The Press Box - NFL Opening Weekend Audio, the CBS News Blues, and Our Review of ‘The Paper’

Episode Date: September 8, 2025

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and David discuss news from CBS News, including more issues with edited interviews and Bari Weiss’s reported arrival (0:20). Then, they get into a tense moment on ‘Get Up!’ between Ryan Clark and Peter Schrager, some audio from NFL Week 1, J.J. Watt’s broadcast debut, and more (12:28). They also share their thoughts on the new Peacock series ‘The Paper’, a puzzling news story about the Treasury Secretary, and more (37:33). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline! Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David ShoemakerProducer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Danny Kelly, and it's officially fantasy football season, which means the ringer fantasy football show is back with the latest news from around the NFL and everything you need to get ready for the fantasy football season. So join us at the ringer fantasy football show on Spotify or on our new YouTube channel. David? Yes. There's more news from CBS News. Oh, God. When you hear the name CBS News, do you immediately think this is going to be a happy story?

No comment. We're going to be breaking down that Amy Coney Barrett interview they landed. No, sir, David. CBS has once again been getting whacked, or maybe we should say allowing themselves to get whacked, by a Trump administration official. Right. Christy Noem, Homeland Security Secretary,

was mad that her Face the Nation interview was edited. Okay. Pause to take that in. Go on. I'll give you some numbers. She gave an interview that ran 16 minutes and 40 seconds. The interview ran on Face the Nation at 12 minutes and 15 seconds. That's via the New York Times.

The network took out some of her comments about Kilmar Abrago Garcia. You remember he was deprec. reported to El Salvador, big story earlier in this administration. But here's the thing. CBS has just been through this with Kamala Harris in 60 Minutes and Donald Trump. And $16 million worth of payouts to make it go away. So when they interviewed Christyneum, they put the video of the whole interview online. They put a transcript of the whole interview online. online.

But Christy Noam still got mad because it's fun to get mad at mainstream media organizations when you know that the people running them will go wobbly. Yeah. So on Friday, CBS announced that Face the Nation

will now do two kinds of interviews, live interviews or unedited interviews. Those are the only kinds they'll do. The only kinds they'll do. attributed that to, quote, audience feedback over the past week. Okay. Dylan Byers over at Puck says, I'm reliably told that the Department of Homeland Security had been threatening litigation over the matter.

Oh, my God. And once again, it pays to sue or threatened to sue a mainstream media organization. Did she, did Christy Noem give any indication of what, how her being taken, I don't know if she used that said out of context, but in edited form led to misinformation? No. Was there a problem with the content or just the fact of the editing? Well, I think she was mad that those comments about Obrigo Garcia didn't get into the television version of the interview.

Okay. And of course, CBS has the same problem everybody has when interviewing Trump officials, which is like, hey, that thing you said, we don't actually. want that on our air. Yeah. But again, they put the full video up, put the full transcript up, still new policy results from it. In a very related story, Dylan Byers also reports that Paramount, it's the corporate parent

of CBS, is very close to buying the free press and installing its founder, Bari Weiss in a job at CBS News that Byers says is, quote, guiding the editorial direction of the division. Some quick thoughts about that. I don't totally know

what that means because Barry Weiss is not going to be running CBS News. Apparently that's going to be a guy named David Rhodes. So if you are the spiritual advisor, CBS News, Mm-hmm.

How much power do you really have? Do people have to listen to you? Yeah, I would assume so. You would think so, but like, let's say you're 60 minutes, which has a great long track record of not listening to their bosses. Okay. I mean, she's not going to go in there and make a piece of television. No, but presumably she'll have some,

and presumably she'd have some input over who, you know, keeps their jobs, right? I mean, you know, who's to say with the thought, I mean, there was, there was, there were a lot of rumors that she would sort of, Barry Weiss slash the free press would just sort of be taking over CBS News. And this is maybe a diminished version of that, but it may just be, you know, it's like, this is like a, you know, uh,

you know, like a White House staffer who maybe doesn't have the credentials to get fully approved or confirmed by the Senate. So they just give them another title, but they're still doing the job they would have done, right? So Stephen Miller. Yeah, I was not going to name any names. Yeah.

So, I mean, this kind of feels like that. Like maybe this is the best rule they could give her without, like, having a mass walkout by the staff on day one, right? I don't think it diminishes her influencer role in any way.

And, and I mean, I guess to draw another, Trump, Washington parallel, it feels a little swamp drainy, right? It's just sort of like if you give so much power to someone who doesn't come from this world, sure, like institutionalism is not like a governing philosophy in and of itself. And it works that way in journalism too, right? I mean, just keeping things sort of the way they're going doesn't necessarily help you.

You don't need more than an institutional memory to steer the ship. But, like, that was a great mixed metaphor there. But presumably there's a lot more to this job than, you know, the new powers to be there probably understand. Or they understand it enough to know that you can't just, like, fire the bosses and put Barry Weiss in their place, at least at this point. But I don't know. I don't know how effective draining the swamp is going to be at CBS News. Two things about that. There is going to be an exodus.

is absolutely going to be an exodus at CBS News. Sure. I would think it's going to resemble the Washington Post in a lot of ways. We have people that are either like, I just can't do this. I don't, I ideologically cannot work with the new regime, or I don't want to because there are better, there are other jobs out there and I'm going to go take him now. those are offers I might not have listened to before.

The other part is what you talk about with the whole draining the swamp institutional memory thing. CBS News, buyers says, was losing $50 million a year. You're losing $50 million a year. Then you are saying we are waiting for the next benevolent rich guy to come along and save us just because. Yeah. In this case, the rich guy turns out to be David Ellison. Yeah. David Ellison, who might look at the free press and say, oh, I like this anti-woke but not exactly Trumpy publication.

Sure. So this is what I want to be a guiding philosophy, or at least a philosophy inside CBS News. Yeah. This thing I just bought. another idea I had is we're starting to see the media that Donald Trump has made. You and I like to talk about weird scenes like Benny Johnson sitting next to Caroline Levin and asking her questions. Yeah. Or the payoffs news organizations have made to Donald Trump.

But we're now getting to a whole group of people who have the jobs they have or are about to in the case of Weiss. because Donald Trump got elected a second time. Like Adam O'Neill, who's running opinions at the Washington Post, there's no way that guy's hired if Kamala Harris wins the election. Oh, yeah. It's not necessary. But newspapers always, journalism and journalistic enterprises, whatever, always react to the time to some extent, right?

Very sure. But yes, I mean, that's true. You know, they probably made a bunch of very specific hires when Obama was elected, you know, I mean, just these, these things can happen. But you're right. We are, we are seeing that for sure. Yeah. And Bariwise, you know, for, I mean, for whatever it's worth, you could, you I'm sure you can draw lines to Trump in a million different ways. And I think that there's probably a pretty direct one in the way that you just framed it. But, you know, Larry Ellison, David Ellison's father is a longtime financial supporter of Israel, is, you know,

of causes related to Israel. And I think that there's probably a more direct line there than just appeasing Trump. I would say, though, that when you talk about new presidents being new hires, it's very different to say, hey, let's go get Lynn Sweet from the Chicago Sun Times because she knows Obama and she knows Illinois politics versus let's make a hire to get us right with the administration. Sure. In an ideological way, right with the way that the country has apparently turned.

Yeah, that's right. Last thought on this, David. If we're talking about CBS News, we might have to apply the press box's Dan Jenkins rule. The rule states that if you are talking about the diminished state of a media organization, you cannot cite someone who left that organization more than 20 years ago. This started all those Sports Illustrated obits that would say the once proud magazine of Dan Jenkins and Frank DeFord. I know we're going to get some Walter Cronkite mentions, maybe an Edward R. Murrow thrown in there. Folks, Bari Weiss is not running Walter Cronkite CBS. Yes.

She's running Margaret Brendan and Ed O'Keeffe CBS. Yeah. No shade to Margaret Brennan and Ed O'Keefe, but this is not the same thing. Yeah. This is just let's reckon with what is changing here. Walter did not sign off for the final time and now my replacement, Bari Weiss,

will be bringing you the news every evening. Yeah, that's true. Do we talk about this? We talked about this in sports though, right? Like, we're about to see the once proud Chicago Bears take on the Vikings tonight. You know, like I don't.

Once proud is such a great adjective. It means I don't really have anything interesting to say about the current state of the organization. No. Or Bears team. I remember the Super Bowl shuffle is basically the extended. Let's remember some guys. Media edition.

All right, coming up on today's podcast, David, we got football audio from a long weekend of NFL in college. Plus a little something to say about that whole Ryan Clark versus Peter Schrager thing. We're going to talk about the first episode of the new sitcom The Paper. What if Office Style Sadness gets a podcast. applied to journalism. All that and much more on the press box. A part of the ringer. Podcast network.

Media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, producer Kyle Crichton, here with you on a football Monday. David, the first thing I want to say about the kickoff of NFL season. We're just forgetting the Cowboys Eagles game conveniently. Yesterday was the first full sleep.

Yeah, well, Joel and I got the first crack at that on Friday. So. Okay. the bloodletting has already occurred. This is further bloodletting. I just want to start out with the fact that I'm so glad football season is back because we once again got a flood of I love football tweets from our media friends. Not specifically at the press box, just they exist, yes.

They exist out there. Yeah. I mean, the kickoff is in the air. Terry Bradshaw's talking. And it's like the first Robin of Spring. You look at Twitter, I love football. Yeah. Oh, do you love football?

You person that covers the game for a living, you love football? And what's so funny is this one thing to have a giddy moment. I feel the same way, right? I'm excited in seasons back. This is great. But if you look, they tweet that every single year. Yeah. It's almost like you're trying to make common cause with your audience out there,

trying to have a bond with your readers and listeners. instead of reflecting an actual emotion of loving footballs. I don't know. Is it more or less trite to just tweet like, I love fall, like the first crisp day of fall? That at least sounds like what our parents would tell us when they call us this time of year.

You've never tweeted, I love professional wrestling. Oh, maybe in the midst of a great match. I don't think I have. But like I could imagine, like I am so into this moment Like if you like to tweet I love football You know with two minutes to go in the

Ravens Bill's game last night I think would have been fine But that's not what you're talking about But don't you love that game Yeah Yeah This is why this is why we love football It's sort of yes

So that's an acceptable tweet We're gonna go with this is why I love football I don't know I'm not willing to accept that either Yeah I've never tweeted You know what I love media I love the media It's wonderful. Media season.

It's back, baby. Yeah. I don't know if anybody's ever tweeted. I love media. Brian Stelter maybe once in a week. Maybe. Ryan Clark and Peter Schrager. So this was Friday on Get Up.

They were talking about that Cowboys Eagles game you mentioned. And what a weird moment this was. You know what you wake up saying? No, AJ Brown's team is 1 and 0. Of course. I mean, that's what I get it. But the thing is this. And we shouldn't do this on TV.

And so I apologize if people think this is rude. That's the non-player of you. Oh, stop. No, that C.D. Lamb is. And let me tell you why. I'm not saying. I'm not looking at fantasy football. Ryan, I'm not, don't belittle me like that.

I could come in and say as three X players are saying one thing and give an alternative perspective that maybe C.D. Lamb did play well. Peter, what I need for you to do, what I need for you to do is not get mad and let me finish for one. Okay, go on. It wasn't about you. It was going to be about me. Okay.

Is that one of the hottest segments that's ever been on Get Up? Yeah, I think so. I assumed it was first take. In the post-Beedle era. Yeah, no, I'm just kidding. She really brought the heat in those early days. Rex Ryan, we miss him. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it was pretty hot. That's the non-player in you? Mm-hmm. That's kind of a funny and awkward way to say that Peter Schrager never played in the NFL. Yeah Stregor is maybe the most nimble on his feet

sort of thinkers and speakers in the sports sphere his reaction was so his reaction was so straight and prepared for that that it almost made me feel like this was a little bit of a pro wrestling work like they thought like they were just kind of going back to this argument

just to get the people to talk about it It felt because it's felt like it's just such well-trodden ground at this point. Like, really, this is what we're doing? But you think he's been, he's been accused? I don't know, accused as a wrong word. But do you think like when he was the NFL network, someone pulled out that card on him? And that's why he was so ready for that? I mean, there's some sense in which you can see.

You can imagine from an ex-player that Schrager sort of invites it more than some of the other talking heads. He doesn't, I don't know, he kind of carries himself in a, in such a way that you, that he, I don't know, he doesn't feel like, there's nothing about Shreger that feels like he's like kissing up to the ex-player. It's just like all personality and brains, you know? And so maybe it's, he gets people a little bit off guard unnecessary,

I mean, non-deliberately that way. It's funny you say that because he always comes off as so nice to me. No, he wants to be friends with everybody on the set. He's super nice. And I'm sure that's like the abiding characteristic. But I'm definitely, I'm sure he encountered some ex-players at the NFL network who said that to him, you know, more so than they would maybe say it to somebody else. Have these ex-players probably don't show up knowing if whoever they're talking to played college ball or whatever, you know. And I think, but I think with Schrader, it's just, you know, you just assume, you can assume that he did not.

But who knows? It's a divide as old as sports writing, isn't it? Mm-hmm. You didn't play the game. So you won't understand this. Yeah. You couldn't possibly understand this. Yeah.

And when you're sitting there on ESPN and you say that to your colleague, you were just telling the audience at home this person's opinion doesn't matter. Well, that's it. It sort of ruins the whole thing. Like it messes up the entire show. I mean, listen, he said it. We shouldn't say this on the air or whatever. You know, I mean, it's just like a really, it's a really, you know, it's a thing you can't give back. right? It's like it sort of puts the lie to the entire presentation. Wait, ex-players,

I mean, non-players aren't allowed to talk. Then what are we doing here? What does Mike Greenberg have to say? Wait, I don't care. Yeah. And why am I ever going to let this guy on the same panel as me again if his opinion so obviously doesn't matter? Yeah. I mean, I read it two ways. I read it as the age old sports writer versus athlete or ex-athlet thing. And I also read it. And again, I'm completely just implying this. Don't know Ryan Clark, haven't asked Ryan Clark about this, but that there are only so many reps to go around on ESPN. Here's Peter Schrager came over from the NFL network this spring. All of a sudden, he's on first take, get up. NFL live.

It's going to be at the Monday night games reporting from the field. It's going to be a Monday night football sideline reporter on their second Monday night broadcast. He's getting some run here at ESPN. So maybe things get a little more tense there. If you step back and think about it and listen to the argument they're making, both sides make a kind of sense. Yeah. Shreger was talking about C.D. Lamb, who had an amazing game against the Eagles.

Seven catches for 110 yards. But then dropped a couple of big passes down the stretch. Yeah. And Shreger's saying, look at him versus Eagle wide receivers who were complete non-fact. Ryan Clark is saying, look, if I was a player and I balled out for 57 minutes, but then I didn't make the play my team needed me to make in the final three minutes, I wouldn't call that a successful night. It reminded me a little bit. Remember when Lamar Jackson and the Ravens lost the bills in the playoffs in January? And you had all of our football friends on Twitter being like, you can't blame this on Lamar Jackson. you can't blame this on Lamar Jackson.

If you listen to Lamar Jackson's press conference, he blamed it on Lamar Jackson. Lamar Jackson wasn't like, actually the stat said, I was great today. Yeah. He didn't think that. Both opinions are valid, but you can't actually have that discussion

when you're like, you don't get to have an opinion about this. Because you didn't play football. Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, listen, he was trying to make a larger point that I don't know if he ever actually made. but I mean it was an interesting sort of window into it the fact that he said I know we're not supposed to say this on the air I think gives you some idea of what the producers are telling them when they're prepping when they get prepped to go on these shows we I shouldn't say on the air that you have no business being on the air yeah yeah I should I should say that behind closed doors yeah

Ryan Clark's really been on one dude too. I don't know if we've followed all these clips. I mean, in a way, this is not even the weirdest moment he's had over the last couple of months. I think I've seen some of the clips, but I haven't been tracking it in full. RG3 and Ryan Clark search that out if you want to,

we don't even need to get into that whole thing here. And I've seen a little bit on awful announcing in other places, like, is ESPN going to put up with us? Yeah. ESPN putting up with stuff is very different now than it used to be. There was a front office sports was like listing off examples and they were all from the skipper era when people got suspended. I'm like, yeah, there's a reason. You can't find any recent examples of this.

Yeah. But I do wonder if what applies to the McAfee tier, the Stephen A tier also applies to Ryan Clark. Well, I mean, I think when you're sort of developing your persona, when you're deciding, what to say on the air, whatever. You do have to take a little bit of that. You know, the story I always tell is like, I'll just put it in TV terms. You could, one could be excused for looking around ESPA

or the sports media landscape and saying, what really, what makes your success these days is to be a delightful jerk, right? But then just sort of like, if you miss the forest for the trees, you like, you forget to be delightful. You're like, oh, I see what's going on there. You have to be a jerk to make to be a successful.

to get us be in. And then you just miss what actually is making people successful. And you can get yourself from a lot of trouble for it. I don't know if that's what's going on here at all. But yeah, I mean, whatever. It didn't seem like that egregious a moment to me, but at the same time,

I get the rule. To make the, listen, to make the pro wrestling parallel, it's like you're allowed to say whatever you want when you're like talking trash to your opponent in the ring. But historically, if you say something like, everybody knows you can't fight or like,

I'm an ex-MMA fighter. and you can't even like bench press 100, that's a business killer. Like people don't show up and watch that match because you just ruin the magic of what's, you know, of this fake sport, right? And that's sort of, you got to protect the business.

And when you say, oh, your opinion doesn't matter, like that kills the business. It's a really good analogy. We should do more how professional wrestling describe certain parts of American life. Saturday, David, it was kind of an okay slate of college football. Oklahoma, Michigan was fun on Saturday night. The craziest game was Mississippi State upsetting 12th ranked Arizona at home.

It's a Mississippi State team that won two, count on two football games last year. They were down three, 40 seconds left. Looks like the Bulldogs are just trying to get into field goal position and send the game to overtime and they say what the hell let's win this game right now Kyle ferry warming up on the sideline two plays to get nine yards to keep the game going pressure was picked up shaping wide open that's Dave Fleming on ESPN and you can hear even in that clip all those cowbells going absolutely nuts so ESPN flashes up on the screen that this is one of the the the first time Mississippi State has beaten a top 15

non-conference opponent since the University of Texas in 1991. Oh, God. I'm sitting there watching, I'm like, why does Texas, Mississippi State, you know, ring a bell in my brain? Here's why, David. The following year in 1992 was one of the greatest apologies in college sports history. I'll read to you from the New York Times. Coach Jackie Sherrill apologized yesterday for allowing the castration of a bull

in front of his Mississippi State football team and the school's president promised that such an incident would not occur again even though I was not involved in the procedure that took place I take responsibility Cheryl told his weekly news conference if this incident was in any way not perceived as proper by those who love Mississippi State

then I apologize. Is that like I apologize if you were offended? It absolutely is. Proceed improper, but only by Mississippi State. And I want to just underline the fact here, that's not 1952 that a bull was castrated to fire up the team, about to play the Texas Longhorns. That was 1992 when that happened.

Oh, my God. Unbelievable. in NFL action on Sunday. We had a little jet stealers in the early window. Iron Eagle and the new number two guy at CBS, J.J. Watt, announcing the game. And you know, it's a tradition. You come back from a commercial, David.

You have a little B-roll of whatever city you're in. Yeah. And you know, there's often some B-roll chicanery when you have the New York Jets. You and I were just at MetLife Stadium. That is not in Little Italy. No. It is not in Times Square. Not near the Empire State Building.

No. Or even the South Street Seaport. Or the late Lamented Rivington Bar. No, that is not in any of those places. But a New Jersey and like yourself will appreciate Iron Eagle's B-roll integrity. Back little tour of downtown Holbrook. And we're not going to be the crew that pretends we're in New York when we're in New Jersey.

We're going to show you New Jersey. I defer to you. You were teaching me all about that stuff yesterday. And you didn't, at some point, wanted to hear about it anymore. You're like, I'm good. Kind of think of you as an eye and eagle, David, teaching America about New Jersey. That's fantastic. Great job by them.

What I heard of JJ Watt was really good. I want to go back and listen to the whole game, kind of tuned in there at the end, when the Steelers won it. But dude, you can hear the field is coming so far away that as soon as Tony Romo has a weird game, why can't JJ What? Yeah. Announce the number one game for CBS. You can see that coming 1,000 miles down the road. What do you think?

What's the over under a number of weeks before we heard of the first call? Not first tweet, but first where it feels like there's a national call for JJ Watt to be the number one. I was a little distracted during the Lions package yesterday, but it might have actually happened. I might have missed it. That wasn't a very good game. The Lions just kind of looked punched out from the start. But yeah, what do you think week two, week three? Oh, I thought you were going to be, I thought it would be deeper.

I was like four or five, but there you go. We need to look at the schedule. What's the next big CBS game? Fox has Chiefs Eagles this weekend, so I think people will be distracted. They'll be mad at Tom Brady instead of being mad at Tony Romo. True. The football wrestling connection. Oh.

Speaking of Ion Eagle and J.J. Watt, they watched his referee Bill Venevich made a call in the Jet Steelers game and then reversed it. Listen to the metaphor the announcers reached for here. Personal file, low block, office number five. 15-yard penalty and deep third down and that is a crusher for the Jets Garrett Wilson correction correction

the fouls on the defense half the distance at the goal what a switch that is not a crusher for the Jets it's the other way Jalen Ramsey quite the opposite

that was like a WWE heel turn the restina the ref just switched the emotions in this entire building. I think Dusty finish is the better corollary there and for wrestling, but that's fine. I'll take what I can get. Integrity in B-roll and in wrestling metaphors

here at the press box. What if I told you that wasn't the only wrestling metaphor that made the airwaves on Sunday? Oh, God. You told me not to look, not to prep for this segment, so I'm actually surprised at what you're going to play. Let me, let's hear it. All right, commanders' giants,

Commander's defense does a just takes Wondale Robinson and drives him into the ground. Take it away. Kevin Burckhardt and Tom Brady. Yeah, Dean Blandino is with us as always, Dean. Is that that first penalty may be on that suplex move there, right? I think it is based on when the official threw the flag. I think it was that suplex. As Tom mentioned, the TKO move, that might be illegal in the rulebook.

Louder than love, is that where we're referencing back in the day? Played on the way in, Tom, on the stereo. I was a Hulkomania back in the day. There was a lot of days of the Cal Palace. My dad took me down there. Whoa. Oh, the Cow Palace, truly one of the, I said, not ironically,

one of the greatest venues in pro wrestling history. That's a classic one. Tom Brady was at the Cowell Palace watching Hulk Hogan. Yeah, that's pretty great. Did he say I was a Hulkomania accidentally? Did he say Hulkomania? Oh, man. I think he said maybe said Hulkomania.

Cal Palace, by the way, and I only just learned this, working on Phil Schneider's piece last week on the ECW arena and its greatest matches. The Cow Palace has one, like, the back parking lot runs on a street that is technically San Francisco, but the rest of it is outside of San Francisco. So it's claimed by the city of San Francisco and claims to be in San Francisco, but it's all based on one piece of a parking lot running adjacent to a San Francisco Street. Oh, wow. Not,

not, you know, a lot of these, this is, but might be one of the earliest sports venues that was like kind of on the outskirts and the and the ex-erves or whatever, but, but yeah,

interesting. Got to watch Tom Brady yesterday and I watched the whole game. He was much better. Yeah. The word I would use if I can just pick, quarterbacking cliche was efficient. He was ready to talk. He had something to say every time.

Yeah. I always emphasized this, but he had one thing to say after a play. I'm going to make my one point and I'm going to get out. There was a grounding call right at the end of the first half. And he was 15 seconds ahead of it, ahead of KB, ahead of the crew, ahead of the refs, ahead of everybody. It's like that's going to be grounding. It's going to be run off the half's over. Yeah.

And he was great. And that's one of those moments. You and I know this. There's the quality of information you say on TV, but just as important, maybe even more important, is giving the audience the sense that you've got this. Mm-hmm. That it's under control, that you know something.

a few seconds before they do. Romo, we saw achieve that by predicting plays, Chris Collinsworth, by just leaping on a piece of analysis as soon as it plays over. And Brady, I think, throughout that C-plus B-minus season, just never gave anybody that feeling.

So it was interesting to see that on Sunday. Yeah, it's like when people talk about rookie NFL quarterbacks, it's like, you know, if you're going to play as a rookie, it's like probably good for your overall career arc, probably for your learning curve, but probably bad for your team this year. You know, the results aren't going to show in year one.

That's a little bit about a little bit like what Tom Brady went through and is, you know, like rookie snaps as a lead color analyst, right? It's like you have to learn this stuff. You have to learn the tempo. You have to learn how to call a game. Just being an expert at being a quarterback obviously doesn't make you necessarily. a great color commentator if you've never done it before. Every time I talk about him, I just go back to quarterbacking cliches.

The game slows down. There are fewer voices in his head. He's more efficient. It's funny how it follows that same pattern. Finally, Ravens Bill's last night. That game was so awesome, David, that it almost made me want to tweet, I love football. It was not only a close.

game, but it was, it looked so good. It was under the lights. It had that particular visual quality that night games have, but also night games, and this is crucial, that are played outdoors have. And then, of course, the bill is scoring 16 points in the final four minutes. Lamar Jackson, Derek Henry, Josh Allen, Kyle Hamilton. I mean, too, there was just so much there. Thanks to awful announcing for those clips. Coming up and 30 seconds. How did the team behind the office take on the newspaper business? First, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time.

Send your nominees to at the Press Box Pod where they were always, always gratefully received. That Ravens Bill's game, David, ended when the bills put in their emergency kicker. 41-year-old Matt Prater just added to the team because they put their normal kicker on injured reserve on Thursday. Matt Prater's been in the league since 2007. I wanted you to take a look at the picture I put in the Google Doc

of him doing the triumphant post-game interview last night. Yeah. Is it just me or does that look like Edward Burns having grown up since his 90s heyday? Yeah. This looks like, you know, another one of the dads at elementary school pickup and, you know, one of the ones of our demographic, maybe a little bit older. Dude, you're more right than you know. Some of the best jokes about that photo of Matt Prater.

Matt Prater definitely remembers not being able to talk on his sprint cell phone until 7 p.m., because that's when the free minutes kicked in. This man is a sketchy character with a flimsy alibi. They introduce on SVU to misdirect you before they reveal their. the real killer. Another one. This is a guy who stands while watching Master and Commander. I'm sorry, but this is Benedict Cumberbatch researching his next role. And finally, and per David, this man is certainly happy to not be on school drop-off duty.

Well done, sir. Thanks to Pete Coruato. If you just learned that Edward Burns is now a novelist, congrats. You made the Overwork Twitter. of the week. All right, David, in the notebook dump, have you had a chance to check out the new peacock show, The Paper?

Oh, yes. I did. It was good. Listen, I'm very free. You want to do the intro? I mean, this is the non-sequal to the, the non-remake of the office. From a lot of the same creative minds of the office, one of the same actors so far from the office,

playing the same role, I guess they should say. But it's, and it's tangentially related, right? This paper was owned by the same parent company as a company that, uh, in office lore bought Dunder Mifflin Sabre or whatever

after the show went off the air. But it's about the, the, the, you know, a day in the life at the local, at a local small town newspaper, relatively small town. The Toledo True Teller.

And like a lot of local papers these days, the Toledo Trutheller is bad. As one character says in the pilot, it's some local ads and clickbait with like four AP stories and high school sports scores on the cover. What's so funny is whenever I travel and go to that medium to small size city and I get excited like, oh, what's the local paper like? It is exactly that. Wire copy, high school sports, some random clickbait. That's what's left. I think the overwhelming feeling I had watching this is that, oh my God.

professional sadness, at least as TV interprets that, has moved from a paper company in Scranton to the media. Oh, that's sad to hear you say that, yeah. To a local newspaper. They went looking for what can we have a kind of environment where the only victory you're going to get all week, if not in your entire life, is stealing the stapler from the guy one desk over. Mm-hmm.

and they settled on a newspaper, a newspaper. That's just terrible. It is. It's sad. Dom Hall Gleason plays the new editor of the paper. Sabrina Impatiatori from White Lotus is the scheming managing editor, the ME, if you will. And then, to me, this was kind of the most interesting part was they had this documentary within the mockumentary. So Dom Hall Gleason's character is watching an old documentary that was made in the 70s about this fictional Toledo newspaper.

And that documentary is in black and white and stars Tracy Letts as the editor or owner of the paper talking about the glory days of Toledo journalism and how important it was and how many papers are coming off the printing presses and how much money they were making. And that was interesting to me because you and I both know there is such a thing in journalism where you look back at the journalistic past. Oh, yeah. And you think, how could I do something like that? What must it have been like to be in that age? And that was an amazing insight to see put into an office style show. Yeah, I thought that looking back to the glory days, I think is something that's so intrinsic to so many of you. the ways that we think and enact,

but to journalism in particular. And it's for small town journalism. I mean, we've all been a part of it, at least tangentially, right, to kind of like your work, your first, your first week at the whatever,

fill in the blank city paper, you're dreaming of these great journalistic ideals that may or may not ever come to fruition or never, or maybe have never had a place at whatever your local truth teller is. Yeah, it was. But the sadness of it, I think,

is just sort of stark. and and overwhelming. I have a pretty pretty accepting of derivative shows of spinoffs of shows that I like.

It's fun to kind of be back in the comforting environs of the office again as different as the show is and is maybe so far sort of inferior. But the journalists so I mean I enjoyed the show

but the the journalistic argument and so much as there is one is is both sort of hilarious and dire i guess that's the point we can't really i don't think there's any i don't think there's any journalists who are like like no you know it's it's not that bad no you're missing you're the jokes the jokes aren't hitting i mean they're they're pretty funny well and i think you know us journalists for you know all the money we didn't make in our careers and will not make in our careers we sort of thought that we took the exciting job We took the fun job that other people wish they had.

We didn't wind up in that office park in Scranton. Where it was really exciting if somebody brought a cake in on Friday, we looked down at those kind of jobs. Sure. A little bit. And now we're like, oh, wait a second. We're that job. Everybody's like, yeah, you're dying industry, buddy. Yeah, I think especially in maybe a town like Toledo or Scranton or whatever.

Like the newspaper job was like the coolest thing. The newspaper was second only to like local rock DJ. Those jobs don't don't exist anymore either. But even the news jobs are, you know, they're dwindling and certainly as they exist. They're not as cool as they went to. And meanwhile, you know, you can be doing a much cooler job remotely. You can live in Toledo and be like the biggest writer at the ringer.com. You know, I mean, there's a lot of other ways to be cool no matter where you live.

So it's a very different world. I always, whenever I see a television show or movie about journalism, I always look at the way the characters dress. Yeah. And Dom Hall Gleason in here is way too well dressed to be in any kind of media organization. I was wondering what you were going to say, okay. You got the cool sweater and the cool shoes, buddy. We don't look like that. I was thinking back to the spotlight, which is 10 years old, by the way, this month.

spotlight. And the way, you know, I first saw that movie and I saw Rachel McAdams as Chino's. I'm like, now that's a journalist. That looks like people I know and work with. Yes. What was the best one? Was that the best clothing one? Was the best, the most realistically clad movie?

Shattered glass, I remember being pretty good, too. It did. A lot of, a lot of just like slacks and basic kind of gap button downs in that. Like oversized sort of gap button down. Yeah. I mean, all the presence men always struck me as good in that department. That's just kind of what our imagination of the 70s was. You and I weren't around for that.

Yes, it was the whole period, not really just the journal, the world of journalism. But yeah. Yeah. You always need it. David and I are very hireable if you need a close consultant. Especially at a place if you make a show a place like The Ringer, just look, you know, come and check out our Zooms every once in a while. but the ensembles need to be right. These are the kind of details we need to get right.

All right. All right, last thing for you, David. I was reading the Politico's story today by Rachel Bade about Scott Bassant. He is Donald Trump's Treasury Secretary. Yeah. Politico had a huge story that he was at a dinner with all these other administration officials. And he threatened to punch one of them because Bassant thought the official, was bad-mouthing him to the boss.

That is, bad-mouthing him to Donald Trump. Now, if you have that story in Politico, do you think you need to write a conventional nut graph? I don't even know what you're asking here. Like, do we need to, is there a better way to present it? Or you think you're talking about they're being too, like, officious about the way this news is presented?

Yeah, I mean, for those who don't know, a nut graph is usually about three or four paragraphs down on the story, and it's basically like, here is the point of my article. Right. Here's the point I've been making. David and I have written dozens and dozens of these. You would think with somebody threatening to slug somebody else,

that that would kind of be the point of the story. Oh, yeah. But allow me a dramatic reading. The confrontation, which one Trump insider called bonkers and another called unhinged, underscores the surprising tensions between top Trump officials, tasked with working on the nation's most sensitive economic matters. Wow. Wow.

We even got an only in journalism underscores in there. Even the top of this article made me smile. A private dinner attended by dozens of administration officials and close advisors to President Donald Trump was temporarily marred by a dramatic clash between two of Trump's top economics officials. Oh, my God. It sounds like the story was that the dinner was ruined.

Yeah. This is where we need the soul of a tabloid. No, no, no, no. It doesn't underscore anything. It just is. This is a story. Forget the nut graph. All right.

It's time for a feature that never needs a nutt graph. Just a snappy lead and a great kicker. Yeah. It's time for David Shoemaker gets the straight-butt headline. Mm-hmm. Last Tuesday's headline about North Carolina fans feeling tricked by their new coach was Bill of Goods. Today's headline comes to us from Rattie. It's from the New York Post to report, David, that Trump officials were talking about offering Eric Adams the opportunity to be ambassador to Saudi Arabia,

which would clear out the New York City mayoral campaign for a non-Mam-Dani candidate. This is still so bizarre to me. This whole story is so weird. Like, why is Trump so invested? Especially what he's been so seemingly effective at running against the momdamis of the world, right? Like, shouldn't just having a target in New York City be, I don't know, anyway. And we want to get Cuomo to win that bad who Donald Trump clearly doesn't like in any other

context, except that he's not Mamdani? Yeah, exactly. It just all seems very strange. I mean, it feels like, and it feels strange in that like it feels like a more conventional White House thing to do, right? You could imagine the Clinton White House getting involved like that, you know, to try to steer an election. Anyway. Yeah. But we're going to give an ambassadorship to the former, to the, to the current Democratic mayor who lost the Democratic primary and whose popularity is like zero in order to hopefully elect another Democrat who also lost the primary.

Yeah. Because we don't like the Democrat that won the primary. Anyway, I think you got enough. What was the New York Post strain pun headline? We're focusing on the ambassadorship, right? We're going to focus on New York. Let's think of New York's slogans that we might be tricking out. I love New York, New York.

The city that I love New York? I heart New York, maybe. I heart new. I heart new job. I heart new. But we've got to play with York here. I heart new. I heart new job.

I heart new work. I heart new work. Okay, there we go. I heart new work. Strained. I love it. Love it. He is David Shoemaker.

I'm Brian Curtis. Produce of Magic by Kyle Crichton. This Thursday on the press box, Joel and I are going to have a very special episode. We did the Cowboys a while back. this time, David, we're going to do a special episode on the Kansas City Chiefs, the anti-Cowboys. Working thesis is how a historically unglamorous franchise became the center of the NFL universe. I'll get you ready for the big game on Sunday, which is Chiefs Eagles from Arrowhead.

All right, Shoemaker, you'll join me next Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. Bye you.