighs like 230, 240. Mike Tyson has been in zero basketball games. So people are saying that one of the reasons why so many Olympic track world records have been broken recently is because of two combined things.

One, Nike released these new track spikes that are supposed to be having Carson Warmholm said that it was like having trampolines on your feet. That's it. It's new technology. Everyone's copying it. And basically, it's like, you're saying Bolt's record is going to go out the window, right?

Someone who actually. Moon shoes. Yeah, like moon shoes. And then the track, right? And the bouncy track. Yeah, so I read about that. It's basically, and I kind of love this, that every host Olympics wants to break a bunch of records

so they just make the track better. It's a Mickey Mouse Olympics. Wow, but they do that every Olympics, I think. Like that's what I was reading, that basically every Olympic, every host city and host country is like, how can we make this legal, but also break all the records? Yeah, well, they were way more lenient this year, they think.

So it puts the legacy of a lot of great runners up in the air because. That's why I'm not catching Olympic fever this year. Yeah. No, but I'm fine with the tracks being different year to year. I'm totally cool with that. And also the oxygen thing, you forgot about that. Yeah, of course.

More oxygen. They should do it to Cthulon, but just for weather. Like running in snow? It's all the 400 meters, the 400 meters is the only event. Snow, rain, hurricane, like 100 degrees, freezing. That would be cool. I actually think that there should just be a summer Olympics held during the winter time outdoors like snow football.

Yep. You get snow track. Yes. That'd be sick. In for that. Is that it? And also you can't bleed out by biting your tongue, but there was a medieval torture where they'd cut out

your tongue and make you strangle on your blood. Good recap, Billy. Sweet. Great job. All right, numbers? 70. 69. 99.

I can't believe I got the number exactly. What a waste. Polar bears and grizzly bears can make a Groller Bear hybrid, which is actually really cool. We should Google them. 8 gold. Oh, 66. Oh, I thought I had it for a second.

Can we get pizza? Yeah. Damn it. Groller Bear. Yeah, get my pizza. Love you guys. Pineapple, ricotta, two olives, onions. Love you guys.

Can we get an anchovy, half anchovy? It's also called a pizley. Depends on who's the father, who's the mother. Which one's which? I think the father is the pizley. The mother is the Groller. I think you just made that up completely. Love you guys.

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