The Ringer NFL Show - Russ Is Out, J.J. McCarthy Is In, Fastest WR Class Ever, and More Combine Winners

Episode Date: March 5, 2024

The guys open by talking through the potential landing spots for Russell Wilson ahead of his imminent release from the Broncos (3:17). Next, they recap the weekend results from the NFL combine by assigning a handful of awards, “bonks,” and “icks,” including the award for prospect with the most performative behavior, Xavier Worthy breaking the 40-yard dash record, Amarius Mims’s staggering measurements, and much more (10:33). 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

Hey there, humanoids. This is David Shoemaker. The pro wrestling world is currently on fire. And so we've got you covered five days a week on the Ringer Wrestling show. Every Monday and Thursday, hang out with me and Kaz on The Mask Man Show. And this is Peter Rosenberg, the host of Cheap Heat. Join me and my guys, Stack Guy Greg and Dipperstein, on Tuesdays and Fridays. We talk wrestling, we have bagel breakdowns, mage interviews, and so much more. And Ben Cruz here. Come kick it with me, Cal and Brian, on Wednesday. Worldwide, where we hit the most interesting headlines and even react to some of mass mans, cheap heats, or even your hottest tics.

Don't tap out. Tap in to the ringer wrestling show feed. Now on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. And stay mage, everyone. Worldwide. So draft show, my name is Danny Hyphenz. I am joined by Danny Kelly, Ben Slocke, and Craig Horleback who's back, baby. The NFL Combite is over.

Pause there. I was supposed to jump in. How are you doing, baby? You're happy to be back? Yeah, ready to get the show going. Combine's over. We went to Indianapolis. So that, Craig.

We're going to break down the winners of losers, the risers, and fallers, and most of all, most importantly, the guys who gave us the ick versus the guys who got us so excited. We need a little bonk, maybe.

You know, some bonks and icks. Imagine explaining your job to your grandfather. Oh, dude. I'm just talking about banks and eggs. 2024 NFL Draft Combine. Dude, honestly, even just working in podcast

is hard to describe to a grandfather. I'm like, he's like, is that radio? I'm like, yeah. My grandpa was a podcaster. So he would have no issue with that. It's in the Bronx. I would throw him off. What?

My grandfather, who was a priest New Orthodox Church, recorded hundreds of podcast episodes for a program for Orthodox Christianity. He was a big podcast. Wow. Yeah, I thought you were going to say that your grandfather was Bill Simmons.

I was like, oh. I thought you were kidding. That's a joke about the age of your boss that you don't make on a public platform. You know, we were wondering what we needed in May. Maybe we should get some more, you know, Christianity podcasting here. It was more of a joke of how young you were been than not how. Okay.

Good you know, good you know. Solid. All right. So, D.K., all right, so NFledraft.orgheimer.com. DK has a new mock draft going that's up at some point this week. DK. Yeah. You want to plug it?

You know what, you know what? Locked in? First pick, Caleb Williams. Second pick. Who is it? I mean, you're just kind of to look at the website for that. Come on. I'm not going to give this away for free.

I'm going to give it away for free on the internet. All right, cool. that's a web. Do you know what the website is? Do you know what the URL is for your mock draft? NFL draft. com. Boom!

Backslash mock draft? I don't know. Just go to the ringer. No, you had it. Just go to the ringer and then find the mock drafts. Google ringer NFL draft. Great. There you go.

All right. So we're going to combine takeaways, but first, we have to take to a little news here. And Craig, you've been, MIA. Why don't you lead us off here? Yeah, as somebody very tapped into the quarterback market right now because of my team in their current quarterback situation,

So the Denver Broncos announced that they will be releasing Russell Wilson on March 13th, I believe. So now I wanted to ask you guys about potential Russell Wilson landing spots because this is kind of unique, right? It's like this is the largest dead cap hit ever for a team, $85 million, I believe. It's like more than twice the largest cap. Yeah. I think it was Matt Ryan was like 40. Yeah, and this is 85. And now Denver is on the hook, correct me if I'm wrong, for $39 million next year minus whatever a new team would pay him,

which the minimum would be like $1.2 million, which presumably would be what a team would pay. So Russell Wilson, whatever you think of him right now, how good he is as a quarterback and how bad he's been the last year or two, you could sign him for $1.2 million on your football team. And so I kind of wanted to just go through the teams that need quarterbacks and ask you guys where you think he would go and what you think is the best fit for him. Is this like Panda Watch, but it's like a really old panda?

And we're like less interested, like, what are they up to? And we're just like, are they still around? Like, I don't, this is like when a dog is up for adoption, but it's like older. Yeah. They're like, come on. She's like, we just need a place for this dog and it's final days. Brutal. Brutal.

Yeah. He's like old yellow. The people out there who adopt the older dogs, you're doing God's work. And thank you. That's true. Somebody's got to put him down. I mean, I'm not doing it. Whoa.

You, I think put him down. We're saying home him. D.K. It's very different. Yeah. Don't leave with that. Put him into hospice. I about that.

Okay. Fine. So, can we just run through the draft here? Okay, so if we start, Chicago Bears are not going to be signing Russell Wilson. Commanders are not going to be doing that. The Patriots, we don't think so. Is that the first team that theoretically perhaps could? First of all, there was some rumors going around in Indy that they really like Baker Mayfield,

who at this point is now better than Russell Wilson, apparently. We've all established this. But I think the main point is they might be interested in like a veteran, obviously, instead of going the rookie route, and then they could trade out of their number three pick and get a whole haul for that and kind of go from there. Do I think the Patriots are going to go for Wilson out?

Probably not, but I think they're at least noodling on having a veteran quarterback. I think Elliot Wolf, just Elliot Wolf, who runs the, and not the Patriot's general manager, but he's the Patriot's general manager. He was with the Browns when they drafted Baker Mayfield. So, okay, so of all the quarterbacks who could change teams or be signed this year, free agency or in trades. Let's say, Kirk Cousins, Justin Fields is probably going to be on the move. Baker Mayfield and Russell Wilson.

Ben, let's go to Ben. Where does Russell Wilson rank in that group of four? To you, if you're paying him $1.2 million. Bottom. Russ, Russ, the, the, 2023 Broncos film from Russ is unstartable. It is not top 32 quarterback film in the league. You can argue, and I'll hear an argument,

that like Sean Payton was actively attempting to make Russ as bad and as sad at football as possible, so as to cajole and coerce him. Sabatour! Yeah, exactly. He sabotage for sure. But the Russ film is not good. There is no, oh, toss him on the Raiders and maybe we go a cheeky 10 and 7.

Like, that's not, Russ does not have that caliber of game left in his bag, in my opinion. The athleticism is far and off too far. And he hasn't adjusted his game accordingly. Like, when the Broncos started Jared Stidham, they were starting the better quarterback on their roster. Like, there was a ton of other stuff going into it, contract-wise and whatever. But in general, like, I would not. want Russ's entourage and name and general vibe on my team relative to the value he's bringing me as a player. That's for someone else to have. Hi, Vince, with the Giants at number six, would you be

upset if they sign Russell Wilson for a million bucks? Yes, I'd rather have Daniel Jones, because at least the people in the team like Daniel Jones, and I don't remember a team that Russell's played for wherever everyone likes him. I think so like your point's right, where it's, ironically, this goes back to the beginning of Russell Wilson's career when the whole thing with this start of the rookie quarterback conference. contract thing, right? With the Seahawks, Russell Wilson won the Super Bowl starting quarterback, making less money than the Searx's long snapper. Now we come all the way to Brock Purdy, almost winning the Super Bowl for the Niners, making fewer money in two years than

Dak Prescott gets per game. But now Russ is back to a million dollar a year quarterback, but it's weird because I agree with Soak, where he just kills the vibes. And I'm like, I feel like he almost Pittsburgh, your face, Craig. I feel like Pittsburgh's one of the teams where at least Mike Tomlin can like establish a order. And I don't know. It's funny because we just think about Tomlin wrangling big personality. who are like a little crazy. Russ is almost like a big personality who's too tame. I don't know.

But he's one of the 32 best quarterbacks, right, DK? Yeah, I would disagree a little bit with Solac that he's like a backup caliber quarterback at this point. I mean, I do think he has his limitations for sure. I think that we've made a little bit too much of how he's playing relative to how he used to play other than he doesn't do the who do any stuff outside the pocket that he used to do.

It's basically he's still very good throwing him down the field. accuracy-wise, he still doesn't really attack the middle of the field. I think there's ways that you can kind of design an offense around him. I don't think he's like a good quarterback anymore, like a high-level quarterback anymore, but I do think he is starter caliber. So I think some team is probably going to want to sign him, but he's not going to have a lot of opportunities just because it feels like all the chairs are getting taken at this point in the game of musical chairs with quarterbacks right now.

So this is a good example where we don't really think about the Domino's this way, but the NBA, you have the draft, then free agency. The NFL, you have free agency and then the draft. If the NFL calendar were like the NBA's, but the draft happened first, you'd probably have the Bears, commanders, and Patriots get quarterbacks one, two, three, or something, right? Then maybe the Falcons get one.

Then the Vikings are at 11. The Broncos are 12, Raiders are 13. And they'd be like, oh, we didn't get anyone. And someone gets McCarthy. And then, you know, there's Raiders or someone ends up with Russell Wilson. But because it happens first, there's only some, there's eight chairs, but the chairs that suck the most are first. And no one wants to sit down at the Russell Wilson.

chair. And so I feel like you're staring it down. And Russ being so cheap is funny because honestly, the funniest thing is if the New Orleans Saints were paying like Derek Carr like $30 million, just signed Russ for $1 million, but Russ was the starter and Derek Carr was the backup. They just negotiated his contractor wherever to like give him an even bigger cap hit like in the future. They're just like stuck with him at this point. Is there a situation where you could do both? You could draft a quarterback, sit him for a year and then start Russell Wilson for a million bucks. I think that's the model. Again, the Patriots locker room wise is not ideal, but I do think that that's super possible. So you say starting for a year, I'd give you the over under of six and

half games. Like I think, I think Ben is so out on Russ. If you're drafting a guy like top five, top 10, I do not see how Russ holds that guy for that long. Like, D.K said like, you know, he's still like, like, he can still throw the deep ball. The only thing is really lost is like the scrambling stuff and the creation stuff. That's a janga piece to his game in my opinion. Like he is untenable without that. because he just can't get to enough long dropbacks that let receivers get down the field to then throw his moonballs

because he can't avoid pressure, right? And he's not good off of play action the way that he used to be. He doesn't throw a middle of the field. Like, that's not for me, man. All right, so we will see where Russell Wilson goes in free agency. It's funny that they're not going to cut him

for 11 days, even though we already know they're going to cut him. So we'll see where he goes. Let's get to the quarterbacks. Let's get to the combine. It is time for America's new favorite segment. Panda Watch. You nail it every time.

Christ's like a proud dad Great impression son You nailed it Capelling and rich All the pandas A compelling and rich All the pandas man They were hiding

Except we only had one panda Come out to play For the drills in the combine Oh come on There was several Michael Pennix Was out there slanging it Is he a panda?

Sure Joe Milton threw the ball 72 yards Which means he's anything He wants to be Joe Milton threw it orange 100 yards at once

That's kind of crazy Sam Hartman was out there his gorgeous hair. The elephant in the room, or the panda in the room, I guess I should say, is that the top three quarterbacks didn't do a lot of stuff at the combine.

If Jayden Daniels and May and Williams were there, where would J.J. McCarthy be right now in the media discourse and just how much has he benefited from those three guys not being there? So, Lek. I don't know if he's like, I'm sorry,

I'm debating because I don't think he did enough on the field in terms of throwing the ball around. to be like, oh, this is why the McCarthy hype is coming. I think the league's got McCarthy hype. I think they've got the itch for the young guy. He's 20. They like his tools. They love the cut of his jab.

I think he interviewed great. And I think that he was going to interview great no matter what. I don't think the absence of the other quarterbacks, like if he really slung it, then sure. But I watched the highlight cut up with his throws. Like, it was very mid. I don't know. That's the same. My voice felt about how he throws.

Well, McCarthy's Zoolander. He can't throw left. His mechanics left are different than his mechanics right. Yeah, he's not a good feat. Like, it's, it's, it's not good. I just think, the concept of the combine is very funny. I know that we talk about this every year, but like, judging or getting excited about, like, these quarterbacks throwing in the combine is like, is like watching dudes warm up in basketball.

Like, who gives a shit? Like, this is so dumb. I know that we literally do this every year. I know that. I recognize that. I'm like part of the problem. But it's so ridiculous that they're literally just playing catch. And, like, sometimes they're not even catching the football.

So that's the problem. So why can't he hit the game? guy and he's going to be the third pick. So ridiculous. It's like me sending you guys a video of me at the driving range. And I'm like, look how good I am at golf. I know. I think that's what we have to explain, though, is if Jay J.J. McCarthy can't on air

in shorts, drop back five steps and then hit a guy 10 yards away to his left. Why, D.K., can you explain then why he will be the maybe the third pick for the NFL? I don't know. I was just thinking that the whole time. And I agree with Ben. Like, I watched all the throws. Went back and watched it today on NFL network. And I was just

like, yeah, it was fine. Like, he was shooting some jump shots, like it war bumps. Like, it was just so, and people get very excited about this or very, like, disappointing. You know, we do the whole spectrum. That's just the nature of the beast. But I agree with Solek, though, like there was a ton of buzz about J.J. McCarthy. I think a lot of it has to do with, like Craig, like you alluded to, he was there.

He was doing stuff. He was, you know, he got weighed in. Jay and Daniels, by the way, which I had asked like a couple of weeks ago if he would do this. He didn't weigh in. And I'm going to say, he looked skin. any upon the podium. He looked rail thin. And when you compare him, because he actually talked, I think, at the exact same time as JJ McCarthy. I went back and forth to different podiums. And McCarthy looked pretty thick, like solid. He was 219 pounds. That was unexpected. That was

surprising. And so maybe like even the stupid shit like that is like fueling some of this hype. I think there's also, you know, just a lot like teams have probably been thinking this for a while. And now it's just starting to get out because everybody's on the combine. Everybody's talking. Everybody's gossiping. Maybe there's some smoke screens. whatever, but I just find the whole thing ridiculous. When you say the whole thing, you mean the combine or JJ McCarthy? No, the combine. Okay, so, but you're saying you're like your tapeers resume, we've seen him play football,

it's the big deal. So, Solac, I ask you, can you explain to people why JJ McCarthy might be the third pick in the draft if he cannot against air, drop back and consistently throw to his left 15 years away? Yeah, so one time on the TV show family guy, Peter Griffin was offered a box and it was a big box. And they said, Peter Griffin would you like the mystery box? Would you like this boat? And Lois was like, Peter, God, take the boat.

And then Peter said, but Lois, a mystery box could be anything. He could even be a boat, all right? J. Agent McCarthy is 20. He is not done growing. He's not done getting better. He will continue to improve. And just that truth, like, oh, young guy, didn't throw very much, might get better in the league.

It can convince NFL teams that he can become anything, right? He might become just, like, who do they, who does even, I don't even hear any good, like, high caliber comps for him. Like, nobody is like, we're just. going to be freaking. Well, Tom Brady said he's better than Tom Brady was at Michigan. So, I mean, I think the comp is probably the best quarterback ever. Tom Brady says whatever he wants.

Tom Brady. It's not real, man. He's podcasting. Michigan, man. Michigan, man. Yeah. Well. So the JJ thing, you know, people, people talk about him on some like elite playmaker and like

elite tools. I think they are talking themselves in the fact that because he might get better or because he probably will get better, he might become 10,000 different things. The other thing is just the, the disposition of it all, right? the like, like, you know, firstly, like, is the whiteness of it all, right? Leadership, toughness, Michigan, national championship. 36 and 1 is a starter. I wish my daughter would leave her husband and marry him, like that whole nonsense.

Like all that allure is around JJ. Sometimes that's total of BS, right? Will Levis fell to 33 or 38 or whatever it was? Sometimes it's not. So we'll kind of sniff that out over the next couple of months. But right now, like, I had 20 more conversations about JJ McCarthy than I had about Jane Daniels when I was there. All the gas right now is with him.

Is this going to fizzle, though? Is this just because we haven't really seen Jane Daniels, Drake May and Caleb Williams in a while? And JJ McCarthy's like the best we got in a month from now, he's going to kind of cool off? Or do you think this train is going to keep on rolling? Ask you in a month, right? That's the challenging part of this. If I had to guess, I think it's legit, right? I wrote up my column, like, this might be smokescreen season.

Maybe I'm being got. I think that teams are, I think most teams are going to have Caleb at one. And I think two, three and four are going to be a conversation across the board. I think May is mostly going to be QB2. There's going to be a couple of teams that have different QB2. and then I think three and four is largely going to be a debate. That's what I think we're going to get. So we might get to the draft end of April and it goes,

one, Caleb, two, May, three, Jane Daniels, eight, J. Jim McCarthy. It's like, all right, we were all right in February. We should have stopped overthinking it. But I do think that teams are going to have different landing spots and different guys. I think it's not, I don't think it's just pure smoke because we had a bunch of sort of hype and anticipation about this before he even got to Indianapolis.

So he's, I think, been considered among a lot of draft analysts. a lock for the top 12 or whatever it is. He's not going to get past Denver. And so that was before the combine. Now I think the combine has just sort of accelerated that to maybe now he's going to be the third quarterback off the board. Maybe he's going to be the second quarterback off the board. I think people are more just talking about like where he's going to go now versus whether

he's going to be a top 12 pick, which does feel sort of locked in at this point. I also just want to shout out, Jim McCarthy is a way better athlete than I ever understood. Like I knew that he was mobile. Like, you know, he's, you know, Kirk Cousins is not the right complex. like J.J. McCarthy's like really like like has, can scoot as Sloak would say. However, the three cone drill at the combine, I could not believe this. J.J. McCarthy had the sixth best time.

Not among quarterbacks, but among all players, period. Like the only at the combine this year? Yes. Like I'm talking J.J. J.J. McCarthy beat Blake Corum, who was this running. J.J. McCarthy did the three cone faster than Roma Dunesay. He did fast. Like, he did, he did the three cone faster than. every receiver at the combine except for four. And Roma Dunesay tried like 40 times.

Roma Dunesay's like, I'm not losing to this guy. Roma Dunesai literally just there until midnight. Can't let the strippy quarterback beep me. Dude, the Wolf of Walshrews, like, I will not die sober. I will not die until I beat J.J. McCrothy. He's a good athlete. I think that was, again, this is something that we knew. Like, he can scoot around.

He can scramble around. I do think it's interesting, though, like hardly anyone does the three cone anymore. I was curious how many actually, what percentage of players actually did the three cone this year because it feels like every year it goes down. The thing about McCarthy putting up a good three cone, he ran a 6-8-2. It's one of the top like 10, 15 best quarterback times that we've ever seen is that it typifies that he is quicker than fast, right? Like he didn't run the 40.

And that's because I don't think he's very fast. I don't think he has runaway speed. I think he has avoid tackle, scoot around, slip a guy speed, which is still valuable, right? Yeah. For perspective, right? Like, Burden Adams ran a 6-8-2 back in the day. Carson-Ransman is 6-8-6. Andrew Luck, 6-8 flat.

Josh Dobbs, 675, Johnny Mansell, 675, Tebow ran 666, Eason Stick ran a 665, right? So, like, good tackle avoiders, good athletes, absolutely objectively a good athlete. But the idea that McCarthy is like a great dual threat quarterback, I still have some suspicions about it, because I don't think he has runaway potential. So speaking of the Roma dunzae thing,

I think my favorite part of the combine, my favorite part of this entire ridiculous three-month cycle of the pomp and circumstance of draft season, is all the performative stuff, right? It's like, who's doing, what was the, like, Malik Willis was like picking up trash last year on the street. Like, there's always shit people are doing, right?

No, he gave money to a, or a food to a homeless. He gave clothes to a homeless man. Yeah, sure. How dare you back? He was someone to close off his back, right? Of course. Yeah, right. He walked home shirtless that day.

How dare you question that? I want, I was, you guys are there in Indies, so I want you guys to kind of, like, walk me through what hit the hardest at the combine in terms of like, like, who won the, the Oscar. Like, we had Caleb Williams, like, hanging around, meeting the staff on the field. I love all of it. And I want you guys to tell me, like, what was the buzziest in Indianapolis? So what was the, so Caleb Williams was, he wouldn't leave the field until he, like, shook the hands of every staff member there or something.

There was also a report. I can't remember if it was maybe NFL network or whatever, that he came in when they were doing a segment with him and shook the hands of every single person that was working on. Sure. This is like Tom Cruise learns the name of every PA. He's like, Jeremy, great to meet you. I'll never forget that name. I don't know why, but I kind of like this for Caleb. Like, I'm the most naive person in the world. I fucking like it. It's a nice thing to do.

It's a nice gesture. Yeah, like the Roma Dunes Day thing. I understood it was performative. I also loved it. I ate it up. You tell me there's three top wide receivers. Malik, Marvin Harrison, Malik, neighbors won't get on the field.

Romaduzzi won't leave it. Neighbors won't even get measured. He didn't even get, they didn't even get like his arm length there as well. I like it. Adunzee up. Let's go. Did Adunzee reach his goal? Did he finally set them?

That's irrelevant. Okay. No, he didn't. He didn't. He never got there? I don't know. He didn't get within a tenth of a second hour. I don't think so. He didn't go close.

He ran into six-eighths. He wanted to run six-six. There's a vulnerability in that. I actually really appreciate that. He's just on-camera failing for an hour and a half. Just out here doing it. Everybody's trying to leave. You're so true.

Craig, you're so right, because on one hand, the reason Caleb and some of these guys aren't like, you know, doing these testing whatever, they can't train for it. It might hurt your stock. It's like, why train? Terrified to look bad. Why would you? You're already at the top. Yeah. But the flip side is also the, I'll be bad at it. That freaks me out. And like, that is the part of it. And I do love that he's just like, I'm going to get this. And again, you're right. It's performative. But, miracle, when they're just like, again, again. Like just, yeah, how does that get your blood bumping? But it's almost not preferative because he was not even close to succeeding. So at a certain

point he has to. Well, no, in herringley, it was performance. It was embarrassing. There was no objective. There was no truth to it whatsoever. I love him the most. I just started feeling bad for him. He's after listening to you guys last week in Indy. Romo Dunes I think is immediately my number one favorite guy in this draft, and I want him on my team. I love Rome so much

here. Craig Man. Did you see the video of him doing a freaking gainer? Yes. Oh, the backflip? No, like, it's like a running backflip. I've seen people do. People only do that into pools. You know what I know? I know. Or like a big batch of foam in like a gymnastics place.

I used to only do that in a pool. Craig, I used to do gators off of like a 15 foot dock and I would like barely make it around. He did this on ground. That was wild. And the best thing is there's two like bottom of the seventh round, unathletic white quarterbacks. I don't know who exactly is that watch him do it in the background.

They're both just like, whoa. I've decided I want Roma Dunseye's day to be a New York football giant. Yeah. God, I love to decide that. But Dunezay's the man. I,

he's just the absolute By the way, we are making fun of the performative six. He was trying to go for six something in the 6.6 something in the three-cote. He tested out of the world. Like he had an awesome combine otherwise, other than he just didn't quite make his goal in the three in the three-cone drill. The other, why we're just talking performative stuff?

I guess this doesn't count. But one of those, who is the guy who just caught two balls in the same drill at the same time? Like just said, the Colorado State quarterback. Yeah. Like tight end. They do this.

Yeah. The mad and auto-generated. but they just do this thing where they like extra guys on the field. So there's a stock, like a stock photo tight end running out. Shout out to that guy who thought he had caught all the balls in the drill and then kept the last one run up field. And then they threw him another.

And he was just like, that was sweet. A good, a good performative, in my opinion is to Vondre Sweat, the Texas defensive tackle coming at 366 pounds by the way. I love this. Healthy young man.

All right. Big fella. Love to see it. They asked him of me at the podium. Asked him at the podium. Hey, what do you think you're going to run? He goes,

I'm like 44. And then he ran a 527. Dude, that's a great bit, dude. That killed me. He got interviewed before it, and he was like, people are going to, their minds are going to be blown when I run the 40. And then he ran a 5-2. They won't believe this, dude.

It's going to be unreal. Which, by the way, it's good for being 366 pounds, but it's just so good that he, like, such a funny bit that he got us all, he got us all going. And then, yeah, whatever. It's like Frank Gore Jr. was just like, They asked him about his basketball career. Like, what have you pursued basketball?

He's like, oh, I would have been the NBA. He's like, five, nine. Nate Robinson. Looking to the rest of the class. I feel like I'm curious what you guys think. But my main takeaway from the combine, my main takeaway was like, this is how convenient for us,

a fantasy football show that cosplays as an NFL draft show for a third of the year. How convenient that this is a fantasy football draft class. This is just quarterbacks, an unbelievable amount of why. wide receivers and then offensive linemen that will just make all the other positions better. No defensive players in the top 10, right? D.K. and your mock?

It would be surprising if it was like the top 13 or 14 before I could do. Who's the first defensive player going to go off the board? Dallas Turner maybe. Quinn and Mitchell. A guy from Toledo might be the first defender taken. Yeah, but here's the thing. He's perfect and I love him. So don't know.

Me too. Shut your mouth. So wait, you were just saying like right before we recorded, you were saying that the thing about this class is that it's their. 14 great players and then like a cliff. Like 40 other guys that could go after those guys. Yeah, I

really like this class. Like, you know, you go through the top, a couple tiers of tackles, top three wide receivers. I was going to have the quarterbacks up there. I like both the top corners, including Mitchard, Toledo, Ontario, and Arnot, Alabama. I think once you get to pick like 14, 15, I think this thing starts to fall off steeply. Like, a lot of the guys

who I see in the back half of the first round are guys that I have problems with. You keep on hearing me say like when we're talking about players, like sure, if I could take him at 50, like sure if I could take him at 45, but like a lot of this second tier of receivers, man, Adonai Mitchell, Xavier, Xavier Worthy, ran the 4-2-1, Troy Franklin, Ladd-McConkey.

These are guys that I would much rather be taking, like, mid-second in terms of their profile, and these guys can be judging to go like top 25. Some of the guys are going to get pushed up in the tackle class, same issue, right? Like, I love the Kingsley-Suea-Matia. I understand the desire for, like, a tailor-a-out-I-At Oklahoma. These are more so guys I prefer to take in the second round.

Jackson-Powers-Johnson. I prefer to take second round. The defensive tackles. I like Byrne Murphy out of Texas. Johnny Newton had Illinois to me his second round. Like a lot of the guys you're seeing right now get forced up. Like this class of me is like a 14-15 player class. The thing I walk away from the combat with, like in terms of my big takeaway is, yeah, like, man, a lot of these receivers have speed, but also a lot of them have size problems.

You know, Xavier Worthy, like, it's great to run that speed. It's excellent. Ted's Walker out of North Carolina. Jacob Cowling ran sub-4-4 to Arizona. We talked about Ladd McConkey out of Georgia. but these are just not the biggest dudes from like a weight adjusted 40 perspective the brian thomas at lSU and the zavier legata south carolina like those are the runs and those are the the explosiveness profiles that are a lot more interesting to me because those guys are doing

it over 200 pounds certainly i and i mitchell up there as well uh those are the guys that i'm more interested in as opposed to some of the smaller dudes dk do you think that because we're in an era now where guys like devontay smith and tank dell are coming out of as rookies and making immediate impacts as like super undersized players uh do you feel much more confident in a lot of these guys now? Yeah, and I think I do, because there's an under size, though, is they're tall but they're thin. Yeah, it's

like skinny guys, you know what I mean? Like, I feel like there is more proof of concept now than there ever has been, you know, because before we would have been like, these guys are absolute, massive historical outliers. In an order for them to succeed, they have to have something special. That was why I was in on Devonte Smith, by the way,

because I thought he had something special. Even though he's like skin and bones, like bean pull, like, one of the skinniest receivers in the NFL. I was like, this guy's so good in so many other ways that he can succeed at the NFL. He had like the wingspan of like, you know, Ryan Phelps or something. It was like he's just built differently, literally. But now we're seeing guys, and I was a big doubter of Tank Dell, unfortunately,

last year because he was 165 pounds. He was already like 24 years old. He was in, you know, lower level competition. There was all these things that were kind of going against his profile that made me start to doubt it. And then he ended up being incredible. He's like one of the best receivers in the rookie class. And so I'm starting to have less and less doubts and have more open-mindedness about guys that are under-sized.

But that being said, I still think it's a concern. I don't think it's something you can completely ignore either. You know what I mean? I think all things else, everything else equal, like I'd rather have a really big guy. You know what I mean? I have some guy of size. And Tankdale, by the way, got hurt in his rookie year. So, you know, it's one of those things where everything else being equal, you kind of go with the guy that's more size.

I do think going forward, the size profile where a guy's like 6.3.205, something in that range, is going to become more common. Because before, this wasn't really a common size that you'd see a lot of production out of. Like, there's like DJ Chark and then a bunch of other ran. Like that, there's not a lot of guys that were that size that were putting a bunch of stats. And I think that's going to start a change going forward. So on that note, so I mean, Xavier Worthy, the receiver to Texas runs the fastest 40-yard dash of all time. and D.K., you compared him to Zayflowers pre-jafed.

Stylistically, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yes. And Xavier Worthy himself models his game off to Deshawn Jackson. And honestly, the numbers are pretty similar. So what's his size? What's his build? Yeah, so Xavier Worthy is 511, 165. DeShon Jackson's 510, 170.

Craig. So super similar size. Picture this. Xavier Worthy is 20 pounds lighter than John Ross was. 20 pounds. So, like, how much do you weigh? Xavier Worthy is 165. How much do you weigh?

more than 165. It's a recent development, if we're being honest, one that we are attempting to reconcile and correct over the course of the cheese. Biggs hyphids. Maybe it's all the cheese. Bulking season, baby. What are you up on the scale right now? Tilt the camera down.

Let's start to check the camera. My camera is a little bit higher than it usually is. Not an accident, all right? All right. I'm not with your hyphids. You're good. But no, to your point,

what's funny is like, it's like, congrats to Xavier Worthy. I'm breaking the 40-R dash record. But I'm like, would you rather be small and real. fast or just big and fast because then you have Brian Thomas, the receiver at LSU, who did not get any, you know, true hype at all after doing this, but he had a 40-yard dash.

He was a tenth of a second by Xavier Worthy, but if you look at the 10-yard split, it's almost identical. It's like 1.49 seconds through 10 yards for Xavier Worthy versus one, one-hundredth of a second slower. But Brian Thomas weighs 45 more pounds. He's 6-3, 205. He's 45-thous heavier. 45 more pounds.

And he's five inches tall. and I'm like, okay, and he's a 10th and a second slower. He looks skinny, and he's 45 pounds heavier. He carries it well. It's really important to bring up the law of diminishing returns when we talk about 40-yard dash times and player speed, right? Once you're fast, you're fast, right? Brian Thomas is taking the top off of defenses at his frame with his size. He is.

You put Brian Thomas as the number two receiver lined up off the ball away from press. He runs down the seam and he's yanking that safety. That's happening. So while it is objectively insanely sick, that Worthy Red 4-21, I was in the car driving back in Indianapolis, losing my mind, dude. It was so cool. The value, right? What you want the guy to do is stretch the field.

And you're getting that from Thomas. You're getting that from Worthy. You can say with Worthy, oh, like the breakaway speed allows him to be a better player, like in terms of behind the line of scrimmage touches, jet handoffs, bubble screens, even as a returner. But now we're talking about pulling 165 behind a scrimmage, right? We're talking about giving 165 the ball in front of linebackers and safeties. Like, I'm worried about the contact of it.

So there is a law of diminishing returns where like it is way cooler to run 4-2-1, then it's run 4-3-9. However, once you're getting into the four-threes from you, you're doing the job I'd like for you to do. So, like, the idea like, oh, where are these times going to bump them up around? I don't buy that personally. Also, just reading the list of guys who had the best 40,

even if we just, I'll just read the first rounders, because even if you're going to say, we'll read first and second rounders. John Ross, like in the most fastest 40-yard dashes ever in down. John Ross didn't do anything. Dante Stallworth, he was pretty good. Henry Ruggs, I mean, obviously, that's a crazy situation,

but he didn't really do anything beforehand. Then you have Darius Hayward Bay for the Raiders who was in the NFL as a deep threat forever and didn't really do anything as a significant number one receiver. Santana Moss, he was sick. Will Fuller, you know, went healthy. But that's the thing.

These guys are race cars. Like, they're like Formula One. They're incredibly fragile and they're not necessarily like the lead thing. And so I look at this list. They're just like midlife crisis picks from a GM. You know, it's like your dad getting a Corvette when he's 50.

That's great. That's great. Also, by the way, this is something that I don't know if it got discussed a ton on the broadcast, but like Xavier Worthy was very, very, very inefficient on deep falls this last year. Now, part of that could be the quarterback not being all that good, which is, I think, a concern. But like his main role, and the reason I compared him to Zay Flowers is when you put on the tape, like Solek was alluding to, he was really, really good at picking up yards after the catch, being elusive on short and intermediate plays, like the jet sweeps,

the screens, all that stuff. Like, Xavier Worthy, I'm looking at per PFF. He had six catches of more than 20 yards last year. So he wasn't like some incredibly dangerous deep threat, which to me is like a little bit of a concern, especially if you're really like buying into the idea that he's going to, you know, like be that type of role on your team going forward. So here's my question,

because it's not just the 40-yard dash in size. It's also about the 40-yard dash and the concept of speed itself. And what does that mean? because the other one I want to ask you about, is Keon Coleman, receiver to Florida State. Keon Coleman ran the second slowest 40-yard dash of all the receivers in the combine this year.

Kean Coleman ran a 461, 40-yard dash. I love it. Give me him. D.K. famously thinks he could get Craig to a four or nine. Around there. Yeah. We're basically saying the gap of speed between Brian Thomas and Keon Coleman is the same as Kean Coleman and Craig. I like how not even Craig believes me anymore.

I'm confident. No one's with me. But, so. I want to switch up. it to Austin. I think Austin Gale can run a 40 and 499. Maybe that's his heart to it, yes. So 4-6-1, there's the thing. So, I mean,

a lot of people compare Keon Coleman, Alan Robinson, because, you know, Kean Coleman has size speed, contested catch, but here's my question. Kean Coleman also had the fastest time of all the receivers running the gauntlet drill, that drill of catching passes on air. While he was running, catching the passes, Keon Coleman was going the fastest of any of the receivers.

To that point, I don't know if anyone brought this up. Are they told to run as fast as they can? I was just going to ask that. I don't think they're told that. I think they're just like, go catch a bunch of passes and see how you do moving. Like the idea of like,

are they told run as fast as they can? People don't run routes as fast as they can in the NFL, right? You're running at tempo. You're running two spaces with time. Like, they are running live routes. The objective is to run routes that look great to NFL scouts.

So if you have the ability to be running scouts at high speed, you better be showing that. For a perspective, this stat flashed last year for Puka Nakua, right? Who Nukua ran like an average 40 time, but in the Gondon,

which is the drill where the receiver runs sideline to sideline and catches five balls on the move. Nukuah had the fastest MPH at that time. And so we don't yet really know if this matters. But what we do know is that a guy last year went the fifth round of that played great, showed the ability of the combine to like run live routes, catch balls moving at a high speed, right? And we don't have college tracking data with chips. I'm fairly certain teams don't have that. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

So this is a useful thing to get here at the end of the combine. I think they may. I think there is some data out there and there's also people that track it. I think I think college teams have it. I'm not sure if NFL teams get it. When you watch the guys that, when you guys watch the tape though,

did you think Keon Coleman's slow? I mean, if you go back to the wide receiver pod that we did, I was given Keon Coleman. And in my description, I called him a five-play player. And I was like, you watch for five players,

like, oh yeah, big guys aren't supposed to move like this. Like when Keonan ran the 4-6-4, I was so ready to be like, you know, bad time. I see it, I get it, don't care. Like my eyes told me, this guy moves weird for a 220-pounder.

And then all this GPS data came out and I was like, oh, baby, narratives, we're good. I have evidence. I've got data. We're chilling. I think the bottom line is that I'm not trying to poo-poo the fact that he ran the gauntlet really fast because at the end of the day, he was running 20 miles an hour and he looks smooth as hell catching all those passes. So that's like the important thing.

Like, he is a natural catcher of the football. That's like one of the best parts about him. So the poop stuff actually, I think, yes, Keith- Kim Kohn-Kolon. Like, he just looks natural running and catching the football, which, again, that's what we're doing. That's the actual point here. And so I agree, like, to come full circle, I'm not trying to say that that doesn't mean anything. I just thought, like, the more important thing is how smooth he looked doing that, running 20 miles an hour, which, by the way, is very fast. Like, you know, 20 miles an hour is, is really good. So, but yeah, again, he's kind of a confusing one. I know I, it reminded me of like, the D.K. Metcalf thing, couple years ago when he ran the 40 and like 4.3 something and then he did... 4.33 at 228. Brother, I can take you to where in the Indiana Convention Center, I was

when I watched that happen. But then an hour later of it was like, I'm out, because he like turns like a battleship or whatever. You know what I mean? I didn't care, not even once. So, but like the swing of emotions was similar, I felt like in this combine

where everybody was like, oh, Keogne-Cobin, 4-6-1, I'm out. And then they saw him run the gauntlet. They're like, I'm back. Let's do this. You know how they have different spandex outfits every year for the players? Yeah, yeah.

I could draw you the outfit from the D.K. Metcalf Combine from memory. Dude, I promise you. It's like purple and orange got these bridges on it. That's when I fell in love. So cool. I also still think that we need

the Patrick Mahomes rule, which is we need someone to be chasing them because I swear like these guys just get faster with the chasing things. All of these metrics should just come from in-game performances. Everything should just be tracked in the game. The Combine.

You can just watch them do it live. All right, Big Brother. Craig said chip them. Yeah, that's true. The campus, gun to the little chip gun to the back and the neck. Elon, let's get Elon on that. Pub that GPS in there. Just put an Apple Watch on these guys.

Yeah. They are going to do that eventually. I feel like over the years, that's going to slowly start to happen. But the problem is you don't have 20, 30 years of data to compare, like, the metrics to. And that's, I think, why these tests are still relevant. But that shouldn't stop you from advancing and progressing, you know, like, well, we didn't used to have it. You didn't know what they're doing.

They're doing. I was sitting at the, I was sitting at the combat in the Indianapolis, Lucasoel Stadium next to a, like a column, like a Roman phalanx of scouts from like 30 different teams. And they were like sitting there. Hyphitz just said. Is it phalanx? It's definitely phalanx, but I'm not going to pick on Hyphus for not knowing how to pronounce it.

It is objectively an archaic Greek word. I'm not 100% sure, so I'm going to let that one slide. But I think it's phelix. All right, you said Ryan Phelps earlier. I let that one slide. You did say Ryan Phelps? And I was like, who's Ryan Phelps? Did he mean Michael Phelps?

He meant Ryan Locti and Michael Phelps. He confused him in his head. I let that go. I'm sorry, I can't say Falings. I'm giving hyphids a strong pass on Phelix. That's a tough one. We just had to mention. It bothered me that D.

Well, I'm not sure, but I'll let this one slide. I'm like, no, man. That's ridiculous. Just let it go. Anyway. It's still funny. But my, yes, it is. But I remember what I say.

Oh, but dude, all the scouts were just in unison. I've never seen human behavior like this in my life. All sitting there worthlessly, lasered eye, like raising their hands, like 50 people. Up and down. You could just hand timing the stopwatches. Boop. When they start. Boop.

When they stopped. And so, mind you, this is all done with lasers for real. And I'm all, and they're all, but you can hear the timer stop. and start so I could hear when they weren't in unison. And all I wanted to do is start staring at the scouts and trying to do my own timing on the scouts of like which ones were quickest on the gun or not. And I wanted to rank the scouts. Yeah.

But anyway, all that's to say, you're right about the player tracking and all this. But I guess as stupid as the question as this is, if Brian Thomas ran a 4-3 and Kean Coleman ran a 4-6, I feel like in three years we might just be like, yeah, Kean Coleman, better deep third than Brian Thomas. I mean, yeah, like just, you know, because I think a lot of people sometimes make fun of like data nerds and people that are just like, oh, yeah, my data says this. And then everyone's like, look at the tape, watch how he plays. But there is actually like a negative correlation in terms of fantasy points and 40 time at

receiver. Yeah, because the guys who can't run fast are good at getting open. You know, who's a good example of this? Mike Evans ran a 453 at the 40R dash. Mike Evans is what, 31? Mike Evans has got a contract extension for the bucks for, let me check here, a chillion Devante Adams ran a four or five. Devandre Hopkins was like five.

Mike Evans did not. Mike Evans signed for $62 million, which is only three quarters of what the Broncos are giving Russell Wilson to leave. Call me when you beat the Russell Wilson dead calf. Oh my God. Yeah. No, but so Mike Evans resigned the bucks for two years for $52 million contract. It's $35 million guaranteed.

We'll see what the exact deal is. But other way, it's a lot of money. And it's interesting because I think it's an emblematic one of this conversation that you can, I mean, guess what Mike Evans is a deep threat? And then two, the overall, all these free agent wide receivers are not leaving new teams. Mike Evans is back with Tampa Bay. T. Higgins, I think, will stay with Cincinnati in the franchise tag.

Brandon Ayuk, I think, is going to stay at San Francisco. So boring. Michael Gibbons's not going to leave the Colts. Well, this is what always happens. But here's why. It's because all these receivers are really good. And this is what we're talking about. Like, why would you give up a first round pick to give Brandon Ayyuk $29 million a year

when you could just not do that and get Keon Coleman early in the second round and pay him like not that. So I think that's a role what's happening. But then couldn't you just say, why would the Niners keep them? Why would the Bengals keep them then? If you could just get a cheaper version? What are you going to get back? What are you going to get back?

I mean, that is to an extent with the Niners. I mean, that's what the Vikings did, right? They traded Stefan Diggs and they drafted Justin Jefferson. The Niners did that a defensive tackle. They traded away DeForest Buckner of the Colts. Same offseason, they took Javan Kinlaw, who hasn't been that good. To point being, I think they... It could be a boat.

Yeah, it could be a boat. But they're close enough to a Super Bowl. They don't want to get rid of Ayuk for a third. I just think no one wants to give him a first, and they're like, all right, screw it. You don't think he fetches a first? Was that a report? Ayyuk? I'm saying I think teams are looking and I'm like, I don't know.

I mean, it depends where the first is. I would trade a first round paper brand out of tomorrow. Yeah. And I would, I would sleep so like a baby, dude. Sleep number 50. By the way, babies, babies, Ben, as you'll find out, they don't sleep great. Okay.

I would sleep like in the phrase is like so long. That's the most wrong phrase there is. Is that because they sleep a lot? Is that how that came to be? Slept like a baby like got up and started screaming. How many hours a day do babies sleep? D.K. I will sleep like a like a seven year old after a long day of playing

soccer in the yard of his pals. DK. What do you want for me? On the floor? Yeah. Sleep like a drunk 22 year old. Yeah. Yeah. Sleep like I slept the day I got back from Indiana. Cast out like a rock. That's, I think maybe the expression comes from like babies have no care in the world and they're just like there to like eat and hang out. That's it.

I think a baby would trade a first round pick for band I yuk. I think we can all agree on that. So easy a baby could do it. Exactly. To that point, though, it's like, yes, because Devante Adams went for a first and his second. I think the Niners are like, yeah, we want two firsts and probably more. And that's probably where it gets to become an issue. You're right that it was wrong in the compensation.

Last, before we get off the comment stuff, I also wanted to mention Amaris Mims, the tackle out of Georgia was ran the greatest combine event of all time. Ben making noise. And he ran. I got out of church. I, 11.30 a.m. Eastern. Check the phone. I saw Marius Mims way in.

And then I told people. about it. Not people who follow the NFL Combine, not Georgia fans. Just the folks that were around. My buddy was like, how was the Combine? How was it combined? I was like, Marius Mims is 6-8, 340 with an 86-inch wing span. Like what? I showed my wife, the

Daniel Jeremiah tweet with the measurements and then she was like, is that a, did someone just have a baby born and those are the measurements? And I was like, first thing, that's insane. Secondly, no, it's more important. It's a merius Mims measuring with the NFL Combine. Six foot eight, 340 pounds. He has the same wingspan as Yonis.

Solex, like the town crier. He's just going out of the building and telling everyone, hear you, hear you. This guy's huge. The three hours of which Ameris Mims ran a 4-3-3 short shuttle with the best three hours of my life. You guys, I just texted you a picture.

Look at this picture I just texted. The photos of Amaris Mims behind all the reporters. He's like going from the interviews on like, you know, the TV sets to the podium. And also the photo of him playing football with all the high schoolers. It genuinely looks like when Gandalf went to the shire. It's out of control.

He's like a foot taller than everybody in the photograph. Craig and I had like a soft take that we didn't really believe it. It was just kind of funny at the Super Bowl last year where we were just like NFL players. Not that big. Not that big. This guy is huge. This guy. I would never want to get on the field with this guy.

He's so huge. I come to Marius Mems to Idris Elbos Heimdahl from the Thor movies. Yes. Heimdoll. God's the gate. Yeah, the guy who has the gate. He's listed as 72575. I'm sure you're a fan of time for Mary's Sims.

That's good. That's actually incredible. For those who missed it, by the way, NFL.com is official combine tracker. Had Amarious Mims as listed as running a 4-3-3-3-short shuttle, which would be one of the fastest times of any offensive lineman in history, and it was done by a 300-40-pound enormous man. And, like, short shuttle is a very predictive metric for quality offensive line play. I was ready to, like, I was ready to get on the spot back of Marius Mim's offensive tackle one.

Like I was ready to lose my mind And then it turns out there was just like a No taking error And it was really McCormick, the guy above Mims in the order Who ran the 43333 And they had to take it off the board And legitimately like the light left my eyes Like there was no reason

Like I had no reason to live for like an hour I was so devastated It's like the Scarlett Johansson Like just devastated meme or whatever She's like crying That was so You're talking about from marriage story? I think so yeah

I think so I can't tell you how bad eyes It's just like, oh, gosh. Short hair, right? If I were a Mariusnoeem's agent, we would spend every single day from now until the Georgia Pro Day working on a shore shuttle.

And I would try to run faster than a 433 and just reignite the world on fire. Oh, I would do anything. Just straight up, Oduenzee it, you know? Just stay out there until you get it. Don't leave until you break it. So other than, I want to know just if you guys have any fun stories

from Indianapolis outside of the Combine, anything else? What's going on out there? Hyphitz, like, who's like, Who's like brother did you run into in the bathroom? Can I tell the Hyfit story or Hyfitz? Do you want to tell the story? I knew there'd be one.

T.K. can tell the story. There's no one Hyfit's story. I mean, if you've ever witnessed Hyfitt's in the wild, he'll go talk to anyone. He's like the greatest and most shameless conversationalist I've ever met in my life. I went up to Jerry Jones and said, nice to see you again. Oh, yeah.

That was the second Hyphitz story. We saw Jerry Jones getting off of his big bus with the big star. on it or whatever and Hifitz goes up to him and goes nice to see you again or nice to meet you again Jerry Jones Hyfitz has never met this man before by the way he's met a trillion people like how's he gonna know he's like 90 years old

I will say genuinely he happened really randomly be behind us entering the media entrance I have no idea what he went in the door and he's an 86 year old man and I'm like I actually would hold his friend I'm surprised his security let you through but like what was your goal were you trying to trick him what did you want him to say in response to that We happen to be discussing getting people to do this two jargons and a lie thing we're doing for the Ringer NFL YouTube channel. Check that out at YouTube. And we literally, the conversation we were having was who should we get to do this for us? And the Jerry Jones was behind us. And I was like, can you imagine. That'd be a good get. So what did he say? Oh, he was pretty nice.

Yeah. You were going through security line. It's like, you know, it's weird. You know, you can't talk to people. I held the door. The first hyphen story and the more. Fun one, I think, was we were hanging out in the lobby of the JW Marriott, which is like where all the teams stay. Lo and behold, guess who walks by the heart and soul of the Philadelphia Eagles, the most important person on that staff, none other than Big Dom. What's his last name? Big Dom. Desandro. Desandro. No, his last name's Dom, first name's big. I made the mistake of telling Hyfitz that he was in the house.

Hyphitz immediately runs over to him with his phone and asks if he can get a selfie with him. He does. but the best part is after he came back for like hyphids do you realize who he was walking with it was Nick Siriani so hyphids what happened we were like hyphids you should have asked Nick Siriani to take the picture

of you and Bob let's put the photo on Spotify we'll put the photo on this episode so if you go it works now I know that I screwed it up before out we'll put the photo on Spotify and you're listening right now that's like the perfect distillation of like like young modern young people of like how they like they would like run up to like Charlie D'Milio and take a cell

even though she's walking with like Oprah and the kid would have no idea. To be clear, I have to say, the professionalism is like really important all this. I would never ask for selfie from like a player, a coach, and he works for a team. Like I would not do that.

Like even the giants. Domresadro works for a team. You know what I mean. You know what I mean. Sort of. But I'm saying like, I don't know what you mean. I think Dombrancher works for a team.

Even Eli Manning, who I watched as a child at this point, I would not ask him for selfie. What I'm saying is the only person in the entire NFL I'm like, he's a meme. I feel like Siriani was just so sad. How dare you reduce him to a meme?

My only regret was that, you know that story of the Midwestern couple who was hiking in England and they came across the queen and her like Butler? And they asked, and they didn't, and they couldn't believe the Butler had met the queen and that they didn't know the queen was the queen. So they were so excited to meet someone who knew the queen. They asked the queen to take a picture of them. And like, they never found out. My only regret was I wish I had asked Nick Seriani to take the picture of me and Big Dog.

That would have been a good bit. I'm so sad. See, that would be a funny bit is you going up to famous people and asking if they could take a photo of you with someone else. That's actually, yeah. High football do it, Craig. Don't put an idea in itself. Have you, uh, Craig, have you ever seen the, uh, there was a local Chicago news station. They went around asking Black Hawk fans what they should do the first overall pick.

And they accidentally bumped into the general manager of the Blackhawks. He's like a really, he's like a really young guy. He's just a young average-looking dude. And they were like, what do you think the Black Hawk should do? And he gave an answer. That's the move right there. That's a good bit. Dude, that's like when Clay Thompson was like randomly on local news talking about

the scaffolding in the city. What are you about all his scaffolding, Clay? And he just gave him her his answer. He's like, I don't know. Yeah, I guess it's kind of annoying. And it actually just said, like, it didn't even acknowledge it was him. Just the bar said, Clay Thompson, NBA player. Local man.

Yes. I, did I tell the Fogo story on here? Oh, yes. Yes. Craig, I'm guessing that to know. So you try to, like, you're trying to hang out a bunch of people in Indy that you don't see all the time. And so we had the ringer team dinner scheduled for Thursday. And then later on, like a couple weeks later, some of my old buddies were like, hey, we're trying to do a dinner like we're doing on Thursday.

As a guys, I don't think I'll be able to make it. Like, I already have a dinner. But they pushed it back. And so like, okay, like their dinner will start at 8. Like, the ringer dinner starts at 630. I'll just do a double dinner tonight. Whatever. It's fine.

Then the ringer dinner was going to be. going to be at one restaurant, the friend dinner at 8 o'clock was going to be at Fogato Chow, Brazilian Steakhouse. If anybody does, now you've ever been to Brazilian Steakhouse. You know, all you can eat Brazilian steakhouse. Pretty good situation. A lot of meat. And they deliver meat to your table. It's a good setup. Well, all you can eat. The ring or dinner on the day of had to get rescheduled, the reservation, had to get moved, had to get reorganized. And the only restaurant that could accommodate us on late notice was Fogonogne Chow. So I walked into a Fogon Chow at like 630 p.m. I sat down at a table.

I sat down at a table and I consumed the buffet and then all you can eat me. And I was heading to eat that much. I knew I was going to be back here. I left that phogel to chat at 750 called my wife. And eight o'clock I walked back in. It's worth noting at 6.30. I paid my bill, which they say, we will give you unlimited food for this amount of money. And I said, yes, here's that amount of money.

Thank you for the unlimited food. I then was placed one table away from where I had previously been placed. had the same waitresses and then gave them the same fee for a second chance at unlimited food in which I had just previously partaken. I'm the first person in history to pay for two entrees at Fogoda Chau

because the whole point is that the entree never ends. And then I left that Fogna Chow around like 9.30. So I spent about three hours in a Fogna Chau, paid for two dinners. I owe the expense one at Big Daddy Spotify. And the other one is just for love of the game. That was my Fogoda Chow. I was just putting in work.

I have foger to chow. I also can't stress enough how much Fogo de Chow is like an auto, like an AI generated restaurant where it has all these components that are in restaurant, but in no order a human being, whenever choose them. Like there's no plates on that, there's a red or green card to bring me food or not. There are no plates. You go to this like weird salad bar. There's a band behind us playing music so loud. I couldn't hear the people to my left and right. The band was not there for my second time. It was a much more enjoyable thing.

Oh my God. The band was there at six o'clock. Why was it so loud? But we realized this you know, so much invention is by accident. The 24-hour Waffle House challenge

has really permeated the culture and to the point where I think Waffle House started to kick people out. And we realized, I think the next level of like last place punishments for fantasy football leagues

goodbye to like 24 hours in a Waffle House every Waffle you have is minus an hour. I think the new one should be six hours in a faux go to chow. You get like to knock off hours by the number of ounces of steak you eat.

Yeah, maybe it's like every ounce of meat sweats that you give off. It's like, I think it's like, I think it's like three hours with the green up. Like that says like three hours with the green flipped. You have only 15 nose, right? And I think, I think that's,

that's how you have to do it. Every time you, you, you flip to red, you have to make that time back up. You flip red as many times you want. We need three cumulative hours with the green up. That's good. How, what kind of music was it? It was a,

acoustic covers of every single song you've ever heard of in your entire life. It was so loud. With no rhyme or reason. So loud. I have a take that. I don't think there should be live music in buildings inside. There should be no live music. Live music should only be outside.

Okay. Well, you live in California. Sometimes we need live music inside. It can be in like a stadium. That's fine. But like in like a small area, no music. Too loud. Yeah, we all agreed with that, Craig.

It was Austin also kept trying to be like, dude, they're not a, band. Two people. He's like, that's a band. Tell them. Were Simon and Garfunkel not a band? They were a band.

I think his point was, well, no, act. It's coming from the mind who brought you the Dintupe popcorn bucket stories.

I don't know. Do you want to do a little obit for Jason Kelsey retiring as an eagle? No, because I'm very sad. And I'm unprepared to speak about that.

Jason, no. I mean, so Kelsey announced his retirement today. His press conference departure of speech was 45. minutes. It was unbelievable. I watched the whole thing. I cried the entire time. My wife is

listening in the other room with no connection to Jason Kelsey. She started tearing up to sharing him talk. He said everybody talked about his family. He talked about where he came from. He talked about being the organization. He talked about Philadelphia. It was beautiful. Kelsey could leave the Eagles tomorrow get signed by the ringer to be an NFL staff writer and knock us all out of jobs, man. He's just a beautiful writer, beautiful speaker, the world of respect for him. So happy's going out on his own terms. Love you, Jason. Come on the pod. It was one of the best retirement speech. He was, yeah, no, it's hard to pay full attention to it and, like, not cry.

The only we could not cry is if you're, like, half watching because it was, like, actually wild how, um, emotionally was. Shout to Jason Kelsey. Some of him became one of the, his, he should get in the Hall fame because he became one of those famous players in the NFL as a lineman. He also made the point that, uh, like he in 2016, like the NFL was kind of, the Eagles were kind of done with him and they were really disappointed with him. And then after that, he had like a really down season.

And like, he barely stayed on the team. Jeff Stanton fought for him. And then he's just been all pro every year since. Like his back half of his career is the part that'll get him in the Hall of Fame. That's something special. It's like Aaron Rogers. Is it? Yeah.

You know how they drafted a quarterback in the first round and then he won two MVPs right after that? Yeah. Oh. No more Jason talking great emotional again. I was listening to one of the two episodes last week that I wasn't on. And I was, to be honest, shocked that you guys both used combs. Ha ha ha. Yeah.

I asked my friends this too. Most people don't use combs. Yeah. The 1950s. That's right. You use a brush. To be clear. Okay.

But the contention was to think, D.K. was like, I don't know. Use your hand. I use my hand. But you, but you have a brush. No, I don't own a brush. Or a comb. No. You don't own a comb or a brush.

No. Are you doing this for a bit? No. Of course he's not. He's normal. I don't have like extremely long. long hair. I don't know. I dry it off with a towel and then you just kind of do it with your hands. If you're going to a wedding, you just use your hands. My own wedding I did with my own hands.

It would be really weird if you, the only time you combed your hair was for your wedding. Because then you don't look like me. Let's try something completely new. If you're going for like a really sharp, neat look, I guess I understand it. But like, I don't know. It's like I'm just going to the office one day. I need to do my hair. Like I'm not, I don't need to brush it and then comb it. It seems like a lot of work. Is this related how you're wearing a hat right now? Messy hair, put on a hat. This is like, this is my hair right now if I don't comb it, right? It all just like flops off to the side.

It looks great. I could do this and just throw a product on it. That doesn't even look bad. You could just run with that. It looks good. I can't hear any of you saying because I think my headphones are up with us. Stop. Whatever comments you might be making it at this time.

I need to use the comb like get the nice line for the comb over and then I can put product on it. Okay. Now that you have your headphones on. Your hair look good. Dude. Yeah, you look amazing. You could have just. No, it's a total mess.

It doesn't look at it at all. From our vantage point, like that look good. I think you could. Thank you, from where I'm sitting, you look freaking 10 out of 10. I love the hair.

I guess what I'm saying is like, I think we should do a poll. Yes. Yeah, Spotify poll. What's the poll? Because what's the question here? Because I think what I'm trying to say is, do you routinely use a comb or brush when you do your hair?

My original question was specifically a comb. Well, that was how I've envisioned it in my head. It was combed. I got really caught up on the hand. I do want to know, do you use an actual instrument to, like brush your hair.

I think what I'm trying to say is, like there are plenty of days where I just use my hand. But sometimes, you know, sometimes, no context, this sounds bad. This conversation,

some days I don't use a Dune tube thing. I just use my hand. No, but, oh yeah, that does. Yeah, don't clip that.

I just use my hand. Only my hand. That's fine. I don't need any other influence. Sometimes I sit on my hand, goes numb. Sometimes I use the off hand. Feels like someone else.

But, you know, if you work out at night, if you shower at night, and you wake up, some people just roll through the day. And on those days, you wake up out of, you tell me you just put on a hat and you just can't show your hair to the world.

Like, what are you saying? Like, if you have bad hair, you can't fix it? Even if I were to do my hair and then wear a hat all day and take my hat off, my hair would be messed up because of the hat. So I would never do my hair before putting a hat on. What I'm saying is maybe you have to put on a hair to go to the office if you have bad hair, if you don't own a comb or a brush it, the hat, God damn it.

So here's, if I see what you're saying, if I wake up in the morning with bedhead and I'm going to go into the office and I've already shower the night before, I just get my hair wet with my hands and then do it. See, I don't know. I have pretty thick hair. If I try to do a, like,

get my hands wet a few times running through my hair, I won't get enough, like, in there to, like, successfully style it. I'll dunk my head in a shower. I'll, like, lean it into the shower. Yeah, like, I got to do a full shower head dunk, and then I'll use the comb to, like, make sure it's laying correctly

and then I'll put product in it. But I will admit, I have, like, obnoxiously thick and unhelpful hair. Oh, fucking cry about it. It's devastating D.K. I just want to point out. We did not bring this up, D.K.

You were the one who decided to throw stones here. I'm just saying you live in a glass house. Look, all I'm saying is I honestly didn't know that many people still use combs. When I picture a comb, it's like a 19, it's a 1950s greaser who carries it

in his back pocket, pulls it out and like puts it through his hair. I didn't know that was still a fucking thing that people do. I love the way D.K. says the word comb. He says it like it's such an archaic thing. He's like, oh, I I didn't know people used combs? Am I saying,

do you say the B? You're literally doing the stepbrothers Pam thing for the word comb. You know what we said the combs? The Roman phalanxes all used combs. Phelings. Phelings. But by the way, I also had this, I have this argument sometimes, it's going to be because Calvin, Calvin, who has

incredible hair, I don't know where he got that. Great hair. He had long hair for a long time. He got license, we had to shave his head. But up until like six months ago, he had, Justin Herberted him. Up until then, he had just long, luscious, curly golden hair. And I was always of the opinion. And I would, I would kind of, we'd do like many arguments, not real arguments. Like, you don't need to comb his hair. Like, it's fine. It's like mess it up when it gets out of shower. It looks great. It has a little bit of volume. She liked to comb it back. And I thought it would turn in. It would look like feathered and weird.

Like a 1970s. This goes back to what Craig was saying. men and women have very different ideas that women's hair should look like. Oh, I don't, I don't think women prefer, like, tightly combed hair. I think they would prefer, like, the messier look is my reading of it. Again, if... Craig's saying, in my experience. Everyone has different hair. If you have really thick hair, I get that you would need a brush.

I don't think in general, like, the, like, Patrick Bateman, like, stockbroker, perfect hair look. But that's not what I use a comb for. Does my hair look like that? Why do you... I feel like you don't need a comb. I feel like I can get my hands dirty, get in there, and I'd create the same product.

Do you use pomade or anything like that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you use any product? What is it just like maple syrup? What do you think keeps up? I use pomade. Medium hold, medium shine, baby. I like low shine, but medium home, but yeah.

Was the maple syrup thing a reference, D.K.? Was that the step-reliadding crashers. Oh, yeah, wedding crashes, right? They're like, oh, we're maple syrup barons or whatever. It's the first quarter, you're throwing up a Hail Mary. Wake up, Count Chocula. All right, let's get out of here. Thank you, DK.

Thank you, Craig. Thank you. Are we doing a poll? Voting the poll. Yeah, we'll figure out what it is. My official poll prediction is that about 35% of men will use comb, 65 don't. My official stance has always been that, like, more people don't use combs than do. But it is not unreasonable that someone would use an own a comb.

Are we going to say routinely? We quit sitting on the fence. I just described my exact opinion. Anyway, vote. Go into the Spotify. Vote the poll. Please vote in the poll. That'll be on Spotify only.

And then also, yeah, that photo from earlier. Thank you to them. I'm going to nifledraft.org.com. Checking out DK's mock draft this week. DK.'s big board, top 50 players, Sulk and I, both have mock drafts in there too. Take you of an emailing or fancy football at gmail.com. Okay.

Also, thank you. Combs. Combs. Combs. Combs. Combs. Colme. Luke Combe.

Thank you, thank you, Daycoma for research help. Thank you, Kai, for this episode. Dan Comber. Oh, Dan Comer. Oh, wow. She nailed it. Jeez. It's sitting right there. I missed it. Thank you, Jack, for help behind the scenes. Thank you, Tucker. Thank you, Lord. Lauren. Thank you. Incubis. Oh, hell yeah. Oh, Incubis. Dude. Remember that? Great song. Thank you. This is sick. It's been a real minute since they've ever listened to one of their songs. I feel I probably haven't heard one of their songs like 20 years. I just almost started singing,

can you take me higher because of the way we ended just out of instinct just sing it again can we can we talk about how Hyfitz was saying welcome to the Rigger Fantasy football show again that was so funny

I had the Yips the person because I was Welcome! Welcome to the Ringer Fantasy football show Highers was like I want to scream but I can't so the only solution is to sound

as tortured as possible sorry but it was just so good. Re-listening back to it. I was like, wow. He was like muzzled trying to yell.

It's either yelling at a full volume or gargling marbles. Those are the only two ways. You can't enjoy the show. Fuck up. Goodbye, everyone. Must be 21 plus and present in select states.

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