The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Rockets Fall to Spurs... More Belichick Talk, Astros Projected Line Up?

Episode Date: January 29, 2026

Rockets Fall to Spurs... More Belichick Talk, Astros Projected Line Up?

is the Matt Thomas Show with Ross. 10.0.1 in the AM in H-Town. Hello. And welcome in to a Thursday edition of the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Final score tonight, inside TOTA Center.

The San Antonio Spurs 1-11 and the Houston Rockets, 99. Oh! Not only was it the Spurs when we hate, but it was also important in the Western Conference standings. There was a ton of Spurs fans in the building, and the game started after 8.30. So, I mean, you had to be in the Toyota Center late last night,

as the crowd filed out with like under three minutes to go, to watch your team completely crumble in the fourth quarter and fall to the San Antonio Spurs if you made it. Hello. And welcome in to the Matt Thomas show with Ross here on Sports Talk 7. I need Ross v. Rial with you. I will be here for the full four hours. Who else will be here? Well, we will see.

Chris Gordy should be joining shortly. He's going to come hang out. I asked both of the Adams to hang out for an hour. And I didn't get a straight answer. I got a whole lot of nodding and why don't you do it? No, maybe you should do it. So will an Adam show up at 1 p.m. and which one will it be?

Who's to say? We'll see you coming up at 1 o'clock here on Sports Talk 790. In the meantime, Jonathan, you're going to be here for the full four hours, right? So I mean, as long as it's me and you, we can hold it down. We can batten down the hatches. We'll be all right. Of course, we got this. That's what I'm saying.

We'll be all right. We got this. So Jonathan is going to bring us the news at noon coming up at noon. Look at this is like the earliest I've ever warned you, I think. I appreciate it. I need a gold star, I think. Jonathan's going to bring us the news at noon coming up at 12 o'clock. We will have Joel Corey coming up at 11 o'clock. Now, he works and writes for CBS Sports.

He is kind of the capologist of CBS sports, NFL contracts and salary cap experts. And you can find him on Twitter at Corey Joel, C-O-R-R-Y. He's going to join us coming up at 11 o'clock. He wrote a really interesting article on PAN, Will Anderson and then also paying C.J. Stroud, what that would look like for the Houston Texans, whether or not they should do it and all that different stuff. But kind of the economics of football with Will Anderson's deal, not necessarily pending, but a contract extension. He's up for one. As is C.J. Stroud. What's going to happen there? We will hear from him coming up at 11 o'clock.

I'm excited for that. Of course, it is Thursday. So we have, I just don't get it coming up at 11 o'clock. as well. And we also have you folks on the phone lines, if you would like to get in. We can talk a number of different things. They're open. It's 713-213-5-790 is the phone number. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90. So we do have a number of things to get to. As I said, we will start off talking about the Houston Rockets and that loss last night. I'm going to be honest. I'm a little bit worried because what happened in that fourth quarter for the Rockets, for all intents and purposes, a disaster. Kind of funny mirroring the game on the 20th.

So what, eight, nine days ago now at this point, rather than the game on the 28th, where the Spurs got up as much as 16 in that game against the Rockets, and then in the fourth quarter, they couldn't do anything in the fourth, and they couldn't score a lick. Rockets came roaring back and won the game and made it not look as close as the game.

the final score reflected. Then you flip it on the other end. Rockets going into the fourth quarter, I think they were leading by two, and then the fourth quarter was just a, and it was a disaster. There's no other way to put it. You get outscored 27 to 13.

Hide your children, hide your wives, hide your pets, hide everyone when I give you these fourth quarter numbers for the Houston Rockets. Four of 23 from the field, 17.4%. That is not acceptable.

that is not good. 0 for two from three were the rockets as well. And you're sitting there saying, what happened? They only took a couple of threes. How did they go so cold shooting four of 23 from the field? Well, I'm glad you asked. The spurs began to use a defense that was pretty interesting. And I don't know that every team can pull it off,

but more on that in a second. They put Victor Wimbunyama the five on Amin-Thompson, the Rockets, one. Yes. The five guarding the one. Why did they do that? Well, unfortunately, you don't have to respect Amin Thompson's jump shooting at all. So they had Victor Wimonyama sagging way off of Amin Thompson. That way you're kind of shutting down his driving lanes,

which he can do a good job of driving by the typical NBA defender. He's going to Euro step. He's going to throw in a couple of fakes. He's going to throw in, use his pivot foot and go and whirl around. He could also just blow by people and fly to the rim. Unfortunately, not the case with Victor Wimbunyama. I know we hate him here here in Houston. We wanted him here.

And then now he's on the other side and he's a rival and he's down I-10. So we have to trash the guy and act like he's terrible. But he's a very good defender. He can lock down the paint. He's got basically like an eight-foot wingspan. So it's very difficult for him to just go by him, for Menn-Thompson to go by Victor Wimbunyama. And then even if he does, Wimby can recover.

and block shots and effect shots with his length. So Wimby was sagging way off of a men, Thompson, and then the rockets have their pet sets that they like to use with Kevin Duran and Alperin-Shingon and having them screening off each other at the top of the key. They were doing that. The Spurs were switching that and ending up with Stefan Castle on Alprin-Shingun, which should be a match-up we should favor,

but Stefan Castle did a very good job. Alperin Shingoon wasn't very good in the period either and the Rockets just couldn't get anything going. Kevin Durant, one for four in that fourth quarter. Amin Thompson, one for seven. Alperin Shingoon, O for five. Those are your big three. We talked about this week on the Matt Thomas show with Ross.

That's a big three. Men Thompson, 18 points per game, first team all defense. Kevin Durant, one of the greatest players to ever walk the planet in Alper and Shingun and All-Star. You cannot have those guys combined for two for 16 in the fourth quarter. And the Spurs did a great job. It was a wonderful defensive wrinkle from Mitch Johnson. And not every team, as I said, is going to be able to do that. But it has me a little bit worried because the Rockets didn't have any answers for it.

They just looked completely bamboozled. They were taking 10 seconds to get into every single offensive set in the fourth quarter. And they were just looking lost and throwing up a bunch of shots that had no chance of going in. It's not like they just had a bunch of wide open threes and things didn't look good. They were not getting open shots. I mean, coming into the game last night, this is the number five offense in basketball. So is it a concern? Yes.

We can also say, ah, it's one game. It's also the spurs. they're uniquely equipped to defend the way that they did in that fourth quarter. So it's not going to necessarily be a problem against, I don't know, the games coming up tonight against the Atlanta Hawks. Then you have some Pacers and some whatever else on the future schedule. That's great and all well and good. And I would agree with that.

But also, I'm not worried about the Atlanta Hawks and the Indiana Pacers and the Charlotte Hornets in January and February. You're worried about the San Antonio Spurs come April and May. you're worried about the Oklahoma City Thunder who have a lengthy big in Chet Holmgren who you can maybe employ some similar type of defense. Not necessarily the case with the Denver Nuggets, but you're not talking about the regular season

and the Rockets are going to be okay, which I think they are. They're still going to finish as a top four seat. It all is going to be hunky dory. But it is going to be in the back of my mind with the Rockets and trying to get to that upper echelon. The goal isn't to make the playoffs. the goal isn't even to make the first round or second round.

The goal is win a championship. That's going to be one heck of a hard goal because of how good the Oklahoma City Thunder are and how tough the West is in general. But last night was not good. And of course, it's the last quarter that I've seen of Rockets basketball, so it's going to leave a really bad taste in my mouth. And I'm not feeling good after watching the end of that game. So, IMA Adoka did address it in the post game last night

talking about that defense that was used by. by the San Antonio Spurs. We'll play you some of that audio as we go along because that was just ugly. You lose against a rival. You lose against Wimby who you want to beat. You got a bunch of Spurs fans in your building. And oh, by the way, you could have gotten, you were two games behind San Antonio in the West.

You could have made it just one game and now you're three. So January game, not the end of the world, but not feeling great last night about Rockets basketball. Okay, we're going to take quick break here. on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. As I mentioned, coming up at 11 o'clock, we got Joel Corey, CBS contracts, and capologist. He's going to talk some Will Anderson and C.J. Stroud. 1130, we have I Just Don't Get It as well.

12, we got the news at noon. Chris Gordon going to join at some point, one of the Adams at some point as well. Jonathan Allen is here. You can get on the phone lines. If you want to hang out, give me your thoughts, whether it be the rockets or anything else going on. Of course, those Will Anderson and CJ Stroud contracts. We're going to talk about.

Got some NFL news to get to. And you know we're going to talk to college football with Chris Gordy in the fold as well. So phone lines open, anything you want to get to. 713-212-5-790 is the phone number. 7-13-212-5-7-90. You could also send tweets to At SportsRV. You can follow me on my Instagram at SportsRV as well, if you don't mind. And again, on the phone lines, 7-13-212-5-790.

All right, I saw Cole Thompson. I mean, distracting my producer, quite frankly. Jonathan in there talking Yeah, it's fine. I forgive you. And I want, I had it, I was going to ask you all fair, but I was like, you know what, let's just go ahead and do it on air. Why not?

Cole Thompson, the morning drive, is that what we're calling it? I thought it was actually, what did, what did the MT call it? He calls it something different every day, which, I mean, I guess it's a funny bit to him, but I mean, for the camaraderie and, you know, so I just, we should. should all be solidified together. Team, teamwork makes the dream work here at Sports Talk 790. I would like to just consistently call it whatever the hell the show is called. The morning drive.

The morning drive. I'm not up in the morning, so I don't catch the morning drive. And then I have like a four minute commute. And normally I'm listening to music. So nothing personal to you call. It's all offense. I take it 100%. But I don't normally catch the show.

I'm sure it's spectacular. You should listen between 6 and 10. Anyways, I wanted the update because you had the I'm sorry on Friday. Are you still sleeping on the? the couch or is everything okay? No, we made up for it. But what's funny was, is that on Friday... I don't need to know how you made up, but go ahead. On Friday, her...

So she works as a droolting director. So she's all on the dance and everything like that and she's about to go into competition mode. And apparently she got me... Yeah. Is that like when LeBron deets all his social media? She literally just does not go on social media or text me on. Oh, wow. She'll leave at 5 in the morning. I won't see her until the summit. Okay, that doesn't concern you at all.

Okay, good. I've been to one of those contests. Dude, it is sterile. It is like, think of like dance moms, like the TV show. Think of that on steroids. Okay. That's what she does for a living. I'm like, just text me if you win or lose.

Hmm. Give me the hell out of it. Dance moms, huh? Yeah, that level of psychology. It's that bad. But anyways. Where is this? Can I go?

Yeah, you can go. All right. Should I bring some wine? Do you want to pay 40 bucks to go to the competition? Yeah. Can I get in wine and some cheese crackers? I don't think you can do that. I think that may be wine coolers, though, what you have?

Dance moms, I'm thinking I need a wine and a pineapple. favorite. I mean, I need a percassette probably. Okay, Perkissette wouldn't hurt. I mean, what are the worst thing? I'm going to want those too. But anyway, so you're all good. I'm good because of now somebody else pissed her off when it came to

the dance. So you deflected. I got to deflect and she actually was like, I don't want to talk to you tonight, but I don't want to talk to you because I'm mad about something else. And then come 48 hours later, I mean, 24 hours later, she's like, I'm over it. That's good. So I kind of got off to give Scott free without even fully apologize.

I got you. It was the distractor technique. Exactly. That's smart. That's actually a vet move, Cole. I actually said, to the mom that decided to piss her off. Thank you. I want to send her a $20 gift card because of now she was the bane of Kierston's existence. So you want to get in trouble with your wife again. Oh, you sent this woman $20. What's going on? Why are you sending this one? Because if she pissed you off and I got out of the dog house? Well, I'm glad you're off the couch. That's all I needed. All right. Thank you.

I don't know. Anything to plug? What's the big fun heritage segment tomorrow Friday on the morning drive? Ooh, I'm probably going to lose my mind over more Bill Balchick stuff because I think it's stupid. I know your co-host is very content with him missing it for a year. I'm not content. I know, I know. I'm saying I'm not content. But also, I don't think it's some great travesty. Okay.

I don't think it's a travesty. Here's what I will say. Okay. You know what you're young. Go ahead. Here's what I will say. I think it's stupid that you don't have to then come out and say I was the one who vote against it. There's secret votes everywhere

No, no, no, no, no. Baseball Hall of Fame secret, basketball Hall of Fame secret. And I'm the same way with all of them. If you have the gall to say that you do not believe that this person belongs in the Hall of Fame, I'm totally cool with it. Be able to go ahead and take the brunt of the force. You can if you want, like that Kansas City writer came out and he came publicly. Yeah.

But also, I don't, you shouldn't be beholding to public pressure either, so I do like the secret vote. See, I'm not for it. I'm for it. I'm for if you feel like you have, because why would you do it then? Because then you wouldn't stay true to yourself. If you have this vote, somebody is taking it upon you to say, hey, you know what, you know ball. And you can disagree with them that they know ball, right? They're saying, but if you're giving a Hall of Fame vote, they're saying, you know ball.

We want you to give your vote 100% true to yourself. And the best way to do that is to make it a secret vote. Because if you're making it public, then you're going to be beholden to public pressure. And that's going to influence your thinking. But then I think that that works because here's the bottom line. I don't know if you know this, Ross. bullying in society is a great thing because of then, guess what happens? They will follow you and you'll get your point across.

No, bullying's not great. Bullying is fantastic. Bullying has me on Instagram and I don't want to be on Instagram. Bullying is fantastic in the right circumstances. I'm coming along on Instagram though, because bullying is getting me off Twitter because I'm sick of all you people on Twitter, you sick, sad human beings with nothing better to do in your life. But coming to my mentions, because Victor Wimba Jammah, Rocket,

You'd be scared of him. I tweet that Vick Rockets aren't scared of Victor Wimbled yon. Which they aren't. They go right after him. He had a great game. Sure. He had like, I don't know, 28 and 16. It's not like he dropped a 50 and 20.

Spurs fans coming in and I mention out of nowhere. I still have pictures. I mean, get out of here. I got to mute 5,000 Spurs fans who are spinning their night. It's midnight. Go to sleep. Hug your children. They don't have children.

Take your dog for a walk. I don't know. They don't have love. Do anything else, but come out and find me in your mentions. They have nothing to do. Because you're all butt hurt. At Sports IV. All right.

Anyways, what were we talking about? Something about, I don't get out of here. Something about Hall of Fame voting, which, by the way, I'm for the bullying. Because guess what happens? If you bully them long enough, they're going to take your side. See, that's not good. Because you know why? The public is stupid.

The public is wrong about almost everything. Are they wrong about Bill Belichick not being a Hall of Fame coach? He is a Hall of Fame coach. And guess what? He's going to get in. Next season? He'll be in in a year, okay? Take your time, get your affairs in order.

You want to go ahead and book your flight to Canton, Cole, because he's coming next year. Why don't I want to book my flight to Canton? You're so passionate about it. You're up in arms. There's like 17 social media videos in a row you put up about it. So you're so up in arms, go ahead and book your flight to Canton, get your leather helmet on, and go out there and go to the Hall of Fame next year. I appreciate you following me on Twitter at Mr. Cole Thompson.

Yeah, Mr. Cole Thompson. Go ahead. All right, there he goes. All right. Didn't mean to go that long, but I did want the update. It's good to hear that coal is off of the couch. That was my main concern. I'm worried about the young man.

I mean, it's not easy getting up early. You got that morning pressure. I mean, morning drive, major market. It's a lot of pressure. And then if you're sleeping on the couch and there's like, I don't know, unicorn stuffed animals in your back, it's just not feeling good. So I'm glad he's doing okay. And he's wrong.

I mean, he's not wrong. Upset about Bill Belichick. I get it up in arms and acting like it's the greatest travesty in history. No. A lot of you youngens, how old were you in 2007, Jonathan? Five. Okay, so you were five years old. Yeah. So you have no memory of the SpyGate scandal.

No, I'd be pretty shocked. I remember the Deflate Gate. That was the only thing. Okay, you remember Deflate Gate. Okay, well, there was an even bigger scandal before that in 2007 called SpyGate. I mean, it was a massive, massive scandal. They got doctor draft pick. Bill Belichick got fined $500,000.

and the Patriots got fined like $250,000. They were illegally taping. I think it was the Jets. And then there were reports that like up to 40 games they were doing this. So, yeah, you're illegally taping, opposing walkthroughs and trying to get signals and trying to break down their defense. You sit out of year. You didn't get banned for life. Not like he's not going to the Hall of Fame.

it was bad. I would have voted him. I don't have one of the 50 votes to vote him in. He would have gotten my vote. He's the greatest coach of all time. Cheating nonetheless. If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying. I'm sure there was coaches back in the 1960s.

I don't know. George Hallis and I don't know. Okay, Vince Lombardi, I don't want to desecrate his hallowed name. But you know what I'm saying? I'm sure there are a number of coaches doing anything they could to win all throughout the history of the NFL. probably things we don't even know about. So he would have gotten my vote, but to call it a human tragedy that Bill Belichick, of all people, has to sit out one year because he didn't get 80%.

He'll get it next year, and we're all going to be fine. All right, quick break here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. You want to get on the phone lines? I saw a couple of you on hold, but dropped off. You want to come back. You can. We can talk some Rockets Basketball, anything you all want to get to. 713-212-5-790 is the phone number.

we can talk about the Belichick thing. I mentioned the Rockets collapsing in the fourth quarter against the Spurs last night as well. Chris Gordy going to join, I don't know, at some point. We got Joel Corey coming up at 11 o'clock. He's going to talk about that C.J. Stroud contract and the potential for the Houston Texans to sign both he and Will Anderson, Jr. That's right.

We are guaranteed human. You think AI can have sports takes this good? Come on now. Or sports takes this bad, depending on how it goes. All right, welcome back to the Matt Thomas show with Ross here on Sports Talk 790. Matt is in Atlanta with the Houston Rockets right now. They are on a back-to-back as they lost last night to the San Antonio Spurs, completely collapsing in the fourth quarter.

Chris Cordy will be joining along at some point. I mean, I guess I'm trying to get every. single employee who works for this station on at some point here on this show. Thanks to Cole Thompson for dropping in for a second there. Jonathan Allen's hanging out with me for the duration. We have, I just don't get it coming up at 1130. And at 11 o'clock, it is CBSports.com's NFL contract, NFL contracts and salary cap expert. Joel Corey, he's going to come on and talk about his Will Anderson.

and a C.J. Stroud article that he wrote about the Texans and their ability or the possibility of signing both of those. Obviously, Will Anderson at this moment, seeming like so much more of a no-brainer than C.J. Stroud. Phone lines open for you at 713-213-212-790. 7-1-3-212-5-790. So I had the audio last night. I talked about it in the first segment. Rockets fell apart in the fourth quarter against the San Antonio Spurs.

If you fell asleep, well, you didn't much in the fourth quarter. Oh, honey, I nodded off in the fourth quarter. Good. They got destroyed 27 to 13 in that fourth quarter. They combined a four. I'm going to bring it up again. It was it 424 or 4 of 23, excuse me.

Yeah, four of 23 in the fourth quarter. And as I kind of outlined in the first segment, what they were doing defensively is they were used. They were using their five, Victor Wimbonyama, to guard the rockets one, Amin Thompson, because Wimby is uniquely equipped to sag off of Amin Thompson and then help everywhere else because of his length and defensive prowess. So you don't have to respect Amin Thompson's jump shooting and Amin was sagging off of him. And then he was going on and helping. And I think the basketball technical term used by Udoca here is flood.

He was able to flood other places because you don't necessarily have to respect Amen Thompson. And then Amin Thompson, what he does when other teams do, what other players do that is he goes and he finds avenues for basket cuts. And he was doing that. But Wembe was doing a good job of keeping an eye on him in Thompson, watching those basket cuts, covering those. And he can just, I mean, he can guard one end of the floor or the other just about with his length.

So it was a very difficult situation for the Rockets. The Spurs were also switching Kevin Durant and Alperin. shingoon actions and they weren't able to get any kind of rhythm going. They were horrible in that fourth quarter. As I said, they went four of 23 from the field. So I want to, it's kind of fun to listen to Imea Doka. And when he's asked a question, he does a good job of, I mean, being open and honest, first of all, but you can kind of tell by the tenor of his voice certain feelings that he may's feel.

So I want to play a little game here with you, Jonathan. then like what is what is going through EMA's mind as we kind of go through this sound bite? All right. So first of all, I think he sounds a little upset to start. This is him getting asked about that defense

that the San Antonio Spurs were using on them. Just not don't get stagnant. We still have to keep playing. And regardless of who's setting the screen, the apping and set it with the small and get advantage with Kevin, those guys. It sounds like a little frustration in his voice at the very beginning. Just, just don't get stagnant.

You see, It's almost like he's yelling in the, he's yelling in the, uh, the huddle with that first part. Yes. No, it seems like he's trying to hold his tongue, make sure he says everything. You know, I'm not trying to get fined again. And vice versa. Men got to be a handler and move when I'm around and screen handle, do a little bit of both. And I don't think we were setting good screens for him. Man, he would just go underneath and didn't get much out of that.

And then operand they kind of pushed him off the block, won't be flooded. And then we didn't get to anything. there on the elbow. You know, surprised we didn't get better position with Albi. Alpy and those Isos. Did a good job. I think Castle and Barnes, those guys getting up under him. Didn't really get to a spot.

So we started shooting some elbow floaters and hooks from there. Not a great shot for us. Yeah. All right. So pretty matter of fact, but I get the very good. And I mean, not so subtle shot at Alper and Shingoon. I mean, yeah, Alper and Shingun. Like he's getting some elbow shots.

They're just not good shots for us. Didn't really get to a spot. started shooting some elbow floaters and hooks from there. Not a great shot for us. So you can hear the frustration in Ime Adoka's voice. So he wants better screens. He wants them to get into better spots. So it seems like they're going to try to do something a little bit better.

But that was just a disaster on ESPN. Late night, rockets collapsing against San Antonio Spurs, wanting to win because it's the Spurs, all the Spurs fans in the building, and wanting to win because it would have helped in the Western Com. conference, you would have been just one game behind them who would have been in the two-seater. I'm not sure if the nuggets would have snuck up to the two-seat at that point. But you lose to the Spurs, and now in the season series, you're behind them at two-to-one, Mr. Gordy.

Yeah, I will give Mitch Johnson credit. I did not know Mitch Johnson. I was not familiar with your game. He is a really good coach. I mean, that Spurs team to go from what they were last year and the year prior to what they are now. put the Popovich days behind you. This guy's got this thing humming and Castle to Fox has been great.

I mean, and Wembe's really... They're a very deep team too. Yeah, but how about their defense? That fourth quarter, they made every shot uncomfortable for the rockets. I mean, and guys pulling up like, I know Durant's got the mid-range down, but like, you know, Alpi and Amen are trying to do it. I'm going, guys,

this is that ain't your game like go to the freaking rim go and then when a man was trying to get to the rim he couldn't get there comfortably they were doing a great job five block shots for victor wimonyama they were clogging up the paint and i mean a weakness that can get exposed to this team is some some consistent shooting depending on who's on the floor and especially when a man thompson and alper and shingoon are on the floor together you don't have to respect the three-point shooting of either those guys i mean amen had was on an island yeah he was out there all by himself they're like go ahead Shoot it. I mean... And he wouldn't. He didn't take a single three. That is a part of his game. He's... I mean, look, we got all the rest of the season. But in the off season, he has got to develop that. Yeah, well, we've been saying... He's in his fourth year now.

I mean, we haven't... We've been saying that for Yannis for like 12 years. Russell Westbrook, his entire career. Who else? John Morant, his entire career. I think it's one of those things that, hey, if it hasn't happened by now, I'm not sure that it is going to happen. But there's God. I mean, like, Anthony Davis, coming out of college had no range.

There are guys who... Yeah, but within four years was he shooting well? I don't know. I'd have to go look that up. I think by year of four, he was hitting threes. So that, and everybody's their different case. There are guys who can come on. I think Jason Kidd is one that comes to mind.

He was a terrible three-point shooter his whole career. Then when he was like old Jason Kid with the Mavericks, he became a good three-point shooter. I think Lonzo Ball was terrible early in his career, and he basically reinvented his entire shot, which is probably what a men Thompson is going to have to do. At some point you're going to maybe have to stuff down your ego and figure something out if you want to make that part of your game. Because maybe there's not even any guarantees that's going to work.

Everybody has their ceiling for a three-point shooting. The highest ceiling ever is Steph Curry and then everybody else has a ceiling below that. But what kind of happened was as soon as like we saw, when a men got that block, he shot blocked by Wembe, then he was hesitant. it was like he was he had an open look but he was like oh i don't know there's wendy he's not far off he might come out of nowhere to block this and it was once he's in your head now he's really got you yeah it was it was not fun to see and rockets have one more matchup with the san antonio spurs they're now down to one in the season series so uh back to the drawing board and no rest for the weary that's maybe a good thing they can flush that fourth quarter out of their minds and get ready for the atlanta hawks that's a seven o'clock start here on sports talk 790

I'll have you for the Rockets launch pad coming up at 6 o'clock. All right, quick break here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Chris Gordy is hanging out. We got Joel Corey going to talk some Houston Texans coming up. Those of you on hold, I see you, we'll get to you next as well. Phone lines open 713-212-5-790. 7-13-212-5-790. 1048 at the PM here on Sports Talk 790.

Rosviary out with you on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. We got Joel Corey coming up. next segment talking about a Will Anderson potential extension, a C.J. Stroud potential extension, what that would mean for the Houston Texans, their cap situation. I mean, just on his face. I mean, you've already paid Stingley. Nicol Collins is on a decent contract, but I don't know when he's going to be wanting some extra money as well. I mean, who knows? Jalen Petra you've already paid, right? So as far as money, it's obviously headlined by those two guys. At some point, Kamari Lassar is going to want some money. That'll be coming up as well. So interesting.

with the Texans especially not having a whole lot of wiggle room in terms of the cap, but they can restructure some guys. So we'll talk about that coming up at 11 o'clock here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. 713-212-790 is the phone number 7-13-212-5-7-90. I meant to ask you, did you see the Frombur buzz out there? Fromber is going to sign with the Miami Marlins. No. Okay, what's the Fromber buzz?

The latest report last night is the San Francisco Giants Really? Making progress with them. They had Johnny Quito over so many years with long hair. They want a long-haired pitcher back. Right. And part of the contract is that he has to keep his extensions in and he can never take them out. I'm going to still hold out, I'm going to hold out a prediction that pitchers and catchers report and Framber still does not have a team.

Okay. He could wait. I mean, because injuries, that's honestly, it feels like not the worst idea to wait for some sort of major injuries because elbow discomfort. How many times, like take a drink every time you're elbow discomfort during spring training. It's going to happen. It's been happening the last couple years all over baseball.

It's been happening with the Astros. And somebody's going to be like, you know what? We need a front line starter. I wonder if that's some of the advice that he's getting. I don't know. I'll just say, I'd rather see Frumber in the editor. then have to face him in the AL. Why? He's a really good pitcher. I'd rather

I'd rather be asked him. Okay, I agree with you. But that's the funny thing to me, because a lot of the fan base, I'm not talking about you, Gordy, acting like he's the worst pitcher in the history of time. And it's like, okay, look at the numbers. Yeah, he had some blowups for sure. And literally the second I started really defending him, like, he hadn't blown up in months. He blew up like five times in a row, and he threw it as catcher. So I'm done defending him. that way, but

Yeah, there were some guys that you just look at and you go, they were fantastic here, but it's run its course. He finished top 10 in the Siong over like three, four years in a row. He was a pretty good run. Well, now he's not going to get paid. Thankfully, I didn't put anything on the bed I made with Matt.

It was mid-season. I was like, oh, he's going to get over five and a half yards. And then I have years, I should say. And then he literally blew up like almost immediately and then hit his catcher in the chest. Even though it was a good season for him last year, his highest ERA since 2019. What was it? Like 317-ish or something?

3-66. Okay, 3-66. That's still good. What is it, what was it, what is it war? What is it good for? 3-8. That's a good war. That's good. He's a little older though.

He's 32 now or something like that. Yeah, just turned 32 in November. So I don't expect any kind of, I mean, been relatively healthy his career too, right? Yeah, he's been a workhorse. Never really missed like a long, significant time. Yeah, he's been over 175 innings basically every year

the last four years, but that's also something you have to worry about. You say, okay, I wonder where they... You're testing fate. Where they even weigh that, right? Like, oh, he's been so healthy as a workhorse. Can you say that's predictable or can you... You can spin it in both ways? That, oh, well, you know what?

Nah, he's due. He's due for an injury. It's been too long. He hasn't broken down. You just don't know. you don't have those long-term workhorses in baseball anymore. I'm excited to get to spring and just kind of see what this pitching staff is going to look like. And, you know, it's going to be interesting.

There's going to some battles. Yeah, I'm excited about the rotation. I think it's going to be better than we're all thinking because it's not names. I mean, Tatuya I Mai is a nice signing and that's going to be good, I think. And then Javier will see, but you're starting with Hunter Brown. then you go to Burroughs and Weiss and I feel like I'm missing another name somewhere like they are going to

have... So Hunter Brown's your one. Yes. Do we put Am I into the two? I mean, I usually depend on how you're feeling. You put him to or Christian Javier probably gets a nod as somebody who's been here a long time. If he's not looking like a complete disaster in spring and he's looking like old Christian Javier

that we know that he can be. If he's looking like El Reptile, I'm good with that. Spencer Erigetti? Eric Getty, I didn't mention. That's right. So, yeah, you've got, and they're going to go to a six-man rotation at the very start of the season. And even we had Joe's spot on at Fan Fest. And he said, I would expect to be in a six-man rotation more often than not in the season. Do you think that's like the new way?

Rather than getting like a one and then like a really good two, three, and then, you know, four or five, whatever, just get like a two through six are like threes. like just get a bunch of really good pitchers and then hope they work out rather than trying to get a bunch of stud pitchers you get a bunch of really good arms rather than studs who can go down and get hurt with depth

your conversation with Ryan Wise was that he's a starter right he kind of made it known he has no interest in being a bolt to pit well yeah he didn't say it that way but yes he wants to be a starter and he was told to build up to be a starter yeah so let's talk to us up So our five-man rotation.

Yes. Hunter Brown. It's going to be six. Okay. Well, let's do six. Harder Brown. Yes. Tatsuya Mai.

Yes. Christian Javier. That's three. Spencer Erigetti. Four. Mike Burroughs. Mike Burroughs. I mean, he was strong for the pirates.

Ryan Weiss. So that's your five. Uh-huh. So your sixth candidates are Ryan Weiss, Jason Alexander. Oh, yeah? It was really good for you, for down the stretch last year.

Lance McCullors Jr., don't laugh. Get ready to learn minor league deal, buddy. I mean, I'm sorry. I love Lance McCuller Jr. I backed him, and I hope he was going to come back, but he's got DFA written all over him. And then the kind of trio of AAA, like I'll call him the 4A guys. Blue Ball.

A.J. Blueball, who I think is knocking on the door of being really good. He was great last September. Colton Gordon. who's had moments. Yes. I think he could get better. Yeah, get a place in Sugar Lang. And then miss most, almost all last year, J.P. France.

But, you know, I think they can develop something there. Space Cowboys Legend, J.P. France. I'm not worried that worried about him either. And then what do they do with Nate Pearson? Is he a starter or a reliever? Yeah. So yeah, you've got options. That's good.

And I just, man, if Lance McCullors Jr. Somehow can get back to some of that lightning in the bottle. I just don't see it. Yeah, we all gave him a leash. We all were like, ah, here we go. But just the injury on top of injury. And I think, and I get it. I pooh-poot on a lot of the fans who, like,

poop-pood on him. But it was like, I think we're all to the extent of, man, we've tried. We've given him as, you know, and he's getting paid well. I mean, it's, you know, it's, I think just the reality is, the thing that sucks is as good as he was, that July 4th game in L.A. against the Dodgers. He was awesome that day.

And it's like, if we could find that guy again and just be consistent. Yeah, if he just simulate the games as he's in Dodgers Stadium. It seems like he all, he loves pressure. Yeah. He loves pressure. Yeah, home game on a Saturday against the twins. Not much pressure.

He's chilling. But the other one to watch, he's knocking on the door. We will see him this year. Miguel Yuloa. Ulloa. Let's go with that. Yeah, I think Yeah, this rotation is going to be fine. I'm barring, of course, we have to say

the caveat, barring a rash of injuries like last year. Was it three players with Tommy John for the Astros last year or two? Rodo Blanco, Hayden Wazneske, Brandon Walter. And then you're talking about the guys who were coming back from.

Luis Garcia. Eric Getty got hurt. Josh Hader got hurt. Louis Garcia, unfortunately, just never could recover. Joseer Kiti, gone. Joseer Kiti. Gone, but not. forgot. Who was the other? And I mean, Javier came back from it. And then he was just kind of up and down. All right. So hopefully that doesn't happen this year. Okay, we're going to take quick break here at the top of the hour.

When we come back, Joel Corey, CBS sports NFL contracts and CAP expert, should the Texans sign CJ Stroud? Would the Texan sign C.J. Stroud and Will Anderson and all how that is going to impact the cap for the Houston Texans? That's coming up next year on Sports Talk 790. This is the Matt Thomas show. with Ross. Number two of the Matt Thomas show with Ross here on Sports Talk 790. Matt Thomas traveling with the Rockets. He is out, or he's in Atlanta right now,

as they're looking their wounds from the loss last night to the Spurs. Chris Gordy hanging out with me right now, and we are pleased to be joined by a previous guest on this show, although it has been a while. Joel Corey is the CBS Sports NFL contracts and salary cap experts. you can find him on Twitter at Corey Joel. That is C-O-R-R-R-Y. Joel, appreciate the time, as always.

Long-time, no talk. Yeah, thanks for having me back. All right, we do appreciate it. All right, so let's go ahead and get right into it. Well, actually, I was talking with my co-host before this. We were trying to figure out. Okay, so can you explain both C.J. Stroud and Will Anderson are up for a fifth-year option. So the Texans, I believe, have until May 2nd.

And then after that, it's just a no-go that both of those guys could be free agents, which they're probably not going to let happen, of course. Yeah, well, the rookie contracts are for four years. First round picks have a fifth-year option. After the third season, you have up until May 2nd to go yes or no for the fifth-year option. The no-brainer is Will Anderson. They will pick up the fifth-year option. CJ Stroud, I know the last two games were horrendous, but his body of work over the three years.

And the price of the fifth year options suggests they will pick that up. So they will not be free agents after the 2026 season if they both end up continuing to plan on their rookie deals. All right. Let's start with Will Anderson. Then we'll get to the fun one with C.J. Stroud. It seems pretty obvious. I mean, first team all pro, 12 sacks, career high. Not only that, the opposite of C.J. Stroud, in that,

Stroud wasn't very good in the playoffs. Will Anderson was completely dominant in the playoffs. So we expect some sort of mega deal to be happening. And I had your article that I was reading, as I said, you expect him to maybe kind of, in a way, reset the market as far as edge rushers and how hard are the Texans going to push for trying to get something done before that May 2nd deadline? Well, he's a guy that should be your top priority last year with Derek Stingley, Jr.

year. They got that thing done so early. It was in March. They hadn't even exercised the fifth year option. So if I'm Will Anderson, I'm like, hey, this is the precedent. You set with all pro defensive players who are first team all pros in their third year. I want the same type of treatment in terms of timing and what you did relative to the marketplace, corners for Stingley, obviously edge rushers for Anderson, with me. So, yeah, he's going to try to reset the non-quarterback market. I expect there to be some pushback from the Texans, given how much that escalated last year. This time last year, the highest paid edge rusher was Nick Bosa at $34 million per year. Now it's Michael Parsons at $46.5 million per year. Wow.

That's almost a 37% increase. that's practically unheard of. So they may want to slot them in kind of like the Texans did, not the Texans, the Lions did, with Aidan Hutchinson, who came in at $45 million per year, did not top Michael Parsons, and that deal was done in the middle of 2025 season. Do you kind of look at this, Joel,

and they have DeNeil Hunter still very much in the middle of his prime and playing fantastic for him, but obviously he's at a high dollar value. but this will be basically the last year of his deal. I know they added a couple of void years. But do you kind of look at it as a capologist says, okay, the Will Anderson big money starts up as soon as the Neil Hunter money comes off the books, kind of?

Yeah, because the way you're going to structure it, the cap number is not going to take a huge jump for a couple of years. But Hunter's interesting now that you brought him up. He's going to be 32 during the middle of next season. He's not showing any signs of slowing down, if you let him play out this year's deal, then he's walking because to franchise him in 2027, it's going to be a little over $37.5 million and that won't happen.

That kind of drives our point home about how this, you don't want to say that used the word waste, but it was an elite all-time Texans defense, and you just couldn't get anything out of the offense. And then that leads us to C.J. Stroud, of course, the headliner. The offensive line was bad. the running game was bad. You had Nico Collins hurt in that Patriots game as well.

So it wasn't all CJ Straub, but when you turn the ball over four times in the first half, before we get cut out of the ins and outs as far as options of the contract, where do you think the Texans weigh that, Joel, as far as the body of work to where he, by many metric, QBR, a quarterback rating, touchdown percentage, interception percentage, and the regular season, he had a bit of a bounce back season from a sophomore slump,

but then those playoffs happened. Yeah, part of the problem is he had his best year when he was a rookie and you were thinking he's on an upward trajectory and he hasn't had a year like his rookie year since. And then you compound the problem by having back-to-back two of the worst playoff games I've seen for a quarterback in recent history. It kind of rivaled what Sam Darnold did the last week of the regular season last year and the playoff game against the Rams last year. which he's definitely bounced back from. But yeah, you don't want to be going into the offseason, potentially trying to get a new contract off of that ending. Yeah, so what are the options in for the Texas right now?

As far as the fifth year option, they can do that? Do you think there is any possibility they do some sort of extension where he's not getting paid, $50, $60 million a year? David Mulligetta is his agent, and we know he's a guy that's been very good at getting quarterbacks paid. Well, basically whatever position he has generally, but good luck with that because Mulligetta presented to Sean Watson, who's the last time of Texas did a big quarterback deal, $39 million per year at the time made Watson the second highest paid player in the NFL.

Granted, Watson was coming off a much better year 2019 as a third-year player than Watson is now, but nonetheless, Mulligata is thinking, hey, let's look at. the totality of the circumstances, not be prisoners of the moment, have recency bias. For my three years, body of work is better than Trevor Lawrence is three years when they got paid.

This is what Mulligetto will probably be thinking or saying, if they do talk contract extension. And Trevor Lawrence, after a third year where the Jaguars imploded down the stretch, missed the playoffs. He didn't play at the same level he did in the second year.

He made him in a tie with Joe borough as the highest paid playing $55 million per year. Then, shortly thereafter, Dave Mulligetta took Jordan Love, who had one good second half of a season, his first year of a starter,

played one in the playoffs, ties those two guys at $55 million per year before Dak Prescott tops everybody. So he's not going to be looking at anything besides one of these top of the market deals. Is the key Joel with a C.J. Stroud as young,

as he is still, like, if we're talking in long-term contract extension, is the key higher A-AV at like a four-year deal as opposed to a five- or six-year deal? Like, I'm just kind of looking at some of the current contracts out there, and Jordan Love at 25, like you just mentioned, 55-mill-a-year, but four years, I wonder, you know, it feels like more teams are leaning

towards that four-year deal as opposed to those five- or six-year deals. Well, typically teams want to lock up their best players for as long as possible. And love was a changing of the guard because you had, when Trevor Lawrence did his deal, you were coming off a bunch of five-year deals. Jalen Hertz, five-year extension. Lamar Jackson, five-year deal as a franchise player. Then you had Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert, got their deals done after the third year, both five-year extensions.

So that environment was five years. So if Trevor Lawrence wanted a four, all the data pointed to a five. Then you had Tua get a four-year deal, Jared Gough get a four-year deal, which allowed Jordan Love to go four. So this is a case if I'm the Texans, I would kind of be looking at it from the standpoint that, yeah, if we wait and C.J. Stroud has a career year, yeah, we're going to pay more. but Kyla Murray be my cautionary tale. His agent pushed to get a deal after three years, and he's probably not going to be with the Cardinals next year. The Rams had buyer's remorse with Jared Gough,

did his after three years. He took him to a Super Bowl. He's got them. He was the quarterback when they weren't a Super Bowl. And Philly cut bait with Carson Wentz pretty quickly after doing his rookie contract after three years. So because of how things have gone south sometimes, I might be inclined to wait.

Anderson's my top priority. If I have to pay more in the long run to be sure that CJ is the guy, then I would have more peace of mind doing that. Talk with Joel Corey, one of the best when it comes to talking NFL contracts and salary cap, I've been doing a long time, of course, CBS. It is interesting, though, Joel, one of the big topics that came up here in Houston

after Stroud's less than stellar postseason is, okay, should we pivot? And you look at what is Sam Darnold's doing right now. Obviously, he was a hired assassin with Minnesota last year was very good, and now he takes the Seahawks to the Super Bowl. It is interesting that concept

of when you have your quarterback, you feel like, oh, maybe we've got to pay this guy just to keep him because we don't like the alternative, but to your point, Kyler Murray, the cautionary tale. I mean, Trevor Lawrence had the nice resurgent year this year, but prior to this year, I think people were wondering, ah, should they have paid him? And then Atua down in Miami,

you look at that situation. It just becomes, man, it feels like the norm now is even if you have questions about this guy, you pay him because you just don't know. It's better than the alternative, which is the unknown. The Nail on the head, fairly unknown has been driving a lot of quarterback decisions, and I'll use one going back a few years. At the time, 18 million per year, believe it or not, was a lot for quarterback. I forget exactly what year it was, but Jay Cutler got an extension. Yeah. And it's like, you really want to give Jay Culler that type of money?

And that's what happened. So, yeah, that factors in the equation. But C.J. Stroud's really young. So there's nothing that says you have to do a quarterback extension at the earliest possible instance. You can wait. Lamar Jackson ended up being the rare quarterback who plays through the fifth-year option. Andrew Luck back when he was considered. a franchise quarterback didn't get a deal,

which made the highest paid player until going into the fifth year option. So you don't have to do the deal today. You can exercise some caution. Let's say Stroud is starting to play on the fourth year of the rookie contract, starts lighting it up early in the year. You may revisit it then if you don't want to do it right now

if the numbers that I suspect David Mulligetta will be asking for. You know, we've also seen a situation where guys have gotten let go. You mentioned Sam Darnold. I mean, Baker Mayfield, we have. Jared Gough was traded, but he wasn't thought of as an elite guy. Yeah, but people were leaving him for dead like he was a throw in. Yeah.

It was just a matter of time before he was done in Detroit. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So it's not like they thought that he was going to be. So, I mean, it's interesting the dichotomy where you don't want to end up in that situation where you cut bait with C.J. Stroud and he thrives somewhere else. but also at the time when those guys came, they weren't making $60 million, so it kind of makes it easier to build around that guy. Yeah, but you also have to think of the fact that the cap has gone up since those guys signed.

So relative to cap inflation, I know the quarterback market has gone haywire, but still sometimes that gets lost in the equation. You have the fifth-year option. It's going to be extremely reasonable cost for a starting quarterback. It's not going to be an elevated amount because that Pro Bowl from Strauss' rookie year doesn't factor into increasing the cost. He was not an original ballot pro bowler. So it's going to be basically the average of the third through 20 of highest paid quarterbacks. And I'm simplifying it a bit for the option cost.

And it's going to be the exact number depends on where the cap is set because it's expressed the percentage of the cap. but it's going to be roughly $25, $26 million for Stroud. That's a reasonable number for a quarterback as a salary. All right. He is Joel Corey, a great expert on NFL contracts and the salary cab for CBS Sports. Joel, thanks for the time. It's been too long. I'm sure we'll bother you pretty soon with the C.J. Stroud's situation as it continues to develop.

And just go ahead and let the folks know what you got going on the website and where they can find your stuff. Okay, you can find it at cbsports.com. I've got an article out right now on 15 notable veterans who could either be traded or released, and then I do an annual contract awards, and that will come out tomorrow. All right. Thanks a lot, Joel. Appreciate the time. We'll talk to you down the road. All right. Thanks for having you guys. All right, appreciate it. There we go. Great stuff with Joel Corey.

Fascinating stuff where the Texans are probably just going to have to wait on C.J. Stroud. I mean, they are going to have to wait. You can't sign them now. But I mean, those names do scare me that we mentioned, Gordy, Sam Darnold, Baker, Mayfield, Jared Gough, to a lesser extent, Gino Smith. But Gino Smith was good with the Seahawks a year ago before being a disaster. And the point is, Gough ended up. We're seeing the best of Gough in Detroit. We're seeing the best of Sam Darnold now in Seattle. We saw it last year in Minnesota. Daniel Jones. We're seeing the better version of him in Indianapolis.

So some of these guys, change of scenery helps. But, you know, do you want to take a gamble that you're going to get one of those outcasts that improves down the road as opposed to investing in your guy? But what if CJ's the next two? What if he's the next Tyler Murray? And what if you want to cut bait with CJ Stroud and find that next guy? Mack Jones is a name that's been floated. So a lot of stuff to parse through here, especially as we said. Bad offensive line, bad run game, inexperienced play caller.

Nico Collins was heard. Eventually Dalton Schultz was heard in that game as well. You had heard offensive line that was already bad. bad situation for C.J. Stroud. Can he improve? All right, we'll talk about that. We have other stuff to get to as well. We'll get the news at noon coming up at noon with Jonathan Allen. We have I just don't get it coming up at 1130. And we also have your phone calls. 713-212-790. The phone number 7-13-212-5-790. Texans, September of 27 is who, Chris Gordy? September of 2027?

That's C.J. Strow? September of 2008. Still C.J. Strat. Oh, I like that. I like that. I made some gut feelings. I was really down on C.J. Stroud. I mean, the playoff games were so bad.

So bad. It's okay. You don't want to forget what they were in the moment. I mean, you just really don't because they were awful. I don't know if I'm just coping or if I'm looking for hope because I am Battlebed Red Ross and I'm a Houston Texans fan.

But I say it because it's true. Running game, awful. What did Woody Marks have like 17 yards on 14 carries, something like that? That's the thing you got to be fair. Look, Drake Mays not been played great this postseason. He has not. But he's in the Super Bowl.

His teams picked him up. And as good as the defense played, you know, some other guys could have done some other things to pick their guy up. Now, Drag May wasn't throwing interceptions like crazy like C.J. Straud was that day. But it's why I go back to, like, home field matters. I don't think Straub plays that bad if that game is at an RG. I just don't. Yeah, it was two road playoff games. They were, man, just two bad disasters.

And the- No Nico Collins. I mean, we can't gloss over that. You're right. He's one of the best receivers. No running games. game. No Nico Collins on the road. Is Seattle here of Jackson Smith and Jigna has to miss a game? That's what I keep going. What if we went into a warp, time warp, and C.J. Stroud starts this game.

I mean, I'm sorry. Now if we flip them, probably the Seahawks lose. Let's be honest. Yeah. Seahawks lose to the 40, not to the 49, to the Rams. But if we put Sam Darnold and into this situation with no offensive line, no top weapons, no running game. and a play caller who's calling his second ever playoff game, I, yeah, Texans probably lose that game too. No, I don't think he's going to throw four interceptions, but also if you play that game with CJ Stroud 10 times, he's not going to throw four interceptions 10 times.

That was about the worst possible outcome, man. And that's what's kind of so hard to kind of wrestle with with sports. Because we've seen it. The Rockets played on January 20th against the Spurs, the fourth quarter, they look great. Wimby was terrible, shot five of 21. Then literally eight days later, he looks like a superstar.

He had zero-block shots, by the way, a week and change ago. Last night he's got five block shots, 16 rebounds. He's getting to the line like crazy. Rockets do a good job of deeing him up, quite frankly, and not keeping him under 30 points, but it's completely different. So the Rockets and Spurs played two different times in the same building and two different outcomes.

Like, it can happen. If the Patriots and Texans played 10 times, it would be 10 different outcomes. Unfortunately, we just had to happen. We had to see what probably was, if not the worst, at least probably the second worst outcome. Yeah. Again, I think the mission for this team needs to be, one, the obvious. You can't start the season 0 and 3.

You can't date yourself that big of the hole. And as good as they played down the stretch of the season and got hot and all that, man, just to know that two more wins your way, you have home field. Home field isn't everything, but it is, it matters, particularly in those playoff games in January. Particularly when you have a bad offensive line, who needs to be better at communicating.

I mean, look, people were, what was the big topic this week? People were bringing up, oh, we didn't play these playoff games in domes. They're just too important. They're too important. For the Texans, playing in a controlled environment like NRG, I think matters. Yeah. And you go back to it, Ross, I mean, that stupid Tampa game, you should have won. You know, like how that game played out.

You lose by one. Yeah, but there's a lot of games. The game against Denver, you probably should have won that one. If Stroud didn't get hurt, especially. Yeah, but you could have easily lost the Jaguars with Davis Mills. The opener, you were one play away from possibly win at that game. Bill's game they could have lost. Ram's game they, I'm not Rams,

Rams game they did lose. I'm talking about the Jaguars game. So yeah, it can go either. Rators they could have lost too. Ugh. They try to give that game up. They try to yack up that Chargers game too, getting up 14. Nothing. They were just a one-score game type of team and things didn't

unfortunately swing their way. But you have a situation where in Carolina, they built around Bryce Young. They got him Ted McMillan. They drafted Xavier Leggett. They got some offensive linemen in the building. You got Chuba Hubbard and Rico Dowdell. They're giving him the best opportunity to try and be successful over there in Carolina. So I just think

you'd like to see something similar here, especially starting with the offensive line and then going with the run game as well. The realities of this is you needed two more wins. If you had beaten Denver and you had beaten pick any of those other games, Tampa or whoever, You're 14 and 3, and you're probably, you have home field, and we're talking about the playoffs running through NRG, to me that is the goal. If you can get to that, that's where you control your destiny. I felt like this team would be playing for the Super Bowl right now

if they had had home field throughout. Yeah, that's unfortunate. All right, Stephen in Portland. Let's get him real quick ahead of a break. We have I just don't get it coming up next. What's up, Stephen? Oh, Stephen. Oh, yes. Hello, my friends.

How are you all? What's up? A long time listener first time. I know I've called before. Gordy, it's actually great to hear you on. I just wanted to talk a little bit about, I wanted to cool my head a little bit on Stroud because I was so mad for a couple of weeks there.

But so I don't understand why so much of this blame is being tossed on him when the interior line was terrible versus the Patriots. And I'm just wondering what you guys think about our off-season projection, as far as getting some veterans on the interior line. Jake Andrews, he didn't do it for me. I don't think he does it for 31 other NFL starting teams either. Basically, I just want to give my props to CJ. I think he was trying to do too much.

I think I don't think he was fully healed from that concussion. I think he was in his own head. But he's got the talent, and I don't think they should break the bank on him, but I think they should extend them in some fashion, and I think they should do it sooner than later so they can do it at a lower amount. And I just want to see what you guys' thoughts are on that. And that's about it.

All right, thank you, Stephen. Yeah, they could look, kind of what they did with Nico Collins, they're like, the breakout's coming with Nico Collins. So let's get ahead of this. Let's get him at a good market price where we're betting that we are going to win on this deal. And that worked for the Houston Texans.

I just don't see that happening. and are not willing to take a discount. Like, that's just not where they're going to go. Likes to get paid. We had Joel Corey on at the top of the hour, and he mentioned, like, Dave is going to be saying, hey, look at this Lawrence deal. Look at this other deal.

Look at these other deals. Like, we need to get paid. And if they hit the market, nobody's talking about Stroud's struggles. Like, his camp is going, man, did you see this guy's rookie here? Oh, man. See how young this guy?

He's only going to get better. He's only going to get better. I expect his fifth, yeah, his fifth-year option to get picked up. And then if he has a good year next year, they'll try to work out an extension. That's kind of how I expected to play out at this point. But the situation around him was horrible. There is no denying that.

Where are you real quick on the outdoor atmosphere and snow and all that? You think we should push for more dome games? I guess. Mike Floreal wants neutral-site games like in Miami and New Orleans and all that stuff for the championship games. I'll say this, it's not crazy because we do it with the Super Bowl. and there's a reason why the Super Bowl sites are always Miami, New Orleans, Dallas, Vegas, Vegas, LA, but when it comes to the- They don't go above that Mason-Dixon unless you got a dome like the Vikings.

Right, or you get a new stadium built and you have a dome. So I think it's fun for the spectacle. Like if the Texans were in that game, I'd be pissed. Since it was Broncos Patriots and I didn't care, I thought it was entertaining. They're punting the ball. It's like, boom. It sounds like a truck ramming into the stadium when they're punting the ball. And the guy's getting high fives for punting at 30 yards.

It was crazy, man. But I think it's fun for the spectacle of it. But yeah, if you want actual good best football, you could possibly do something with the neutral side. I think Matt Thomas said that no way, no chance in a hell that would ever happen. I think if you get money involved, I will never doubt. I will never try to shortchange the greed from NFL owners and it would be better football.

It would. All right, quick break here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. You have something in your life or in sports that you just don't get. What is that? Why is that happening? I don't understand why this is so popular. I don't understand why this keeps happening. You can bring it to the table.

713-212-5-790 is the phone number. 7-13-212-5-7-9. What don't you get? That's coming up next here on Sports Talk 790. Do you have something in your life that you just don't get? No need to worry. No need to fret. We will discuss the topics to see if we comprehend the things that may confuse our friends.

It's time to say I just don't get it. Something in your life or something that you see or something in the sports world or something outside of the sports world. Let's not talk politics, though. That you just don't understand. You don't get it. Why does this keep happening? Why is this so popular? Bring it to the table.

Tell us, why don't you get it? 7-13. We'll tell you if we get it or we don't. 7-13-212-5-790 is the phone number. If you want to get in, 7-1-3-212-5-7-90, Gordy, since you are a guest, I will throw to you first. What is something that you just don't understand? Well, the first one is the 11 morons that voted not to put Bill Belichick into the Hall of Fame.

I will say, well, we don't even know if it's 11. I wonder, do we ever get a, we just know that it was calculated. It was 50 voters and 11 of them had to vote. I thought, well, I said it was at least 11 because he had to make, he had to make 80% and he did not. That's what it. Did somebody like try to try to figure it out? Oh, there's somebody who's been running a list of all the voters and he's got. a list of the positive, you know, the people that have affirmed on social media or whatever that they definitely voted for him.

One of them being John McLean. He has outed himself as a for Bill Belichick. Okay. That's good. I will say that I get it. I would have, look, if I had a vote, I'm voting Bill Belichick in. Yes. Like, that's the easiest of easiest things. And it just, it gets stupid over the whole, the spy gate, the flake gate, even if you think

that that was a little bit of an edge. I'm sorry. They didn't win Super Wolves because of Spying. I just... I don't think so either, but you still cheated. If you cheat the game, it's not like he's getting banned from the Hall of Fame. If I said you got, if I said,

hey, a head coach got a draft pick taken from his organization and was fined $500,000 and so he had to wait for a one year penance into the getting in the Hall of Fame, that to me doesn't seem that crazy. I think it's because SpyGate was so long ago.

If it was like five years ago and it was the same exact offense, it would be fresher on everyone's mind and it would make a lot more sense. Because I'm with you. Like when I first saw it, I saw JJ Watt, this is unbelievable.

Tom Brady, I can't, oh my God. Patma Holmes, whoever else. And I was like, yeah, I was with him. I had my pitchfork out. I was ready. Yeah. And then I read about the,

oh, the spy. I even forgot about SpyGate. Because you probably get people holding grudges about that. But it's just, it's, it's I get over it like he's the greatest coach of all time it's the same thing with Barry Bonn I got to go back to Barry Bonds Barry Bonds was the greatest ball player of all time your grace hitter all time even if you take out

the steroid so I just feel like he deserves to be in regardless Bonds should be in the baseball hall fame and Bill Belichick again nobody's won as many Super Bowls as him like just he deserves to be in first ballot I don't care what your opinion is on Yeah. All right. I will go next. I'm going to go with a football one. I don't get why these NFL owners are not learning. Every year, there's more and more and more head coaches fired.

I mean, are we that caught up in looking for the next best thing? where Sean McDermott, I mean, you have, you had 10 vacancies out of 32, 10 vacancies. Raiders still haven't hired a coach. Cardinals still haven't hired a coach. What are these owners that are thinking, I need the next best thing. I have to fire my coach so fast and they're getting fired so quickly now to where you end up scrambling like the Raiders and the Cardinals, you're getting the 10th best candidate. You're the Cleveland Browns. Oh, we're all smart.

We're going to fire Kevin Stavansky. two-time AP coach of the year who has a dominant defense and you're giving him Shador Sanders and Dylan Gabriel at quarterback you fire him for Todd Munkin? Is Todd Munkin an upgrade of Kevin Sifansky? I don't think there's a person on the planet

that thinks that's the thing. When are these owners going to learn that just moving on to the next best thing is not always the greatest idea? It's like they're a teenager in the dating world going to girlfriend after girlfriend after girlfriend. Like, come on, man. Be adults here.

I don't get how this has gotten so out of hand. I'll throw you on more. NFL retreads. I don't get it. Why is one man's trash, another man's treasure? It always happens as well. Robert Sala. Robert Sala sucked as a head coach with the Jets,

but the Titans went, no, man, there's something there. And then fast forward. Let me give you a headline two and a half years from now. Yes. Robert Sala fired as Titans head coach. Now, the biggest retread we can think of, we've mentioned earlier in this segment. Bill Belichick, fired with the Browns. I get it.

And he was great with the Patriots. But I'm trying to think of who else. I'll say it's more misses than hits. Mike McCarthy going to the Steelers. Oh, my God, exactly. The Steelers didn't fire Mike Tomlin. So I can give them a bit of a bit of a pass on that. He was let go.

Who is the second most successful, even? are currently head coach. Now, Kyle Shanahan's only been with the Niners, right? I know he bounced around as an offensive coordinator. Oh, Dan Quinn with the commanders? Yeah, you know, nice year one. If you have backwards hat guy as your NFL head coach,

I'm a little bit wary of that. Now, would you say? Mike Rable retread, but he shouldn't have been fired with the Titans. Right. Would you say Gary Kubiak with the Broncos? They won a Super Bowl. Now, they didn't win it because of his great offensive game plan. all-time dominant defense.

With Wade Phillips, I'll give you... I won't win a Super Bowl with Gary. I'll give you the best retread. What? Andy Reed. That's got to be going. Yeah.

So, yeah, it can work. But I would say... But I'm saying more the retread of you suck the first time as a head coach? Did Sean Payton get hired? No, he retired with the Saints, right? Yeah. Okay.

I'm just saying the guys that clearly failed as a head coach. And then they go back as a DC or an OC and they're good again. And then they go, What are we missing? This guy needs to be our head coach. He sucked the first time his head coach. Mike McCarthy is the prime example of that, I think. I mean, there's no way that works out.

I mean, Stefanski had, what, one good year in Cleveland? He was coached of the year twice. He had two good years. I'll tell you this. My buddies who are Saints fans are like, Robert, or Stefanski as the Falcons A coach, doesn't scare me. I think he's good. I think he's a really good offensive game planner.

I think, yeah, like I said, two times. He won the coach of the year in 2020 and 2023, with the Browns. Oh, here's some other retreads that never worked. Jeff Fisher. Oh, hey, come on, man. Lovie Smith. Hey, that was, they were just looking for a name.

Bruce Arians. Did they pivot from David to Lovie Smith when it was, when they were the Josh McCown stuff was going down? Or was that when they pivoted to David Cully? I can't recall. You know what? I'm going to throw up. That was actually a very dark era of the Texans.

I don't even want to talk about. Oh, David Cully gets another head coaching opportunity. He is. on the ranch. Oh, Rod Rivera. Oh, he's getting interviewed somewhere. Why? He got interviewed with the Raiders.

Stop. That's what I'm saying. You're like, You'll find somebody new. Now, of course, you had to fire old man Pete Carroll. I mean, you're wheeling them up to the stadium for goodness sakes. You know, John Gruden, let's just put his name back out there. David Cully is out chilling.

And what was that high? I'm trying to pull up that high school he was coaching at. Nashville somewhere. Yeah, I can't remember. Yeah, White County. I'm in White County High School sitting on his buyout cash They took care of him

Remember there a few years ago People were there not Jim Caldwell's name again Oh my God Like why do we do this? I don't know And here's it's exacerbary even more Ross If you take a year off and go do media

Your name gets hot again You're fired NFL head coach Go do media for a year Your name will pop up again Yeah Sala McCarthy Harbaugh Jeff Halfley Todd Munkin

Joe Brady elevated You have Jesse Minter, Kevin Stefanski, and then you have two vacancies. That's 10 new head coaches next year out of 32. I like John Harbaugh, but Ross, if I made you put $1,000 right now, will John Harbaugh make the playoffs as the head coach of the Giants of the next five years? Would you go? Make the playoffs five years, yes. Win a championship, hell no.

I would say odds or no. Honestly, it feels a little like John Harbaugh, the game passing by a little bit. Same thing from Matt Tomlin. Look, he'll go seven and ten. Good leader of men type coaches. Maybe he gets above 500, but they just miss a wild card spot. Like, I could see that. We'll see.

I mean, he's a good coach. He's got time. He's not that old, was he, in his 60s? So we'll see with John Harrow. Like, I'd rather, I like the Joe Brady hire. Yeah. Shoot, I like Todd Munkin. Like, take a chance on somebody first time head coach as opposed to the retreads.

Yeah. All right. Jonathan, we forgot to get not forgotten. We didn't have time. We ran out of time. to get yours, Jonathan. We'll get you when we come back. You guys want to get in.

What is something you just don't get? 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-2-1-2-7-90. 11-51 here on Sports Talk 790. You can still get in with what you don't get if you'd like. Got a couple of minutes. 7-13-21-2-5-7-90. 7-13-212-5-7-90.

Jonathan Allen, what don't you get? As you know, I'm a track guy, man. Just real quick, the reason why I did track and why I fell in love with the sport in general. That's school record holder at SFA, folks. All right, put some respect on his name. But just hit me out. And the reason why I do this, and I love track in just the Olympics in general, is because of what athletics is supposed to be.

It's supposed to be the great, like, as a human, you are doing something that no one else has done. Yeah. That's why I love sports. You're excelling at that, right? They're pushing the humans limits. And so with football and all these sports being relatively new to, you know, old running, throwing, whatever, whatever, you have integrity you have to uphold. So when it comes down to Lambs Armstrong doing PEDs, performing the same drugs, gets all his Olympic males taken away. Uh-huh.

If Michael Feltz would do the same thing, everything's getting taken away. If you St. Bolt did the same thing, he would not be known as the fastest man on Earth. Oh, I think I know where you're going. Football and football is coach. Coach, you got your military versus my military. We go out of it and see who's stronger, who gets more points, who wins. If Belichick is the one ruined his integrity and ruin an integrity of NFL, he shouldn't even be sniffing the Hall of Fame if they really were serious about it.

You can be upset with it, but I just don't understand the point of, oh, because he won this many things. No, this isn't the WWE. This is supposed to be the NFL one of the greatest sports in the world. The same with MLB. B, they're doing steroids. Oh, Barry Bonds. Oh, yeah, he's a cool spectacle. You're right. But are you even an athlete at that point? Are you really a human, God-given athlete? You're not.

At that point, you are trying to rate the game. And in itself, it's distasteful. And I see why those people didn't vote again. And that's what I just don't get. You don't get why. So, yeah, look, I get why people are like, oh, upset. But now, Gordy's talking about this guy who's on a witch hunt. This guy's like, all right, I'm counting up all the public votes. Who didn't vote for Bill Ball? check, I got out you right now. I just say put your name

on it. If you're going to have the balls to go Bill Bill and check, yeah. Make him wait a year. I think Jonathan makes a good point where to where if you get a stain where you took PEDs once. How much of a stain was it though? Come on. They sent some cameras to an opposing practice.

It was a major scandal at the time. Brady said take a little ball out of this air. It was a massive national story. They had a draft pick taken away. And a draft pick taking away and you get fined $500,000. Do you think they won a Super Bowl because of SpyGate? I didn't say that.

But think about the history. I mean, yeah. 30 years out of line. Let's say that's it. 30 years on the line. And we go, okay, who's the Hall of Fame? And you go to Belichick. Oh, wait.

He's cheated. Let me give you a little spoiler, Jonathan. The Steelers of the 60s and 70s were all popping roids. There are guys in the Hall of Fame that took steroids. So like, that's true. We can't get on our moral high horse in 2026 and be like, well, well, you're not taking them out of the high horse. He's getting in the Hall of Fame.

He's not banned for life. He's not the cream club. He's going to get in there. Bill says, I couldn't hear you over all these rings. No one will ever have that many Super Bowl rings. Nobody's going to talk to, nobody's even going to talk about this in 10 years. It's a one year penance. He gets held out of it.

He gets held behind the Velvet Roll. They didn't let him in the club for one hour. All right. Hey, you're not on the list. Then again, no one should ever be first ballot ever again. That's ridiculous. All right. No one is.

No, he is. be but who can't come to me with Tony Dungey or Sean Payton or any of these other morons no one should ever be Why do two words make it so much that much of a difference? It's not going to put They put that on your gold jacket

First ballot I don't think it's that big of a deal My question to you, Gordia If there's another coach says to go win a Super Bowl just like Bellet today but no scandal at all Shouldn't he be a first ballot? But I'm just saying if this is a whole

hypothetical. If that happens and shouldn't he be more first ballot than no because there's going to be some dumbass voter that puts himself on a pedestal and thinks his opinion matters he's going to go well i think he should have to wait y'all bring the same energy when hose al-tube has got to sit around and wait because some dumb-ass voters like well i know altuva didn't take part of the cheating but he let it happen first of all yeah those are apples and oranges because it was a it was a team-driven scheme-driven scandal if we're talking about a j hinge being held out for a year if he ever makes the hall of fame i wouldn't be sure shocking. We're talking about Alex Cora absolutely should be held back. It keeps two cheating scandals with 2018. Jose Al Tuvee was part of a player-driven

scheme and did not participate in it. But also, I will say on the same token. I know, I mean... Paul's Feltran, just kidding. Yes, he did. It took him a long time. He said he wanted orchestrated it. So if Joseo Touvei, if I know we're going to get our pitchforks out here in Houston

and you're going to say, I don't get it, Jose Al-Tubei needs to be a first Ballot Hall of Famer, I'm going to sit here and I'm going to tell you, because I just have to be unbiased, I have to be myself, I would get it. I would get it. I would vote him in. I don't get a vote. I would have voted Bill Belichick in.

I don't get a vote. That's where I am on it. All right. We do have to take quick break here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross here on Sports Talk 790. Matt Thomas is out as he is with the Houston Rockets in Atlanta. Chris Gordy, appreciate you hanging

out a little bit later? Are you, you You bounce it on me. I got a good news. He's very busy. He got like 15 meetings to get to. That's okay. And Will and Adam show up at 1 o'clock? I asked both of them. And then I got a bunch of like a silent looking. Why don't you do it? No, maybe you should do it. So I don't know.

Will there be an Adam at 1 o'clock? We'll see. I mean, I can handle it. And that means you guys can come in and be a co-host for a couple of minutes. You want to talk some ball with me. We got the Bill Belichick thing. People are still fired up about. Is Bill Belichick getting slided the greatest travesty in football history?

Or he's going to be fine here? He's just wait a year. All right. You know what? Go hang out in Cancun with your girlfriend. All right. Go figure out how to lose more games at North Carolina. You've got yet stuff to do with this time.

He didn't have to be in Canton in August or whatever. All right. So we're talking about that. Rockets collapsed against the Spurs last night. We got other NFL stuff going on as well. We had an interesting conversation with Joel Corey talking about C.J. Stroud and Will Anderson's extensions. Anything you guys want to get to.

Phone lines are wide open for you. 713-212-5-790 is the phone number. at 713-21-2-5-790. This is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Oh, 3 in H-town. What's happening, lunchttimers? Hello and welcome in to hour number three of the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Without Matt Thomas. But it's with Ross.

I'm here hanging out solo for this hour. And perhaps more, we shall see as we go along. Phone lines are open. 713-212-5-790 is the number if you'd like to get in. 7-13-212-5-7-90. We've been talking about Bill Belichick. I put a tweet out at SportsRV. We're going to talk about that in the next segment.

It made me laugh of what I saw. I screenshot it. I did a little Google searching and I screenshoted it. You can check that out on my Twitter at SportsRV. So we have some Belichick stuff to get to, of course, the Rockets collapsed last night. What else is going on in the Sports and News? including those things. That's where we turned to

Jonathan Allen for the news. Let do. What's up, Jonathan? Hey, how you doing? You know what? I think it was a really good point by you to make the players be holding to the same standards.

I mean, so the coaches to the players. Because, I mean, it was a major scandal. They got a draft pick, take it, all that stuff. And he's still going to get in the Hall of Fame. Exactly. And I just feel like it's being overlooked. You know what I mean?

I know. I'm with you. I'm with you. All right, Blake, we'll get to you in a second, but right now we've got the news at noon with Jonathan Allen. What are the top sports news items of the day, Jonathan? All right, let's get out the way. Rockets fall down to San Antonio 11 to 99, getting completely taken over in the fourth quarter.

If you watch the game, you know what happened. EMA wasn't really too high about the defense, and he's been screaming about this all season long. Just not, don't get stagnant. We still have to keep playing. And regardless of who's setting the screen, the Appi can set it with a small, and get advantage with Kevin, those guys, and vice versa.

Men got to be a handler and move one of my mom around and screen handle, do a little bit of both. And I don't think we were setting good screens from men. He would just go underneath and didn't get much out of that. And then Alperin, they kind of pushed him off the block. One B flooded and we didn't get anything there on the elbow. You know, surprised we didn't get better position with Albi. So, Ross, talk to me. You're the basketball guy, man.

What's going on, dude? I turned it off at the half time and I thought everything was going to be good. You know, it was straight. Well, you went to sleep. Those were 14. It was the good thing you went to sleep. You didn't have to watch that disaster. I want to claw my eyes out in the Toyota Center.

That offense was so bad. Four of 23 in the fourth quarter. Yeah, it was the defense of Wimby guarding a men. The five on the one, but sagging off them because you don't have to respect Amin Thompson's three-point shooting. So that allows Wimby to sag off and not allow the driving lanes for a minute. Thompson. That allows him to help off of Amin Thompson because you don't, it clogs up to spacing. You can leave if Amin Thompson's in the perimeter to try to space things out to let Kevin Doreen or Alpern Shingoon operate in the elbow or the paint. Then you don't have to, Wimby can be there because he doesn't have to guard Amin Thompson at the three point line.

Then it's a five on four situation. So, yeah, Rockets were not doing a great job adjusting to that. And then you also had some switching defenses on the. Alperin Shingoon and Kevin Durant actions that they were running. And Stefan Castle, by the way, Wimby is the headliner of why this defense worked for the San Antonio Spurs. But Stefan Castle did a great job of being physical

and beating up on Alperin Shingoon, who he should be able to handle and score over. But Shingoon, I had the fourth quarter stats. I think it was, what were they? They were combined one of 16 or whatever. Two of 16, I think maybe in the fourth quarter, you had all of them not performing well. in the fourth quarter of that game, they completely collapsed.

And it was bad offense from everyone, but especially from who are supposed to be your big three. Kevin Durant, Amen Thompson, Alpern-Shangoon are supposed to be your big three. None of them could get anything going in that fourth quarter. And the Rockets, they just lost the game. It's not like the Spurs scored like 27. It wasn't anything crazy. But when you have Durant 1 of 4, Shingun O of 5, and Amin 1 of 7,

Yeah, you're not going to get going. What else is in the news? I don't know if you saw our friend Chandler-Rome for the Athletic gave his Astros projected 2026 lineup. Oh, really? Yeah, so... I did not see that. Yeah, it was a couple hours ago.

Starting off, he's got Pena. Of course. Altuve. Yeah, where is he at? Second. Okay. Alvarez, I'm going on order, by the way. This is third.

Alvarez. Uh-huh. Correa. D.S. Yes. Walker. Yes. Smith.

Cole and then Myers Okay So Zach Colin left Jake Myers and center Catchers being Diaz and Salazar That means no

Essoc Paratus He I'm I'm I don't know I'm just I'm I like

I understand that Certainly for opening day It makes sense You got to give them a shot But having Issoc Paredes is one of your top three hitters. I'm sorry.

I love Jose Altuva in the history, but Easek Paratus at this point in their careers is a better hitter than him. And Jeremy Payne and Yordon Alvarez are Yordon is one, obviously. I'm probably putting Pena or Parada's number two. Man. This is going to be fun.

This is going to be fun how to see this works out when the season comes around, man. Yeah. In that article, as you said, from Chandler Rome of the Athletic, Houston's infield surplus seems untenable. It's not great. Chandler Rome, quite the wordsmith, by the way.

He's worth the price. I literally only subscribe to the athletic for Chandler-Rome. So a high compliment to Mr. Rome. He's such a great writer. Does such a great job covering the Houston Astros. It really does. I wish they would get beat riders, everyday beat riders for the Rockets and the Texans,

but they don't because they got to pay Ken Rosenthal's salary, but that's fine. But anyways, great coverage is always from Channel of Rome there. And yeah, logically, hey, Christian Wals and, is your first baseman. He's a gold glove caliber first base. Like, I don't know how you can stick, keep Isak Prades

to stick out of the lineup consistently. It just doesn't make sense long term. But that is certainly interesting. Jake Myers and center, Zach Cole in left for the Astros, says Chandler Rum. What else you got?

I have as well. Just some layback Texans news from Jonathan Alexander, excuse me, saying that Joe Mixing insist he will return for the 2026 season, which would be amazing, but I mean, John Alexander is saying that Joe... John Em Alexander.

Yeah, yeah, no, that's okay. I mean, he's, uh, I think, you know, you just call John. You can call John. John, is that. Some people don't like, some Jonathan don't like that. I'm all the John and Malikazeera. Okay, so he like, okay, okay, okay.

But I think, yeah, he goes by Jonathan, but I think, you know, Jonathan Alexander doesn't fit in a Twitter handle. It's a lot of word, it's kind of wordy, a lot of characters. Yeah. I know, I'm sorry. sorry. You know, from Jonathan to Jonathan, I will call him Jonathan. I'm sorry, you say that. Joe Mixen, say that again? Joe Mixen insists he will return for the Texans 2026 season. Did Nick Casario insist that? Does he know he's getting deadlines here?

You know it's $8 million off the cap if they get rid of them? I'm finding the topics I'm trying to give to you. I don't, I'm not sure if I would believe that either. So a 30-year-old running back coming off of a major foot injury where it seems like there was at the very least if he didn't shoot himself in the foot literally. Come on, Jonathan, there's no way that happened, right? There's no way. I mean, what could it? It's like very dark.

It's been a widespread rumor. But that, I mean, if somebody gets shot in the foot and ends up at the hospital, people know, right? It's got. Then they get filed in a police report somewhere. But you got hip-a-laws, man. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. I mean, I'm staying with it. Okay. That's the only way. Well, I hope I'm wrong. I hope I'm right. It's only, we only put a small. bet on it because Matt seems super confident. I'm going to tell you a little secret about Matt.

Sometimes he does get a little inside information here and there. Why would he say that? I know. He was so confident too. I know. So I'm telling you I'm a little scared because Matt Matt hears the whispering winds around Houston a lot. Definitely give him credit on that. So I could be wrong. I'm not saying I'm 100% right. That's why I only bet coffee on it. But it just seems insane that that would happen. Yeah. But that's the news that noon. Not too much top. what's going on unless you got something you got can say to folks but

all right there you go thanks for the news at noon there jonathan all right blake we see you on hold we'll get to some astros stuff with you you guys want to get on uh get on hold you can as well as i'm flying solo right now so you want to come hang out the floor will be yours we gave out that uh chandler rome projected lineup that does not have esauk paradis in there to start the season how are we feeling about that? We've been talking about the rotation early on in the show as well. Of course, we've been talking about the Rockets, loss of the spurs. I mean, a lot of stuff going,

it's supposed to be the slow time of year. But hey, we are humming on all cylinders here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Anything you guys want to get to? 713-212-790 is the phone number. 7-13-212-5-7-90. Ross v. Re-out with you, Jonathan Allen as well, flying solo for the moment. The Matt Thomas show with Ross, with no Matt Thomas, but with Ross. I'm trying to figure out of the way that makes this like the extreme, even longer of a description of the show. Hi, I'm here. You guys can send me a tweet if you'd like at SportsRV.

I'd also appreciate a follow on my Instagram at SportsRV as well. After neglecting it for years, I've been trying to build it up. So I would appreciate a follow just from friend to a friend. If you'd follow me at SportsRV on Instagram, I really would appreciate it. And I'll follow you back. 713-212-5-790 is the phone number if you want to get in 7-13-212-5-790 we'll get to the bella-check stuff a funny google search i did you can find on my twitter at sports rv but a couple of people in holding very patiently blake appreciate you holding through the break blake the floor is yours hey ross how you doing today bud i love the show man uh thank you i appreciate it it's a beautiful day to be alive

and i'm doing great man thank you And my question is, why do you think the Astros asked Jose Altuve and Carlos Correa to not participate in the World Baseball Classic? Now, it came down. The first initial report from Brian McTaggart was that Jose Altuve was adhering to the wishes of the Houston Astros. Then Chandler-Rome broke his story that it was an insurance issue for Carlos Correa. He could not get his contract insured in case he. he got hurt.

And then Channel Rome followed up with another report saying that it also was the case with Jose Al Tuve that he was unable to get his contract insured in case there was some sort of insurance issue. Here, I'll read to the tweets. I was pulling them up here. Jose Al Tuvei's absence from the WBC, which Brian McTaggart first reported on Monday, is also due to insurance issues. Sources told the athletic that was Chandler Rome. And then he also said Carlos Carrer failed. to receive insurance on his contract. So I don't know how much of it was the Astros wishes,

how much of it was the contract issues, but it's being reported that there were insurance issues for both Carlos and Jose Al-Tuvae. I get you. And then one more question, man. Go ahead. Why do you think, from Vervaldez hasn't been signed yet?

Yeah, I would imagine it's just because he's asking for a lot of money in a lot of years. And he's 32. Look, there are a lot of question marks. Right. I mean, he opted out of the qualifying offer, which Framber Valdez was well within his rights and should have done to go ahead and see the market.

And at the worst, one year, $21 or whatever million dollars would be what Framber Valdez would be able to get. Gordy brought it up. I don't know who the source would. Do you remember who Gordy said the San Francisco Giants were being floated as a possible? I forgot.

I forgot. Okay. So I would have to go back and look around that. but Framber Valdez, there's a number of factors working against him. Let's start with the on the field. Well, I guess this stuff happened on the field too, but, you know, I'm saying. On the mound as far as throwing and all that stuff. He's 32 years old.

He has been a workhorse. Four straight years, he's been 175 innings or more. Last four years, 31, 31, 28, 31 starts. I mean, that is a workhorse. That has been great. And the three of those first four years at the caliber of finishing top 10 in the Cy Young did not do it last year and slipped in terms of an ERA of 366, which is the highest he's had since his second year in the league when he was 25 years old in 2019. So he had his worst year he's had in four or five years. He has piled up a whole lot of inning, so you're worried about wear and tear.

He is 32 years old, so do you want to hand a 32-year-old, a five, six-year contract in big money? And that's what he's asking for. And that's all before we get to the fact that he unraveled on the mound far too often. And it looks like he got intentionally crossed up with his catcher, Caesar Salazar, and hit him in the stomach. Now, both of them said that that wasn't the case, even though afterwards, Fromber said, oh, it was my mistake. You know, I got the wrong signal.

Salazar said, oh, it was my mistake. I had the wrong signal and it was like, hey, you both can't be telling the truth. Somebody's got to be lying here. So I don't know. Who knows if there's more whispers around the league about what happened or getting to the bottom of that stuff? But, I mean, it seems like it would be

a precarious situation. Like, do I want to sign this 32-year-old, two big money, who does have a lot of innings on his arm, who also is probably, to unraveling and then possibly being a bad teammate. Do you think that took his stock that low after he did that? Yes, it cost me a bet. Now, me and Matt didn't bet anything.

Middle of the summer, the middle of summer, Frobber is like rolling on all cylinders. See, I'm just cursed with bets with Matt. I don't know. It's just not great. It was like the middle of July. His ERA was under three. He had like seven or eight really good starts

or it was like eight out of nine really good starts. and then August happened. We made the bet. I was like, oh, over five and a half years, man. He's cruising. Then he completely unravels against Boston. And he had that horrible start in Detroit. And then I don't even remember what started was.

He got crossed up with his catcher. And it became national news. Like every baseball content creator on the planet, like Doug's baseball podcast in Des Moines, Iowa, Like everyone was talking about it. Everyone is bad. And that's bad PR. And whether you like it or not,

PR matters when you're handing a guy long-term contract. So, yeah. He and I don't know who his agents are. I'm sure are asking for, they're wanting six years or something like that. But I don't know that it's being, that people are willing to give out those free agent contracts. And especially not to Framber Valdez,

who now we sit here on January 29th, he does not have a home. Reports, though, that the San Francisco 49ers, San Francisco giants are interested in Framber Valdez as a possible landing spot. All right, let's keep it going on the phone lines. 713-213-213-213-2-213-790.

You want to get in, 7-1-2-790. Broderick, next up. What's up, Broderick? What's up, Ross? I was about to call. You mad. My bad, bro. But before I get into my Rockies point,

like you were saying, I remember that game with Forever. He was just mad, and he threw the ball and left to catch him. Like, bro, everybody saw it. Like, so, yeah, that's enough about that, though. Still, crush shitty.

Put to the Rockets. I think yesterday was the first time since maybe his first year that I think I actually saw. all of men like look hesitant as it pertain to wimby now my question unless i'm wrong didn't wimby have like four files in the third quarter yeah with nine minutes left in the fourth quarter you had four fouls so i'm sorry third quarter yeah exactly so what i would say is we should have like a man or anybody that should have tried to get that fifth file but they all backed up

But when you got him on the ropes, I already had four files, he's frustrated because we can see it. Try to get that fifth file and get him out the game. So that's pretty much what I was going to say as it pertains to Wendy, but he did what he do. I mean, 7-5, what are you going to do? Shengu, I love you to death. I'm glad we got you, but you can't be getting bullied by Stefan Castle. Like, no, he's too little, bro. You got to put him in the rim.

If we watch you back Windy under the rim, you definitely can get closer to the rim as it pertains to Staford Castle. So we need you to not get mad because you're not getting the car and force the official to make the car. Just keep going to the paint. Yeah. I mean like that's go ahead. I'm sorry, Brodick. Yeah, I'm with you, man. It's, I mean, that four quarter was horrible.

They couldn't get anything going. As you said, Wemby, now I understand, yeah, men, maybe. could have gone more at him. He was a little bit hesitant and the Rockets. The funny thing is Broderick, that game 9, 10 days ago at Toyota Center, nobody was scared at Wimby. They were going after him and they did throw up a lot of shots

and they got, but he started piling up the blocks and it did seem like they got in his mind and they were physical with him for especially the first half and a lot of the third quarter and Wimby was, he was rattled like you said. He was falling all over the place. He was flopping and falling over the ground

and Alperin Shinggoons throwing away. throwing spinning dunks while he's all on the floor. Like, they look like the Rockets of Wimby. And then something happened in that fourth quarter where it just, it's like he woke up or the Rockets fell asleep. I don't know, man. It just seemed like a completely different matchup in that fourth quarter than the rest of the game.

And then they gambled a little bit more two in the fourth quarter because I saw when EMA got mad at or Colgi. But not only that, it's like, if you watch, well, you was at the Toyota Center, so you saw it. I don't know if you noticed it, but what Harper had like three or four drives back to back where he got down here, nobody was in the paint. You got to get back and protect the paint.

Like, Alpy, okay, your shot got blocked on one end or you didn't get the car. We don't have time for you to complain. You got to go. Somebody got, even if it's not Alpy, hey, a man, a Kogi, whoever, rotate to the paint. That way Harper can't get a free run at the paint. I mean, little dude, he was looking like a season vet in the fourth quarter, getting repeated layup after layup. Like, come on, now we got to do better as a team.

I have a lost plate. I'm not going to lose faith. We just, we need to play like he may say, stay consistent. We need to play at one way the whole time, whether your shots are falling or not. You still need to get back and hustle. And it was pretty clear that Alpy, like he, When he wasn't making shots, he wasn't getting back. Like, simple as that, kind of front running, like you said.

He's spinning on, he got Winby on the floor. You're doing what you're doing reverse dugs. You puffing your chest out. We need that same energy all game, whether you're making the shot or missing the side. Your job is to play with the same effort. So, yeah, we couldn't get nothing going, but our effort lacked in that fourth quarter. And it's got to start with the main people. If this is Alpy and supposedly KDC, Alpy.

You got to go, bro. You got to go. All right. That's all I got for y'all, man. Thank you, Broderick. I appreciate it. Yeah, look, everybody, there's a lot of blame to go around in that four quarter. Nobody was good.

I mean, the offense is so bad. You want Kevin Durant to get more than four shots. He was only one of four. I'm in Thompson, one of seven. He was trying to get up some shots, but they were going with the five-on-one defense, as in the center on the point guard, and sagging him way off and then daring him. Like, Amin Thompson, I think the one bucket he scored, I think it was over Luke Cornett. So I don't think he scored on Wimby that whole fourth quarter where Wimby was guarding him a lot.

And it just, they will completely out of sorts. And Amin Thompson talked about it. and the there was an article written about it I'm sorry I don't know there's a new beat reporter for the Chronicle for the Houston Rockets I'll try to find him he wrote an article on it I intend to read it

and I don't normally do this for regular season games I normally only do this for playoffs I go to the games when I'm working pre-imposed home games for the most part and I was there last night and it's great I encourage all of you all to go to the Toyota Center you can see so much more you could see Wemby

and his frustration but you could see that he was kind of resolute. He wasn't going to let it keep him down. He was going to keep trying and keep battling and keep getting back up. And then he had a great fourth quarter, unfortunately, for us here in Houston. And you could see the more pensiveness and tentative actions from the rockets in that fourth quarter when the defense really changed them up. So I'm going to go back and I'm going to watch this game tonight again before watching the game against the Hawks. That's how interested in my aim to kind of see how this played out and kind of get a little bit

more on it because I was at the game. You can't pause. You can't rewind. There are certain things you catch in the arena that you can't catch at home and vice versa. So I'm just intrigued, man. It was so interesting to see how the rockets could not put the puzzle pieces together. It was like a riddle they could not solve. Like, Wimby's hanging way back in the paint. And now he's helping off and on to Shingoon and Kevin Durant. Like, what do we do? We can't do anything. So he had E. Maidoka speaking after the game about some possible solutions. I'm in Thompson as well. they were

just puzzled bewildered, flummoxed, whatever you want to say. It just wasn't great for the Rockets there in that fourth quarter and it was not fun to see. But yeah, angles to cover on that as Broderick mentioned.

We could talk about Alpi, we could talk about a minute, we could talk about Durant, we could talk about the defense. It wasn't up to par last night for the Rockets. Just one game out of 82, but these are measuring stick games. It was important for the Western Conference. So to drop that one with that loss in the four quarter, certainly not the way we wanted it to go.

All right, quick break here on the Rockets. What else got to say? Rockets rap? I'm such in Rockets mode. The Mad Thomas show with Ross here on Sports Talk 790. Oh, they're putting the highlights on ESPN News right now. Men Thompson, by the way. That game got ruined. His four quarter ruined what was a great performance where he was flying all over the place.

They're playing all these Men Thompson highlights, throwing and gliding and dunking the ball down. Anyways, we'll talk about that. We can get anything you guys want to. I want to get to. Those you on hold, I promise we'll get to you next as well. It is the Matt Thomas show with Ross without Matt Thomas. 713-212-5-790 is the phone number if you'd like to get in.

7-132-12-790. 1236, the PM here on Sports Talk 790, the Matt Thomas show with Ross, with you until 2 p.m. Coming up in the 1 o'clock hour, if you missed our conversation with Joel Corey, it was quite a while. ago. It is a four-hour show. Great stuff with him talking about C.J. Stroud's possible contract options, Will Anderson paying him? Will he try to reset the market at edge rusher? Because Michael Parsons' deal was such a huge leap up. Will it be more like an Aden Hutchinson deal? Those kind of things and the ins and outs of where the Texans go from here with fifth year options for their number two and number three picks. That'll be coming up in the one o'clock hour. And in the

meantime phone lines are open. I'm flying solo right now, so you guys want to get in. The floor will be yours for a couple of minutes. Yeah, be my co-host for a couple of minutes. 7-13. 212-5-9. 7-190.2-7-190. We had some fun stuff. We're talking about the Astros in the

projected lineup for the Astros. 1.0 from Chandler Rome of the Athletic. No ESAC paratus in the opening day lineup. As predicted by I believe Matt Thomas and I were arguing

about this. I just don't know how you keep East Hsac paratus out of the lineup but I understand Christian Walker better defensive option but there's a log jam right now in the infield and long term it just seems like a very difficult situation for the

Astros to try to figure out even Chandler Rome calling it untenable or saying it seems untenable. All right 713 212-5-790 is the phone number. Biscuit holding longest is next up. What's up, Biscuit? Hey, what's up, Ross? Hey, man. Before I get to my rockets, man, and when you talk to that guy again about C.J. In the extension or whatever, ask him what would be the difference? Like, how much would they say by extending him early? Or how much could it cost them if C.J. had a good year, and they didn't extend him late. Because I

I know, like, with the Cowboys situation, they didn't want to give that money, and then that go out and have a great year. Now you really got to pay them. So what's the difference would it be? I'd be curious to see what that was. And if it was not much, I guess it was worth to gamble. And the second thing, I would say, getting to the Johnson and your news of the day, I didn't hear nothing about the Cougars, man.

Cougars got a big road win last night. They did. Who did that? Who did it? BTCU on the road. Oh, nice. What's TCU ranked? I don't know what they're ranked, but it was a tough win. You know, it's a quality win on the road.

Okay, good. Anyway, any of the Big 12th, it's a good win. All right. Congratulations to the Cougars. There you go. There you go. Now, to the Rockets. And, Ross, you can help me with this, man. What happened was that Wendy was playing a one-man zone, right?

Now, they had rules in the NBA to, you know, combat that, right? But Thompson, for my, you know, it's perfect. I think Thompson would have to be above the three-point line. I mean, above the free-throw line outside the three-point line to get Wimby out of the paint.

Because what happened was last night, they turned the rockets into a jump shooting team. They're like, Wemby going to be in the paint. We're cutting everything off the paint. We're going to force out. We're going to crowd all the shooters because if you get by us, we've got Big Boy back there waiting on you. Now, this is the thing, Ross, and I was telling them earlier.

Thompson has got to start And now it doesn't have to be a three-pointer He has got to start hitting some jump shots Everything can't be a layup Everything can't be going to the home When he was, they was there in the shoot He let the free throw line by himself You got to shoot that

At least become a threat If you don't do it They just gonna continue to pack the pain And it's going to force Sangun To not be in a good situation Because he I think he wasn't worried about Castle, he's worried about the man standing behind the castle.

You know what I'm saying? And that's where the issue is. You know, and then even Duran, when being able to come off people, and he blocked the rent shot on a men-range shot. So, you, Thompson has got to start shooting some jumpers, man. He can't just, everything can't be a layup. Yeah, well, he's, that's easy, but you can't snap your fingers and just have him be a jump shooter all of a sudden, biscuit.

Like, he's not good at it. Well, that's something he got to work on, man. Yeah, we're on it. He works on it, but he can get them up all he wants. If they're not going in in an NBA game, then he's going to be sitting down. If you said, Ben Thompson took 10 middies in the fourth quarter and he went one for 10, nobody's going to be happy with that. But guess what, Ross?

They're not going to go in if you don't attempt them. He was attempting harder shots, in my opinion. He was trying to throw it over when being and try to get old. That's not going to work, man. Just take the open jumper. to take the chance to shoot it with confidence He took some

He was one of seven In the fourth quarter They were all floaters Trying to go home And just pull up and shoot I'll go back and watch it Yeah I actually I'm gonna go back and watch this game

Because I am intrigued Like I said I was there And I was more horrified Did anything in that fourth quarter So I am interested to go back And I'm gonna watch the whole game When I get a little homework assignment For myself

When I get up at two Well actually first I'm gonna work on the The pregame I have tonight at 6 o'clock then I'm going to rewatch that game. I am. So I mean... It was at least... I count at least four or five times where he dribbled to about like the Freakon line

and he looked, he hesitated, and he kept on dribbling around. And it's like, man, take that shot. Even if you take it, Sangone and now, Jabbar and then maybe they can get the offensive rebound and wouldn't be come out. Yeah. And then another good point from Broderick that he made is he was in foul trouble. Try to get a foul, even if you get your shot block. Try to figure out a way to get him his fifth and six fouls.

I think you tried that, but Wimby was, you know, and they wouldn't call in some of the, they were some contact, and it wasn't, you know, but you got to take the open shot. That's my point. You got to take it that way your teammates can maybe get the rebound. But if you don't take it, you dribble back out, and then you force it to KD, now we're in a shock, we up against it, and now we've got to force up a shot. That's what the team I saw happened. Yeah, I just pulled up his shot chart.

The one make, I'm pretty sure it was in the restricted area. It was on Luke Cornett. And he only had one other shot in the restricted area of his seven. Three of them were well outside, very long twos, and then a couple kind of long 10 to 15 footers in the paint. So, yeah, not the shot chart you want to see for a men Thompson. This is a Kevin Durant shot chart. We're okay.

This is a man Thompson shot chart. We have some issues. Yeah. he got to get better at it, man. If he's going to be, you know, an all-star caliber player, he got to be at a hit open gentleman. All right. Thanks a lot. Biscuit. Appreciate you getting in. 713-212-5-790 is the phone number.

7-13-212-5-7-90. Yeah, he's got to get better at. We can say that. He works on it. I mean, I'm in Thompson. He certainly is someone who no one's going to question his work ethic. So at some point though I'm not saying he is at his ceiling But you just have to wonder

The good news is and I've talked about this earlier this year Is the free throw shooting numbers have gone way up So that tells me hey if he's improving his free throw shooting Maybe he can improve his all-around shooting Because he's gone up from 68% of the free throw line to 80% But He's shooting 19% from 3.

From the left corner, he's 6 of 30 this year. From the right corner, he's 3 of 17. These are corner 3s. He's supposed to be the easiest 3s in the league. And he's well, well below average from those. And mid-range isn't great. He can knock some of them down, but not enough to where it's efficient

to where you want them taking a shot. It's basically only a handful of players in the NBA. You want taking long twos because you need to make. them over 50%. Kevin Durant is one of those. I mean, Thompson is not. All right, 713, 212, 5790, the phone number. If you want to get in talking about that Rockets lost to the San Antonio Spurs,

we've been talking Astros, we've been talking Texans, we've been talking Bill Belichick. He didn't make the Hall of Fame. We've been talking about that too. Anything you all want to get to, 713, 212, 570, the phone number with you until 2 o'clock. it is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Continuing here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Excellent news.

And Adam will be joining me at 1 o'clock. Which one will it be? Tune in at 1 to find out. Appreciate them helping out. We are just, we don't have a mega robust staff here at Sports Talk 790. So I appreciate the help from Chris Gordy And of course, which Adam will it be? Who's to say?

Coming up at 1 o'clock here on Sports Talk 790. In the meantime, phones are open at 713-212-5-7-90. If you'd like to get in, 7-13-212-5-7-90. Thanks for you guys calling in, getting involved in this hour. I've been talking some rockets, talking some Astros, having a good time. Just hanging out talking some sports. It's not that serious. You don't got to be like these freaking wards.

weirdos on Twitter Spurs fans getting into my mentions and I knew this was going to happen I was like as soon as I tweet this Victor Wimbiamma's like going to go off the rockets were going at Wimbi they were roughing them up

they're being physical with him they were keeping him from scoring in the first half they did a good job of scoring and not being afraid of them in the first half as well and I went on and tweeted there are many teams that are afraid of Victor Wimbaniama the Houston Rockets are not one of them

And then somehow Tari Easton's mom found it and it got retweeted by hers. That's when I was like, oh no. This is an NBA Twitter sphere. Literally that happened, Jonathan. I see you making a face. Literally when that happened. His mom for real?

Yeah. She's very active on Rocket's Twitter. So I don't know. Somebody must have retweeted it and then she saw it. So she retweeted it. She doesn't follow me. So as soon as that happened, I'm going to tell you a secret, Jonathan.

I literally went to go mute the conversation. I was like, oh, here comes Spurs fans here. Some Raptors fan was coming after me. I'm like Raptors fans. Really? They still exist. Yeah. What are y'all doing?

Okay, hang out. Go have some putteen, okay? And work on your conversion rates with U.S. dollars. We don't need you here talking to me about Victor Wimbunyama, a Frenchman playing in the United States and you're in Canada, all right? I don't need to hear it. Spurs fans, I get it to some degree, but some of them I was like, I was just like going to their profiles and they're just finding every single Rockets account and trolling.

and it's like you're either 16 years old or you're a damage human being or both. And so I'm really getting better, Jonathan. It's just ignoring the noise, muting the people, not letting them affect my day-to-day life. So I literally just muted the conversation. The old me would have even went back and checked dimensions just to read them and not responded.

I'm not even going to do that. I'm staying away because the rockets aren't scared of Victor Wimbidiyama. Did he have a good game? Yes. Did he go off for 50 and 20 and 10 and have a quadruple doubled? No. So let's not act like he's, you know, I had the game of the century and you're putting up like

Wilts Chamberlain number graphics with Victor Wimbonyama. Yeah, he had 2816, five blocks. He had a good game. And they came back and won. But Rockets aren't afraid of Victor Wimbunyama. Although maybe that fourth quarter defense contradicts my previous statement. All right. 713-212-5-790 is the phone number.

7-13-212-5-790. James. In Klein. That's a year's Matt Thomas' number one favorite caller, James. Go ahead. Yeah, in case you missing Matt Thomas, I thought I'd give me some Matt Thomas conversation. Oh, what does that mean?

Like, you're going to role play? I'm going to be Matt Thomas. Okay. All right. Welcome back to the show. It's Ross v. Real with you. And Matt, good to have you back. Yeah.

Do you like ketchup on your hot dog, Rossi? I, now Matt is actually, Matt, I know you are very anti-cetchup on the hot dog. I don't normally do it. I'm normally a mustard guy and then maybe a little relish, if I may. Perhaps a stone ground, perhaps a spicy brown. But no ketchup. Yeah, I agree with you there, Rossi.

Do you like your hot dog longer than the bun? No, I'd like equal bun length. You don't want it overstuffed. Yeah, but no one's going to complain about a big weener. No, I feel like I would. Like I just said, you don't want it. want to, you don't want more, way too more we, much weener for the bun. Okay, Ross, Jennifer Connelly, Jennifer Anston, or Jennifer Gardner?

In their primes? Connolly. Yeah, that's fine. Connolly Annison Garner. I'm picking Jennifer Garner. I'd pick Jennifer Arner, but she's more like a friend to me. But anyhow, that's my invitation of Matt Thomas. Hope you enjoyed it.

Okay, thank you, James. We'll catch him at the improv. make sure you tip your waitresses. That wasn't all that bad though. It wasn't that bad. I'm going to give him a couple points. Honestly, now he's got me thinking. Prime Anneson,

uh, yeah. And friends, friends, Jennifer Aniston, uh, let's just say a young teenage Ross was a big fan. And we're just going to leave that there.

Yeah, but Jennifer Connolly also, I think criminally underrated his history has gone on because somebody was trying to, who was trying to say, say she's not even attractive. I think it was Shmadam Shmanton who said she's not even good looking.

Jennifer Anderson? Yeah. No, no, Jennifer Connolly. Oh, no, I don't remember. And now somebody's tweeting in. Ketchup does not belong on hot dogs, but if you do it, it's not, whatever. I'll do it with mustard. I won't do ketchup by myself. If you're doing ketchup by itself on a hot dog, you're six. Okay? Yeah, you want me to, how about I chop it up with a little plastic knife for you, too?

Little Timmy. Come on. You're being a child If you're having just ketchup on a hot dog Ketchup with mustard and with relish I can get behind that as a flavor mix Also a little off the board That's not bad barbecue sauce If you've ever done that

But ketchup no All right anyways on that note Which Adam joins the show next Who did me a favor And came in early to hang out And chop it up and talk some sports You will find out next here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross

without Matt Thomas with an Adam which one stay tuned This is the Matt Thomas show With Ross All right your long anticipated wait is over Which Adam made it here

For the fourth hour of the program The Matt Thomas show with Ross Hi I am Ross And I am Adam And here is Adam Hey all right it's Adam Lexer There was a guy on Twitter saying everybody knows it's going to be Wex.

Well, like you, who was still entertaining our listeners just after midnight last night. I was out of Toyota Center for quite some time. Yes, you were. So I do appreciate you being here. I don't even notice, actually. That game, it didn't slide, right? Because the previous game was blown. Okay, so no five-minute slide.

It started like 42. The very emotional early game did not have a slide. Was this 30-point blowout? LeBron James tears in his eyes as the Cavaliers destroyed the Los Angeles Lakers. and yeah we got a lot of stuff to cover adam wexer appreciate him hanging out as i said the jol kori conversation was really good we're going to bring that to you folks coming up at one 30 phone lines open for you at 713212-5-790 713 212 5 790 so we will start with that rockets game wex because you worked it and i i was there as well i actually don't normally do this

for playoff games but i'm actually going to go back and rewatch because i'm so intrigued that defense that the spurs were using with Mitch Johnson was very smart wrinkle, Amin Thompson, the one, guarded by the five Victor Wimbunyama, allowing him to sag off into the paint, and the Rockets just couldn't get in then switching actions on Kevin Duran and Alprin Shungoon. The Rockets are horrible in that fourth quarter. All right, how concerned do we have to be that this is some sort of key to unlocking, defending the Rockets' offense? Of course, not everybody's got a Victor Wimbunyama, but there is in Anthony Davis, a Chad Holmgren,

a Rudy Gobert. There are some teams who can employ similar type bigs with length against the rockets in those situations. You're a smart person, and I hope all of your listeners realize that. Because it is a two-part situation. I don't even think the three teams you mentioned with those three players can do it.

I think there's a possibility maybe Oklahoma City could do it with Chet, but I don't think there's any chance that the Timberwolves can do it with Rudy. Victor's just, in my opinion, light years better than Rudy Gobert. And if he's sagging off, then Amen Thompson on the Rockets will figure out the best way to do it. It was very smart.

It also requires the other players to do their job. And a lot of people were asking you last night and then again this afternoon and questioning it all over social media, why didn't Alper and Shingoon just back down Castle when he was defending him? Well, because Castle's much stronger than Victor Wembeyanama, if you hadn't noticed, most players are. Any player who's built well that's six, four and a, above is stronger than Victor Wembeyanama in terms of holding your defensive position. He's a great defensive player, but he's not a strong, physically strong defensive player.

Why do you think Alperin Shingun has spent the last three years pushing him under the basket? Because he can. So can everybody. So they took that defensive matchup away from the Rockets smartly. And having him sag off a man Thompson obviously takes a men out of things to a certain extent if you're not doing anything to help him. And then it takes anybody else who's trying to get into the paint out of some of the things you'd like to do. because Victor's just going to double if necessary. He's just going to drop off even further from a men, Thompson. Rockets probably could stand to not have a man at the three-point line.

If the defensive player is 10 feet away from you, why don't you make it six feet away from you? Why don't you make it five feet away from you? And I think closing that gap to a certain extent might have at least made him play more honestly. And then thirdly, and I think you'd agree, almost every team that has capable wing and physical wing athletic wings, they're all denying Kevin DeVeval. Grant the ball. And 37-year-old Kevin Durant is, I think he's getting a little tired and frustrated of being tired of pushing these guys off of him because I don't think any official is going to call these fouls probably shouldn't. No different than what happens to Steph Curry. They just get it inside his jersey and they just don't get off. That's their whole defensive philosophy. If we get up in his grill 30 feet from the basket and stay there, then we're wish you luck. The other four rockets, try and beat us. Yeah, I mean, that's what, when Kevin Durant was not wearing a Houston Rockets uniform, that's what IMAA do to defend him.

And that's how they defend Victor Wimbunyama. And those are the two guys, I believe they have some sort of analytics like the highest wrist releases in basketball. It's Wimby 1 and Durant 2. So you're not going to contest their shot. So you might as well get into their body, get into their chest and get physical with him. And I think, do you feel like Kevin Durant is, is there some wearing down? Because he's still very efficient. The scoring numbers are there.

But just as you mentioned, kind of laboring around the court, you're seeing some frustration. It's not easy for him to score like it was younger in his career. He's getting there. And thankfully, he's one of the greatest shooters to ever walk the planet. So he can still knock down those shots, even with guys draped all over him. But it just, it doesn't seem maybe even as easy as it was earlier in the season for him to get his looks. No, in this month of January, you're right. The numbers are still there.

He's having a great scoring month. He's had the last couple of games He had a bad first half against Memphis and then came alive in the second half. Last night was the opposite, and 6-11 the first half, and then he and Shangoon, who had identical first half,

neither one of them could make a shot in the second half. So maybe in terms of that, I think one thing that's working for Houston, but against Kevin, is he still plays defense. So he doesn't take the other end of the court off, like so many other players at this stage of their careers do. He's still an awesome...

You want to call Lebrana like that. Lebron, well, It's not new. I mean, I've been doing it for five years at least. It's unbelievable. It just is magnified when he has another younger player who does the same thing in Luca. For the Rockets, it's part of who they are. It's part of what they do.

Last night was a little bit odd in that they took, the reason why the Rockets had the lead that they did is because they didn't turn the ball over. Because the Spurs were, they made everything they shot last night from the start to the finish. Rockets made their first seven shots. Oh, my God, they're never going to miss. Awesome. They're up by four. because the spurs were shooting well over 50%.

It was just a matter of the rockets weren't giving them extra possessions with bad turnovers until the fourth quarter. And the rockets were doing as good a job as they normally do rebounding the basketball. The number of rebounds was no problem last night. The number of offensive rebounds was no problem last night. They didn't convert. They had, what, seven more offensive rebounds than the spurs and one fewer second chance point? Or two fewer seconds?

It usually doesn't work that way. And all this discussion and minutia and really intense basketball analysis is awesome. But we might also acknowledge one obvious thing. The spurs are good. Yes. The spurs have talent. Yes. The spurs have the best group of talent they've had in like a decade.

It's not great. They finally started, they spent about six years in the lottery of taking just awful players. And then they took Gwembeñama, and then they took Stefan Castle, and then they took Dylan Harper. Hit, hit, hit. If Dylan Harper wasn't hurt and Cooper Flagg wasn't the whole offense in Dallas, Dylan Harper could have easily been in the rookie of the year conversation. I think he's very likely to make first team all rookie this year. That's why they're so good.

Their veteran players are all falling into their respective roles. Adding Luke Cornett was very, very smart. And they're eight or nine deep where, I said this last night on the broadcast. They don't start their five best players. they probably start three of their five best players. And then Kelden Johnson, Dylan Harper, and Devin Vassell all come off the bench. And they dominated the Rockets bench. Yeah, well, that's the thing, too.

It's the depth. And then they don't have, there was four Rockets played over 35 minutes, zero Spurs played over 35 minutes. I literally in the third quarter, I was like, oh, wow, Mitch Johnson doesn't care about winning this game, man, he's just going to go with his debt. The scoreboard indicated that too. Wow, man, he doesn't care. They're playing the long game.

You know, that's smart. You know, they're going to lose tonight, but that's really smart from the Spurs. they're in the two seed. They're not worried about winning this game. And then they came back in one. And still, Wimby didn't play 30 minutes. And as I mentioned, nobody played over 35 minutes in the game. It's, honestly, I'm a little scared. I hate talking about how good the spurs are because we're in Houston. But as you said, they're really good and they're really deep. And they're going to be dangerous. And especially when if and when they do it in the playoffs, if they're unleashing Victor Wimbunyama or to whatever extent, they don't even have to do it because they didn't do it last night on the. the road beating a very good Rockets team and he played 28 minutes in 36 seconds.

Yeah, a lot of things to look at and definitely things from this game and several of the games that preceded it. Obviously, the future without Stephen Adams, which he may address before the game a little bit. They lose at home for only the fourth time. And sitting at where they are at 28 and 17, there's only three teams better than them in the Western Conference. There's only one team better than them in the Eastern Conference. And of those four losses, they've come to those teams. Those exact four teams, the only four teams that have a better record than Houston are the only teams that have won a game here at Toyota Center.

Wow, I didn't know that. Wow, this is why we come to Adam Wexer for this level of expertise. I appreciate it. So, yeah, look, but that's also, that's the broader conversation we were talking about, okay, Wimby, they can't, you know, Wimby is maybe the only team that's going to be as effective as they were employing this defense. Maybe other teams can try it. it won't be as effective.

But also, I mean, we mentioned the Oklahoma City Thunder. I don't know. The Nuggets obviously can't do that. But these are the teams you're worried about. You're not worried about the Atlanta as, well, the Atlanta Hawks you want to beat them tonight. But your goal isn't to beat the Atlanta Hawks and the Indiana Pacers. It is to beat those San Antonio Spurs and those Oklahoma City Thunder and hold the Larry O'Brien trophy. Yeah, it's definitely a factor.

Those teams aren't beating Houston flukishly. Those teams are definitely outplaying the Rockets. And again, everything we look at to date, you know, outside of the last four or five games is a little bit irrelevant because the Rockets just became a new team back on the 20th when Stephen Adams went down. If there's no move to be made, then the group that you have last night, the healthy group, because that's not the group you're going to have tonight, then that's what the Rockets have to work with. You're going to play more small ball. You're not going to be as good of an offensive rebounding team. You're far less likely to give Clint Capella 20 to 25 minutes a night. as a given, which you did with Stephen,

you don't do that with Clint. Played eight minutes in the first half. Didn't play in the second half until garbage time. So you're saying it's Jeff Green season. Jeff Green is going to save the rocket season. They put a team together the day they traded for Kevin Durant. And they have to change everything they hope to do now because two of the key components of that team.

Two very key components. You want to play physical, tough, rebounding basketball. You lost one of the most important pieces to do that. you want to play smart, few turnover, quality, half-court offense basketball, because Fred's out there, that obviously hasn't been the case the whole season. So they've been in adapt to what we have mode the whole year. There's no end in sight. Yeah. All right, now I'm depressed.

All right, quick break here on... They're also 28 and 17. The Matt Thomas Show with Ross. Adam Wexler is here, and we're talking some rockets. We have other stuff to get to. I'm curious. perspective on the Bill Belichick thing. We've mentioned the Chandler-Rome projected

he had the projected roster, but with the lineup, we can talk about that, and we'll have that Joel Corey conversation. You guys on the phone, if you'd like, at 7-13-21-5-7-90 with you until 2 o'clock. It is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Hey, hey, hey, hey,

hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, One to 17 in the PM here on Sports Talk 7. Oh, they're still all over this on ESPN News? All right. I guess I can bring it up because Chris Gordy was very passionate about this. My take has been Mr. Wexler that Bill Belichick is a Hall of Famer. Bill Belichick, if I were a voter for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, would have gotten my vote for a vote for.

the Hall of Fame. But also, literally you can check on my Twitter at SportsRV, I went and put in Google. What is the biggest scandal in NFL history? Google AI said SpyGate. The biggest scandal at NFL history is generally considered to be the 2007 SpyGate scandal where the New England Patriots were caught illegally filming the New York Jets defensive signals. It resulted in unprecedented fines for Bill Belichick, $500,000, and the team, $200,000. $150,000 plus the loss of a first round draft pick. So if you're at the helm and involved in what is arguably, I'm going to go with Aaron Hernandez killing a guy or multiple people as like a bigger scandal.

Or maybe even, I don't know, Michael Vic electrocuting and killing dogs because, I mean, their literal death of living beings was meted out in those situations rather than a guy flipping on a video camera. but at the very least thought of as one of the biggest scandals in NFL history so if he's going to have to hold out a year and he's still going to get into the Hall of Fame, what's the big deal? Not what's the big deal,

but it's going to be, everybody's going to be fine. We have to get all up in arms about this. Yeah, there's so many different arguments to make will he get in eventually? Yeah, okay, so he didn't get in the first time, big deal, as you just made it. Are there actually reasons why someone could say,

I don't want to vote for him? and they're going to stick to those reasons every year, because if they're not, I don't really understand it, but you brought up one of the reasons why could have also added deflategate to it. So there are some items there. If you really want to make a case that this head coach, despite his accomplishments, I don't think he deserves my Hall of Fame vote, period. Okay, we'll hear that. I think it's pretty tough to make that argument, considering what reality is.

And then the manner in which they put these people in, well, they've changed the vote. voting process again. They've changed the voting pool again. They've lumped all these people together. There's senior committee football players, three of them this go around with Roger Craig, and Ken Anderson and Elsie Greenwood. And then there's a coach, and then there's also a contributor. And you're asked to put all these different types of whatever you want to call them into your only vote. And you can only vote for three because three can get in. All five can't get in. You can't just say, does he belong in or not? Because once you say he's in and he's and he's in, well, now the other two, it doesn't even matter. They can't get in. You can't vote for

them because we limit how many you can vote for. So I think there are a bunch of different arguments to make, and I think they all still are hollow. I have five names in front of me. I'm going to vote for the people in order that are most deserving of the Hall of Fame, and maybe some of the on my list aren't deserving, so I don't have to worry about them. The most deserving name on the list, in my opinion, is Belichick of these five I have to look at. So I don't really think it's so difficult. How many sacks did Bill Belichick have, though, as opposed to Elsie Greenwood, Wex? Come on.

You know that was a huge argument that many of these voters made. I lean to the players. Now, Elsie Greenwood, let's take him, for example, since everybody in here in Houston should hate him, even though he's a nice guy. Played for the Steelers, part of the most unbelievable collection of talent defensively, the AFC maybe has ever seen, and won a lot of football games, and is a Super Bowl champion. is an elite player. And he seems like he's just in a group of a bunch of other elite players, which we always see, which is one reason why I didn't get into the Hall of Fame, what is perceived as a more conventional way. Belichick's not in a group of anybody.

There's nobody in his group. There's him and there's everybody else. Elsie Greenwood, Roger Craig, Ken Anderson are in a group of other players that did exactly what they did. If Elsie Greenwood gets in, there are 10 edge rushers better than him. if Ken Anderson gets in, there are 40 quarterbacks better than him in the hall? If Bill Belichick gets in, there's no coaches better than him.

Yeah, like I said, he has my vote. I just, the outrage, and I would continue to vote for him, but I understand where there are people who there was the sentiment of, as you said, there was SpyGateGate, Gate as well, which I don't know if that was more Tom Brady or whoever.

I don't know, so is he going to be held out for a year. You think Bill was down the hall saying, or having someone go down the hall and say, this is a, I don't want to know about this situation? Probably. I mean, okay, he deflated the ball a little bit to get a better grip. I mean, let's move on. So what does, I mean, this is a performance enhancer, right?

Yeah, I guess it could be. Have you not made that baseball argument? We heard that, yeah, actually, I thought it was. What do we want from our baseball players? The best performance possible. That's true. That's what we want, right? You know what? So we should do a full steroid league.

I like that. And you do the ball, whatever you're up. But, yeah, I mean, to Jonathan was bringing this up earlier when we were talking about it. If, yeah, if Barry Bonds is out of the Hall of Fame for life, Roger Clemens is out of the Hall of Fame for life, and Bill Belichick has to wait a year. He can go to Cancun with Jordan Hudson. He can have a good time. He can go and do some more recruiting for North Carolina.

He's going to be okay. He's got my vote. I agree with you. He's the greatest football coach of all time, NFL. And he should be in. But there also was not spy gate, deflate gate. The Bengals accused him of using videotaping in 2019. The Broncos accused him in 2010 of videotaping.

Like it also wasn't just a one, oh, we flipped the cameras on an accident this one time. It was a big major scandal. So I ain't crying for Bill Belichick is the way I'm putting in. Yeah, every conversation we've had about it on the A team, at least has included that. It's not like I feel sorry for him. Like everyone that has all this outrage is not him. He hadn't said one word about it. Nobody from his camp, if there is one. This is unbelievable.

It's everybody else that's up in arms. But it is every possible group of people. There's media up in arms. There's players up in arms. There's former coaches up in arms. There's Hall of Famers up in arms. Everybody seems to at least be on the same page that's outside of this group of 50 voters. He can just give the Isaiah answer.

I thought I had the criteria to be selected, but I was not. So Bill Pollian is Michael Jordan? Yes, exactly. Michael Jordaned him. The Michael Jordan of the NFL's Hall of Fame vote is Bill Poland. Oh, God. No, I'm really confused. I really don't know what's happening. 83-year-old Bill Pollian.

And what is he doing? How is he campaign? Well, how does this campaign start? Does he just call everybody individually? Is he on the horn with John McLean saying don't vote for Bill Belichick? And aren't these voters, especially John McLean and so many voters who are like him? They've covered this league for decades. they have their own minds.

I know this is a big lobbying effort. You're lobbying for this player and you're giving people something else to think about. I want people to make up their own mind. I'm all for gathering information. But Bill Pollian was able to get that many people. We're actually crediting him for making people not vote for Belichick. Like they can't think for themselves. They're taking his word for it.

They're going with what he says. I find that a little hard to believe. Well, he was a great general manager who had Peyton, Manning fall into his lap. Yes. Shocking that he was up against the Patriots teams all these years, which is why he may have a beef. Hmm. That is. Yeah. I didn't even think about that. He has to then have us all believe they weren't doing anything. But you can only win one Super Bowl with Peyton Manning. Come on, man.

Jimmy Johnson and Bill Cowher, and Bill didn't do this recently, but a long time ago when he was on a TV, they seem to sound like, yeah, this was not that uncommon. We tried it. but we didn't really gain anything from it or think that it worked so we stopped which jimmy said which i think was basically a well i don't want anybody to investigate us so i'm just going to tell you there was a statute of limitations we didn't do anything we didn't think there was an advantage from it but just kidding prank caller like every it's it does have some elements of the astros like we know other teams did it why because this is a competitive professional sports league whatever advantage you think you can gain you're going to do and

you're probably going to push it all the way to the as far as you can provided you don't believe you're going to get caught. Yeah, weren't they running like telegraph lines in the 1910s back in the day? It's a Brooklyn bridegrooms are caught in a scandal here. I mean, there was a baseball scandal in the teens. Yeah, there was too, exactly. Literally, they threw the World Series. You ain't cheating, you ain't trying.

All right, real quick, Keith. We don't even know who did get in, which is somewhat ironic because that doesn't come for another week and change. Well, Rob, you think Bob Kraft got in? I guess he probably did. make for a more fun angle. I would. All right. Keith,

real quick, Keith, what's up? Two questions, and then I hang up and listen. Number one, I know that Rafael Stone was supposed to be a great talent evaluator, but I think they made a big mistake

with Dorian Finney Smith. He's a bus. Secondly, he's on a minute's restriction. Give him some time, man. He's got an ankle injury. When he gets in, he does absolutely nothing.

He's got to work into a rhythm, Keith. Whatever. All right, what else? That wasn't me. My hands are up. Jonathan, be my witness, Jonathan. I didn't do it. The connection went south.

I didn't do that. I promised, Keith, because I actually was getting out my document ready to write down more of your hairbrained predictions. Yes, I know that Keith didn't realize he had called into Dorian, any Smith's agent, so it was a little bit of a block there for him. I mean, you can't deny the actual results. He's played very poorly for this team. He's out there to knock down threes and defend. He's not doing any of that.

It's been difficult with his injury. It's been difficult to get into a rhythm, get regular minutes, be a party off. All that's true, but he also, you know, he's getting wide open shots for a good reason. A three and D wing with no three and no D. But other than that, he's doing great. All right. We're going to take a break here on that note. When we come back, great conversation.

with Joel Corey, CBS Sports, NFL contracts, and salary cap expert. What will Will Anderson command if the Texans try to extend him? What should or could the Texans do with C.J. Stroud? We'll get to that next here on Sports Talk 790 and the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Welcome back. Matt Thomas Show with Ross here on Sports Talk 790. Ross v. Real with you. Adam Wexler hanging out as well. Earlier today, I wanted to bring you guys some of this conversation. because it was a while ago and it was a great conversation with Joel Corey.

He is with CBS Sports as the NFL contracts and salary cap expert talking about the Texans and the offseason coming up with C.J. Stroud with Will Anderson Jr. starting off talking about exercising the fifth year option and what exactly that means for the Texans. Yeah, well, the rookie contracts are for four years. First round picks have a fifth year option after the third season you have up until May 2nd to go yes or no for the fifth year option. The no-brainer is Will Anderson. They will pick up the fifth year option. C.J. Stroud, I know the last two games were horrendous,

but his body of work over the three years. And the price of the fifth year options suggests they will pick that up. So they will not be free agents after the 2026 season if they both end up. up continuing to play under the rookie deals. All right, let's start with Will Anderson. Then we'll get to the fun one with C.J. Stroud. It seems pretty obvious. I mean, first team all pro, 12 sacks, career high.

Not only that, the opposite of C.J. Stroud, in that Stroud wasn't very good in the playoffs. Will Anderson was completely dominant in the playoffs. So we expect some sort of mega deal to be happening. And I had your article that I was reading, as I said, you expect him to maybe kind of, in a way, reset the market as far as edge rushers and how hard are the Texans going to push for trying to get something done before that May 2nd deadline? Well, he's a guy that should be your top priority last year with Derek Stingley Jr. They got that thing done so early. It was in March. They hadn't even exercised the fifth year option. So if I'm Will Anderson, I'm like, hey, this is the

precedent you set with all pro defensive players who are first team all pros in their third year. I want the same type of treatment in terms of timing and what you did relative to the marketplace, corners for Stingley, obviously edge rushers for Anderson, with me. So, yeah, he's going to try to reset the non-quarterback market. I expect there to be some pushback from the Texans, given how much that escalated last year. This time last year, the highest paid edge rusher. was Nick Bosa at 34 million per year. Now it's Michael Parsons at 46.5 million per year.

Wow. That's almost a 37% increase. That's practically unheard of. So they may want to slot them in kind of like the Texans did, not the Texans, the Lions did, with Aidan Hutchinson, who came in at 45 million per year, did not top Michael Parsons. And that deal was done in the middle of 2025 season. Do you kind of look at this, Joel, and they have DeNeil Hunter still very much in the middle of his prime and playing fantastic for him. But obviously he's at a high dollar value.

But this will be basically the last year of his deal. I know they added a couple of void years. But do you kind of look at it as a capologist says, okay, the Will Anderson big money starts up as soon as the DeNeil Hunter money comes off the books, kind of? Yeah, because the way you're going to structure it, the cap number is not going to take a huge jump for a couple of years. years. But Hunter's interesting now that you brought him up. He's going to be 32 during the middle of next season. He's not showing any signs of slowing down.

If you let him play out this year's deal, then he's walking because to franchise him in 2027, it's going to be a little over $37.5 million and that will happen. That kind of drives our point home about how this, you don't want to say, use the word waste, but it was an elite all-time Texans defense, and you just couldn't get anything out of the offense. And then that leads us to C.J. Stroud, of course, the headliner, the offensive line was bad. The running game was bad. You had Nico Collins hurt in that Patriots game as well, so it wasn't all C.J. Stroud, but when you turn the ball over four times in the first half, before we get cut kind of out of the ins and outs as far as options of the contract,

where do you think the Texans weigh that, Joel, as far as the body of work to where he, by mini metric QBR, a quarterback rating, touchdown percentage, interception, percentage, and the regular season. He had a bit of a bounceback season from a sophomore slump, but then those playoffs happened. Yeah, part of the problem is he had his best year when he was a rookie and you were thinking he's on an upward trajectory and he hasn't had a year like his rookie year since. and then you compound the problem by having back-to-back two of the worst playoff games I've seen for a quarterback in recent history. It kind of rivaled what Sam Darnold did the last week of the regular season last year and the playoff game against the Rams last year, which he's definitely bounced back from. But yeah, you don't want to be going into the offseason potentially trying to get a new contract off of that ending.

Yeah, so what are the options in for the test? Texas right now. As far as the fifth year option, they can do that. Do you think there is any possibility they do some sort of extension where he's not getting paid, $50, $60 million a year? David Moologetta is his agent, and we know he's a guy that's been very good at getting quarterbacks paid. Well, basically whatever position he has generally, but good luck with that, because Molligetta, President of Sean Watson, who's the last time of Texas did a big quarterback deal, $39 million per year at the time. made Watson the second highest paid player in the NFL.

Granted, Watson was coming off a much better year 2019 as a third year player than Watson is now. But nonetheless, Mulligetta is thinking, hey, let's look at the totality of the circumstances, not be prisoners of the moment, have recency bias. For my three years, body of work is better than Trevor Lawrence's three years when they got paid. This is what Mulligetta will probably be thinking or saying if they do talk contract extension. And Trevor Lawrence, after a third year where the Jaguars imploded down the stretch missed the playoffs,

he didn't play at the same level he did in the second year. And he made him in a tie with Joe Burrow as the highest paid player in $25 million per year. Then shortly thereafter, Dave Mulligetta took Jordan Love, who had one good, second half of a season, his first year of a starter, played well in the playoffs, ties those two guys at 55 million per year before Dak Prescott tops everybody. So he's not going to be looking at anything besides one of these top of the market deals. Is the key, Joel, with a C.J. Stroud as young as he is still, like, if we're talking long-term contract extension, is the key higher AAV at like a four-year deal as opposed to a five- or six-year deal? I'm just kind of looking at some of the current contracts out there, and Jordan Love at 25, like you just mentioned, 55 mill a year, but four years.

I wonder, you know, it feels like more teams are leaning towards that four-year deal as opposed to those five or six-year deals. Well, typically teams want to lock up their best players for as long as possible. And Love was a changing of the guard because you had, when Trevor Lawrence did his deal, you were coming off a bunch of five-year deals. Jalen Hertz, five-year extension. Lamar Jackson, five-year deal as a franchise player. Then you had Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert, got their deals done after the third year, both five-year extensions.

So that environment was five years. So if Trevor Lawrence wanted a four, all the data pointed to a five. Then you had Tua get a four-year deal. Jared Gough got a four-year deal, which allowed. Jordan loved to go for. So this is a case if I'm the Texans, I would kind of be looking at

it from the standpoint that, yeah, if we wait and C.J. Stroud has a career year, yeah, we're going to pay more. But Kyla Murray be my cautionary tale. His agent pushed to get a deal after three years, and he's probably not going to be with the Cardinals next year.

The Rams had buyer's remorse with Jared golf did his after three years. took him to a Super Bowl. He's got them. He was the quarterback when they weren't a Super Bowl. And Philly cut bait with Carson Wentz pretty quickly after doing his rookie contract after three years. So because of how things have gone south sometimes, I might be inclined to wait. Anderson's my top priority. If I have to pay more in the long run to be sure that CJ is the guy, then I would have more peace of mind doing that.

Talk with Joel Corey. One of the best when it comes to talking NFL contracts and salary cap. I've been doing a long time, of course, CBS. It is interesting, though, Joel, one of the big topics that came up here in Houston after Stroud's less than stellar postseason is, okay, should we pivot? And you look at what is Sam Donald's doing right now. Obviously, he was a hired assassin with Minnesota last year was very good, and now he takes the Seahawks to the Super Bowl.

It is interesting that concept of when you have your quarterback, you feel like, oh, maybe we've got to pay this guy just to keep him because we don't like the alternative. But to your point, Kyler Murray, the cautionary tale. I mean, Trevor Lawrence had the nice resurgent year this year. But prior to this year, I think people were wondering, eh, should they have paid him? And then Atua down in Miami, you look at that situation. It just becomes, man, it feels like the norm now is even if you have questions about this guy, you pay him because you just don't know. It's better than the alternative, which is the unknown.

You get the nail on the head. Fairly unknown has been driving a lot of quarterback decisions, and I'll use one going back a few years. At the time, $18 million per year, believe it or not, it was a lot for quarterback. I forget exactly what year it was, but Jay Cutler got an extension. Yeah.

And it's like, you really want to give Jay Cutler that type of money? And that's what happened. So, yeah, that factors in the equation. But C.J. Stroud's really young. So there's nothing that says you have to do a quarterback extension at the earliest possible instance. You can wait. Lamar Jackson ended up being the rare quarterback who plays through the fifth year option. Andrew Luck back when he was considered a franchise quarterback, didn't get a deal,

which made the highest paid player until going into the fifth year option. So you don't have to do the deal today. you can exercise some caution. Let's say Stroud is starting to play on the fourth year of the rookie contract, starts lighting it up early in the year. You may revisit it then if you don't want to do it right now if the numbers that I suspect David Mulligeta will be asking for. You know, we've also seen a situation where guys have gotten let go.

You mentioned Sam Darnold. I mean, Baker Mayfield, we have. Jared Gough was traded, but he wasn't thought of as an elite guy. Yeah, but people were leaving for dead like he was a throw in. Yeah. It was just a matter of time before he was done in Detroit. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So it's not like they thought that he was going to be.

So, I mean, it's interesting the dichotomy where you don't want to end up in that situation where you cut bait with C.J. Stroud and he thrives somewhere else. But also, at the time when those guys came, they weren't making $60 million, so it kind of makes it easier to build around that guy. Yeah, but you also have to think of the fact that the cap has gone up since those guys signed. So relative to cap inflation, I know the quarterback market has gone haywire, but still sometimes that gets lost in the equation. You have the fifth year option. It's going to be extremely reasonable cost for a starting quarterback. It's not going to be an elevated amount

because that Pro Bowl from Strauss rookie year doesn't factor into increasing the cost. He was not in original ballot pro bowler. So it's going to be the base. basically the average of the third through 20 of highest paid quarterbacks. And I'm simplifying it a bit for the option cost. And it's going to be the exact number depends on where the cap is set because it's expressed the percentage of the cap. But it's going to be roughly $25, $26 million for Stroud. That's a reasonable number for a quarterback is a salary. All right.

There you go. Joel Corey, CBS Sports NFL contract and salary cap. analyst joining us here earlier on the show. Great conversation with him. Wanted to bring that to you guys. Going to take quick break here. When we come back, the final segment of the Matt Thomas show with Ross,

I want some of Wex's reaction, talking about what's going on with C.J. Stroud and Will Anderson and the Houston Texans. We'll get to that before we get out here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Good gracious, we are listening to the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Hi, I'm the Ross part of that. Good to be with you. Adam Wexler is, well, he's neither part of any of that, but he is hanging out and I appreciate him.

Good conversation with Joel Corey. In the last segment, so I don't know if we need to role play this necessarily or anything, Wex, but how do you think conversations, because there has to be some contact between David Moologetta and C.J. Stroud in this offseason. Joel kind of mentioned how other comments. contracts will be brought up of guys who did get paid early to where Trevor Lawrence is a good example. And really, I mean, is there any chance of Texans try to get anything done to try to do kind of not exactly apples for apples, of course, but paying Nico Collins earlier saying there's

going to be a breakout year so that you can kind of get in front of that and win on the deal to where if C.J. Stroud does bounce back because we have a really bad taste in our mouth from the playoff games, but he wasn't that bad all season long to where if he does bounce. back, it's going to cost you even more in the long run. I don't think there's any such thing for a quarterback. If he's good, you pay him, and it doesn't even matter what amount.

It really doesn't. He's going to get paid a ton. They're going to be the highest paid player on the roster by a lot. Whatever the going rate is, even if it's Tua, Trevor, Kyler, whomever, whomever, it's $50, or it's $50. I just don't think it matters at all. You're going to pay them no matter what, as long as they play well. Now, they're not there now. Now, I don't think there's

any advantage to trying to say, well, if he's good and what a deal that we have, I don't think they're looking at it that way. I just don't. I think they are more concerned with the downside of signing him. We all know what that is. You could be stuck with a quarterback and the decisions that come with how much dead money can we eat because we now have decided we just can't win with this quarterback anymore. And multiple, I mean, Miami's there. The Cardinals are there. Every year, probably one to two teams is in that situation who has gone long term with a quarterback. who I think we all knew there were still questions about, and there were with both of those two.

Now, you brought up Lawrence, as did Joel. There were questions with Trevor Lawrence. Probably, as it looks right now with Liam Cohen and everybody there, it looks like it's going to work out. Now, they've also gotten him first-round pick, Brian Thomas Jr. They traded up for Travis Hunter. They traded for Jacoby Myers and extended him. Hey, don't sleep on Britain Strange now.

He's a waiver wire god. On the back of his jersey, it says, I play tight end, like the other 25 in the league that are all the same. Hey, come on. Why is he any better? I'm just kidding. He's the same guys. Everybody else is tight end. They had a good running game, too, with Travis Ait.

That's the thing, too. We were talking about Trevor Lawrence. Oh, he got all these weapons, and he got an elite play caller, and then they have a good running game, and all of a sudden he's playing better. Funny how that works. It is funny, because the Texans, I think, clearly have tried to do all about one of those things. They traded for Joe Mixon. Obviously, we're up Nico Collins. They've attempted to find the right play caller,

but they've chosen a first-time play caller in both instances since C.J. Stroud has been here. Now, one of them's already on his second try. Yeah. He's a season now. Miami this upcoming season for Jeff Hathley. So those are the things they probably could have done a better job on. But now if you do, I mean, that's clearly gone and over with.

They're not changing OCs this off season. But I know that's a conversation we have all had. Could they have? Should they have been in the mix for some of these? veteran experienced play callers that were on the marketplace this offseason? Yes, they should have. Even if you have to admit a mistake, Nick Cacero, not Nick Cayley, even though maybe they don't think it's a mistake.

Yeah, but if they don't have background in New England, what do they care? Or John Carroll on the resume either. All right, Wex, appreciate you hanging out. All right, I'll hang out another four hours. You can hang out for another four hours. He's not going anywhere, so you shouldn't either. Thanks to Chris Gordy for hanging out earlier in the show. Thanks to Joel Corey for joining us as well.

Thanks to Jonathan Allen for hanging for the duration as well. Oh, even Cole Thompson popped in. We got the whole 790 roster just about here on Sports Talk 790. The Matt Thomas Show with Ross. I appreciate you all listening. Talk to you tomorrow at 10 or actually coming up at 6 o'clock on the Rockets Launchpad here on Sports Talk 790.