The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Nick Caserio Speaks to the Media; Rockets Complete Comeback vs. Spurs

Episode Date: January 21, 2026

Nick Caserio Speaks to the Media; Rockets Complete Comeback vs. Spurs

is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Let's go right to Nick Casario on NRG Stadium. I just say, you know, really proud of this team, really proud of what we accomplished, really proud of what we've done organizationally. A lot of work that's gone into this. A lot of people are involved in that process. But, you know, we've had the best three-year stretch

in the history of the franchise. I mean, you know, certainly we don't take that lightly. we understand there's still some work in front of us and that's a challenge that lies ahead. The reality is the more we're playing games in January, that's where we want to be. You like to be playing a few more games in January and February and ultimately like that's the goal.

That's where we're all striving for in this league. And ultimately like we feel like we're more than capable of being able to do that. You know, now we're kind of flipping the page here a little bit and focus on the 26th team building in that process. It'll be very fluid, as you all know. There's a lot of different things that take place. But, you know, I think it's important for everybody. And D'Amico will mention it the other day. I think from where we started, the resolve, the leadership that he displayed. I mean, I think this franchise in this city is lucky to have the head coach that we have. I wouldn't want to work with any other coach, be a partner in what we're doing.

And he makes me better. I mean, I probably don't make him. him better, but I think we've got a great relationship. We have a lot of respect for one another. We have a lot of the same philosophical beliefs and what we're trying to do and what we're trying to accomplish. And we understand there's work to be done. And that's what kind of this offseason is about, just kind of looking at everything that we're doing, figuring out ways is something we can improve, whether it's individually, whether it's collectively, whether it's schematically, whether it's personnel-wise. But, I mean, what the players accomplish this season, I mean, some of the historical relative to the franchise,

historical relative to the league. I mean, we're like the second team in the history of the NFL to start 0 and 3 and make the divisional round. I mean, that says a lot right there. And it doesn't mean that we're satisfied with being there. We know there's more work in front of us. But, I mean, we're all proud. I'm certainly proud to be associated with this organization.

And, you know, we got a great program. We're proud of our program. I said this before the season started. You know, when we met in a 10th area in August, we felt we had a good team. We had a good team. We have a good team. We've got a lot of good players coming back, excited about what's in front of us, and excited to get started on 2006.

Just a couple of injury things, because I'm sure I'll be asked about him. And I think Damiqa got asked about yesterday. So as it pertains to Joe, so here's what I would say. It was a very unique situation. I don't think anybody really had any clarity, honestly, from the start of the year until now. I'd say Joe worked very, very hard to try to get himself ready to play football. It just never manifests itself and came to fruition. So probably have an opportunity to kind of see where he is in the offseason relative to next year.

But again, it was very, it was as unique a situation and injury as I've been associated with. And it's just, I don't want to call it a freak thing, but it's just kind of a freak thing. And Joe worked really hard, you know, put his best foot forward. It just, it didn't work out. And then Tank, I know I think DiMigo got asked about him the other day. I mean, Tank's doing awesome. He's been in the building every day. I mean, a matter of fact, he's here today.

He's got a great attitude. We would anticipate him being ready for the start of the offseason program. So he's a great spirit. He's got a great attitude. Good player. So, you know, I'm sure he's excited. He can't wait to get started. Saw him yesterday and he had a big smile on his face.

Like, basically like, all right, you know, now it's time. You know, now because we're focused on 2026. So just, I mean, I'm sure I was going to get asked about him. So I figured I would just, you know, address those couple, I would say, injury, you know, situations. All right. So, go ahead. Why is there an uncertainty regarding this situation? And do you bring him back?

Is there for, as far as what? Regarding his situation, who we're talking about? Joe makes him sorry. Yeah, we haven't seen Joe in a little bit. So I think at some point we'll see him and then we'll be able to evaluate kind of where he is and then based on information, we'll kind of see what the status is moving forward.

Do you want to bring him back if he can? Yeah, I mean, he's under contract. So we'll evaluate his situation. and then, you know, we'll see where it goes from there. We spoke with CJ. We were talking with him, and he's obviously very contrite about the game. He feels bad. He has an organization what can you do to help him get to where you hope for him,

what you believe that he can be. Yeah, I think every player, the off-season is about improvement. What are some of the things that you can do better? CJ had a really good season. He's done a lot of great things for his team, a lot of great things for this organization. Anytime that you pass John Elway, in terms of what you've accomplished in a short period of time.

I mean, like, talk about, like, Hall of Fame quarterback. So, CJ played good football this year. Honestly, it wasn't our best day as a team. When you go back, really, and look at the game from Sunday, Kha turned a ball over. And you look at the divisional round, the teams that turn a ball over, they lost the game. Buffalo turned a ball over, what, how many times, four times?

Brock Purdy, the Niners turned it over three times. Caleb threw three interceptions. So, in the end, like, the most important, I mean, our ball security, I think this is a franchise record for a least amount of turnovers. So we've shown that we can take care of the football. We did a poor job of it in the game the other day and ended up costing us. It's still an opportunity to win the game, despite how poorly we played, which I'd say that game was emblematic of kind of maybe the first three games.

When you go back and look at those first three games of the season, that's what happened. So I think the reality is, is what can we do better individually? And as a player, you've got to look at what are some of the things that you can work on? and what are some of the things that you can do to improve your performance. So, again, I think taking care of football for a quarterback, and we talked about this, D'Amico and I both talked to all the quarterbacks about including CJ. Your normal job as a quarterback is to mitigate risk, period, under story, every single play. And if you do that, you're going to give your team a pretty good opportunity to win.

If you don't do that, it's probably going to be a little bit harder. I mean, Drake put it on the ground the other day a couple times, but unfortunately we put it on the ground more, and that's why the result was the result. Over the last three seasons, you all have done a lot to build this defense of defense with the number one overall defense this year. How can you duplicate that type of success

on the office and the side of the ball? How much of an emphasis will that be in this offseason? Yeah, we're focusing on building a good team. I mean, that's what we do every year. So we've got a lot of good players on offense. So, I mean, we'll try to put the best team together we can for the 26th season and go out there and try to play winning football.

So in the end, it's not about offense or defense or special teams. It's all three phases. Everybody's involved. We got a lot of good players really throughout the building. So in the end, it's about how do you execute with the opportunities that we have on each Sunday or Monday whenever we play? And that's what the focus will be. To go back to Joe Mixum for a minute, with what you know now about the situation, would you expect that he'd be able to play next season? It's honestly hard to answer that right now because we haven't really seen them in a little bit.

So it's on point. We'll see him. We'll probably get a better idea. maybe do some follow-up, you know, examinations and get more information. Once we have more information, I think we'll better be able to make a better assessive. And why you haven't seen him so much? All the other injured players were around the facility. Actually, that's not correct.

We've had some players that were here. We had some players that weren't here. So every player is their own situation. So at some point, we'll have an opportunity to visit with all of our players. And before the 26 offseason starts, at some point we'll have an idea where everybody stands. Go ahead, Lander. We've gone from Bobby Slovak last year and went to, Nick Cayley. Do you feel validated in that decision? And is Nick Cayley, are you comfortable

in saying he's going to be calm plays in 2026? Yeah, I would anticipate Nick being here next year. You know, I think Nick learned a lot, you know, first opportunities to play caller. I'd say offensively, probably the last two to three months of the year, played pretty good football and did a lot of good things. So there was growth and improvement. There's always areas that we can improve and get better. And that's what, I mean, D'Amico mentioned the other day, this first, next couple weeks right after the season, it's kind of looking at everything, go through, you know, coaching staff, go through other aspects of the staff.

Is there anything that we have to do? All right, then we're looking at some things schematically, start to go through the self-scout, try to figure out, all right, what are some of the things that we did well? It's interesting. D'Amico started this when he got here. So the other side of the ball basically goes through and watches the respective side. So the defensive coaches will basically go through and watch an entire offensive season.

Offensive coaches will watch the defense. And it's basically just for observations. Hey, through that lens, what do you see? Hey, what are some of the things that we did well? What are some of the things that caused problems? What are some of the things? You know what? You know, maybe a little bit less of this,

whether it's schematically, whether it's personnel-wise. And there's good communication. I think it's a great exercise. We actually didn't do anything like that in New England. But I think there's some teams that do that. So what we're trying to do is say, hey, we know kind of where we are as a team. And I think sometimes when you're working on one side of the ball, you maybe see it through one lens.

Sometimes when you're on the opposite side of the ball, you see you through a different lens. And I'd say the rapport amongst the staff's really good. So we can communicate honestly and openly with each other. So it says a lot. And honestly, it speaks to who D'Amico is. So that's what we're going through right now. So, yeah, I would anticipate Nick being here next year. And all of us are just trying to improve and do we can to make the team and the organization better.

Do you think that you guys are? doing everything you can in terms of around C.J. for his development, because I know with young players, that's a key, it's a key time in their career. Like, are you looking at what can be done differently to help him continue to develop? Yeah, I mean, look, in the end, we're trying to do what's best for the team.

Like, this program's not about one individual, so we're not building a team based on one person, one facet of anything. We're trying to look at the big picture. Yeah, it doesn't affect, I mean, how we look at the team. So what do we need to do to build the best team possible, put the best team together, and then give ourselves the opportunity to compete on a weekly basis, which we've certainly done that. You know, we put ourselves in a good position.

In the end, I'd say our shortcomings come down to execution. You know, when you go back and look at the game the other day, can't turn the ball over five times. We control that. I'd say the three touchdowns that New England scored, we didn't play the coverage or the technique the right way on a calls that we've done countless times. So in the end, like we've proven that we could do it, but in games of that magnitude, the margins are as small as any, and you either make the plays and do the right thing or you don't. So in the end, and the players know that too, talking some of the players on Monday, they know it. And when they're articulating it, that's what you want to see and that's what you want to hear, which tells you you're on the right track. So in the end, it's about the team.

Let's build a good team. And in the end, get the best 53 guys. And like we've talked about, we talked about it in October. I talked about it for the season. Whoever comes in this building at some point, they're probably going to have to play. And that's where we try to build as much as depth throughout the roster, because at some point we're going to need everybody. So this program's not about one person.

It's not about one individual. It's can we put the best team out there? Because in the end, the team that wins the Super Bowl is the best team. that's the truth. Is the contract extension with CJ a goal of your front office at all this time? Yeah, I'd say like contractually, you know, we haven't really talked

publicly about anybody's contract. I would say every situation with any players kind of case by case. So we'll handle business, how we handle business. So, you know, everybody's in kind of some different categories. So we kind of take a case by case and kind of deal, you know, one player at a time. I think one of us to Will Anderson, Jr.,

the expressed his desire to be here for his entire career on Monday. his body of work, what do you think about Will? Just the hope to, obviously, keep a good football player like that, as long as you can. Yeah, similar answer. I mean, we'll kind of take it case by case. I mean, Will's a good player.

I mean, we drafted him because he thought he was a good player. And he's been a good player, and he's improved each year. So, again, I mean, there's never a linear path on any of this. So, you know, I'm sure you guys will be calling the agents all the time, asking what the hell is going on. But, you know, we'll kind of take it one day at a time and try to figure out, you know, what makes the most sense for, you know, for the organization.

Go ahead. Let's go, yeah, I'm going over here. From the standpoint of just knowing that you don't have to get a contract extension of them, would you at least consider looking at their fifth year options to pick up? Yeah, I mean, there's some things just business-wise. I'm sure we'll look at and discuss. So that's what kind of the off-season is about. So, I mean, there's a timing element that's involved in some of that.

So kind of work through it here, you know, I'm sure throughout the course this spring. I went to go through some ways here. On the side, you guys, you know, made a lot of changes. Some work, some did it from your respect to how do you feel just overall about the first part of the question. I'm sorry. From offensive personnel standpoint, you've made a lot of changes in the last off season to this offseason this season, some work, some didn't.

From your respect, how we should overall analyze how some of the moves that you made on the offensive line, receiving role, kind of unfolded throughout this season? Yeah, we feel kind of we got contributions from everybody. Probably the big wholesale change or overall, you know, was the offensive line. We talked about that, you know, at different points. We talked about it in October as well, you know,

because it kind of coincided with the, you know, the cam trade and that. But, I mean, and going back to the spring, I mean, D'Amico and I both felt we would have a pretty competitive group. We felt that it would be improved. You know, in the end, we end up with, like, one player that started who had, I know Titus played multiple positions, but Titus was really the only player. The rest of the offensive line was a number of new players. They're changing spots. I mean, overall, I'd say that group certainly improved. I think Cole did a phenomenal job with that group.

him and Coach Jensar, and we ended up kind of like we talked about a little bit early, using everybody, you know, and eventually it kind of settled down once Tate was able to kind of settle in, a left tackle. Tay played really good football. I'd say he made some young football player mistakes, and there's some things technique-wise that he can certainly improve. You know, we felt once Trent got healthy that Trent would go out there and play pretty good football, and he did. And I'd say, you know, Jake Andrews gave us a good level of play. he probably played honestly hurt probably played on one leg for about half a year

which kind of speaks to his toughness and Ed I mean Ed had a good year he probably had his best year he's a free agent you know kind of to see how that goes so I mean overall certainly improved you know there's always things that we can do better but we got contributions from everybody you know Blake had to go out there and start against the Chargers played pretty good football I mean J-Pat we've always kind of viewed him as a swing guy kind of inside sort of that 6th 7th offensive lineman. That's kind of the role that he had. So we have some players who will be for a group. We have some players under contract for next year. So, you know, I'm sure there'll be some different players in that group next year, but we also have some guys that,

you know, under contract that are coming back. So, you know, looking forward to kind of putting that group together. But, I mean, overall, like, they were improved. I think the past protection was improved, certainly was improved relative to last season. So there's always a combination of factors involved. It's personnel, it's scheme. There's a lot of different things. It's not one particular thing. But overall, that group played pretty competitive football from start to finish. I wanted to just clarify something you said earlier, because I'm not sure quite understood. You said you anticipate Nick Cayley coming back. Has that decision been made? Because DiMiko said that he would take the week to decide. Yeah, we're working through it right now.

I mean, no, that's, I mean, D'Amico and I talk every day. So I don't think I'm like speaking out of school here. So, I mean, if I am, then, you know, someone will beat my ass. So football injury designation. Can you disclose what happened to Joe? Is it something that you guys don't want to disclose it? Is there a reason why we can't just have what happened? Yeah, no, I would say he didn't do anything off the field. It wasn't like he was riding like a snowmobile or anything like that. I'd say it was just more of a medical condition or situation that just whenever it really didn't improve maybe as much as everybody would have hoped. I mean, I'm not trying to like evade the question. I think that's the reality of the situation. So like he didn't jump off a building. Like he

wasn't cliff diving or anything like that. He wasn't doing anything irresponsible. It was just it was a freak thing. Honestly, I'd never seen it. You know, it's just the condition. I hope that situation will improve before next time. We'll see. I mean, believe me, I'm not smart enough to be a doctor. So, I mean, I'll leave that up to the medical experts. And, you know, once we, going back to some of the other questions, we get a little bit more clarity, more information, then we'll kind of see where we are moving forward. We talked about Tankdale earlier, and it's your anticipate him in when he brought to him. All of that, you guys have a superb performance program.

Do you have any indication that you expect him to be able to compete at a high level? I mean, I know you don't know the answer to all of him, but what do you know about that? Just a good question, TBD. He's worked very hard. You know, I think our performance group, I mean, they do, I mean, they do a really good job. And I think the players feel that. So we have the resources available. And each player is a little bit different.

So what's required for one player might be different for a tank and, like, his situation. But, I mean, I would anticipate him being available for the offseason. And then really, April, May, and June, probably a better idea. Once you get on the field, you probably have a better visual representation of what that looks like. And then if you clear that hurdle, then training camp is more of like, okay, what does this actually look like? So knowing Tank, I mean, Tank's probably cautiously optimistic that he's going to be able to go out there and, you know, be Tank to L. I think everybody's hoping that's the case. But you never know.

I mean, injuries are like none of us control injuries and kind of what happens. But I mean, everybody's rooting for a tank. And he's rooked very hard. He's had a great attitude. So I'm excited to kind of see him out there moving around. I think nobody's more excited than he is. So it would be good once we actually start moving and getting on a field, getting on grass to see what that looks like.

What goes into your process of evaluating a player and maybe some projection as to what that player can do and then how that affects, hey, we have the guy at the building, maybe we want to go outside the building. How do you kind of go about that? I don't know, obviously everybody hopes their guy gets better, but you build in sort of all the different factors of a projection. Yeah, that's a $100 million question.

But no, it's you have to go off of what you've seen to this point, and I'd say with younger players, there certainly is a projection element, but if they have a body of work that you've seen, then you have to project a certain level of improvement and growth. that you hope takes place. It doesn't guarantee anything. So then you look at your team, what the expectation is you think for the role. And as we get into free agency, all right, supply and demand, what's available, what are our options? Do we have an option already in place? That's comparable to what else is on the market. There's an opportunity to upgrade that.

The draft is kind of its own entity. I think our philosophy on the draft is just good, good football players in here with the right mentality and the right mindset, regardless of the position that they play. That's how we approach it philosophically. That's what D'Amico and I believe in. And that's kind of how we'll go about it. But yeah, you have to take inventory of what do you have? Who's played? Who's

under contract? All right, what does that look like moving forward? I would say, I think we have right now 55, 56-ish players under contract for 26. It doesn't mean all those players are going to be here. But if we had a lineup and go play a game tomorrow with those 55,

what does that look like? How do we feel about that. I say certain positions just from a volume standpoint, excuse me, feel pretty good. Other positions, we just don't have a lot of supply. So, all right, where does that supply exist? So where do we go find it? So it's a good question, but that's kind of a balance. And that's kind of what we work through here. Understanding even whatever we think it is, and we go to training camp, something changes, something happens. And there's a player that's going to end up on this team in November and December that we're not even thinking about or talking about. That's part of the calculus.

Like Jamarcus Anger in this year, Demone Clark, like players like that. And I would say those are a little bit more need-based. Like, hey, we lost a player. What are our options? You know, in the spring, it's a little bit more of like there's a vast array of people available. All right. Free agency is kind of step one. All right.

What does that look like? All right. The draft, that's step two. All right, then go from there. I mean, we've got what, eight, call it eight picks? I'm sure that number will change, but let's call it eight draft picks. You know, how many players we have in our contract, undrafted free agents. So the players can kind of come from everywhere.

So that's kind of how we'll go about it. Hopefully that answers your question a little bit. You talked about the success that the team has had over the last three years and you ought to be able to do that because of some of the contracts that you have right now. But coming up, you're going to have to, this organization is going to spend a lot of money to keep some of the talent that it has. At what point do you feel like the window of success is going to start to close? It's always open in our book.

You can build a team a married a different way. So contracts for contracts, you can fit them however you need to fit them. So how do you keep good players? What does that look like? There's a little bit of a balance and, okay, how are they structured? You got to stagger them. I mean, look around the league. I mean, there's plenty of teams that have highly paid players like eight to ten of them.

them. I mean, the Lions, like, they got a good team. They had it down here this year, but I mean, I got some of the best players in the league, you know, they found a way. So there's always a way. Like, you got to be creative. You try to think a little bit ahead. I mean, we've sat here, we've talked how we kind of look at the team building in two-year increments, not like, well, here's the window. It's more of like just the contracts. What do those look like? Okay, some contracts are going to run off. Some are going to come on. All right. How do you balance that off? So, I mean, in our book, the window is always open. So we're going to try to put together the most competitive team possible every year.

However we do that, you know, we'll fit the contracts, whatever those look like, and, you know, and go from there. So that's kind of how we view it. Again, I can't speak to other teams and their philosophy, but, you know, our goal is to have a good team every year. And, you know, we'll figure out a way. And whoever plays, we don't really care. I mean, look, Tommy Toggi, I wasn't like a figment of anybody's imagination like two years ago. now he's one of our best defensive players. So, I mean, he got here in the middle of, like, last year in October on a practice squad.

I mean, the guy, like, played as well as any defensive tack on the league. So, I mean, there's players out there everywhere. Like, our job is to find them. And the contracts are the contracts. So, I mean, that's kind of its own entity. And, you know, we'll deal with that accordingly. It's a difficult thing. When you look at the Higgins and Noel in the development they had this season, what's like most about that,

where would you like to step forward next season? Yeah. I mean, two really good players excited about their future. I mean, I think Hague showed he's got a chance to be a really good player. He's just productive as any of our offensive skill players over the last kind of, you know, month or two of the season. You know, Jay Null, you know, show where he can do in a return game. Probably get some more opportunities here offensively.

But, I mean, two good football players. I mean, not receive a room. I mean, if you didn't do anything, which, you know, I'm not saying. like we will or won't. But if you didn't do anything, it's a pretty good room. Higg, Noel, Nico, Hutch. Nobody talks about Hutch, but nobody's improved more from the time he was drafted to where he is now.

He's become one of our most dependable players. Talked about Tank here a little bit. I mean, Justin Watson is under contract. I mean, Kirk's a free agent. We'll see how that goes. Berrios is a free agent. But, I mean, it's pretty good room. So I feel like, you know, we can go out there

and play good football with that group. So, but great kids, great attitude, dude, good teammates, selfless, no ego, just go out there and work and do their job. And I think Jay Newell kind of showed his kind of versatility, you know, punt returner, you know, kickoff returner. So, and when he played offensively, you know, he made a lot of plays. So I'm sure we're going to see more Jane O'Loll next year. James, I heard of his request for the Falcons of their gamble.

Oh, you said, go ahead, yeah, sorry. What do you think about James and the job he's done and just him getting that kind of attention. Yeah, I have a lot of respect for James, knowing him a long time, probably knowing him as long as anybody in this building. We hired him as a scouting assistant. Coming out, he finished his career at Georgia Tech,

hadn't been involved in scouting. Probably didn't have much an NFL career ahead of him. He knew that, but he wanted to get involved in football. So we hired him as a scouting assistant. And he's grown. He's done a great job, great person, great family. You know, works really hard, relying on him for a lot.

He's earned this opportunity. So, I mean, credit to him, whatever the Falcons decide to do. I mean, hopefully he's here helping the Texans, but he's fortunate enough to have the opportunity. You know, I'm sure he'll do a good job with it. But, you know, I think we're pretty fortunate. We feel like we've got a lot of really good people in this building across departments, scouting, sports performance, coaching. And I think that's D'Amico and I believe in just bringing in good people, you know,

teaching them, develop them. Our responsibility to everybody in the building and our role is to try to help them as much as possible. and let them grow. That's our kind of fiduciary responsibility to each other. But happy for James. We've got some other folks that I think are going to get some opportunities and some different looks. That's what this time of the year is about.

I mean, you guys look around a league. I mean, the amount of movement that takes place is, I mean, it's mind-numbing, honestly. But everybody gets an opportunity. You know, we all got an opportunity. You all got an opportunity in this room. I was fortunate enough to get an opportunity back in the day, and it's really what you do with it. So, you know, happy for James and we'll kind of see how it goes.

Nick, do you feel like you all did enough from a personal-wise to help the offense grow in the way it needed to grow? Or do you think probably some of the unexpected injuries like Joe makes an injury probably stalled that? I mean, I'm not really sure the question. I'd say we had one of the best teams in the lead. So, I mean, we went out there and competed with every team in the league that we played. So, I mean, I'm not sure what the question is. I can specify. You know, the offense, according to their statistics,

didn't take a huge jump offensively. And I'm wondering. The most important statistic is winning games. So that's a worth of all. 100%. But you lost in the divisional round again. You ultimately want to get farther. Do you feel like you could have done more to get to that point

or where there are circumstances that you felt were out of control? We had a good enough team to win any game we played. In the end, we didn't execute well enough. You can't turn her ball over five times in the divisional play. off round. I mean, taking care of the football is a single most important stat correlated to winning. I mean, look it up. It's the truth. If you don't turn a ball over, you enhance your chances of winning, it's 85, 90%. I mean, so that's the most important stat. Turnovers, taking care of the football, like look around the league. So in the end, we had a good enough team to beat anybody. We

play with every team in the league. There's more room in front of us. In any end, if we execute better, we'll still be playing. I mean, I'm not trying to oversimplify it, but that's the truth. Going back to Sarge talking about the contracts, when a quarterback's on his rookie deal, we talk about it's probably easier to put a team around him. How critical is next year not just for CJ to prove that he can be that guy, but for the organization to believe that he can be that guy and not turn the ball over?

in the division around? I mean, every year you kind of start from scratch. So, I mean, everybody is focused on individual improvement. So CJs play a lot of good football, won a lot of games, done a lot of great things for this organization. And I think all of us are excited about the opportunity in front of us for the 26th season. It's a year-to-year league. I mean, that's where we're focused on a 2026 season,

trying to put the best team together. And hopefully put ourselves into a position that we can go out there and play pretty good football and, you know, win a bunch of games. So that's what the focus. That's where our focus is. Maybe two more. From you look at Brevin Jordan a few years ago, you signed up an extension that way.

You could get him in a medical red shirt year, basically. What he was going through an entry? Tank could be up for an extension next year. That could be in the works just to have it for one year to where he missed the season, but you have it for four years. Yeah, again, it's kind of case by case. So you kind of look at everything and try to figure out, all right, what makes the most sense for the organization.

The player is a part of it, but it's kind of like piece of the puzzle. You got all these puzzle pieces. how do you fit them all together, coming back to Kahn of Sarge's earlier question. So we'll look at everything and just try to figure out, like, how do we line a deck chairs? And then we'll be prepared. I think the one thing that we've shown is our ability to kind of pivot and adjust

and kind of handle and adapt. I think that's one of the hallmarks of this organization. You know, D'Amico and I, like, philosophically, like, that's how we view things. So you never get too caught up and doing one thing in particular way. You know, I think the more you're open-minded and kind of maintain some level of flexibility. you know, it just gives you more optionality. So, you know, again, we'll look at everything, and it's always case by case,

and ultimately we'll feel what we do, you know, makes the most sense by everybody involved. That investment in Joe plus Stefan, do you think, I guess, it was more bad break? With what you got from that investment, and are there any lessons, I guess, you take moving forward from that? Look, good players helped our team. I'd say, and I've said this, you know,

every decision, every player you bring in, maybe doesn't go the way that you think or hope it's going to go. Some of it's in your control, some of it's not. So all we can do is look at it, okay, deal with the reality, and just press forward. So trying to have to get too caught up in one particular thing. I think Damiko and I kind of look at things that way. So that's probably why we get along so well.

How do you think CJ handled all the hurdles this year, a slow start, his own concussion, the postseason? Yeah, and he's said this. I mean, it was hard, you know, and I think any time that you deal with difficult situations, adversity, it's just in the end, you're the only one that can handle and respond to it. And, you know, our job as an organization is to support our players and give them that resources that they need and feel like they have a good environment to come to work. Look, I'd say players that come in this building, love being here. They know what we're about.

They know what Tomiko's about. They know what I'm about. So, I mean, in the end, we're just trying to win football games with the right people. And, you know, understand this league's hard. I mean, it's really hard. I mean, we're all going to have to deal with stuff. It's not easy. But, you know, honestly, that's where you kind of get to joy, at least I do, is just in the fight, you know, and just

nothing's easy. Everything's earned. So, I mean, that's the beauty of, you know, everybody's got the same opportunity. I mean, all 32 teams, once, whenever Super Bowl is played. You're going to have the same opportunity. I think our division, I mean, has become a really competitive division. I mean, I think, you know, I've said this, you know, Jacksonville, I think he's done an awesome job.

I mean, Tony, you know, James, Liam, did a great job this year. They showed it. I mean, I think Tennessee is going to be much improved. I think Coach Salas is a hell of a coach. You know, Coach Seichen and the Colts, I mean, they've shown year and year out. They can compete with anybody. So, I mean, we're going to have a work cut out for us in the division. But that's why this league, when you go one through 32, the gap between one and 32,

it's not as big as the numbers suggest. So, I mean, all of us, you got to embrace it. You know, you got to embrace it. And it's okay to fail, but, you know, you got to pick yourself back up and, you know, try to come up with some answers and solutions. So that's how that's kind of the key, right? as a terms of everything. How do you help, I mean, you collectively,

is where that war to lie that all the players? How do you get to where the execution is persistent? Yeah, it's just making sure. I think we do, because again, we turn the ball over, like, least amount in franchise history. So it's just every detail, every practice, every day, every meeting. It's all important. So, and I think as a player, any end, it's a player's game, right?

And the players take ownership. and you just have to have a heightened awareness that any little small thing, like playing a wrong technique. Okay, your leverage on this play is supposed to be inside leverage. Okay, you've done it 90 times. Why the 91st time do you play with the wrong leverage, right? It's just this league is about discipline, it's about consistency, and it's about doing it every single snap, every single play.

And I would say our responsibility is to make sure that we bring the players in, that A, understand it, B, have the mental fortitude to do it. Because it's not easy, going back to the earlier question. It's not easy, but it takes work and it takes communication. And that's, in the end, what makes a team good. So everybody's got good players. Those, I would say, small details, those finer things. Those are the things.

If you do them right, I mean, look, there's a reason we won 10 games over three months or whatever it was because we were doing more of those things. When there's gaps against good teams, the margins are smaller. So we're trying to make the improvements on the margins. I just make sure, like, every single day. And again, I mean, we'll probably be playing like 400 games here at some point. So it's got the long season. Every week matters.

Every practice matters. Every meeting matters. Every walkthrough matters. And Domingo talks to the team about this all the time. And I'd say the majority of the time, we do a really damn good job of that, right? But when there's gaps, then you've got to go back and look and say, all right, did I really do what I was supposed to do? or did I kind of, you know, in the end, that's player accountability and ownership. When you're assessing a player, how do you reconcile body of work, maybe success from a couple of years ago versus now?

Does recent performance matter more than some of the previous performances? Yeah, you got to be careful taking just like a snapshot of like, oh, here's what it is. You got to look at the entire body of work. I would say, like, because this actually get into the draft a little bit, okay, look at player's body of work. players started 45, 50 games, you're looking at their body of work, as opposed to, well, they did this in this game, they did this in that game. Okay, over the totality of it, what does it look like? And then you've got to be able to say, here's what we think it's going to be, right? And with NFL players, some players have more body of work than others, right?

So you're looking at the whole body of work, and if they've shown the ability to do things at a certain level, then it means it's in there, right? And it's like, all right, what else can you do? and every year you're starting from scratch, right? So I think each player looks at, hey, I'm going to focus on this, this is offseason, whatever your list is, right? And we're going to have kind of a checklist for the players and they come to building, hey, these three or four things,

here's what we're looking for relative to improvement. And then you can look at the end of the year. All right, did they improve that? Did they not? So it's ongoing, it's very fluid. So, again, you look, you have to look at everything. You just can't look at one particular play, one particular game, one particular situation.

Nick, can you talk about the time? Go ahead, Sarge. Go ahead, Sergeant. So can you just talk about the job that D'Amico did this year, overcome that four and three starting at even at a point it was three and five to be able to coach this team into another division around game? Yeah, I mean, it was phenomenal. I mean, like, he was incredible.

I mean, I would say his just consistency, how steadfast he was, and being able to get the issues fixed and addressed, and honestly, not really. really losing sleep or losing his mind. Here's what I would say, too. D'Amico is one of the best human beings I've ever been around in my life. He's also one of the most competitive individuals that I've been around.

And which is why I think, like, we resonate with one another because I think we're both, like, very competitive. You know, I think his, he's so genuine, so sincere. He treats everybody the right way. I mean, I mean, I, I, I, I'm fortunate to be around him on a day-to-day basis. I think the way he handled the team was incredible. I think he did as good of his coaching job as any coach in a league this year.

I mean, he's not going to win coach at a year, but, I mean, you can make a very cogent argument that he should be the coach of the year based on what we did with this team from where we started to how we finished. And everything starts with leadership. Everything starts the head coach. And I think he's grown. You can, you can ask him, but he's grown from the time that he started on now.

You know, obviously the play, passing that off to Coach Burke. I mean, there's no ego with him at all. Like, he just wants what's best for the team and what's best for this organization. Period. End of story. And I can't see enough great things about him, the job that he's done.

I'm grateful for the opportunity to work with a moderated day basis and looking forward to working with him building the 2016. That's like six last, last question. This may have been where Cody was gone. but, you know, obviously, C.J. Stroud had an improved year up into that last couple of games. You don't take, and this is me going on your answer, you don't take just what happened in the biggest games and use that into how you might approach, you know, negotiations extensions later on down the line.

Or is that all the part of it? Yeah, look, if we want to go game by game, like, we don't win a Kansas City game without C.J. Stroud. I mean, so again, like, that's one game, all right? Look, he'll be the first to tell you. He didn't play well on Sunday, all right? I'm not going to sit here and tell you you play well either. Like, he knows that. So in the end, all right, you got to learn from it.

What can we do better? All right, and then we're moving forward. All right, and see, look at his body of work. This guy's been a damn good quarterback in this league for three years. I mean, it's the truth. So, again, you wanted to look at everything in totality, and then every player will look at their situation, and it's always case by case.

With the tight end position that was wondering, updates on how Dalton and Kate are doing from Saturday, and also kind of how you evaluate that position moving forward with Dalton going into his last year and other guys are going to be okay. I mean, it was just kind of a calf. I mean, I don't think it's anything major. Cade, I think he avoided serious injury.

I think he's going to be okay. So, I mean, probably going to be ready for the off-season programs, probably not as bad as it looked. It looked pretty bad, right? I think he's going to be okay. Overall, got pretty good production from that group. I mean, Dalton had a really good season. I mean, he broke the franchise record for career receptions by a tight end. I mean, the guy's record he broke was a damn good player. Like, you guys know him very well. I mean, we played against OD multiple times when I was in New England. So, I mean, Dalton had a really good year. He was healthy. You know, he quite frankly wasn't healthy last year.

you know, but got really good production from them. You know, I think we were planning on Brevin, kind of being a big part of it. You know, fortunately, like, he went down there a little bit, but, you know,

Kate kind of showed his versatility. You know, Harrison, you were able to kind of give us some snaps there a little bit. So overall, it's pretty solid group. So, I mean, if there's an opportunity for us to improve it, you know, certainly look at it, you know, relative to what our options are. But overall, it's good group.

Works hard, very professional. You know, Dalton had a really good year. And, you know, very dependable, very instinct, a very smart player. Okay, the actual last question. To kind of follow up on Kim's and John, this question about the execution and vision around, we know that you've got to be better,

but what can you guys do a little bit better to, I guess, add more, if you guys have more overall, because so far since Miko, you guys, you've been here, vision around, you guys have an average of the 11 points in the offense, and that just kind of them to me in those rounds. So what can you guys have to be in those rounds? So what can you guys have to be in those rounds?

to improve just the overall talent that is on office to win those. Yeah, I mean, the goal is the same. Try to put together a good team and get players in the building that we can go out there and play winning football with. You know, it's a combination of things. You know, make sure we've got enough players. You know, we're doing some things schematically. There's some things that have popped up in those games.

So, again, you look at those games, you look at other games as well, look around the league, what are some teams doing, where are some things you might be able to incorporate. So again, I mean, offense has really never been. I mean, DeMico and I have never sat in our office and said, like, well, our offense is a concern. Like, what do we got to do? Like, you know, we've got to play better.

There's some things that we can do better. So try to build a good team, try to get good players in here with the right mentality and a right mindset. I mean, again, I guess Nico Collins isn't good enough player. So, I mean, maybe we can find a player better than Nico Collins. You know, I don't know. So we try to do the best we can, try to bring good players in this building, you know, and try to put together a good team that gives a chance to compete, you know, on each Sunday.

Thank you. All right, thanks. Wow, that's good stuff. Actually, good stuff. A lot to chew on. Oh, by way, I'm Matt. He's Ross. It is the Matt Thomas Showwood Ross. That might have been our best 40 minutes of radio programming all week. A lot to frankly chew on, right? Joe Mixon, Nick Cayley, C.J. Stroud.

Those are kind of the real heavy points of it. We'll get to all that. plus the Rockets with the comfort behind when Big 12 schedules out we got a lot to get to today we want you to be a part of the show Ross I will be a part of the show

and we're going to check an in Denver letter today too okay wonderful yeah but we're going to address Joe Mix we come back and whether or not I owe you coffee and a lemon loaf 1043 on Sports Talk 790 it is Matt Ross and

we haven't said much because that press conference and I'll give Nick credit because we have to give credit what credits do. Every question answered, asked. Maybe did not get as much information as you want on some things. Initial thoughts? Very much a Nick Cayley guy. Very much a C.J. Stroud guy.

And I wouldn't expect him to throw him under the bus. But he was, is it the term, effusive? Is that right? Would that be a term? In his praise? In his praise? Sure, why not? And almost, almost got away with not telling the world what happened to Nick to Joe Mixen, although he didn't provide any specifics.

Okay, so you want to know what it really sounds like to me now that he said he didn't talk about it wasn't going on some cliff diving, cliff diving or something like that. Anything irresponsible. Now, if there's a police report that eventually comes out that says otherwise, then we'll just call Nick the greatest liar of all time. I mean, I might be the greatest liar right now, but Nick would take my spot. Nick would surpass you. Okay. So after hearing that, a botched surgery is, and somebody, I think Pedro on Twitter said the exact same thing, that you have to be very careful, Ross, in public talking about malpractice. Mm-hmm.

And that sounded very malpracticey, if this is just such a term. Malpractice? Sure. I'm going with it. Okay. So I probably going to wind up owning you a loaf. I'm not going to... I was going to go with an almond croissant.

Okay, almond croissant. Fine. I think we're going to need to make a decision probably by the time the Super Bowl is over. Okay. How about this? Okay, we can do that. Or we can even wait. I don't care.

Yeah, it's only about $10. And then if you... Exactly. This is a very small coffee bet. Right. And then if I win, or if you pay, and then it comes out that you were right, I'll pay double. So I'll pay back to get us even and I'll pay you one and one. That seems fair.

Does that sound fair? At the Super Bowl. That's when all the media gets there and sometimes there'll be some TMZ stories that will come out. And if you got, there's loose lips, TMZ will find them. That's true. TMZ sports should be on top of this already. Yeah. If you're shot in the foot, I feel like we would have heard about it now.

Now, once the season's right, right, right, right. But again, if you're trying to inter, you know, you know, You know, there was a class I took in college called oral interpretation. Okay. And if you're trying to interpret it, it was, I've got to try to give you a little bit of information, but I need to probably protect. I don't know if HIPAA is the word I would use of the laws. Oh, HIPAA.

All right, Dusty. Okay. I know. I know. I always know with that. It's, again, now my money, the favorite on the board is a botched medical procedure. Okay. Could be both?

Yeah. He shot himself with the foot and then got a bunch. Yeah. It was just a simple flesh. wound of the foot and then all of a sudden and they removed two of his toes. Yeah, he's down to three toes. But I'll say this. He didn't sound like he was confirmed

coming back. It also sounded like it was a confirmed coming back to Tank Dell wasn't going to be 100% ready. And I've told you this before. The best Tankdale you ever saw was already in the field. You're not getting anything close to that coming back. And I like Tankdale. University of Houston guy. I love him.

I'm not an orthopedist, but that seems like a fair assumption. Yeah. It was just too much injuries and touch a short period of time. Yeah. When it takes five minutes to list all the ligaments you tore in your knee, that's not a good something. Yeah. Anything else that caught you, uh, that tickled your fancy, if you will?

No, I don't, I mean, he was backing Nick Cayley as you said, but he didn't like confirm. It was interesting when he said, we're still evaluating. Like, didn't say that he was going to be back. I took it as, well, first of all, Mike McDaniels now, here's the, here's strange thing. If you didn't see this yesterday. The charges. He's now the charges.

but he is still open for a couple of head coaching jobs. So at the worst, the new offensive coordinator will be Mike McDaniel in Los Angeles. Hmm. I mean, Joe Brady could be re-signed by Buffalo. Two great tackles. Justin Herbert, decent wide receivers. And Omari and Hampton. Hmm.

But I'll say this. Yeah, they're going to be in a good spot. I do have one criticism of Nick. again, it's kind of of the position. If we took the, you know what a template is when you have like a blank page and you fill in the particular space on what you're doing? If there is a template for what Nick has done the last three years in these end of season press conferences is, you know, we won some games, we want to get better, we need to do some things. I feel like I've heard some of the same rhetoric after they lost last year in the divisional playoff to Kansas City. The rhetoric hasn't changed too much.

We are good. We've won a bunch of games in the last three years. I don't think Texans fans wanted to hear that. They did win a lot of games. They have won two AFCs, and they've won a wild card spot. They did win a road playoff game. So there was some tangible changes from year to year to year to year. But the end result is you're still looking at a franchise that has been around since 2002

that has never tasted an AFC championship game. And I think it bugs a large portion of the year. Houston Texan fan base. So you, to go to the, we're going to go in there and start prepping for 26 to get past it. I don't know if he could go on and said, we are in a sense of urgency. We've got to get past this. Not necessarily doing this to defer a political thing, but just to show that complacency isn't a part of what's going on right now in energy. Yeah, I mean, I guess if you want to be pounding the table and saying this is unacceptable and

everybody's job is on the line. I think you could have gone with. And again, this is easy for us to do because we analyze things. You could have easily said, look, we got to divisional playoffs. We've got to go further. And again, it's captain obvious on that. But it's also sometimes the fan base has to hear that. But his statement was true.

They could have beaten anyone. But when you turn the ball over five times, you're not going to beat it. You're not even going to beat the Raiders if you turn the ball over five times. You just can't do that. Yeah. So overall, I thought it was, I mean, for word salad, not as bad as it usually is. Because he can get you into words. He can get you in a, he can get you in a, like an apple salad with walnuts in it.

Oh, really? Yeah. Okay. What a wedge with blue cheese and bacon? Blue cheese crumbles, run onion, a vinaigrette. Okay. You can give you all that stuff. Well, that was good.

I'm glad we carried it. I was really starting to get irritated that we're going to get some more clarity in the Joe Mix and stuff. But we got a little bit. a little bit more. So who do you owe lunch to? I don't recognize it. It's probably Aaron Wilson.

So Aaron, if you're listening in the car right now, I owe you big city wings. Okay. Because if you saw that on Twitter earlier today, I said that, hey, the person that gets the most details out of the Joe Mixing situation

I'm buying them lunch. So congratulations, Aaron Wilson, you win. All right. Second hour, the Matt Thomas show with Ross continues. Yes. In one half hour,

we're going to tell some people to shut their bum asses up. You ready for that? Yes. We're going to have a live in studio guest during Shut Your Bumass Up. We are. Yes, we are. Oh, they're coming after me? Nope.

We're going after them. Ooh. Okay. But first, a word for Synergenic. This is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. 1103 on Sports Talk 7. I mean, Matt and Ross with you today until 2 o'clock. We have Shut Your Bumass up at 1130 today.

Nobody got time for that. Well, the live version of that today, if the person that comes in studio remembers to do so. I'm intrigued. You really don't know who it is? No, I have no clue. I like that. I'm glad you didn't look at my Twitter account. Okay.

You probably have me muted. What's your name? Don't look at it. Okay, now don't look. See? You're welcome. I'm trying to help the show. Because I put in, I put that the person coming in 1130 today is going to be getting to shut your mess up.

Okay. All right. 713, 21, 2, 5-790. 713, 2, 1-1, 2, 5. 790. Headlines today really quick. You just heard the NICSara Press conference, and I'm sure we'll mix in some of the clips

throughout the course of the show. And we've got that. We've got the Rockets last night. Ooh, baby, what a game. Nice comeback win over the hated I-10 rivals. And they are hated. By the way, noted hated

Victor Womenyama fan, Adam Clinton, wanting his flowers today. Victor last night, five of 21. He had 14 points, 10 rebounds. Did not block a shot, which is stunning, because that's what he wakes into one of those. Rockets were down 16. What was the biggest deficit?

Do you remember? 16. I'm talking about the score and where it was. Oh, with the exact score? I don't remember. All right. Rockets came back and put together a 29 spot in the fourth quarter. The Spurs only scored 14.

The Rockets win the game 11 to 106, and we won the game despite a 22-minute delay for a rim being broken by Stefan Castle. What next? there are going to be squirrels loose on the court? Now, that was nobody's fault last. Well, it was Stefan Castle's fault. It was Stefan Castle. Apparently Wimby was throwing down dunks, and I think they were saying

somebody else was throwing down a bunch of crazy dunks. Probably Jeremy Sohan. He's a weirdo, too. Yeah. Did you see Sohan try to climb up the ladder to help fix the rim? Well, how about the fact he was playing one-on-one drills with Jay Chantay on the other side of the floor? Yeah.

Good win for that. We have the Big 12 schedules announced. The University of Houston already anticipated finishing a perfect 12 and 0 in the season. Very excited about that. Okay, so they were picked 13th last year. Yes. They exceeded those expectations, so that's good. Yes. Where did they pick this year? We have a tougher schedule this year.

Oh, okay, so you actually got a place and you can't play a bunch of slapies like last year. I don't know if it's slapies, but the road schedule is much more difficult than this year. So you're going to Lubbock to go get batteries in your orbital bone. Oh, look at you doing that. Oh, come on. Not nice at all. Going to West Virginia, Mountain Mama, going to U.S. Utah going to Colorado. A lot of travel.

At Georgia Southern for some reason. That was scheduled before anybody. College football win totals out yet? Whatever it is, take the over. Yeah, you say that every year. That is fair on them. You're right about half the time. We have NFL owner basically guaranteeing an 18 game schedule coming up.

We'll discuss that as well. Okay. And I got to find out if there was something that Cole Thompson said this morning that was true. Now sometimes you get information on your show and you trust the social media streets out there and sometimes they are really good and sometimes they let you down. Yes. He had a wacky story today that Fernando Mendoza,

who is the perceived number one overall selection of the upcoming draft, is going to skip the combine because he's an internship at a big-time Fortune 500 company. Okay. I just thought that was very peculiar. Now, whether that's a true story or not, you know. Well, quarterbacks do.

You skip the combine. At least they don't throw. Right. For the most part. He's got to be Uber confident that he's the number one pick. Yeah. Shut your bum asses up.

Any other way, well, again, it's vague, but number two's the jet. So it's like, you're kind of screwed either way. I mean,

again, you're the best player in the college draft. You're probably going to go to one of the worst places. Yeah, you're normally not ending up with the Patriots. Yeah, he's not, he's not setting up his green bag gear.

So we've got to find out if that's a true story or not. And again, I was listening because I like to listen to the first and 10. show. Okay, good. It's good. So I want to do it. I didn't catch it. Yeah, you don't catch any of the shows. Well, I mean, my commute is like literally four minutes. Do you listen to A team yesterday and the way home? No. I, because I don't normally listen to sports radio and I'm not on it. I want to keep a fresh mind, Matt. You know what? I want to borrow and steal from anyone. I want to use my own takes. I don't want anything else to seep into my brain. Certainly not from Adam Clinton or Cole Thompson.

I do hate listen. I don't hate listen our shows. Oh, okay, good. But I do a fair amount of hate listening. All right. Anything else you wanted to take away before we get the phones on the Nick Casero stuff? I don't think so. Great three-year run. Didn't talk about a fifth year option yet.

Didn't speak very glowingly of Will Anderson. Because he doesn't want to, he doesn't want to negotiations for the quotes to show up that he's the best. He didn't want to go. I think that was smart and calculated, actually. I think if he goes out in this press conference, I said, yeah, we think he's the best. edge rusher in the league, that's going to show up from his agent's going to clip that and say, oh, remember when you said this?

And then Will Anderson's going to have a shoe that's going to say, pay me Nick. Pay me Nick. Right. So my first reaction was like, oh, he just calls him a good player and he's a good player and we drafted a good player, so he is a good player. I think maybe he's kind of making sure keep it a little low key, because they do use the

GMs and ownership's words against them. It's funny because when IHeart Radio talks about me, they go, yeah, he's on our air. He's fine. No, those are internal documents, Matt. Oh, damn. You don't want to be an I-Art radio intern.

Internal talker. You're saying stay up the radar. Oh. All right. Biscuit, Cameron, and Roger are all there. Roger feels like he's being blacklisted. From what? He feels blacklisted? Or is somebody else blacklisted?

No, I don't know. I think he thinks we don't take his call. We're going to take his call right this second. right now. Roger, Roger, first of all, you would never be blacklisted, but we hear you on every show all week long. You're not blacklisted. You know this, right? Well, it's good that you still have your ears on,

but I thought I was Brad listed. I'd say blacklisted. Bradlisted. Oh, Brad, no, you're not Bradlisted or blacklisted for that minute. You're neither one. What's on your mind, Roger? I thought we were, I thought they were McRib brothers, man. Oh, we are.

Hey, McRib for life. It is America sandwich. Is it back off the menu yet? That's my next set, too, if I get one. one. Okay. So on yesterday's game, I think I have a way to, uh, to at least ease the pain whenever the rocket, the, the rocket, or any of his teeth lose, uh, I think I have a way to prevent that. So I didn't do it for the Texan because I thought we really had a real chance to win that game. At the start of the rocket game, I just, I just feel like we have

no chance between them and the OKC Thunder. I just, I just feel that way because of obvious reasons we have won and it just doesn't look good. Uh, so yesterday we had my group, Texans, my boys, and we're, you know, we're texting away. And I'm like, here we go. Tim Duncan era all over again, get ready for it, you know. And I was like, you know, just a skips going to be the same thing over and over. We've got a great team. You know, we've got a window opportunity with Kevin Durant. Same way the Texans have a defense, you know, been around for me two, three years. We've got to be something about it. I'm hoping you're bitting and complaining and moaning. There comes a fourth quarter and Richiepper goes off. I'm like, oh, my God. I go, I got to start

doing this. But the thing is, I have to do it. do it with like compassion and it's got to really mean it if i do it against like a team that we're i'm just trying to do it anyway it's not going to work so in other words and their words of paul would like you know it works 60% of the time or whatever so yeah i was just that was just an awesome game read sheper needs to really maybe odoca's using them wrong maybe you just you can use them as a shooter and and a and a and a and a you know two guard instead of just using them try to use them as a point guard of sister it's we get that noise and uh that's all i got man, it was a great game, great call as usual, man.

Thank you, friend. I appreciate it very much. Thank you. You know, it's funny because you took a Reed Shepherd hate call on the calling show last night. He scored 21 points, save their bacon in the fourth, and the first call out of the gates was like, yeah, I don't know about this Reed Shepherd guy. It's a little peculiar. That was odd. Folks, Reed Shepherd has gone from four points a game to like 13. He's making a massive and, quite frankly,

unexpected leap. He went from shooting 34% from 3 to 41% from 3. He's doing great. If we're expecting him to all of a sudden, he went from 1 assist to 3. Now, of course, his minutes are way up. But your percentages you would think

would be either stabilize or go down, the more volume you get. And it's gone way up. Confidence is up. He's playing better. He does have some defensive issues. He's not the greatest playmaker on the planet, but he can do some playmaking.

And he's playing very well. I guess just because he's dribbling the ball a lot. I don't know why are we trying to pencil him into a point guard or shooting guard situation. He had to do a lot of dribbling last night. Yeah, he brings the ball up some. I mean, and when he's on the floor, he had to play it a little bit with him in Thompson last night. Alperin Shingoon brings the ball up. Kevin Durant brings the ball up.

I mean, it's, I don't know. It's not the 1960s with Bob Coosie and the boys, and he's just going to sit up there and be the floor general. Right, right. I thought it was really good He and Tari Well actually he and Jabari A little bit of Tari With the reasons why the Rockets came back

And won that basketball game. Period. Yes. I mean Kevin was good But Kevin didn't take over the game last night. Was it 518? 7 to 12? Okay, that's been the night before or something.

One of it was. Yeah, a man, I mean, it was collectively anybody that played, I mean, they played nine players and Reed was one of the big guys down the stretch. Reed Shepherd who helped you win a game when you were down 16. Yeah, sorry, five. of 18 was Sunday. Yeah, it's indisputable.

So, yeah, that I thought that was a beautiful team win because they locked down on defense and you just mentioned it was a peppering of everyone. A little Duran, a little Jbarre, some Alpi, some Amin, and then some Reed Shepard. You had five different players with 15 plus

points. I think the Spurs were 11 or 25 in the first half from three. I think they were three of 25 from three in the second half. And by the way, Julian Champany was going off way too much in the first quarter of that game last night. And also, by the way, I'm sad that Stephen Adams is going to be missing extended time.

Look, Clint Capella. I love him. Yeah, I know. But he's the backup to the backup center. And that's what he is. That's honestly what he is at the stage of his career. Stephen Adams is an elite, elite backup center. Backup center.

And you're going to miss that rebounding for sure. Matt and Ross with you on Sports Talk 790. Our time is 1121. back on the phones. We've got shut your ball. May I step coming up in about 10 minutes. We're going to play a little highlights of the Rockets, went against the Spurs at noon with a song that is one of your all-time favorites. It is not on my iPhone, so that should help you out a little bit. Hmm. I don't know if it's one of your all-time favorites.

It may not be one of your all-time favorites, but it's a song that you got me to that it fits what happened last night. Okay. How about that for a little tease? Wow. Andy Lindahl, a friend of the show is going to join us from Denver at 120. I'm going to bug out to get to Philadelphia with the Rockets and you're going to talk to him. What do you think, real quick, before I go to the phones? What do you think Denver's thinking this week? And that's why I'm very curious. I'll be listening to what you

and you and Amy talk about. I found money. Great disappointment. I mean, obviously disappointment. I mean, if there's any offensive mind in sports that can give Jarrett Sinem a very small page of notes

an implementation of practice, of practice. It would be, Sean Payton. Are they thinking Jeff Hostetler? Is that what they're thinking? Are they thinking

Frank Reich? What are their backups made playoff runs? Nick Foles? Are they thinking Nick Foles? But this is, isn't this like an all-timer,

all-timer? This is going, this guy, Jared's going to make his first starting in the NFL in years and it's for the AFC championship.

Well, maybe he's ready. If you stay ready, you don't have to, if you stay ready, you don't have to get ready. I think Earl Morrill backed up. Oh, wow. We're going with...

Bob Greasy, back in the early 70s. Earl Morrill. Didn't Johnny Unitis back up Earl Moral back in the day or something? He came in and he was backing up. You're mixing them up. We don't know. Some of our OGs would know the answer. We'll get Charlie Polillo on the horn. He would absolutely know.

And I don't know and I feel like I'm a much smaller human being because of that. Let's talk to Cameron on line two. That's a great name. Cameron on 7-9-11-23. Hi, Cam. What's going on? Hey, good evening, gentlemen. Good morning.

Good evening to you. Yes, it's evening. I know, right. I'm being gaslit by Nick Casario. That press conference would have flown in 2011, in 2012, even 2019, 2020. I got no emotion, no anger out of it. We had no Mahomes. We had no Allen in the playoffs.

Bow necks cracked his ankle. We literally just had to beat the Patriots and were in the AFC championship game with a diminish Denver Broncos. All I hear is we need to execute better. We need to execute better. We'll look how many games we want. I don't give a bleep about the regular season.

We're out again in a divisional playoff. It's just, I don't know, man. Well, that's why I said, and again, we weren't expecting him to come in and, you know, pound the table. But there was a lot of rhetoric that you could have stolen from the

last two end of season, Nick Serial press coverages. And I think sometimes you got to, at least for public perception, not that it means anything when you go back and the walls of NRG Stadium, but from public perception to say, hey, getting where we are, winning just the playoff spot, winning

just a playoff game, getting just a division around, we're mad as hell we're not going to take anymore. Again, it could be for purposes, just like you're talking about, because he has to know that he's not only answering questions for the media, he's also answering for the fans like yourself. That's where we carried the press conference because you guys

need to hear his competitor, us talking about it. So, again, I don't need him to be an Academy Award winning actor, but I thought some of the material was, were repeated from previous years, would be my point to back up what you said. Yeah, a lack of emotion, like, show some anger.

Like, yeah, we drop the damn ball. That's all I wanted out of it. But I will be calling back in 10 minutes to tell him to shut his bum ass. All right, camera. Should we let him do that? Sure, no, I don't know. Look, if you're expecting from from Nick Casario, you're going to be

waiting around a long time. And Nick Casario was right. And I understand, look, fans get passionate and get angry and get emotional over it. Nick Casario can't be like that. He's not supposed to be overreactionary and emotional. He's not supposed to run this team like a fan. He's not supposed to, otherwise everybody would have benched

C.J. Stroud. If you went by fan vote and fan-controlled league, it would be a completely different run franchise. And frankly, it'd be run poorly. So for him to come out and scream and say, yeah, we screwed this up, we had an opportunity to make the Super Bowl, he's not going to do that, nor should he, really. Can I give you an analogy?

Okay, here we go. Please be open-minded to this. I'm always open-minded, Matt. When you go to a political rally and the Canada gets in front of on the pulpit, right? And he gets in front of the podium and there's thousands of people there. I'm going to lower your taxes. I'm going to keep the roads. Free and clear. I'm going to educate your kids. I'm going to make sure the cost of eggs are down.

Blot, blah, blah, blah, right? What is that, Ross? False promises? Well, that may be very well true. But it's things that the audience wants to hear. And I'm not asking for Nick Casario to give me 60 minutes of a political speech. I'm just saying there were bits and pieces of, if you took the transcript, it matched the last two years. And I think people, some people, Cameron is an example. I'm making this up. I'm making this up. Cameron just called and said this. Okay, well, I'm sorry, Cameron. I just disagree with him. I, again, I will give Nick a B plus on the press conference.

I do. I will do. I just say that there was just a few things that sounded like, well, we got to the championship game. We turned it over and we're going to go back to the drawing board again. I think there's a little bit of people want to hear. We're going to do whatever it takes. And obviously, they're going to do that. But we're going to make sure that we do everything in our power to change the course of what we have.

been and that is a habitual pattern of going to the playoffs year after year after year and not advancing any further. Yeah, it's not his job to be charismatic. It wasn't a open, it wasn't a rally. It's not an open appeal for votes. He's not running for office. It's a press conference with media members asking him what happened to Joe Mixon's foot. He's running for public approval. Absolutely he is. If the organization, if you're down on your general manager and you don't buy into it, people are not going to buy into the organization. He can be a deaf mute as long as they win. It doesn't matter. But he's not when he's. It can't be a deaf. They are winning. They won 12 games and they made a division around.

But Texans fans are done with divisional playoffs. They are. Yeah, they're done to that because that's the standard that was set because of what Nick Casario was able to do. This team was winning four games a year. And why are we, would we be upset three years ago with a divisional run? No. Now we are because that's been where they are. Also the reality is they were never going to beat the, what was it, the Ravens that they got destroyed by in the division around the first time. They didn't have any shot against the Chiefs. They had a shot this year and they blew it. So every year is different.

Even though the results have been the same, every year in the construction of the team has been different. Man, if you had rookie CJ Stroud on this team, they're going to the Super Bowl. You have a generational defense. Maybe the best ever, and it might be just as good next year. We don't know.

But the chances are, it's not. And the blay blew it. And I think Cameron may not, you know, maybe speaking for the entire fan base, again, he's not running for the club to call office. I get that. But sometimes you want, you put these media availability out there, not because you want to answer Aaron Wilson's questions.

You are trying to sell a message because the media does present the message to its fans. And I think to some, not to me, because I don't have a dog in a fight, but to some it's like, man, give me some fresher material. That's all I'm saying. Okay. It wasn't terrible. I'm trying to remember when Rafael Stone got all upset after the seven game loss to the Golden State Warriors.

I'm trying to remember when Dana Brown he's always super positive and people don't like the way that he speaks publicly. Well, here's the reality is that general managers don't typically get...

Wow, I was blown away by that, man, I'm fired up. Yeah. He's in the same category as other folks. And Nick Casario is going to be as milk toast. I mean, we just call him GM speak.

It's just, it's Nick speak. He's a robot. Casario bot. I've been calling him Casario bot for years because he's a robot. Rossi, it's just raw to people. If you expect a

robot to show emotion at this point. That's on you. That's why you want to worry about this a year from now if they don't make the championship game. Yeah, we'll see. All right. You ready to tell some people to shut their bum asses up? Yes. Cameron, you want to come in here? Tell Ross shut his bum ass up too. You can tell me, yeah, that's fine. Battle Red Ross is like, I love Nick Casario. He's a greatest thing in the world. If you're expecting Nick, no, see, I didn't say that. I know. If you're expecting Nick Casario to show a bunch of emotion and start

like flipping tables, you're going to be waiting a long time. That'd be awesome. That would be amazing. CJ, you had it on a silver platter. Just throw passes to open receivers and don't turn the ball over. And we would be in Denver. We blew it. That would have been awesome. I mean, he kind of said that.

He said we can't win a game. Turn the ball over five times. But he loves him some CJ. Shut your bum ass up. Ain't nobody got time for that. After a word for the amazing people at Affordable Tree. service. Ain't nobody getting time?

Ain't nobody getting time for that? Hey nobody getting time for that. All right. It's our, needless to say, Rossi, our favorite 30 minutes of the week. Somebody irritates us. Somebody brings us down. Some at the office talks ad nauseum about his golf game and what they served in the crock pot for 30 minutes where you're trying to wake up, heat up your food.

It's just ridiculous. Ain't nobody got time for that? Hey nobody got time for that. Now, before we get to our special celebrity, guest on Shut Your Bumass Up. Jonathan has been fighting the cold. Do you want to tell your cold? Ain't anybody got time for that?

Is he doing okay? No, I'm doing good, but everybody, Houston, it rains a lot. If he tires are bald, get out the left lane. Ain't about that time about it. Shit your bum ass up, man. That's my guy right there. By the way, you should not be in the far left lane

unless you're passing. Or going 95 miles an hour, one of the two. Okay. What you got this week, Sports Harvey? Me? You know what? This happened because I was tweeting about C.J. Stroud

as was everyone, and I put out one where I had some polls about whether or not he was a franchise quarterback, and most people are saying he's not now. I didn't know this, Matt, because we were talking about this on Monday. We thought only the Stroud family and David Moologeta were backing CJ Stroud. Apparently, there are Stroud truthers out there, and they are very angry. How can you watch your quarterback turn the ball over three times in the wild card, and then four times in the divisional round, and say, that they, and defend him and talk about how great he is.

Now, if you want to say the Texans can still need to give him another year and their situation's not good, that's great. But if you want to act like he's like bawling out of control in top five and getting all angry in my mentions, shut your bum ass up. Stroud lovers. Shut your bum ass up, man. I mean, come on. Get your head out of the sand. Do you not, do we all watch that game?

That was indefensible. Yet it's getting defended. I can't believe it. Ryan Clark, ESPN. Shut your bum ass up, mate. What did he say? What's your bum ass up, man? Big Struth Trouther.

Stroud Trouther? Yeah. How could you watch? Okay, one of the picks was off Hutchinson's hand. It was still a high throw. Yeah. And then the other three picks were terrible. Yeah.

Now it's my turn. I don't understand. Go ahead. So a friend of our shows decided to shoot a photo of her in the hallway at the TOTA center last night. Okay. With the spurs warming up in the background in the hallway. First of all, they're wearing those

Fiesta powder uniforms which are not the uniforms but the warm-ups it's bad look Spurs are black and silver not this multiple-colored crap I like the old fiesta colors

no thank you Okay Then she is Silver and black's bland Oh it's what the spurs are all about It's the ice man George Gervyn It's Johnny Moore It's Tim Duncan dribbling 17 times

At the elbow and throwing up a A shot And seeing just for men running down his forehead. Then 16 point lead. Then Spurs Nation was going ballistic inside TOTUSA. They were loud. Then Reed Shepherd happened. So our live guest in studio, Missy the Ultimate Spurs fan,

Missy, we love you. We've been co-workers for 16 years. I say this with warmth and charm and with great passion. Shut your bum ass up, girl. Shit your bum ass up, man. Your Spurs. Your coach, Mitch Johnson,

said we didn't show any grit, we didn't show any fight, we couldn't shoot the three. When Binyama was overrated last night, Adam Clanton loves on that big time. What do you have to say for yourself of your spurs giving up that 16 point lead? That one's working.

Are you going to talk to that one? Yeah, sure, why not? It's a limp mic. It's a limp, It's a limp one. Oh, God. Jesus. Staying away from all this talk.

Hi, Maddie. Hi. Hi. Hi. It's Missy the Alvin Spursie. Hello, Missy. How are things going? Things are going great.

Oh, well, you're doing better than Wimby, five of 21. Wimby. Locked up. Not the best, not the best game. But who would have thought Reed Shepard was going to be the Rockets leading score? Everybody did. No, no. The Shepherd family?

Well, yes. Wildcats fans. And the Stroud Truthers. probably thought that Reed Shepherd. There's probably some Shepherd Troop there's. No, it was great to see the boys in the building yesterday. I had a great time. There was a, like you said, a lot of Spurs fans.

I too, Maddie, am a traditionalist, black, silver. That's what she's wearing today. Those should be the color of your uniform, the color of your vehicles. Everything should just be black and silver. I do not, the Fiesta Las Spurs era, I thought we would never have to see it again, but now the kids these days, they like this retro nonsense. I do not like the bluey green aqua warmups. Thank you.

It's ugly and bland. But it's cool. That's our logo. You tell the Raiders that they're boring and bland. Hey, tell Penn State data and makes a color in me. Like, shut your bumasses up, man. Yeah, they went back because have a little fun. Have a little zest, a little ver.

No, we're team non-zest. Jual de Veeve. We do in our city connects. Let's just connect and move on. Like, we don't need to be connected. The gray's not bad. I like that. But it's black, silver, and gray.

That's the Spurs. I do like how on one of our uniforms, we've gone back to where it says San Antonio on the front. Like in the olden days, your road uniforms used to say your city and your home uniform said your team name like Spurs. Okay. So they have gone back to that occasionally, and I am a fan of that. But I'm going to give you your flowers, Maddie. I know you did say that the Spurs would win. in a series, in a seven, like a seven game series,

if the Spurs and the Rockets were to meet, the Spurs would probably sweep the Rockets. We're going to have a big bet. No, I did not say that. Big bet. What's the big bet? They got to play each other first. Oh, in a series?

Oh, this is stay away for me. I can't stay away. I'm the voice of the Rockets. I can't stay away from that. The Rockets do body up Wimby. They do. Stuff him into the locker. He needs to get a little bit more tough.

He, I could see it because I was at the game. And by way, you as a Spurs fan. cannot like Luke Cornett. Luke Cornett was balling actually for a while. He had a reverse dunk last night. Dude. I was like Luke Cornett was balling. That's crazy.

It was at the basket where I was sitting. It was gorgeous last night. But I will say this. Wimby did not have a great game. And teams are figuring out, like I guess they saw it after we, we, because I'm the backup point guard team. That Thomas's line. Yes.

But he, after we, beat Oklahoma City the three times we beat them. They figured out, okay, if we just elbow Wimby, he gets a little flustered. And he did. You can see it last night. He got very frustrated. They're very team.

They don't point fingers and shoot blame at their players when they're down there. But Wimby was frustrated. And I will say, because I'm not going to get fined by the NBA, the referees on both ends were really sketch last night. They really... They were wonderful. We're having these fouls. It was awesome. They swallowed the whistle.

It's like they were trying to make up for the delay we had from the goal problem in the first quarter. Cefon Castle, thank you very much. Well, you know what? He likes to jump. I don't know what to tell you. I heard you guys had a problem like three days ago with the shot clock on that same thing. So I don't know. Maybe you guys should pay a little bit more to get that stuff done.

You know what? We have super technology and sometimes technology feels. I will say I love the upgrades and the tech. It's really cool. I like the green lines on the coaches challenge. go all around the stadium and tell everybody. That is very cool. I will say it's very cool.

The scoreboard, but the under the thing screens, that's the first time I've seen those. All right. So that was really cool. Let's get a rocket spur series going. We need a rocket spur series. And we'll make a bet for a large amount of food.

Yes. And you and I can just drive back and forth for all the games. I'm going to fly. Rossi and I will drive back and forth for all the years. I'll get us a sponsor. Yes. Oh, I like this. Yeah, yeah.

We'll get a good sponsor. I like this. Rossi and I will drive back and forth for all the games. We'll do podcasts. We'll do podcasts the whole way. On the whole way. Yes. From the, from the Buckeys?

No, we're going to stop at Bill Millers and get some fried chicken. Oh, okay, I was going to say, don't get the barbecue there. It's terrible. It's a fried chicken and sweet tea. That is a Bill Miller estate. We'll go to Chris Madrid's and get some burgers. Okay. That sounds good.

Well, there's, I have a million places. We'll go swimming in the river walk. Oh, don't do that. No. I'll bring my hazmat suit, not my swimsuit. Don't, no. Depending on, yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it'll be fiesta. So guess what? We have another match up one week from tomorrow. Tomorrow. One week from tomorrow. 8.30 start time. It's kind of late for you. You're all right with that?

That's very late for me. Because, you know, I'm up here early. Yes, you are grinding. Yes, hashtag grinding. Hey, let me tell you all something. If you want your business to grow, first of all, this is the show to sponsor. Of course.

But Missy is the rep that will give you a super sweet Houston rocket special. I don't know what that is. No, we do. We've got some great rockets and Astros. Oh, Astros is coming up. Astros' spring. training. Wonderful.

We can use some sponsors of that. That's a great program. Let's get the business going. Let's get Missy's business going. Let's get our business going. Let's get your business thriving. They call her the closer. That's right.

Yes. We'll all go to lunch together. Okay. Before or after the show. Yeah. We'll be a late lunch. 230. Yeah.

230. My tree is great. My treat. Oh yeah. My tree. Oh, yeah. Let's do a shirt. Okay.

Let's go. We go to our show sponsor. 713-212-8,000. And you just punch in always, not as in literally always, but ALW. A-I-S. Yep. Or just hit zero until somebody live picks up.

Yeah. Or you can just actually call. I think, what's my number? 7-13-21-21-2-8-4-5. 8-45. It's easy to remember. 7-13-21-2-8-4-55. Messing your good sport,

and we look forward to another Spurs loss one week from tomorrow. One day we will have like Wimby Wednesdays or Spurs updates or something like that. I love you guys so much. Thanks for listening. I look forward to listening to all of the listeners now call in and tell me to shut my bum ass up. No, they would never do that.

Hey, Houston would you tell a Spurs fan to shut their bum ass up on this show? I don't think that's going to be the case. The fans last night did. They did. They did. All right. That's Miss. Miss the Alton Spurs fan making an appearance here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross.

More, we shut your bum ass up. Oh, we've got a brand new fresh caller camera on the line, Ross. All right, great. And if you've heard from him or not. I have never. You'll be talking to Cameron next here on the Matt Thomas show. Ross. 1154 sports talk 790 you guys and ladies by way are always welcome to call in and tell somebody to shut their bum us up anybody got time for that 713212 5790

710 713 212 5790 Ross let's go to the phone see who's out there today you know I love the name Cameron a gentleman a gentleman ross it's fine my oldest son's name his mother calls him Cameron I call him cam his brothers and sisters call him Cammy. Let's talk to Cameron on 790. Cameron, what's the matter with you, Cameron? Gentlemen, Ross. Hello. Hello. Yeah, Nick Casario, whatever that press conference was, shut your bum ass up. You're gaslighting us. Okay? We're not, we're not happy with a divisional exit again. Sorry. And, okay, maybe not show a lot of emotion, but don't gaslight me into thinking, look how many games we want in the regular season. You're one of the leaders of the team. You set the tone, especially since he was dressed the press. Sorry.

Oh, he's doing a sorry on top of that, too. Shut your bum ass up, man. Appreciate you, Cameron. I like him to shut his bum ass up. Yeah, like I said, we're going to play some more cuts throughout the course of the show today, but my feeling is I had no expectations for Nikki to be very honest, and I thought it was, at most part, pretty forthcoming. Yeah.

Since he's been GM, they were 4 and 13, 3, 13, and 1, 10 and 7, divisional, 10, seven divisional, 12 and 5 division. And the one thing to give Casario the benefit on this is that he's not going to give you every the company, all the company secrets. You'd like to, you'd like more, you're not going to get

any. Because most teams do that. I mean, let me tell you something. I wonder what the heck Joe Mixing did. Okay, so we need Jonathan, we needed a ruling on this because I'm the one I kind of persuaded you towards the gunshot. We can wait. What is your now? I have now switched. Now, I'm not, I'm still betting

the gunshot won't. Okay. But I'm still now, I think the new leader in the clubhouse is a botched medical procedure. Or both.

Or it could be a botch medical procedure after he shot himself on the foot. When he says nothing irresponsible, that gives me confidence that I could win the bet.

And we're playing for an almond croissant and a cup of coffee. Yes. You like coal brew, though, so it'd probably have more of a venty flavor size.

Well, it depends. If I go to the nitro, you see a grande, that's bad boys. Got like 300 milligrams of coffee, caffeine. I got you.

All right, where are you signed, Jonathan, on this? Are you going to bodge medical procedure? Are you going to fall with me on the gunshot wound of the foot? Can we go to Maduti? Or Mom and Mond? I just don't like Barbux. That's fine. I does sound like malpractice if I'm being completely resistant.

I know, I know. I was looking for maybe. I'm still holding out hold, but it's a gunshot wound. Okay, so when does this expire? And like I said, if I lose it comes up? No, we have to have, if we don't have any further information by the end of the Super Bowl, meaning the Monday after the Super Bowl then you win the bet.

Now, if it comes and finds out that I was right after all, it's a doubles. You then owe me two croissons and two cups of coffee. Okay. I want to go to Mom and Mon and I'll get a cold brew and a Coonamond. It's delicious. Little known fact, when Ross and I went to Lake Charles, what was it, when we go, Gnaman, I should say.

Was it during baseball season or was it like early football? When we went to that coffee shop there? We found a nice little coffee place. They're gone. Next to Merrill's. Is it really gone? They moved. Did they really?

How did you know that? Oh, you went to, I went to Lake Charles recently. Oh, you did that's right. Did quite well. So where is the place now? I don't know. So you went over there going to go, I don't get me a nice. Yeah.

It was gone. I need some caffeine for these blackjack tables. We spent money with them too. I know. I didn't use trade or anything. Because I went and got the large. Ooh, and you were wired. I went and got the large Daryl special.

I needed some caffeine. It was going to put me to sleep. All right. Last call. 713, 2.12. 5, 790. That's what those sandwiches do it. 713, 212.570.

Anything else going on? Oh, I'm going to tell Lena Doggo to shut her bum ass up. That was ridiculous sending out that, well, we should be really part of our guys. We're resilient. That sucked. Shut your bum ass up, Lena. We worry about our county roads.

I'm all about government people staying in government. Well, they are PR people, so they have to try to make PR for themselves. So we want to keep getting voted. in. I don't think she's running for office anymore. I was going to say, are there, term limits on that? I think she's decided. Can we get term limits on everything, by the way? Except radio host. We should be here forever. We're not voted in, Matt. That's true. We'd probably be voted out by some people. As long as the ratings of revenue are doing well.

We're good. We're going to keep our jobs. That's why you got to call missing. Yes, indeed. All right. Let's get to the news at noon. Hey, Ross, I got a quick question for you. Yes. What did you see last night? I wouldn't call it a comeback. They've been here for years I wouldn't call it a comeback That's all I'm saying Okay Are you ready for some lunch

Yeah I'm starving actually Big City Wings hello My window to eat starts in one minute Please come feed our guy Ross At Big City Wings This is the Matt Thomas show With Ross Come on man

Reed Shepherd said knock you out Yeah Reed Shepherd baby First call on the rocket's rap last night There you guys He's been disappointing Be a hearing I sound like I'm a deputy dog

Is that what it was? Droopy dog We chipper needs to play better He just scored 21 points What was it? 10 or 12 in the 4th Yeah By the way a lot of you have been sending me emails and tweets About this I'm thank you

I should have said it I knew this The reason why Ryan Clark is a C.J. Stroud truther is because Ryan Clark's agent is David Mulligetta. Oh, is that true? C.J. Stroud's agent is David Mulligata. Yeah. Okay. David Mulla going to get you some money. David Mulla going to ruin this city here if his mega client isn't getting mega money.

He's not holding out now. Would he hold out going into a fifth year? Depending on how this season goes. No, this is, okay, next year. year is year four. The year of the year of that would be year five where the team would have to pick up the option. And then you can in theory, I think was it three years? Franchise them for a couple years. Not that they would.

Not they're going to get it. And if he gets franchise he's holding out, I would imagine. And when I say ugly, I mean, David Mulligetta is going to go to all of his media mouthpieces and it's going to try to sway the conversation of the Texans don't know what they're doing. Nick Cacero's hard to negotiate with, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I don't think. I think that's a... I don't think that's going to happen.

I think there's evidence that proves otherwise. I think Mulligetta can play the media card very, very well. When did somebody not get paid? I'm just talking about here, I guess in here and here, some of the Deshawn Watson thing? Deshawn Watson wanted to be out. There's another one, too. Was it...

Was it Lamar, too, or am I making that up? Is he Lamar Jackson's agent? Lamar Jackson was going to get franchised, and then they were talking about trading him, and then eventually they signed him to a big deal. But it got content. for a while. Yeah.

Let me see. David. No, it's his mom. What? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Lamar Jackson's, is that still true? I don't know.

I thought it was like when he came out. Chad GPT says that. Well, sometimes they're wrong. Did he eventually get an agent? I thought, or maybe it still, is it still his mom? I'm going to look up right now. David Mulligate get a client.

Hey, you need to pay my baby. Is that what happened? I don't know. I don't think it went that way. Okay. All right. I'm not just making them some chunky soup. David Mollong got a client would include C.J. Strav, we mentioned.

Kenlyn Bullock, by the way, of the Texans. Deshawn Watson, you brought up. Well, he said quite well for himself. Justin Fields, but that wasn't my... Micah Parsons. Oh, Micah Parsons in Dallas was very, very... Yeah, he got traded. But frankly, that was more because Jerry Jones is an idiot.

Jerry Jones didn't want to pay him. Yeah. If we're in a scenario where he has a season, he's not going to have a season like this, where he's kind of decent and then has a playoff disaster. There's no one way or the other. If he gets two more playoff disasters like this, he's not going to be on the team anymore.

He can regress or he can progress. We're going to see. He's going to play games. You have time. This is not decision time right now. This is just. So it's not going to, I don't foresee it. It could get ugly.

Yes. David Moologetta likes to draw a hard line in the sand and he's going to want his guys to get paid. it's possible, but I feel like we're probably going to end up, unless we're going to be in limbo to where it's like, you're going to have more of a sample size. You're going to have four and possibly five years to figure out what it is with CJ Stroud if you want to make him your franchise guy

or you can win with him. The way the roster is, you can to an extent. They won 12 games and made the divisional round, but if he wasn't a complete disaster, and here's the reality. They're in the AFC championship game I mean, going to the Super Bowl, quite frankly. Ross and I, mainly me, we've got to do a better job of trying to get away from a contract conversation

because this really shouldn't be a conversation piece. Unless the Texans spread the word through Ian Rappaport and some other folks that they are trying to negotiate something. Other than that, it's really not even a talking point. The talking point for 2026 is going to be, we'll see Jay Stroud be a better quarterback to next year and get this team to a different level than he has in his previous three years. To the news at noon we go, at 12 minutes, 10 minutes. the hour at 10 o'clock, 12 o'clock. He said easily. Rossi, what's going on

the world of news? Yes, Matthew, what we mentioned? The Houston Rockets defeating the San Antonio Spurs 11 to 106 last night at the Toyota Center. But we also got the unfortunate news in the pregame media availability, Matt,

that Rocket's head coach, Eimeo Doka, saying a grade three ankle sprain for Stephen Adams. That means that There has been a ligament tear, if not multiple. So we're talking not a matter of weeks, but a matter of months for Stephen Adams missing time with your Houston Rockets.

And going to be sorely missed. I mean, I like Clint Capella, but he ain't Stephen Adams. So a couple of months at least. So could you go get reinforcement as a just a guy backup center? From where? I don't know. I mean, is Ryan Holland's in good shape? You can play even eight minutes.

Fact is, though, that's not a topic of conversation that regular fans have. That's deep in the weeds among general managers and front office folks. I think people are going to miss Stephen Adams. No, no, I don't disagree. I'm saying who's it going to be. Who the options are. I got you. So Rockets have won three in a row.

Now they are in the number four spot in the West. All you people, you know what? I should have shut your bummed ass up like that guy I was arguing with that this is, this team is going to completely fall apart and they're going to be an eight-seat max. that guy can shut his bum ass up. Where are you people at? Even though the Rockets are only three games from being the eight seat. By the way, the Rockets had nine block shots last night.

How many didn't Wimby have? He had zero. Suck it, women. Harrison Barnes, old ass Harrison Barnes had a block before Victor Wemignano had a block yesterday. Come on, man. He is old ass. That'd be NBA champion Harrison Barnes. I'm the epitome of old ass.

I mean, that's what it is. That feels like that's a good clip. All right. Well, also, Matt, elsewhere in the news, did you see, is it Pegula or Pegula? Bill's owner Terry Pegula. I mean, he was going scorched earth on Sean McDermott, defending Brandon Bean saying it was Sean McDermott than wanted the wide receiver, Keog Coleman.

Keon Coleman's still on the roster, by the way. It was an active part of the game over the weekend. If you have the owner, calling you out and saying Brandon Bean, the GM went along and was a team player and got you Coleman, who was selected by the Buffalo Bills with the 33rd overall pick in 2024. And I mean, I don't know what the heck's going on there in Buffalo and who's going to be the head coach. Brian Dable, I think, is the chalk pick. But how about the owner going out and calling out a current player on the roster?

That's probably a guy that had no idea who Keon Coleman was. Well, not pre-draft. No. All right. One of the NFL note on the owner, Robert Kraft, of the New England Patriots, was on a podcast or radio show. I don't know what it was, but it was something up there. It was not. It's not orchids and friends.

He says that the conversation in the NFL circles, this is no surprise. But really, you don't hear an owner say this at least publicly. 18 game schedule 2 games preseason and a gut feeling I'm going to hit on every but team has to play an international game Nick

in the future so I think I got that one on that one more NFL note did you see Baker Mayfield's tweet I did not D Orlando Ledbetter friend of the show He's been on with this before Not a great interview but it's okay

voice was a little off but we wish him the best and then he stopped responding to my text, but that's okay. Put out a tweet talking about Kevin Sofansky in Atlanta, saying Kevin Sifansky had a dumpster fire at quarterback in Cleveland. Baker Mayfield and Deshawn Watson failed, which started a chain reaction to 11 other starters. Baker Mayfield tweeting,

Not so fast, my friend. Quote, failed is quite the reach, pal. Still waiting on a text call from him. after I got shipped off like a piece of garbage. Can't wait to see you twice a year, coach, in the same division. So Baker Mayfield v. Kevin Stefansky. Going to be a nice AFC South matchup to keep an eye on coming up in the next season.

Love it. All right, more phone calls, plus a couple of cuts from Nick Casario. Coming up in the next segment of the show, it is. All right, back in the phones we go with Ross. I'm Matt. This is Sports Talk 790. It is the Matt Thomas Show with Ross. 713-212-5-790 7-1-3-2-1-2-5-790 let's talk to

Alex and Conroll on 7-90 Alex let's try us again Alex thanks for waiting good afternoon what's going on Matt so I work a weird shift I just got to work at noon and I get off at 930 so I listen to a full spectrum of sports radio throughout the day before you go any further I get home again the shit before we're getting further What do you do for a living? I'm very curious. I'm a welder. Okay. You know what? I will say this.

And I think Ross would back me up on this for you to your phone call. I could do a noon to nine. It's great. Honestly, it sucks whenever you want to go to something, you know, during the day or during the evening. But overall, man, I'd rather get up at 10 than get up at 6. So it's not a complete loss. And if I get an extra dollar for working later. Well, thank you very much for telling us that.

And again, now, you said you were listening to a lot of sports radio. Hopefully you listen to us quite a bit, and for that, we thank you. So I basically stay on 790 from noon to 7 o'clock, you know, and then in the evening I get a little busy with other stuff. Whenever I get home, take a shower, I'm listening to some other more national brands, right? Okay. And I guess this is where I'm at. If you come up and you want to talk sports with me, you know, just chop it up as a, you know, guy-to-guy, and all you do is listen to national sports guys.

If you get your takes from Colin Cowherd, shut your bum ass up. I do not want to talk to you. I have nothing to say to you. You are not intelligent enough to have a conversation with because you're just regurgitating the same crap that you've been told over and over again. And then going on on these national guys,

Ben Mallor, dude. Ben Mallor, I just, I want to throw a rock at him so bad, man. I just want to. This whole perpetuation of encouraging people to just stick their heads in the sand when it comes to the cheating scandal. You're bright enough and you are clearly talented enough and you have the mental aptitude to have that job to be put in that place where you are, you know, talking to so many people at one time because apparently you were smart, but you're not smart enough to use your brain to figure out how something could. be connected, even though there's no, you know, black and white thing that says, okay, Carlos Beltron brought the system from New York. You're clever enough to figure out, you know, whether or not this kid, this kid from Duke is going to go to Miami or not. You're, you're clever

enough to figure that one out because, you know, you can tell that he's going for the money. That makes sense to you. But understanding that a cheating system could have come from somewhere else and traveled, that's beyond your comprehension. I'm tired of these guys, man. I just don't have the energy to argue with them anymore. They all just, just shut your bum ass up, man. I got to, uh, that's fair. They're doing it.

They're doing it to agitate you. Thank you, Alex, for the phone call. They're winning the battle. Shut your bum ass up, man. I mean, the only way you can win the battle back with them is just not listen to it. Yes. Don't feed the trolls. Yeah.

every, you know, look, every show, some people love that, some people hate it. I mean, same could be for this show, same for any show. I've never heard of a radio show, or for that matter, TV program that is universally beloved by every single person. No. I mean, I mean, that may be Mr. Rogers' neighborhood. Yeah, I was going to say, if you don't like Mr. Rogers, something's wrong with you. But, I mean, like in radio, Paul Harvey would do a 15-minute newscast every day. and he did it for five or six decades.

But he wasn't always university love because there was always the thought that he was more of a conservative newsreader than he was as a straight down the middle. Okay. I wasn't a Paul Harvey guy. I liked his rest of the stories. Those were kind of interesting to me.

Well, rest of those story. I screwed one of those up on KTRH, one of my first shifts. Did you really? Yeah. Sorry about that. Yeah, thanks for bringing it up. I didn't mean to. But yeah, everybody's going to know their strengths and weaknesses.

Everybody's going to know that Ben, And I've met Ben a couple of times over the years. You have? Yeah, in Los Angeles. Really? He goes on a clip again. He goes to leave the house? I guess he can't.

I don't know. I mean, I don't know him that much. But he knows. He's poking the bear because he knows one of his biggest markets is Houston. Yeah. So, and as far as Collins concerned, Colin speaks to a national audience. You have to kind of talk in generalities.

You don't have to know the specifics of things. You're going to get stuff wrong. You're going to get stuff wrong. You just are. You don't know every 53 man or every 15 man or every 15 man or the history or the 40 man. 40 man. vibe.

Yeah. That's why I would never, I've talked to this hundreds of times, I would never, I mean, look, then granted, if somebody said, Matt, we're going to triple your salary, I'd figure out a way to do it. Yeah. But I wouldn't, I would never choose a path towards doing national radio because you don't have any passion for anything. You have to kind of just speak in generalities. You can't, like for instance, when CJ screwed the pooch on this weekend, you and I came in

with Fire and Brimstone because we were passionate about a local team we covered. You can be mad about CJ for about a minute and a half on the national radio show. And then you're going to move on to what's going on with the Cowboys. Yeah. Or LeBron. Packers. Packers talk. Yeah.

It's just not as fun. Now, there were some people, like for instance, Nick Wright, who used to work here in town, his goal was to be the national irritator. And he's done quite well for himself. Yes, he has. But that was his path. And Collins' path was, I want to do a national show. and if you have that path and you are

and somebody thinks you're good enough to doing it you're going to make significantly more money than the local guy will and but you're also going to have as you're going to have a much broader audience but you can have a much greater group of people that are going to hate and despise your guts and that's the choice you have to make too in this business is if you do want to sensationalize things

and if you do want to be fake I'm just going to say if you want to be fake to climb your way to the top the national way is the easy way to go yeah Because if you're doing a national show, and I'm not trying to indict the national folks, although I kind of am. Some of them are nice, I'm sure. No, I mean, look, I've met Colin Coward. My son, my oldest son loves, I don't know if he still loves anymore.

It was when he was in high school. But we went and saw Colin Coward. We went to California many years ago. And Colin was very nice to us. Very inquisitive. And actually, frankly, knew the Houston landscape much more than I thought he would. But I've always liked about Colin's show. I've liked that, I don't know.

how do I put this? It's fast-paced. He has these, I think he does a much better job of analogies than I do. Oh, that's good. Which I think it's also a low bar. It's a low bar for that. But he gets a lot of things wrong and he doubles down on it. And that's to me, like I learned that if you're going to do this job, you're not going to about a thousand when it comes to every one of your sports takes, everyone of your opinions. Or for that matter, you go one of your facts.

Now, there are some facts like, hey, who caught the Brett Favre touchdown on the Super Bowl? If you mess that up, okay, no big deal. But if you don't know the basic stuff and have a basic history of your sports town or a basic knowledge of how a team was can put together or knowing the players in team, then that's a problem. In Collins case, I'm not trying about Concutt in general. I'm talking about all the national host. They just, all they have to do is just know a little bit about a couple of players. Well, yeah.

In some, listen to the Matt Thomas Show podcast with Ross, so Shepo podcast instead of the national guys. I hope you would. Don't listen to Ben Mallor. Like, I know it's on our station. He's just trolling you. Don't listen to it. He's a troller.

He's trolling. He's trying to get your reaction. Do not feed the troll. Just ignore it. And the easiest way to ignore it is to go to sleep. Yeah. Or put the podcast on. The 18 podcast.

Let me tell you, putting us on at midnight, that could get some feelings going. The ladies love us at midnight. Is that true? I've heard many a story. Really? Yes. Our sultry voice has helped romances.

Well, I've heard it's put people to sleep. That's a different show. Okay. So it's a Teddy Pendergrass play mix and then you put our show on. Yes. Did you see that somebody on Instagram? Sparks Fly. And I'm not trying to tutor on homework.

What's not doing it? What's up, guru? You ready for this? No. A young lady listened to our show was running the marathon last week. Yes. And was listening to our show as she was running. Shout out.

Sarah. Is that who it is? Yeah. Sarah, we love you. She's running on empty. Until the show. She's not Jackson Browning it. Oh, okay.

She's running on full. She's got the Matt Thomas show with Ross podcast going. It really passed at the time. So I've made a decision. You did? Once the basketball season's over with, I'm going to do a game show podcast. Yes.

No wrestling, just game shows. Yeah. Are you going to do it solo? Are you going to partner with I-Hard? What are you doing with that? Are you in negotiations? But I don't know. I want it is I want to have a live guest on every week

and I want us a video, but I don't know how to do any of that stuff. Okay. I'm just going to do a podcast too. About how much game shows suck. You hear that, folks? I'm just kidding. He's so mean. You have to be one of the foremost preeminent experts on game shows. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to do it. I'm going to do a half hour show

a week. I'm going to commit to it. Name me every host of the match game. Gene Rayburn, Burt Convey on the pilot. Match game, Hollywood Squares Hour was Gene Rayburn. and John Baumann, match game with Alec Baldwin,

match game with... You're like freaking rain man! Oh, it's not Martin Short. You need to do a game show podcast. And then that guy Rob did it too. Rob Schaefer. Oh, Ross Schaefer did one too. Yeah, he did it, yeah.

Wow. I'm just going to assume that's correct. I'm not... I'm going to tell you the truth. All right. Up next, Vince, Martin Short do it? Martin's his current host.

He does a terrible job of it, too. I mean, just wretched. I heard he was an unfunny guy. Yeah, the unfunniest guy in America. So the funny thing is, though, he was kind of funny in Arrested Development. Never saw the show. Okay. It's a great show.

I wouldn't recommend it to you. Good. All right, Vince, on some of the Rockets, and we're going to hear Nicky C talk about the Texans. Wonderful. And coming up at 120, you're going to go to Denver, Colorado. Casario Bot. We'll talk next. It was better than that.

that, right? We got to be fair. We have to do better. We are building the team to win. We will do what it takes. See, your boy, Cameron's got a point, doesn't he? He's not going to show emotion. That's what I'm saying. He needs to show some emotion. I want emotion.

I want something. I want a pulse. That's what he's asking for. He wants a pulse. Don't crush the kid. What's a pulse? We'll see a little passion. Again, we're going to go to the relationship card, Matt. You know, I'd like to see a little more emotion, a little more passion for you. Your therapist would say that. What do you know? You're saying? No, I promise to

turn down the passion. Cole 40, Sports Talk, 790. Vince is with us on the Matt Thomas and Joe at Ross. We're going to hear from Nicky C. after that. Hi, Vince. Hey, guys. Hey, I went to the game yesterday, and a couple things. I really love the

recognition the crowd gave Al-Tubei when they introduced him. I don't know if you noticed that or not. I did, yes. It was quite raucous. Yeah, very raucous. Number two, a lot of San Antonio fans there. There was one guy that was really, really obnoxious sitting close to me and kept saying, I can't hear you, I can't hear you, and that's how real basketball is played. At the end of game, I let him have it, by the way. But I love the rivalry. I think

this is a renewed rivalry between San Antonio and Houston. I think that's a great thing. But one thing I did want to kind of ask you about, do you notice a rift or something happening between Sangoon and Durant because I noticed that they kind of were miscommunicating or something and they both seem very perturbed at each other. Is that

something that we should be worried about or just the normal courts of a thing? I would chalk that up, Vince and thank you for the phone call to two guys competitive trying to play, win a game, down double digits, tired of turn the ball over.

I actually, I'm trying to go back to my game notes. I wrote about when that happened. Look at you prepping like a muddle. I know. You should put your notes on a Twitter account. What quarter was that? Oh, third quarter, 806 after Udoka timeout. They were all arguing, but it was like,

they weren't like going out of each other's throats. It was constructive. Because I wrote that down in case somebody brought it up in the post game, actually. Yeah, it was in the third quarter. Chingoon and Durant were kind of arguing about defensive coverage or something like that. Jbarre Smith Jr. on the bench and he was kind of between them and they were all disagreeing. And then Shingun, I think one of the assistants came to him and told him he was wrong. That was basketball stuff to me.

That was coaching. That's not a rift. These guys are going to argue all the time. It's like your brother or something. You're going to argue it's going to be okay. They're going to disagree. You miss the assignment. No, you miss the assignment. And then they figure, oh, I was supposed to do this or whatever. That's basketball stuff. I didn't think anything of it other than that. I mean, like I said, I did write it down just in case somebody brought it up. But I literally, I literally really wrote not bad or contentious or anything. Yeah, I would tell you if there was a problem, we'd find out about it.

And they're just not. They're just, I mean, look, Katie is going to hold you accountable. Younger players, not nearly as Boister's players, may not say something, but Katie doesn't hide his emotions. And I think Alpern Shingoon sometimes does miss defensive assignments, and he gets a little defensive about it. Just, just me thinking, saying out loud, just an observation. I could be way off base.

Look, that's a highly charged game. This is the time of the year where the Western Conference seatings are moving around, almost on a day-to-day basis. You needed to win that game yesterday. You did not need to lose and be behind by 16 points or whatever the number was when that happened. You're a half game from the seven-seed wolves. Well, there's 3-team, 5, 6, 7 are all half game behind you and tied. And then you're 2-5 behind Spurs in the 2 spot. crazy

this is exactly like it was a year ago I know it's like it's been every year for like 20 years are you on pace guy sure why not what are they on pace for 52 wins 52 wins 52 wins you know when they got that last year 52 52 wins

okay it'll be different because remember those last three games they didn't even care about because they put players in there for yeah rocket to the four seed they are a game and a half out of three, they're a half out of the five. Why, they have the tiebreaker against the Lakers. They have the tiebreaker against Phoenix. So it would have to take the Lakers and Phoenix to have at least a one game lead on those

before the Rockets have fall down to six. Every game going to matter. In Minnesota, they got a tiebreaker over Minnesota too. All the tiebreakers. That's good. That's good. They do not have the tiebreaker over the Sacramento Kings. Thankfully, that shouldn't matter.

That hurt a little bit there. All right. Little Nicky Cee we come back. Okay, good. Plus, we got a huge show on the 1 o'clock hour. We've not talked about that. Baseball Hall of Fame editor two members. Yes, I meant to mention that in the news and noon, but we were just, you know,

I had so much. We're chock full. We'll save it for the 1 o'clock hour. No, actually, but I want your opinion on those guys. We'll do it real quick one come back then. Then we'll save Nicky Cee, I swear to got 1 o'clock. Yes. They are.

And Andy Lindahl, 92.5 altitude sports, going to join Rossi at 120 to give us a perspective of what's going on with Denver and whether or not Jared Stinnham could lead the pay. Patriots or the Broncos to the AFC Championship. Ross. All right. Two new memories of baseball's Hall of Fame are in. We all be also a signing today by the New York Yankees, spending some money today, huh? Cody Bellinger. According to Jeff Passon.

Dush. With the New York Yankees for five years and $162.5 million. Sources tell ESPN opt-outs after the second and third season, a $20 million signing bonus and full. No trade. Clause Codes Cody Bellinger is a New York County Cody

Good for them I mean I was hoping that all the stars would go to the National League but we had to keep one in the American League so there you go Hall of Famers yes announced yesterday Carlos Beltran Andrew Jones

into the baseball Hall of Fame I think Beltran was probably more of a given than Jones was but both got in yeah Jones had been climbing up the list where do you you come down on both of them? Let's start with Beltran.

Okay, Beltron. The cheater. Cheater! Jose Al Tuva is like, this is great news. Yeah. They didn't seem to carry. The dude was the mastermind. Yeah. Hello? Yeah. Nine-time All-Star, three-time Gold Glover,

rookie of the year, two-time silver slugger, 435 home runs, Career OPS 837 It's getting easier to get in It just is It just is Feeling Hall of

Hall of very very very good Feels like a I'm not calling it a fringe case And it's like 84.2% of the vote Up from 70% last year Does the New York tie Have a lot to do with it

Or some to do with it? I would say yes probably doesn't hurt that he was with the Mets and the Yankees as he masterminded their cheating scandal and brought to Houston. As he was on that team in 2015 and 16 where they got the, that was the Yankees letter from the commissioner. Briefly, of course. Is he going in as a Houston Astro?

No, I think he's going in. He said as a Met. Okay. I covered his very first Astros game. He was in Kansas City, got traded to Houston and the Astros were playing in Arlington. and my boss at the time said get in the car and go up there and cover the game. So I did. That was big news when he was trading. Huge news. Huge, huge, huge news.

Do you recall any of the pieces that went out for the Astros? I didn't. I just looked it up, though. Can you tell me the names and I can go, oh, I remember those? I mean, Octavia went to the A's. It was a three-team trade. Okay. John Bucked and cashed the Royals. Buck was a catcher. And that's it. Okay. Didn't hurt. Short-term deal, though.

Okay. Andrew John. Jones. Now, you got to give me the number. You can give me his career numbers. Five-time All-Star. Good. Ten-time Gold Glover. That's really, really. That's, you know what, to me, that's more impressive than a five-time All-Star? 823 OPS?

Really, really good. It's good. And 434 homers. Do you, it sounds like to me you want a guy with an OPS of like 875 or higher getting in. Yeah, but I think with the 10-gold gloves. Even though, I mean, he was basically done. He was basically done when he was like 32. And by the way, part of a dominant decade of Atlanta Brave Baseball, correct?

Yeah. Okay. I would say Andrew Jones I would put in before Beltran. I would have gone the opposite. But to the bigger picture. If he's getting in, that means there will not be any issues with Jose Al-Tube getting into baseball's hall of it. I wouldn't think so.

First ballot? Yes. Ooh. You know what? I want you to be right. Put my name on it. I like it. He's kidding.

Because again, this is not the court of public opinion. This is the court of, you would hope, establish baseball writers with at least some common sense. I want you to be right. I really want you to be right. Hopefully many of the old fogies have died off by the time that he comes up for a vote.

George Springer, yes or no, ultimately. He just had a great, I mean, the book is. still written. I would have said probably not before that great season he just had. He needs two more seasons of excellence. He's like 35 or something. Yeah. Coria.

Korea no. Nope. Bregman. George Springer. Bregman, TBD, but probably not. Four-time All-Star. No, no on George, I guess. Again, it's not an indictment against how good the 2017 was. But you're going to get one Hall of Fame. George is looking like a no. He's got a better

OPS plus than both Andrew Jones and Carlos Belltron I think Springer needs a couple more years. It's only 293 home runs. And he also got started very late too, as we know he didn't start 31 OPS. Yeah. Yeah, the Astros didn't call him up until he was 36, actually.

I almost believe you for a second. I believe he came in on his first about wearing walking with a cane. Super 2. He had a back brace on. All right. Casario. Yes.

Checking in on Denver. Checking in. Anything else going on in the final hour of the show? We'll figure it out. All right. All of your calls. Let's fold the phone lines up. 713, 2, 1, 2, 5, 7.9.

This is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. 1.4 p.m. Here on Sports Talk 790 of the Matt Thomas show with Ross without. Matt Thomas for the rest of this hour. He is out traveling with the Houston Rockets as they have the day off today, but they are flying out eastward to take on the Philadelphia 76ers tomorrow. And then it'll be a back-to-back in Detroit. And then Matt will be back.

And by the way, I haven't mentioned this, and we should have on the show earlier, Matt will be back in time for Astros Fan Fest. I mean, pending some crazy weather, which it shouldn't be by Saturday, at least by the latest weather projections that I've seen. We're going to be out at Astros Fan Fest coming up this Saturday. It starts at 11 a.m. with Adam Wexler and Dan Matthews.

And then myself and Matt Thomas will be joining the broadcast at 1.30. We're going to be on until 4 o'clock. So if you're going to go out to Fan Fest, make sure you come by and say hi. And if you just want to listen, we always have great player interviews. We normally get on Joe Espada and or Dana Brown. don't have the schedule in front of me right now, but normally get some players as well. And people who know, those are you listeners out there,

you know that one of the best places to come by and be close and see the players, get a glimpse of the guys, potentially even get a picture here and there depending. I'm not going to promise that. But if you want to see up close and personal, a lot of the Astros players, coaches, managers, and all that type of stuff, make sure you come by, see us at the Astros fan fest.

normally in the left field concourse area by the escalators. So make sure you come by Astroats Fan Fest. Say hello. We're going to be there 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. here on Sports Talk 790. I want to say this is like my seventh or eighth year doing this. So excited for Astros Fan Fest. Always one of the better times of the year.

So make sure you check that out. All right. We're here with you. We'll have Andy Lindahl in a minute coming up here. Altitude Sports talking about the Denver Broncos in the AFC championship game. In the meantime, you guys can get in. 713-212-5-7-90 is the phone number to get in.

7-13-212-5-7-90. As promised, Nick Casario earlier today, if you missed it, 10 a.m., he had his press conference at the end of the season. A lot of things to cover, of course, not the season that the Houston Texans wanted. And a lot of question marks right now with what's going to happen with the offensive line. What is going on with Joe Mix and Nick? Kaylee, is he possibly going to be coming back?

So we're going to cover a number of those topics right here. Let's go ahead and start with, this is the interesting one, that now I have a bet, and I'm going to want to play this. I'm going to want to hear from you, Jonathan, because Matt and I have a bet. I have the field. He has Joe Mixon shot himself in the foot. Here's Nick Casario asked about what really happened with Joe Mixon.

He didn't do anything off the field. It wasn't like he was riding like a snowmobile or anything. anything like that. I'd say it was just more of a medical condition or situation that just whenever it really didn't improve maybe as much as everybody would have hoped. I mean, I'm not trying to like evade the question. I think that's the reality of the situation. So like he didn't jump off a building like he wasn't cliff diving or anything like that. He wasn't doing anything irresponsible. It was just it was a freak thing. Honestly, I've never seen it. You know, it's just the condition. It's a freak thing. Honestly, I've never seen it the condition.

but also says he didn't do anything irresponsible. So should I be feeling confident that I'm going to be able to win the bet that he did, Joe Mixon did not in fact shoot himself in the foot with a firearm? Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think you're going to win this. Just give me your honest feelings, Jonathan. I'm going to make Matt buy you some coffee too if I lose. To be honest, it just seems I'm, you might be right because it just seems like he's avoiding the hippo laws and all this stuff and he probably doesn't listen to more about this medical thing and he can't say anything.

There's going to be some kind of mal-buttal practice lawsuit or something. something like that. Yeah, something that's very, like, that's the only that you can think of. What's personal that you can't report to the media other than that? They dropped a bag of screws in his foot and sewed it back up. They didn't put him in correctly. They left a scalpel in there. I don't know what's going on with Joe Mixing. This is such a weird, dodgy situation. But okay, I'm feeling more confident after those comments from Nick Casario. So we'll see what happens between the bet, myself and Matt. But more pressing matters to get to as well. I mean, one of the things we talk about, running game has been bad.

We talked about Woody Marks and kind of just being a guy. That's something that they're going to have to address at some point, whether it be bringing Joe Mixing back, which I would highly doubt, drafting somebody, signing something, somebody trading, doing anything to improve the run game because your running back room is not very good right now. It's Nick Chubb, who's had multiple horrible knee injuries, Woody Marks who can improve and get better, but to me you're just not seeing a whole lot of explosiveness.

If you're looking at a position where oftentimes guys can hit the ground running and thrive in their rookie years, running back is one of those. And you haven't seen it. With Arionte Ursary, it's ready. We can kind of see and hopefully he can grow and improve get stronger. With quarterbacks, of course, we know that can be a multi-year deal. Normally not the case with running backs. Although there can be some fluctuations, but I'm just not super high on the ceiling of Woody Marks.

But as far as Nick Cayley, the offensive coordinator, much more than. a line by many of the fan base. I think he got better as the season got along. I thought that a lot of the play calls were much better. I like the integration of the Decade Stover Tush push stuff in short yardage situations where you were struggling. They found a good

solution there. Sometimes, oftentimes the red zone offense wasn't exactly where you wanted it to be. But I think for the most part, execution and with C.J. Stroud throwing the ball up in the air and protections breaking down. That was the bigger problem,

especially later in the season, rather than the play calling. Here's what Nick Casario had to say about Nick Cayley. Yeah, I would anticipate Nick being here next year. Nick learned a lot, you know, first opportunities to play caller. I'd say offensively, probably the last two to three months of the year. Played pretty good football and did a lot of good things. So there was growth and improvement. There's always areas that we can improve and get better.

And that's what, I mean, D'Amico mentioned the other day. This first next couple weeks right after the season was kind of looking at everything. thing, go through, you know, the coaching staff, go through other aspects of the staff. Is there anything that we have to do? All right, then we're looking at some things schematically, start to go through the self-scout, try to figure out, all right, what are some of the things that we did well? All right, there you go. So basically the, the headliner there, what he said at the beginning, I would anticipate Nick Cayley being back. He didn't say for sure, wasn't a massive vote of confidence. Who knows if they're talking to any of the other candidates out there

trying to figure something out, but Nick Cayley probably going to be back, and that's what I would expect, honestly. I know you wanted to go big game hunting with a Mike McDaniel or somebody else, but Nick Cayley, you can be better. You get them some good players. That's what comes down to me, the bottom line.

Get good enough players. You could probably win with Nick Cayley as your offensive coordinator. Okay, a couple of other things to get to, but Biscuit has rung in. We didn't get Biscuit, you were on hold earlier. We didn't get to you, did we? no sir okay just making sure go ahead biscuit and uh and ross you can help me with this man because

and then that was by the way that was great radio man that press conference if you had to do that it was good to hear you know the whole you know conference you don't get sound bites you can get all the context and everything and my takeaway from it ross and you can correct me if i wrong but it seemed like he was blaming everything on execution and not much on personnel. Yeah. Well, the personnel has to execute, I guess, so one can lend itself to the other. Right, but if I was at the conference, I would ask, so why do you stand on the personnel versus execution?

Which one do you think you need to improve the most in? That's what I would ask. Because it seemed like he's saying it's execution. But for me, let me just say this, Ross. For me, the thing that made me raise my eyebrows is when he talked about the wire receiver room, right? Now, you can look it up.

He seemed to act like they got one of the top 10 wide receiver rooms in the league. And I'm like, no, that's not the case, man. Y'all, where is the, we know Nico's number one. The number two receiver, how many receptions did they get? this year. Jaden Higgins, I don't think he had a bunch, but he started to factor in a lot more as the season

went along. I mean, you're talking about somebody who was a second round pick, a high second round pick. So, I mean, with the wide receiver, you're not always going to get an instant immediate impact. It took a couple of years for Nico Collins really to get better. He was a third round pick.

41 catches, 525 yards, six touchdowns. That's not good enough. It's not bad. It's not horrible for a guy who started to come along as the season went along and wasn't doing much early on in the season. If that's your 1B, you know what I mean? We're looking at teams that got T. Higgins and this.

Yeah, you're Jemar Chase. It's not going to be Jemar Chase and T. Higgins situation. I mean, maybe it can be Collins and Higgins situation. But you also had Dalton Schultz. Jalen Noel doesn't really provide you much. I mean, Hutchinson is like, he's the best. I always keep jokingly saying he's the best W.R. 4 in the league. but Christian Kirk is decent.

It's not terrible, but it could be better. And you're hoping for the, I don't know what the, what kind of rankings are you looking for exactly? Because, I mean, the passing yards weren't there with C.J. Stroud and Davis Mills. Okay, but do they, they don't, do they rank the receiving group? They don't rank them like that at a pro football. Yeah, I, weak. Um, PFF has preseason rankings.

I don't know if they did that as. the season went along. I can look. My point I'm trying to make, Ross, is you can't, if you think as, if you go into this all season, thinking, man, we're good at this and good at that. We just need to play a little better

and not turn the ball on. Man, you fooling yourself, man. Them receivers is not, they're not scaring nobody, right? Other than Nico and Schultz to a certain extent. You've got to get better at the receiving court. You've got to get better in the O line in the Guard

center positions. That's to me is where it's at. If you don't get better in those areas, I mean, you're going to smoke up in it. The defense covered

over a lot of stuff. You know, I don't think you can think you can advance far in the playoffs with those position groups not being better. Yeah.

O line and interior. Yeah, I got to get to a break biscuit. I appreciate you. And yeah, we know that. I brought this up. This is, again, we go to pro football focus.

It's one data point. It's not end all, be all. but I was bringing this up. If you looked at the teams that made the divisional round, right, that's eight teams. This is where their offensive lines were ranked. Broncos first, bears, third, Rams, fourth. San Francisco 49ers, fifth, Buffalo Bills, sixth. That's five of the top six right there in the divisional round.

New England, 11th, Seattle, 15th. Seven out of the eight teams were in the top 15. The Texans were 27th. And Trent Brown didn't play in the divisional round. Offensive line just by this one stat directly correlates

with team success. It's not rocket science there. Texans offensive line needs to be better. Nick Casario spoke about that. We'll get to that later on in the show. But right now we've got to take quick break when we come back. Andy Lindahl of Altitude Sports in Denver talking about those Broncos.

What kind of shot? they have against the Patriots and the AFC championship game. We'll get to that next here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. The big voice man is correct. It is the Matt Thomas show with Ross here on Sports Talk 790. Matt Thomas ducking out early, traveling with the Houston Rockets. And right now we are pleased to be joined by Andy Lindahl of Altitude Sports in Denver, where we're going to do some Broncos talk, not necessarily some Nuggets talk after what happened.

happened last night, Andy. So forgive me for not talking some nuggets. But the Denver Broncos team, a lot of questions, a lot of different angles to go to. But before we, of course, get to the elephant in the room and Jarrett's did him, I just wanted to start talking about the Broncos, and especially in this Sean Payton era,

how do you feel, the feeling in Denver from where you started with the Russell Wilson era to right now, the perception of him as a coach at the AFC championship game. Well, look, it's been a wild ride. I thought they were crazy for doing what they did with Russell Wilson and absorbing that kind of cap hit with what we thought this roster needed.

But look, it's worked out. And I would never have predicted, we were kind of talking about this yesterday. A, I would never have predicted they'd have been here after the, you know, two years after the Russell Wilson cut and you know all that 84 million of dead money. B, I never thought Vance Joseph would be in the middle of this, especially as a guy that was the team's head coach during the disaster. or his 10 years between these playoff appearances and wins, or that he would have come back as a defensive coordinator

or that Garrett Bowles would have turned into the player that he was, because that was a guy that the left tackle was a guy we wanted to run out of town, quite honestly, all the way up to about 2021, because he just could not quit holding people and just didn't seem like he was ever going to figure it out. So a lot of great stories. The fans like Sean a lot. Well, for the most part, they do.

Sean, as you've probably seen, and he had a viral clip last week where he was given a young reporter from the Denver Post gruff, at least that's who he was talking to when he said, what do you know about getting downhill? Yeah, you don't. He still comes off as a bit of a bully. He's definitely an old school coach. I know you've had a few of them there in Houston. But look, he's winning, and you know fans love winning, and that's all the matters.

Yeah, as long as you're winning, you can talk about just about anyone you want. But that's also one thing that can kind of wear thin on people, because once the winning stops, you don't have a leg to stand on. No, you're right. trust me, there's some fans that really don't like when he talks to people that way. You know, I was a sideline reporter for the last Super Bowl that they did. I did that job for 12 years and got to know quite a few people in the building. Now, with the Penner's coming in and taking over and reestablishing a lot of the bowling people that I knew have since moved on, Sean can be a bit of a bully even behind the scenes.

And so don't always love that, but whatever. Again, they're winning right now. And as you said, as long as they're winning, people are willing to put up with a lot. Andy Lindahl with us here on Sports Talk 7 out of altitude sports in Denver. So we know that they are winning. Tell me why are they winning? What is the, I mean, we know the offensive line is great. We know the defense has been pretty good.

What do you think in your mind, the Denver Broncos as the number one seed? What is the biggest reason that they have been winning the way they have? Well, I'd say throw on a few Houston Texans games, and you'll know the reason. It's defense, right? Their defense gets after people. it's an uncomfortable environment when you're playing them. Quite honestly, my prediction was we would be doing an AFC champion preview with you guys, you know, this week. Because I really thought Houston's defense was going to be the reason why you moved on and not the Patriots,

because I just, especially after being up close for the 2015 for the Denver Broncos, and it was at the Super Bowl where the Legion of Boom took apart the greatest offense. statistically we've seen in history, I believe in defense in the playoffs. So their defense has been the reason. You know, Josh Allen and the bills had not turned the ball over in like two years in their playoff games. It was like 2022 or I think it was early 23 the last time they had. And then they had the four or five turnovers this past weekend. And Josh just made some really weird, stupid decisions.

And, you know, that's what a past rush does. I know Houston got a lot of turnovers in their game this past weekend up in New England. So it's really about the defense. And I will say this. When you watch Bow Nix for the balance of a game, you're probably not real impressed with him. But the one thing that Bo Nix does really, really well, he may be one of the top five clutch end-of-game quarterbacks playing right now.

That kid so many times, you know, whether it was the improbable Giants comeback where he just went nuts in the fourth quarter or what they did on the national game against Philly coming back from 17 down to win that one. you know, he went and had to drive. He played a terrible second half, terrible second half, hopping balls at receiver's feet and overthrowing people and looking genuinely uncomfortable, but Buffalo left the door open.

All they needed was a couple of plays to go get a touchdown, eventually a field goal, and that's what Bo does. And I can't explain it. I don't know what happens. I think it's in part because Sean's got to, you know, shrink down the play sheet and defenses don't play for whatever reason, no matter what history teaches them. They don't play the same way.

the last two minutes a game that they typically do during the rest of the game. And when you do that to Bo, Bo Nix is going to use his feet and gets a lot of comfortable looks and he just finds a way to get the points he needs to win and it's been kind of amazing to watch. Unfortunately, getting hurt at the end of the game. Has there been any

hindsight talk in Denver about him not even being on the field to kneel it down, which some teams, I guess, can go to a backup quarterback situation there. Has that been talked about it all? Not really because he did, you know, So, Sean, I think Sean kind of misspoke when he talked about it.

The play they finally revealed was the one where he tried to run. I don't know. I locked anybody in there was. But he got tackled and the foot got yanked and that's heard happen. So he actually threw the ball that caused the controversial in Buffalo anyway, pass interference call that moved him into field goal position. He did that throw on the broken ankle, if you can believe it. Okay.

So I'm not even sure the coaching staff was fully aware. how much discomfort he was in because of the play where he actually got hurt, he hops up and runs back to the huddle. And I guess in the huddle, as people told the story, is where he started to realize something doesn't feel right in my ankle. And then after the throw that drew the P.I, that's when he really knew there was an issue. And then by the time he limps off after the kneel down, because honestly, I thought he got stepped on on the kneel down the way Sean described it.

Because he ran to the middle of the field and just like you kind of described it there. he had a bit of a funky kneel down. That did not look like your typical kneel down as they think he tried to get the hurt leg out of the way. Okay. And then he lips off. And then the crazy thing is he stood there with Tracy Wolfson and did the interview and I didn't realize he was hurt.

So got the adrenaline going. That's a powerful drug there, Andy. Andy Lindahl with us here on Sports Talk 790 altitude sports. So obviously going to Jared Stenham, expectations from you. And of course, importantly, how much help can he get from his friend? from the receiving core and from R.J. Harvey and the run game.

Well, you just said on the major question there. You know, look, Bo Nix, even on his good days, Bo Nix is more of a system guy than a Josh Allen type, right, that's going to run around and make incredible things happen. You know, look, in that game last week, he had receivers drop a couple passes. They shouldn't, and I thought that might ultimately be the reason why they lost instead of one. So these guys, you know, now one of the guys that we were really starting to get excited about was Pat Bryant, the rookie that had three early catches in that game the other day and then went out with a concussion.

And now that that's like two concussions in a month. So I don't know if a lot of us are feeling terribly confident. He'll be back out there. But they're definitely going to have to help him. J.K. Dobbins, you know, they're calling it a midfoot sprain. If you've been around football long enough, that's also French for Liz Frank. That's basically what he's dealing with. and I know a lot of people that are very, very skeptical that J.K. Dobbins, despite some positive reports and maybe even him dressing, is going to be anywhere near close to himself.

Now, if he were in the game, if he could have been what he's been in the middle of the season, he was kind of their closer. He was the real force on offense. He was the untalked about element. And then he got that game hurt against the Chargers or got the foot hurt against, I think it was the Chargers. Maybe it was a Raiders, whatever it was. They just haven't been the same offense because Sean doesn't like to run. the football and you got to let him trust you to run the football and both the backs McLaughlin and Dobbin or Harvey had fumbles last week so that always gets Sean's mistrust up. Look, they're going to have to run the football. They're going to have to find a way to not let

the Patriots just tee off on Stidham. Stidham has not played a game or thrown a pass in two years. He's been in there to kneel the ball down at the end of a half. That's it. He's not had to dissect the defense in two years. I do think it can be done. done. Again, I would point to a Davis Mills that led to some surprising victories for you guys. But again, we're talking about the AFC championship. We're talking about a defense, and I know there was some tape out there after the Houston game where some of the Houston guys admitted they probably didn't know what they were looking at in some of the coverages and that Rable and his D.C. really fooled the young guy there at times to Stroud.

And so I don't have any doubts. They can do it to Jared Stinnom as well. This defense is probably going to have to cause a turnover. and maybe even score their own points if this thing's going to get done. I think it can get done because they're in Denver, but I'm not so sure I'd be putting money down on it. It does feel like a tall task, you know, when you're talking about the AFCG. Okay, but I imagine you're, I mean, we can point to examples. You can have been a lot of Nick Foles and Jim Plunkett and Jeff Hostetler talking Denver this week.

Yeah, you know what? We broke it out. My buddy name that I do the guy I do the radio show with is really good about going in and looking at the history. Here's the name we probably all should be quoting. And you probably remember this from a couple years ago. It's Taylor Hineke for the commanders or maybe even then they might have still been football team. But he actually came in, had a day through for 300 yards, blah, blah, blah. Scott Zolak, we had him on the show yesterday, backup quarterback in New England, and he had to go into a playoff game.

And he told us he got on a heater when he entered the game. But see, the problem is I can't remember about Hineke for sure. know Zolak got to go in cold. The Patriots are, you know, preparing for Stidim, right? And they know Stidim very well. So it's not like you just get to go in there and surprise. Now, I will say this. I think Sean will probably get himself a half because Stidham does like, we saw this in camp.

Stidham is going to test the deeper thirds of the field more than Bo will. Now, we'll work out, I don't know. But the Patriots can't just go off of their six, you know, their six weeks of game tape, or whatever they like to go back to to look at this offense. because Stidham will run it differently. The problem is the last time I watched Jared Stidham playing a regular season game at the end of that famous Russell Wilson season, he had a lot of trouble hitting guys in strides.

So is that solved? I don't know, man. He's had accuracy issues. It's one of the reasons why despite the beautiful mind to be a starter, the physical ability isn't always there. And again, you know, the reality, we keep trying to keep reality in check here in Denver. Yes, I think Stidham can do it.

But we're also talking about a guy that Sean Payton, look, he overdrafted Bow Nix, even as good as Nix has been, they took him with the 12th pick. I don't know if he's totally been 12 pick worthy because there's a lot of games where you're just like, my gosh, is this offense ever going to get out of the mud? But that's how much Sean wanted another option

other than just Jared Sted him that year. So look, it is going to be what it's going to be, right? And hopefully the Denver defense shows up and confuses Drake May the way the Houston defense did. I don't have to tell you guys the value of a team that can both rush the passer and cover. you've got Stingley, we've got Surtan, you know, you hopefully

will be able to put those guys to work and it leads to something good. But again, I just think Denver fans did also wake up and realize that we're asking a lot of a backup quarterback to come in and win the AFC championship. Now, when they went in 2015 with Peyton Manning again, there for that game, the Broncos came out, they got a couple of touchdowns, Owen Daniel,

the old Houston Texan tied in, was the guy that caught a couple from Peyton they got up and then they held on in the second half. If you can fool the Patriots with whatever new wrinkles you're going to put in for them for at least a half and get a lead, hopefully the noise and the defense can take over and that's how they get it done. All right, Andy, before we get you out, I will just ask you a gut feeling of how it plays out. You know, look, I've grown up here. So the Homer and me wants to believe the ghost of my eyes. You can believe it.

It's all right. We're in Houston. We're not going to call you on it. Nah, you know, look, again, I've been doing this job for 25 years. You know how it is you've got to divorce yourself from the fandom. Listen, the Patriots and the number two seat for a reason. If it wasn't for a stupid early loss to the Raiders of all things beginning of the year, that was the tiebreaker that swung the Broncos to get this as the home game.

Drake May is playing like an MVP. Honestly, the Denver defense has been good, but not quite to the elite level it was when Houston played them because they're missing safety Brandon Jones. if they had J.K. Dobbins, I would say this is all still possible. But my gut tells me the Patriots are probably going to be too much on Sunday and that they'll be the ones moving on. All right, there you go. Andy Lindahl, Altitude Sports in Denver, appreciate the time, and we'll talk to you down the road.

You guys take care of maybe we'll talk some NBA playoffs here in a couple of months. Absolutely. It could be some big matchups coming up. Rockets and Nuggets. I like that. It very well could be. All right. Appreciate it, Andy. Take it. All right, there we go. Andy Lindell altitude

sports here on Sports Talk 790. All right, way over for a break, but that was some good stuff on the Denver Broncos and the matchup against the Patriots and the AFC championship game. Quick break here on Sports Talk 790, the Matt Thomas show with Ross

when we come back more from Nick Casario. What did he have to say about addressing the offensive line? You'll hear that next. That's right. We're guaranteed humans. None of that AI stuff. Are you a human?

Jonathan? What do you think, baby? I don't know. I don't know. Are you AI? I don't know. I'm confused. A little bit scared.

Welcome back to the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Fold lines open at 713, 212,000, all right, short segment here. We did go along with Andy Lindahl of altitude sports, talking about some Denver Broncos action, but I do want to get to you guys real quick, so let's go ahead and do it. Appreciate you getting on the line.

Kenny in downtown, what's up? Hey, Ross, is Matt already gone? Yeah, he left. Hey, so, you know, I'm a long-time listener. I'll listen since the inception. I want to talk about two things. You know, I'm always a day behind because I always listen on the eye heart. Yeah, I forgive you.

That's okay. I haven't even listened to a day show. So last night when I was driving home from work, you were talking about Indiana. And, you know, you mentioned about their NIL, and I'm like, well, Texas. spent twice as much, A&M spent more than twice as much, and they did nothing. They didn't have blown out. Texas didn't even make the playoffs. And I think the difference is, and you're not going to like it, but it's the players,

the players and the coaches. They pick the right players, they have the right coaches, and the right culture. Texas hasn't had that in 20 years, plain and simple. I'm sorry. They get all these five stars, and they turn into one stars after a year. That's not true. That's not true. They made the semifinals for a couple of years.

They were nine and three with the Florida loss was bad, but the other losses were to what? Georgia and Ohio State. So, I mean, it's not like they had a bad season. They've had a lot of players coming up in the last couple of drafts. That to me is the biggest. How is your program doing? Are you getting a lot of draft picks?

And for years, for the last decade plus, there were times of there were hardly any draft picks for the Houston, for the Texas Longhorns. But now they're getting a lot of more draft picks. That shows me that they are developing players and getting the respect. They have not gotten over the hump yet with Steve Sarkisian, but they've made the semifinals twice, and I don't think there is some kind of culture issue with the program right now. I listen to you every day, and I don't think you're a big Sarkisian fan.

Am I right or wrong? I think you can win with Steve Sarkisian. I don't think he's the greatest coach of all time, but I think if you get him enough players, he's a good play caller. and you can win with him. I don't think he's some footballing genius. And I think that goes for a lot of these coaches.

I keep on bringing up Ryan Day with Ohio State. If they didn't have a 12-team playoff, he might have gotten to let go before winning the championship last year because they were a six-seed, and they lost to Michigan again. Joey McGuire, I bring up with Texas Tech. Was Joey McGuire some footballing genius

or his first year at Texas Tech? No, they got him a bunch of players and they won. So can you win? with the right roster with Steve Sarkisan, who I think is a good coach. Yes, do I think he's an elite best coach in the country or anything like that? No, but I think he's at least a top 10 to 15 coach in football. And if you get them enough players, which they have now with Arch Manning, and they're hitting the portal hard.

This is going to be an interesting upcoming season because they are pushing all their chips in. Right. And I became a U.O.T. fan this year just because of Arch. You know, I'll probably go back to Root and get them when Arch leave. But I became a fan because, you know, I like the man. I like the manning's. I like how they make him stay there, then go on the portal, you know, even though he wrote the pond for two years. I just like that top attitude.

You know, I hate these three or four, you know, schools, you know, that you've got to go to because you're unhappy somewhere. Hey, the second thing, I want to talk to you real quick. There's this thing you will always do. And Matt sometimes picks up, but it's funny when he doesn't. yesterday he was like hey uh it's gonna be two degrees in detroit and uh i'm going to uh pick up a gloves and a hat and then you chime in without missing a beat and you go and scarf and that goes no no you know he doesn't catch i mean when he doesn't catch it i do that to my older brothers all the time when i say little when i say little quips and and matt's not paying

attention yes that's what that's the funniest it's the funniest thing it's the funny and you know Go ahead. It is so funny. And like I said, you've been doing that since day one. And sometimes he catches it, but when he doesn't catch it, it is hilarious. I'm with you, Kenny. Just between you and me, one of my favorite things on this show, because look, you've got to keep yourself entertained, especially if, you, I work with Matt.

We have a great working relationship on with them four hours a day, 20 hours a week. We've been working together for now 16. This is our 17th year working together. you got to entertain yourself and that is one of the things that I do I make these little quips or like movie references or song references that I know

he's not going to get but it's like I mean it just makes myself laugh or yeah saying a little thing or addendums to whatever which he catches all the time stuff that I say or that I do but sometimes he doesn't I'm with you kidding I'd rather rather than get the laugh I don't know

outwardly it makes it's more entertaining sometimes for me to make myself laugh So thank you, kidding. I'm glad. I'm glad you noticed. I appreciate that. All right, quick break here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross Lafayette. We will get to you next, I promise, because there is no, believe it or not today with Matt Thomas out.

But we're late again for a break. So quick break here. Final segment next ahead of the A team here on Sports Talk 790. All right. One quick note. What did somebody do in the bathroom up here? Was it you a wax? The lady's been cleaning the bathroom for like 50.

15 minutes. The past two breaks, I've tried to go to the bathroom and it's been, I've been trying to relieve myself and it's just been closed off. John, then, are you okay? Do you do anything over there? What's going on? Guys, I told them earlier, I went to the restroom, like around 12. And we got some corporate guys in the building and they'll come in waves, like huge waves. And I went to the restroom. The back stall was messed up, the automatic level was going on. And then I looked down the floor. guys there's liquid all on the cross I don't know what happened I don't know if someone fell into the urinal and came out with it first I don't know I'm just trying to go take a pee and I can't that's been she's been cleaning in there for like 15 minutes ain't nobody got time for y'all making big messes in this bathroom up here this building ain't nobody got time for that all right sorry I had to get that out Lafayette what's going on Hey hey y'all's going fellas how's it going doing doing doing doing great what you got here listen so earlier guy wanted to call in and I've heard this

before. They want to criticize the Texas receivers, but they obviously are not watching the same game that I'm watching because I see receivers open. I see CJ missing them, overthowing them, underthorn them, throwing the ball behind them, too far in front of them, or just playing on not even seeing them and throwing the ball somewhere else or taking the sack for no reason. Like, you can't criticize the receivers when the person in charge of getting them the ball is absolutely wetting the bed. Plain and simple. People stop looking at stat sheets and watch the game. Watch the game.

The receiving court is fine. The receiving court is good enough to win. However, we aren't going to win anything if CJ doesn't get his act together. So either C-Day needs to get it together Or the team needs to move on But please stop blaming receivers Yeah thanks a lot Lafayette Yeah somebody was arguing with me about like yards per game and stuff

Like well the Texans didn't throw for a whole lot of past yards per game It's not like you know jaden Higgins was out there making a bunch of drops It's I think with Higgins I mean we'll see you I think kirk is a free agent I think Noel. They probably could use another pass catcher for sure. But it's not a terrible, it's not a terrible wide receiver court at all for the Houston Texans. All right, that's going to do it for the Matt Thomas show with Ross here on Sports Talk 790. Thanks to all of you for listening to the show, especially those you called and tweeted and got

involved in the show directly. I appreciate you. Thanks to Andy Lindahl, joining us from Altitude Sports. Thanks to Matt Thomas for actually being here for the first three hours of the show. Thanks to Jonathan Allen for me for all four hours. I'll talk to your folks next tomorrow at 10 a.m. as part of the show, Matt Thomas Show with Ross. Right now, it's the A team. A couple of Adams.

Don't go anywhere.