The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Rockets COMEBACK WIN Over Memphis, Rams Beat Vikings, Cowboys Interested In Coach Prime

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

Matt Thomas and Ross Villarreal of "The Matt Thomas Show with Ross" and Chris Gordy recap the Houston Rockets finishing a come-from-behind win against the Memphis Grizzlies. Jalen Green tied his career high with 42 points to give the Rockets a 120-118 victory, their fourth straight win. Matt, Ross and Chris also:discuss the Texans waiving wide receiver Diontae Johnson and placing tight end Cade Stover on the injured reserve listreact to reports that the Dallas Cowboys are talking with current Colorado coach Deion Sanders to replace Mike McCarthy as head coachreview the Rams defeating the Vikings in the final game of the NFL Wild Card roundtalk about Jimmy Butler reiterating to team president Pat Riley that he will not sign a new deal with the Miami Heatrecap Wild Card weekend in "Ross's NFL Rewind"give their latest "Gut Feelings" and more.

Lunch timers. This is the Matt Thomas show. 10 o'clock at H-Town. Good morning. And welcome to a Tuesday edition of the Matt Thomas show with Ross. This is Sports Talk 790. Crossover gets by Aldama, flips and behind Jalen Green, sets, fires. And hits a straight-on-three.

Jalen now, with nine in the quarter. 18 to 17. Rockets have scored six. in row. Green has a pippin and junior in front of him. Bounce pass on a pick and roll to shingoon. He'll turn left spin right goes up against Satie Ldomain will throw it off the backboard in for two Shengu now with 14 Freddie hands it off the green now Moranth defense him shot clock at four pass out right wing can't shoot Bamblay 3 and the Rockets leading in 107 105 second three for Bamblis hands it off to Jalen green

Shock lock at 12. Jalen double team comes, lob to Schengoon, top of the key, Euro steps, turns, spins, nearly turned it over, gets it back, Alleyu, and a flush to him in Thompson! Outstanding pass in a free throw line, Thompson is waiting for it. He's got 17, 114, 110. Everybody on their feet inside Toyota Center downtown Houston. Free throw from Moran is on the way. Backiron miss. Grab by Tapsin. Into the hands of Fredman League with three to half seconds left. And a foul with 2.7. John Moran with two huge missed free throws.

Ket's shoot shot is up. It is good with point four to make it 1.2118 in the hands of Fred Van Lee. And for the fourth consecutive game. The Rockets look like on multiple occasions that were going to get knocked down. But Jalen Green got them up again. Rockets were down 100 to 87 with 930 left. That's not an impossible feat to overcome, clearly. It's the case happened last night.

It's not quite the Timberwolves being down 15 with 419 to go. Nope, nope. But it's a nice comeback. But it's a nice comeback. Good morning, everybody. Hi, Ross. How are you? Hey, Matt.

Why are you saying good morning? Oh. Because I said good morning in the audience. I didn't say good morning to you. That's fine. Connor, good morning, and most importantly, happy New Year to you, my friend. Happy New Year, guys. A new year.

Somebody gave me a happy New Year in the hallway yesterday. Yeah. And I'm, I've decided I'm going to continue to give Happy New Year's until February the 15th. Okay. And so it's 45 days. Okay. Well, you're going against Larry David's wishes. Oh, yeah. Larry's, and you know how I love, no, he's alive.

Okay. I mean, last time I checked, he's alive. I will have to take it. There are days I'm taking off. When Paul McCartney dies, I'm going to take a day off. I'm going to take a day off. Bob Barker croaked and you were fine. Yeah, but I was a weepy.

No, you're fine. Okay. But he's 100. He's been on his deathbed for a while. Oh, man, that's tough. All right, it is a Tuesday edition of the show. As we celebrate people we're going to eventually die, which will include the two of us. That's everyone.

Will you take a day off when I die? No. So you'd be like, oh, so it's the, it's the Ross show with Ross. A day off a celebration. Oh. Okay, you know what that was. That was, God. I'll be very sad, Matt.

I've already got a great eulogy plan for you. Yeah. And I can't wait. I've had it written. It's been in the can for a couple years, actually. You know, about being prepared. Honestly, in the news business,

you have to have those locked and loaded for when people do pass. So when something happens, you're not running around the last second trying to get something done. Like how Jimmy Carter outlived his. Oh, the Jimmy Carter Ulogy was all locked and loaded from all the different networks, and that happened. So, yeah, you're right. All right.

We got a nice show for you today. we've got gut feelings coming up at 1130 this morning. This is where you get to call in and make your predictions about a variety of things sports related. Could be about the Texans game. Could be about the Rockets' upcoming road trip, but they will take on Denver, Sacramento, and Portland. It could be about Alex Breggman's new destination. It could be about the college football playoff,

national championship game between Ohio State and Notre Dame. Notre Dame. Notre Dame is Dunker Rock. It comes back. Dunker Rock and they could be making it appear. By the way, I forgot, we didn't mention this because we were obviously talking a lot about the Texans. How do we feel about Ryan Day? I mean, just going to the motor oil to take care of that beer to his.

Yeah, he goes with the Jesserman and not with the Just for Men touch of gray. He goes to the full jet black. I mean, it's like he went and got, basically, printer fluid. Yeah. I mean, because it's more economical, Matt. It's off-putting, actually. Because look, I have people in my life that color their hair, and they've told me, and I don't, I mean, you don't, which I think is awesome. No, I don't. Never will.

And I respect that. I was looking like Father Christmas on Space City Home Network yesterday, but that's okay. Did anybody see Ross on Space City last night between 5 o'clock until 6? So, Colin. There was no Adam, there was no other Adam, there was no Dan Matthews by the end of it, and no Chandler Rome who was filling it. It was just me on the A team. You could have booked some guests. I guess I could have.

Yeah. That's okay, though. Next time. I'm very vain. I just wanted to talk. Yeah. So if anybody saw Ross, how disheveled that he look? 713-212-5-790.

7-1-3-2-1-2-7-90. Look, we've got a lot of time to get to before the Saturday Texans game. So let's get the Rockets Air Flowers a little bit. Fourth straight win last night, third in a row over Memphis. They've won the season series with them, which could ultimately play a little bit of a tie-breaker game. It's good for the tiebreaker, yes. I was talking to one of my great friends He's the voice of the Grizzas

And I said, you know, I don't know if it's, you know, we're all kind of thinking, wouldn't a second round Memphis Houston matchup be really awesome? And I would agree with him on that Because Memphis is very good and obviously Rockets are good. Something tells me that Denver ain't going to go hiding here. They're playing a lot better as of late.

They are, I think, two and a half behind the Rockets or three, whatever the case may be. They got a game coming up with the Rockets and Nuggets tomorrow. I'm not sleeping on Denver. trying to sneak into the top three spot. I think it would be foolish to sleep on to the Denver Nuggets. Yeah.

And we'll get more of that. Eme Addoke is going to join us tomorrow as we go to the Mile High City later on this afternoon. Gordy's going to come in for an hour. Really? Now, will he be here right at Want to Climb? Who knows? That's fine. Will he raise his voice to astronomical levels over something about college football?

If we bring up the SEC. Yeah. That's almost a given. And how weak they are in these last two years prove that they're not the dominant conference in football. And you are the flagship school that? I'm just kidding. I wouldn't say that. Why wouldn't you?

I would say Alabama is? Well, I mean, of the last 25, for sure, but I'm talking about right now. It lasted the longest, but it's one year. If you were at the Olympic ceremonies. Yes. And somebody said one school from the SEC gets to carry the SEC flag during the opening ceremonies, it's the University of Texas. Yeah, but there was no podium finish though, Matt.

You got a participation medal. That's good. Well, you got the bronze. No, not even. Well, they don't play for a third place game. They probably beat Penn State. I feel confident you'd beat Penn State. Me? Thank you.

I mean, your school. So, yeah, I'm going to give you Texas for the second consecutive year is the bronze medal of college football. You got a medal. It's fantastic. Oh, please. I'm sitting here and not even going to like the Pop-Tarts Bowl, so cut me some slack on that. Pop-Tar's bowl is nice. The Mayo Bowl, everybody's got to come up with their gimmick to get as much shine as they can.

Well, that's how it works because, frankly, nobody cares about the game itself. It's about what you can do. Who played in the Pop-Tarts Bowl this year? I have no idea. But I remember the video, the guy ripping his aluminum pop-tart cover off. Well, it's like, and then the Mayo Bowl is known for the winning coach getting mayo dripped all over him, which I would pay, I think I'd pay $1,000 for Clanton to have a large bowl of mayonnaise pour on. I thought you were going to say for Bill Belichick.

No, no, no, I don't care about that. Bill Belichick getting covered in mayo is going to be hilarious. There are certain things in life that we all despise. Clinton's distaste for ranch dressing, anything creamy mayonnaise is, first of all, ridiculous. What kind of childhood trauma is that guy have? Second of all, it might cause permanent damage to AC, and I'm here for it. So if he were in Guantanamo Bay and we were trying to get some information out of him, we would hold him down and pour mayo down his throat to get him to talk.

It'd be like, hey, Matt, I'll give you $1,000 to walk an armadillo. 100 yards. I would be permanently traumatized over there. Walk within 100 yards of a lot? No, walk, you walk, no, put an an armadillo. Can you leash adelo? I don't know. I've never seen a dillel leased. Okay, well, you stay away. Excuse me? Why did I say? Yeah, they got leprosy, Matt. Stay away from armadillos. That's why I stay away from them.

Yeah. Or they can give you leprosy. Yeah, if you're, if you're like rubbing them. You're rubbing a dillo? 7-1-dil rubber Thomas. Sports No, I've never touched a dillow. It's another nickname for you. I've no, I've no No one just in touching it. I went to South Lano State Park and one time they're all over the place in that park. What park is this again?

South Lano State Park. And remind me not to go there ever. International Dark Sky Park. They got good skies. They have sky parties where the meteorologists come. I mean, the astronomers come with their telescopes. So you and Frank Bingsler hanging out? No, well, not really.

Can you name another one of the person in this market besides him? He's retired, actually, sir. Yeah, Matt Lanzo. Friend of the show. Friend of the show. Friend of hurricane coverage on KTRH. I'm all for that. All right.

713, 212, 5, 790. Rockets with an impressive win. If you listen to the game or watched it or we're in person and you want to get a little rocket chatter going, we're going to do it. I'm not going to force it down your throat. I'm not going to force anything down your throat. We're going to do what. 10, 12. We're going to do what y'all want to get into, whether that's Texans, Chiefs play.

I think we're, I think we put the game with the charges in the review mirror, right? I mean, it's great performance. I'm still basking in the glow, Matt. 129 yards gained by your Houston Texans. C.J. Stroud comes alive using his legs as well. Over 100 yards for Joe Mixon. All right. Let's go Texans.

So this is what we're going to do. We're going to recap the game again for four more hours. That's what you want to do. That's cool. I mean, it's not my show, not your show. It's Houston's show. Rockets? That's what I like to hear.

In-depth recap yet again of a game that was played several days ago. We have that douchebag Dalton Schultz. reporting that No, Jordan Shultz. Whatever, who's Dalton Shultz? Dalton Shultz is the tightening for the Texans. He's a very nice human mate. Yeah, he's not duch.

Please don't come up here and kick Matt Thomas' No, Dalton, you're a great dude. Matt Thomas, 1233, South Loop, a West Loop South. By the way, Dalton Shultz, somebody from another station stole us as a guest, it was supposed to be for us. That's true, we didn't get sniped on that one. It happens. We snipe before.

We have? Yes. Was it good? Was it good a guest? Yes, it was. Oh, really? Okay. Then I can't be Judgey. Back of the day. I can't be Matt McGudgy. Okay. So, oh, Jordan Schultz, a 100% douchebag who blocked me on Twitter. I don't know why he did. What did I do?

What I say to him that got me? I didn't even tweet at him and he blocked me. He must have been literally listening to the show or somebody tagged him or something. We were talking about how unreliable and bad his reporting is and he sucks and you shouldn't trust him. Don't trust him. But he has... But Schefter did... Shepter verified. Yeah. Shepter said that Shultz was the first report that

Dion Sanders and the Cowboys are talking about it. I know we've got a few Cowboy fans bumping around. But my first blush is it will not end well. I'd love to see it. I want it to happen so bad. Incredible drama for a team that's already filled with drama. It's entertainment for a team that I love to watch fail. So I want it to happen.

You know, now that you said that, part of me is like, that wouldn't be a bet. You know what, Dallas, that may be just the higher you need. Yes, do it. 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-21-2-5-7-90. Rockets, Deon, Texans, Alex Spregman, I hope you've saved your money. Verlander is speaking very well about his time here in Houston,

looking forward to pitching maybe five to six starts for the Giants next year coming up, and gut feelings and NFL Rewind. I am Gordy today. It's a busy Tuesday edition of the Matt Thomas show with Ross. This is Sports Talk 790. Matt Thomas. Ross Villarreal. It's the Matt Thomas show with Ross on Sports Talk 790.

Jalen Green tied a career high with 42 last night. I think he's done it. I want to say two or three times. Obviously he did at least twice because he tied in a career high. He's having a great month. And the number one thing I always hear is, is this a stretch of six or seven games that's awesome? Or it goes back to regression or he does it. is this the next step in the development, the maturity, the professionalism?

He was always professional, but the increased efficiency of one, Jalen Green. The box score last night was very impressive. Is this the real Jalen Green is what we have to always ask ourselves? Over the last six games, he is shooting 45% from three. So I'm going to say, no, this isn't the real Jailen Green, but he can get close to it. Well, see, he's probably about my guess. I don't have the numbers right in front. I do.

I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. This year he was, before this stretch started, he was under 32.

Now he's up to 34 and a half already. Okay. So let's get him to. Just on a six game stretch. Let's get him to 37, 38, called a day, be happy. Didn't I ask for that last year too?

Yeah. Did I get close? I got close. No. Oh, well. He said 33 last year. That's what I'm saying. We have to always temper

because he's very streaky. Well, he's also volume 2. So that's another thing is you don't want to, you know, if he's going to take 5 to 8 per game, well, more than that probably, it's sometimes. He's been locked in because he's also shooting 92% from the free throw line. Well, he's the only one shooting free throws making him.

A man Thompson missed a bunch yesterday. Well, he's going to do that. Alperin Shengu missed him too. And I'm not being shooting 75% from the free throw lineup until about a week ago. Yeah. Water tends to find its level for the most part, which is why I believe that Fred Van Fleet, He's going to start making threes at a high clip at some point.

Yeah. By the way, only took, what, five shots last night? I mean, it's good. Very efficient, doesn't turn the ball over, a bunch of assist, made a key three when necessary. So it's fun, good atmosphere. And again, I know that we're in January, and I know that the Houston sports fan is very lukewarm

to jump on anything, especially regular season, was still half the campaign left. Yes. But let's be realist here. even if the Texans make it to the Super Bowl, the NFL season's over within a month. We have pitchers and catchers that don't really report until middle of February.

The games don't really start counting until late, but we might as well grab a hold of something here, and that's going to be, hopefully it's a rocket. Yeah, I think so. And I do, I actually have been surprised, Matt. I mean, you've been in the arena for every game. It feels like the crowds are. There has been more energy, more people in the building.

A little earlier. I wouldn't say like early Chicago, early Toronto, early New York, but I would say better than it has been in years past for sure. And by the time the fourth quarter is going on, it was a minute left in the game last night. Never wasn't a person sitting down. By the way, those three cities you mentioned have great public transit, correct?

Yes, they too. Interesting. And I always say this to you probably four or five times a year. Toronto is a hidden gem. It's not hidden because it's one of the biggest cities in North America. It's hiding in plain sight. But it's the only negative is. And I mean, Rossi, the only negative is it's bone-chilling cold up there right now.

But I mean, transportation, people are nice. Your currency transfer rate is very good right now. Canadian dollars going down? USA. Well, I'll give you an example. And again, this is not exact. But when I go to Canada, I usually spend cash when I'm on the road in the United States. Okay.

I'm traveling around the NBA. the credit card in Toronto because I don't want to get Canadian money and be stuck with it, blah, blah, blah, blah. So if I will go get a, let's say I get a cheeseburger, fries, and a soda there, and it'll be $23, $24, I'll come back and look at my, and I'll put charges on my credit card, it'll be like $15 or $16. That's good. I mean, it's a foreign transaction fee?

No. Okay, good. No. I don't think race does that. Now, does Dank of America do it? I don't race into this, Matt. Well, okay. Lace.

Oh, no, you definitely want to bring lace into this. We can't. 713-212-5-790. Come join us here on the radio program today. I'm here to 1 o'clock, so let's go. And then Gordy's going to be in 1 o'clock until 2, where you guys will yell at each other. Well, we'll see.

That's the number one thing I hear about when I'm gone. Why is Gordy and Ross always yelling at each other? That's not true. I don't believe you. We don't yell at each other that much. We yell more when you're on. Because he wants to troll and make fun of Texas. and I don't take any gut from him in that losing program LSU.

I'm going to listen to my way to Hobby Airport today. I'm just kidding. I'm going to be the ultimate consumer of this radio show. We'll see what you can do. We'll see what you guys if you all can behave yourselves. Tim and Katie at 1024 on 790. Tim, good morning to you. Thanks, guys.

I was in the building last night, and it was a great atmosphere. A really good game, nice to be at. I thought a men Thompson was awesome. He had a few turnovers, but man, he guarded. He was, he led the team. rebounds and they put him on John Morant and then they even put him on Jared Jackson

towards the end. What do you guys think about Amman and is he going to stay in the starting lineup when Jabari comes back or what do you guys think there? Thanks. Thanks Tim. Trust me, Rossi, when I tell you this. Amen Thompson's staying in the starting

lineup. It seems like the natural fit. You know what it is? You just answer it right there. It's the natural fit. And as I said philosophically, we kind of talked about this when it first happened. Philosophically, you don't want that many non-shooters on the floor. But when you have somebody, Amin Thompson makes up for it in other ways. Slashing to the basket, being in the right place at the right time. And it could come a problem depending on playoff matchups and stuff like that.

But Amin Thompson is the better. Keep it simple. He's the better player. Put him in the starting lineup. He had five block shots last night. Gosh. That's pretty good. and there were numerous times well I just say numerous probably at least two or three Rossi that they didn't have a center on the floor

19 points 13 rebounds two steals five blocks four turnovers made a three early yeah needs it some more free throws yes but is a great finisher at the basket a tenacious offensive rebounder

especially for a guy size he's he's six seven long but He's not thick. You know what I mean? He's not a bulky player. Yeah. And he's going against bulky players most of the time. I mean, look at the Grizz's threat then last night. You had Zach Eadie, who's a foul machine.

My God. Yes, he is. He just cannot stay out of foul trouble. It's too slow. And then you got Jaron Jackson Jr., who's a really nice athlete. Does a little bit of everything. They were throwing them at him, and the rockets were hanging with him.

But yeah, Zach Eadie, what was he, the back-to-back college basketball player of the year? Yes. and I think I've called three of his games. He's either fouled out or received five fouls in each one of those three games. From athletic standpoint, he's, and we know we don't stereotype here on the show, but he's just an unathletic white guy. Yeah, that's why, I mean, for a guy to be back, I mean, 30 years ago,

back-to-back college player of the year goes number one. That was such a big deal. He'd go number one overall. I think he'd go ninth, I think something like that? Ninth, yes, is correct. Rockets went at him. Shen Goon went at him. Everybody, you could go out.

She and Green was going around him. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, a man is quickly becoming my favorite rock. I had him on the show last night, on the postgame show. Just, I mean, they're, and I'll say this, and look, you can take it for what it's worth coming from me. They're just a bunch of good, really good dudes. They're young.

They're the total broskey of the NBA world. High dollar, haven't had a lot of experience, getting paid a lot of money. Don't think about it. But if you go to the basketball game and you win, you're going to have a good time. But they're physical, their physical edge and tough. And don't take nothing from nobody. I'm actually proud because the Rockets and Grizzes have played three times and no one's gotten into a Pier 6 brawl at this point.

That's kind of shocking. It's kind of chippy. It has been. Yes. With Dylan against a lot of his old teammates. But nothing has happened so far. So, yeah, good for the Rockets, good for, and I think it's good for us. It'll give us an opportunity to kind of have a nice segue between.

the end of the Texan season, which, I mean, I think most people think it's going to end on Saturday. You know, it could be surprising. But, yeah, in between that and start of the baseball season. Because, look, the Astros could, we're definitely an adjustment period here. You've lost your two best, you've lost two of your three best hitters. It's Christian Walker season and Chas McCormick season. And sneaky snake Jake season. Wait a minute, you're going to, you know what we need to do, we need to do a commercial for your Jake Myers fan club.

Okay. Like get in early. Oh, okay. Like a discount rate. I like it. You put up a poll question on your Twitter account yesterday. I did? Which we talked about briefly on the show, and I want to talk about more when we come back.

Okay. So rarely do I ever go to your Twitter account and go, hey, that's good material. At Sports RV. Yeah, it's fine. Give us a follow on Twitter and Instagram. I don't think you need to. We're trying to build the sports RV brand. Basically, it's just basically copying off of me.

713, 212. Never, ever, ever. 713-1-2-5-790. Yeah. You know what? Speaking of copying off of Matt, he's actually got some high energy. He's looking great. You want to copy off of Matt in that respect?

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Cinergenicshealth.com. CinergenicsHealth.com. That's S-Y-N-E-R-G-G-X-Halth.com for Cinergenics, testosterone and weight loss. 1034 sports talk 790 good morning to everybody we've got gut feelings coming up at 1130 we have the news at noon today and we will get to the i think the big national NFL story in just a minute about deion and jordan shultz coach prime now for the record you think you think he's going to be out of football and you said three years or was it more than five i said three yeah that was before this news broke I know.

I make it four. You're more than well. You know, you can got a feeling on this. Yeah. All right. But you did put a poll question up yesterday on Twitter. And again, I think you stole it off the show, which is fine. We discussed it on the show, and I discussed it on the A team without Adam Lexer or Adam Clanton.

By way, no one sent me photos of you doing your show yesterday. Why do you need photos? You see me every day. What do you need photos? Because I want to see anybody was watching. So basically, you just talked to yourself for an hour. I mean, I did. I put some water in my hair at least. I wouldn't look completely disheveled.

That's funny. Okay. So your poll question was what? The poll question at Sports RV. Is the Texans season a success in your mind, or do they need to win more? 56% of the votes say no, win more. 43% say, well, 44% basically, 43.7. Yes, success. 43% of the people feel the season is a success.

Now, you and I, somebody called the show directly about this topic yesterday. And my answer was, status quo sometimes can be successful. If the Texans lose this Saturday to Kansas City, it is a status quo season. You didn't improve. Yes. You didn't regress. You just remain status quo. Now, if you're at the workplace,

in your status quo more times than not, that's good. That's good. Now, if you exceed, then you're going to get more money. If you regress, you may lose your job. But if you status quo it, generally speaking, not in every situation. You're going to be just fine. Right. Preseason, we wanted them to make the AFC championship game.

I think everybody on this station, and I would say 98.5% of Houston's Texans fans are like, man, look, we went to the divisional playoff last year. We went and got the Neil Hunter. went and got Stefan Diggs. We have another first round picks. Joe Mix. I mean, the recipe was the Texans are taking the next step forward. So, if I was answering your poll question,

I would say that it, what was your options again? There were two of them, right? Yes. Season is success or they need to win more. I would vote in the need to win more. But a lot of people, yourself included, had them losing last week and had their season over. So they're exceeding those expectations.

Right. Or their season was completely over when they lost 31 to 2 to the Baltimore Ravens. So I think I'm going to give you a cop-out answer. And that's okay. That's it depends. How do they look against the Chiefs? Is it a close game? They lose by one score. Do they get a mud hole stomped in them? And if it's exactly like last year where they had the surprise win in the wild card round and they look nowhere near the class of their divisional opponent, I am going to feel it's going to feel more like a failure, I think, at that moment. than it does right now following the surprising win. I think you can do that. Because here's the reality. When the season started,

if you took a list of every NFL pundit, whether it's the guy at the bar that you hang out with, whether it's Adam Schaefter, whether it's Terry Bradshaw, I mean, anybody that has any opinion at all about football, people generally speaking around the NFL thought this was the fourth best AFC team. Tell me where people do. Now, maybe some people thought they could top Buffalo because they lost Defon Dix.

Yes. So maybe there were a few that said they could sneak into the third spot. But if you said, let's build a chart of the top to bottom teams in the AFC in August. Kansas City would have been one. Baltimore probably would have been two. Yes. You probably would have had either Cincinnati. Could be Cincinnati in the mix.

Buffalo in the mix. So anyway, you could have a collection of people that would say, the Texans are the third best team in the AFC, or maybe they're the fifth best team in the AFC. Yeah, to me, certainly this season is not a failure. You're in the final four with Buffalo, Baltimore, and Kansas City. It isn't a failure. There's a difference between being successful and being an object failure.

Failure would have been probably losing the game on Saturday badly or not making the playoffs at all. Correct. Yeah. But the division was poor. The team limped into the playoffs. We can't call it any other way than that. They did. But they played one of their best game.

Their best game of the season was Saturday. They made Justin Herbert, who doesn't throw I&Ts, throw a bunch of I&Ts. Right. Correct where credits do. Their other 20-point wins were against Drake Maine and his first start and then Cooper Rush. Like this was Jacksonville. No, those are the only 20. I don't think they had a 20-point.

I'm talking about 20-point wins. Their best offensive performance was Jacksonville Week 4 with 435 yards. This was second against that Chargers. defense with 429 and they turned the ball over three times. Where did, where was this team all year is what I'm asking? Yeah. Because you can't hang your hat on a bunch of really important regular season wins. The Colts were in disappointment.

Yeah. You went five and one in a very weak division. Outside of the division, they went, what, five and six? Yeah. You took advantage of what was given to you. Yeah. So they win, let me tell you something. And I told you this, I would, I will not, I will not become deep, deep,

steel mat. Liberty White, Matt. Why don't it be Liberty White? Why not? I mean, there's how much white is that? Do I need to have more of my life? You know, my pigment, my color, my legs. It represents purity.

You know what? That's what they call me, Mr. Purity. So yeah, I go Liberty White, Matt will be fine. Dirty Dog, Matt. I won't become a fan. And I'm not trying to jump on the train. I'm just saying that I've already enough to spare in my life.

I'm plenty of fun of what I have. have. I'm going to be honest. Yeah. Why? Sometimes, like, when I'm sitting there watching Quinn Ewers give up a fumble six, I'm like, why do I do this? Yeah. Why do I watch this? Why do I do this to myself?

It hurts. Yeah, it's like, you know, here's it or now. Sports fandom is 99% pain. Yeah. Yeah, as I'm saying, very few times, very few people in this world get to circle a team and organization to go, all they do is give me

championships. Unless you were born in Boston in like 1990. Right. Yeah. I mean, even Laker fan right now is kind of feeling it for a team that's all those championships. Yeah, they went 10 years in between and then won the one on 2020, the bubble championship. Yeah. And they had to ask you last night by Victor Wemanniam and the San Antonio Spurs.

Frauds! Who's been telling you there are frauds for two weeks? Be yours. Sorry with the Rockets. So, yeah, I will join the fan club. And I'll even buy gear. But I need more. I need something that they're not going to,

that they've never predicted to do. That's go to the Super Bowl. It can happen, baby. Beat Kansas City. You probably need Buffalo to beat Baltimore. Well, no. The easier path would be Buffalo, but you'd be playing it in Orchard Park.

Yes. And my guess is late January in Orchard Park isn't going to be a, well, first of all, this weekend in Kansas City is going to be cold A.F. your dogs no matter what your dog's the rest of the way no matter what from here all into the Super Bowl and probably at least a touchdown dog in each one of the games probably yeah but that shouldn't matter so you need to go on like a new york giant's 2007 run that's true that makes a lot of sense you got a better quarterback than eliam an

manning i'll say it right now it's a fraud of a hall of fame and you got a better receiver than david tarry right absolutely i mean they don't have a tight-in better was jeremy shocky on those teams Who knows? Full breakdown of the 07 Giants. What are we doing here on 66 WFAN? And the Giants in 2007. Go straight to the Hall of Fame.

Tom Brady can't hold his jack. Look at the results. And I missed Derek Jeter. Where's Jeter? Alex Bregman can't hold Derek Jeter's jack. Let's get the phones. Long Island. You're going to talk some island as hockey.

Let's do it. 66 WFAN. 713. Let's go pick the 790. Let's go make the regular speak here. 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90. The big NFL story does not revolve around Houston, Kansas City this Saturday. It's going on four hours to the north of us. We'll discuss that after and tell you about the folks at Big City Wings.

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I'd be surprised if five-star restaurants around town, don't go into Big City and say, just give us a quarter of your dressing. It's this that good. Get there tonight, enjoy what's going on? We get college basketball tonight. We've got, I'm sure there's some hockey on. Or just go have time with your family and friends.

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at any of the 13 Big City Wing locations. Finally one near you, you simply go to bigcitywings.com. Matt Thomas, Ross Villariel. It's the Matt Thomas Show with Ross on Sports Talk 790. You know, we were talking about how tough it is to be a sports fan. Let's be Vikings talk 790 today. Two weeks ago, you go to Detroit. You play the last regular season game.

Yeah? You win that? Don't do that. Do you want some lute fish, Matt? The nastiest fish. Nassiest dish you will ever serve anybody in your life. Is San Darno D'Solution, Matt? All right.

That's more North Dakota than is in Minnesota, but I see what you're going with. Sorry, there, Matt. So you win that game, you're the number one seed in the NFC playoffs. You don't play until Saturday night. That's if Minnesota beats Detroit. Well, guess what? Detroit beat Minnesota. Rather beat them rather handily.

And then you're the number five seed, the top walled card. Yes. Having to go on the road. By the way, you thought you were going to Los Angeles. And then you went to Phoenix and said, which probably probably helps you a little bit because you're not playing in front of as many Rams fans. Yes. So then you jump out of playing, go to Phoenix.

And you lay an egg. yesterday and you're out of the playoffs. So you go from this amazing run with Sam Darnold running things. Which we have to have a conversation about that too. To losing week 17 or week 18. To losing in the wild car round. Imagine what Viking Talk 790 is right now. That's despair.

The system is unfair. You're already having the is Sam Darn. Do you keep Sam Darnold conversation? You weren't supposed to have that three weeks ago. Three weeks ago, it's like you got a minimum franchise, maybe sign him long term, and trade J.G. McCarthy. It's so funny how it works in the NFL. Literally two bad games and we're like, I don't know.

Is Sam Donald the guy or has the clock struck midnight on this guy? He's turned into a pumpkin. And it's a legitimate conversation. 35 touchdowns, 12 picks, 4,300 yards. And you're wondering if you should keep the guy. At the end of the day, it's got to be yes, right? Well, I mean, I honestly, I was traveling in both particular situations. I didn't see our last game against the Lions, and I certainly didn't see yesterday because I were working the Rockets.

You tell me, 27 to 9 is not good. 31 to 9 before that. The stat numbers for Sam Darnel was 25 of 40. That's not overly efficient. 40 attempts. 245 yards. It's a little more than six yards in a temp. on an I&T. T.J. Hawkinson was your main go-to guy,

5-4-4 with a touchdown. Man. You think, I think it's absolutely a really painful off-season for Minnesota. Because if you goof on this decision, you're really potential taking several steps back. And here's the thing, what does Justin Jefferson want?

Yeah. And the thing is, like the the Brian Flores' defense that he runs is supposed to be super effective against the West Coast Sean McVeigh-Stile and they just scored on them like and I mean

DeNeil Hunter played Cashman Harrison Smith like oh how how did they give up so many points this they were supposed Sam Darnall isn't supposed to be winning them games Sam Darnel isn't supposed to go out there and throw 400 yards and three touchdowns every single game

his defense is supposed to be the backbone of it. So maybe even though he wasn't perfect the last couple of games, okay, not good the last couple of games? Let me ask you this. Why don't we make it nice and simple? Franchise tag him. He's going to get compensated. What is that? What is that? Even $50, $45 million somewhere in there? So, honestly, you look at the resume of Sam Darnel.

What does he have to stand on and say, I don't deserve to be franchise tag? What are you doing to me? No, he's going to have, he'd have no choice but to sign it. That's, if I was Minnesota, and I know that It's so weird that people just don't want to use a franchise tag. But if this is a no better indication of when you should use it, it's right here. Because you want to pay Sam, but it's looked very murky the last couple of weeks. And you went and spent a first round pick on J.J. McCarthy, who you thought was your franchise quarterback. To get rid of a guy who's never taken a snap for you, that's pretty painful too,

especially when you obviously had him very high in your list because you drafted. him in the first round. J.J. McCarthy is a dart on the board. It's going to be up to, it's going to be risk versus reward, and that's anything in the NFL with evaluation in the quarterback. Just like in the NFL with the Kansas City Chiefs. Alex Smith was a very capable, successful

quarterback for the Chiefs, and they said, you know what, Alex, we appreciate you. Thank you very much for your services. The guy behind you, we think we've evaluated. I think they knew. It seemed like Andy Reid knew. Does Kevin O'Connell? No. That's a good question.

And I mean, I would trust Andy Reid's evaluation over Kevin O'Connell. Connell's a good coach. Look, I don't manage a salary cap. But to me, if you don't know what J.J. McConnell is, McCarthy is because he's been hurt. So he's not even Pat Mahomes who's been practicing and working out and being with me. You have zero indication of what J.J. McCarthy is except what was on his college tape. Tell Sam, hey, man, Sam, we love you. We're going to make your financial dreams come to next year for. the one-year franchise tag.

And then if you continue to do what you did for us during the course of the year, we'll figure out long-term of something and move on with JJ. But what I would do is if I was the Vikings, I'd say, Sam, look at our situation. What would you do in our spot? And then Sam would probably say, well, look what I did for you this year. Give me a four-year deal worth $200 million.

You explore what you can get for J.J. McCarthy in trade. You just listen to offers. I guess the bigger questions. And I don't have to answer this because I got an at the game last night. Would I better have Sam Donald been able to beat the Los Angeles Rams?

I don't think so. 31 points a lot to a good, not great Rams offense. 27. It was 31. 31 was the week. I'm sorry, the Lions was 31. 27 the night, excuse me, 27 the night, yeah. I mean, let me look at LA's offensive production here.

Matthew Stafford, 19 to 27, 209. It's okay. Karen Williams at 16 for 76 Higby was their main go-to-key. Cooper Cup only called one pass-hish. How the hell they...

How did they score 27? Turnovers. I don't know. I would do a one-year deal, but you know what? We'll see. Let me get to a biscuit before the top of the hour on 790 and 1056. Biscuit, good morning to you.

Cooper Matt. Yes, sir. I'm with you on that with Sam Darnold. Let me just say that. I would, if there ever time to do a franchise tag, this is it. You know, I mean, he's only done it one year.

You got at least see him do it twice before you you know, give an extended contract, I would think. And then you got to least let JJ get healthy before you know what you got in him. So classic case of franchise tag. Yeah, but maybe, you know what? But it's so

funny though, Biscuit, you know this watching the NFL. These teams do not like using the franchise tag. I mean, hell, the Texans have used it a couple times in their existence. It's almost like tabooish, which, again, if you're Sam, this has found money for you. You worked your ass off. You deserve to get a hellacious payday for one year.

And let me take you something. If you're good and they still want to go with J.J. McCarthy long term, you'll go find somewhere else to play. Good quarterbacks will always find a place to play football. And he'll be compensated. I don't think Sam Donald's like, oh, it was my dream to be the next franchise quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings. He found a place that was not New York and did well.

Good for him. Yeah, but what's the market for Sam Donald now after these last two? I don't know. That's what I'm saying. The safety valve is the franchise tag. Yeah, right. Let me say this for a lot. I think the Texans mark me down for the Texans are better than they were last year.

I just think the defense is vastly improved. And the offense maybe took a little step back, but some of that is due to injuries. and the teams that they played this year were much tougher than the teams they played last year. So I think if you're looking at the organization as a whole, I think they're better off than they were a year ago. Now they're not still one of the elite teams, but all you can ask is for improvement, in my opinion, if you want to, you know, they're better than what they were.

And then lastly, Ross, my boy Whitmore last night, did you see him, Ross? Oh, your boy Whitmore, what did he do? He was passing the ball. Matt, am I wrong? I think Whitmore passing the ball more in the first quarter last night and he did in the previous game. I'm glad he's finally listening to some instructions.

What was the stat you gave me yesterday, Matt, about the assist numbers? He has more points in the association with fewer assists than anybody else in the NBA. He was the acting. But remember Matt? I know you remember this sequence, Martin. I think that was a big sequence in the game

to end of the third quarter. And they were down like 13 or so, and then look at the game was about a game. get away from him and he had Whitmore and some of the bench guys in there and they made like a 9-1 run to cut the like and that last played a third quarter when they, the ball got tipped back out to Whitmore

and he was there for a three-pointer and lo and behold he didn't jacked and he took a couple dribbles, kicked at the holiday in the corner and the holiday in the corner and how they hit a three-point to end the quarter. Wow. And I was like, okay am I right now? Let me tell. Let me tell you about Cam Whitmore. He's got us, he's got a guy,

he's got space and a rotation. He's got minutes for him. Make the most of it, my man. That's all I'm saying. Jabari's going to be another two. Yeah, Jabari's going to be on another month at least. Tauri, said, I'm no idea when his return is. There's minutes for him to grab every single night. Just smile, get out there, do things that you may want you to do,

and you're going to have an opportunity to play 18, 20 minutes a game. And for this point in his young NBA career, he should be more than satisfied with that. Yes, sir. And last night, he did it, man, because we didn't feed him taking the four court like we did the previous game. No. Yeah. I mean, Whitmore brings much more to the table. Now, defensively, Tate's going to be a more professional effort. But from a shooting perspective, all different spots on the floor, it's Cam Whitmore over Jayhaw. And I think Jayshon knows that. Second hour, the Matt Thomas show begins in a manner of moments. Would you please join us, 713-212-5-790? 7-1-3-2-790. The Matt Thomas show with Ross continues. We have gut feelings in one-half hour, the news at noon. And Ross's NFL rewind. And we've got to get to Jerry Jones, too. Prime? Indeed. 11 o'clock, 7.90.

Launch timers. This is the Matt Thomas show. 11.03 on Sports Talk 790. It is the Matt Thomas show at Ross. We are with you today until 2 o'clock. I'll be hanging with you at 1. And then Gordy's going to come in and do the last hour with Ross. We have gut feelings at 1130.

12 o'clock the news at noon. NFL rewind at 1230. A lot going on today. Why'd you guys be a part of it? And ladies too. Busy, busy, busy show. 713, 212, 570. All right.

I'm not going to mention, this is the last time I bring up Jordan Schultz's name, because he's just a, I mean, he's a douchebag. I mean, it's just really no way to say it. You're going to ban him from the show like Mex Mayan. Oh, by the way, before you go to that, I don't mean to. Wait a minute, that actually works. Mex, Mayan. There is, and I'm going to tip our, give ourselves a hat,

tip on this one. Yes. Pat, don't hurt yourself patting yourself on the back, Maddie. Well, we're going to do it anyway. Too bad. This is going to live with this. Yesterday at 956, Ross and I made it and said, why don't we not bring up Mex Mayan the whole show? Yes. And you said, that's a great idea. Mm-hmm. So we didn't bring up Mex Mayan at any point during the show yesterday. We went from 10 o'clock until 2. Yes. Talked Texans. Breaking it down.

NFL. Mm-hmm. Rockets. College football. 70 sitcoms. 70 sitcoms. Taylor. All these things.

All the hits. And we didn't bring up Max Mayan. Connor didn't bring him up. No, he didn't. And he wanted to. Did you really? Were you like, hey, can we get into that comments? Really?

Okay. I mean, I guess. I mean, Connor, you're part of the show, too. If you wanted to, we should have done it. You know. he's kind of like our sounding board yes but we didn't do it and we did a four-hour radio show and didn't do it so

I want to give ourselves an applause I'm going to guess the only show in the marketplace there's no question we were the only show in the marketplace it didn't bring it up now I don't listen to a lot of other shows I don't listen to any other shows I hate listen to a lot sadly because I'm a pathetic piece of crap but that's a different

issue for a different time so Ross congratulations Connor congratulations to you as well we were able to actually organically come up with four hours of material instead of and then not having to go to the lowest hanging of fruit to go grab somebody saying

that the certain team is on a biweek. So we're officially done with that. And by the way, if you're the Jets and you hire him, you're just making a stupid, stupid decision. I would, well, you never, you never count out Woody Johnson doing something crazy, but I would still be utterly shocked. All right, so back to the douche.

Rorden Roltz. He's now apparently works for Fox, which is embarrassing in itself. He grifted his way up there. He's given out so many. The first time we had him on this show, he said sources close to him were saying that Dwight Howard was going to sign with the Mavericks. And we gave him, you gave him an out because Sam Amico was talking about the rockets at that time. And he said, no, I'm sticking with my sources. He's going to be a Maverick.

He's gotten so much stuff wrong. So he moved on to the NFL, and he reports that there had been conversations, nothing formally but conversations between Dion Sanders and the Dallas Cowboys. Ross, when Colorado hired Prime, Dion, they had to know this was going to be coming up. That Dion said all the right things in the interview, how much he loved Boulder, how much he loved the Pac-12, now being 12, how much he's ready to. to restore greatness to once a great football academy. But this is going to happen for the rest of Dion Sanders' tenure at Colorado.

And honestly, Ross, while I wouldn't be surprised by it, if I was Colorado, I'd start to get pissed eventually. I don't want to have to hear about, like, if we hired you to go work in a radio station and say Detroit. Okay. And all you wanted to do was talk about where the next place you were going. If I was Detroit's boss, I'd be mad like, man, we just hired you here or paying you well to work here. I don't want to hear about your next job. And I think that's what Deion's bringing to the table no matter where he goes.

Because I do believe he wants the ultimate. He wants to be able to do it at the highest level in the NFL. There's no way that Deion Sanders thought in his life. I'm going to get into college coaching, and my ultimate goal is to go to a mid-level Big 12 school. probably not. Now, do the sons have something to do with this? Does this, is this a case where he's trying to get some more money for Colorado? Is this a case where he's just wanting to at least kick the tires on the first time he's been associated with an NFL job?

Because Deanne apparently, and again, if you can only trust what you read or what you see reported, Deanne apparently wanted to put its name in the hat for the Las Vegas Raiders job, and the Raiders said like, no, we're good. And Jerry Jones is an old coot. He's old. He's basically senile. Yes. And if Dion Sanders calls him, Jerry Jones, Ross, he's taking the phone call.

I don't blame Jerry for doing it. It's one of his old guys. He's dynamic. He would certainly move the needle even more than it already gets moved in Dallas. But I'm sorry. And I know that you're not the biggest Mike McCarthy fan. I'm not. But replacing Mike McCarthy with Dionne Sanders is frankly embarrassing.

Yeah. If you replace Mike McCarthy, you're going to be able to. going with somebody that you think is young and up and coming going to be the next big thing in coaching. Go get somebody off the Detroit coaching staff, period. Yeah, Ben Johnson or Aaron Glenn. Bring Aaron Glenn home to Texas. There's plenty of people that have paid their dues that know the NFL backwards and forwards.

If Deion thinks being a college coach takes a lot of time, there's a reason why NFL coaches largely burn out very quickly is because they don't ever leave their house. I mean, they never leave their offices. And you're going to, if you think second-guessing is bad, Rossi in Denver by the local TV station, imagine the national opponents want to do it. Yeah, if he's having beef with the local Colorado Springs reporter, how's that going to go over the NFL media? Yeah. But as you said, it would be a 100% circus if he went to Dallas. I would love it from that standpoint. I'll believe it when I see it. I will stick. I don't think it is not going to happen. I would be shocked if it did.

Do you think he'll ever be an NFL head coach? I'm going to say. You're saying out of coaching in three years, so that would be probably a no. I'll say no. Yeah, if the Cowboys hire him, I'll up it to four years. I mean, think about the Dallas Cowboys coaches. And somebody put a list on this on social the other day, and I forgot what it was. But the number of people that have been the head coach of Dallas Cowboys since Jerry's taken over.

I mean, one of the things, and you can complain about Mike Tomlin in Pittsburgh until you're blue in the face. but the Pittsburgh Steelers have been good for a long period of time, not great, but very good, because they don't make changes on the fly and as regular as they have. Well, and I think a bit of luck. Probably so. Every franchise would like to say we've only hired three coaches in 60 years.

So let's get to a little more of a medium of a franchise that has not done a lot of coaching changes. Maybe there's nobody. Maybe this is the norm. Yeah. I'm trying to think of success. Philadelphia. got away from Peterson

Yeah Well Andy Reid I mean Andy Reid's been in two spots Andy Reid was great but they fired him But I mean he can stay in Kansas City For as long as he wants Mm-hmm

Dallas has had One I mean even when Parcells was there You knew he wasn't going to be there for the long term He was past his prime there Yeah Yeah that was even

Okay so Jason Garrett Wade Phillips I forgot Yeah Bill Parcells, Dave Campo, Chan Galey, Barry Switzer, then Jimmy Jones. It's not as much as, like, say, the Browns.

Well, but the Dallas Cowboys never, never, ever want to be the same conversation as the Cleveland Browns. Gary was 10 years? Yeah. Then five of it was,

when are you going to fire him? And he was like, no, we like him. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, he was for sure the chosen one. And my guess is it was even painful for Jason Garrett to get let go. Because it took,

It took years of non-playoff victories for Jason Garrett to finally get the hook. So, you know. Who's been the worst? Probably the Bears, maybe. Bears are Browns? Browns. Browns. Browns.

For a few years. Well, you, Jacksonville hiring Urban Meyer. That was a disaster. That was one and done. Yeah. Bears. Eberflus, Nagee, John Fox, Mark Trussman, Lovie Smith, Dick Geron, since 99.

It's not terrible. Texans. Oh God. DeMeco. Cully. Lovy. Yes. Capers. Kubiak. Am I missing anybody?

Bill O'Brien. Bill O'Brien. Well, there are a lot of teams in the NFL that can't be a bragging, but they're coaching hires. I mean, they went on a run with three coaches and three head coaches in three years. That runs it up. That runs up the totals. Certainly does. The Jack used to be era ran the totals up, and then they wanted to go with Josh McCown.

So here's a show. shout out. All of you Dallas fans that are dying for thirst for airtime on a Houston radio show, successful one, by the way. When I say Coach Prime at AT&T Stadium coaching the Cowboys, what is your initial

I'm not just a gut feeling, but what is your initial feeling about them even talking to each other? 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90. Rockets with a nice win against Memphis last night. They've won four consecutive games. Rams out, perform them Vikings.

Vikings are out after a spectacular season. What do you do with Sam Darnel? Texans getting ready for the Chiefs. A lot to get to today. And Alex Breggman still looking for a spot. Incredible. 11. 14. 713.212.5.790. 713-212-5-790.

Back to Matt Thomas and Ross Villarreal. On Sports Talk 790. Fill the curtain back on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. I said Ross, what would you like to get to? And he said the Manchester City transfer window? Yes. The January transfer window has been very fruitful for Manchester City. A couple of centerbacks, they signed, and a striker.

That sounds great. Phone lines are open for that as well. It's 713-212-5-790. We have gut feelings come out of the bottom of the hour. You got anything juicy on your gut feelings this week? No, I can try. We can make our predictions on the NFL games unless you want to hold us off. I guess that's bad radio.

Yes, Matt. I'm going to make one of the biggest predictions in the history of the segment coming up. Is it on a recorded line, though? Free on a recorded line. I think my locket a week was the Broncos when I said that when we're making our prediction. Did you go back and get the air check of the show on Friday? Oh, no, I forgot. You were too busy being a television star on Space City yesterday between five o'clock and six.

I had a busy day yesterday, Matt. I was on air for five hours. I should have deviarded it. That's a bad point on me. Why, it's fine. I want to look at your mannerisms. Look, let's see if you look like you were sweating bullets. I didn't have any sort of weird facial tick or like anything like that.

Did any of your friends send you text? May you look great on TV or maybe you should have got a shave or something like that? No, nobody said anything. Oh, well. Thanks. I'm saying, I owe that to you. Appreciate it. The only text I got was one asking me if I was distracted.

Were you? No. Oh, God. Now I felt somewhat bad that. No one paid attention to you. I even told my mommy and daddy I was going to be on. You had nothing from them. You had one person tension.

That's fine. If a TV shows on in the woods and no one watches it, is it really on? Well, honestly, and to be fair, most people are at 5 o'clock or either handling dinner or drum. You're really trying to help me out, man. I appreciate that. I feel like I've done enough crushing of you the last decade. I'll come over and give you a hug down. No, I don't need that anything.

Come here. Don't touch me. 713, 2,1. 2-5-790 7-1-3-21-5-7-90. So we got playoffs. And look, I don't want to do a lot of deep analytical breakdown. Let's do it. No, I said we're not going to do a lot of them.

Maybe later in the week. All right. You know what you ought to do? Thursday should be four full hours of Texans preview. I'm with it. I won't be here. So you can do all four hours. That's going to happen.

Knock it out. Yeah. You go leave. We'll talk some football. Have you got your guests on for Friday for our show Friday? Got our Casey guy on? Oh. Oh, you're going to be gone Friday? No, I'm here Thursday.

No, I won't be here Thursday. About here Friday. Should we get different people on every day from Kansas City? Yeah, let's give five people. Go to all the different TV affiliates, radio guys. Yeah. We can get the play-by-play guy. Touchdown, Kansas City.

What's his name you know? Mitch Holfis. Okay. I've never met him before. Okay. I'm sure he's wonderful. It's an iconic call for local football. Oh, I think people know that for sure.

Yeah. original uh that's the first i ever heard kevin harlan was when he was doing chiefs games he did chiefs games yeah way back in the day i know it's not as maybe prestigious or doesn't make as much money but he was born to do nfl on the radio yeah yeah he does it so good yeah he was born for radio television i think he's good he's great he's somebody that if harland gets any uh negativity it's he will probably inject more of a radio call on his TV broadcast and other people do. He can sometimes oversell like a third and three in the second quarter. It's like, all right, calm down, Kevin.

It's not like they just won the Super Bowl. But that's my only, but he's still great. Oh, no, he has too much energy. Like, it's not a bad criticism. Well, it's funny because Gus Johnson gets some of that sometimes. Yeah, that's way oversold too often. Yeah, we have a really good batch of broadcasters, but I would say if there was a criticism of the group,

that's running the national games that maybe they tend to overhype things. Like Tony Rummel tends to overhype things. People get a lot of Tony Rummel. I still like Tony Rummel a lot. I do. But I would have to say pound for pound right now when it comes to analysts, probably the most highly regarded analyst is Greg Olson from Fox Sports, former Carolina tie-in.

Tom Brady was getting crushed all weekend. Yes, he was. Yeah. A little too rigid. Just relax, Tom. See, I don't think he's bad at all. He's not bad. I agree.

I mean, would I replace him with Greg Olson? No. He's, yeah, he's, Greg Olson is better, but Tom Brady's a big name. But Tom Brady, he's a way, bigger start. And by the way, this won't be an issue in a couple of years. I'm firmly of the belief. I think you're on the right side. That he is going to go and be a huge, first of all, if he's a huge part Rossi of the Raiders' coaching search, that is complete conflict of interest. Yeah.

And he can't do his best possible job. If he can't go to coaches meetings, he can't watch practices, can't watch practices, can't interview players or coaches, can't criticize officials or the NFL. As a color, man, sometimes you've got to say the officials got it wrong. That's just part of the job. Yeah. And he can't do that. Yeah.

But again, if there was a most improved category, it'd be Tom Brady, but you don't put your most improved guy on the biggest game week after week after week. $300 million. Who has a Super Bowl this year? Fox. Hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. I mean, he chose the right year to jump in.

Yeah. I wonder if that probably wasn't an accident. Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah. Anybody that broadcast the Super Bowl is going to get incredible coverage. So if he was trying to build his brain outside of football, he's certainly to have been that. Man, it would be a great interview for him in the quarterback. Oh, never mind. He can't interview them. Now, his partner can do all the note-taking he wants, but there's just going to be a certain interaction

that you'd have face to face. He can't even Zoom. He can't do anything. He really can't even phone. He couldn't dial up. He couldn't call C.J. Straout tomorrow if you wanted to, to get his thoughts. It's against the rule. He's a part of an NFL team.

Can he send him an email questionnaire? Can he reach out on the WhatsApp app? Yeah, why not? Nobody ever finds out what's going on the WhatsApp. People love the WhatsApp. It's international. That's how I communicated with you. Yeah.

When I go international. Yeah. And there's no evidence of anything that you put. type on the WhatsApp. Is that true? Well, it's end-to-end encryption. So what you're talking about? You can delete them. Yeah, delete it, and there'll be no record of it. That's what's apps like it's what's apps like, hey man, you want

to keep things secret, you erase it, you never can find it again. If you're in that sort of thing. Okay. Just something out there. Thanks. Thanks, Matt. 1126 on Sports Talk 790. I wouldn't do that. But I like to keep my text clear. I know. You've got like three emails in your inbox. It freaks me out. I like

I've got like 10,000. I have very Very few text and very few emails. So people, like if, when I find, if anybody ever says, hey, Matt, you have that email on mine and I'll go, oh, no, I accidentally erase it. That's a lie. You aren't purposely erased out of 100. I erased it intentionally. No, thinking that I wasn't going to use it again. Now, my trash in my email is abundant.

There's like 10,000 there. But sometimes you don't have time to look for that up. So, yeah. Thanks, Matt, for the tips on your personal email life. Well, I'm just saying that, you know, at least. I'm being truthful now, as compared to a line to you earlier. The truth shall set you free. Is all that clean?

I hope so. Did the lay button for anything you just said? Put the dumb button out there. All right, gut feelings time. You ready? Yeah, I'm going to make one about college basketball. Ooh. Okay.

And it's not going to resonate, but that's okay. Okay. It's about the long ones to make it, the NIT. That's your rateful. But, hey, that is not true. Please. A lot of tournament appearances. Lots.

Dozens. All right. 713, 212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90. If you're new to the program, first of all, where the hell have you been? Second, we're damn glad to have you. This is the segment, the half hour of the show. We ask you to make your predictions about anything sports-related.

7-13-213-212-5-7-90. 7-1-2-2-1-7-90. We need your gut feelings. We need them now here on Sports Talk 790. Listen up, girls and boys. This has been so appealing. Because Ross and Matt Thomas. Yo, they got a gut feeling.

This is their gut feeling on the Matt Thomas show. All right, 1131 on 790. It is a Matt Thomas show with Ross. It's time for us to see how we did last week with our gut feelings. Give you some new ones. And then we hear from you, the great listeners, the great sports fans, the great people, the community that we call Houston, Texas. 713, 212, 790, 790.

213, 212.5.7.90. Time now, Rossi, for some gut feelings. How we do last week? Last week, Matthew, you're really going hot and heavy again. You had the Chargers beating the Texans by a touchdown. Texans covered the plus seven. Got it. Laramie Tunsel called for a penalty. No. That's another L. That's two nose. Rockets minus 12 and a half versus the Wizards. They won by like 23, I think. Thank you. Texas beats Ohio State. I was doing it because I was Team Ross. You did this on purpose.

I hate you. No chance. That's another L. Penn State wins the other game. That's another L. God, this has not been a good week for me. Why are we announcing this then? I think you're going to win this one.

Jimmy Butler stays in Miami. By the way, we've got an update from Shams on that after gut feelings. We'll have that. Okay. Let's see. I had the Texans beating the Los Angeles Chargers. and advancing to the divisional round of the AFC.

Brown Ross, the consistency is very appreciative. I thought they were going to win. I did. Kimee Fairbairn game winner. That was wrong. Amanda Thompson has the best career of the Young Rockets Corps. Jalen Green says... Jaylon Green's like a haul my beer on that one.

Yeah, but we'll see. We'll see. It's not a 45% three-point shooter, which he has been this last week. And I said, Eagles versus Ravens, Super Bowl, Ravens win it all. I have Ravens and Lions playing for the Super Bowl. By the way, I was not impressed with Philadelphia this weekend at all. I mean, I know they

beat Green Bay and it wasn't... It was really good defense, but I thought Hertz was rather average. Barclay was outstanding. Could have had a much bigger day, but he gave up the ball late in the contest just because he was running the clock out. I thought it was a very pedestrian game. The Eagles.

I think the Eagles are going to have a lot of trouble this week. Who are they playing this time? they are playing the hated Detroit Lions. No. No, it's Washington's Detroit. Philadelphia is playing the Rams in Philadelphia. They are going to have their hands full. These are divisional round.

This to me is the best weekend in sports. It's really good. It's so good. A lot of good things. All right. McConnell McGovern, Joe Mixon touchdown. Let's go. That's a hit. He had the Texans winning. That's a hit as well.

and he said the Rockets win three of their next four. And they've won four in a row. Wow. Even better. I'm still giving them a win on that. Yeah, absolutely. So that's your job. Yeah.

And those are the gut feelings from last week. All right, boys. You want to start Texans first against, do you want to hold off the later in the week? It's up to you guys. I'll do, I'll do a quick one. Please. I don't have a final prediction yet,

but they cover the eight and a half is what it opened at. Are you going to give me the opening line or do you want the current line right this second. I would have hopped on, if we lived on a legal state, I would have hopped on eight and a half in a second. I promise you. That's actually how I felt. The current line right now, seven and a half.

So you're telling me a point's making you really think about this. Seven and a half to eight and a half's big, Maddie. Texans cover the seven and a half. What's up? Connor, Texans, plus seven a half, or Kansas City minus seven and a half. Don't let your motions.

What those nine Texans T-shirts you wear weekly? I can hear the waffling. Yeah, he doesn't want it. He's very slow to the microphone on this one. Now, the spread, the matchup a few weeks ago was three and a half. But Pat Mahomes had three weeks to rest up from that bad ankle. Haven't played in what 20, it will be 24 days? They're going to be rusty.

I say the Chiefs, seven and a half. I don't want to. I don't like you right now. I'm so close to being deep steel, Matt. Can they score enough? The question is, now, if they play like they did this past weekend, that was the best offensive performance relative to the team they were playing. That's the best offensive performance of the year.

Yes, but whose defense is better? Kansas City's or the Chargers and you're playing. But Chargers is top 10 defense. They were number one in scoring. That's right. But you're also playing in 25-degree temperatures in front of 75,000 lunatics. Yeah, who are going to go get frostbite? losers

yeah I'm gonna I'm not going I'm not going I'm not going Rex Ryan on you here I'm going to just you're going to call it a bye week no I wouldn't do that that's stupid that'd be only an idiot would do that can't city give the seven and a half up

all right good you know what I'm feeling good you guys are doubting you're doubting the Texans like they were doubted last week you know there's a phrase called being a doubting Thomas I know you're always a doubting Thomas I doubt a lot of things by you. Look at you've done. You've covered the spread a few times in your life.

Hey, we've made it. You've also eaten a few spreads in your life, too. I destroyed them. All right. Rockets go two and one on the next road trip. Three games. Denver, Sacramento, Portland. Back to back.

The Denver, Sacramento one is brutal. You know why it's brutal? First of all, it's two, I mean, Denver's excellent. Sacramento is getting better. And secondly, the NBA doesn't realize that Denver to Sacramento is like a two, hour plus flight and the airport in Denver is far away from the city. I mean, we're not going to get there to like three o'clock in the morning. Once again? The next night. You're fine. Well, that's what I'm taking the day off. I'm going to sleep. I'm getting there until 3 a.m.

And the game's not for 15, 16 hours. And our private jets and our five diamond hotels. But I have to get my rest. I need to be at my best. I know. You got to change your massage booking time. appointment time. That's fine. Thinking about 12.30, 1 o'clockish. I'll listen. I'll have the I Heart at radio app on. Listen, because you told me to. The free shrimp cocktail messes up my eating schedule. The shrimp this year had been fantastic.

Really jumbo. The cocktail sauce has been nice and spicy. Oh, the jumbo golf shrimp for free on the private jet. Don't forget the eight-ounce fillets. Although they cooked more medium well to my liking, but we're going to try to fix that. The temperature is not right.

On my filet mignon. The lobster mac and cheese has been good Terrible Are you dead serious? There's lobster mac and cheese on these plates? Frequently, yes. Wait, actually? Yes.

Oh my God. It's really good. And I'm not a huge mac and cheese fan, but I like it. All right. Yeah, Rockets 2 and 1 on the trip. What else we got? Dion's not the couch, the coach, the Cowboys. Is that a low-hanging?

That's a low-hanger, right? No, no one with you, though. I mean, there's just no way, no hat. No way. Okay, no way know how Dion's the coach of the Cowboys. Matter of fact, I think I will go with on the Cowboys coaching search, it will be an assistant coach somewhere in the league right now. You want to make Matt Thomas Show with Ross show history? Oh, please. Let's both put our names on it at the same time.

Dionne Sanders will not be the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys. Dionne Sanders, say it with me, will not be the head coach of the Cowboys. Putting our names on it. Boom. We just did it. First time ever. Ever, ever, ever, ever. Follow sports empty.

Don't record this if we were wrong. Yeah, by the way, delete this immediately. Connor, what you got this week? How's Missouri basketball? Don't we got any predictions about them coming up? They won their first SEC game in like over a year the other day. Mm-hmm. So that was nice.

But other than that, I don't know. But the Rockets go three and one over their next four games, so I'll include the road trip plus the Martin Luther King Day game against the Pistons. That's real nice of you. So three and one. Okay, I like that. And then Notre Dame is your national champion. Oh, oh, I'm going to Ohio State for the championship.

I'm really not even more about the spread. I don't even care. I don't even know what the spread is. Just give me a good game. Is that fair? I'm not going to watch. Yeah, you are. You're going to have it in the background.

You might be right. I hate you for that. I know. Ohio State minus eight. I got one for you. Wow, that's healthy. Half of America is going to love Carrie Underwood singing at the inauguration, and half America is going to...

She's singing at the inauguration. Yeah, and half people are going to hate her. When is it? It's the 20th. Okay. So 50% are going to love it. 50% are going to hate it. If you're going to hate it, why would you even turn it on? I haven't watched an inauguration...

Because you go run to your social media and tell you that you meant you hate something. I didn't watch... I think the last inauguration I watched was Obama 08. I don't remember ever watching an inauguration. Yeah, I think it was the Reese Franklin was up there or something. Oh, you better think. She wasn't doing that. Why not?

Why's you trying to do it to America? You better think, think. About the checks and balances. About freedom. Republicans and Democrats, all freedom. I like that. She just did a governmental, she did a government one-on-one version. Yeah, she did.

You better think about the judiciary committee. I thought those Senate seats. You better think. All right. about taking down the deficit. You better think. It's talking about the majority whip. All right.

That's enough. All right. I'd like to apologize for the last 90 seconds of the show. That was the least, that was the most political this show has gotten in 15 years. Oh my God. You better think about government shut down. You better think about lowering the taxes right now. I'm going to listen to Ruth on the flight to Denver.

I already decided. By the way, I have downloaded you should. Two new shows to watch. It's part of a series on Netflix. Okay. And I'm going to give you the name of it. I'm not even going to let you guess. Okay, well, while you're looking at it up. Any more gut feelings, boys? A change is going to come. Aretha Franklin's version, it'll change your life.

It's great. Put that one on, Matt. Okay. Highly suggested. Nice. Any more gut feelings right now? We're going to have a phone calls next. So I just want to make sure we got all of ours taking care of here. Alex Breggman's signs within the next two weeks. I cannot do that. Although that seems like a pretty even,

that's a nice call on your part. I'm still not convinced, though. I don't believe it's going to be before spring training, like a middle of spring training, but, because if you're, don't you want to get your, your, your,

um, your, your, your bearings, you want to figure out where you're going to live, because you're going to be in theory for a long time, right? Do you think,

what's the relationship like, Jordan Montgomery literally fired. Fired him. What is the day, I'm not going to try to predict that there's discord or discontent between Boris and Bregman. But do you think, I mean, his hardline stance so many times and it's fallen short the last couple of years. And you know what? You and I predicted, and I think I said this. I said, Boris couldn't have had a worse year. There's no way he's going to repeat his lack of success.

Well, Soto's getting taken care of. Soto is fine, but you and I could have negotiated Soto's deal, right? Boris probably got a little more than we could have. Yeah, that's true. By the way, the name of the doubt of the new series I've been watching on Netflix on my flight to Denver today will be called Jerry Springer fights camera action. There's two episodes already blocked the motive. That is the most Matt Thomas thing I've ever heard of.

Good, you should. You'll watch it too. You'd enjoy it. I've passed over it already on Netflix. So next two weeks. I mean, I would watch. Next two weeks, you say. Yes, next two weeks. I'll jump in on that as well.

Okay. Connor, last thing from you? Rockets will get an All-Star, whether it's Outby or Jalen. Ooh. Somebody did the All-Star team reserve. That is very... Reserve could happen. Honestly, Jamlin's playing towards it.

But he's got to do it for another couple weeks. Numbers aren't there for the season, though. He was not scoring well before. Yeah, but he might get player the month in January, and he's playing that way. Now's going to go along towards an All-Star. I'll also matter who's going to be the coaches, too. He's still just averaging 21 a game. 34% from three.

But you see the Rockets last night? They're great. Do you see how efficient he was last night? Yeah, he's just saying. If only he could do that every night. Hopefully he will. To the phones next, 713, 212. 570. We'll start with Garrett. We'll go to James. The rest of you, come on and join us. Give us your gut feelings, your predictions about the world of sports or for that matter of life. 713212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90. I want to tell you about Uptown appliance repair. These are the wonderful people that said, Matt, hey, send your audience to us because we're going to fix their ice makers and aren't working. We're going to fix their washer dryers. We're going to clean out their dryer vents. We're going to do anything when it comes to household appliances. That's why you call uptown.

Appliance Repair at 281-7589978. That's 281-758-9978. 100% customer satisfaction. You will be giving that to them or they're not leaving your house because they're going to do the work done right the very first time. They've got a great reputation. In fact, they are BBB A plus rated. Very few companies can say that. Guess what uptown appliance repair can.

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Ross and Matt Thomas. Yo, they got a good feeling. Lunch timers, gut feelings. continue now on the Matt Thomas show. All right, time now for your gut feelings at 713-212-1-2-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90. If you want to send us your... We don't want them on tweets.

We want them on the phones. We want to hear from the great people of Houston, Texas. Yes. We love you. Some more than others. Garrett and Cyprus. Garrett, what's in your gut this week at 1151? Good.

It's, you'll talk about it earlier. It's Alex Breggman. I'm winning in the next two weeks. I don't think it's going to be money at a shortstop, different position. But he's going to make more than money. Someone's going to see that value over $25 million. So I think it's coming for him. All right.

Unfortunately, you were glitching a lot there. I don't know what the exact prediction was. I think he said he was agreeing with us. That would be the next two weeks. I think so. Now, let's look over our bets just to make sure. Yes. Six years, we Dutch.

Correct. Seven-year contractor, higher. I win. I buy you lunch. Five or less, you buy me. Yes. We have, I believe, nothing on the line on the dollar amount. No.

I have under 175. 001 and higher. Yeah, but that's just a bet. That's just bragging rights. Yes. And then we also do have a Kyle Tucker bet. That's a hard line, 7.5. I have the over.

And I have the under at 7.5. Let's go. Have a good season. If he has a good season, you're going to lose. If he has a season and he's hurt again, you're going to win. To be brutally honest, I really thought after I made the original Bregman bet that I was going to really take a big L on this. You're alive. I feel like I'm, momentum is shifting here.

I don't think you're going to win unless you get the three-year opt-out deal. Which, man, he shouldn't do that at 30 years old. But isn't it? Again, you and I don't know the inner workings of this, but it's eerily quiet. Sometimes things are darkest before the dawn mat. What book is that? I don't know who said that, but it's actually not even... Is that a Bonnie Tyler song, too?

It's not even scientifically true. Things are darkest like at midnight. It's true. 713-212-790. James, what's in your gut? Yeah, my gut is take the under in the Texan game and take the under in the National Championship game. take them in both games.

What are the numbers on that, do we know? Texans total is low. I think it's 41 and a half. If I'm taking the under, Ross, I'm also probably taking Kansas City to win the game and cover. I'm thinking if it's low, it's going to be probably 25 to 10,

something like that. 25 is a random number. 24-10. 24-14. 24-14? that's an under you said 41 is the overrunner there right yeah and what about the national championship game oh uh

I just saw it was it 52 and a half or something like that I'll go look it's gonna take a second stall tell the people to fall I got 45 and a 45 and a half um that feels about right really I don't think I'm not anticipating a 31 17 game I don't think Oklahoma State I'm excuse, Ohio State, the other OSU, by 8.

By the way, here's my another gut feeling for you, gang. The Cougars only lose one conference game this entire season. Over. I don't want to say. You're going to go with that? U of H. Cougars only lose one conference game. It's a gut. It's not to put my name on it.

It's just going to be a gut. One conference game this season. Is the conference that week, or you're just saying the Cougars are that strong? I think the Cougars are that strong, and I think some of the thorough breads, the Blue Bloods of the League are a little down. Arizona's a little down. Yeah, but TCU

down. You're always going to have that random weird loss. Yeah. Like West Virginia. Didn't well they play with West Virginia tomorrow night? Yeah. Here in Houston though. I mean, if they do, if they're going to be like national championship favorites. Well, I mean,

I can anticipate them being a top three C in the NCAA tournament. Four teams right now in the top 25. Baylor Bears, Jayhawks, Cougars, and Cyclones. two team in the country. Oh, you know, I forget I got to retract that. That was kind of sick. That was a little much.

Yeah, get rid of that. That's the key thing about it. Yeah. Cougars will have two or fewer losses in league play. Okay. And I don't even know if Calvin Samson would be happy at that point. I'm also proud of you for saying fewer instead of less. Man, it's great. Well, we're trying to add the vernacular of the show. A lot of English majors' favorite show.

That's what we're trying to be. Oh, God. It's like, I've been telling Carlis, I said, Carling, the number one thing you have to do is take as many English classes as you can. If you're going to be any sort of writer in college. She's trying to be a writer? No, but I'm saying having a great vocabulary

is one of the things that I think will go a long way in your life. Anywhere. And she just... You can always impress interviewers, friends, Not impressed, but you know I'm saying. Like you sound smarter than your things are going to go wet better for you. Or in my case, you sound dumber. I dumb can't read good.

You sound like, you're doing great, man. You sound like Gronk. Patriots, coach, Vrabel, good. Yeah, he doesn't necessarily use a lot of verbs, which is hard in life. I have to use verbs. He's a lovable airhead, though. At least he's nice. I don't know.

Some people are stupid and mean. guys on a set is a little much. I said the exact same thing during the middle. I was like, do we need to pay how much is Fox paying all? Is everybody going to like tune out because Terry Bradshaw's not there? Terry Bradshaw is like got to be in his mid-70s. He doesn't provide. He's like the Lee Corso

of that show now. Have you ever sat there and be like wow? Oh my, what a great point by Terry Bradshaw. Now Terry 30 years ago had his fastball. Yeah. But everybody loses its fastball at some point. Oh my God. And can we can we just take Lee Corso up behind the barn? it's too much.

And do what to him? How about when... It's old yeller time. How about we do this? We don't take him to a barn. We fly him back to his house in Orlando. We get him a night nurse and we call it a day and let him relax at his home. Look, just build a fake ESPN set at his home.

He won't know the difference. Oh, I think the key would be using an AI league carso. Tell me. That's what you're going to go with. I'm just like, they're trotting him out there and I just feel bad for him. He's collecting a check. Don't feel sorry for him. Yeah, you're right.

All right. That's got feelings for this week. We have the news at noon in a mere moments. 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-2-790. Speaking of Lee Corso and low energy, how's your energy, Ben? How do you feel? Look, I'm telling you right now,

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S-Y-N-E-R-GenXHealth.com. That's centergenicshealth.com. Lunch timers. This is the Matt Thomas Show. 123 at H-Town. What's happening in luncht timers? Good afternoon to you. This is our number three of the Matt Thomas Show at Ross on Sports Talk 790.

Now we go to the anchor desk. When you think of the great most trusted men in news, you think of a Peter Jennings, a Tom Brokaw, a Ted Koppel, a Dan Rather, Rossville, Real, in the News Center with the News at New. Yes, Matthew, last night in a battle for Western Conference supremacy for teams not named the Oklahoma City Thunder who are going to run away with the West. the Rockets took on the Memphis Grizzlies and didn't back down despite a fourth quarter deficit. I'm trying to play. I don't know. Uh-oh. My computer? Is this working? I don't know.

All right. Well, there goes the Emmy for you. It's not playing. Production value. Absolutely sucks. Can you play number 26? So let me try this. This doesn't work at all? We're a billion-dollar company. Can we have equipment that works? Why isn't this working? We have no music. We've got no production. What are we doing here? Tomson comes up, left side of the floor. Bambleed in front of him.

Bounce past and Jalen between the rings. 38 seconds. Jalen gets by two defenders, down the lane, up and under to the window. He'll score it. He hung up in the air, and it ties a career high with 42. Rockets 1-16, 115. Morant, underneath, stepped out of bounds. He went against two rockets.

The deflection on the baseline, and the Rockets have the ball. with 27.9 seconds remaining. Rockets hang on to win 120 to 118. Matt, as you told me, actually, a Desmond Bain three-pointer at the end of the game giving the over and the cover to the Memphis Grizzlies. But the Rockets get the win. Yeah, so you could have had it other way.

You could have had a rocket cover and an under or you could have had a Memphis cover and an over, and that's what you got. That's why Benning. on, first of all, betting on sports is dangerous. Betting on basketball is especially dangerous. And Vegas pretty good at setting lines. Well, Matt, now with the 26 to 12 record number two in the NBA, we continue, or in the

Western Conference of the NBA, we continue to say earlier on in the year, it's early, it's early, it's early, it's early. It's getting late early. Almost halfway through the season, now two games clear of the Grizzlies for that number two spot. Plus the tiebreaker. So am I allowed to? This is a ruling for the show. Can I start talking about who the Rockets would want to play in the first round of the playoffs?

If the playoffs were to start today, they would take on the winner of the Lakers, Minnesota 7-8 playing game. Huh. So they play in the winner advances and then they get another chance to lose, right? Yeah, 7-8 loser plays the 9-10 winner. It's very confusing. That's not really confusing. That's a lot of problem.

No. I'm going to make you wait until at least after the All Star Break. I can't do Rockets playoff watch ever. All Star Break. Come on. I hate you. All right. We're 38 games into the year. It's an 82 game season. But on Pace Guy says they're going to win 55 games. Man. Well over the over is what Vegas thought. What was it? 41 and a half? I remember Vegas giving us a positive number, and it's still not being good enough to be the top 10th.

I said 45, and you said 48, I think. They're going to win there. Are they going to win 55 games? Probably not. I wouldn't bet on it, but they're going to be way past, I think they're going to beat my, they're going to get my 48 at least.

If they go 48 and 34, they would be 22 and 22 the rest of the way. I mean, I don't think they're going to play 500. I don't think they're going to... It's going to be hard pressing to play 685 ball the rest of the way. But I'm there to watch it if they do. All right, Matt, moving along on the news at noon.

Jerry Jones, apparently, according to... Well, first it was, we should give credit when it's due because... No, don't say it. I'm not giving credit. He said it first. No, I don't care. I'm not going to credit on the show. Credit? Nope.

Jordan Schult said it. Oh, you give him credit. He's gotten a lot of things wrong. He's a terrible reporter and normally not trustworthy, but he was right on this one. And probably a dushy human being, too. Probably is very few friends. I mean, his dad makes a decent cup of coffee. It's fine.

I said decent. I wouldn't think of like it, robust, flavorful. Hmm. Wow. You like robust, don't you? Yes. The Dallas Cowboys in the early stages of their search to replace Mike McCarthy, one name already known, former Cowboys cornerback and current Colorado head coach Dion Sanders.

Adam Schaefter also saying there is mutual interest between, the two parties. Now again, I would be shocked as you and I have both for the first time in the history of this show put our name on it. I know. I know. But I kind of would love it from a theater standpoint for a franchise I have no skin

in and actually actively root against. It'd be kind of funny. I just can't imagine Dion and Jerry working within the same walls of a building. Because Deion, wherever he goes, Dion's going to want to control the roster. He's very headstrong.

Jerry Jones has clashed with headstrong coaches. As the NFL GM say, they want control of the 53. And I don't think Jerry's giving that up. We talked about Jason Garrett lasting 10 years in Dallas. One of the reasons he did that because he was just Jerry's yes man. He was happy being the coach. He didn't care what players you got. Now, of course, he'd have an input.

But at the end of the day, Jerry Jones is, I'm going to sign Zeke Elliott to a long-term deal, and you're going to like it. And Tony Romo is my guy, and you're going to like it. And we're going to go draft act. Scottian is going to be great and you're going to like it. We're going to sign Zeke Elliott to a big free agent contract. I mentioned it. Yeah. And we're going to cut him by the end of his tenure. Oofta. All right.

Oh, well, let's go actually mention this briefly yesterday, Matt, but wanted to circle back because I know how much you love NIL. Rick Barnes, over the weekend as his Tennessee volunteers beat the Texas Longhorns at the Moody Center. Is that Rick Barnes' second went over his former school in the last year? Maybe third? I think they play all the time. They play in the tournament, did they not?

Yeah, but I think they played the regular season last year, too. Sorry for your loss. It's whatever. He hasn't won at all, and that's the only thing that's keeping me saying. By the way, kudos to me for not sending you sorry for your loss on the last two times Texas has played an athletic event. Well, what, kudos to you for being an actual regular human being? Yeah, we're proud of you, Matt. That's fine.

It's fine. The bar is low. Okay. Tennessee coach Rick Barnes giving leading score on the team, Chaz Lanier, a quick hook after 11th. seconds into the second half on Saturday, he benched him for peeling off a screen and hurling an errant pass, and then he did

not re-enter the game. Rick Barnes afterwards, quote, I took him out the first play of the second half because he didn't shoot the ball. The play is designed for that shot. I told him, quote, if you're not going to do what you're getting paid to do, then you're going to sit

over there because he is getting paid to do that. Can I throw NIL scenario at you? Yes. If we get surly players, like we had at Florida State last week, suing.

Well, they were lied to. Right. Yeah. By the coach. Are we going to have loose lips with college athletes saying, you wouldn't believe what I was guaranteed by this person and guaranteed by this person and guaranteed by this person. Absolutely. And at some point, somebody's going to say,

you can't do that. NDA? You ever sign an NDA to get an offer? Non-disclosure agreement. How about this? I got paid $250,000 and my father got a new house built with alumni money. I'm just saying, Reggie Bush. Whatever. I'm just throwing that as an example.

Could we see, like when things are done illegally, sometimes people like to snitch. Are we going to see college athletes snitching on an all-time level coming up in the next couple of years? maybe because of things just like that so you're basically blackmailing these kids and then you've got to make sure they're going to blackmailing up to keep them quiet if they're especially they're not happy well I'm glad the coach is doing what he needs to do

and not listening to the GM whoever that is of Tennessee Volunteers Basketball it's crazy there's a lot of general managers now in college sports including Andrew Luck who's the general manager of Stanford football he is really weird really yeah that happened while you were gone oh hmm

he's got a nice neck beard and he's the GM of Stanford Maybe he's cleaned the neck beard up a little bit because you don't want a gray neck beard. It's distracting. Anything else? And that's it for the news. It now. Very nicely done.

Thank you, Matt. All right. We attempted production value. We didn't get much of it. I got to put it in a trouble ticket. That's going to help. All right, 1213 on the Matt Thomas show at Ross. We have the NFL Rewin coming up at the bottom of the hour.

We have the Rockets winning last night against the Grizzlies. If you want to get to that. Deanna is a cowboy coach. Rossi and I don't see it. We just don't. And when's our favorite ex-third basement going to find himself work? These are the things we're talking about today. If you want to get into any of those topics or anything on your own,

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If the unexpected happens, you need Scott Callahan and Associates on your side. 713-888-9,000, principal office, Katie, Texas. Lunch timers. It's the Matt Thomas Show with Ross on Sports Talk 790. So Rossie, what podcast you've been listening to lately? Anything you want to mention to the audience right now? I'm a big dudes on dudes guy. I love dudes on dudes.

It's my favorite podcast. Please. Yeah. We do a lot of great things in our company, but man, some of the podcasts we promote are just hard to fathom. On iHeart Radio. With great new features, Matt. Oh, I saw your, I saw you, I retweeted your little video there yesterday. Yeah, you called me clinically ill on it, but I guess that counts.

I frankly, it was a retweet, so you get that. I probably could have done it separately with, you were clinically ill before the video. That's true. Appreciate it. Real quick. the NBA. I brought this up a few minutes ago. We did not mention it the news at noon because you were having production issues. We're putting in a trouble ticket. We'll get on it, man.

What is exactly going to say? For the 90th time we've had this issue? Yeah. It's got to keep plugging away, Matt. Keep on working. Shams Charonnie an hour ago says that Jimmy Butler told Pat Riley in a face-to-face meeting that he wants it to be traded and will not sign a new deal in Miami. I've gotten word from Pat Riley. He says, don't let the door hit you. the ass. I think I hear a shut your bum ass up in the distance. Yeah. I was like, get the hell out of here. I've heard

mixed bags about who Jimmy is as a person. As a player, when he's on the floor, he's one of the best two-point scores in the league. Does that make sense to you? Yeah. Anywhere on the inside of the R-key's as good as it gets in terms of finishing. Three point? Yeah. Two-point, really good. health, concern, grumpiness, all-time high. Here's what I don't get.

And forget about this being basketball. Just pretend it's any athlete regardless of sport. He has talked his way through his actions, comments, and lack of desire out of Chicago, Minnesota, Minnesota, Philadelphia. And now Miami. Please walk me through. Why the Phoenix Suns all of a sudden, like,

we want this dude around us. Do they want to get rid of Bradley Bill that badly? Aren't you taking one troubling piece for another? At least Bradley Bill's playing for you right now. I think that's their owner, Matt Ashiba. He's been trying, he's like pushing. He might be one of the worst owners in, Basketball, but he's willing to spend whatever it takes.

You're talking about Phoenix is over. Yeah. Phoenix are. But back to my ritual point. If you have been unhappy in four different spots, isn't it one of those shame on you, shame on me kind of situations? Oh, okay. Fool me once?

Yeah, fool me once. Yeah. Fool me twice. You can't get fooled again. Why are you talking something like George Bush? That's how he's when he misread the quote. Now they're saying in Tennessee. now they have it in Texas too

It's not one of your better ones But it's it's admirable I knew what it was See you got it I did out of nowhere I don't think I'd use it a lot in the show But you know I'll hold it

That's literally the first time I've ever tried it It's better than your Cal McNair I think that Hannah is pretty About way Cal was the game last night with Hannah Was he? They were sitting there baseline She told me to throw up my age Don't get me started on that All right

So back to it Tell me why a professional organization would want somebody who is unhappy in four other places. Four over 15 years. Not that bad. I don't know. Especially at 35 years old. Is there anybody else in professional sports today that has been generally speaking that unhappy everywhere he goes? I mean, Terrell Owens was typically unhappy everywhere he went.

Yeah. I'm trying to think of Russ, kind of. Russell Westbrook. He's pretty happy in Denver now. He's happy in Denver now. I think he was happy in Oklahoma City. He wasn't happy in Houston. James Hardin wasn't happy.

That's true. James got grumpy in Houston. That's a good one. He got grumpy in Oklahoma City because he wouldn't get him the contract. Then he got grumpy in Brooklyn. Then he got grumpy in Philadelphia. Yeah, there's James. And he's calling a bunch of children in China are listening to him called Daryl Mory a liar.

Yeah, I won't speak to him after all the money that Daryl gave him over the years. Dude, gave you max contracts at every step of the way. You should be thanking him. It just to me comes across as, why do you want to add that to you? That's why the Rockets, I think at the end of the day, Rossi will not get into any sort of big trades. Because the vibe right now, and look, I'm not around the guys all the time. I travel with them. I'm in the games.

And there could be some internal things that the average person or from that meet or me, someone on the inside I get to see. But I don't see anything apparent that makes me go, ooh, This is a troublesome spot here. I don't say, it may not be a 10, but it's certainly at least an 8 in terms of general happiness among the roster top to bottom. No, they're going to trust the process and they should. They're ahead of schedule right now. It's found money. You're not supposed to be championship contenders and you're number two in the West.

Yeah. It's just, it's confusing to me. If Phoenix didn't have Bradley Bill, they wanted to unload, would they want, would they have any interest in Jimmy Bell? I say no. I think this is, they're trying to get rid of one bad kind. trick brother and hoping that the short little time that Jimmy Butler is wearing a son's uniform that he will have a good

time playing with Kevin Durant and Devin Booker. That's got to be it. He would go to Phoenix as not as the alpha dog. He would be just a complimentary piece. Why are the son so terrible? Does everybody have been hurt? Durant's been playing, hasn't he? Yeah. Booker's been playing. Yeah. They can't defend anybody.

And defense as we know here in Houston, Texas is part of the game. If not, if you don't know that, E. May a Duk is going to call a timeout, walk on the court and pull you off by your jersey top. Ooh, they're starting. Made it Mason Plumley and Tyist Jones.

It's bad look at a scowling your face there. Ryan Dunn? Ooh, okay, I see why they're losing. Ooh, Grace and Allen off the bench? Yeah, they suck. Are they, what, 10th seed in the West right now? I think so. They're a squarely 19-

them and San Antonio are kind of battling for that last spot, I think, in the Western Conference. Yeah. Victor Wimbanyama playing very well having the Spurs in line for a play-in spot. They're fighting for a play-in spot. It is amazing. We try to, as sports

talk host, put these front office executives on a pedestal. And this isn't all sports. Like going to grab a player who's always hurt saying, well, he'll come, he'll be with us and we will real habilitate him. We will make sure he's eating properly. We're making sure he's going to

get the best sports medicine possible. And if you're, if you've got an I-H, you've got an injury history, you're going to have it no matter where you go. It's almost like general managers try to catch lightning in a bottle. And I think if you live your life of your profession that way, you're going to get burned.

Ah, but I think you do have to roll dice. You do have to. But Jimmy, but you've rolled the dice. You know what? Ross, it's like having you at the crabsaber with me. You're constantly rolling sevens. I don't get any payoff. That's the nature of the job. At the end of the year, 29 teams have failed.

29 general managers and coaches and players and rosters have failed. But what does Jimmy Butler do? He's got a consistency of the following. Scores 20 points a game. Yes. Great perimeter defense. Perimeter defense. Can hit everything inside the ark.

There's not a space on the floor that Jimmy Butler can't make a shot. He can completely take over a game. he's been shooting over 38% from three the last two years. Which has been better for him typically. And probably one of the best closing scores in the NBA. I've seen it first time myself. Dang. All right, you're fine.

You convince me. Rockets need to get them. I'm just kidding. He gets so certainly. Now, I'm not saying, look, if the Rockets get Jimmy Butler tomorrow, they're a better basketball team. No one's, I'm not arguing about the playing ability. It's just what you're going to give up and how much the vibe would change. Yeah, but in three years, they're not a better basketball team.

And that's what. Raphael Stone is looking at the long time. as he should. If Rafael got a deal he couldn't refuse. Multiple second round traffics, maybe one in the mix somewhere. Maybe you could do something like that. Yeah, but you've got to match money. But they're already over the, they're going to be over the cap next year,

especially when Sengoon kicks in and Green kicks in. Their cap spent. But they have a team option on Fred Van Vleet, right? Yes. We'll see that. That's 45 million of the book. We'll see that. Yeah, that's right. Now whether he comes back for that or they're going to go.

Who knows? But yeah, they're not, the rocket to this point where, or not cash flush to even wait to the end of the season to go get an impactful for age. They'd have to make a trade. That could certainly happen for sure. All right, NFL Rewind is coming up next to you on the program. This is where Ross goes and finds the anecdotal things from the playoff weekend. 713-212-579 if you want to join our conversation.

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It's the Matt Thomas show With Ross On Sports Talk 790 That's one Ross, you know what it is You want to give a second one? I think there is worthy of a second one Just do it

Just do it It's like a one and a halfer The Texans Waved wide receiver Deontay Johnson That's Wow Well, first of all the fanboy

YouTube hosts were like, this guy can make the difference with this team. I can't wait to see what he does. It's why you don't follow YouTube fanboy host. It's ridiculous. I was hopeful he could produce. He was just a guy. Yeah, I mean, he's good.

I don't know if it's his attitude problem or what. Well, he needs to retire. Or he's going to be retiring through no fault of his own. Somebody will give him another show. No, they won't. He's about 14s in the last year and a half. Somebody will at least put him in camp. Okay.

Well, that sounds a fun. He could have played on a wild card team and a visual playoff team in Kansas City. Did he just that watch? Did he have like an Achilles injury or something? I don't know. I don't recall. He, like, he is always open when he was on the Steelers.

He's out. And here's the bigger one note of it. Cade Stover is going on the injured list. The injured reserve? They are saying, let's make sure to get this right. Dang. Love Cade. What happened to Cade?

It doesn't say. I'm just reading the release. Cade. Cade. Cade Stova. Cadeland, Albert Stova. Rookie from Ohio State. It was an enterprise and young man. Yeah, well, hopefully he can produce next year. He got better as the season went along. I wonder what happened. Did he get hurt during the game? I don't remember.

I don't really recall that either. Maybe he was slicing avocado and got hurt in his kitchen yesterday. That could happen. I've heard. Yeah. All right. So Deontay Johnson out. Cade Stover Injur list Now I was going to say The one that hurts more

Stover for sure Because at least Stover was involved In the offense Johnson was nowhere to be found Yeah I think He got one catch And I don't even remember that I'll take your word for it

Box score All right and that my friends Was your breaking news Now we get to Our favorite part of every Tuesday We're gonna do this side You think we should do this every Tuesday During the year

I mean it could be Kind of late Oh throughout the year year. Just NFL news and notes. Just once a week kind of bit. I love it. And it doesn't have to be guaranteed.

Yeah, whatever Mike Florio manufactures, I can look up that. I don't want you manufacturing anything from Mike Florio. Don't suck off his teat. 1236, 55. I'm not, I see, I don't even want to be. I'm trying not to make the montage. Time now for NFL Rewind at 1237. On the match on the show.

All right. We're going to start with last night's game on Monday night football in the playoffs, which still is a sham. How about the Los Angeles Rams taking care of business against the Minnesota Vikings? Stafford, cool as can be, takes the snap, looking left, comes off that read, side-on pro, to the nine, to five. Hotsdown! Chargers went 27 to 9. Jared Verst had a fumble 6 as well.

Defense not great for the Minnesota Vikings. That's how they've won. Sam Darnold, 40 attempts, just 249 yards. Kevin O'Connell, with a lot on Sam Darnold learning us some lessons this year. There's just times where no matter how much you believe in the scheme and how much you believe in things, especially when, you know, sometimes you're calling quick game and if they take away your first throw, there's completions to be had. If you've got to find a way to check the ball down and just keep moving the ball forward,

completions have negative effects on defense as they just do. And those moments where you're holding that ball and your reaction is to try to make a play, we can't talk out of both sides of our mouth because he sure has heck made a lot of plays doing that this year. But I think that's part of the growth. Remember this guy's 27 years old or whatever he is. And I think he has a foundation now of both the things you do at the quarterback position to have success and the things that sometimes you have to learn the hard way. You talk to some of the greatest players

that ever played the game at that position. And they all had learning moments throughout their journey. Boy, that was a lot of Ward Salad there. No, I think he sounded pretty direct to me. He didn't like the way it sounds like, listening to that, sounds like Sam Darnold's out, honestly.

No franchise tag, or at least for one year? She said he needs to stop holding on to the ball. Let's do this. Let's flip this. Okay. The Vikings one of the wild card. Yes. I mean, it's nice, but it's like... They were 14 and 3.

It's like, help me, I need an analogy on this. It's like you watch a great movie and then the last 30 minutes are trash. You got invited to the dinner party, but when the VIPs showed up, they asked you to leave. Mr. Analogy, ladies and gentlemen. Do you like it? No. All right. I tried.

Let's keep it moving on the NFL Rewind. over the weekend you also had the Pittsburgh Steelers losing as predicted to the Baltimore Ravens. Offense, I mean, it wasn't horrible with the points scored of 4-270 yards from Russell Wilson, but George Pickens, who is always a fun quote, talking after the game about his optimism with the offense. What you've done with his offense now for three years? Have you seen signs of growth and how much minorities has been still in your offense? Yeah, I've seen signs of the growth for sure.

From past, you know, the first year I've been here, just way more growth for sure. What does that make you optimistic going forward? Nah. Nah. So it's kind of hard to hear. He's asked about if he's seen growth from the offense, he says yes. Are you optimistic about the future? Nah.

Wide receivers, the most dominant diva position in professional sports. and I stand by that every single day. George Pickens. Look, I'm... George Pickens. We have a friend of ours that loves the Steelers. Okay. Much to her chagrin.

But she also loves like 1,400 teams, too. It's very hard to keep track. Yeah. George Pickens looks like half the time he's out there. He don't want to be out there. So why is he the one that's the surveyor of how the Pittsburgh Steelers' offense is going? It looks like he doesn't want to be out there half the time. He was asked the question if he's optimistic.

I like the honest answer from George Pickens. Keeping with number one wide receivers, A.J. Brown, Matt, over the weekend. Did you see him reading a book on the sidelines and a lot of people talking about that? I thought it was a great, great video of it. Because it was trying to, they were trying to make it a gotcha moment, and instead it made people that were asking a question kind of gotcha.

Yeah, it spawned a lot of memes and people were making jokes and captioned this picture type of stuff, but A.J. Brown explaining about the book after the game. Excellence the book Right there. Why do you read during the games And what does it bring to you? Man, it gives me a sense of peaceness.

That's a book that I bring every single game. My teammates call it the rest of you. You know, that's the first time I heard that y'all got me on camera. But that's not the first game. You know, it got a lot of points in there. It's a lot of mental gain. A lot of mental parts about it.

You know, it's for me. You know, this game is mental. The book is called Inner Excellence. It's a self-help book. and A.J. Brown goes to the passage in between series offensively, and he uses it for inspiration. All right. So let's localize it a little bit here. If there was a book you'd want to read in the middle of between our segments of the radio show, what book would that be called? Dealing with narcissists.

A self-help guide? No. Hmm. I would go a TV guide. Okay. That's good. Well, apparently that book was like 5,000th on the Amazon. bestsellers list. It went up to number one after this weekend. So whoever that author is... You think he's being legit? Huh? Do you think he's legit in saying

that? Who? He really was reading the pastes? Or do you think he was doing... Yeah, he showed the book. Oh, no, I saw it, but I'm saying, dude, was that a bit or was he really being authentic? He said he's been doing it all year. Then how did it... This is the first time they caught him on... That's crazy, because every game has got cameras to it. Yeah, but I don't know. Everybody's not always is human in on AJ Brown. I think it's interesting. I have zero issue with it. I like it.

Yeah. It's good. Whatever is going to inspire you, AJ Brown, to the level of excellence that he's reached. That's cool. I think it's cool. Yeah,

I find nothing wrong with it. Okay. And last but not least, Matt, we will go with here locally in Houston. Of course, the Texans taking care of business against the Los Angeles Chargers. Demico Ryan's.

Now, the Texans have played the Chiefs already this year, but he says this is a fresh start. Different game. I don't take much from it. It was a game. That was that week. You know, it's different circumstances that happen in that particular week now.

It's a new, new game for me. Fresh start, new game, right? We'll attack it just like it's our first time playing these guys again. So we'll go in with the fresh set of eyes and see the things we need to do to be better, the things we need to do to close out the game. And that's how I always go into each game with a fresh set of eyes, not really harping on a lot of what happened in the previous game. I'm still perplexed by the

Sionte Johnson situation. How do you bring him in just a couple weeks ago and sell us hard on him? Who sold it hard? They did. Where? Who said that we got, we picked up a Hall of Famers? Texans meeting a network. Okay, Texans meaning. Damico Ryan didn't say he's going to be a Hall of Famer.

He was going to get a good sample size against Tennessee. He was returning punts. They're trying to get him involved and see, to me, it was just a move they were trying to see. It cost you nothing, basically. Oh, that's right. A couple of weeks of a league minimum for Deontay Johnson and it didn't work out. I got no

issue with it. And I don't think anybody from the team side anyways maybe some Texans homers tried to act like it was a huge pickup and he was going to be a baller, but those people are idiots. If you thought that a guy that was traded away and subsequently cut from the Ravens and you're picking him up

off of waivers, which means a lot of teams ahead of you did not pick him up off of waivers was going to be a big cog in the wheel. You were fooling yourself. At Adam J. Wexler. In the last 10 months, Deontay Johnson has been on four teams, traded by Steelers to Panthers, traded by Panthers to Ravens, way by Ravens, claimed by Texans, way by Texans. Yeah.

Thank you, Adam, Jay. It's a lot of real estate he's had to purchase. Hmm. Got a lot of lease breaking. Do you think he lived in a hotel? Do you live in a hotel? Could you live in a hotel? They put them in the extended stay?

No. Why not? Maybe he's at least going to the Riltern. There's an extended state Marriott downtown in there? It's a business in. Yeah. Not extended stay. You wouldn't sit there for months.

Well, I stayed there before. They got ovens. It's true. Full kitchens. Full kitchens. Hot breakfast in the mornings. Yeah. And that is Ross's NFL rerun.

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Biggio! Back to Matt Thomas on Sports Talk, 790. Oh, we're having some fun! You're home with the Stroes. As I've said before, and it's just because I'm so much, I've watched so much losing in my life. Like most sports fans have, that I just want to add another layer of team.

But this happening again at ESPN makes me want to root for the Texans to win and go to the AFC championship game. Stephen A. Smith apparently on Twitter, somebody said that he says there's a 0% chance of Texans win. And this is a guy that wants to have the biggest contract in sports media today. He does.

He wants more than McAfee. He wants more than Romo's the Brady's and all that kind. I mean, the money that is being spent on television talent is incredible. Forget about the massive layoffs that ESPN has done over the years. As long as Stephen A. Smith and Pat McAfee, and my guess is Herbstsuit's making a pretty coin. And it wasn't cheap to get Bill Belichick.

It wasn't cheap to get Nick Saban. I mean, they have decided ESPN has that they're going to spend a lot of money on game coverage. And the biggest 10 stars in sports media, and everybody else is going to get paid little dollars or get released from their contracts or get laid off. Look, I don't think the Texans are going to win. But I feel like I'm repeating myself. When Rex said that it was a buy, that was stupid. Yes.

I understand trying to accentuate a point so you get recognized. But as I've said before, Ross and I've argued with this of many people, getting there's no such thing as was it bad publicity. I do believe his bad publicity. I do believe that if, well, like I saw Stephen A. Smith in Las Vegas when they were playing the tournament.

I didn't want to go up and say hello, I watch a show. I went to look to him and said, what a sad sack. Now, granted, he's making... He's doing all right. 800 million times more than I am. But I didn't respect. I didn't respect them. And look, we all say goofy things on shows because we're just having a good time. But I would hope that people that listen to the show

respect us. for most of what we have to say. And I do, and I'm not trying to get all hokey here, but I think respect is a huge part of what gives you shelf life in sports media. And the Nick Wrights of the world, the Skip Baylaces, the Rex Ryan's, and I have not seen this as I don't watch that show,

that first take show, unless I'm in the hotel or something, getting ready for our show. I don't watch it. But I'm mostly because I'm not up. Did Stephen A. Smith really say there was zero percent chance of Texas are going to win? Did anybody really hear that? And what are we doing? It's just where we are, man.

It's where we're going. It's like many things in life, all the ESPN executives have looked at is bottom line ratings short-sightedness. And it was like, okay, look, hey, these guys, Skip Bayliss and it started with Skip Bayliss and Stephen 8 yelling at each other. Right. This got ratings. Hey, let's do more of this. What has worked? Let's do more of that.

And it's happening, I think, with movies, the quality of movies have gone down. It's like every movie that comes out now is Ice Age 5, Shrek 6, like Cars 4, Gladiator 2. It's all rehashed and remixed because it works. Is it good art? No, not necessarily. Or the, you know, not like the Marvel movies and stuff like that. But, I mean, it's just keep it simple is what the executives are. doing with these TV shows, movies, whatever.

Some people here in radio, not on this station, thankfully. We have good management up here that likes good content. It's all about sensationalizing and the being extreme as possible. And then when you're wrong, you say, oh, I got to apologize and people want to tune in for that. People want to tune in to hear Mex Mayan talk about how all I called it about, you know what, I'm sorry, guys. I got to say sorry on that one. And they say it's the gotcha moment.

And then we move on and we'll forget about it in two weeks. It's just, because it's maybe a talking point in Houston, but do people in Missouille, Montana care that Rex Ryan pick the charges? No, they don't. No, they don't. They don't care. It's sad. My favorite sports personalities are people, not necessarily I agree with all their sports stakes, but are at least well thought out. Yeah.

And they surround guys. I mean, when J.J. Reddick was on the show now, he's, of course, the coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, but I thought, he did a good job. I think Dan Orlovsky does a good job. Meena Kimes has good analysis at times as well. And then you have the loud talking heads and then you have some, they try to mix it up a little bit. But the guys who make the money, the guys who make the most headlines, it's going to be the Stephen A's, the Skip Bayliss's, the Shannon Sharps. Our friend Grace said that he definitely said zero percent chance to win.

Okay, well, are you putting credence in that, folks? Are you going to go rush to watch to watch Stephen A. Smith and really get his analysis? Wasn't it a couple years ago? He was like who it was a tight end that wasn't even on the Chargers anymore and then Derek Johnson who wasn't even on the Chiefs anymore he's like this is a coverage matchup I'm looking at both not even on the team anymore then that's fun look I don't

hate Stephen A I look I can't hate him He's done nothing to me personally He's extremely charismatic and loud and boisterous But do you respect him? He can be funny I don't respect his takes I respect his career

What he's done from as a Philadelphia Enquirer beat reporter to be making $10 million a year. Probably the next contract north of that. That is incredible. Good for him. No, I don't respect his takes. I don't ever sit there and be like, wow,

great point from Stephen A. A man you'll be respecting his takes is Chris Gordy. He's going to come in and finish the show for us today. Are you sure? Well, I'm going to listen. I'm going to do a deep dive into the final hour of the shows I head to Hobby Airport. LSU softball, topic A, coming up. Really?

No. Kim Mokie Talk, greatest woman's coach ever. That's the final hour. Oh, I love Pat Summit. Well, you have to argue with him about that. that. Okay. Launch timers. This is the Matt Thomas show.

Hour number four of the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Now without Matt Thomas, fancy Matt is off to jet set with the Houston Rockets. They will be taking on the Denver Nuggets tomorrow evening after winning last night against a Memphis Grizzlies in a pivotal matchup for the Western Conference standings as the Rockets stay. Two games ahead of the gris in the West. Still six games back of the Oklahoma City Thunder. And we have a lot to discuss with Chris Gordy, who has now hopped in for the final hour. Chris, thanks for the time.

Yeah, I'm just looking on Twitter. There was a post that ESPN Radio tagged us in. Us? Like ESPN National Radio. They said the only four teams that haven't made the conference championship round since the Cowboys last did in January 96, Browns, commanders, dolphins, and Texans. and they put the year on the other three teams and Texans in parentheses it says never

because they've never been the one but I'm like why did they tag us? Well I'm starting to see I think they meant to tag 790 Miami Oh that happens This happened a lot over the years You know we used to get calls Sometimes we would get calls from people

Like I can't believe that you just said that About the hurricanes What? Yeah who was Stugats Was Stugats on there? His things like I think his Twitter handle It was like, still got 790. Oh, and we would get tweets.

People would be like, you guys have no respect for what the dolphins are doing. Like, what are you talking about? Who are you? Tony Spirano's got to get fired out there. But it is kind of, I mean, here we are again on the precipice, Ross. The Texans with a chance to get somewhere where they've never been. All they have to do. To the AFC championship game.

Everyone else has. Upset the Kansas City Chiefs, the number one seed. which we were talking about earlier on the show and actually a little bit yesterday. I put a poll up on my Twitter account, Mr. Gordy. Is the Texans season a success in your mind or do they need to win more? Yeah, to me, to me, you've gotten the bare minimum.

Like, you've got to get to exactly where you were a year ago. You're right back where you were. They reach quota. It's like you've reached quota if you're in sales. Now, I was saying last week, you cannot lose to the chargers because that would have been a step back. And they didn't. Yeah, and they didn't. They took care of business. They stepped up.

But I do think it's funny how everybody just changed his course so quickly in the course of a week. We went from last week across so many people go, I don't know, man. I don't think they got a chance here. To now everybody's like, if they play like this every week, we're going to Super Bowl. Yeah, well, that was their best game of the year. Their other two 20-point wins this season

were Drake May and his very first start and then Cooper Rush with the Cowboys. Those are the only other 20-point wins that they've had. this is their 20-point win in the playoffs against a team that, you know, we mentioned the names with Khalil Mack and Joey Bosa and Justin Herbert and J.K. Dobbins, Quinn Johns playing. Well, Ladd-McConkie did still go off. But, I mean, a really good Jim Harbaugh, all that type of stuff.

And they beat them down. And they had 429 yards, their second most all season long. This was the Texans team where we were, you were kind of, you're filling in with Matt, I think, sometime early in the season we were talking about it, even when they were like 5 and 1 or whatever. Like, yeah, they're five and one, but it is a week five and one. Where is the real Texans team? Where is this team we wanted to see?

And we saw it on Saturday for the first time all year, even without Tank Dell and Stefan Diggs. Well, and that's the tough part is if they had both of those guys, I'd feel really good about it. I'd feel a lot better about this weekend. I'd be calling for the upset. Ooh, I like that. Spicy. Just because the difference they make. Now, John Metchy, man, like, it's put up or shut up time.

like the drops last week. He did make a couple of good catches, but like you've got to step up. When that ball comes and hits you in the hands, you have to make the catch. Like this is what they're asking. Don't fumble at John Metchy. Now especially with Deontay Johnson out.

One catch for 12 yards over the weekend. Now released by the Houston Texans. Do you subscribe at all to the rust factor for Kansas City? Not really. I mean, especially Andy Reid, the Chiefs and Pat Mahom. They've had buys forever. Yeah.

I think they definitely rested Pat Mahomes because, and a lot of the stars, well, one, because they're old, two because it's the long season, three because Pat Mahomes had been nursing that ankle injury. It's no accident that a few weeks ago when they played at Arrowhead, the line was, I think, three and a half. Now it's up to seven and a half, opened at eight and a half. Because should be a healthier Pat Mahomes, and we'll see. I think that's one of those things where if the Chiefs score on their first two drives, then we're not going to talk about it. But if they don't, oh, it's all rust. It's all rust. It's one of those things where we try to write the narrative after the fact, in my opinion.

Maybe this could be the year of Russ. What do we see from all four teams in the college football playoffs? They got the first round buy. I can't believe Boise State didn't win their first round after getting the buy. I can't believe Arizona State didn't win their first out of the buy. Again, this comes up every year because there was one year when they used to do two buys where all four teams that had a buy in everybody was like, oh, Russ versus Russ. And then literally I think the next year.

and the Tony Dungee, Peyton Manning Colts that happened to them a couple times. When? You got to go back. Didn't those 2009 Saints that didn't beat the Colts? Didn't they not play? They lost like their last three games

and they rested their starters and there too as well towards the end of that season? They only rested them in the last game. Okay, so they rested them and they didn't really play well the last three games. They went and won the Super Bowl. I'm sure I can come up with some examples. I think it's overblown.

We're going to write it afterwards. Nobody was talking about rest. for the college football teams before all four games were played. And by the way, all four favorites won their games as well. Yeah. But this is a significant layoff. They have not, the last time the Chiefs played their starters was on Christmas Day. Wednesday, December 25th.

I mean, that's going on almost a month. Yeah, they're going. It'll be 24 days, I think, or something like that. No. It's, like I said. If there were any other team, I'd say it. But a Pat Mahomes led team. Last year, the one seed, San Francisco,

they beat, they won, they went to the Super Bowl. Last year, the one seed was Baltimore. They won their first game. Did Baltimore look rusty off the by last week or last year against Houston when they beat them 34 to 10? No. I would say no. They did lose to Kansas City in the AFC championship. But there you go.

There's last year's playoffs. I can try to bring up some more from the last several years. But generally, you want the buy week. it's an overblown thing to me. I think we look at the results of sometimes teams do lose. It's the NFL. Anyone can lose. And I mean, clearly Vegas doesn't think there's going to be that much rest as they have them as a seven and a half point favorite. Now, there is the other factor. The Chiefs have played close games all year. Towards the end of the season, they really started kind of flex their muscles. And they beat the Texas by what, eight at Arrowhead? Yeah.

One score game. Yeah, one score game. Beed Cleveland by two scores, beat Pittsburgh by a couple of scores. But outside of that, almost every other game they played this year was, you know, decided by one score. Yeah, I mean, I picked the Texans to cover. I don't know if they're going to win the game, but I just think they are being a little bit underestimated are the Texans. They are... Is it nine or eight and a half? It was eight, open at eight and a half. And now it's seven and a half. It's already got

bet down. I saw one that had it at nine. Really? Yeah. Okay. Hmm. Texans plus nine. It's come down mostly everywhere you look at this. I think got to 10, I would lock it in. 10? Oh, yeah. It was 38, 28 or something like that. That's why got invented teaser bets. You can just go tease that bad boy up to 10.

You'll be all right. It is just, though, like, when are they going to take that proverbial step? If we're going to assume that they're going to lose a tough one and, oh, great season, Texans. We come in on Monday. We're like, oh, still a heck of a year, D'Amico. Like, when are they going to take that step? When are they going to get to... It's been two years, bro.

Relax. No, it's been 20 years. No, but it's been two of Dimeco. You've never gotten to an AFC title game. Everybody wants them to be in the Super Bowl in the second year, man. The freaking jaguars have gotten in the AFC title game. The Titans have been there. Yes, yes, and yes. The Colts have been there numerous times. How can you not get there? You're in the final four and the other teams are the back-to-back Super Bowl champion chiefs who were the one seed and Baltimore and Buffalo who are juggernauts. Even Rick Barnes can get the final fours. Why can't the Texas get the final fours?

They're in the final four of the AFC. No. So I would at least, I think they do have a shot to win, legitimate shot to win, in my opinion, with this defense. Pat Mahomes is probably going to be 100% healthy. So that's certainly a concern. They still don't have great weapons. It's going to be a low-scoring game.

And in a low-scoring game where anything can happen, I do think the Texans can certainly surprise this weekend. And think of what it does for your legacy and everything. I mean, we immediately amplify C.J. Stroud and his legacy. I think maybe Bobby Sloak's name gets thrown back out there for some coaching interest. If this team gets the answer to the Jets have already interviewed him. And I thought he did a great job play calling. We haven't talked about that on Saturday as well.

Like just think of, because I'm sure what the TV networks want. They want Mahomes versus Josh Allen or Mahler-Lamarr. Yeah. Like these are the matchups they want. But if C.J. Stroud can get there. I think they buy back in. They were all aboard the C.J. Strad, Hopperian, as a rookie. Yeah.

It kind of fell off a little bit this year. But if he gets there, I think it's. it's immediate buyback in. Oh, we've got to get all over this story. Most passing yards by any quarterback wildcard weekend. See, Jay Stroud with 200. That's encouraging, because it has been a little bit of a roller coaster season for him. It did. When he made that hutch play, and then he looked way more locked in than he had been the last several weeks. I don't know how much of that is health, how much of that is mental or whatever or the offensive line holding better, but he certainly looked a lot better. Do you have the Texan season as a success, or do they need to win this? weekend or have they just hit quota in your mind? 713-212-5-790 is the phone number on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. 7-13-212-5-790 with you till 2 o'clock and we'll return after the short break. Back to Matt Thomas and Ross via Real. On Sports Talk 790.

P.N's Adam Schaefter. With more details on the Houston at Texans waving of Deontay Johnson as they prepare for their divisional round game against the Kansas City Chiefs. Following the Texans' wild card playoff victory last Sunday, Johnson was visibly upset in the locker room. He was fully dressed sitting at his locker, staring in frustration because of a lack of playing time and targets. Joe Mixon and Aziz Alshayor tried to comfort and encourage him. Johnson only played 15 of the 70 offensive snaps and received only one target, finishing with one catch for 15 yards.

So apparently very, very upset post game with his lack of snaps. He's like, I'm not better than John Metchy and Xavier Hutchinson. Come on, man. Well, that's the thing. I mean, like, they're not doing it because they don't like you. They're doing it. Playing time is earned.

Don't you think it's time to look in the mirror? When you say, let's see, the Steelers got rid of me, the Panthers got rid of me, the Ravens cut me for nothing, and now the Texans have gotten rid of me, when is it time to look in the mirror and say, maybe the problem is me. Maybe I'm the one that's the issue here. Well, in hindsight,

the one you look back on and say, had the Texans known when they lost the Foddiggs, had they known they were going to lose Tankdale, the one you wish you would have scooped up, is the guy that the Saints picked up mid-season, who was very productive. Marquez Valdez gambling. Yeah, he was good.

Went for 400 yards of four touchdowns on the backstretch of the season with a bad saint, team. Nick Casario said we're good. That would have been one that I would have liked to have had. Don't need an offensive lineman. Don't need a wide receiver. Everything's all good.

But Deonti Johnson, I don't know. Time passed him by. He's 28. He's 28 years old. I get it, but like, that's where a lot of guys' career starts to dwindle. Yeah, 28 is like the new 33 in the NFL. How did that happen?

Especially for running backs. His rookie season was 2019. I mean, it's a lot of years ago. I mean, I don't know. Like, he's only been a third. thousand-yard receiver once. Yeah, but I mean, I think he was good. I don't think he was great. And I was hopeful.

I wasn't, you know, there were some people running through the streets talking about, Jackson's just picked up a pro bowler, baby, it's time. It's a Texan swarm with Deontay Johnson. No, I was hopeful something would happen. I was hopeful he'd be okay. You know, he'd be a contributor and

somehow have an impact on this year, but one catch for 12 yards, apparently visibly upset. that having to be, I mean, but Joe Mixing and Aziz, I'll share here. I mean, that's two captains of the squad. Yeah. So, ah.

But now he has been released. Clearly, the Texans say he's not worth a headache. And it's time for a little introspective look, I think, for Deontay Johnson and his representation and whoever else. Yeah. I'm fine. We'll move on. I'll be at the senior role in a few weeks. I'll be looking for the Texans next wide receiver.

We'll be looking for Matthew Golden. Yeah. Could be the top wide receiver in this year's draft. And Isaiah Bond declared for the draft. Do the Longhors have anybody left now? No, dude, we were just talking during the break. So Cam Williams, the right tackle, just announced he's going to the draft. That's fine.

Full start machine got destroyed against Georgia twice. David Benda, linebacker, just declared for the draft an hour ago. It wasn't even starting by the end of the year, but okay. Bill Norton and nose tackle. Bill Norton. Gunner Helm, Helm, the tight end. Gunna Helm. Isaiah Bonn, the ex-receiver.

I mean, this is- Like Isaiah Bond. Kelvin Banks declared on Sunday. So let's just go through it. Starting tackles, both your starting tackles, two wide receivers. Jake Majors, the center, declared as well. Because he's out of eligibility. Left Guard, Hayden Connor is out of eligibility.

God. Vernon Broughton, I think, is head. Vernon Broughton. He's done. Jaday Barron's done. All right. We don't have to talk about it. Andrew McCuba's done.

All right. You're making me upset now. Michael Taff, Richard Jr. He could come back. Let's go, Michael Taff. be Arch and Michael Taff. Arch and Tapp. That's the team. He's going to have to play both ways. He's going to have to go Travis Hunter on him. Actually, the two guys I really like that are definitely back.

Colin Simmons, who was a freshman, Anthony Hill, was a sophomore. Yeah, absolutely. So they're both back. But it's them, it's them two. Alfred Collins and the interior. You mentioned Norton and the interior, both gone as well. Oh, Jaden Blue declared. Jaden Blue?

He was getting like two carries a game. What is this scouting report on Jaden Blue? Tray Wisner was a true sophomore, I believe, right? So he's got to come back. Should I be concerned that a scandal is on the way? Like, everybody's like, yeah. Is it the rats banning a sinking ship? Well, I mean, there's really no cheating anymore.

If they got paid and free cars, that's kind of part of the course. Even with that, didn't the Tennessee volunteers or somebody, didn't they still get in trouble with the dinged for the NIL? Because the school was getting involved or something like that? Like, is Sark about to get a class action lawsuit, like the Florida state coach, the basketball coach? Was he getting them strippers or hookers? Like then, okay, then maybe you can get something there. Or was it the whole thing with the woman and with the monkey? It was one of the assistant coaches was dating a stripper who had a pet monkey?

That's right. I forgot about that story. Well, either way, what's funny is people, like the media is, sports media are just so dumb sometimes. They're going to automatically, like, just because Arch Manning is there, they're going to put Texas assistance. the peripot of one of the favorites for the playoffs again. Absolutely, let's go. But like, can we look at supporting cast? There's a lot they're replacing.

By the way, Matt Thomas brought up something I was thinking about over the weekend as well. What was Sark's obsession with sticking with Quinn under all circumstances and how much does that possibly mean that Arch simply is not ready? And with that, the writer question to that,

if Arch is not ready after a redshirt year and a redshirt freshman year, how ready is he going to be in a couple of more months? I don't think that it was, that it was, Arch wasn't ready. I think they just thought Quinn gave them the best chance to win. That to me means Arch isn't ready. Arch is supposed to be this five-star all-world game. And Quinn is good, not great.

Go back to some of these games where they said, where people were chanting in the second quarter, oh, get Quinn out of there. Sticking with Quinn in the SEC championship was the right move. Sticking with Quinn in the playoff the other day was the right move. He brought you down to the goal line. He played great. I think there could have been, there should have been more packages for Arch, of his athleticism and his running ability.

We didn't see as much of that in the last couple games as maybe we should have. But I think sticking with Quinn was not a detriment. I think it was fine. Now, normally he doesn't go. Now, he went out and won that game against Arizona State, to his credit.

But in both games against Georgia, he did not do it. And the game against the Washington Huskies the past year, he did not do it. He had opportunity to just go out and win that game and he didn't do it. So if, if, if, if, if, if, Arch Manning is this all-world can't-miss quarterback prospect, hot shot, sure fire going to the NFL, then he should have shown enough to say that he's better than Quinn Ewers two years into his college career, in my opinion.

So I am a little bit worried about how good he is going to be next year personally as a Longhorn fan. Because Quinn, I like Quinn Ewers. I don't hate him. Like a lot of Longhorn fans hate him and think he should have been replaced all season long. but to me a certain like a 7 out of 10, which means to me, Sark, either A, was loyal to Quinn Ewers or deferring to upper class

and rewarding somebody who came back to this program and helped him kind of found the new era of Longhorn football or maybe Arch wasn't ready. I don't know, and we'll see. We'll see come fall, of course, with the Longhorns. I think they have a, aren't they going to Ohio State, their first game? Week one. Yeah, we.

So can we, babe? He's going to the reigning national champion. on the road for his first real start. He started before, but... They need to get rid of these games, because it doesn't help you at all. The committee doesn't come back at the end of the year and go, well, we'll give you credit because you went and lost all in the road at Ohio State. No, they're going to go, you lost.

No credit. The Longhorns wouldn't have made the playoff last year if they hadn't beaten Alabama on the road. That's true. But that's the only one that it can come up in the conversation. Yeah. But as long as you... I think it can bolster. You get a little bit of a litmus.

I don't think they should do it week one. I think it should be week two, like it was this year where Texas going up to It's like Brian Kelly loses the opener every year. This year, LSU goes to Clemson in week one. I'm like, stop scheduling these stupid games. Can't they do it week two? Like, why would they, everybody should mutually agree to not do it week one? Well, in a few years we get U of H at NRG to open the season.

So that'll be a nice. Oh, that'd be a nice warm up. A lot of purple and gold. But, no, I just, I know. Oh, and you know what the Ohio State fans are saying already, go beat Texas's ass twice in one year. Because, you know. They probably are.

But Michigan fans did the same thing to Alabama. They beat them in the bowl game. They said, oh, beat Bamba twice in the same year. Because they beat them in January in the playoff, and then they beat them in December in the bowl game. Yeah, they did. They did. SEC supremacy. SEC supremacy is dead.

No, that's stupid. I just said that for you. Well, we got a whole debate yesterday over Ohio State. Oh, Big Ten pride. I'm like, go look at the crap bottom eight of the Big Ten. All those teams suck. They all finished Sub-500 in the conference. They're all got off.

Big Ten top heavy. Purdue doesn't get to beat their chest over Big Ten. Hold on. You told me the SEC has a bunch of bad teams in the bottom because that's who Texas played. There was only one bad team at the bottom. It was Mississippi State. All right. We're going to take Chris Brick here on. Yes, they did. And Arch Manning took care of business against those bulldogs. All right, time for a break here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Matt Thomas is out doing fancy Matt things, getting on a jet with the Houston Rockets. Chris Gordy's here. I'm here as well. We're talking college football, NBA, Rock. It's Texans this weekend as well.

Anything you want to get to, 713, 212, 5, 790 is the phone number. 713-212-5-790. Lunch timers. It's the Matt Thomas Show with Ross on Sports Talk 790. All right, will you stop telling me players that are leaving Texas? We can move on. All break, Chris Gordy's just telling about all these longhorns who are leaving.

13 starters have already declared for the graph. 13. Well, you know, number one recruiting class in the nation, hopefully they can reload rather than rebuilt. What I do these hits around all the time talking to SEC football, one of the questions I always get asked this time

here, they go, if you could only go to one spring game, which would it be? You know what? Texas is moving up my list. Is I got to see what the hell they're going to have on that team next year? They've got a bunch of five and four star recruits. I mean, I want to see Arge. I want to see Arge. I want to see Arge. But I got to see who who the hell's blocking for him, who's catching.

They got some transfer quarterback too. I can't even remember his name who transferred in. So, yeah, it's all right. Why would you transfer in behind Arch? Because he knew he was from some crappy school. I can't remember. I'll go look it up. Clipboard holders, what you are.

Yeah, this guy made me got a little cash. Arch could get hurt. He likes to run. Could happen. I'm not saying I want him to get hurt or anything like that, but anything can happen in a given season. Quinn Ewer's got hurt multiple times in the last couple of years. So we'll see what happens.

I'm trying to find the guy. transferred to Texas. I mean, this is wild. Sark's got to get, he's got to get in that portal. He's going to. They'll be fine. They've been ponying up the NIL money. Here we go.

CJ Rogers, whoever he is. He's transferred into Texas. I'd tell you that day I was at the, I was at the state. Oh, from Houston Christian. I was at the stadium and I was right outside the entrance to the athletic facility,

and they were just like, what are those cars? Lambos? Yeah, Lambos. Yeah, they got the Lambos lined up. Yeah. I mean, it was, but no, they weren't like on display. They were just parked. So they were like, there were players in there working out.

I think a lot of those get leased. They have a deal with the, they have an NIAL deal with the, the Lamborghini dealership. I think a lot of that is leased for free. So if Carson Beck got a Lambo at Georgia, what's he going to get at Miami? He's getting four million, four million to go to. That's what he got at Georgia last year. Isn't that money wasted by May? Carson Beck's not that good.

He's fine. I mean, they're losing Cam Ward. And the kid that was going to be the heir parent, they started him the second half of the pop tar bowl, and he sucked. The pot tar ball. Because remember Cam Ward opted out, he's like, I just wanted to hit that milestone.

And then I'm done. And the kid that they turned to was terrible. He's one half of football. You got to throw the baby out with the bathwater? Why don't we trust the process, folks? Carson Beck's good, though. He's fine. He's not that good.

not that impressed. I mean, it was the Longhorns defense that was kind of limiting his effectiveness. You lost him twice. They didn't lose to him. He got hurt in that second game. He didn't even play in the second half. If he plays in the second half, it's the Longhorns win by 27. By my calculations, Longhorns would have won by 27. It is weird though that he's following

the girlfriend, Hannah Kavender, over to. Yeah, is that where the Cavender, are the twins in the same spot now these days? What's happening? Well, I think so, right? And they're terrible at basketball, correct? They're okay. And I think they're out of eligibility now. Oh, wow.

So this is going to be it. She's trying to grow up. So she's hanging around in the fall when he's playing another year of football. I mean, that's what's so student about this is he could have literally went everywhere, anywhere. He's got four, Millie. Are we going to get to the point where, like, these quarterbacks are going to make more in college than they do, they are going to in the NFL? No, that's been the joke is that Carson Beck was going to be at best a day two pick. And they said some scouts even had him as, as, as, as, you know, as.

far down as a day three pick. And if you're falling that far, your signing bonus won't even be what you're getting for one more year of college football. Dang. That's pretty crazy. And, I mean, the rumors, with Quinn Ewer is possibly taking $6 million. I still think, has he declared for the draft? Who? Quinn Ewers?

No, that's what's funny. That's an interesting one. I just tweeted this out about all the guys that have declared. And I said, you know, Quinn still hasn't. But either way, he's not back at Texas. Either way, he's not back at Texas. rumor was Notre Dame had a $6 million NIL deal on the table for him.

And that Oregon was interested as well. But Notre Dame's going to lose Riley Leonard. Six million. You can have them. If they win the national championship on Monday. The Notre Dame fighting is. Yeah, they get all that money. Like,

now they can't put it. Quinty or is going to go there, I think. They can't put it into a, yeah, it's not like they can put that money that they get all by themselves in any kind of pool or anything like that. I'm sticking with he's going. to go to the NFL. But if the returns from, I don't know,

they still do that NFL committee or whatever that talks to the college players and tells them where they think they would be drafted and then they could decide whether or not they're going to go back. Third round pick, fourth round pick. Well, apparently that's what happened to back. He declared for, he literally declared for the draft

a week ago. And they said all the feedback he got, they're like, bro, you ain't a first rounder. Hit the portal son. But that's what's crazy is like, if you're an average quarterback right now and you're teetering, go to the draft. Because it's Chidor, it's Cam Ward, Jelan Milrow. Where are we in five years with this NIL stuff?

Because I think we have seen, I mean, Carson Beck's getting all that money at Miami. But remember there was that guy that was having, he was like a gym owner or something like that. And he was giving every single player $300,000 to play for Miami. He stopped doing that. He was like, this isn't worth my money. The Aggie. Look at A&M. Yeah, they bought that number one recruiting class.

There was an initial pop from the Aggies with that NIL money, and they spent all that oil money, and then they finished like 8 and 5 and lost their bowl game. But here's what nobody wants to say about the reality of that. So you get your collective and you raise your money. For those kids, they raised the money and said, we're going to pay you like one kid got a million-dollar NIL deal. Well, then when he signs on the dotted line, he realizes, oh, it's broken up. It's 250K per year for four years. And it's a year-to-year thing.

As long as you stay here, you will get that. So a lot of those kids that signed a deal like that to go to A&M part of their number one recruiting class, when they left after that first year, that money's now freed up to go to someone else. Yeah. Because he's not getting the remaining 750K. They still wasted the $250,000.

It was wasted. Sure. It hit the transfer portal after or even more money. Well, you're saying the same thing for Ohio State with Quinn yours. I mean, Quinn came there for a semester, basically and didn't do anything. Quinn grifted him hard. He's like, this is illegal in Texas, but I can, I can re, what do they call it,

re-declare or whatever for reclassify, reclassify, and I can be a senior, I can go make three-milly or whatever he's making at Ohio State for a year, then just slyly hit the transfer portal, go back to Texas and be there. Wow. And he only played like one game, I think, with Ohio State, didn't throw a pass. It's just interesting because you ask where will this be? I do think we're going to get, having talked to Greg Sankey and a lot of the big power brokers,

they are very much pushing for legislation. And Ted Cruz, that's one of the big things on his five-yard line. Yeah, but they do that in Texas, and that's going to hurt, I mean, well, no, it won't just be Texas.

They're pushing for national legislation. They're going to put like a salary cap? Well, no, what they're going to, well, kind of a cap on what you can make. But the real, the real key here is we're entering this year into revenue sharing. where the schools now have budgets that they can pay for athletes. Now, not just football, that's all athletes. So if you got a really good basketball program,

they're taking a cut of that. That can't all be spent. Money can't all be spent on football. But what I think they're going to try to regulate now is they want to get away from the collectives. Because the collectives just are unlimited money. You know, like the power broker guy at Michigan just comes along and goes, yeah, we'll pay $10 million for this for Kurt.

Now, why is this? They want to get away from that. I thought Ted Cruz would support a free market economy. Why is the government getting involved with government oversight on this? Well, I think it's just that you have like the CEO of Oracle can just come up at any time and write a check for a kid. Well, so what? That's cool. Good for the kid. It's good for the sport or the other schools.

Why not? Ohio State didn't want a championship in like 15 years. They won one. Michigan had won one since 97. You're getting new teams involved. So the SEC doesn't have a stranglehold on everything now? Well, still the best talent. The 12-team playoff, though, is going to.

hurt them more than help them, I believe. Well, you get more teams in, Tennessee. More teams, but more opportunities to lose in early rounds. Yeah. Well, get the buy, win the championship. Also, they got to get rid of these automatic eyes for... As our host of of Locton Sooners told us last night,

we really were relying on the Longhorns for the sake of the conference. I could have told you how that was going to go. Oh, whatever. I don't want to hear it from Sooner fan. Look, it's been a long time since the Longhorns have won a championship. It's been an even longer for the Sooners. Yeah, which Longhorned out worker still around. They can keep replaying that

Vince Young Championship. The 20th anniversary of the Lord Corn Championship. Yeah, we're coming up on it next year, baby. That's a long time, Ross. January 6th, 2026, baby. At least those you, we got the Joe Burrow Championship five years ago. You've been in the final four of the past two years. Program's in a good spot. Now, a lot of people to clear. We celebrate now. Final fours?

I'm not celebrating, yeah, I'm saying the programs, you're going to tell me that's a failure and the programs been terrible. They lost to a better Ohio State team. They should have beat Washington, but I think they would lost to Michigan next year anyway. They're going to have to break through here eventually. You hope so? Yeah, but it'd been, Michigan is one of the heritage programs of a college football.

They had not won since 1997. Ohio State, also same thing. When's the last time they won one? So five, six years ago or whatever it was? Cardel Jones. Cardel Jones? Was that even 10 years ago? My God. 2014, I think, yeah. Yeah, so it takes a long time.

We can go through the list of there's 20 programs who thinks they should be winning every year. This is not realistic. Aggie's having one since the freaking Hitler was invading Poland and they try to fancy themselves in some kind of Tier 1. I remember like it was yesterday. Yeah, I know. I was

eating raccoon guts for dinner and a gallon of gas with my Model T Ford cost 12 cents and then I read the newspaper Extra Extra! Hitler has invaded Poland Oh my gosh! He had different bathrooms for different races I believe at the time as well.

Right, we don't have to bring that up. Well, I'm just, that's how long it's been. On that note, we're going to take a break here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. And historian Chris Gordy, history major, he's going to tell you more about the Jim Crow era of Texas. When we come back here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Hey, it's Jeff Blum. Oh, have we waited for Blummy? Fun fact.

Not only am I a former player, I was also Junction Jack for a few years. Until Matt Thomas stole my gig. The Matt Thomas way of doing it? That dude looks way better in. funny ears. Deal with it. Yep. All facts. All right, Junction Matt, take it away. Oh, Matt's not here. He's not taking anything away. Speaking of Jeff Blum, sources close to the station are telling me that he will be coming up co-hosting with Adam Clanton. So you want to make sure you stay tuned for that. It will be the AG team instead of the A team as Adam Wexer is out.

Rome was in yesterday. I also filled in for an hour as well. Jeff Blum going to be on with Adam Clanton coming up at 2 o'clock here on a Sports Talk 790 so make sure you stay tuned for that. Just a little bit of time in the show left. We're not doing, believe it or not, with Matt Thomas out.

He is hopping on the jet with the Houston Rockets. They won last night and I mean, okay, it's not the biggest game in the history of NBA basketball, but as far as a mid-January game against a very good opponent, it in the Memphis Grizzlies who had

John Morant, who had Jared Jackson Jr. and a lot of their pieces that they play with. Chad Hongren, I don't know, Chad Hong was on the Thunder, sorry. I'm getting my Grizzlies and my thunder mixed up, but a lot of really good play lately from the Houston Rockets, taking care of the

Memphis Grizzlies, sweeping them 3-0 on the season. They've got the tiebreaker. They've got two games up on them for the number two seat. I mean, can you believe we're even talking about that right now, where the Rockets are. We are into January 14th. We are 38 games

into the season. And there are two games up from the three seed in the NBA's Western Conference. It feels good. Yeah. The only thing that sucks, I was talking to somebody about this this morning because they were like, I'm trying to get into it. I'm trying to come around on the Rockets. What? What sucks?

Last night was fun. No, it was, but I have a friend who didn't even know they played. He's like, they played last night. So it's like it's still not the diehards of the diehards. But for the casuals still have it come around yet.

Well, the Houston casuals take a while to come around. But here's his argument. In 2012 Hardin got here. They instantly became a playoff contender. But he was the face of the franchise. He was the star. You tuned in every night to see what James Hardin

was going to do. Well, a lot of a lot of the fan base hated him, though. They were a great team. E-May's a great coach, but you don't have, who's that one guy? I got to tune in and see who's, what he's doing tonight. They wanted to kind of be Jalen Green. They wanted to be Jalen Green. He didn't have 42 last night.

And he was awesome last night. But half the fan base hated James Hardin anyways, even when the Rockets were real good. Later down the road. I took the calls, buddy. Not in year one. Yeah, maybe not in year one when he was surprised. What did he score? Like 40 against the Pistons in his very first game in a rocket uniform or something like that.

So, yeah, it was off to a nice start. And then people got soured. and then they hated James Harden, and they wanted to ship him off every single time and said they could never win with he and coach Mike Dan Tony. They could have. Winning Cures All.

So if they keep winning, they will get the attention and all that. But it is kind of tough, though, because again, like, who is the guy? Boston kind of had that when they started that run, and then very quickly Jason Tadam and Jaylon. Jason Tadam emerged himself as okay, he's the guy. The product is good, the team is good.

The crowds have been better. I feel, look, I've been doing a lot of these post-game shows monologing for years. We got a lot more calls on these post-game shows. And that's just one data point. It's not necessarily hugely indicative of interest level being up. But I do feel like more people are talking about the Rockets. The crowds have been better.

They've been there earlier. They've been more energetic. I guess maybe the corporate partners are actually taking their tickets and going to the games. Rather than just staying at happy hour and be like, whatever, we're not going to go to the game. So it's going to take time. we're 38 games into this of hopefully a revolution of really good rockets basketball. But I would say I have certainly seen an uptick and interest for me, at least, for the Houston Rockets. But I'm just saying like stop everything you're doing and go watch the rockets tonight.

We haven't gotten there yet for the casuals. No. I don't think, no. The city of you, you're going to have to literally start getting into championship contention. So where they are right now into phase two of the rebuild is. we've been calling it. They're still in a really good spot. So I'm happy with where the team is. They're number two in the freaking

West. Yeah. No, it's wild. It's wild. 30 games in. If you haven't paid attention, you absolutely need to. And as I mentioned, I always look at things like they're third in the West in point differential. They are I think fifth in basketball, so we'll see what goes there.

Net rating is something I always look to because like I said, I was been saying the Lakers are frauds. They have a negative point differential and they've been losing games. They lost three in a row. I think they're going to continue to tumble down the standings. They're going to finish like ninth or tenth in the west. So the

Rockets buy those types of metrics and net rating and stuff like that. They're sixth best in basketball. This is real. This is actually happening. The defense is so good. And if Jalen Green can continue to come along like he has over the last six games and we've said this before with Jalen Green

but that's who would be the face of the franchise. As of right now I'm still, I'm sticking with my gut feeling that I had a week ago that Amin Thompson is going to have the best career of these young players. But Amin Thompson doesn't have the ceiling of what Jalen Green does have as far as being a do everything 30 point per game wing player. And that's what he's been lately. But of course, again, we saw it in March last year.

It needs to be more consistent. Last six games, 30 points per game, 51% from the field, 45% percent. from three, which is not going to hold. So if I came to you, Ross, and I said, where there's a marketing group has reached out to us. They want to put up a Sports Talk 790 billboard on 59 and, I don't know, whatever, right near downtown. Yes.

And they said we can put one Rockets player face on the billboard. Who you put it in Schengen? You put in Chingon? Yeah. So he's the face of the French. I guess right now. I'm putting email Doka. Isn't that funny, though?

Like, who is the face? Stephen Adams. He's quite handsome. We don't care about Hansom. We care about... Reid Shepin. Who's most recognizable? Who, I would say,

I would say with the Turkish appeal, if you walked around the street and you asked people to name one Houston Rocket, it would be either Jalen Green or Alpern Shigoon. I don't think... Do you think people know Shangoon's name? No, I don't know. I'm not saying he's a household name.

I'm saying what answer would you get the most? Jalen Green's not a household name, but it's either him or Alper and Shingoon, I would say. Maybe even Stephen Adams. But I don't think people. People know that he necessarily. People know Stephen Adams. They don't know he's a rocket.

Right, right. So I would say probably out Britishing Doom. If you really made me answer that question. Yeah. Well, we're not doing a man on the street in Turkey. He's trying to make the all-star team. That'll go a long way. If Jalen Green keeps playing like this,

he'll be in consideration for an all-star team. But of course, how many times have we sat here and said, if Jalen Green can keep this up and then it doesn't keep up? Yeah. Now, happen first five games of the first five games, the season. First five of the games of the season is like, oh my God, is this really what's going to happen? But we'll see. 30 points over a six game stretch isn't nothing. If he can continue it. Maybe he started it, look, he started it right at January 1st. He's trying to win player of the month

in January. That's what's happening. What if he's got a contract bonus for that? What does he get? I think long term, just because Jalen Green, how do I put this nicely? He's not the most charismatic person on the planet. I like Jalen Green and he's nice, but he's kind of just soft-spoken and not loud and or boisterous. And if you're looking for someone to develop into a star,

I think you might have to look elsewhere. Yeah, that's the thing. Like I was a marketable star. LeBron came out well-polished. Kobe was, you know, always talkative. Shaq was kind of a quiet, but he spoke his mind. Well, dude, Shaq is America's pitchman now.

Yeah. He's on with the general and foot powder and icy hot. He's some cruise ship that he's on now. Yeah, he's on the cruises now. I don't remember what cruise line it is. How did two of America's pitchmen, the biggest pitchmen in America, are Snoop Dogg and Shaq? When did that happen? I don't know. I'm not mad at him.

It's pretty crazy. That's where we are right now. So the face of the Houston Rockets franchise asked me in one year. Yeah. Face of the Texans? I'm in Thompson's charismatic. He's funny. You know, we got a lot of views on that YouTube interview that we did with him. He's got a while to go, though. But face of the Texans, C.J. Strauss.

Face the Astros. Ozel Tuf. Face of the Rockets. Okay. Get a time, bro. They're in the second year of the E. Madoca era. All right? Give them a little bit of time. I just knew for years. He's asking for too much. It was the beard must be feared. Yeah, okay. Who would you say is the voice of Space City Home Network? I might go Jeff Blum.

I'm going to go Julian Morales. Okay. And then Todd Callis. And then Calvin Murphy. Good grief. Then Craig Ackerman. You know, right? I put Blumber 5th. Jeez. Yeah, Bogey. Bogussevich.

He's not even on Rushmore. Mike Stanton's 7. Well. All right. Well, the voice of Space City Home Network. He's going to be on his own home network because he's on the A team. It is Jeff Blum featuring Adam Clanton coming up 2 to 6 here on Sports Talk 790. Gordy, thanks for hanging out for an hour. I know you're very busy these days. Yeah, let's see how many other Longhorns declare before the end of the day.

All right. That's a 13 is enough. Quinn yours? The fact that he hasn't declared, maybe tell you a little something. Alabama. Latest rumblings. Full breakdown of Quinn yours landing spot from Jeff Blum coming up next year, two to six on Sports Talk 790. Thanks to Matt Thomas. Thanks to all you for listening calling. Thanks to Connemogne. I'll talk to you folks tomorrow on the Matt Thomas show with Ross at 10 a.m.