The Ringer NFL Show - Mock Madness and the Swivel Hip-Drop Tackle Rule

Episode Date: March 26, 2024

LIVE SHOW in Detroit on April 24: Click below for tickets! The guys start by comparing top NFL draft prospects to storylines from this year’s March Madness tournament, including overrated first-round stars, the Kentucky Award, the Jack Gohlke Award, and much more (2:10). Later, they react to a couple of significant NFL rule changes for next season (42:44). “You guys want to do some emails?” (62:16) Tickets: http://bit.ly/ringerdraft24 Check out our 2024 Ringer NFL Draft Guide here! Email us! [e-mail] The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please check out theringer.com/RG to find out more or listen to the end of the episode for additional details. Hosts: Danny Heifetz, Danny Kelly, Craig Horlbeck, and Ben Solak Social: Kiera Givens and Jack Sanders Producer: Kai Grady Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Have you ever wondered about the meaning behind your favorite song lyric or why certain melodies make your skin tingle? I'm Cole Kushner and these are the kinds of questions I try to answer on Dissect, a podcast that dives deep into one album per season examining the music, lyrics, and meaning of one song per episode. I've dissected full albums by Kendrick Lamar, Radiohead, Tyro the Creator, Beyonce, Kanye, and more. Our latest season just launched all about MF Doom's Mad Villainee. Listen to Dissect wherever you get your podcast because great art deserves more than a swipe. The ringer NFL draft show. My name is Dana Hypatts, and I am joined by Danny Kelly, Ben, Select, and Craig Horrell back today.

We are doing mock madness. We're using March Madness to explain 2024 NFL draft. We're also going to get to the NFL change the rules. Now you can't fall. Just get ready to learn swiveling, buddy. Everyone's going to have to learn about swivel. I've seen the word swivel written and read more today than any other day in my life. It's the first time.

It's the first time swivel has been used in this context. Yeah. That's why. No hip drop tackling. I mean, Craig, you know, what are the kids dropping their hips on these days? You know what I mean? That's a great question. I'm not really tapped into the hip drop scene.

I'll have to check back in on that. Hip drop sounds like a genre. Yeah, it's like we had trap music and then we had hip drop. When the hip drops. So yeah, we'll get to all that. And also, obviously, DK 70 scouting reports up at NFLDraft. 3.com. We all of mock drafts up there of team needs there this week.

So check that out. And also we have our live show coming up in Detroit. We can the NFL draft. Links for tickets there is in the episode description. So check all that. Unless Kai doesn't put it there. Email us for best Detroit style pizza, please. Yeah, email us.

If you live in Detroit, please send us recommendations at ringer fantasy football at gmail.com. Either places to eat or drink or drop hips, whatever you want. I think Detroit style pizza, although not, I don't know if it's compared to Chicago style, but if you were to compare them, I think it is 1,000 times better. Good day.

Okay. Craig, lead us through mock baddest here. Also explain this ridiculous conceit we've come up with. So, you know, every year in March Madness, there's all these storylines, there's the Cinderella, there's the one seed that everybody thinks is going to lose, there is the overhyped team of talented players that always crumble in the tournament. So we're going to kind of go through all of these narrative storylines and compare them to players in the NFL draft this year. So we're going to start with the Kentucky Award. And this is for the players who are going to be drafted really high in the NFL draft, despite not really doing anything when it counted. And this is classic Kentucky basketball of just like freak athletes who have.

no chemistry because they showed up on campus four months ago and are going to leave tomorrow and Calipari recruits all of them and tells them look, you come here, I'll get you to the league in five months, you'll never have to think about college again. They're like, great, where do I sign? They show up. They lose to Oakland in the first round.

They go to the draft. I was going to say J.G. McCarthy, but J.J. McCarthy won a national championship. And that's the inherent to this is Kentucky not winning a national championship. Yeah, but did they win a national championship because of J.G. McCarthy is the question. in the sense that it's like, hey, you're all the way up here, but what are you doing all the way up here?

How did you get here? This is very much JJ McCarthy, where it's like McCarthy at this point, there was a Tom Pelliseros on NFL network saying, hey, I'm talking to people who know Adam Peters, the general manager of the commanders, and he thinks Jason McCarthy, they all think that he's taking McCarthy at too. It's going to go Caleb Williams and JJ McCarthy. This will be the first two players off the board.

I'm going to look at Caleb. I'm going to ask JJ, what are you doing up here? And I suppose that that's the experience of watching. Kentucky still getting still getting highly ranked. The McCarthy Rocket, man. It was really funny because I'm on this pod and we've been talking about McCarthy this whole time. Like, all right, looks like he's going to go round one.

Looks he's going to go top 15. Looks like he's going to go top 10. I hopped on extra point taken on the ring NFL feed with Sheel. And I just mentioned sideways. I was like, yeah, JJ McCarthy's going to go like top 10. And he was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, JJ's McCarthy go top 10? I was like, oh, yeah, I forgot.

Like, you know, the people who just like kind of like watch college football generally. Yeah, no, like this, we're in our little NFL draft vacuum. we're like, we're starting to normalize this. It's still when you kind of think a step back wild that this player who like had nine past steps against Penn State is going to go apparently top five in the NFL draft. It's kind of like Reed Shepherd for Kentucky. It was like, Kentucky was like, yeah, one of the guys on Kentucky might be a top two pick in

the draft. And I was like, which one? Where is? I don't see this guy, Reed Shepherd, where is he? It was like, oh, the guy on the bench at the end of the game, him? Guy with six points? Really? He's the glue guy.

He's the glue. This is like, it's so fascinating to watch how. And look, I'm honestly not even taking anything away from J.G. McCarthy because I think his skill set is intriguing. And yes, he was very good on third downs and fourth downs and in crucial situations. However, when you just like look at the raw numbers, like in the national title game, he completed 10 passes for 140 yards. That's the guy we're going to take 10 passes. He was 10 for 18. And we're going to talk about this is the top 10, top five pick. I just think it's fascinating that this is what's happened over the last few months.

So, D.K, don't worry about it because his coach, said he's the greatest quarterback prospect since the universe began or something. Yeah, it's like, look, I actually can and I've sort of gotten caught up in the hype of J.C. McCarthy, but I will say this part of

the draft process has really, really reminded me of what we did with Zach Wilson during the run-up to the draft. It was like, we're talking about his pro day, like these incredible throws he made at his pro day, his elite arm,

and I never really quite bought into all of that hype around him just being like this ultra high level prospect. I just couldn't see it. I'm not saying that J.J. McCarthy is going to end up like Zach Wilson, who is truly one of the worst draft picks ever. I'm not saying that because I think he has a strong chance, especially if he lands with a good team, like, for instance, the Vikings. I think he could end up being a very good pro.

But this whole, like, I don't know, like myth making of J.J. McCarthy is wild to me. How good do you think we are at making sure that we know who all the good quarterbacks are in college football? Like if J.J. McCarthy was on Fresno State. Here, I'll throw out a random team for you. Iowa State. Because I comp on Brock Bernie. That's the comp for me, right?

And so I very much agree with where you're going, Craig. Like, if J.J. McCarthy last season transferred to Fresno State and just played a season for Fresno State, is there any shot he is a top 10 quarterback in the draft this year? Or is it more likely? That's the... I think it's still Michigan because of the national championship. I think it's Michigan because of the Harbaugh thing. Which for anybody who missed it, Harbaugh said at owners meetings this week of

Jason McCarthy. One, he said the pro day was the best throwing day he's ever seen, which is just the, he's like, dude, it's warmups. You're, you're shooting around at the gym. It is such an unbelievable thing to say, but also a completely consequenceless thing to say. And that's why I love it. The example for me is always Jared Stidup, who is at Auburn. He's a fourth round peg, is now with the Broncos, where anybody you talk to

in the league was like, dude, when you watch Jared Stidham throw, oh my God. And it was just like, okay, but when you watch him throw with defenders on the field, it's terrible, right? And there's, there are some guys who are incredible at spinning it. It looks beautiful coming off their hand, great release. But once you introduce defenders, they lose that. These are practice heroes. Anyway, Harbaugh said it was the best throwing days ever seen.

He also said of McCarthy, I think he plays quarterback the best of any quarterback in the draft. He's incredible. So big market, small market, cold weather, hot weather, it won't matter. this is elite content. Every single year, we should have a draft, like a Hunger Games draft where one of the head coaches

of like a projected top five, top 10 pick jumps to the NFL. Because then you just say the wildest stuff about your guy and then you pass over him from somebody at USC. Right.

And there's no chance. I promise you, apart by the first overall pick, he would take Caleb Williams over JJ McCarthy every single time. But because he has five overall, he just could say stuff like this. just completely without consequence.

It's so funny. I do love Jim Harbaugh talking about the JJ McCarthy ProDays. It's like how people talk about the dream team basketball practices. Bethany Clothes. They're like, oh my God, you should have seen Michael Jordan. I wish you were there for Jordan versus Bird.

Those are actually probably awesome. I genuinely don't understand pro days. I was watching J.J. McCarthy. And I have no idea how to evaluate if what I'm watching is impressive or not. I'm like, this guy's thrown out routes with no pads on. Like, what am I supposed to be looking at here? You truly, can we stop for a second there and just dwell on this for a minute?

Literally, they're playing catch. They're going out there and they're playing catch with the football. They're playing catch. DK, DK, DK. Can we stop for a second and recognize they're playing catch? They're going out there and tossing the old pigskin around and we're talking about it. Like, it matters. How could I possibly be expected to know if a quarterback who has played multiple years in the Big Ten on national television, I have all the film?

He can throw a football. How can be expected to know if he's good? Unless I see him do it in person in his own practice facility wearing no pads. This man can throw a football. I think he threw so little passes in the national championship game. They actually needed him to throw it. Actually, maybe that's a good point.

They're like, we've actually never seen him complete some of these passes before. So the answer is to why priorities are valuable. It has nothing to do with the J.G.M.C., nothing to do with the top five, top 10 guys. What it has to do with his Austin Echler, right? who was at like Western Colorado and had no draft interest whatsoever. There was no buzz about him. And he got to call,

he got to go to Colorado's pro day because a lot of local players who don't, the schools can't host their own pro days will get attached to the bigger school pro days. A lot of guys who play at those big schools who didn't get invited to the combat will play at those pro days. They've got opportunity to work out, get testing numbers, interview with teams. And that's how you're like,

a lot of your round six, round seven UDFA guys get discovered. Echler here obviously being like a big story where like he came out of nowhere and he won that job and he was productive for the charges for years. So pro days are a lot more like, think of them as localized combines that have a much wider invite list. So guys who didn't get to go to Indianapolis,

get some exposure to NFL teams. They're much more valuable for those players. But obviously, because the NFL, we want to televise stuff, we're going to show Jay Jim McCarthy throwing it and be like, oh, there was a Caleb Williams throw at his pro day where like the broadcast

was like, oh my gosh, did you see that throw? It was the most pedestrian throw ever. Like just the most normal throw you've ever seen. But that's what we do because you want to drive the NFL draft hype beast. I think J.J. McCarthy's going to be good. I did too.

I actually think, like, at the end of the day, especially because he's most probably going to land with the Vikings at this point, like I think he'll be a good pro. I just think this whole process is ludicrous, ridiculous and ludicrous at the same time. I thought you were about to say La Croy.

And I was like, what? It is like March Madness, though, Hyfitz, where it's like, you know what? When everybody gets behind one sleeper, everyone's like McNeese over Gonzaga. Gonzaga boat raced him. Anytime somebody gets one wave for a quarterback, I'm just going to take the other side.

It's not just that. McCarthy should be good. No, but that's the thing, Craig. Everybody is on McCarthy. We're the ones that are against it right now. I guess that's fair. I like how we had to wait, where did we land on my question of if JJ McCarthy was on Fresno State,

would he be a better or worse prospect right now? Worse. I think the basic way to look at McCarthy is, and this was how I felt during the season, he's a game manager for Michigan for a road grading undefeated team built around an offensive line and he kind of just is there. But if he was on a different team, I think he'd be throwing more. And if you let Brett

Widefield at fantasy points, that you did a great job breaking this down. If you take out screens and just look at the first half before Michigan blew everyone out. J.J. McCarthy didn't play in like seven different fourth quarters because it makes right. So it's like the total stats don't work. If you just look at first half, take out screens, J.J. McCarthy threw more passes in the first half

than Drake Mae, Jaden Daniels, or Caleb Williams. If you take out screens in the first half. So I just think if you're on a different team, he'd have throw more and people would be like, oh, yeah, this guy's good. He didn't have to do, he doesn't take any risks. If you're playing from behind, it tends to be harder that way. You know, there's a lot of context missing there because he didn't do that. You know, another thing that J.J. McCarthy did that Caleb, Drake, and Jaden didn't do, playing in the cultural football playoff, semi-final and final.

So he got an up-free game, right? You got free two games for the guys who sat out of the bowl games. And so there's also just a totality question here in terms of like why he's throwing more in the first half. He got more first-half than the other guys did. So speaking of- So eat that, hi, Fitz. Yeah, well. Yeah.

No, there's a lot of like, there's a lot of like, well, if you look at this and you look at that, then Jay-J McCarthy actually, like, threw the ball quite a lot. There's a lot of that going around. And there's, there's veracity to all of it. Don't get me wrong. Like, situationally, they were leaning a ton of games, whatever. I saw the way that his coaching staff treated him in must-win games against top ten opponents against playoff opponents. I experienced that narratively. And so while you can Jerry rig the numbers to make it look like he was utilized, that they take the ball out of his hands in key moments. That happened. I saw it happen multiple. I completely agree. The Ohio State game. I completely agree.

That's what is impactful to me. It's just like... But isn't that... But that's... I agree, but I think where I've come around is, again, it's Jim Harbaugh. Why would he trust this young quarterback

to do it when he knows he's going to... He was right. Like, Harbo's right. Because he's the best quarterback he's ever seen. Yeah. He threw the ball. It was the best pro day throwing

I've ever seen. Also, let's make sure we hand the football off in the second half. Right? It's just at the college level. If you have a guy who's emphatically bona fide, no question NFL quarterback, you put the ball on his hands.

That, to me, that's the sun rising in the east. That's a non-negotiable. Okay, but do you think that he can manage a pocket and actually create outside of structure in college? Okay, so what are we arguing about here? About whether or not the coaching staff, like, utilized him as a top-year passer, which they didn't, in my opinion.

But I guess what I'm saying is, do you think that he has an NFL stuff that you saw? He just didn't see a lot of it because he was, because he wasn't actually doing it a lot? No, I absolutely, I think he's got NFL traits for sure. When I, when I'm, like, when I'm watching a player, his utilization is going to tell me something about what his coaching staff thinks of him.

That doesn't decide whether or not he's good for me, right? There's film and there's save, but there's athletic testing, there's a bevy of other things, but it does invite a question. And if I have Jim Harbaugh sitting in Orlando and saying this is the best quarterback prospect ever, best quarterback than any other guy in the class, but then also three months ago, not utilizing that player is apparently best quarterback in college football in close game situations, there's a discrepancy there that I want to investigate that I want to understand. And it invites some uncertainty for me about McCarthy's projection into the league.

I think McCarthy, like, I think that McCarthy has developmental traits and could become a starter in the NFL. I view him as a developmental prospect, sit him for a year and then play him. I don't think that like he's a elite quarterback processor, game manager. I don't think that's him right now, nor do I think that will be him in the future. I think he's much more likely to kind of follow a, I comp him to Brock Purdy. I think much more likely to follow sort of his career path, and Kirk Cousin's career path, then he has to become like a guy that decides games for you in the second half. And I think that in part because of what I saw at Michigan.

We also have, speaking of Kentucky players, we also have the other Kentucky players. It's not just good old Reed Shepard, JJ McCarthy here. We also have like, I mean, Kevin O'Connor NBA draft. Notterriner.com. I think there's like four other Kentucky players in the top 50. It's like a whole thing. ESPN had like six Kentucky players in the top 30 for the NBA prospects in the Marchman. They couldn't be Jack Golky on Oakland.

Couldn't be. And we were talking with this in D.K., you had said that it actually reminded you like a couple receivers in the draft. Like Kentucky-esque, like, these guys are going to go really high, even though they've done nothing in college. Yeah, I think, like, the art of doing NFL draft analysis is, look, it's not what you've done. It's what you're going to do at the next level. Projection.

Right. You're like trying to project what this guy can do in a certain scenario. And so that's obviously very difficult to do. Generally speaking, the precedent of a guy being very productive means he's going to be, he has a better chance of being productive in the NFL. Like, that is very generally a way that we can, like, try and guess which guys are going to be good in the NFL. The guys that were really, really good in college in terms of production are more likely to

be good in the NFL. That being said, like, when I watched Ad Mitchell out of Texas, he truly reminded me of, like, the way he moves, like a seedy lamb. He's very, very explosive, very twitchy in the short area. Like, he was breaking guys off with his route running, winning at the catch point. And then you start to look, you start to dig a little bit deeper. I had him as like a first round type player early on in the process because I just was very, very, very impressed with his tape. And then you start to dig in a little bit more to like his numbers.

And he is awful from an analytical point of view. Like truly really, really bad. Like from multiple different points of view from yards per route run over his college career, he's like 1.72 or something like that. Something very low relative to what you normally see from first and second round type receivers. Which is the stickiest stat. It's kind of, it's almost like, it's one of the stickiest stats. Yeah, it's like there's, it's one piece of the pie, one piece of the puzzle, I should say. But basically it tells you like how, how efficient were you without with the amount of routes that you were running on your college team?

And basically, so you know when you see like charts with here's the last five years, the top like the top receivers in NFL, usually the top right is all the good players. 80 Mitchell on almost every single graph I see in the run up to the draft is like literally the guy who's in the bottom left corner. He's the worst. The Kenny Pickett, Daniel Jones. He is analytically one of the worst receivers I've ever seen. I don't know what to do with this guy because I love his tape. I think he could be really good. He could be like a total outlier, like a DK Maccalf type player.

And we saw what he did in the Combine. He's one of the most athletic receivers in Combine history. He's just not good. But the problem is, no, that's the problem. He didn't produce. I don't know what to do with this guy. That's classic college basketball. That's perfect.

It's like freak athlete, all the skills. If you look at any statistic, you're like, This guy did nothing. Six point seven points per game. Like, what? Where? But he's going to be,

but he's going to be productive at the NFL level, right? Like when he's playing against better players, okay. I truly don't, I'm very torn on him because I can't ignore what my eyes tell me, which I really liked what he did on tape. But that, it's hard to reconcile that.

A.D. Mitchell is a classic prospect for me where it's just you watch him and you're like, I'm supposed to like you more than I do. Like something just feels off, which the people who are all in on him, go for. I totally get it. I'll probably be wrong.

on him because there's a lot of the traits that are great. But I watch this film. I've watched a lot of A.D. Mitchell at this point because the amount of pilots coming in. And just for me, I'm like, man, for how good you are, you should be better than you are. And that's a weird feeling to have. Basically, like, if you look back in the history of the last, like, 10 years or something like, like the big, the two big outliers at receiver for in terms of their college yards per run and their NFL yards per route run or D.K. Metcalf and Terry McLaren.

Both guys, not very productive in college, and then went to the NFL and were stars immediately. but the list of guys that were bad like bad yards were out running college and they went into the NFL and we're bad is like very long. And let me tell you. A lot of players. I watched Terry and love Terry.

I watch DK and I love DK. I don't watch Eddie Mitchell and feel the same way. See, but I did love him. Keon? But Keon is in the exact same boat. Keon Coleman out of Florida State via Michigan State. His numbers are also pretty terrible

in almost every way that you look at them. But then you watch him play football and you're like, this guy's going to be awesome. He actually looks more like D.K. McHuff on the field. than A.D. Mitchell. But so anyways, I don't know what to do with these guys. I'm very, very torn.

The heart wants what the heart wants. I want to really like A.D. Mitchell. But I'm very wary of him as a prospect. So while we're talking about Kentucky, we also have the good old. We have to have the Jack Golky Award for honestly the most absurd basketball performance I've ever seen. This is how I play and be alive with my friends, which I was, he had, how many field goals did he have in college? He had like field goals. Do we call it that?

They do, actually. They do. They do. I know we call it that. But that's like a 1950s expression. He went one, so in the game where they beat Kentucky, he took 20 shots. All of them were three-pointers, and he made 10 of them. That then prompted everybody to go research this man in who he was in his career.

Jack Golky in his career at Oakland University, which is in Michigan, by the way. It's in Rochester, Michigan. Is it by Miami University? In his career at Oakland, Jack Gulke has attempted 372 field goals. 364 of them were three-pointers. He shot eight, two-pointers. field goal attempts in his entire career at Oakland, which is one season.

Why shoot a two if you can shoot a three? How many of the eight were him thinking he was shooting a three, but I was put on on the... Oh my God. That's such a good question. This man is Ricky Bobby. This is first or last. He's like, I'm just shooting threes. And he was hitting him. And it was the best story. But anyway, who is the NFL draft

prospect that gives the most Jack Goldkee energy? Unquestionably. Texas wide receiver, not A.D. Mitchell, Xavier worthy. Jack Golky, I'm here to shoot threes. Xavier worthy, I'm here to run fast. Jack slash Xavier, would you like to do anything else?

Nope, moving on. Xavier Worthy is too small, his inconsistent hands. He doesn't, I think, like, break tackles, like breaks angles well, obviously. He doesn't break tackle as well. Route running, I don't think he's a diverse route tree. He's here to do one thing. All right, Jack Golky's not here to set, no screens, not here to shoot no twos.

And run fast and shoot threes. Shoot no twos. There's also, like, watching goalie. is funny because, like, he takes shots from, like, weird angles. And, like, he's, like, falling backwards, like, quick off the jump. Like, he's slanted to the ground. Worthy's the same thing where you just watch him move and you're like, man, how are you upright?

Like, how are you getting it? It looks like every take is a back take. The same thing was worthy. You're like, he's, there, he is too small. He is too thin. You should not be able to do this the way that you're doing this. And so, yeah, Golky, which, by the way, Jack Golky, great name for just a name.

What a name. A Michigan Guard shooting threes. Just, the most average. name, Golky, just like weird. He's jacking up three. He literally had a TurboTax NIL deal overnight. Yes. He filmed it from

he filmed it from the hotel lobby. Which is also really funny to me because it's TurboTax sitting in their offices in the middle of March being like we have a month left until tax season are done. None of people are using TurboTax. What can we do? And they're just like brainstorming ideas and in the background somebody's watching

Oakland, Kentucky like, yo this kid's nuts. Like get him! He's our only hope. You just like TurboTax had had a better ad plan from harsh than this. And they're like, Venmo him $10,000, quick. Yep.

And then, by the way, you have to report that. You have to report that right, Texas. On Venmo, yes.

Golky, man. Thank goodness, Kevin Harlan, I think it was Arlen, I think it was Arlen, you know, you see that name written and you haven't learned the pronunciation.

Yeah, yeah. That dangerous. He was ready for it. That's a pro. Tony Romo would be like, this guy. This guy. That guy.

Golk. Golka. How many threes would Golki have had to make till Romo learned his name? I think, I think, I think he would have made like two or three like in consecutive possessions. They would have gone to break with Roman being like,

this kid, incredible, he's got it. The boy Jack, what a shot. And then they would have come back from break. And Roman immediately would have been like, Golky, this young shooter, like someone had told him in his ear during the commercial. That's how it would have gotten done. This conversation reminds me so much.

I was talking to my buddy the other day and we're both talking about how washed we are now and we don't play basketball anymore. And he was like basically complaining because everybody playing pickup ball just like spots up at like half court and she's for the day. Jack Golky is, but he's the best possible version of that.

You know the guy who just runs to the three point line on a fast break instead of going to the fucking hoop? Like that's this. Jack, Jack, Jack Golk is who everyone who is an athletic thinks they are in their head. Absolutely. Like, I don't play pickup because if I play pickup, I would want to be able to play like Jack Gorky plays, but I can't, so it's not fun. He has the most joyous life ahead of him where he gets to just walking to gyms and people look at him and be like,

he's going to be mid. And then he gets to just hit every shot on. the court and jog. Never dribble. I saw a stat that was like he hit like 10 threes and had like 12 dribbles in that game. Just never do it. Just only jack up shots. That's the ideal pickup experience.

Points to dribble ratio is good. It's like that Clay Thompson game where he had like 33 points in a quarter off 10 dribbles. Yep. Ideal. Okay, the next March Maddenous come here I want to give is Zach Edie. Zach Edie is the center for Purdue. He's one player of the year, I believe, two years in a row now. He's incredible. He's unstoppable.

He's unstoppable. He's seven four. You literally you can't drive on him he's unstoppable in the post with the ball he's an amazing player NBA teams don't give a shit about this guy he's not going to first round he's not good enough to have like

for practice you know like he's not even going to be on the practice team too slow not dynamic of an athlete can't shoot from distance so my question to you is who is the college football equivalent of Zach Eadie well the

College of the ball equivalent of player of the year has got to be the Heisman trophy, right? And the reigning Heisman trophy winner is Jane Daniels. Better stats than Joe Burrow, right. So, like, I think this isn't a perfect cop because I do think Jane Daniels has skills that are translatable. But, like, when you think about Jane Daniels going to the NFL, especially the way he plays, where he's extremely reckless with his body, he runs a ton.

And he is a little bit, I don't think limited his right word, but he has like a one-track mind in terms of like what he's trying to do when he's when he's dropping back he's either going to throw deep or take off running like that's a big generalization but when i look when i think about him going to the afl number one i think he has to do much better job of protecting himself because there's so many highlight films out there now where he's running around and just getting completely annihilated he'll like there was this one famous one first quarter it was like a first down in the first quarter and he's like jumping into like a group of defenders and he just gets like suplexed uh down it's like you need number one he's going to have to like get more disciplined that way number two

I think you're not going to have the same type of ability to just attack deep at all times. He has to be able to develop as a guy who can pass over the middle field, player the football a little bit, you know, just become a more nuanced, take checkdowns, things like that. Like he's either, he loves to take off and run instead of keeping the play alive and looking downfield. There's just a lot of things that I worry a little bit will not translate one to one in the NFL with what coaches want to do and what is best for him to protect himself long term.

Can I give an alternative, Zach E. DeComp? Sure. Amarius Mims, Tackle out of Georgia. Nothing to do with production to league, exclusively to do with how much I enjoy looking at them. No, Big Phelph. Certainly. I love watching the Yukon kid, Klingonon.

Yeah, Klingon. Yeah, Klingon. Klingon. His name is Klingon? His last name. Yeah. Klingon or Klingon? I don't I pronounce.

Klingon. Which, I have cousins who are Yukon fans, and Klingan is from the same small town in Connecticut that they're from and they love this guy and the fact that I can't pronounce his name I always have to like talk around it when I talk to them but he's incredible but he's he's great, he's talented, he's gifted

he also just looks enormous like he's big but he's got like a big frame to him I love to watch big guys I love it, watch Zach Eady I just the whole time like oh massive big fella can move when I watch your Marius Mims oh big fella can move

and that's the only comp I need right there who are the big guys that I like watching as a small guy I'm being like, that's incredible. Eadian of Marius Mims. Can I also, I, going back to Jaden Daniels for a hot second, I, uh, I, I, I've discovered something about that we have not talked about on the show, but it's, to me, defines how I think of him.

For D.K., you mentioned, Jayden Daniels, first of it just plays like he's a human bumper car, right? Like, just, Jaden Daniels runs like he's the embodiment of why they don't give like good deals and car insurance to men under 25 years old. Like, he's just no sense. Right. He's literally the embodiment of a, I'm never going to die.

even at the combine. I asked him, like, do you think you should take less hits? He's like, yeah, probably, but like,

I don't know. I remember being kind of disappointed with that answer because I was like, dude, you should be coached up by now to just say, yeah,

I got to do a better job to protect myself. I'm going to work on that. Instead, he was like, I don't know, this is just kind of how I play. I'm not like going to half speed

or whatever. Like, dude, chill. He just, he's going to get crushed. I can't believe we haven't talked about this yet. Jaden Daniels,

the first NIL deal Jaden Daniel signed was with a personal injury attorney law firm. See, this is what I'm talking about. This is what he's signed a personal injury lawyer law firm.

How on earth is that, it's like the only thing I need to hear about this guy. That's funny. It's like those call Jacob billboards but it's called Jaden. I like that. Dude, can you imagine,

think about this. Some personal injury attorneys in Baton Rouge, Louisiana were watching LSU and watching how Jaden Daniels plays and they're like, that's the face of it. of our firm right there.

I just think so, so like, people might get annoyed that we're lingering on this so much, but like when being a runner is such a huge part of your game, and that's what it was, obviously last year for Jane Daniels. Like, he's always been a dual threat guy, guy that can make a ton of plays with his legs. He was creating very explosive, awesome huge plays with his legs. If that's a huge part of who you are, being able to slide, being able to like get down, get out of bounds, not like put your body in danger. Like, this is an important thing.

This is why people are still not fully bought in with Anthony Richardson. He got hurt three times in four games or something like that. And like, you know, when he was playing last year, like RG3 going back to him, but he was one of the guys that I comped McCarthy to. He didn't last because of the injury situation. Obviously, there's a million different things that could happen. But I think it's a legitimate concern that not only has he shown no willingness to protect himself. He doesn't seem to want to protect himself either.

There's a big like Jane and Daniels pressure to sack thing going on right now in the, in the discourse, which, you know, like. Can you explain that for a hot second in case? People are plugged into the pressure to sack this course. So, you know, I'm Ben Soak. I take a sack on 8% of my dropbacks, right? Not a great number. Danny Kelly, he takes a sack on 6% of his dropbacks.

He's a way better quarterback. But there's, it might be a difference in our sack rates that's explained by the difference in our pressure rates, right? Like, I might just play behind office line. It gets pressured a lot more. And so pressure to sack takes the amount of sacks that you take on pressure dropback specifically. Try to understand, hey, when this quarterback is pressured, what's his response? Is he able to turn that into a quick drop-offs?

throwaways, checkdowns, positive plays, turn it into a scramble, which can be a positive play, or does he turn it into a sack? And this tends to be an extremely sticky stat talking about your ultra-run for wide receivers. A quarterback doesn't really change his stripes. We talk a lot about quarterback play styles, and play style tends not to change.

You can get a lot better in your style, a lot worse in your style, but you tend to be as you are. And so pressure to sack tends to stay very sticky. Jaden Daniels has a very high pressure to sack ratio depending on what charting service you look at. It's usually between 20 and 25%. Caleb Williams, by the way, also, People always don't talk about this.

Functionally the same. He's 20 to 25%. These are both pretty high numbers. SEC stat cat is a great follow on Twitter. charts like true dropback percentage, right? Looking at dropbacks where it's like it's not play action, it's not RPO's. Jane Daniels has a pressure to sack rate of like 50, 60%. Like it's astronomically high that when he gets pressure, like he is going to screw around back

there. He's going to eat the football. He's going to take a sack. That sort of stat considering how sticky it is a pretty big red flag for Daniel's future success in the league. Especially who had two receivers who are going to go in the first round. maybe. Yeah. And that's the thing is when you look at just pure sack rate, Daniels isn't going to spike because they just got rid of the ball so successfully so quickly. But when he's pressured, he doesn't have a good response right now. That's a very, that is, you know, Carson Wentz

theorem, that doesn't go away. That is not a sort of thing you're able to erase. I'm curious, if you're the New England Patriots and the first pick is Caleb Williams and the second pick is Drake May to Washington, let's just say it's how it goes. If Jade and Daniels on the board, I'm just hearing all this and I'm curious, you know, the offensive coordinator for the Patriots this year is Alex Van Pelt. And you need to drill into Jaden Daniel's head. Hey, go down, go down, go down, no go down. You can't do anything for us if you're injured,

like Anthony Richardson got hurt three games in the season. But also, your scrambling is what made you like amazing. So also don't lose what makes you special. Well, also go down, go down, go down. And also, the Patriots O line is below average, like at best. So is the granders. And they have no receiving talent on this team.

They'll probably have rookie receivers, second and third, maybe first and second best players. I'm like, should the Patriots just freaking trade down? And like, I'm curious. Like, I feel like New England, Washington are such bad places. Even Washington, at least as some receiving talent. I'm a little worried about how Jaden Daniels will be able to learn in an environment. I don't know.

Yeah, it's tough because I think obviously there's multiple ways to look at this and different philosophies of how to attack the quarterback position. I'm starting to become much more amenable to the idea and maybe even thinking it's the right thing to do to trade down from that spot. you're getting very good offers because, number one, and this is, I think, Elliot Wolfe's first chance to be a GM or de facto GM. This is a first time head coach. If you take a quarterback right there, you're immediately starting the clock. You better start being good right away versus like if you wait, you start to build the

foundation a little bit more. Generally speaking, you can have like a longer runway to be good. You know what I mean? And so from that point of view, I can see why they might want to do it. And then just from a pure team building point of view, I also think it, might be the right move because we've just seen so many quarterbacks come into the league. If they don't have a good support system, if they don't have the foundation, they're going to, it's very, very difficult for one player, especially a rookie quarterback or early career quarterback,

to like change the entire complexion of the team. So it's like you're almost setting up that pick to fail is what I'm saying. And so like that to me is something you've really got to think about here. Do they think they're going to be a good team? They do have a good defense. So that is a variable that you have to consider here. but they don't have good skill player group. They didn't do anything in free agency, really.

They tried to get Calvin Ridley. That didn't work out. So I don't know. I'm starting to think that the right move would be to trade down to just a mass capital. I think it's like that that move makes the most sense if you're anybody but the Patriots. Like that is the most rational idea, right? It's like, well, of course, they don't have the foundation. You don't want to bring somebody into a bad team and ruin their development.

But if you're the Patriots and you're sitting there and we're assuming in this conversation, we've been basically assuming that Daniels is there at three. If Drake May's there at three and you're the Pats and you're Elliot Wolf, you're sitting there, and you're like, are we really going to trade down, lose Drake May? Right, right. And then just see what happens next year and start Jacoby percent. Is that really how I want to start? And Drake May is incredible on whatever team trades up for him, Minnesota.

I don't know. Well, everything depends on how you view these corebacks too. I think both Ben and I like Drake May significantly more. So that would be our bias, of course. And maybe the Patriots love Jane Daniels and he is there. They're doing backflips, you know? That's the thing is you have to be honest about, this quarterback class, next year's quarterback class as much as you can be.

It's a hard thing to prognosticate and say, all right, we're not going to force a quarterback pick. We don't have to. Tradeback package could be incredible. It could be franchise changing. At the same time, we're going to need a guy. We're going to need him soon. So if we like a dude, you've got to be willing to pull the trigger on him and say, okay, our environment isn't great to develop him in year one. So we're going to be patient.

We're going to play Jacoby for 10, 12 games. We're going to protect this guy. We're going to make sure that we deploy him at the right time because you can, you can Chris Ballard yourself, man. You can say, oh man, quarterback's tough to figure out, ain't it? And then just tread water on it for four years and lose a winning window. That's a real concern to have as well. The next one we got here is we have the five seat who loses to the 12 seed. The James Madison Memorial, James Madison beating Wisconsin in the first round this year.

And this is such a trope, too, the 13 seed who beats the 4, the 12 who beats the 5. And I'm curious, Solac, who is your version of this? Who's like the 5 seed is super overrated or a 12 seed version of a player who might, you know, a player that's either going to go early in the first or. whatever who's probably overrated or vice versa. Yeah, I will, I'll, I think there's a, there's a few five seats in this class that I'm worried about. I think Jared Versa of Florida State is a big one, a big school and good, good recruiting history and a long-term starter.

I watch him, I see a fine player. I do not see the sort of edge rush that's going to consistently deliver double-digit sacks, be the sort of guy who, who gets you a high impact, at a high-impact position with that early of a draft capital. So, like, we talk Marshawn Neeland out of Western Michigan, small, school. cool long player all right uh neelan man looked good at the senior ball i like got a scene from film i think he played an awful defense of western michigan i do not like that this guy two gap and he's a yard off the line of scrimmage i think neelan could be a much better pro than he was a college

player and i thought he was quite good uh brandon dorlis out of origan is another long term starter long player like to me like there are there are 12 seats that can beat a five seed jared verse i think that uh uh Xavier legett out of south carolina man that's a 12 seat i would listen big and All right. Those 12 seats that win, right? They're the teams that, they're like, do one thing really well,

right? The teams that can just kind of like, you know, get on top of you play in their style, their base. I like that. Yeah. Xavier Leggett,

two 20 with wheels, dude. Well, give you better than a, better than an Adonai Mitchell. Sorry, what was the sound? That was like a,

the sound. Leggett, man. Legate, like, it's one of these players where I'm just asking everybody like, hey, like, where do you have legate? Like, where you have legate?

And everybody's just like, oh, you know, I like it, but not too much. He's fine, like, day two, whatever. And I'm just watching him like, I don't know. Like if you, if you told me, like, I got to a team where they know how to generate yards after the catch, you know how to get a guy open over the middle of the field, man. So Xavier Worthy is like a pew, pew, pew, pew.

But Xavier leg, it's like a. Like it to me is a, he's another perfect example of what we were talking about earlier with A.D. Mitchell and Keanu Coleman, where, you know, from a analytical point of view, his profile as a prospect is about as bad as you can possibly get, like truly. He broke out in his fifth. year. I think his previous career high was like 13 catches. You got to be cooler, D.K. Just vibe,

dude. Enough with the... It's going to be fine. It's going to be fine. But that being said, everything that Ben said is valid because this man is very big, very fast, very powerful, and he absolutely just mosses people at the catch point. Xavier

Leggett had to play quarterback his senior year of high school. It's a team to have a quarterback. And he rushed for 1,800 yards of 20 touchdowns. And he threw for 800. yards, which is less than he ran for, and 14 touchdowns, all right? So this is, he, he did not get the arc you're supposed to get to, like, go into college. He had to play quarterback in high school. Late breakout, I understand it, but big is big and speed is speed.

I know what big and fast looks like, and it looks like Xavier Leggett. You guys have, like, you know, five minutes. You're making coffee in the morning. Turn on Xavier Legget, South Carolina versus Mississippi State. Just, just what, three touchdown game. Just watch these touchdowns and tell me you don't want to track the guy. He's got a little Cordero Patterson to him. I could see, you know, maybe make him kind of like a quasi running back slash playmaker.

Listen, from the studios that brought you, I'm ranking Liviska Chanel above every other wide receiver in the 2020 class. That is me. And Chanel massively busted. I'm back, baby. Are he massively busted? Ligette is way faster, way more explosive for your defense. Yeah. Yes.

But the same Chinot theory where he's built like a running back playing wide receiver, like that's what you're doing with the legate, is better down the field. So, okay, maybe he's. Debo, but that's kind of like a helmet comp. Xavier Leggett and Malik Washington out of Virginia are my two in this wide receiver I love. I'd be passing on. I'd let every other receiver go and go give me a Xavier Legat and a Malik Washington. I'll let me cook. I'm all right. I'm with you on Malik. Yeah. Who's your 12 seed, D.K.? Uh, so this one, ironically, it started to become discourse on Twitter today and I swear I'm not stealing this because I told this to you guys

before, but Spencer Rattler is really growing on me as a prospect, quarterback out of South Carolina. By the way, he was the guy throwing passes to Xavier Luget last year. Go Cox. Here's the thing. His arm is incredible. Like, if we're talking about traits, if we're just talking about, like, the things that coaches look at when you're in your pro day, he has actually an incredible arm, like truly. The ball just jumps off his hand. He can make any throw. He can make it off balance, off platform. The ball just arrives more quickly than anybody else for some reason. He has a truly incredible special arm.

Everything else, there's some concerns, which is why he's probably going to be a second round pick. He's six foot tall, which is not great in terms of the NFL, generally speaking. He's the guy that actually got benched at Oklahoma for Caleb Williams a couple of years ago. He came into the college football as a five-star, and it just didn't kind of go to plan.

And then he got unseated by Caleb Williams, and he transferred. Incredibly cocky human being. That means Instagram when he was on Oklahoma was like he was already Joe Burrow. Spencer Rattler had a Kenny Powers come up. He was like he had a Netflix show where he started. I'm fucking in.

You're fucking out. Yeah. He was like number one. He was said when he was a senior in high school, he'd go number one in the draft and he kind of lives his life that way. Well, and that's kind of part of what makes me intrigued with him is he went to, he went through this like growth arc in college where he got knocked down.

He got humbled. for sure. Ego death. He'd be a spur now. And honestly, like, and this doesn't matter that much. But when he was on the podium at the combine, very impressive. Like, he was going through the exes nose. He was, like, taking guys through plays. He was very composed. Like, I was very impressed with his maturity.

That's always been sort of a question mark with him. So we'll see how that, like, turns out in the NFL. But overall, like, I've become more and more impressed with him. Again, I'm not saying he's going to be a first round pick. But he's a guy I would love to take a chance on in the second or third round if he's still around. You know when people

like, you know, they go through like a rehab program and it's like, hey, like you can't hang out with the people that you used to hang out with. Like, you'd have to be outside of the social circles. I can't be around Rattler hype. Like, I've gotten past it. I've gotten past that stage of my life. Okay. Dude, you can find

some tweets at Benjamin Solach Rattler where like he's on South Carolina, right? And I'm like, guys, Ratler's kind of dealing. Rattler's back. Like, I cannot like, anytime D.K. starts talking about, yo, I kind of like Spencer Ruther's arm. I have to physically step away.

I just step away for the game. This is not a good place for me to be. I will let other people do Rattler hype. I've done it enough. I volunteer. I volunteer's tribute. I'll tell you. Oh, man,

when he took over for Kyler at Oklahoma and he started throwing that ball. Oh, good. The first thing I ever said on a ringer NFL drafts, or a ringer podcast at all, a ringer podcast when I was hired here. First episode I came on, they asked me about quarterbacks for the 2021 class. And I said Spencer Rattler throws the ball like Patrick Bomes.

I've been here for years. I've been here for years. I typed in your tweet, September 12th, 2020, you tweeted, enter the draft right now, Rattler. He should have. His stock, he wasn't eligible to enter, but his stock would have been higher than it is now. Okay. NFL had some rule changes this week. So there's the NFL annual league meeting where they have the owners, I mean,

the owners, GM's coaches, the coaches get together, take the little picture, which is kind of hilarious. And then they changed the rules. a couple big ones couple small ones I mean it's little stuff like the lions want to want a rule where I mean basically right now you have to win two challenges

to get your third and the lions were like if we win one why don't we have another one and the end of it was like all right fine fine so now you get a third challenge as long as you win one of your first two that one makes sense and I think they're like yeah

Detroit you kind of got screwed over this year didn't that one barely pass I feel like I heard that it passed by like one boat yeah just don't like fairness they don't like change also they're old billionaires Speaking of old billionaires The photo of Jerry Jones

On the bus With his notepad And there's just scribbles on the notepad It is unintelligible Writing it looks like You know when you were like in high school And you were trying to figure out What your signature was going to be

And you would like just do that on an entire page It looks like Jerry Jones is figuring out his signature It looks like he's testing a pen But his eyesight isn't good enough to tell if it's actually working So he just kept it rolling He's getting ready to forge someone's past or someone's signature. Yeah, he's been licking the pen and rubbing it on the page. No, like, if he was just doing that nervously while talking, like, that's fine.

But if Jerry Joe, if like someone who was like, he's like 88 years old or whatever, no. He's just doing that? How old is? Yes. We decided he's way older than you think. He's 81. Oh, he's 81.

38. Oh, my Lord. Jeez. When you're in the 80s, man, that's all. If an 81-year-old person is just, like, what would happen if, like, you look down at Joe Biden's notes and you just saw that he'd been doing it? It would be like the biggest stories. Yeah, right. So when the Cowboys are going to make their first round traffic, whoever it is, and Jerry Jones is going to walk up to the presser and he's going to pull open that, that, like, that sheet of paper.

And there's going to be, like, certain strands highlighted in yellow. Brock Bowers, no matter what. Jay C. Latham, right? He had it the whole time. Oh, my God. Well, honestly, it's probably smart considering how all the whiteboard things that leak from all the draft stuff anyway. Jerry Epstein, by the way, who is there, she's with Yahoo Sports.

She was at the Jerry Presser. She tweeted out an alternate picture of Jerry, and she said, I'm not sure it'll take me longer to process. Jerry Jones would turn into the Cowboys are all in more than a dozen times, or the fact that he used four different notebook pages to draw lines and circles to emphasize his point.

That's actually a huge issue. So he was using it as like punctuation, right? Like make an emphasis. And he went through four separate pages of a legal pad. Man, cooked. So he has four, he must have like thousands of these, right? Right.

Just in every meeting with like a whiteboard up on the previous chase. Just drawing circles and lines. Every morning he gets brought two eggs, a glass of OJ and five legal pets. And that's how he bought the Dallas Cowell's. All right. So the big rule they passed was they, they ban the hip drop tackle. No.

They banned the swivel hip drop tackle. The swivel hip drop tackle is still legal. These are important. Real terms that people know. Which my summary of this whole rule is, you know the meme of Adam Silver, the NBA commissioner, who just is like, get ready to learn Chinese, buddy.

It's the get ready to learn swiveling, buddy. Like, that's, like the main takeaway is you're going to hear the word swivel from Gene Stereator so much this year. Yes, God. Gene, can we get you in here? Was that a swivel or not? Why didn't they have to make a new word up for this? I promise you.

I can guarantee on my life. There will be some point where a rules analyst goes, the question here is whether or not we see a swivel. And everyone's going to be like, nobody knows. And that's the thing. That's the thing. So I want to go through the, and again, like, Kavia, we all want players to not get hurt. And part of the issue is guys grab them from behind and you're, you know, basically,

it's easier to just fall down and then you happen to crush their legs. But then they fall down from your body weight and then guys get disproportionately hurt. And the NFL obviously is weird with healthy safety. I take exception to how you explain that. But yes. Well, I'll get to my defense of this. Oh, yeah, no. But I'm saying, obviously we don't want guys to get hurt.

And if it led to some huge improvement in player safety, that would be awesome. and everyone wants the players do not get hurt, right? So that's the impetus. So like, yeah. So like 99% of people don't want players get hurt. So I want to go through the rules here.

The actual rule is the proposal requires official to note two actions. First thing, if a defender quote, grabs the runner with both hands or wraps the runner with both arms. So literally that will never be in dispute. It's like grabbing with two hands or wrapping with two arms.

We'll never talk about that. We're just borderline describing tackling, but... Yeah, right? No, we're not. Okay, continue. I'm just going through the rule. I'm saying so far with this language.

The second part is unweights himself by swiveling and dropping his hips and or lower body, landing on and trapping the runner's legs out or below the knee. We'll never get to argue over landing on or trapping the runner's legs. That's not going to be dispute. So that means the entirety of like

what we're going to be arguing about is unwates himself by swiveling. So I watched the video that the NFL showed to the coaches and stuff. So you kind of grab the hips and then kind of and then jump around kind of swing? If you can just picture a running two foot jump kick into the solar plexus, that's what these defenders are doing.

They're grabbing a hold of the shoulders or around the top part of the body and like jump kicking. That's what the swivel is. They're bringing their feet under them forward. Okay. That's the swivel. It's like you're going on a swing. You're jump kicking someone in the chest with your feet.

The defender often ends up like parallel to the ground. But not actually the chest. the videos that I saw. I don't, I personally, like, I think that people are freaking out about this a little bit too much. I think it's like every time the NFL makes a change, they're like, oh, they're ruining football, blah, blah, blah. If you watch the video that the NFL shared. Yeah, exactly. If you look at the video that the NFL showed, I think at least the one that I saw, every single instance,

the defender is essentially doing that thing swinging their feet forward. And then their full body weight comes down on the back of the legs of the offensive player. So you're trapping. So basically, that's what the swivel is. It's a stupid word for it. The NFL probably fucked that up and they shouldn't have said swivel. What would you have chosen though?

I bet you they thought about that for a rust. This is like legalese because unwates himself. Dude, that's protecting them against like, oh, well, I wasn't jumping.

Unwating is a term from skiing and snowboarding. It's when you like stop putting as much of your weight on the skis. You know, they kind of, that's what they're borrowing from. So anyways, my whole, my whole thing is,

is, look, you guys know me as the person who wants referees out of the game. I completely get that. I'm saying that now before I kind of go in my defense of this. I think for personal, for the safety of these players, the hip, the swivel hip drop sucks. Like, it's a bad tackle. It's bad. I think it should be outlawed. And specifically the way that they're defining it, I understand people are going to be upset

because there's going to be some, you know, controversy over what is right and what's wrong. but if you look at the examples they show, to me that's the key thing is like the kicking of the feet forward and landing on the back of the player's legs. Like it's not that hard to define. It's not that hard to figure out. I don't think. Well, we'll say.

I mean, obviously, sometimes they institute these things and it's not a big deal. And sometimes they institute them and it's kind of like a mess for a season. The NFL is very good. I will say this. NFL is good at making things more complicated than it needs to be. But to me, this makes sense and is something that should happen. So I have no doubt that,

are dangerous swivel, hip drop tackles that are remarkably more likely to injure players and other tackles and that we should remove those from the game legislatively. We should get, say, if you do these, you will be penalized, you will be fine. That's super square for me. I do not think that this will be successfully called on the field or accurately, consistently called on the field at all, right? I do think if it is successfully and accurately called on the field, the NFL, like Rich McKay who runs the competition committee, said they see one per game of this sort of

tackle. We're talking about 272 new penalties. And the number of fines will probably be smaller than that. But they also have the potential to find people like on Tuesdays and on Wednesdays. Like if the referees miss it in game on Sunday, they'll review the film and find these guys. This after a year of like historic fines in 2023, the NFL's solution to hip drop test, swivel, hip drop tackles was more penalties and more fines, which is understandable because they want to remove a dangerous play. The problem is that the NFL currently has a too many penalties, too many fines issue.

And so if they are unable to successfully litigate this well, which, spoiler, they will not litigate this well. It is highly subjective and it's also the league. They don't do a good job of this. There's just going to be massive inconsistencies. It's going to affect the outcome of games. It's going to super frustrate defensive players. The union already said they don't want this. It is good to remove plays that injure players.

The league did not do what is necessary, in my opinion, in terms of research and defining the play and working with the union to make sure they're going to do this well. So it's going to cause problems. It's going to cause drama. And we're going to be dealing about this three, five years down the road. See, maybe I'll end up being wrong. I'm open to the idea that I end up like just totally missing on this. I don't think it's that subjective. I think it's pretty obvious.

I don't understand. Every time it happens and someone gets hurt, I'm like, oh yeah, that was a terrible tackle. Like, that sucked. You're sprinting as fast as you possibly can to tackle someone. Your upper body hits their torso and if your legs kick. Again, I'm not going to lie. Like, I don't fully understand how this goes. It's hard when you're checking.

chasing somebody to kind of not do that. No, I see this is where I totally disagree with you guys on that. I don't think it's that hard. This is a relatively new technique. This was invented in like rugby in the early 2000s. Right. This isn't like some sacrosanct pillar of football that we've been doing since we're

in the 50s. But it was introduced to take the helmet out of contact, which is also being legislated. Right. That's definitely correct. But again, you said this like there was one play a game when this happened. There's like 140 plays a game. This isn't like going to ruin football.

I don't think it will. I don't think it will at all. I do think that where we currently are at is not where we're going to end up in terms of how this play gets legislated and tackled. I think it's frankly way too amorphous and way too challenging for defensive players. I think that you see that in the reaction of the defensive players who like when the all the defensive players always protest every single. Not when they said take a lien with the helmet out.

Obviously they'll protest it on the field during the game. But there wasn't that big of a public upro then versus now when defensive players are well, we can't tackle anymore. Two ways to tackle a guy. Put your velocity through him or put your weight on him. And right now you can't do either. So, DK, I think that I agree with you in that, look, obviously, if they could eliminate this play really cleanly,

I obviously want players to not get hurt. Yeah, it's a nasty tackling style to watch. Yeah. I agree with Craig and Solac in that I am a little, I'm extremely dubious of the referee's ability to enforce this. I think that's, that's, that's, that's, but I'll say the larger point, though, is that you're right and you're both right in that the hip drop was. kind of introduced as honestly,

but the Seahawks largely, a lot of rugby style tackling because the NFL was trying to get away from helmet to helmet contact. And I think that's the context of this that I think is really important, is that the NFL is a reactionary league in everything, PR, punishments, rules.

The NFL is just reacts. The NFL doesn't act, honestly, about anything, whether it's like the Ray Rice or the Adrian Peterson, like issues with, you know, domestic violence or those kinds of things. Like, there's no policy till there is. Like, quarterbacks are getting hurt in 2019. They're just going to make up.

up, oh, you can't land on the body weight on the quarterback anymore. And like week three, they just made that rule. The NFL is an extremely reactionary thing in all its policies, including the rule changes. They went to hip drop because they wanted less head injuries. Now they have a couple seasons to hip drop injuries that that's not allowed either. And here's to me the point where I think the issue to me is you can only control so much of the chaos. That to me is the key because you think about what has had more world changes than anything.

Quarterbacks. You can't hit quarterbacks anymore, right? It's all you can't hit them below the knee. you can't hit them above the shoulder. You can't hit them on the face with your hand. Even though they're wearing a hump, you can't hit quarterbacks. And like how many rules?

How much do we hear about how you can't hit quarterbacks anymore? And yet the last two seasons have had the most quarterback injuries ever. Like more quarterbacks have gotten hurt in the last two years than any season ever. We had the record for quarterback starting last year by like, I forget mid-December. We had the most rookie quarterback starting ever in season by like week nine. I actually don't know the stats. So maybe this isn't right.

But I think it's much more common and much more frequent that a quarterback will be put into the concussion protocol. And a lot of the times they can't get out of that concussion protocol. Yes. We're calling more things injury. That's absolutely true. But you also have weird stuff where it's like Joe Burrow and like guys are just having like more thumb injuries, more hand in mallet fingers just going around like it's trench foot now. So I basically I think that I want I think everyone wants players to just like stop getting hurt lower leg injuries. And frankly, I think a lot of players actually care about their knee.

and ankles more than they care about their heads for being honest. It's going to be really hard to enforce this in the moment, which I think is going to be a huge, there's going to be some playoff moment that everyone's going to freak out about. I wonder if, do you think it would be better if it wasn't a penalty, it was only a fine? No, I think it's the opposite. So this is something that

Nate Tice brought up to me. I thought it was very interesting. So it doesn't affect the game, but it still impacts the player. Well, yeah, I guess. I think I can understand why that might be good from a fan's point of view. It's terrible from a player's point of view. And because there's been such a massive increase.

So like said this earlier, there's such a massive increase in the amount that the league is finding players. It was like up, I don't know, like seven times or something last year. And so you're, you're taking someone's money

for a play that is potentially subjective. For example, another way to improve player safety is to fix the fields. That cost the owner's money. That was not voter on, you will notice this week. Obviously,

it's not competition committee, but still, if we care about player safety, baby, we got ways to make the game safer. You got spent a couple bills for it. Those didn't get rolled the way hip-drop tackle got rolled to the front real quick. And that's where I'm skeptical is I think that like the reality is they're due. I think that this is being approved because they'd rather do this, pull the lever on this

and hope that injury rates go down rather than be forced into shelling out for the money to get grass fields. Like all the soccer players have and every soccer team and everywhere that wants those messy has to contractually put grass down. And the owners would rather do that than spend $3 million. to just have grass. And I think they're just saying yes to this, pretending to care about player safety. And that's why I'm a little cynical about all this. I mean,

it's not pretending to care about player safety. Like the injury rates are astronomical compared to all other tackle types. Like, I don't think those are the same thing. No, no, I'm not saying the coaches and stuff. I'm saying ownership. Like, look, the coach is sitting around the competition committee care about player safety.

I'm saying the owners do not care. Like the owners do not care. The salary cap is $230 million. They won't spend $2 or $3 million extra out of pocket. I think so. So at the end of the day, like, I understand exactly where you guys are coming from. This is going to be a subjective thing. And the refs are notoriously bad at that stuff.

So I totally get that. At the same time, if you're being like, if you're being really cynical about it, like, yes, the NFL wants to protect offensive players because it likes scoring. This happens every single year. Scoring is down. Let's protect our players that are carrying the football. Let's protect our quarterbacks. This is the product. I think even Harrison Smith tweeted something about this.

Essentially, it was like, this is the, this is the. the, here's what he said. As a human, he's mostly indifferent about it. As a business person, the NFL is protecting the merchandise. National audience tunes in to see offense, further protect offensive players, potentially weak in tackling attempts. So call me the Lorax, baby. I speak for the safeties. And then he said, he said as hit man, dislike most more defensive finds true sport weakens. And that's, I think what a lot of fans are feeling is like, oh, they're turning it into flag football or whatever. You know, like something that is said every single offseason.

But they, I mean, they kind of are slowly. I mean, isn't that the whole point? It's to prevent injuries. They are, I mean, it is going in that direction. Yes. That is a correct statement. Yes, but it depends on how much you think that is a negative, I suppose. Yeah, right.

I'm not saying that I disagree with this rule. I'm just saying I think it's going to be messy during NFL games, but I want to prevent injuries. That's fair. That's fair. DK, if you can successfully identify the plays that are going to injure the players and not, like, we got to get you to the competition committee stat because that's the main thing. It's like, we want that. We need that.

Well, I'm telling you, this, this type of tackle does injure players a lot more. Yeah, it does. Like, to me, that is like not, that's not subjective. It's absolutely true. I'm with you. I want to get you to the refs. I want to get you to the ref meeting. And you're teaching the tape, man.

You've got the clicker, all right? No one wants to be a ref. Everyone hates the refs. I'm being the most cynical here, I will say. It's like, reminds me the catcher a little bit. Try writing a play that you're like, oh, you want to eliminate 100 plays. Cool. Write one that'll apply to 20,000 plays.

That, honestly, it's hard. And you also have the problem of no one gets any, this is like football, public policy, anything. No one gets any credit for preventing things. No one's like no one gets any credit. Like what Boeing, all this stuff happening. No one cared about like the 50 years that like plane crashes were really rare and there were no issues.

Like no one cares about preventing things from happening. And so like it's a really weird thing to write a policy that applies to everything at all times. And also if it works, no one will think about it. Like it's just it's a weird problem. You're the, yeah, but you're the one that was defending the, uh, the last year because you're like, what a thing about that at 19,997 plays.

Yeah, I'm saying writing the rules really hard. I'm saying that I want players to not get injured. I'm saying that it's going to be really weird when in October we're arguing about. Did he swivel his hips? Best case scenario is this turns into something that's similar to the horse collar tackle thing, which I don't think is a big problem for people anymore. Like, do you guys feel frustrated with the horse collar tackle rules at all?

Like every once in a while, they'll mess it up. like for instance, like someone will grab a shoulder pad and it'll look like a horse collar and they'll call it even though it's not technically a horse collar. But like is that ruining football? Like do you guys feel really passionate about that? I don't think football is going to be ruined at all. I do think that the horse collar is a good example because there's, you know, make up a number, 25 horse collar tackles every year, totally made up number.

And on 24 of them, no, but like it's like, yeah, it was a horse collar. On the 25th one, there's some debate about it. And then people post the rule book. And they're like, see, it's not one because of what the rules say. It's like, okay, nobody actually officiates this according to the rules. They officiate it according to like, did it look like that was about to hurt the player? Did it look bad? And I think that's where we're going to end up on hip drop.

And I think that that's a scary place to end up for hip drop because legs get caught in her bodies a lot. And like if we end up like, all right, we're throwing a flag if this looks like it might have hurt the offensive player. I think that's a bad spot to be in for the competitiveness of the game. Maybe I'm just a hip-draft whisperer. I feel like it's easy to tell what a hip-trop is. I don't know. Swibble hip-hip drop. people are showing the

DK Metcalf Buda Baker Chase down like and they're like and the best thing is like that very clearly isn't that's one where it's like DK like dives to

to tackle him and then wall diving lands on his legs but there's no swivel and so like there's there's plays it very clearly orange it's just like the line of the swivel

there's no swivel Jerry there's like a fucking sign film episode did he swivel the celebration rules where's the swivel all right ball across the plane. Did the second foot get down? Did the hip swivel? Did he swivel?

No swivel. Let's do an email and we get out of here. Okay. Email. This is from Noah. Email. Noah. So I proposed last week and I told my story and people emailed in. A lot of people emailed in. But Noah's was my favorite.

Noah says this past weekend I proposed to my now fiancee. Flex. Nice. Congratulations. Huge for you. Noah says, I've never had nervous shits before. Yeah. That's privilege right there. I know, damn.

This guy's never had nervous shits. I'm sorry. What's it like to be born with a silver spoon in your mouth, my dude? Not a drop of anxiety and Noah's nerdy. Just nerve of steel. Just fucking ice cold. Bridesmiths, and she's like, I don't bloat. It's a gift.

So Noah says, I've never had the nervous shits before, but I think you guys talking about nervous shit so much has cast the evil spell of bombing. We manifested it in you. Yeah. Yeah, we did. The morning that I had, that I have secretly arranged for a photographer

to meet my now fiancee and I at a scenic part to park to catch our proposal. I'm struck by the constant but low but constant urge to purge. Nice. Well phrased. Low but constant.

I kind of love urge to purge. Notice is I was able to power through and not only secure a yes for me popping the question or should I say pooping the question. Oh. This man's word-playing. But I will also get nice photos of us despite, you know, he had to take a shit.

You guys truly do have an unknown power beyond comprehension. Heck yeah. That's where I want our listeners. I want our listeners about to propose the love of their life and instead thinking of the four of us and pooping. That's that's, that's the mental state. That's so cool. That's where your head's at.

He thought of us while nervously shitting himself right before he proposed. That is, that is, we've peaked. The meme of the woman being like, I bet he's thinking about another woman. and he's actually like in bed and he's like, oh God, that like those four football podcasters are going to make me shit myself during my proposal. Do you guys want to?

I have a quick nervous shit story last night that was pretty tough for me. Okay. I got like, I don't know if it was a collection of nervous shits and like I didn't eat that healthy this weekend. So it was kind of like the perfect storm. Right.

And we were all going to watch the SDSU Yale game at a bar. And I was nervous for the game. I wanted to win. I also, again, hadn't eaten great. a lot of beer the whole weekend. So I went to the bathroom. We're at this bar, not the cleanest,

nicest bathrooms in the world. One stall, I sit down, right when you sit down, you know, things are underway. And I look down, no toilet paper.

There's no toilet paper. So what I had to do is use... Call 911. This is so brutal. I had to use the seat cover. The toilet cover. Oh, my God. It was a real low point for me.

I was like, dude, you ever seen the outtake from Parks and Rec where Chris Pratt is like, there's sometimes I'll just sit down, I'll just wipe and wipe and wipe and wipe. Yeah. It's like, he's like,

it's like I'm wiping and a marker. Oh my God. I had a friend in high school who wouldn't look at the wipes. He would just do five wipes and go. And we were like, dude. What? I know.

And we were like, dude. He's that coughing? Yeah. It can do it all on the field. It's like shooting a three and turning around. It's the step-curring of wiping. He's like to Jack Golky of wiping. You know what blew my wife's mind

was that she didn't really think about because like men, traditionally men spend more time going number two than women, right? It's a longer process for us. Yeah. And more frequent too. Right. And she didn't realize why there were so many flushes.

She like never thought about it. And I was like, it's the wiping. And she was like, it's the wiping? And I was like, yes, sometimes you can wipe forever. And she just had no concept of like that even being a possibility. She was just like, I thought you were just going a lot and flush a lot. And I was like, no, it's just constant wiping. So she thought of you flush twice.

It's because there was so much shit. I think she was like, I never even considered the idea that you just kept using more and more. I could not empathize with this more. One of the first things that like when my wife and I moved in together was like, you know, I was like, I got to go number two. And then, like, later that day, I was like, I got her number two. And she was like, what? And I was like, yeah, no, this is like, I had coffee.

Like, we're, like, this is part of the process. Yeah, that's crazy. And then I would come back downstairs. I would come downstairs after a period of several minutes. And she'd be like, are you good? And I'm like, yeah, that's routine, homie. That was average. What are we talking about?

A hundred. I feel like every woman at some point in their life has gone like a full week without pooping and it's like not that for yours. That sounds so crazy to me. For men, like, I, imagine if you guys went a week. without taking a shit. No. I would not so well.

No, yeah. We had quite the, quite the, come to Jesus, quite the, all right, let's sit down and talk this out. You got to understand

what I'm going to go through gas or not telling me. I make like a whole, like it's, I make a whole thing out of it. Like when you, yeah, the phone's in there, you got an article.

Let me ask this, let me ask this. I, so I got two and a half bath in my, in my house. I will poop in exactly one bathroom. Right. Yeah, exactly.

That, that, like, I could not post, possibly be more of a non-negotiable for me. I don't think I could achieve it in the other bathrooms. I exclusively the master bath. I only go in our guest bathroom.

I do not use the master. And it's honestly not because I was banished. I feel bad. I would not want to go in the master bathroom and have her have to deal with that. So I reserve myself to the guest. And I live in my little dungeon. You're out on my phone. And it is.

It's actually preferred. I like it. I want to ask a question for the parents out there. So Craig, you mentioned the wiping situation. one of the reasons I was like actually kind of worried about being a parent was like all the ass wiping that you have to do like as your kids grow up like it's not immediately or it's not immediate that they learn how to wipe their own ass and I was like man this is like this part of it it's going to be like not the best I'm not looking forward to this okay I got to say I don't know if this is normal Calvin is he like ghost shits there's there's like I would say 98% the time, there's nothing there. If you could draft qualities in a child, I feel like, I'm like, how is this even possible?

I don't understand the physics of it. I have like one ghost poop every month or two, and it's the best day of my month. It's so great. It's a thrill. I think that, I think I've heard if you do, if you have a ghost poop, like that just means like you're eating healthy. I think, I think Calvin might be the chosen one.

He's the prophet that was promised. Calvin is Al-Gai-Ive. Charlie, Al-Gai-Ive. L-Ga-Eve is Calvin. Anyway, hopefully he never gets mad at me for saying that There have been books written about him. We've been waiting. I want to know if that I guess are and have made the way.

The shit from the outer world. Wait, but that doesn't work when he's in a diaper back in the day, right? Because the diaper gets messy everywhere. You're saying post diaper. Post diaper. Okay. I'm just like, this is, I don't understand how this happens. Tune in a few years from my update.

That's right. Poop corner. Poop corner. We should just, like, do a whole episode where Soak just like chimes in from the bathroom. He's just pretending to be in the bathroom. Should we just get like an hour of quiet? Craig, we can call it potty language. See how long it lasts?

Yeah. We do a show. We're all just on the John for an hour. Each of us, remote. It'd be a pleasant experience. It'd be one of my better-proving experiences of least. It's an unbelievable idea. Let's show it with you guys.

We're going to follow up about email. Email surrogatefancyfutball.g.com. If you have any thoughts and anything we just said. All right. Definitely get out of here. Thank you, T.K. Thank you, Craig. Thank you, Soak. Thank you, Tucker for help on the scenes.

Thank you, Kai, for producing this episode. Thank you, Jack. Thank you, everyone for making it this far through a lot of that. I mean, my God, I wonder what the reception will be on that one. Thank you, Lorne. Lord. Thank you. Frankie goes to Hollywood.

Nice. Relax. Is that like a poop-related one or just each a firm fan? I don't believe that's poop-related, right? Frankie goes to Hollywood? Yeah, I don't know of him. I don't know anything about the song Well he went to Hollywood

Right Guys there's a cat that lives in my neighborhood And he's right outside my window Who is the mailman? There's a stray cat that lives in my neighborhood And he lives right outside my window Which means either one My dog's about to start barking like crazy in 10 seconds

Or two he'll stay out there And then I go I feed him tuna from a can He's my best friend Relax Don't do it That's him yeah Wait from the end of Zoolander Yeah yeah

Yeah, yeah. Relax. Oh, with the keyboard necktie. Yeah. Oh. All right. Goodbye, everyone. Must be 21 plus and present in select states.

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