The Pat McAfee Show - PMS 2.0 320 - OVERREACTION MONDAY, NFL Week 16 Recap, Kyle Juszczyk, Ian Rapoport, & Michael Lombardi

Episode Date: December 28, 2020

On today's show, Pat and the boys overreact to everything that happened in week 16 of the NFL season including Aaron Rodgers potentially locking up the MVP award, if the Steelers are back, and everything else that happened this week in the NFL as we close in on the playoffs, plus Pat and the boys go through Twitter and look at a couple of huge overreactions with the hashtag #PatIDontWantToOverreactBUT. Also joining the program is 5x Pro Bowler, friend of the show, maybe the most recognizable FB in the NFL, Kyle Juszczyk joins the show. Pat and Kyle chat about his season and how it's been a struggle living in AirBnB's the last few weeks, the Harvard NFL pipeline, why he loves playing in Kyle Shanahan's system, and much more (19:38-36:56). Next, NFL Network Insider and friend of the program, Ian Rapoport joins the show to chat about everything that happened in week 16 of the NFL season, and he has to leave early in order to break a little news (38:22-50:27). Lastly, 3X Super Bowl Champion, former GM of the Cleveland Browns, special assistant to the coaching staff of the New England Patriots, host of the GM Shuffle Pod, co-host of HammerDAHN, the Daily Coach, Michael Lombardi joins the program to chat about everything going on in the NFL, what he would do if he were the GM of a few teams, and what he's keeping an eye on as we approach the NFL playoffs (57:04-1:27:22). Make sure you subscribe to youtube.com/thepatmcafeeshow and listen every day on Mad Dog Radio, Sirius XM Channel 82. We appreciate you all for listening, come and laugh with us, cheers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, it is Overreaction Monday, December 28th. Massive show today. Massive show. We got the Juice, Kyle Juszczyk, Ian Rappaport, Michael Lombardi, the boys and I. We go on a couple of rants. We sing some songs. We overreact to everything.

Set the stage for what the NFL is about to be for the next few weeks. Can't thank you enough for choosing to listen to this show. Remember, if you like this show, be a friend, tell a friend. If you don't like this show, just act like it never happened. Okay. Just say, Hey, you know what? Charge it to the game. Lost out on an hour, hour and a half of my life. Let's just never let that happen again. Just don't tell anybody, you know, Hey, it's going to be, it's a holiday season. It's going to be 2021. If you like the show, tell somebody, if not, just act like it never fucking happened. And by the way go fuck off we probably don't like you either um let's get to the show there's a lot of shit to

talk about we'll do that right now since that beat drop by twine was an absolutely glorious one yesterday week 16 of the nfl basically wrapped up we got one game tonight but a lot of week 16 is done and where do we sit well in the af, there's five teams that are currently battling for three spots. Who's going to get them? Who's not? Who's in? Who's out? There's a lot to still be figured out on the NFC side of things.

Some teams stink who didn't stink before. Some teams are great that sucked worse than anybody has in the past. There's a lot to figure out and dissect. And today, we hope that you will call us at 1-888 mad dog six for your overreactions we get overreactions from the twitterverse i sent out a bird call excuse me hashtag pat i don't want to overreact became the number two trend in the united states shout out to us yeah shout to us shout to the people shout out to everybody that is going to rock with us today including i Ian Rapoport in about 20 minutes,

Kyle Juszczyk of the San Francisco 49ers, which play in Santa Clara and in Arizona, who beat Arizona yesterday or two days ago with George Kittle playing great football. We'll talk to the Jus a little bit. And also Michael Lombardi will be joining us to talk about what would he be doing with his team right now if he could rest or play in the final week of the season. For instance, the Pittsburgh Steelers get a win

over the Indianapolis Colts yesterday, okay? Colts kind of collapsed. Ref's just handed the Steelers a victory, basically. The Joe Flacco offense was in full force for Ben Roethlisberger. Let's go ahead and get a pass interference or a holding call, and let's move down the field. But the Colts basically collapsed yesterday. Okay, it was a sad scene. Now the Steelers lock up the AFC North. Congrats to them winning the AFC North. Next week they play the Browns. That game was supposed to be for the AFC North if they had lost to the Colts yesterday.

But instead, they already clinched. They already have a playoff spot. Would you rest your team week 17 if you were the Pittsburgh Steelers? Had an early bye week that you didn't even know was a bye week in week four would you give the boys a rest before trying to go on a run to number seven or would you say hey we just learned how to play football again in the second half do not need to slow that down i don't care how much rest these boys need they just figured out how to play fucking football again the offense was throwing deep balls shout

out to ben roethlisberger looked like he got an immense amount of weight off of his shoulders whenever he completed that deep ball to Johnson. What's that? Well, you know, you got to assume that at halftime, maybe they had, you know, Ben work out some kinks in his system. Whatever it takes. Whatever it takes. Everybody's saying that Ben beat his baloney at halftime,

and that's why they came out in the second half and were a completely different team. I'm not saying it. They're saying it. People on the internet are saying it. But what do you do with that particular situation? How about the Bills tonight? Let's say the Bills get a win.

Then they basically locked in a number two seed. Do they want to rest their players next week against the Dolphins, who need a win to potentially get in? There's a lot to be deciphered, and we'll do that today as best as we can. A couple house cleaning notes here. Ty Schmidt is in Massachusetts for the holidays, visiting his future in-laws. Ty, we'll miss you, Bob. We'll-laws. Ty, we'll miss you, Bob. We'll miss you, Ty.

We'll miss you, Ty. Have a good time up there. Hope it is fantastic. Zito woke up this morning with some cold-like symptoms, so he is not coming in. Diggs, our friend, last week who missed the end of the week. This weekend, actually late last week, he did test positive for COVID, which led to our entire office getting tested. Connor got tested. It's negative. Gumpy got tested. It was negative our entire office getting tested. Connor got tested.

It's negative. Gumpy got tested. It was negative. Foxy got tested. It was negative. Mansouri got tested. It was negative. Nick got tested.

It was negative. I got tested. It was negative. So somehow Diggs got it. We were able to contain it with our protocols we've been utilizing in the office. Diggs had flu-like symptoms, he said, the last few days. Today he woke up feeling much better. He will have to. Now we've got to figure this out because we haven't had this in this office. he said, the last few days. Today he woke up feeling much better. He will have to.

Now we've got to figure this out because we haven't had this in this office. Do we make him miss 21 days like we're the Big Ten? James Harden? Seven tests or whatever it is? Perhaps. Or do we do the five negative? Now we have to figure out our rollback in plan, and we shit on a lot of people.

We shit on the commissioners of the Big Ten. We've gone after people for not having protocols in place. Now we find ourselves in that exact situation. I think three negative tests out of the Diggs will be what will get him back into the office. Hopefully he'll be able to do that by the end of this week and we'll get him back next week. But just know that our protocols here in this office

worked. We contained it and I feel damn proud about it. Good for us. I really do feel proud about that yeah that like whenever digs felt sick he wasn't got tested okay we didn't know his results but then there was a real moment there was like he's he said he's puking he said he's it's like all right we're gonna find out if the way we've been operating in this office was good or not we contained it fucking right i feel so good about it unbelievable i mean look at the studio too we're this close and we're still socially distanced i mean come on yeah yeah hey yes that's something to really be proud of and

this is not an overreaction this is probably the you know going forward the standard for how you should deal in office situations hey if you need us to come talk to your office we can't just fucking hand over the keys we'll get a consulting fee for sure. Absolutely. Fucking right. Obviously, we hope Diggs survives. Yes. Health is wealth. Of course.

We hope Diggs survives. And we hope Zito feels better and he comes back tomorrow and his test comes back negative. But everybody else who's tested negative, we all feel good. Diggs, T's and P's, he will be calling us

from the COVID cave, I do believe, today. Nice. At some point, we'll get some Diggs because Diggs went 11-0 at betting the last two days. What?

Yes. Bowl games and the NFL. He hit four unders yesterday. He is hot. Need to hear from him, even if he's in a state of potential flu. And by the way, his wife didn't even test positive. Interesting. A lot of time to go hunt and win or his old Tony.

So he's locked up in a room in his house. Okay. His wife. In the lab. Is somewhere else. Yeah. Digs are just in the COVID cave over there. Just dissecting things, making things happen.

We'll talk to him. Big weekend of football at Boston-Connor. The guy that you tackled. That's right. You said it. The guy that you tackled, who was the second-round draft pick for the Green Bay Packers. A.J. Dillon, a man who has massive legs.

Big boy. Massive legs. A man who hadn't had much playing time because Jamal Williams, Aaron Jones, and others in the backfield for the Green Bay Packers had been so damn dominant. But with injuries kind of giving him an opportunity on primetime football. Last night, A.J. Dillon showed up and showed out. And the story that you told all of us, okay, you told all of us.

Oh, yeah. Hey, that A.J. Dillon guy, we'll play against him in high school football. And I asked, was that your first junior year, your second junior year, or your third senior year there? And I forget what it was, but you said. Third senior. Yeah, third senior year.

You said, I met him in a hole, okay, and I drove him all the way out of bounds. That's right. Do you remember this? Bunch of times he said it. I met him in a hole, lowered the shoulder. That's right. Drove him all the way out of bounds. After watching A.J. Dillon play against grown men last night

and watching him run people over in those legs. I didn't know much about the guy coming out of Boston College. Didn't watch much Boston College. But after watching him, I was like even more impressed while I was watching the game. I was like, damn, we have a guy in our office that met this dude in the hole and drove him all the way to the sideline. Foxy, do we have the video? Right here.

Play it. Wow. Glory days. That guy breaks one, two, three, four, five, do we have the video? Play it. Wow. Glory days. That guy breaks one, two, three, four, five, six, and then you come clean up. How do you do it? That is meeting

him in the hole and driving him out of bounds. That was one play. Look, I can go back through the entire film if you want me to find the specific in the hole, driving him out of bounds that was just you know first quarter send a message look aj it's gonna be tough today you're not just gonna run all over everybody you know you might get a first down on every carry but it's gonna be a tough

10 yards to get there oh yeah and we sent the message it was a long day for all aj you think you sent a message oh yeah we let him know you can't see it in that uh film exactly but on the sideline there's some rocks i actually sent him into? We let him know. You can't see it in that film exactly, but on the sideline, there's some rocks. I actually sent him into the rocks, let him know, hey, look, it's going to be a grind. He literally just broke seven tackles in one play. Hey, look, I can't speak for that. And if you look at the scheme, I mean, our DN went outside when he should have gone inside. We had a blitz, you know, wind up.

Yeah, but you said you sent a message. If anything, he sent the message to your team. He sent one, but, you know, he got up off the ground. He had to pick himself up off the ground. He wasn't just jogging out of bounds. I let him know. Who was that? That might have been the hardest I'll ever be hitting my whole life. I'm pretty sure you had to sit up the next play, if I remember

correctly. I mean, look, you got his high school football. Alright, okay. You gotta let him know. Okay, alright. He was like 14 at the time, wasn't he? He was probably an 8th grader, and this guy was a second year senior buying fucking smokes. Uh-uh, he was 15. I was only 18 years old, boys. He's probably an eighth grader, and this guy was a second-year senior buying fucking smokes. Uh-uh. He was 18. I was only 18 years old, boys.

I wasn't 20. All right, all right. So let's move on, though. A.J. Dillon was massive for the Packers last night. He hunted some yards. He looked – Aaron Rodgers looked so damn good at football. And I put a tweet out last night in between my Oculus sessions, which we will talk about.

I'm a fucking problem on there. Hey, video game nerds, just a little heads up up i'm coming into your world with something i can actually play and i am enjoying the hell out of it i can't control my life with thumps okay so that's why i didn't get into any of the games that you guys all play you know i can't do it my thumbs just aren't good enough but i'll tell you what if i'm allowed to use a little athleticism in there i can play real ping pong put against a guy in germany italy japan beat a little athleticism in there. I can play real ping pong, but against a guy in Germany, Italy, Japan, beat a little kid who was a fan of the show.

He asked me, is this Pat McAfee? I said, yep. He asked if I could take it easy on him. It was six, nothing. I said,

it's fucking your fault, kid. Five more, 11, nothing. How you doing? Keep it moving. Yeah.

I mean, that's just, it's real. It feels like you're actually playing ping pong. You could put spin on it. I spar against a guy that I created, basically has a beard, wears a Santa Claus hat.

He's damn near a fucking expert. He never misses, but he's making me better. The Oculus Boxing thing, I'm 7-0 with seven knockouts. How you doing? Bang. Is that good? Is it good? I don't know.

You tell me. I might be the greatest Oculus Boxer in the history of Oculus Boxing. Neither here nor there. I came out of the Oculus session, which, by the way, as soon as you put it on, it's like you're going to a different world. People are fighting for these PS5s. Fucking forget them, dude. Get the Oculus.

This is not a paid advertisement, okay? Zuck doesn't need to make any money, by the way, at this point. But the Oculus is the coolest thing. It's Ready Player One. As soon as they make the goddamn treadmill thing, I will buy that at the house. This morning, I woke up, fucking played the Beat Saber game. Boom, boom, boom. Woke up a little bit,

sparred with my partner for 25, 30 minutes in ping pong, because the issue with the Oculus ping pong is, I don't play with a backhand in real life. I actually throw the paddle to my left hand. I have two forehands. And a lot of people think that I'm joking there. No, no, I have two very dominant forehands. Like, it has just been my style of playing.

My backhand isn't as great, okay? Like, so i've been working on that with my sparring partner week or two i'm gonna take challenges from all over the world okay and i'm gonna stream it live on youtube let's go i'm gonna start doing this thing but i need a week or two to figure out the backhand because i can't toss the oculus controller to my left hand so it's a little bit of a got to work on which by the way foxy you played against me i really do play like that you really do it and you don't notice it that much because you're very smooth with it if that makes sense yeah as soon as i mean it is paddle is in free flight in real life whenever i'm playing like it is because it's never got me either by the way i was gonna say you're always trying to find someone's weakness and the backhand most of the time is what you

don't have hey can't have a can't have a weak backhand you got two fucking forehands how about that and i play tennis like that too by the way it'll come really it's like the flat stick in hockey don't need a backhand that's that's what i'm lefty and righty and hockey yeah that's that's just how i play so the oculus ping pong is a little bit different and a guy from germany beat the fuck out of me and he took advantage of that whole thing i mean he was just he was just feeding this goddamn backhand the entire i was like all right but i just woke up. You know what I mean? So I've lost one game and all that thing.

Anyways, but then I fucking boxed two guys this morning. I mean, I can't even wipe my ass because my shoulders hurt so bad from throwing fucking haymakers. Oh, my God. It's awesome. I come out of the Oculus. Blizzard, 20 degrees. Aaron Rodgers wearing his fucking long jaunts. His thermal undies that he wears.

He's not even affected by that. The offense doesn't change at all with the way that weather was. You would think it would affect somebody that throws the ball so much or maybe it would affect Devontae Adams. They weren't affected. They almost got better in that whole thing. Now that they're basically the NFC favorite, problematic if everybody has to go through fucking lambo that is going to be a hard out for everybody aaron's going to win the mvp probably this week at some point they're going

to be home for all the playoffs shout out to our guy come on good luck nfc good luck screw good luck to your point too they got three running backs now and that's stable mean, how hard is that to game plan for when you don't even know who's going to be lining up back there? And, obviously, you've got the MVP playing quarterback slinging the pill. Him, by the way, everybody just admitted it yesterday. Oh, yeah. Collinsworth, by the way, basically came out. Now Michaels basically came out and said it.

Collinsworth does have a vote because, remember, he had to answer for Russell Wilson never getting a vote early in the season. They came out and said, like, after what happened with the Chiefs and the Falcons, not that the Chiefs lost, but they were fucking close to losing to the Falcons yesterday. And Patrick Mahomes, whenever he needs a play, he's going to make a play. A lot of people say, well, he almost threw a pick to play before. Almost doesn't fucking count.

Almost could have threw a touchdown to play before, too, if you really want to break it down. And he'll make a play when they have to make a play which is what we've always said about the Chiefs it feels like whenever they need it they need it you can go back to Wasp at the Super Bowl you can go back whenever they were down 21 in the playoffs you can go back when that team just has the ability to flip the switch whenever they want and it seems like it goes through Travis Kelsey by the way who Travis Kelsey and Patrick Mahomes might be the only connection in the NFL that can compete with Aaron and Devontae at this point. Travis Kelsey is his go-to guy whenever he needs something.

And whenever he needs a play, he makes a play. And everybody knows that Patrick Mahomes is going to be a superstar for a long time. But the MVP of the season has been for a long time on this show. Are we biased because he comes on every week? Absolutely. Aaron is the fucking MVP of this whole thing. And I'm pumped to talk to him about it tomorrow. 44 touchdowns. 4,059 yards, 119.4 passer rating.

Here we are, 15 games into the season. Next year, by the way, going to be 17-game season, so this will all change, I assume, all the stats and statistics and records will have to change. 70% completion percentage, 32 touchdowns, zero interceptions in the gold zone. Five interceptions total, 12-3 record. He's unbelievable right now.

We'll talk to him tomorrow. That was a great game to watch last night. I mean, Malcolm Butler making fun of the belt and then getting dunked on. Yeah, come on, dude. I mean, it was beautiful. It was just a cool night. Tonight, the Bills play the Patriots. Oh, yeah?

Who cares? Oh, yeah, who cares? I mean, most likely the Patriots probably lose by 40. I'll tell you who does care. Let's go, P Oh, yeah. Who cares? I mean, most likely the Patriots probably lose by 40. I'll tell you who does care. Let's go, Pats, baby. Have Bubba Gumpino, big Dolphins fan. And we will talk about the Dolphins having two quarterbacks. They say if you have two quarterbacks, you have no quarterbacks.

But the way B-Flow is operating is like, no, no, no. We got an ace, and then we got a closer. And watching that Dolphins situation yesterday, okay, with the Raiders, obviously the Raiders are the Raiders, and Gruden's record is what it is in December. I mean, it is. Those are tough stats to fall back on if you're John Gruden. I mean, $100 million he's making, but that Raiders team has to figure it out. But there's a couple situations late in that game where I was pumped to see if Tua had it.

You know, like those are some moments. Patrick Mahomes is one of those guys. At the end of the game, if he gets the ball, he knows what's going to happen. Aaron Rodgers, if he gets the ball late in the game, he knows what's going to happen. Tom Brady used to be like that. I'm not saying he isn't anymore, but it does feel as if there's a little bit of question when he walks on the field. But I want to see if Tua's that guy.

For instance, I think Herbert is one of those guys. Need a drive? He's going to make a drive for you. I would assume Joe Burrow, if they ever figure out how to get that team good, even though they win again, if they ever figure out, he'll be one of those though they won again if they ever figure out he'll be one of those we'll never will we ever find out if two is that guy because they got a fucking magic man on the sideline who was built for that do you care if you're a dolphins fan and all that you haven't got a chance to see it too is that guy at the end of the game or not or you just as long as we get a dub we get a dub i'm obviously not comparing the

two because it's early in flores's coaching career, but I know how Patriots fans feel about Belichick. Whatever B-Flow says or does, fucking good with me. Oh, really? Yeah. By the way, one of the nicest throws. I mean, the face mask ripping off his head, basically, like it was one of those tops of a drink that you like have to twist off. You know, that's what his face looked like.

35 yard bomb down a sideline. 15 more on more. Jason comes out, kicks the field. That last five minutes took about 10 years off my life. We were dead. That pass interference. Like, by the way, rough day for analytics this weekend. Both Coastal Carolina game and also that game where they decided to take a knee on second and goal

whenever they could have scored a touchdown to put themselves up six, I believe, or maybe seven if they go up for two. And instead they take a knee to kick a field goal and they go up one. Fuck you, Fitzmagic comes in, bang, bang, game over. Tough day for analytics and stats and things like that. But, boy, what a weekend. I mean, it was awesome. That Coastal Carolina game.

Oh, geez. Coastal Carolina had a hell of a run, man. Hey. Good season. Hell of a run to the Shorts. Good season, Shorts. Good season. Haven't really kept up with much of the bowl games.

You know, there's a lot of them. Louisiana won one. I saw that. The only reason why is because if I follow somebody, it shows up on the timeline. Oh, yeah. That's how I found out about the Shorts or whatever. And I went back and watched the end of that game

where they punched the ball out to one or whatever. Wild. Wild. Both those quarterbacks, Liberty and Coastal, they might be a little crafty pros like Gardner Minshew, if you will. Oh, Gardner Minshew, by the way. Jags, that worked out. Shout out to the Bears.

Yeah. Hey, come on, Chicago. Zito, T's and P's. Hope you feel better, obviously. Getting tested literally as we speak right now. Chicago Bears playing football. Nagy saves his job. How you doing?

Keep it moving. Got another year of Maserati Mitch, probably. Yeah, Mitch Trubisky. Is he going to get the max going forward? I mean, he's playing at the top of his game now. I mean, it is something to think about. Why not? It is something to think about.

All right. We got to get to a break. We got Ian Rapoport joining us on the other side. We'll talk more about, you know, stories around. Did Jerry Goff break his thumb? Oh, no. What's going on with Dewey Haskins? By the way, oh, Dewey Haskins.

Hey, tease and peas to Dewey. Tease and peas to Dewey Haskins. Tease and peas. Stripper revenge game didn't work out. He looked bad out there. Three turnovers, I think. Not good. No Terry, though.

This isn't a bad song. He didn't have any McLaurin. No. But it seems like his career is probably short. Might be. And that's a shame, I think, you know? Because if you go back to draft night, a lot of people are rubbing in how he shook his head about Daniel Jones going to the Giants, and then he got benched yesterday for Mr.

Heineke. Oh, yeah. Heineke charactered yesterday for Mr. Heineke. Oh, yeah. Heineke character bowl. Yeah, Taylor Heineke. But Dwayne Haskins feels like it's probably done. And with the way everything's going, body language-wise and off-field stories, that's going to be a tough sign for somebody. But hopefully somebody will give him another shot,

and he'll be able to grow up and mature in that whole thing. But, boy, that's a tough situation over there alex smith if they win they're in on sunday night football against the eagles he's supposed to start and if not him then heineke dewey haskins is third string quarterback again and to join us is a man who's had a lot of success uh this past saturday he had two tuds receiving touchdowns for the Niners against the Arizona Cardinals. I don't know where he's calling us from right now, if he's in Arizona, if he's in Santa Clara.

They got the Seahawks at home this weekend. Ladies and gentlemen, Pro Bowler The Juice, Kyle Uschak. Yeah! What's going on, dude? Pat, what's going on, man? I'm coming from my Airbnb in Arizona. Okay, so you're still in Arizona right now. Is your family with you? Was it just players? How has this whole thing worked

out? I'm happy we can just jump right into this because this seems like a very huge obstacle that your team has had to go through here. Yeah, definitely a weird and unique one that we've had to deal with. But I'm lucky enough, my wife and my dog came out here and we got an Airbnb close to our hotel. So have a little bit of normalcy. At least have a house to come back to after practice and whatnot. But a lot

of guys, I mean a good majority, are still just in the hotel. And I feel for them. Okay, so you guys got that heads up. It was like a Thursday almost, I feel like. Maybe a Friday? No, it was literally the Saturday we were flying to LA. We got on the plane and we got, we saw on Twitter that Santa Clara wasn't going to let us practice or play in our facility. And so right after we got done playing the Rams, we had to go home, pack up our stuff, and I think we were out by Tuesday. It was pretty wild.

And so did you guys just have a locker room at – it used to be University of Phoenix. What is it now, Allegiant maybe? I don't know what the stadium is over there in Arizona. But did you guys have your own locker room? You were able to train at the – how did that whole thing play out? Because I was so intrigued by the fact of the quick turnaround, like how quickly Arizona was like, come on in. And then how there was going to be enough space to keep you guys in the Cardinals

separate. Did you guys see each other? How did it work? Yeah, no. So we're staying at the Renaissance Hotel right next to their stadium and our locker room, our weight room, our training room, our meeting rooms, all that is in the hotel. So, I mean, we don't really have to worry about the meeting rooms because we do everything virtually. So you just, you know, you meet from either, you know, either at your Airbnb or at your room in the hotel. But we just do everything right at the hotel. And then we take golf carts, like literally like a three-minute ride down the street, and we have a practice field that we've been doing all our practices on. You guys just golf carting around like every old white that retires and goes

out to Phoenix. Oh yeah. As soon as practice ends, it's a mad dash to who can drive the golf cart. ATVs that we have to back to the hotel. Has it been better or worse than you thought it was going to be when you immediately were told that for three weeks, you're going to have to go live somewhere else.

You know, generally it's, it's been better um it's not ideal for sure uh but it really hasn't been you know too bad uh i do feel for the guys like i said that are stuck in the hotel with no family who had to celebrate christmas all by themselves uh that's a tough pill to swallow and that definitely hurts uh but as far as like the day-to-day and like the football operations they've been pretty good it hasn't um you know really fallen off too much from what we were doing in san jose hey you know what you guys get to play in the nfl okay if you celebrate christmas alone in a little square you get you are lucky to do that remember you are not a human you are an n NFL player uh let's talk about this

game on Saturday CJ Beathard we obviously saw him go out and throw the deep ball last week to approach guys within seven or whatever and then he gets the to play this week and the emotional obviously post game a little bit with his brother and everything like that just how was the team George Kittle comes back what was the mindset going in there because a lot of people are like why is George Kittle playing and. What was the mindset going in there? Because a lot of people are like, why is George Kittle playing? And Kittle was basically like, what are we even talking about here? It feels like you guys still have a great culture, even though this year isn't everything that you obviously hoped it would be. Yeah, that's definitely something that we've had this whole time that we've, you know, kind of started this group in San Francisco four years ago. We've just had such a great locker room, such a great culture.

Everybody genuinely cares for one another, and we go out there and fight for each other. And like you said, there is absolutely no way that you're going to keep Kittle off the field. If he's healthy, he's going to go out there and play and do everything he can. But definitely so happy for C.J. Bethard. I think the guys deserve so much more than what he's gotten in his time here.

I think he's extremely talented. He's a great leader. People just gravitate to him. He has a great energy to him. And he played a really good, a really solid game this past Saturday. He was able to, you know, go in there finally with his first week of preparation as a starter and just run an efficient offense. You know, I think he threw three tuds. We went out there. We dominated on the run game, so it's not like we had to lean on the passing game too much. But there's a lot to be said of running a Kyle Shanahan offense.

It is not as easy as one. Well, I don't know if anyone thinks it's easy, but it's not as easy as one might think. With just the amount of decisions the quarterback has to make at the line of scrimmage, the ball handling, and just getting in and out of the huddle. There's just so much on that guy's plate, and I think CJ just handled it great. Yeah, everybody talks about, obviously, the young coaches. When McVay got hired at the Rams and had success, everybody was looking for the next McVay. Like, okay, if you hung around McVay, you get a chance to get a head coaching job in the NFL because he had success. So if you sat at the same table as him, that means you're going to have success.

That was kind of the hiring process that happened. And nobody ever talks about the other young coach that's in California. Well, currently in Arizona, I guess, because you guys got kicked out of California. But Shanahan just feels like he's like this young little whiz kid. It feels like he's a wizard. And the way the run game is set up, and I don't know if that goes back to his dad and TD and the Mile High Salute days and everything like that and how much it's evolved since then, but the fullback, your position is a vital position in that entire offense.

Do you and Shanahan obviously have a great relationship, and what is it like to play for Kyle Shanahan? Why does he never get talked about in those conferences? Now, granted, this year you guys are out of the playoff picture, so it's not going to happen. But I feel like Shanahan never really got that young pop of a coach that maybe McVay got. LeFleur is not getting as much as he should,

but Shanahan never got it, I don't think. Yeah, I do have a phenomenal relationship with Kyle. It's been so great to play for him the past four years. I can't imagine playing for a better head coach. I mean, he just does such a great job of relating to players, but also just being a very good leader and putting together, you know, such a unique offense and such a creative offense. I think maybe the reason he didn't get as much hype as McVay is McVay inherited a very good

roster you know he came in right away I think it was year two they were in the Super Bowl and so you know it took an extra year for Kyle it took three years for him to get there but I think McVay just had that very early on success and And, you know, he's in L.A. He has exciting players. He had Todd Gurley and Jared Goff and Cooper Cub. You know, all those guys are exciting guys to watch. So I think it was easy to gravitate to them. Whereas, you know, Kyle took a little bit longer to get things going. I still think three years and to turn a franchise completely around from, you know, ground zero to super bowl is still very impressive

uh and i do think he deserves a little bit more credit and recognition around the the league but i think that's going to come with time and uh i think he's just going to continue to have um you know success every year and people are going to you know get back on the shanahan train it's awesome to see how you guys put a plan together you know like for instance last year in the playoffs what eight pass attempts or something like that which is it was almost like it was 1920s football again it was it was very and if it works by the way it's not like shanahan's going to get greedy or egotistical and be like well i gotta do this i gotta do this if it works he's like let's just hammer this let's go ahead and do this which is a awesome mentality to have as a coach to kind of put your ego aside and be able to do all that shit uh he's also kept the fullback position alive very much how much pride do you have in being a

fullback out there i mean there's only a few of you guys out there that are still holding it down it's a cyclical league so there'll be more that'll come around on the other side of this whole thing but in your eyes being a fullback what does it mean oh my gosh huge amount of pride uh to be one of the you know the full few fullbacks that are out there and getting significant playing time. You know, whenever people love to throw out, oh, there's only three or four teams that use a fullback. No, it's not quite that. There's still 21 teams that have fullbacks. And there are more teams that use guys in that position. They're just not labeled a fullback. in that position. They're just not labeled a fullback. But like I said, tremendous pride to be out there and be one of the guys that consistently can contribute to our offense.

And that was really one of the biggest reasons I came to San Francisco is I saw an opportunity with Kyle. I saw what he was doing at Atlanta with his fullback, and I felt like we could expand on it even more with my skill set. So I've been tremendously blessed to be in an offense that really uses me and lets me display my skill set out there. It's been awesome. Are you going for the kill just every time? You went to Harvard. You've got a big brain, so you probably can't just cobra strike like Kevin Green.

What's the mindset whenever you're coming? Are you just trying to kill somebody? A.J. Hawk told us he usually joins us. He's with his family this week or whatever. But he said he hated Oklahoma drills. But his mindset was, I hate these things, but if my

only means of survival is to kill everybody in this, I'm going to have to kill everybody. It's going to have to be what it is. As a fullback, that's a lot of collisions. There's a lot of collisions happening. There's a lot of high- collisions happening what is your mindset are you a leverage guy like i gotta out leverage this person or are you trying to are you trying to potentially put yourself into uh you know a concussed state every single time um you know what i feel like i disappoint people with this question all the time because i am one of the

more recognizable fullbacks people want they want to hear about the guy who has the neck collar and heads into the wall. He comes out with his forehead bleeding. All that kind of stuff. I hate to let you down. That's really just not my style. End the show. There are times where you can't

avoid it. You're getting ready to show me something. I was going to say end the show because you said that, but you're ready to show me something no i was gonna say end the show because you said that but i but you were gonna give a great answer so i i wanted to stop interrupting you because i was about to hear a great answer and i kind of fucked it up that's on me but you said there are times let's just just act like what i did was nothing there just go ahead and do your thing uh but no i'm definitely uh my mentality is to use my leverage, to use my speed to set up. You know, a lot of times I'm attacking a guy on the edge and he's got to be able to defend a flat route

and he's got to be able to defend me cutting him out or kicking him out on a power. So I try to use, you know, leverage and angles to my advantage and less so of just smacking my head into somebody. That's a shame. I mean, it's smart, obviously, but I was just hoping that your answer would be like, yeah, I don't think. I just run and bury my head in it. What was your major at Harvard? Economics.

Oh, are you paying attention to anything? What do we got? We got money in Bitcoin? You doing whatever? No, that's the thing, though. If I hadn't played football, I would have been in trouble. I can't tell you the first thing about economics. What are some hobbies? You got a dog obviously that takes up a lot of time you and your lady what are some hobbies for you uh love playing cards big in the garden got a got a

greenhouse back home uh always got the garden going uh so you know try to eat well my wife and i do a lot of home cooking oh food so that takes up a lot of our time i thought you were growing marijuana out there no not not that kind of garden okay well maybe whenever you retire you'll maybe potentially you know maybe make an economic decision as well uh connor what do you got yeah kyle between yourself and ryan fitzmagic it's a pretty massive weekend for harvard alumni do you think it's time to start considering Harvard as a pipeline for NFL players? Superstar. I think it's no question. I'm pretty sure we

lead all FCS schools in active NFL players right now. I think there's seven or eight of us right now. It's a good amount. We don't get enough love for it, I feel like. About one every year we're putting into the league. Well, not this year because the Ivy League said we're not playing football.

They said that first. That makes it tougher. Yeah, that's going to be tough to get a guy. And you'll appreciate this. You're a special teams guy. We got two Harvard Pro Bowlers this year. We got our long snapper, Tyler Ott, tight end with me. I didn't know that. Let's go! I didn't know that.

Let's go, Tyler! Was it pass-fail? Did you get grades? There were pass-fail options. You could do one a semester, but it was mostly grades. Did you do really well? I don't know how you would have done it. I went to zero classes, and I was at West Virginia,

which is the Harvard of West Virginia by all means. That's right. It was just basically communication studies. I don't know how anybody with the schedule of football, especially in a position that you have to be pretty yoked, so you had to worry about your fitness and what you were eating and everything. I don't know how you put it all into one day, dude. I don't know how you did it.

I'm not going to say it was easy, but time management was definitely your number one skill. You had to figure out how to fit everything into a day. I snoozed my way through a lot of classes. It worked out. I mean, not really, but here we are. Kyle, safe travels. Were you playing in Arizona again this week?

Yeah, yeah. We're here in Arizona against Seattle. And then do you have a house in Santa Clara, like offseason, or do you have somewhere else? Will some guys not even go back to Santa Clara ever until next year? I'm sure some people just go straight home. But I've got a house in Santa Clara, and then my off-season house is in New York.

So we'll go pack up our stuff in Santa Clara and then head out to New York for the off-season. City or upstate? Long Island. Oh, Long Island. Ooh, the island. Hey, Long Island's not a bad place, huh, man? Sorry, isn't that where you're from, Aaron?

Great place, man. Lovely little town called Huntington. Is it locked down right now, though? It's not a bad place. I mean, sir, you know where you're from, aren't you? Great place, man. Lovely little town called Huntington. Is it locked down right now, though? It's not as open as it should be. No, no. Well, we don't know anything about that, but I feel like Santa Clara and New York are the two most, right? Oh, yeah.

Locked down. Yeah, and the two highest taxed places in the country, too. So I picked some great places to settle down. Yeah, as a Harvard economics guy, why don't you have a house in Delaware or whatever? I know, I messed up, right? Well, you said you're not really paying attention to the economics thing. That's true. You openly said it.

Hey, good luck this Sunday. I hope you have a great game. Enjoy the Pro Bowl. The Pro Bowl's not even happening, I guess. What are you guys doing? Just hanging out? Virtual Pro Bowl. We're going to Madden.

What are you doing? You're playing Madden? Are you going to Madden? I don't know. Honestly, I'm not sure if the players are playing in the game or if they're just doing a simulated, you know, Pro Bowl roster. So I'm not totally sure yet. How would you fare if you had to play?

You know what? Eight years ago, I'm taking the championship, no doubt. But since I joined the league and got married, I haven't been playing too much Madden recently. You need to get on Oculus, okay? Listen, I'm not- I just saw you posted something on your Twitter. My father-in-law got one

and it got some hilarious videos. Oh yeah, I'm gonna start streaming, I think, of me playing because it's not even like, I mean, I'm talking shit to these fake things that are existing. It is so realistic in there, Kyle. I've never been a video game player in my life,

but I very much understand how people can get addicted to it with this Oculus. It's ready player one. You're in there. You're just fucking living. What's that? Wow. Yeah, I'm playing ping pong. Okay.

And they got, I mean, you're playing, first of all, in this like little lounge area and've got your own table or whatever, and you have to throw the ball up. It has to fall six inches like the real rules, and whenever you hit it, it feels like you're hitting it. It's even a little vibrating in your hand, and then you can put spin on it, and then you look out to the left in your windows

at the lounge that you're in, your place, the fucking Alps, dude. You're just hanging out in the Alps. Yeah, so I'm playing ping pong against this character that I created who's really good, unbelievably good, and I'm just playing, and then I look at the Alps? Yeah. So I'm playing ping pong against this character that I created who's really good. Unbelievably good. And then I look at the Alps over there, and then I go out, and all of a sudden I'm in a resort in Mexico all of a sudden.

Then I'm boxing in an arena against a knockout artist from Bangkok all of a sudden. I mean, it is. It's Ready Player One, Kyle. Yeah. I've got to get one. It's going to be hard. I think they're sold out until January. Yep. Sold out until January. On topic. Especially after I got to get one. It's going to be hard. I think they're sold out till January. Yep.

Sold out till January. On topic. Especially after that campaign you just gave. Well, that's how I know they're sold out till January. By the way, the DMS I've been getting from a lot of my former teammates. They're like, is this thing real?

What is this? I'm like, yeah, I'm fucking fighting dudes every morning. Like it's, they're like, we got to get in. Then it's been sold out.

But Kyle have an incredible off season. Enjoy that pro bowl. We appreciate your time, man. I hope you come back on the show whenever. Yeah, man. I'd love to be back on again. So I'll talk to you again soon. All right.

Next time you come on, though, let's get some economics information. Come on. We don't have a lot of Harvard friends that are in the economics world. So we would like you to potentially bring that into the thing. Please. But if you're not comfortable. Home with homework right now. Come on, man.

You're right. You're right. Hey, whatever you want to do next time, but we will ask again. Just know that that question is coming. All right. I'll be ready. Ladies and gentlemen, Pro Bowler Kyle Euston. Yeah, Kyle!

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giving back hundreds of millions and millions of dollars to their users. Fandle Sportsbook is the best sportsbook going for a lot of reasons, most of them what I just said. We are very thankful for our partnership with Fandle, obviously. There was a little bit of a miscommunication last week between myself and Fandle. We worked that out. That's kind of how things operate whenever you're in a business relationship with each other. But even if we weren't in a business relationship with Fandle, it'd be hard to say that we wouldn't use the Fandle Sportsbook app. There are so many different ways to win. There's more things to bet on. Their boosts seem to always hit, which is just fucking themselves over time and time again we love the hell out of vandal sportsbook and you will too if you haven't used it yet use it nah

also there's fantasy on their daily fantasy and free to play games where you can win money shout out to vandal shout to you let's get back to the show joining us now is a man with a lot of knowledge on a lot of things in the nfl host of rap sheet and friends he's also on nfl network and nfl.com insider for the nfl ladies and gentlemen he and wrap up yeah it's going on rap sheet so i i get a question before you get to your questions for me so you have me on a bunch. Yeah. And then you have Pellicero on a bunch.

Yeah, yeah. Who is a better, more knowledgeable, and also more entertaining guest? So, rap sheet, here's the thing about that is everybody's special in their own particular ways. But how am I more special? Well, you've led to a couple breaking news on the show. You know what I mean? Like, you've kind of, like, alluded to a couple. Pelissero's a little bit of a greedy prick when it comes to that.

You know what I mean? That's right. Welcome to my life. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Greedy. Pelissero's amazing. Okay.

He has a radio show on SiriusXM, so you can tell that whenever he gets into explaining things, he hits it from all different angles. You two have two different styles, but he gives us nothing. He'll get phone calls while the show's happening, won't even think about letting us know who it potentially is. You have given us little breadcrumbs before, which we

do appreciate. So I think that is the two vast differences, even though you're both amazing on the show. That's fair. So I'm better is what you're saying. Cool. I read between the lines tom pelissero we pronounced his name wrong the first 10 times he came on the show it wasn't until a couple weeks ago it's pelissero not sorrow you know what i mean because oh my god he's the biggest jockey of pronunciation he gets so pissed when people pronounce matt lafleur's name oh people say lafleur yeah it's actually lafleur yeah yeah and he gets legitimately angry about it he once did a

segment on it because he was so pissed well that's because his name probably has been butchered so much so he got upset about it how does it work with you two you guys are just on one group text thread and then as soon as somebody calls you or texts you you guys have to get into the group text and say does anybody else know anything else about this uh yeah i mean it's me and palisaro and garofalo and you know i would say i would say we you know we share some information if i'm on something i'll be like you know hey fyi this is coming just so they're not blindsided or if it's like hey i got lead on this, but you got good contacts here. Can you help me out? Or it'll be like, you know, for Sundays, hey, I'm working on something,

but you're covering the game. Let's get together on this and we'll both talk about it on TV. That kind of thing. There's a lot of collaborative thinking. How does that work business-wise then? That has to be a little because if so is it like when you get brought you guys are just judged as a team like are you judged as a team at nfl is that how it works like from the business standpoint of it all i mean i'm

honestly not sure i just know that i want to win as much as humanly possible. And so like, for me, you know, like I wanted us to hire both these guys. I was very clear talking to our bosses, like for each of these guys, like, I think these guys are the best and I think we should go hire them. And we've made some other really good hires too, but I'm just saying, um, you know, these guys are two where I'm like, we should definitely go hire these guys. Um, and I just know i wanted to win and so we decided like all right if we're we're either going to be three three separate silos and we'll we'll break some news and we'll be fine or we could just combine forces and do really well uh we went with the latter and i think that worked out here's the church here's the steeple look inside see all the people see

what you guys did right there that's what you guys did that was awesome that was awesome you guys did that let's let's talk about let's talk about some of your teamwork shall we uh 17 uh game season is a go for next year was there ever a thought of an extra bye week or did this get expedited because of the current financial situation with COVID? Or how do you feel like this whole thing got worked out? Yeah, I mean, it was, you know, it was in the CBA. And it was always a possibility. I kind of in my own head was like, all right, it'll be kind of down the line whenever they do the TV deal. So I was thinking probably 2022. And then the pandemic hit. And then it's like, all right, you know, everyone's, it's not like everyone's

having money problems. They're just not making as much as before and when the revenue streams kind of dried up a little bit obviously limited fans and um and all of that you know it really became like all right how can they get more money this year to help it's not just make more money it's not like the owners need more money it's also salary cap you know the salary cap projections for 2021 were so far off because you know there's been hardly any fans you need to make up for that at some point this was the best and most obvious revenue possibility it actually helps all sides because you need to get an extra billion dollars or so for week 17 that the players split with the owners um as soon as one tv deal gets done whether it's you know fox or nbc or espn or cbs or whatever amazon then this will basically kick

into place um and i think it'll be a very cool thing they're talking a hundred billion dollars in tv deals hundred that's over a lot of years but yeah 10 right uh i think that's what it would be 10 years 100 billion dollars and they still negotiate ways for their own network to have exclusive things the nfl business model is insane how come there wasn't an extra bi-week thought about because you would think that's two more weeks of television i i just have not heard any uh any momentum toward an extra bye week you know it kind of

I don't know it dilutes things a little bit and I'm just not sure it's necessary what I would be you know from a player rest standpoint possibly but I'm going to be really curious to see if some of these roster things that they've had now like the flexibility the three games of IR guys being able to come kind of back and forth unlimited promotions off

the practice squad without going through waivers like i wonder how much of that is going to stick because it does seem to it seems teams have more good players on the field this year this time of year than previous um which i think is a good thing. Okay, so let's talk about a couple of the stories that came out of yesterday. Jerry Goff, we've seen him pull his thumb out and put it back into place. Not great. Not great at all. The thumb off the helmet is always a worry for quarterbacks.

That's why a nice clean pocket is preferred by us NFL quarterbacks. Also, the running back got hurt for L.A. Yeah, us quarterbacks. Start string, look it up. You got it for probably a little fucking Rolodex. Were you the emergency quarterback? Oh, yeah, buddy. Oh, yeah.

I got snaps every Saturday, dude. Every Saturday. That's awesome. Let's hear it, Doc Sega. Yeah, yeah. The whole thing. It is. Yeah, go ahead.

I would say I have a six-year-old and a seven-year-old boys who've started watching football with me, and now you get to hear everything on TV. You can never really hear the signals. They're infatuated with the signals. So they walk around the house going, green 80, green 80, and they want to know, like, do the quarterbacks practice that? And how does it happen?

What does it mean? So I've had to talk more about quarterback signals than ever before, And they want to know, like, do the quarterbacks practice that? And how does it happen? What does it mean? So I've had to talk more about quarterback signals than ever before, and it just warms my heart that you can now join our conversation. Well, just let them know every Saturday I go work. And Dallas Clark actually told the story the first time he saw me working on that my rookie year where he was across the field, and he was like, I could probably do it. I at least know the plays better.

Like, that's always the reaction. Clyde Christensenon current quarterback coach for the tampa bay buccaneers uh was a big fan of mine we golfed together he saw i was athletic and he's throwing with me he was the one that made the big push for me to be the emergency quarterback frank reich who is now the head coach of the indianapolis colts was the assistant quarterback coach at the time he's the one that went through the reps with me, so like the hand and everything like that. So NFL coach, quarterback here, no big deal. Currently two of the greatest, some will say, even though that second half yesterday was a complete collapse.

Give the ball to Jonathan Taylor. I'll ask for your kids tomorrow, Aaron Rodgers, what scary ninja means because that was an early audible that Aaron made that I will be excited to see what that meant. Scary. Oh, we don't have enough guys. Ninja. Whatever that means. We're doing that. So with the Rams, though. So Rams, yeah. Running back at Jared Goff. They got a guy who was in the AAFL. What's going on with the Rams? And are they in a bad spot right now?

They are in a really rough spot right now, which is weird because they really are a very good team. And I would say they're in, you know, like a lot of the good teams now, it seems in danger of missing the playoffs somehow, some way. So you got Jared Goff was a fractured and a dislocated thumb. He popped it back in yesterday, which gives you chills. Just thinking about it's horrific. So that's going to need surgery. He's going to try to put off surgery until after the season,

which from what I understand is possible. So he thinks he can play. He's going to try to push through it. We'll see. It seems nuts, but we will see. So he's going to have a splint on that thing probably, huh? That's going to be. Yeah, and we've seen this because Brady, it wasn't the same injury,

but Brady, remember when he almost chopped off his thumb? Oh, yeah, on a handoff. Yes. So he played with like a hard. Oh, who is it? It's no caller ID. Did someone call me on purpose with no caller ID? This is what happens whenever Pellicero is on. It's probably Tom.

It's probably Tom. It's probably Tom. To hell with Tom. No, no, unless he wants to come back on. Should I get it? Do you want me to get it? Yes, yes, yeah. Yeah, for sure. For sure. This is probably Tom. To hell with Tom. No, no, unless he wants to come back on. Should I get it? Do you want me to get it? Yes, yes, yeah. Yeah, for sure.

For sure. This is the first time a no-caller ID. You missed it. There'll be another one. There'll be another one. Hey, it's week 16. There's going to be a lot of news to break here. Don't worry about it.

What if that was it? What if that was the big one? Like Detroit selling their team? Oh. Is that happening? I have not heard it's happening. Oh. You don't sound very confident.

You know that's my nightmare, right? What's that? Is to be on and have someone just drop a, hey, have you heard this? And it's something unbelievable. But, like, it's the NFL. Literally anything is possible at all times. So I never laugh at those things. I'm always like, huh.

All right, so you'll probably go to the group text and ask if anybody's heard anything out of Detroit. The Rams are in trouble. Goff is going to try to power through that. Is there any big news you think that's going to come out? Any firings? It's too late in the season for a firing, right? People just wait until the season's over.

What are some surprising things you think that we can expect this week to happen yeah i mean i would say um you know i would say this week um it was a it was actually a twitter alert from mike garofalo talking about doug peterson it's a non-caller id calling again i'm gonna have to get this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Please do. Here we go. They didn't respond. Oh, it's Pelissero. It's a ghost. Yeah, it's Pelissero.

Probably. Anyways, what should we look forward to news-wise? How about that Jalen Hurts-Doug Peterson situation with Wentz? That's wild. It's wild. And, you know, it's interesting. The Eagles aren't good, and obviously they're not going to make the playoffs. But to me, they're like the most interesting team heading into this offseason.

Most interesting team by far. Because they could keep Carson Wentz, let the quarterbacks battle. Hard to imagine Wentz would want to do that, but what are you going to do? You know? I mean, is he really going to ask to be traded rather than compete? I don't know if I see that. They could, I guess, theoretically trade Jalen Hurts. Maybe he's got value. Possible.

No way. Unlikely, though. Or they could trade Carson Wentz. And maybe your team, Colts, says you know what? No, no, no. Here we go. Here we go. It's back.

I got to go. I got to go. All right. At rap sheet. All right. Let's go. He's about to break this. He's about to break this. This is sheet. All right. Let's go. He's about to break this. He's about to break this right now.

Huge. All right. Let's keep up with the Twitter. Notifications on. I gotta go. That's big because he was getting a few calls and he didn't say that. So who the hell just called? Is he in trouble for what he said on the show?

Did he say something on the show? Somebody's getting fired. Oh, yeah. Somebody's canned right now. I was wondering if Gase and Nagy. All right. Let's go around the room here who's getting canned not naggy not naggy no no way gays no way or they're picking up the option on trubisky fifth year oh i thought they had to have done that already didn't they is there a deadline to deadline pass i don't know i don't know let's see that's something sports shows should have about fangio fangio and there's conversation

about elway potentially having to step down. Yeah. Maybe it is. So we've kind of locked in now on Denver is what we're thinking. Uh-huh. All right, let's keep up with Rap Sheet. Maybe, you know, who knows? Maybe, you know, the Washington football team is done with Dewey Haskins

and they just want him out of the building. Did they cut Dwayne Haskins? Perhaps. Oh, man. There's so much. Week 16 NFL, anything could happen. Let's go to the phones here real quick. That was electric.

That was maybe the best exit of an interview we've ever had. The look on his face, the panic, his eyes. His eyes go, for those that were just listening, his eyes go huge. You could see him start looking at his computer. I was assuming, does he type his tweets then? No, got to do it on the phone. He's calling us on the computer, so he had to probably find the uh the hangers got a few phones too so he's coming you know who knows which one picked up man what the fuck happened right there it was big because because a lot of guys

pelicero it happens to him they get calls but they never say hey i gotta go let's get a call in cleveland call what's going on man hey what's up what's up? Shout out to you guys. Love the show. I do have my one big question for this week is if the Pittsburgh Steelers next week, now that they, you know, they clinched the division, they're in the playoffs, are they going to sit their guys next week and, you know, making an easier pass for Cleveland to get right into the playoffs? Even if they sit their players, you think the Browns are going to beat them? I mean, the Browns are out 45 players, lost to the Jets yesterday, Kyle.

Yeah, but I mean, they're going to get at least some of those players back probably. You know COVID. At least two to three of those receivers back. Kyle knows COVID better than us. We got a guy that got nobody else. Last week, you guys went in the division. Now you're worried about the Steelers resting players. What the hell's going

on in Cleveland? Hey, that's the highs and lows of being in Browns. I can respect that, Kyle. The Browns losing to the Jets was interesting yesterday because they were out, what, eight receivers? They were also out three offensive linemen. And that can be tough, obviously, whenever you put together an entire game plan and maybe Stefanski just decided to keep with

his game plan no matter what they had Baker throw the ball 53 times and that stat can be alarming okay and I got a lot of people coming after me that that was lazy analysis that's just me looking at the box score and the stats and saying oh this is probably when they're going to lose games whenever they're doing this now am I saying that they should have just force-fed Chubb and Kareem Hunt? Yes, I am saying that because that seems to be working for them, but even more so whenever you're out eight wide receivers. Now, the three offensive linemen giving them no time and not being able to pick up yards, cool,

but at least you're still chewing at the clock a little bit, right? You've got to change your game plan whenever you're out a lot of stars. You've got to hopefully play a little game management style. Him throwing it 53 times was wild to me. I thought that was wild to me. I put it out that it was wild to me. It was wild to a lot of people. Then I got a lot of Browns fans attacking me for not doing my deep dive analysis

and watching the entire game, which hey, that's on me. I didn't watch the entire. It was on. Hey, it was on, especially whenever I saw you guys were about to lose to the fucking Jets. It this is gonna happen here let's go ahead and watch this thing as they were pulling away 20 to 3 at one point but for me that you got two monsters in the back you just feed them i don't know why they didn't do that now the pittsburgh steelers cleveland browns game was supposed to be awesome it was supposed to be week 17 afc north championship on the line

probably sunday night football. Instead, we got the Washington football team, Eagles, and that's because that game is the only one that isn't affected by any other games, I guess. Washington wins, and they're in. So all eyes are going to be on that game if the Cowboys can get another win against the Giants next week. But for me, that Steelers-Browns game was supposed to be awesome. Steelers turn around in the second half.

Browns go the complete opposite direction. It feels like this could be a situation where the Browns have their best season they've had in a long, long time and maybe miss the playoffs. Dwayne Haskins has been released. Did we guess it? Oh, my God. One of our four guesses was that Dewey Haskins was getting released. Holy shit. So, Ian Rappaport just broke that?

Yep. Yes, sir. I gotta go, he says. I gotta go. Per me and Tom Palacero, by the way, in the group text. Nice. Congrats, Tom. Good job, boys. Washington has released QB Dwayne Haskins per me and Tom Palacero. Reports friend of the show at Rappsheet

Ian Rappaport. He actually ended our show early to get this tweet out. Could have done two birds, one stone. He chose not to. We thank him for his time. This is wild with Dwayne Haskins because Dwayne Haskins, everybody remembers the draft party. Everybody remembers where he was charging people to get into his draft party. Everybody remembers him shrugging off other quarterbacks getting drafted ahead of him after his illustrious career at Ohio State. Then things get a little bit rocky. Case Keenum, I believe, was the first quarterback to play. Dwayne Haskins

was the backup quarterback. And during Case Keenum's playing time, Dwayne Haskins was nowhere near him. Dwayne Haskins was on the other end of the bench, fucking around, messing around, maybe with his friends. And I always wondered, if you're a young quarterback, like Toole was, Ryan Fitzpatrick, if you're a high draft pick, probably going to be the future of the franchise. If they have a veteran starting over you, even if you don't like quarterback like tool was ryan fitzpatrick if you're a high draft pick probably going to be the future of the franchise if they have a veteran starting over you even if you don't like it you should probably hang around that person to kind of learn how they operate be in their back pocket is how it's described in the nfl and duane haskins did not do that then duane haskins got his chance to play at the end of the season last year but it was an entire fire new coaching staff we've learned about the expose but he showed some promise against the packers last

year he showed a little bit of promise against them remember giving them a little bit of a problem and going into the offseason it was like is Dwayne Haskins the future of the Washington football team at that point they didn't have a team name by the way I don't even think they knew what was going on Ron Rivera has him as a starter he gets voted a captain by his teammates so in my eyes all the rumors that I had heard about him potentially having a weak work ethic or maybe not being a team guy from his body language on the sideline behind Case Keenum whenever he was voted captain that kind of relieved all that for me I was like all right his teammates like him his coaches like him this guy has shown talent hopefully he'll be able to dive into the playbook and become an absolute monster out there then something happened and

it seemed to all fall apart joining us right now is a man who's a former general manager and a man who is a coaching consultant to the Patriots, a man who's an author, host of the GM Shuffle and Hammer Don, which is the gambling podcast that we put out of this office here. He writes for the Daily Coach, which is an email newsletter that shows up every morning with a little bit of motivation. The guy literally does everything. I'm not sure how he fits it all into his day, but we're thankful he can join

us right now. Ladies and gentlemen, Michael Lombardi. Thank you. I was jogging here from my office to here, so I'm back. I'm ready to go. What a day already, huh? Yeah, well, let's talk about, we'll get to all that, but let's talk about the tweet that you just put out because a little bit disparaging a little bit disparaging i mean did not expect this from you at m lombardi nfl by the way the punter and the owner slash head scout wanted to prove they

were much smarter than most even those in their organization and selected duane haskins ignoring the signs of problems okay so we'll get into the Dwayne Haskins release, you know, for sure. He goes from starting quarterback last week to starting quarterback yesterday to being released on the day after the game with one week left in the season whenever they have the NFC East to win Sunday Night Football. But aside from all that, the punter and the owner wanted to prove they were much smarter than most. What's that all about?

Okay, so the former general manager of the team I worked with in Oakland, and I never call him by his name. He was a punter from Richmond, and he got drafted in the 12th round by the Baltimore Colts. You could figure out his name. I'm never saying his name. And so I always refer to him as the punter. And then the owner is Dan Snyder, who's the owner head scout,

because literally, I mean, everybody from Jay Gruden to their head, referred to him as the punter and then the owner is dan snyder who's the owner head scout because literally i mean everybody in the from jay gruden to their head everybody was telling him look dwayne haskins is not what you think he is he's got some issues off the field that he's not disciplined he doesn't care enough about it so that's why that tweet came out michael why do you think they voted him captain because that that was big for me, because I had heard all those rumors that you're referring to about how he's not in it for the team, he doesn't love football,

he doesn't care about winning, he's just a talented guy. Obviously he has a lot of talent, but in the NFL, a lot of people have talent. It's taking the next step, especially at the quarterback position. I had heard all those rumors. And then going into this season, I thought last season, it wasn't really given an opportunity. Coaches fired. All these exposés

are coming out. The place is upside down. Going into this season with Ron Rivera, though, a nice steady voice. He had a C on his chest. He was starting. I was like, okay, maybe everything we had heard about him off the field was wrong. How does that happen? And then this happened. How did he get voted captain? Did something change? Did he

somehow zoom call his way through leadership like how did that whole thing happen was that ron's fault you think the team like how did that work i think when the pat mcafee office starts to get in the 30 30 business and does documentary this might be the first one you want to work on it's like how did this happen like how did a guy whose behavior has never been reminiscent of a captain become a captain was this dan snyder said hey let's throw the kid a bow now remember he lost 25 pounds this offseason everybody said he was working harder than he possibly could have worked right and I think today you know the daily coach

today I wrote about Joan Diddy and one of the great writers of all time and she talked about in a passage from slouching from Bethlehem an essay she wrote about how we can't forget as we all start to prepare for New Year's and have resolutions we can't forget the past person we was we can't say we don't want to talk about what we did because that person shows up at 4 in the morning and kind of says well who's abandoned me well Haskins never acknowledged he was doing things wrong in the past. And he thought that if I lose weight, I'll win everybody's confidence.

And those habits that he thought he changed never really changed. He's young. Immature. He's immature. A lot of it is immaturity. I agree. By the way. And the best thing that happened to this kid, and I would tell him this, is now you have a chance to rebuild your career.

Because fear does the work of reason. When you're're fearful you're not going to have a career and let's be honest who's going to sign duane haskins for a third string quarterback job who tell me no one so his career is at a crossroads after two seasons and it's not like it's drug related or he's been suspended. This is behavior related based on caring. It's based on maturity. And he can fix that. Okay. So I hope he can as well, by the way. This is a story that 10 years from now will be talked about in two different ways. How this moment today with Ron Rivera either pivoted him into becoming everything that he could become with his potential being one that's very high he can sling the rock it seems like if you watch practices he can go ahead and put the ball wherever it is but off the field will he dive into being an

NFL quarterback with no fear that whole without fear there's no reason that's a great quote by the way because he's probably always been unbelievable I assume in high school he was unbelievable college he was unbelievable you go to to the Washington football team, it's your hometown team. You're friends with the owner. I mean, you probably feel as if you're invincible and can do whatever the hell you want and not be held to the same standard. But I fear that nobody, like what's he going to have to do, XFL next? I fear he's been labeled a distraction already, and he's only, what, 24 years old.

And once you get labeled a distraction, you've got no chance of getting back in the league. No, and I think this, Pat, you know, let's be real honest. Part of this is his problem, but also part of this is the system problem, right? So he's a highly recruited kid. He's a five-star kid coming out of high school. And the guy that really suffered more from him than anybody is Joe Burrow. Because when Joe Burrow was coming out, he was a three-star. And they put all their eggs in this five-star basket of Haskins,

and they basically started to kiss his butt. They started to do things to get him. And that self-entitlement that people give you, you start to think it just comes with every day. Burrow was the three-star. They never thought Burrow was quite as good. And so Burrow had to transfer to LSU because of Haskins.

And Burrow never opened his mouth. He never said anything. In fact, I know from a former coach that worked there that Burrow didn't even wear the red jersey. They let the defense hit Burrow. That's why he fucking just eats hits all the time the ohio state just ruined him good god unbelievable oh but but they but they kissed haskins butt and he's had his butt kissed so much that no one's

derecruited him no one's brought him in and said okay it, it's all over with. It's over. The scholarship's over. And that's a big problem. How do we change that, though? Because especially with social media, right? I mean, Zion, I don't know how Zion isn't the biggest prima donna of all time. I've been watching him since he was literally like, what, 12 years old, dunking on little white kids in South Carolina, right? South Carolina, that's where it was. He was dunking on superstar, megastastar goes to duke megastar uh pelicans megastar but he's still

somehow very humble i'll be intrigued to see going forward how the superstardom doesn't affect people off the field as much as it does it's already i mean it's happened since the beginning of time obviously everybody there's a lot of mentions in the youtube comment section about ryan leaf who we've had on our show and that situation was one that is obviously ended up sad at the time i think there's a redemption story who knows long term how that whole thing works out but i feel like that is potentially going to be a problem as the world continues to build everybody it's it's like everybody gets a trophy type thing right it is something that is going to inevitably affect some things, and you just hope that Dwayne Haskins is able to learn from this moment,

which is obviously going to be low point of his life thus far. I mean, granted, I don't know him that well, so that's a complete assumption, but professional football life, this is the low point of his football life, is this enough to change something and get him into being like the hardest worker in the room, which is what you want your quarterback to be if he's going to lead a billion-dollar operation? Yeah, and what you want to hear him say is, look, I screwed up. I'm sorry.

It's my fault. It's on me. I'm going to work harder. I'm going to do everything I have to do. Take responsibility. But he's yet to take responsibility. He's always, it's been, you know, well, the system was bad. You know, he's always been about the things that come with being a player, not the process of being a player.

And that's a dramatic difference. Hey, you and I, you and I have talked about this. I started seeing this as social media got bigger in the off season. You have like a hundred guys on the team, 90 guys on the team or whatever. And as soon as the guys would get there for OTAs or the offseason you have like 100 guys on the team 90 guys on the team or whatever and as soon as the guys would get there for otas or the offseason workouts they go right to their twitter and instagram bios member of the indianapolis colts you know what i mean pro nfl football player for the indianapolis colts and then i don't see them like doing extra reps on the jugs or anything like that and i'm like that's a cool bio for like the next three months or so but when football actually happens are you going to take that off and just say former professional football player or are

you going to do everything that it takes to actually remain an NFL football player because everybody wants to be a lion until it comes time to do what lions have to do and that's kind of like the whole thing about the NFL it's not easy being an NFL player getting there obviously impossible staying there is a whole different animal. It's a whole different animal. When I talk to players before the combine or in preparation, I always ask, do you have Kobe Bryant's picture up in your room? Oh yeah, I love Kobe Bryant. Do you know how hard Kobe worked? Do you know what Kobe did? Do you understand Kobe Bryant? Do you understand what Kobe did? Do you understand that four o'clock in the morning he was in the gym? Do you understand that Kobe would practice for eight, nine hours a day? do you understand nothing was more important in kobe's life than being the best pro he could

possibly be being the bestest i mean because if you're going to hang that picture up on the wall and you want to emulate him you better understand who you're doing with you know because kobe just didn't sign autographs kobe just didn't show up kobe worked the work what you do in the dark will come to the light that's go that goes everything, especially in the world that we're in right now, but also with the work that you put in when you only have 16 Sundays to prove what you've done all year. It kind of figures out. Hopefully Dwayne Haskins will be able to figure it out from this moment

and move forward. Incredibly talented dude. I hope he doesn't fucking waste it like it seems like he has thus far. Let's talk about some other things. Tom Brady and the Buccaneers, the last 90 minutes of football, Mike, they've played very good football the last 90 minutes. Are they getting hot at the right time, or is this them playing bad football teams? Well, a little bit of both.

I mean, they play, you know, the Atlanta game. I mean, look, Atlanta game, Kansas City, everything you wanted to do, and they just kind of plowed through Atlanta in the second half there. And then, yes, against Detroit. Detroit's too slow, had no coaches. I mean, but it's all going to be the matchup. You know, if Washington wins this week, Washington go and Tampa has to go into Washington. That's not the perfect team for Tampa to play because they can rush four guys and put pressure on Brady.

That's always been the recipe against Tom. And whether they can hold up on the outside, whether they can, he'll make plays, whether they can score any points with their offense, who knows? But I think that the Bucs still have the same symptoms and problems when they play against certain teams, especially teams that are good with a defensive front

that can pressure Tom and make him play faster. Man. Hey, there's a lot going on in that NFC right now. The Rams, Jared Goff last night, exactly what we talked about. The Jared Goff live bet. Last night I was too scared to do it just because it looked like the Seahawks were completely dead. But the Jared Goff live bet, if you watch the first two, three series,

and Goff looks like uncomfortable, go ahead and hammer the other team. Now, it didn't happen until later in the game. The Seahawks kind of took over. But Goff never looked comfortable I think he only had like 215 yards or 200 and some yards before he broke his thumb that offense seems to be so hit or miss over there you can't really trust them to do much but the Seahawks win the NFC West for the first time since 2016 is are they a real contender in this thing or is everything run through green bay because everybody's going to have to probably go to Lambeau well I mean have a problem with with with aaron there's no doubt i mean the way aaron played last night he won the mvp but i think you gotta get it

congrats aaron congrats aaron proud of you bud let's take your hat off to pete carroll he got this he got his defense fixed you know he's got him playing in the eight man front i mean let's jamal adams is a linebacker and he's a good linebacker don't get me wrong i'm not dismissing him but they got him you know he's playing down the box they're kind of got a match he attacks the pocket and their their gap integrity's improved but you're right about jared goff i mean i knew yesterday i on your on the hammerdown i had the rams as one of my pick and after the second series i said to my wife this is not going to go well this is a blow i blew this one this is over with this is this is not going to go well. I blew this one. This is over with.

This is not the way I envisioned the game going. And if I were a betting man, I would have gone to an app and bet against them. But I think Seattle's dangerous because Russell still hasn't played to the level we saw him play earlier in the season. There's some of that that's left to be

played. They'll give Green Bay trouble, but I'm telling you something now. You know, this Green Bay team, the way they played last night, the way Aaron's playing with Devontae Adams healthy, and that if they can set the edge like they did last night with Gary really helping them, they're a hard out now. They're going to be tough to play, especially, Pat, you've done it. I mean, you've played in a dome.

You've played outside. The Packers look like Eskimos, how comfortable they were throwing and catching outdoors last night. They did look like a bunch of Inuits running around out there. The thing about them is their offense did not change at all. It almost looked better because the D-line

slip, don't have as good a traction when they're trying to work their thing. Everybody thinks about wide receivers footing and corners footing, but D-line footing is a big deal as well. I'm not saying the offensive line isn't, but it's obvious that the Green Bay Packers were much better prepared in the conditions than

you get it, the fucking other team, Titans, Tennessee Titans. But the defensive line couldn't get any rush. Aaron was sitting back there for like 10 seconds at a time, and if you give Aaron Rodgers six, seven seconds to sit there because he knows what defense you're in, so he knows exactly who's going to open up.

And how about him last night with a little 15-yard skirt skirt? I mean, they're playing their best football. Defense was opportunistic. They seem to be playing their best football right now. That's going to be trouble, people going down Lambeau, Donner. How about he takes off for 15 yards, gets the first the first down golf takes off and slides three yards short of the first down like seriously seriously get the first down dude like you know you're not sliding this isn't that we're not playing the Mets in a double header get the first down you know and I thought

you know the one thing I don't think fans understand this. That football, as wet as it is and as cold as it is, is hard to throw. That's one thing. It's even harder to catch. Now, you could catch it, but you'd double catch it. Those Packer receivers, there was no double catch at all. They caught that thing clean. They were perfect, and he threw it like it was an 80-degree day in Green Bay. It was really impressive to watch.

And he jogs out there because they do zoom in on it. I tell them this every time I talk to them. They zoom in on his face more than any other quarterback. I mean, they are on his face as tight as possible. And there's a snow coming down sideways, and he just looks like the most calm dude of all time going out there. Like, this is not a problem. That whole team seems to be rallying around each other as well,

a lot of celebrating. You can tell a lot about how a team's operating in the locker room, how close they are by their celebrations and how happy they are for each other. I mean, that is another team in the NFC we have to talk about. Speaking of celebrating. Excuse me. Hey, God bless you. God bless you.

May the Lord be with you, Bo. May the Lord be with you. Whichever one. The Saints, they win the NFC South. Kamara scores six touchdowns. Should have been seven. Sean gave one to Taysom whenever they were on the two. Thought he wasn't going to be

able to get to six. Could have broke the record. He had six touchdowns. You've been on the train early that Kamara should be in the MVP conversation. You're not saying he should win it, but you've been saying that Kamara should be in the conversation. When Taysom Hill was the quarterback, he wasn't having his best games. But when not saying he should win it, but you've been saying that Kamara should be in the conversation. When Taysom Hill was the quarterback, he wasn't having his best games.

But when Drew Brees is in there, Kamara is on a different planet playing football. No doubt. And I think the difference here is when you watch them play, they always motion a guy across and then they set the defense. And then Drew usually gets them

into a play that he wants. I'm not sure Taysom's that good to be able to get them into the best run play. So when they don't have that ability to motion, reset, okay, I want to run it here against this front or that front, right or left, then, you know, I think it affects Kamara. But when Breeze was back, they did their motion. They reset. They reset the snap count.

They ran. They called a run. Then all of a sudden, he was really good. And look, Minnesota, we know they're not good on defense, but Kamara was sensational. And the way they played, you know, Breeze cuts down on the interceptions and the bad balls. They're a tough out, too.

Now, they're going to have to go to Green Bay. That'll be a tough place to play for Drew. Yeah, Drew's arm, I'm not saying, is dead because... But it's going to be hard. I'm not going to say his Drew. Yeah, Drew's arm, I'm not saying, is dead because... It's going to be hard. I'm not going to say his arm's dead, Mike, because Saints fans come after me a lot, but, I mean, that looks like

a much different ball coming out of that jugs machine than it did earlier in the year. You can look back to previous years. This seems to be a trend with Drew at the end of the year. Now, five-week break last year with Teddy B, four-week break this year. Maybe that will continue to happen.

You go back two years, though, before the breaks there in the middle of the season, because of – I don't want to air quote that – because of actual injuries or whatever, you know, the ball just starts spinning a little bit slower. Father time has its way with everybody. Now, is this the year where Drew goes on a run and he sails off in the sunset? Maybe. But in the AFC, Kansas City Chief city chiefs mike they can win whenever they have to it feels like they'll be able to flip a switch they're gonna be a tough out for anybody is this a year where they get got though because of how they've been playing they've been a bet they've been i was at the borgata yesterday and thomas gable the who runs the sportsbook said we've made more money on the chiefs in the last six weeks

than any team in the league. Never cover. Never cover. And everybody thinks they're going to cover, and they never cover. Why is that? Is that because they're bored, do you think? I don't know if they're bored. I mean, the last couple weeks, the philosophy has been,

we're not going to give up a big play. We're going to keep the ball in front of us and make them have to execute and see if they can do it. And then their offensive line, for as great as they are at the skill position, you can pressure them. I mean, I think if Green Bay gets to play them in a Super Bowl, I think Green Bay could give them a lot of problems because Green Bay has a quarterback who can match them points and they have a defense that can set the edge and pressure those tackles and make it a little uncomfortable for Mahomes now look I don't think it's going to be a 17-14 game like it was yesterday for them beating Atlanta but if Matt

Ryan was a little better yesterday they could have won that game bro that's been a couple times this year where they know and it's like they're the Chiefs so you're automatically they're going to win they're going to win and it seems like when Patrick Mahomes needs a play he's going to Kelsey by the way Kelsey is third down fourth down they need it it's going to win. They're going to win. And it seems like when Patrick Mahomes needs a play, he's going to Kelsey, by the way, Kelsey is third down, fourth down. They need it. It's going to Kelsey. Even though he threw a touchdown on somebody else, it feels like those two are really good, but man, I watched the chiefs and I'm starting to think like, yeah, I get it. You can just turn on this. You can just flip the switch or whatever, but what if you can't one day? Like what, what, what if you like, you know, you're reliant, this is like a three point

shooting team. Every once in a while, a three-point shooting team will have a cold day, and it's like you think you can just turn it on, but what if you get cold one day and you can't? I don't know. I love the Chiefs. Okay, let's not get crazy. I'm a big fan of the way they play. I still think they're awesome,

but the way they've been winning games has been very expensive for my bank account. It's been great for sportsbooks, and I think if you're a Chiefs fan, you've got to be like, all right, at some point we should just start getting back to what we were doing. Let's talk about getting back to what they were doing. The Steelers in the second half, now granted, the Colts collapsed. The refs handed them some plays, you know what I mean, with pass interferences and holding and everything like that.

But it seems like the Steelers learned how to play football again in the second half. They do not have to win this game against the Browns this weekend. Are you resting your Steelers team if you're the GM of the steelers because of the early bye week and how long this season has been or are you going to have them keep it going with how they learned how to play football again in the second half i think it just look at the line the line i don't know what you have it as the line seven and a half that tells me the steelers aren't playing their guys yeah six and a half over here dogs against the brownies they're not playing their guys yeah six and a half over here talks against the brownies they're not playing

their guys i i think this is a mason rudolph game would you do that is that your move if you're gm i can't improve my position if i can't i think i gotta get these guys haven't had a buy all year pat i know i know but they they just remembered how to play football literally just i mean but big ben looks like he could use the buy and you can't one thing you know this very well you can't rest everybody they only got 53 guys yeah so guys are gonna have to play but i gotta i can't let ben out there i gotta get rest him and get him ready to play whomever we're gonna play and it looks like it could be cleveland again if they're the seven seed that happened to us whenever we chose to lose to the Jets.

We ended up playing the Jets again in the playoffs, and we all very much understood that if we lost to the Jets after losing to them on purpose, that would be quite a karma kick in the ass if that was to happen. So we obviously didn't. We were a much different team, I think, than the Steelers are currently. But for me, that week four bye week is a long, long time ago. The three different day of games for that Baltimore week is week is also exhausting i understand they're humans and everything but boy if i would i would

send them out there for a couple series like a preseason game though you know i would send them out there for we did that against the jets and we did that against the bills week 16 and week 17 uh the year we went undefeated because there was records and clauses and contracts that had to happen and you got to do that. Yeah, I agree. I do. What's that, Nick? I have a question to follow up on the bi-week thing,

not just physically, but like mentally. How refreshing is that for guys? Oh, huge. The boys on the sideline without their shoulder pads on in the second half with their shoes on. Oh, I bet you guys would be loving it. Give me some peanuts. You know what I mean?

Give me some seeds. There'll be some guys maybe sneaking some other things in there on the sideline. You know what I mean? Hey, for the second half, got a little gummy here. You know what I mean? Give me some seeds. There'll be some guys maybe sneaking some other things in there on the sideline. You know what I mean? Hey, for a second half, got a little gummy here. You know what I mean? That would be. You'll need a tip to Mater D to get near the heaters in Cleveland. I can promise you that.

There's a bunch of people locked around there. You're going to have to tip that. You have to tip the guy to come in there. It's like, remember in Goodfellas where they bring the table right up front? That's what you're going to have to do to get near those heaters. They might bring another. Ben's probably calling in another one. Hey, we need another.

I'm going to be standing on the sideline the whole second half. Let's talk about that Browns team. They lose to the Jets. They're out eight wide receivers and three offensive linemen. Going to be a tough game. They threw the ball 53 times. Would you have ever expected them to do that? Did you watch that game?

I was getting attacked because I didn't watch every snap of that game. But I know if you're throwing it 53 times and you're the Browns, probably not a recipe for success. This is just like the Ravens who look hot, by the way. The Ravens look hot. Keep an eye on them. The Ravens last year, remember they went on that run where Lamar Jackson was trying to prove everybody wrong

and Greg was having them throw 40, 50 times and they were losing. Then they went back to running and they became the Ravens again. You have Baker thrown 53 times. I don't think you're going to win. That's not the way the team's set up, especially with eight wide receivers out. Yeah, and I think this is a game where Stefanski really impressed me after the game with his press conference. He said, hey, look, this had nothing to do with us not having receivers.

This had everything to do with the Jets front kicking our ass. I mean, we couldn't run the ball. They ran it 15 times and they couldn't run the ball. I mean, Chubb couldn't get it going. And just like you said, the Browns, the Titans, there are certain teams that have to play their style. When they play outside their style, they're not very good. And we saw it last night with Tennessee.

Tennessee can't play from behind, right? The Browns, they can't play from behind because the ball's in Baker's hand. Nobody respects the run when they're playing from behind. And Baker's a good player he's a system player and when he removes himself from that system drop back passes 53 times you're not getting the same results man i'm i wrote this down last night about can tannahill win a game by himself you know if derrick henry isn't getting yards and even if he is but you need to score points can tannahill do it himself then he had that big long run and I was like maybe Tannehill can but they all are predicated off of Derrick

Henry doing his thing and they're just going to have to keep the you have to have the lead and you have to be able to wear out the clock with the Titans but the Titans got a big win over the Ravens last year in the playoffs people forget who knows what uh who's going to go on a run four different teams or five teams fighting for three spots right now I mean it is the AFC playoff is hot going into week 17 what do you got hey by the way connor uh tackled a.j dillon when a.j dillon was a 12 year old and connor was an 18 year old a.j dillon tweeted out that he remembers that hit still to this day he tweeted the game film and connor also guessed that duane haskins was getting cut from the washington football team that's why Ian Rappaport had to leave our interview. So Connor is on what

we like to call a heater right now, Mike. Not too shabby. Mike, looking at that AFC picture, do you think the Colts are going to get in or are they going to be on the outside here? Is Connor wearing a Patriots sweater vest? Oh yeah, just in case they need a linebacker.

Yeah, I love it. Awesome. I love it. Well done. Okay done okay connor go ahead i'm sorry no they stink okay it's first time they haven't made the playoff since 2012 fucking stink there's been a lot of things this year you know defender's son over there yeah go ahead connor what do we got yeah mike do you think the colts are going to get in or are they going to be that team with uh double digit wins being outside the playoff picture here. It feels like it, dude. I mean, if Buffalo has nothing to play for, do they play their guys? They shouldn't.

We know one thing. Baltimore's going to win. Can Miami... First of all, Pat, you talk about pissing off fans. You're not allowed to say certain things about certain Drew Brees' arm. Cover your ears. You're not allowed to talk bad about Tua. You're just not allowed to say certain things about certain Drew Brees' arm, Gump, cover your ears. But you're not allowed to talk bad about Tua.

You're just not allowed to talk bad about Tua. You can't do that. It's the law. It's against the law. You'll be arrested. You'll be put in jail. Even though he can't throw the ball down the field. Whoa.

Freaking takes over 25 yards. And if they done benched him last week, they weren't winning that game. That's facts. Wow. Damn. You didn't take it. What are you saying? That's Fitz magic's team.

Well, I think that two of this doesn't throw the ball down the field. He said, you know, I've been saying it on the show. I've been saying on hammer down. I love gump. I want them to have a guy,

but they're going to have the fifth pick in the draft. He look, let me ask you this question. Gumpy. But are they Minshew as a rookie or Tua as a rookie? And then let me ask you this question. Who's better, Jalen Hurts as a rookie or Tua as a rookie? Jalen Hurts, Tua's better than Gardner Minshew.

Gardner Minshew stinks. Whoa! Look at the numbers. I know his numbers were decent, but you got Skycam Glennon playing over him. Well, and by the way, also, they were playing the games that were down a lot. I assume a lot of those yards were potentially

whenever they were trying to pick back up or whatever. Maybe. I don't know. That's just me reading from the outside, knocking on the analytics and stats and all that. But the Tua Fitzmagic thing is interesting because I said this earlier in the show, Mike. That was one of those moments where I wanted to see

if Tua was the guy that could do it. Aaron comes out in that situation, Aaron Rodgers, what do you assume is going to happen? Okay, Aaron's going to drive right down the field and he's going to score. Tom Brady, whenever he was with New England, forever, if they're in that situation, he's going to go out, he's going to go right down the field, he's going to score. Patrick Mahomes, in that situation, he's going to go out,

he's going to go right down the field and score. Justin Herbert, I think, has proven that if he has to, he'll be able to go down. I think Joe Burrow is a guy, if they can ever figure out how to put a team around him, even though they won a couple games, he'll be able to. I wanted to see if Tua was going to be that guy, but instead he gets pulled, Fitzmagic comes in,

and Fitzmagic's like, yep, still fucking here, rip my head off, doesn't matter. That's an interesting, they always say if you've got two quarterbacks, you've got no quarterbacks, and i understand winning cures all but that is not a that is not a long-term success thing right there they said there was no receivers on the field that's why two was struggling and he threw for 93 yards but then the quarterback they didn't change the receivers there wasn't a hockey shift i didn't see that so that's the receiver stayed the same and he threw for 180 with the same receivers okay i'm

just saying i'm look all i'm saying to everybody this i don't have i'm not i don't have a grudge against to it just grade what grade what you're seeing grade what you're seeing he doesn't throw the ball down the field he doesn't get away from pressure you know and can we add this to it too the raiders defense might be one of the worst defense oh wow they were buzzing on saturday my boys were buzzing golf you're making excuses i'm just telling you mike let's talk about this real quick there's a there's a mic'd up moment between fitz magic and two i don't know if it was this week or last week denver denver was or last week. Denver. Denver.

Was that last week? No, when he got benched in Denver. So Fitzmagic was basically telling him, like, hey, sometimes whenever you look back and there's one, two, a guy might look covered, but you've got to take that shot. Like, it feels like Tua, much like when Taysom Hill was playing quarterback for the Saints, that one week he kind of was able to get over it. But in the NFL, guys look covered.

They look like they are covered, but that's open in the NFL guys look covered they look like they are covered but that's open in the NFL because of how great athletes are it feels like some quarterbacks struggle with the transition of letting it fly whatever it looks like so it's like safe right it's a safe move you're not going to turn the ball over but you're not going to be able to move as much either I think Taysom Hill had that issue whenever he was quarterback for the Saints you see him like Pat he'd look he'd look and then'd look, and then he would run, and then he'd scamper. And then that one week, I think against Philly, he was just kind of letting it fly.

And it was like, oh, he's figured out how to be an NFL quarterback. Tua's that same way. I feel like he's so scared to turn the ball over that he doesn't let that thing, oh, are you breaking news? Is this going to be Tua? Are you breaking news right now? Oh, I think I had another radio show to do, but go ahead. I'm listening.

Is that Tua's problem? You think he's scared to turn the ball over? Yeah, I think I had another radio show to do, but go ahead. I'm listening. Is that Tua's problem? You think he's scared to turn the ball over? Yeah, I think he is. I think he's so used to it, and I think he just knows he doesn't have a powerful arm. He's afraid to put it in there, and he wants to throw the ball in the middle of the field. All right. So do you draft somebody at number five if you're the Finns, a quarterback, Mike? Absolutely draft somebody.

Who do you think there is to take? That I can't answer yet, but here's what I would do. I would grade the quarterbacks in the draft against what I've seen from Tua. Fair enough. If you have two quarterbacks, you've got no quarterbacks, that's always been a saying. Dolphins figure out a way to win.

Mike, we appreciate you. We'll see you at Hammerdown. Thanks, Patrick. Thanks, guys. I'll talk to you on Hammerdown. Have a good one, Paisans. See you later. Dwayne Haskins has released a statement about his release at DH underscore Simba7.

My time with the Washington football team has unfortunately come to an end. I thank the team and fans for the opportunity to play for the team I grew up rooting for. I take full responsibility for not meeting the standards of an NFL quarterback and will become a better man and player because of this experience. Okay, Dwayne.. Okay, Dwayne. Come on, Dwayne. Obviously, we're not happy that Dwayne Haskins got released from the Washington football team. This is a sad story.

The guy had an incredible amount of talent. Something was going on behind the scenes that we don't know about unless we were there. Obviously, it's not great for a man in his second year after being a first-round draft pick to get released after Week 16, a day after he started a game, while a team is still in contention for the playoffs. So hopefully he'll be able to figure it out. That seems like he's potentially on the right path. Ladies and gentlemen, every Monday we have a segment here, and today we became the number two trend in the United States.

Thanks to everybody that follows along and listens and watches this show. Hashtag Pat, I don't want to overreact, but it's time right now. Let's do it. Pat, I don't want to overreact, but it's time right now. Let's do it. Pat, I don't want to overreact, but... A lot of entries today. People were entering yesterday in the middle of games. We appreciate you. Let's get right to them, Foxy, shall we?

This is from the rapper Sid. Shout out to Sid. Hashtag Pat, I don't want to overreact, but the Cowboys seem to be able to sneak through the back door into the playoffs. Will they win it all? Question mark. Great question.

Andy Dalton was slinging the rock. We forgot about all the weapons that they have on offense because to be honest, they've kind of been absentee for a while. Yesterday, they all got hot. They were scoring. Dalton was slinging it like the red rocket that he is. I'll be excited to see because if the Washington football team loses and the Dallas Cowboys win, the Dallas Cowboys will host a home playoff game. And then once you get into the dance, it doesn't matter how you get there. If you do-si-do good, fucking keep it moving. Mike McCarthy might win comeback coach of the year within the same year. Remember, week six, the entire locker room was talking about how bad the coaching staff was.

Now here we are going into week 17 with them having a chance to make it into the playoffs. Now, they don't control it outright. They need somebody else to do something, but it's a lot easier to get in for the Cowboys than any of us could have expected about week seven, week eight, into this NFL season. And McCarthy figured it out. I mean, if he wants the boys to come out flying,

all he's got to do is grab a couple sledgehammers, a few watermelons, bash the hell out of those things, and the boys start scoring. Turns out, by the way, the boys got a chance to grab a sledgehammer and bash some watermelons. Watermelons didn't just have water inside of them, by the way. If you do recall last time this happened, Mike McCarthy talked to Jerry Jones and Jerry Jones said the one funny anecdote

from Mike McCarthy was Mike McCarthy didn't realize how much water was in watermelons. Instead, this time, Mike McCarthy had some of the boy smash watermelons like Gallagher and he put candy inside of them like one of them piñatas. That's right. Dallas Cowboys had watermelon piñatas in their team meeting the night before. They went out and

get a big win. They're now 2-0 whenever they're bashing watermelons before the game. Are the Dallas Cowboys going to win the Super Bowl? Whoa. A.J. Hawk called it. He said it. Let's get to another one, Foxy. This is from Dane Hanson, 02. I don't want to overreact, but someone needs to make a statue for that

no-look face mask pass from Ryan Fitzmagic. Amen. If the Dolphins go on to win any games here, I assume that would happen. What a fucking moment there. Shout out to Dane for entering. What's the next one, Foxy? This is from at Jrami15, Jordan Ramirez.

Alvin Kamara could be the best running back of all time. I mean, obviously you can't title somebody the best running back of all time while they're playing. But if he keeps going, by the time he's done, there's going to be real conversation about what Kamara. Should have had seven touchdowns yesterday. Only got six. Should have been in the MVP conversation. Michael Lombardi's been drumming that. He's a weapon.

He got paid this year, too. He'll probably get paid again. His balance is unusual. His explosive abilities are just next level. And his vision and calm is just something I don't think you can teach. Kamara is unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. Route running and catching, too.

I mean, obviously, like you said, you can't say, well, he's still playing. But as far as complete running back goes, I mean, there's really no one better. And I think he was a punt returner at one point, right, Wendy? A returner at some point, too? When he first came in, I'm pretty sure he was. I assume he could be if he wanted to he's unbelievable to watch fun to watch in his celebration of the five thing he's a great gift that's going to be used a lot the sixth one obviously tough to count because you only got five fingers on one hand should have had seven though taser mill stole one from him uh was it sean payton or was it alvin kamara or i mean was

it taser mill and neither here nor there what's the next one, Foxy? Hashtag Pat, I don't want to overreact, but says Benny Butts at BenjiTaylor1. NXT did the right thing to can you on Xmas. They're tired of cleaning spray tan off the canvas. Get some sun sun. Take it easy, Benny. Hey, Benny Butts. Get off my ass, dude. And I try to get some sun sun, but Indiana doesn't have any for like five, six months.

What do you want from me? This guy doesn't know. Yeah, I'm super Caucasian. I become red easily. I have a tanning bed in my house. But I got third-degree burns from the first time I laid on him. My entire body looked like a goddamn zebra for six months. I can't use it.

So I used a spray tan. Oh, your fault. My first match, NXT TakeOver 30 against Adam Cole, where I made some rookie mistakes, where I should have been an undefeated wrestler after that match. I made a couple. Maybe I got too dark of a spray tan, okay? I didn't go to my spray tan machine. I went to another one down in Florida.

And maybe that one was cooked a little bit too much. And maybe when I was sweating, it was falling off my nose onto the canvas. Maybe everything that guy is saying is close to accurate, but that doesn't mean I should have to read on the internet all day Christmas that NXT has just written me off of television for the rest of my life come on hey fuck you benny butts all right what's the next one foxy uh chris psych at c dog is real we'll be the judge of that c dog hashtag pat i don't want to overreact but one aaron rogers is the best quarterback in football okay two the packers running back room is the best in football okay uh colts would argue with that i think the colts with uh nine hines jonathan taylor

wilkins i believe is in there they have a great running back or there's a bunch of stables and i mean the buccaneers have a stable back there as well saints uh saints alan come on oh yeah he's really good there's a meal you could probably throw in there there's a really good so there's definitely up there but i mean mean, with A.J. Dillon, a man who once got tackled by Connor Campbell with his comeback story, maybe that's a Rudy like story. If you get tackled by that guy and then you have that night on primetime football, that is a motivational story for sure.

But I like that. Devante is the best wide receiver in football. I think that's a conversation that's happening currently. Aaron Rodgers once said that Charles Woodson was the best football player he's ever seen or played with, and he said it's about time Devontae Adams starts sneaking into that conversation alongside him. Massive praise for Devontae. The Packers are going to the Super Bowl.

Also, the Foxy curse is broken. Okay, a lot of people have not, we have not talked about this yet. Foxy experienced his first win as a diehard Steelers fan. Yeah, that curse never existed, Pat. I will say, though. You stopped watching the game at halftime and the Steelers played football in the second half.

Just a coincidence. I had to leave. I watched that first half and I'm like, this is the same old stinky Steelers. I can't take it anymore. And then I did leave from Michigan to come back to Indianapolis. They just so happened to come back.

But, you know, I think I'm done being a Steelers fan. What? I'm done being a Steelers fan. Why? I'm done being a Steelers fan. Get the hell out! I didn't get any thank yous for potentially motivating the team to win this last game. Wow. I also didn't get any thank yous for not giving up

on the team because that team stunk when I was watching. Yeah, they did. And also, I haven't got any thank yous for talking about the Steelers on a worldwide show like this one. No, regionally. You know what I mean? I'm just done with about the Steelers on a worldwide show like this one. No, regional. You know what I mean? I'm just done with all the Steelers fans. They didn't welcome me with open arms. There was actually a block party yesterday, was there not?

And bingo, they all blocked me on Twitter because of at-home digs. So I just didn't like how they treated me. They're supposed to be the best fans in sports. Done with that team. I said, well, that's big news, by the way. Huge. You decided to leave them once they learned how to play football again. Aggressive decision by the guy who's been a fan of the Lions his whole life.

Feels like that is potentially your fault. Nobody else's. Because the Steelers could get hot again. But I sent Foxy a couple tweets from the hashtag Pat, I don't want to overreact, you know? And he said, I can't read that because the guy blocked me. And I was like, why is everybody blocking me? All of Pittsburgh had a block party on Evan Foxy last night. Nobody knows he exists on Twitter anymore in Pittsburgh.

Diggs said he still blocks me until the Steelers lose in the playoffs. I will be blocked forever, so I won't be able to see Tone's tweets. That's awesome. It felt good to get that skinny stooge monkey off the team's back. He was obviously dragging everybody down. This is the problem. How about a thank you, Nick? How about City of Pittsburgh?

Thank me. Otherwise, you probably don't win that game yet. Can we get one last here we go, Foxy, for old time's sake? Here we go, Steelers. Here we go. Pittsburgh's going to the Super Bowl. That a boy, Foxy. Thank you.

What's the next one here? Hashtag Pat, I don't want to overreact, but the Baltimore Ravens are super hot, and Mar Jackson might get a few playoff wins the way they are playing. That's from Awkward Esteban, Awkward D. Esteban. You're not awkward, pal. It's only awkward if you make it awkward. Remember that.

It doesn't matter what happens. If you make it awkward, it is awkward. If you act like nothing happened, that's how everybody else is going to have to act. Now, once you get put in your place and say that you should be uncomfortable, then it's time to leave. That's just how you do. You get the hell out of there and say, you're right. This should be

awkward, but I don't want to be a part of it. I'm going to get out of here. You're only, it's only awkward if you make it awkward. Uh, that was the lesson taught to me by an old bull one day. And it's something I would never, ever, ever forget. And by the way, the situation we were in should have been very awkward, but he and I just acted like it wasn't awkward and it wasn't at all. Now was everybody else talking about how awkward it was that we were there? Probably. But did we care? Nope, because we made it unawkward.

So D.S. Vaughn may be something to think about. With the Baltimore Ravens, they do look like the team that they were last year, and maybe they're heating up at the right time. That was a team, if you remember, not too long ago, they weren't allowed to be around each other for like two, three weeks because old 19 got in the locker room and run rampant on the boys. Then the Tennessee Titans threatened to fight him, and only Harbaugh went out there to fight. Now the team seems to like each other again.

They seem to be having a good time. Lamar Jackson's moving and grooving. The Giants stink for sure, but the Ravens were in control of that game the entire time, just like they were against the Browns when they came back and won that game. I mean, I am pumped about the Ravens. They're a fun team to watch. Do wonder if it's going to get awkward when they don't want to pay Lamar Jackson.

It's only awkward if you make it awkward. Remember that. Lamar Jackson in the playoffs as well. Not great, but you can always turn that right around, just like the Foxy curse. Can't thank you enough for listening to the show today. Thanks to all the guests. Thanks to the boys.

Thanks for the moments we had today. You know, the moments. Ty, who is currently in Massachusetts with his future in-laws. I hope life is good up there, pal. Okay. Hope you're battling your colitis well. Hope you're being healthy up there. Hope you're socially distancing like this office has. And I would like you to play some independent music and propel these people into a beautiful Monday night football between the Pats and the Bills where the Bills win

by two scores. Ty Schmidt, please play some independent music. We'll be back tomorrow with Aaron Rodgers Tuesday after what might have been his best performance yet and definitely won him an MVP. The NFL MVP joins us tomorrow. Be a friend, tell a friend. Cheers. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.