The Ringer NFL Show - Ten Preseason Stories That Have Our Attention!

Episode Date: August 28, 2026

Sheil, Billy, and Tom get together to analyze and debate some of the biggest and most interesting topics currently swirling around the NFL media landscape.(00:00) Ten preseason stories that have our attention!(04:12) One-of-one Topps patches for rookies(06:57) Have we reached football broadcast saturation?(09:53) NFL scraps the Pro Bowl(16:55) New NFL rules for suspensions and violations(25:33) What are we hearing?(37:26) New NCAA rules for NFL players(54:53) Preseason revenge game for Tua Tagovailoa?(01:01:09) Browns name Deshaun Watson starter for Week 1(01:12:00) No more 'Hard Knocks' in-season series(01:19:15) NFL and Disney pairing teams with characters(01:21:45) Remembering Dolly Parton and Tim CurryUpgrade Your Performance with Orgain Creatine. Available at Amazon, Costco, Walmart & Whole Foods.The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit https://fanduel.com/playwithaplan to learn more about the resources and helplines.Host: Sheil KapadiaGuests: Tom Pelissero and Billy GilProducer: Chris SuttonVideo Editor: Stefano SanchezProduction Supervision: Conor Nevins and Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Ringer NFL show. I'm your host, Shield Capadia. We've got 10 categories, stories, topics that have our attention here in late August. Billy Gill came up with the list. He surprised us. It's me and Tom Pelliserra, but we get into a bunch of stuff happening around the NFL. It really goes all over the place. Lots of fun. So let's take a break. We'll come back with Tom and Billy and get started. This episode of the Ringer NFL show is presented by organ. Organic creatine helps improve muscle size, strength, and power when combined with a regular exercise and weight training routine. Plus, it's certified with informed choice, which means it's tested for prohibited substances in sports. Upgrade your performance with organ creatine, available at Amazon, Costco, Walmart, and Whole Foods.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. this product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. All right, we are back here on the Ringer NFL show with Tom Pelliserro and Billy Gill. Tom, I thought we had an idea for the pod. We're going to do 10 most fascinating players, people, coaches in the NFL. We thought we'd let Billy come up with the list. You and I would react. But because he's Billy, there may be a little curveball here.

So he's going to kind of explain the pod to us. How are you feeling about this, Tom? I'm just quickly realizing that Billy is basically the Joker of this podcast. Does he look like a guy with a plan? No matter what, it's just sewing chaos and we'll react, but I love it. I love a good, completely blind hour of NFL talk. So let's go, Billy. Wait, which Joker are we thinking here?

That's the Heath Ledger one. Yes. Yeah, but could be Joaquin Phoenix. I don't know which one we're thinking. No, that line is from Dark Night Rises. It's him sitting bedside in the hospital. Okay, there you go. We're off to a confusing start, but the pod's going to be good.

So stay tuned right here. All right, Billy. So here we go. You've got some type of game, some type of categories. You're coming up with 10. Tom and I are going to react. It was nice for us because we didn't really have to do any prep because it was in your hand. So lead us off here.

What do we got? I kind of noticed that. I was wondering if this was some sort of hazing ritual where it's like, why don't you like just come up with all of this stuff and we'll react? I was like, hold on a second. Like, I was like, this is great. They trust me. They're handing over the wheels.

Like, finally, we're building some rapport here, some chemistry, some team building. And then, like, halfway through, I realized, like, no, they're just dumping all of the work on me. Like, I'm the kid doing all the work in the group projects here. Like, what are we doing? So I think I may have misunderstood what the assignment was from you guys. You just wanted names of people. We were just going to talk about people.

What I decided to do Sheel, because we've done this a couple of times here, Tom, is sheel has given me numbers one through 10, and I will give him a number. and he will blindly give me a story to react to, right? But with the blindness of this story, sometimes it could be something that just happened this week or it could be like a Wednesday story and it's a Friday, maybe I missed it in the news thing. So I'd have to kind of play along

and usually I knew what was going on, but there were times that Shields just so plugged in that it was inside stuff. So what I decided was we can do a similar game, but what if we did it sort of like Jeopardy where you have kind of like a topic and you guys could select the topic. So what I did is I selected 10 topics

and I will read you the topics. You could choose the topic and from there I'll give you the information and the question. You ever have seen, you ever like a party with like an adult party and there's like four couples

and like the one guy brings a game and he's going to teach you the game. Now you're like an hour in, people are getting second drinks. It's like, dude, can we just, we'll figure it out. Like let's just play the game. I don't need all the rules.

Just play the game. Let's play the game, Billy. Let's start with one of one, Billy. What have we got? One of one. So, beginning this season, NFL rookies will wear one of one NFL rookie debut patches on their jerseys. After the game, the patch will be removed. It will be inserted into a Tops card, which they will autograph, and then it will go out to the general public.

You have to buy one of those fancy packs. How do you guys feel about this? The new commercialization of the NFL. The NFL has been known to try to, you know, profit as much as they can off of these things. And now they're adding these jersey patches. We've seen this in the MLB before. Do we like this? Do we not? Are you guys collectors? How do we feel about this? I'm curious what the players get out of it. I mean, it kind of seems like a, now listen, there's all kinds of different licensing deals. This is all through fanatics, which has had a

long-standing relationship with the NFLPA. They own tops. Of course, Michael Rubin and company are involved in essentially everything on and off the field that the NFL does. So I'm not surprised that this is happening. I would just be, I would be curious to know, Sheel, how exactly this works. If you're driving, hey, you get to wear this patch on your jersey. It's very special. We're going to take it from the jersey right after you make your debut and then make kids buy more cards to go find it. Like, are the players actually benefiting? I would think if you're, you know, a Jeremiah love, you might want that jersey for posterity and now with like, you know, the outline of where something used to be. Yeah, I'm with you. I don't know if the players get anything out of this. We'll see if they do.

I don't think my kids are going to be asking for these patches. I don't think they're going to be a big hit here. It doesn't sound like a winning idea to me. But when Billy mentioned the commercialization and just kind of the NFL trying to squeeze money, and you know, is their right to do that out of every little corner. I actually had a follow-up question for Tom. That has nothing to do with the problem. But Billy, am I allowed to do that? Yeah, sure. Okay. Tom, I've had this idea for, this theory for a while. And you're going to Australia to cover, that's a Wednesday night game, right, in the U.S.? It is a Thursday night game in the U.S. that is Friday morning 1030 a.m. in Melbourne. Okay. Okay. So I've always had this thought that Sundays, the inventory, and I've said this on the pod before,

the NFL has this inventory, and so much of it is just in these two windows on Sunday. And, you know, you remember the Tuesday night game in Philadelphia. I remember you talking about that with Bill Simmons, there was that. We have the Sunday morning window. They've tested stuff on holidays. Do you think we're close to getting to the point? Because I've been preaching this for a while and it hasn't quite happened where there's just going to be football on a bunch of different windows, a bunch of different days. Maybe they stagger Sunday. Maybe there's a Wednesday night game, rather than just having all these same games on in those two windows on a Sunday. It seems, and I've talked with, you know, league officials about this for, you know, basically the past 15 years.

And they've always been believers that if you, if you saturate it and you put it on every single night of the week, like there's no chance to miss it. If you're a baseball fan, you can tune in any night, any day, and you can find baseball games. The NBA has different packages on different networks and it's every day of the week. NHL, same thing. Like the NFL, and even me is somebody who, you know, lives it and covers it for a living, by Wednesday night, you're kind of like, when's the next game on? You know, like, you have two nights in a row and you're like, all right, you know, I need. I need the football here. That's part of the overall strategy.

You know, the expansion into the international markets is its own thing, because this is all about the hundreds of millions of NFL fans that exist in different countries, people that identify themselves as NFL fans. And essentially, if you look at the biggest, you know, populaces that are NFL fans in different countries, they've gone to every country except for China. By the end of this year, now going to Australia is another step, going to France is another step. They're trying to spread it up. But in terms of the days of the week, they've always wanted to have some gaps.

What they're trying to do is fill in. All right, one of those other days that a lot of people are home and maybe you have big groups and you need something on. Well, Friday, Black Friday football became a thing a couple of years ago. Let's put one there. This year on Netflix, we've got Packers Rams on Wednesday night the night before Thanksgiving in L.A. The biggest drinking day, biggest bar day of the year. And now, you're going to have to get Netflix on the TVs because we're going to have a massive game there the night before. But no, I don't foresee this being, right?

Now it's Tuesday and Wednesday night football. Yeah, we did that during COVID and there were games every night. That was not really by choice. Those gaps are important to make people crave, all right, we're wrapping up to Thursday. We're ramping up to Sunday and so on. Interesting. I wonder how close they'll try to get to that edge and be like, all right, you know. I think we're pretty close.

Yeah, we're pretty close. Triple header on Thanksgiving, triple header on Christmas. It's close. But if there's any other gaps, and depending on the calendar sinks up, there might be, you others days the week, just like last year when it was Wednesday Christmas football. I mean, that's just kind of the reality, the holidays they're taking over, and I'll never see him giving it back. There you go.

All right, Billy, did you see what I did there? That's a professional move. You see this with interviewees all the time in sports. You're asked one question, but you pivoted to something else that you want to talk about. So I hope you didn't take offense to that. I didn't want to spell it out for the audience. But in just the, you know, we're trying to be honest here. We're trying to build some report.

That's kind of what I did there. but I think we're ready to move on to the next category. Is that right? You pick that category, Sheila. There's no one to blame but yourself on that one. All right, Tom. I would just say this. Maybe there's a reason it was the seventh one that I gave you, you know?

How do we go to number one, Billy? Take us to number one. Sad day or Glad Day. Wow, okay, here's a game that we're going to play. It's called Sad Day or Glad Day. Great job, Tom. You know how to play this game. Sad Day or Glad Day.

Here's the headline. NFL scraps a Pro Bowl. So, beginning in the 2026 season, 88 players, will be named the Pro Bowl class and in late December and no replacement selections will be made. There's going to be no AFC versus NFC games this year.

There's going to be no Pro Bowl games this year. There's just going to be a ceremony ending the long tradition of the Pro Bowl. Now, they have tried different things over the years to make it work because it wasn't exactly competitive, 2013 to 2016. You had legends picking the team, so it wasn't AFC versus NFC.

That didn't really catch on. Then we had the Pro Bowl games where there's drone drops, precision pass and dodgeball contest, Strongest Man, stuff like that. None of that ever worked. In 2021, they had an E Pro Bowl where to no one's surprise, Kyler Murray won the MVP of the E Pro Bowl because, of course, he did. So all of these traditions now die. They no longer exist. Is it a sad day or a glad day for NFL fans? I would say a couple of things here. One, even the Pro Bowl games and people can laugh about it

or the late days of the actual tackle football Pro Bowl, they still outrated practically everything on TV. Like there's a lot of things. If it's something loosely resembling football, you can still sell it, which to me says the product in the NFL's mind and what it looked like had gotten to a point that they couldn't defend putting something on TV that was just an easy moneymaker. Even when you're looking at, you know, seventh alternate Snoop Huntley playing in the Pro Bowl, it's still, it's something that's about football and names you know that are on TV. And yeah, I give the NFL credit for trying to find ways to salvage it. because, you know, once Sean Taylor lit up Brian Moorman, like we just weren't going back. You could go back to watch some of those games. It kind of, it wasn't like it also fell off a cliff, but there was kind of this slow deterioration

of quarterbacks being set on the ground and nobody was going to hit anybody and kind of weak tackle attempts, which begat the entire transition to, okay, what if we did it in this way? What if we had them play Dodge Ball and, like, longest pass or whatever the other categories were? I mean, that's something they were doing back in the 90s with the quarterback club, Sheel. and it was like, you know, if you ever watch those videos, by the way, that's the best. Like, I would still go and watch, like, when it's just like, John Elway and Dan Marino just, like, coming up, like, discus throwers and seeing how far down the field they could throw it in Hawaii.

Like, that was kind of entertaining. But again, you know, the fact that the pool had been diluted of, like, 150 guys calling themselves pro-wall players, like, that was a part of it, too. I don't think the players really wanted to go and play in a game, but if now there's going to be some type of an event, and it's those top 88 that actually get recognized. It's kind of like the expansion of the all pro list, which now there's a little bit of kind of overlap there. So I'll be interested to see how people look at those things here. But listen, if it got bad enough that they decided it wasn't even worth taking the ratings

and putting it on TV, that probably tells you everything you need to know. Yeah, I think it's a glad day. I looked at this. And you're right about, I do remember as a young kid just watching those quarterback competitions and the moving target and they would just be chucking it. I honestly, that's when I was like falling in love with football, but I don't know that they've been able to recreate that. This is great because I think what they're doing, we want the Pro Bowl to have this historical relevance. We're 30 years from now, we're like, how many Pro Bowls did this player make? Okay, how good were they during the course of their career? And to Tom's point, now we look at all pros for that.

That's the thing you look at because the Pro Bowl has just been such a joke where you're like, wait, this guy made the Pro Bowl? I watched him. He was not good at all last year. Why are we doing that? So this is much better where it's going to take some time to catch up. But 50 years from now, if they keep this, it can be like, all right, this guy made for Pro Bowls during his first eight seasons in the NFL. Is he a Hall of Famer? Is he not a Hall of Famer? All that stuff, we will now have a better record for than the actual Pro Bowls.

I didn't like to watch the Pro Bowl. I know what Tom's saying, that the ratings were still good. Billy, here's what we do. Rather than televising the Pro Bowl, let's televise. And this is not an original thought. I've been talking to, you know, Anthony Dubundo, some other people at the ringer. They should be teleplexed. And a little name drop there.

They should televise the joint practices. I mean, just the one-on-ones, you know, last week, it was AJ Brown versus Quinyon Mitchell, fist. It doesn't even have to be the scrimmage part if the coaches are paranoid about that. Just great players going up against each other one-on-one. I think, Billy, that would do big numbers. By the way, quick side note to that, since we're talking about those 1990s quarterback competitions, am I the only one who had the, I can remember exactly what the name of it was, but it was that game on the Nintendo Game Boy,

and it was like you could play with the different quarterbacks. There was like the accuracy throwing it like a, you know, like where you have the bow and arrow, like throwing at that type of a target. They had all these games that were built into it. And this is all, like, it's a long story. It's because a bunch of the top quarterbacks opted out of the NFLPA licensing agreements in like the early 90s,

which is why if you played Techno Bowl and you're playing with QB bills instead of Jim Kelly, and you're like, why is that? Because those guys opted out and did their own licensing deal. I can remember spending so many hours, so many long car rides. I don't know if they're, I mean, I guess it's now just iPhones, right? Like, what the equivalent would be of the Game Boy? Like, if you were going on a, you know, road trip to, like, Mount Rushmore with your parents and you didn't have a Game Boy, I don't know what you would do in the Toyota Previa for eight hours, you know?

Like, that was just a core, core memory for me. Stare out the window, Billy, right? That's all you had. You played a license, played game maybe. thing where you pick the letters off the signs. Yeah, that's another good one. Was it quarterback club? Was that the game you're talking about?

I believe quarterback club is what it was called. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't know, if you have it in front of you, you can read off the various competition. But that's what it was, is it was all those events that you would see at like two in the morning on ESPN from Hawaii, and they would put that into a video game. I'm a little mad now, Billy, at my parents, you know?

I was stuck with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They had, like, a sports obsessed kid. I didn't even know this game existed. What's up with that? All right. Well, it's never too late to get a game, boy, shield. Okay. All right. Now it's the Switch. The Switch is also very popular. Yeah. Mm-hmm. I never seen any one with the Switch.

I think that one worked. Really? Took us places you were, didn't even know we were going to go. You don't, you know, there's a Mario card in your house or anything like that, Mario Party? Do have Mario Kart still. There's a Nintendo Wii somewhere in this house that occasionally gets fired up. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Ready for your next topic, guys? Let's do it.

I like what Tom did there. We just pick a number, or are you going to pick the number? I'm just going to go in order now. It seems like you guys aren't feeling this game, so we're just going to borrify it. Yeah, that's fine. You didn't want to start out of that jersey patch, huh? Billy, that was a slight mistake there. I thought we'd build up to the jersey patch.

I mean, honestly, I'm just happy that we didn't start by. You said we were picky. I'm trying to play by your rules. It's true. It's true. You know, and if I'm going to be honest with you, I said this could be a dangerous game, so let me leave off the 49ers owner in that story from the, this because if we get that way there, how are we going to end up in that situation?

So, all right, next one. NFL rebates. What can this be about? In a joint statement released earlier this week by the NFL and the NFLPA, it was announced this season there will be an emphasis on five rules affecting player safety. Any player who commits three of these five offenses across any category during the season will receive a one game suspension. And here things kind of get tricky.

Players who commit only one violation will receive. see 50% of their fine back at the end of the season. Violations in these categories will carry forward to subsequent seasons, but all players will begin with a clean slate. And then later on, we find in the article, in addition, players who commit a single offense in eligible categories will now have the entire amount of fine return back to them at the end of the season. So it seems as though we're emphasizing five rules.

Hip drop tackle, horse collar tackle, launching, hit on the defenseless player and blindside block, and depending on whether or not it, It was intentional. If you're a multi-time offender of these rules, if you offend the rules across various categories, you could get some money back. You could get no money back. If you're facing a suspension,

they're also going to force your coach to go with you to the hearing so that the coach takes on some of the blame for your bad behavior. And these will carry over from year to year. So how do we feel about this? How do we feel about fines being given back to you? Because we've always been told, fine money goes to charity.

So if you're a good boy, now money's being taken away from charity. theory. Well, first of all, Billy, thank you for crediting me for breaking that story through Netflix in the ringer yesterday. I'm glad you're paying attention to the content that we're creating out there. Listen, this came out of months of discussions between the NFL and the NFL PA. Basically, boil down to this. The NFL's goal was to have an actual agreement saying, yes, we can suspend repeat offenders. They've always had that ability, but obviously there were a lot of fights. Players can still, by the way, they can still appeal. So it's not like it's automatic

and your appeal rights go away. They can still appeal, but there was always fights about, you know, an Aziz Al Shire in 2024. Last year was Frankie Louvo. Those are the only two players in the last two years that this three strikes in your out would have applied to, where you get suspended. But this gives them clear-cut agreement, hey, these are the five most dangerous fouls, the ones most likely to cause injury. And if you get fined three times and you lose your appeal on those, you're going to get suspended. And that's one of those things that as much as the Union protects the rights of its players, you know, it's, it's your wages, it's your working conditions. Nobody's going to sit there and defend and go, all right, a player who repeatedly,

you have three horse callers a year or three hip drops like it was with Frankie Louvo, well, you should be able to get off scot free. No, it was, all right, those guys need to be punished. What the NFLPA wanted was, we got to relieve the financial burden on all the other players, because the vast majority of fines that are handed out to players for player safety categories were one-time offenders. Most guys, it's a one-time thing, but you might be losing 10 grand, 20 grand, depending on what the foul is.

If this had been in place in recent years, it would have been an average of about $1.7 million back to players. Just because all these guys who had a single foul, you get either 50% of your money back for this is one of those five major categories, or for some of those other ones like roughing the passer, use of helmet that are a little bit harder to control because they're football plays. those ones you would get 100% of your money back if you're a one-time offender.

So it makes sense in that regard. The other piece of this too, yes, there's the coach accountability. That's a big thing. The union wanted that. Like, hey, if a guy's got a bad technique, who's teaching the technique? Why is he not making that play better?

Let's bring the coach and the coordinator in so they can be educated on like, what can we do to try to keep this guy from getting suspended? But the other piece of it that I think is important here is if you were previously in repeat offender category, You had to go two full years, 34 games without an infraction, without a fine, to exit, repeat, offender territory. Now, if you have just a hypothetical, let's say you have two points, right, in the three-point system, you have two horse-collar tackles in a year. At the end of the season, if you don't get a third, you drop back to one entering the following season.

Even somebody who gets suspended for it, if they don't have another one the rest of the year, they enter the following season with two. if they get through that season, they go back down to zero and they're completely out of the program. So if you adjust your behavior, if you have better technique, if you're not putting your fellow players in danger, you have the opportunity to not be one bad hit away from a suspension forever. We'll see it's on a one-year trial basis. The NFLPA wants to make sure that the NFL is not going to now take this as license to start finding more guys and then suspending them and you've got a rash of suspensions.

And the NFL is going to want to see like, all right, this is a one-time coupon you can use. If we start seeing a huge uptick in these illegal follow-up because guys are like, hey, I can get away with it once, then they're going to have some things to say about it. But the full intention is this is going to be a long-term thing. It's also a common-sense solution where both sides wanted something that probably, even though it doesn't impact the collective bargaining negotiations that are coming up in the following years, it at least shows like, hey, when everybody looks at this and goes, the system doesn't really make a lot of sense. Let's make a deal. At least show the sides could get together and get something done that everybody seems to be happy with. Yeah, part of me, you know, my initial instinct was that, okay, like everything else in the NFL, this is a bit unnecessarily complicated. But as Tom explained it there, as he went through it, I'm like, okay, that actually does make sense.

Because what's always the complaint from players? It's like, we're moving at full speed. It was a one-time thing. And then the announcers are going, you try to change how you're, you know, tackling that guy when you're trying to bring down Derek Henry in the open field. So now that it's like, all right, it's a one-time thing. We understand football. It's hard to control all those things. Every single snap you play in a given season.

And to Tom's point, you can still appeal it. So if you feel like it was unfair, you can still win that appeal and they can look at it. It's not just one official on the field determining whether you get that strike or not. So that makes a lot of sense to me. And then the repeat offenders, I mean, most players would be for that, where it's like, this guy is crazy out there. This guy, like Tom said, it only applies to maybe a couple of guys over the last couple of years. but they're looking at that, especially offensive players.

You're looking at Azizal Shire, and they're probably like, yeah, that guy, you need to do something about the way that guy plays because it's putting my livelihood and my career at risk. So I think it makes sense, Billy. Where do you come down on this now that you've done all the research on Tom's reporting? I mean, I'm very happy and glad that Tom broke this news. I'm sorry that it didn't appropriately credit you for the news breaking. I think that to his point, like it does open up a path for.

potential, you know, gaming the system saying like, I can get one of these in here and there won't be too many consequences. I did also, as I told you, I was kind of confused by the situation. We start with a clean slate. Money can be given back. You might get some of this. You might get some of that. You're now telling us that you can go from three to two if you're good at the end of the year. So it's a fun experiment. I mean, look, player safety has been a long an issue of the NFL. We saw reports come out earlier this week that was testing players that have passed away and CT and all that stuff. Obviously, there's things that need to be done to clean up the safety. So, you know, kudos to the NFL for trying a new approach to maybe incentivize players because I guess the fines

weren't enough to not, you know, continue these dirty hits and dirty plays intentionally or not intentionally. All right. So Billy is coming out anti-charity. I don't know where Tom came out on that. I, for one, maybe I'm the only one at the Ringer NFL show. I believe giving to charity and helping these causes is important. But listen, we all don't have to agree on everything. She'll pledge before this episode to donate all of his earnings from today's episode to charity, which is nice. Thank you, Sheel.

Correct. Absolutely. All right, the human fun. All right, let's take a break. We'll come back with more of Billy's categories on the Ringer NFL show. The Ringer NFL show is brought to you by Fandul before the football season begins.

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18 plus DC or Wyoming. Gambling problem, call 1-800-Gampler. Call 1-888-9-77-7-7 or visit at CCPg.org slash chat in Connecticut. All right, we are back here on the ringer NFL show. I think we've done three. Is that correct? Yeah, we've done three. How do we feel about this so far? It definitely got off to a rough start.

We're not going to mince words on that whatsoever. I think it's going great. I think now we're getting rolling. I think you just keep going right on down the list there, Billy. That's the new approach. And we're just going down the list. I'll give you the name of the category. It doesn't even matter anymore because I'm just going in order.

But Tom, I think you're going to like this one. All right. This one's a category called, what are we hearing? And here's how this game works. I'm going to give you the name of a player who is a free agent, and we're going to discuss what we're hearing. So let's start off with former Detroit Lions offensive tackle, Taylor Decker. What are we hearing?

It's been quiet on Taylor Decker, but there are teams with left tackle needs. The Bears who saw him forever are still trying to figure out their left tackle position. Obviously, Washington with losing Laramie Tunsell. You know, every team needs a swing tackle at minimum, but Taylor Decker is a long time starter. He's had a lot of injury issues down the stretch last season. You know, he got ill before the Christmas game that they lost to the Vikings. But still, you know, a guy who can function at a high level.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if we see him if he chooses to play this season. But it's also a matter of, you know, what's the price point? What's the right spot? There's a bunch of veterans sitting out there right now, Billy, that I would say, you know, all of them right now. You're kind of just going, all right, if they really wanted the sign, they could sign, but not everybody wants to do what some of these veterans have done over the past week. And just saying, screw it, I'll take the minimum right now because I just want to play. Well, how many of the free agents are just doing the whole, I want to avoid as much camp as possible?

Like, I'll get back there eventually. Like, I want to play. I don't want to sit up the year. I have my options, but I'm going to take my time to not do this stuff I don't want to do. I mean, there's certainly, you know, guys who are in that category. But I think that a lot of times, I mean, listen, if you're talking about these veteran players, there's still a bunch of when we saw, you know, Vaughn Miller came in and signed for, I think it was like $5.5 million. So Daria Smith came back for $6 million. Guys like Darren came back and took. the minimum. Trevon Diggs took the minimum. These are guys who were like highly paid, if not the highest paid at their position at a certain time. And so there's kind of a recalibration at some point. Stefan Diggs sat out there for a while. Kean and Allen sat out there for a while. Like sometimes there's just kind of a, all right, what do I actually want to do? Because I've made all the money.

This is pennies on the dollar for what I've been making in the past. Like, do I really want to play? You know, does this offer make sense? Or do I just wait until somebody's in a bind and they got to pay me to come back. There's more of that, especially with guys who have gotten paid on a second, if not a third contract, than I think a lot of people realize here. It's not that it's all about the money, but the money is a piece of it here.

And those guys who were taking minimum deals just to get themselves back on the field. Najee Harris took a minimum deal from the Giants. Like those are guys who are just going, you know what, the money's probably not going to get better. If I want to play, I better get in there right now and establish it because if I sit out for several games now and then nothing pops up,

Like all of a sudden, I'm the guy who didn't have a job for half a season, which if you're pushing 30 or over 30, that can kind of be the end. Billy, can I hijack this and do it? What are we hearing to Tom? Yeah. Now, you didn't prep Tom for any of these, right? Okay. Off the cuff.

No, I think that's apparent right now, yes. Okay. Yeah, I was kind of, you know, I thought maybe if it's, you know, specific veteran-free agents like Taylor Decker, you know, we'll work on it, the prep. Maybe, you know, then he can make some calls. Bobby Wagner, what are we hearing? Okay. Well, hold on, hold on.

This one's bad. this one's more interesting, Billy, because this is a, what are we hearing? Bad team ratio. Well, because here's what I'm doing. I'm going through all the preview stuff. All right, which teams do I think are going to be good? What are my official picks going to be?

And Tom, I'm seeing a bunch of teams that I like, where I'm like, man, if they had an edge rusher like Max Crosby, I might pick this team to go to the Super Bowl. And I was just thinking of how weird the whole Max Crosby thing was. He gets traded. He comes back. They're like, no, we're not going to trade him now. And I'm like, wait, why are they not going to trade him now?

just that teams are not willing to give up, you know, anything close to the same draft capital. Is it one of these things where they hold on to them for the first month, see how their season's going? And then a team comes calling at the trade deadline. Do you think he's going to be with the Raiders for the whole season? Because I'm looking at teams like Detroit, Chicago, Dallas. I'm like, these are good teams that, man, if they added Max Crosby, I would be so excited about them. What are we hearing? Billy, that's the category?

Yeah, what are we hearing? What are we hearing, Tom? One thing that I think is important to understand is how close. Mark Davis is with Max. So when Max, after everything that happened, and listen, he was not fully healthy. He was like three months away from being done with his rehab. Everyone knew that.

Baltimore was within its rights to terminate the trade. Many other GMs they spoke to around the league, thought it was BS how they handled it. But again, they're allowed before the trade is actually executed, before there's trade papers, you are allowed to do what they did, even though we very, very rarely see it. When Max came back to Vegas, and from everything I was told, it was very emotional, him getting back with Mark and him seeing his teammates and the people that he still knows around the building, Max wanted and wants to be a raider. And unless he goes to Mark Davis and says, you know what, I want out again, I don't know that there's a great appetite for the Raiders to do it.

One thing you mentioned is absolutely trusial, which is once the trade gets terminated, you had two first-round picks, and that was the high offer for. from anybody in the league, which is why, like, Dallas got priced out because they weren't willing to do both of their ones this year. Realistically, there was no way until he was fully healthy and showed he's Max Crosby again that somebody was going to go, all right, he is still worth the two first-round picks, right? So I think that what you're going to see here is, listen, we'll find out what the Raiders are. Max came back to a vastly different team. All of a sudden, they had spent on a bunch of players on defense. You know, they continued to fortify things in terms of other positions on the field. They made a wide receiver signing and free agency.

see, like, he came back to a different team, and then they get Fernando Mendoza, along with Kirk Cousins. So the team he is returning to is not what they were in 2025. Let's see, maybe they're okay. I'm not going to sit here and go, the Raiders are going to be great, and they're going to come out. They're going to be ahead in an AFC West where I think by any objective measure on paper, you would rank them fourth out of four in that division. But let's say they're okay. I don't know that Max is going to go out of here.

You know, Max always wanted to be a raider. He didn't want to leave, but he was sick of the dysfunction. He was sick of the losing. He was sick of the constant changes. If Clint Kubiak can come in and calm things down, and we did that category last week, where it was, what coach is going to make the most first year impact? I said Clint, just because it's been chaos there.

And Clint, like his dad, is like this. He is absolutely totally flatline, totally chill about everything. And that's just his natural personality. I think that's going to be good for the building. If they're sitting there at 2 and 6, 2 and 7 as we come up on the trade deadline, I'm sure they're going to get calls. They didn't have to make calls in the first place when it came to trading them back in March before they didn't end up doing that.

They got calls from other teams. I think it would be the same thing. If they start losing, you'll see them start to get calls. Is it possible that something could happen before the start of the season? Anything's possible. I mean, any player in the league outside of maybe a couple dozen guys, if somebody offers them two first round picks, that player can be traded. But I wouldn't say that that's the likely scenario here.

I don't think that they, I do not believe that they're. going to trade Max Crosby against his will. He's like, Mark, I want to be a raider. I don't see Mark Davis, as much as he's not interfering right now with what they're doing, football operation. I just don't see them making that trade. I don't see Tom getting involved in saying we're going to trade him against his will. Obviously, he had a lot of frustration at the end of last year, too, with it be made clear to him, they were shutting him down, which looked to the whole world like they were trying to lose those games to Max who wants to play. It wasn't a great situation. But again, everything that's happened, like in Max's world, for what I've been told, this is like the sign from God.

Like, I was meant to be here, happened for a reason. I want to be in this place. They get off to another terrible start. We'll see where we are come November. Right now, I believe Max Crosby is going to be a Raider. Okay. So the scenario would have to be Raider, struggling, Crosby feeling the unhappiness, maybe a little bit more, that I don't have a competitive team again. And then another team that is contention.

Yeah. Or somebody just calls and goes, hey, we will do the two ones. Yeah. And they go to Max being like, hey, what do you want to do? Do you want to go and compete for a title? We're not going to win it here. Or do you want to stay with us? Like, I'm not saying it's completely, I'm not painting this as like a binary.

It's totally up to Max. Like, the Raiders have to do the best thing for the Raiders. But he's Mr. Raider. He's the face of the franchise until Fernando assumes the starting role here. There's more to this in just a normal, you know, we're trading a guy away. Okay. Billy, good category. Let me get Tom's take there on Max Crosby.

Appreciate that. But I think Bobby will play. I think Bobby will be somewhere. It's just a matter of when and where. You know, I don't know that the commanders, you know, are right now planning on him being back there. So it's possible that he's going someplace else. I don't believe that Bobby is done. You know, he could go in the Hall of Fame tomorrow based on where he is.

He's 35, 36 years old. But he can still play. If you look at his tackle numbers, I mean, he'd have like 140 tackles even last year. Like the guy could still play football. I believe he's going to be playing. Janu, it's been really quiet. It really hasn't been a great deal. of interest. Again, there's, there's teams that would bring him in, but John

who's, he's made a lot of money, and he may not need to do this right now. You know, with Tyreek, it was a significant injury. You can go back and look at what I said on TV at the Super Bowl. You know, the reason that it was clear the dolphins were going to release him was because they didn't know when or if he was going to be able to play in 2026. That wasn't just an ACL. That was like a whole knee reconstruction. He said himself in a video not that long ago, you know, he doesn't have the power back in that leg yet. So we'll see. If Tyreak plays, it'd probably be somewhere during the season and maybe ramp him up and try to get something in the playoffs. But it's also possible we just don't see him this year.

He does what O'Dell did when O'Dell member had that awful-looking injury in the Super Bowl where he was the best player on the field for like a quarter and a half or whatever it was. And then all of a sudden his leg is like dangling off. He missed a whole year. Came back in the Ravens gave him $18 million to go play for him. That could be the Tyreek plan. That's still kind of a shifting thing. There's no clear timetable at this point. but if it happens, I don't think it's going to be really in the near term for Tyree.

What was the last one you said, Billy? I forgot the last one. Odell Beckham, you just mentioned him. He's had a good, he's had a good kid. Here's what you had to ask yourself. If you cut him, is any other team going to sign him? He's not subject to waivers. In other words, you could release Odell, bring him back on the practice squad,

elevate him up to three times and save yourself a roster spots. You don't have to put one of your young guys through waivers. I think that Odell will be a part of the team. team. I don't know. I have not talked to Odell. I don't know how he would feel about the practice squad route. Some guys are just against that. And it's like, if you want me on the team, keep me up. But if they can come to him with a plan of like, here's how we're going to get you integrated during the season, you know, I could see that being a scenario here. I mean, John is really fond of him. He's had, I mean, I know he dropped that ball in the preseason game, but like he's had, by all

counts, a really good camp. He still is, you know, as explosive as plenty of guys in the league. We'll see exactly how it plays out. But I do think, going to see Odell most likely with the Giants at some point this year. I just don't know in what capacity or exactly when he's going to be a guy that they're going to be really using on the field. That's wild, Billy. What percentage of our audience do you think even knew that Odell Beckham Jr. is part of the Giants training camp in the year 2026?

I mean, I give our audience huge credit. I feel like they're plugged in on everything. They just know what's going on at all time. It would be a nice ending to his career, right? if he goes back, he plays the Giants, wraps it up there, but I don't know. We'll say. All right, Billy, what do we got?

What's the next category here? All right, I feel like we're picking up steam here. Shield, how do you feel about this so far? Yeah, Tom, how do you feel about this so far? Feeling better? Yeah, feeling great. All right. Well, in a story that was broken to me by Tom Pelliserro.

I don't know if he broke it to everyone. He broke it to me for sure. No takes these backseys. So a memo sent out this week, the NFL informed its teams that any player who returns to college will be prohibited from signing with an NFL team the same season. Now, this has come because the NCAA is kind of a disaster at the moment. They're making up rules as they go. Players are leaving. They're coming back. We have our first situation where two different players, Zavion Harris, who was signed by the Saints

and released, and Dayquan Wright, who was signed by the Eagles released, signed by the Browns released. both are now going back to play for their former coach, Lane Kiffin, at LSU. How do we feel about this? I feel like the players aren't to blame. Maybe you guys feel differently, and this is just a situation where the NCAA has made a mess and now the NFL is having

to react to this. Yeah, I need Tom's explanation on this because I find this to be one of the more confusing things that's happening in anywhere in sports this summer. I can't wrap my head around what's going on. I can't wrap my head around who's supposed to regulate it and what the

future is going to hold. So Tom, like Billy said, you gave him. I don't know if you gave him a personal voice memo or taxed or just said him. Twitter. He shot it out. He showed us the memo essentially. Okay. Where, Tom, get this? There you go, Tom. Explain this to me because I'm very confused. It's a complete mess. And the NCAA has adopted the posture over the past several years that like every matter should be settled in court. You can pick your various fight. You know, take Brennan Sorsby. They could have settled Brennan Sorsby. They could have suspended them. And, you know, agreed to a suspension for, you know, probably close to half the year. And instead they're like, nope, you're not going to play.

And if you want to play, you got to fight us in court. And the NCAA, it would make sense to me if they were winning. But they are losing, repeatedly. Almost every time this goes into court, you lose. So they're not helping matters. You are now, the conferences are having to take matters into their own hands because you have these legal rulings like, the one that restored the eligibility.

Basically, the short version is, players now have been given a fifth year of eligibility. While the players who went to the NFL because they thought they were all out, sued and said, we should have gotten the fifth year. The courts gave an injunction saying, yeah, you can come back. So those couple of players you mentioned,

all right, they're going to go to LSU, for Lane Kiffin, who is not, who was already not a popular figure, by the way, in the NFL. So nobody within the league is surprised. is surprised that like Lane is somehow at the center of this. But now the SEC comes out and says, actually we don't really support this. The Big Ten says, hey, you can't do this.

The NFL is now putting out their own word. And listen, teams were trying to gather information on this over the past week because all of a sudden, like, think about this. All right, the cut down is Sunday. It's 6 p.m. Sunday, which is totally ridiculous. And I won't even get into it the fact that there's preseason games the night before. nobody has time to assess their injuries, do injury settlements. It used to be on Tuesday.

It used to be back in the day, it was like last preseason games, everyone played Thursday, Saturday afternoon cut down. So you have like 36 hours. Then in recent years it was all right, the preseason games end on Saturday. You got until Tuesday. This year, it's the last preseason games are like late at night on Saturday. And then you have to cut down by Sunday afternoon. So anyway, that's a side story. But so his teams are going through this.

And I've had people within the NFL like tell me about. these stories. And it's like, all right, we got two defensive backs, right? We can only keep, let's say, just the making up numbers here, we can only keep five corners on the team. All right, coaches want this guy because he contributes on special teams. This guy's, you know, maybe got more talent, but he doesn't really play teams. So if we're going to cut it down, we want this guy. And the scouts have to go, yeah, but this guy told us he might go back to college. So you now have a thing where you're trying to figure out who do we keep because our guy's going to bail? What happens with the guaranteed money? If we owe guarantees, no NFL team.

has contract language saying, hey, if you go back to college, we don't have to pay you the money because that was never contemplated. The player from the Browns, what's the name, Dayquan Wright, I think? Yeah. Yeah. He, I was told, gave up his guarantees to get out. Because part of what the NFL said was, if you're under an NFL contract, you have to honor that contract. In other words, you're going to have a legal fight with us. If you just say, I'm leaving for a different contract in college, The Browns came to the agreement, hey, we'll release you. We're not going to pay you that extra 25 grand that we owed you. He also got $25,000 signing bonus from the Eagles after the draft,

which I don't know, can they claw that back? That's a whole other untapped world. But so these are all questions that NFL teams are trying to sort through. And also like, I mean, I've had scouts being like, yeah, this coach texted me, who's now on a college staff, be like, hey, can you break down those two rookie runners you've got? And it's like, no, dude. No, I'm not going to give you the information. so you can come take the guy

was going to put on the practice squad so we can come play for you in the SEC like these are real stories that are happening so basically what the NFL did was just say hey all right here's the rules if a guy is a free agent if he gets cut he can go back to college if the rules allow him to which it increasingly

appears that it might not actually happen and all this might be for not and these guys who went back then they're going to play at LSU might end up playing like NAAIA ball somewhere in Wyoming because no one else will let him play but for the NFL teams it's all right if they're cut they can go there if they don't sign with a call team or if they do,

they're a free agent next year. They're not back in the draft. They're free agents like everybody else. But if you cut them, and this is the part that I tweeted out yesterday, if you release a player, you can't have like a weak knot. Hey, we'll let you out,

but you got to come back in January. We want you back on the team. If the NFL finds out that there is a agreement or even an understanding, anything undisclosed, where that player is going to go back to the team, then that team can lose draft picks. They can be fined.

there are all kinds of different ramifications there. And the same thing, if you go back to college, you can't come back up this season. I mean, that's the image I had was, let's say, to give an example, Garrett Nussmeyer, I don't think he's getting cut by the chief. Let's say he did, right? Garrett Nussmeier, in this environment,

could go, hang on, I can make the rookie minimum in Kansas City as the second, third string quarterback, or I go make $5 million right now to go to, like, Texas Tech. I might go for the $5 million. And then, all right, it's October. And now an NFL team loses their quarterback. And the chiefs lose. Mahomes are like, Garrett, come back up.

We'll pay you. The NFL didn't want to have it be like a minor league type of a system. These are all like, I can't even believe we're having these conversations. But I've had them with all these people within the league who are dealing with this stuff on a daily basis. In the end, it might end up being a big nothing burger if all the conferences, say like NCAA, you're a bunch of morons. Why are you going to court? We're just not going to allow this to happen.

it might all end up all being for not other than those players who already went in the transfer portal and got themselves cut from NFL teams. But right now it is chaotic because we are three days away from the cutdown deadline and normally it would be all right if my guy clears waivers, we want you back on the practice squad. That player might now go, actually, you know,

University of Nevada wants me on their team. I might go do that. It's just it's this dynamic the NFL has never really had to deal with before. How sick is the NFL getting kind of this dysfunctional in NCAA because you mentioned Soresby. So Sorsby, for those who aren't aware, had a whole, basically he had a gambling scandal in college. And then Texas Tech brought him in and he was ineligible to play.

But they found a lawyer, like a judge, like you're saying, there's always going to be a court where you can find a judge who's going to say, you know what, this player is eligible for college. And because the NCAA doesn't seem to have any control, they just go back. But this caused his whole stir in the NCAA. So then eventually his lawyer said, you know what, he's not going to play this year.

Texas Tech gave up pretending that they were the victims. And he declared for a supplemental draft that the NFL had not announced. And then the NFL had to come out and say, hold on a second. There's no supplemental draft. You're declaring for something that doesn't exist right now. We're not holding one of those this year. And you're not eligible. So this is at least the second major issue that the NFL's had to address that the NCAA is just

kind of letting go this offseason. 100%. I mean, if you remember with Soresby, yeah, the NCAA, like, all right, he lost his eligibility, the school ruled him eligible. The NCAA said he was ineligible. he goes to a former district court judge and gets an injunction that says he can play. And then all of a sudden you have multiple state attorney generals involved. You have conference.

You have other schools within the conference saying we're not going to play and schedule Texas Tech in anything. I mean, and then it all ends, as you said with eventually Texas Tech goes, we're not going to win. Like they're going to find a way to yank him off the field. We just can't keep fighting like this. So he thinks, all right, now I'm ineligible. I'm dropping my lawsuit. I'm going to go into the NFL. and the NFL does something that really doesn't happen,

which is they just go, actually, we're not going to have a supplemental draft. We're just not going to do it. So Brendan Sorsby is going to be down in Texas this year, basically studying NFL playbooks and getting himself ready for the 2027 pre-draft process. He is eligible to play in the senior bowl, which would be really interesting to see if Drew Fadionjean company,

having played in that All-Star game is a one-time showcase. You want to talk about something that'll bring eyeballs to that game, putting Sorsby in it, I would certainly do that. But, you know, there's a bunch of players who are, and Sorsby's not a victim. I said this many times, he had serious issues. At what point it became a compulsion or an addiction that became a problem as opposed to him making poor choices.

Like, that's something that is honestly, it's like it's a medical diagnosis. Like we can't really get into that. But he made the choices ultimately that led to it. But he still was caught up in this broader game where everything is such a mess at the college level. And the NFL is having to be reactive to a certain degree because the last thing they want to do, they've always had this kind of understanding with the NCAA. Like where does the whole, you have to be three years removed from high school to enter the NFL

draft come from? It's a joint agreement with the NFL and the NCAA because NFL teams don't want 19-year-olds coming in and getting the ship kicked out of them. Like they want you to have time to actually physically develop before you're coming into the NFL. So they've always worked together. But now that the NCAA has lost all control over everything to the point that like, I wouldn't be shocked if by, you know, a year from now, there's just an SEC Big Ten super conference with like

40 teams and everybody else, ACC, Big 12, or do whatever you want, but like, you're not part of this. And every kid in America is going to want to go to those schools because they got the most money. They're playing the biggest games. They're on the biggest stage. And everybody else is like in a secondary tier. Like, that's absolutely what could happen because the NCAA has no control. And again, the legal strategy, I'm not a lawyer, but I would say repeatedly getting your head beat in in the legal process is probably not a good way to calm a massive dysfunction like they currently haven't called. Well, kind of to add to your point of what you're saying too about like, you know,

there could be super conferences and everything. What ends up happening with this story of the players trying to go back to the NCAA is now the individual conferences are having their own votes voting that they cannot come back to the NCAA. So now conferences themselves are banning players from going from the NFL back to college, even though they've really only played like preseason games or training. They're not really NFL players, but even the conferences aren't aligned, creating more dysfunction, while Lane Kiffin's just like, we'll take anyone.

Like whoever you watches, come down here, LSU, we got spots. We got a spot for you. Exactly right. You know, the team content part of my brain, when Tom was describing the Nussmeyer thing, I'm like, now that would be interesting. He goes to college, he's playing, and then a quarterback gets injured. It's mid-October. A team's like, man, he looks pretty good there.

And then he just jumps up to the NFL. That college team gets screwed. So that's not going to happen, but from like a podcaster perspective, I got to admit. I can't believe we haven't seen Pavia file another lawsuit to try to get. Remember, he won the lawsuit a year ago to get the fourth year because he had two Jucco years. Well, now, by the same exact logic, why wouldn't he get a fifth NCAA year? If the Juko years don't count, he's not on an NFL team right now. He would be free, again, depending on what the rules are.

Like, I don't see an offer coming from in the NFL form. You tell me, Diego Pavia was the Heisman runner up last year? can't get $5 million, like to go even go back to Vanderbilt? Right now, like, these are, I mean, listen, and in no way am I saying, like, guys shouldn't make all the money that they can? Like, that part of it is great. Like, players should be going and getting all the money that they can, but you have to have a set of rules and a set of established guidelines and what you can't have.

I mean, it would be like, the equivalent, honestly, would be if the NFL was just losing over and over in court, and then, like, you know, the NFC North was like, actually we're going to have different rules. Like what? What are we doing here? Like that's the equivalent thing. Like you need someone to be in charge here. There's just there's not a, there's not enough grownups in the room and the grownups that are in the room all seem like the type of grownups you wouldn't want to be sitting next to at a youth game. It's chaos and it feels like the part of it's out of the NFL's control.

All of it's out of the NFL's control. They have to react and try to try to come up with solutions to some of these issues that they are not creating. All right, let's take one more break. We'll come back with the rest of Billy's Categorce. This episode is brought to by Organ. Go harder and push farther with Organic creatine. It helps improve muscle size, strength, and power when combined with a regular exercise and weight training routine.

Orgain creatine is certified with informed choice, which means it's tested for prohibited substances in sports. Upgrade your performance with Organicrotein, available at Amazon, Costco, Walmart, and Whole Foods. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. All right, we are back here on the Ring or NFL show. Where are we, Billy?

How many more have we got here? I think we're halfway done. So we'll do some lightning, rods. Yeah, we'll see it through these. Yeah, we'll go through this a little bit quickly. Sorry about my soliloquies in that last segment. No, good discussion. Honestly.

If you want, we can revisit the card talk one of one. later on. I don't know. I'm trying to remember was that conversation? Yeah, more relevant or less relevant in the pastings, I don't know you guys could be collectors. You guys have kids. I don't know if your kids are in this. Can I just say one thing? This card thing, I mean, I understand that every

league now is in business with fanatics and tops and all that. It's going to bust at some point, right? Like, this idea that these cards are just going to continue to go up and value forever and ever seems insane to me. Like, this is not going to be a long-term thing. I'll say this. I was at, like, my college buddies get together every year in the summer at one of the guys' lake houses.

And like this year, somebody went to like a card store. They live in L.A. and bought like, I don't even know, 500 packs of old football and baseball cards. Like, you can get them in bulk. A lot of times they're like the ones that they've manufactured way too many of so there's not a ton of valuable ones in there.

The thrill of opening the pack is real. Right? Like the, I don't know what I'm going to get in here. Like, we open all these packs. And we got a Randy Johnson rookie card. It was like, that's a pretty, Good one. Like I found like old random football players. Like I pulled a, I pulled a Trace Armstrong card.

And like, man, you know, like, oh, that's a cool, you know, just like people, you know, guys that I like know, no and remember playing. And then, but we got to the end of the weekend. And it's like, someone's like, hey, what do we do with all these cards? There's just like 10,000 cards later. I'm like, I guess we just throw them away. But that seems weird. Oh, that's wasteful.

Right. But what do you do with them? I'm not going to bring home 10,000 Fleer, 94 cards? Like, no. I think as a kid, I liked collecting cards. Then I discovered, like, wow, you can just buy the complete sets. So, like, you lose some of that.

But, like, you know, like, I got everybody. Like, this is a cool little box. It's like 30 bucks or whatever you put it in the corner. But, like, now the way the cards are going, you're realizing this is kind of a racket. Like, you need to buy special, like, $1,000 box of cards where that's where the actual, like, big money cards are like, it's not like a lottery ticket. You can't just go into like a target or something, buy a pack of cards, and all of a sudden, here's an $11 million card in this pack.

Apparently now, that's what they're promising the people. I'd love to see the number of packs if an annix is producing and what the percent chance is. I don't know. It's like one of those, it's like the claw machine. It's like how many things are you going to pull out of there? They all cost three cents and then you might get the one big stuffed animal, but it doesn't fit down the hole. All I'm saying, it's odd that Tom Brady opens up his own card store

and all of a sudden, some of the most sought after cards just happened to be sold there. It just seems a little weird to me. You know what this smells like to me? This smells like a Billy Gill, off-season deep dive. I'm going to investigate this right now. He's coming for your corner here. Write that down, Billy.

Start doing the reporting, and they will revisit this maybe after the Super Bowl. Can I tell you something about Pablo? Yeah. He pisses off a lot of powerful people. You know what I mean? I know better. I'm not going after big cards here.

You know what I mean? I'm just going to say, it seems a little fishy, and that's about as far as I'm willing to push that. You're just asking questions. As far as we're going. All right. What are we got?

Let's get back on track here and let's again, lightning round. Boom, boom, boom, boom. We'll go through quick. I guess we only have five more, so we don't have to go that quick. But preseason revenge game is something that we might be looking out for this week. So Tua Tua, former dolphins quarterback, is now going to be starting in the final preseason game

for the Atlanta Falcons against the Miami Dolphins. Earlier this week, your friend possibly foe coworker, Ian Rappaport put out there. He said it, Tua has made it impossible to be named QB one of the Atlanta Falcons based on his play thus far. It seems like the Falcons are just waiting for Michael Penix to come back. Is there anything that Tua can do in this game to actually win the starting job? Is it possible to have a revenge game in the preseason? And furthermore, preseason week three, what are we looking out for?

What should be we be watching, guys? Listen, first thing I would say is somebody's got to start week one. And if you were just approaching this logically, can you remember a whole lot of quarterbacks? Can you name one quarterback who wasn't cleared for 11 on 11 by what the third week of August didn't play in the preseason who was in a competition? There's different types of competitions and started week one. That's what I would say.

I do think I know that they like Michael Pennix there. He's had a lot of injuries. This is his third ACL, I believe. and there's a you know the rhythm and timing and tempo doesn't come back overnight so i think it's possible that michael pennix junior ends up starting the regular season in week one right now you'd have to say it's toa if for nothing else than by default and listen i know that you know the first preseason game didn't look good and there were some memes that came out of that i would say we overreact sometimes to those things to run in the most basic concepts you know if tua does play if in fact he does

start this preseason finale, then the thing he's just got to do is just go out and function in the offense. They've got pretty good players. I mean, if you look around the field and they've paid them all in this offseason, Bejohn and Drick London and Kyle Pitts and some of the other parts that they have on that offense, like, they should be able to go out and be a, you know, a functional offense if the quarterback just plays on time and gets the ball where it needs to go. If Tua gives them a better chance to do that because he's just had more time on tasking camp, I don't think that Kevin Stefansky would hesitate to, put him out there. And also, remember, it's a lot easier to go from Tua to Michael Pettix Jr.

than it is to name Michael Pettix Jr. the starter with virtually no reps and Tua goes and becomes the number two. That would send a greater message as opposed to, hey, we still believe in Michael Pettix. We want to give him time and make sure he's back to 100%. Let's ease into this season and get to him later. That, to me, just speaking logically, I'm not saying anything's done. I would just say logically, that makes a lot more sense to me. Well, given Penix's injury history. Like you say, it seems like a terrible idea to rush him out when he's not ready to play. And you have a 17 game season ahead of you. Like you said, you have talented players like Drake London and Kyle Pitts and Bejohn Robinson who do not want to go through a season

where no one can get them the football where their season is just totally torpedoed because of horrible quarterback play. So yeah, if you're the Falcons, you got to keep the long term in mind. But Tom, my question is, if they're really considering still starting Tua in week one, Why are we starting him in the final preseason game? Like, they think the reps are that important that we need him to get in a rhythm here again, given his injury history as well. Doesn't that seem a little strange? Where is Jack Strand?

But like, what are the odds that week one we look up and you're reporting on Sunday morning? Surprise. Jack Strand is starting for the Atlanta Falcons today. I'm not going to say I invented Jack Strand, but I guarantee I led the national media in Jack Strand reporting before the draft. Because he is like, That dude is like, what is he? Six foot six and like 230 pounds.

He's a huge guy, the huge arm, he tested off the charts. And he was, you know, enough of a prospect that they made a quick move. It was right after the draft to bring him in. But that's a developmental type of player. Cooper rush is there too. He started games in the league. We'll see how they end up sorting out that room.

But, you know, I would not in any way read into, hey, the preseason didn't look good for Tua. Maybe you just want to end on a high note, you know, if nothing else. just go out, let everybody feel like they're confident as opposed to, listen, if you don't play Tua this week, you're almost sending the message, hey, we've already decided it's Tua. Like, let's put them out there, let's have one good drive, move the football a little bit, and then put them on ice still the season.

Billy Tom's got a nice background there, but I think a little invented Jack Strand banner might look good maybe over the right shoulder. Wow, yeah, there seem to be some shelves there we can put it on a shelf. There's always a couple of those kind of fringe guys that, you know, the course of time. You kind of feel like you have a personal attachment to. You know, the Scottish hammer, Jamie Gillen, the punter was another one where his nickname came out and then that became a thing before the draft.

I'm like, I feel like I played a small part and made making that a thing before the draft. There was once an Eagles kicker, Billy, and his nickname was Murderleg or Murder Toe. And I wrote a big feature on him and I don't believe he made the team. So to Tom's point, you try to claim your guys when you can. Some of them hit, some of them miss. But to answer your point, I'm not looking for a lot in week three of the preseason. Like Tom said, some of these teams are probably like, we have to make cuts, maybe less than 24 hours later.

We're going to put guys out there who are probably not going to make the roster. They can get some fill. Maybe we want to hide some guys, and we're not even going to play them because we don't want other teams to see more film with them. Maybe we want to sneak them on the practice squad. But yeah, I don't think a bunch of stuff is going to be decided. I think what might be more interesting is kind of the trades, the roster moves that happened this weekend as teams try to get to.

53. I've been searching for murder toe. I don't see anything here. I might have got it wrong. Murder leg? I'll try to look it up. Here, give us the next category and I'll look it up. How do you get that wrong? If the name is murder toe, I feel like I'd have a hard time for getting that. Tom, listen, I'm an old man.

You haven't discovered him. Remember what happened yesterday? I'm not going to remember a story I wrote 10 years ago, accurately. I'm just being honest with the audience here. There's the Tokyo toe. There's a rookie kicking in the Tokyo toe this year. No, that wasn't. All right.

Tom, what's the next guy? All right. That's a weird place to put those signs. So this is another topic, and this is another quarterback controversy we have going on Monday. One of our quarterback controversies came to an end. The Browns head coach Todd Munkin announced that Deshawn Watson will be the Browns game one starter this season in Jacksonville versus the Jaguars.

DeShon, as many know, was booed basically off the field in preseason game against the bills at home. Fans are not happy about this situation. This is just a general quarterback mess that's going on. Fans were so upset that they went and they taped signs to a statue of Brown's legend, Jim Brown. Signs said $280 million, $27 plus victim, zero supporters. Another sign read, permanent damage to the city and fan base.

These, again, were taped to a statue of Jim Brown, who if you do a quick Wikipedia search, has some stuff in his past. So I don't know that that's necessarily the statute to tape permanent damage to the city and franchise too, but it is what it is. How do the Browns get out of this quarterbacking mess? The draft won next year. Like, I mean, it's as simple as that. They've got two first round picks next year.

Realistically, you know, they're on that list of teams. I think we talked about this last week who they're starting quarterback for 2027 is probably in this year's draft. It's probably not somebody that's on the roster right now. You know, what Todd Monkin said was in part. They opened with two road games. DeShahn started a lot of football in the NFL. They think that the ability to function and to play.

on time. He's just got the best opportunity to allow them to do that. And if you look at Shadur, as well as he played in the second preseason game, like there was stuff down the stretch, you know, late in the half that didn't just operationally looked like it was off. And that's the stuff that frustrates Munk. And he knows

what he's getting into Sean Watson just from the ability to operate the offense. You put him out there for two games. I mean, the biggest question, Deshawn had a good off-season. He hasn't played him. He's played 19 games over the past five seasons combined. He has not played since his two Achilles tears during and after the 2024 season.

It's been a long time since he played football. But from a football perspective, that wasn't really the concern. Yeah, he may never be the guy who was considered by plenty of people to be a top 10, if not top five quarterback when he was at his best in Houston. But it's more so about how is he going to do in the game environments? And honestly, a big part of it, or at least part of the factory was, what happens when he gets boot? What happens when home and away, he's the most hated man on the field?

And he's got to hear all that stuff. He's been through all this. There's plenty of guys like this would be when Teddy Bridgewater came back after his, you know, gruesome knee injury, like he had a standing ovation when he came in the game and handed off a couple of times. Most players, if you come back from an injury, Alex Smith when he went back on the field, you get that bump of just like, man, he's been through a lot. Like we, as much as me not, I might not think Alex Smith is a great quarterback.

Like, I have empathy for him. I feel like we can, you know what I mean? Like, I feel as if this is a guy that I can get behind. Deshawn for all those reasons and he wasn't wrong listen in that post game press cameras everyone's picked apart I don't think that anything

Deshawn said was wrong I probably would have rephrased the I don't regret anything in my life part but in terms of like you know the fans are booed me for something has nothing to do with football there's some football

because you just haven't played but yeah a lot of it is you it is like he's absolutely correct in that it really ends well when you go after the fans but Tom Monkin's got to make a decision that has nothing to do with who's going to get booed

and who's not Just like I was talking about with Atlanta, it's a lot easier to go. Deshaun Watson starts at the beginning of the season and then you put Shador in the game, that it is to say, we're going to let Shador leapfrog Deshawn right after those comments, right after the brutal second preseason game. At that point now, what do you do with Deshaun? Do you just say, hey, do it the Texans did back in 2021 and we're going to pay you, but just kind of hide in the training room for the whole season?

I don't know what you would do. This is kind of the last gasp. And based on how his contract is structured, they have to hold him through this year. They don't have to do anything. But all of the bonus acceleration would take place immediately. It would all come into 2027. You don't want to have that. They did a restructure in December of 2024.

It essentially allows them to push it out as far as 2028 with some of the cap hits, which is just easier to deal with going forward. So I think he'll be on the roster. I don't think they trade him. I don't think they cut him. You know, even if he is not the starter by week three or whenever it is during the season, hear. But there's no doubt. I mean, there's some pressure on him to try to turn the tide a little bit. He's going to hear it, but he's going to hear less of it if they're two and oh when they come back home.

I think that contract point is the biggest thing. If it wasn't prohibitive to cut ties with Deshaun Watson, this to me would be an absolute no-brainer. You mentioned he's played 19 games in the last five years. Statistically, the worst season for any quarterback in the last two years with Deshaun Watson in 2024. when he actually played and he was terrible. He's never admitted to any wrongdoing. He's antagonizing the fans. I mean, you add all these things up. This would be a very easy conversation in the front office.

I mean, Jimmy hasn't said, what, two years ago that like we swung and we missed on Deshawn Watson. And now he is, here he is, starting at quarterback. You're a Brown's fan base who's like, we just want some excitement with some of the young players on the roster. We know we're not going to be very good. And now this guy's going to be out there being our quarterback in 20, 26, you can see how they're looking at it like, this sucks.

We want to be excited about football. And even if it's like, hey, no, we're getting our quarterback in next year's draft. And Tom's right about that. They've acquired draft capital. They've tried to build an infrastructure where maybe you can plug in a rookie and have success next season. I get where they're coming from. But I do think it's just mostly contract related where even Shador Sanders is not perfect

and was not good last year. You would find another option if you could cut ties with Deshawn Watson. So yeah, when he said this isn't about football, You're right. DeShah, everybody knows. It's not, I mean, now if you were playing great, now maybe you would hear that same reaction. But obviously, it's everything together. It's the off-field stuff. It's the lack of admitting you did anything wrong.

And then it's you being terrible when you actually got a chance to play quarterback. So, you know, just in terms of fan bases that go into this season with like just having a tough time getting behind their team, even in September, I think the Browns have to be number one on that list. The only other thing I would add would just be the history. lesson of how the Deshawn Watson trade happened, which I said it at the time. That was not a trade. That was free agency. The Texans basically said, here's the price. If you're willing to meet it, you can negotiate a contract. And it was not just the Browns. There were four teams at that time. They were all willing to meet the Texans asking price for Deshaun, which was three first round picks plus additional picks. It was massive. Deshaun actually told the Browns they were out.

because he was not going to go to Cleveland. And the way that they got him was to give him a five-year, $230 million fully guaranteed contract. At that time, what other people in the league said, and they were not happy about it, was like the Browns just rewrote the entire economics of the NFL. This exact scenario, as unique as this is, it's things like this,

which is why teams don't want to do guarantees beyond two or three years of a deal. when you see fully guaranteed contracts, they're generally shorter because none of us know what things are going to be like four years from now, all the other factors. But the only way the Browns were going to get him was if they did this contract that no one else was willing to do. But again, just as a reminder here, there were four teams lining up with everything going on to all trade for Deshaun Watson. And if he had gone someplace else, maybe things are different. Maybe the team's better. Maybe he plays better.

maybe he doesn't suffer as many injuries. If he had gone anywhere, including Cleveland and played well, I hear what you're saying, Sheel, about not expressing remorse for his actions and those things. He's got a social media presence that I know rubs some people the wrong way. If he plays good football, no one cares. And that's just the bottom line. I'm not being insensitive. I'm just saying nobody is consumed with it.

It's the fact that they invested so much in him. It set them in. I mean, right now they're in the year two of another five-year rebuild in Cleveland. The draft class was really good last year. From everything I've been told, it looks really good so far. It's early, but in camp. It looks really good again this year. They are all building this to place the quarterback in in 2027 and then roll in that division.

I mean, think of all the things that can be different in the AFC North a year from now. We don't know who the Steelers quarterback is going to be. Aaron Rogers has already said it's his last year. Who knows what happens if the Bengals have another disappointing season and what changes could take place there? And even Baltimore, where they've been trying for two years to get Lamar Jackson contract. extension done. There could be further evolution of what's happening with the Ravens. So it's not to say this season doesn't matter. You can never say that in the NFL because, listen, if it's bad enough, everybody can get fired. We've seen that many, many times. But I believe that there's an understanding

in the Brown's building that, yes, they love if, you know, Chador steps up as the franchise quarterback. They like if Deshaun gives him a chance to win and they don't have to bench him throughout the course of the season. But the odds are pretty good that the quarterback is in the draft in 2027 for Cleveland. And so all that we're talking about right here is one more year of everyone going, the Browns or being the Browns before they hope they're going to rewrite what being the Browns means starting next year. It's a great what if for those other teams that were interested in even other teams that were interested, but maybe didn't quite get to that point as those four. There are other teams there. I know it's a what if in Philadelphia that is asked like, huh, I think he might

have poked around that Deshaun Watson situation after 21 and didn't get to that point. But yeah, it is a move that once you get to the point where you fall in love and you're like, we have to have this player and you're willing to go where no other team is willing to go in terms of guaranteeing a contract, you open yourself up to a situation like this. And nobody's done it sense. Yeah, no one's done it in.

So if you're like, they got what they deserve, I don't necessarily disagree with you there, Billy. So wow, by the way, this is off topic, Billy. But murder lay. Yeah. Carrey Spear was the kicker. I know we're jumping around here a little bit. Sometimes you want to close the loop on that.

I don't know. I didn't get that far. I was wrong up my story. Harry Spear and his nickname was Murder Leg. I feel like he could have done more with Spear. Well, yeah. I don't know. His leg was the spear?

2014. A different time. All right. All right, there we go. Carrie Spear did not expect to get a shout out on the Ringer NFL show today. All right, Billy, what do we got? What's the next topic here? We were going to come off of the Sean Watson and start talking about trading cards.

This is where things took a lighter turn off the field, more towards like, oh, These are things that are football related, but not necessarily the most important. Second half of the show. Okay, so we'll move on past that. Hard knocks announced this week with, you know, one week to go in this season's Hard Knocks training camp with Seattle Seahawks,

season finale is coming up next Tuesday. It was announced there will be no in-season hard knocks this season, but there will be a return next year to the off-season hard knocks, which we saw once before, which was the New York Giants famously. We saw Jones, Joe Shane's son, telling him you should trade up and get Jaden Daniels, quote, you only get this job once.

Might as well try to win. Of course, they did not get Jaden Daniels, and they have not done much winning since then. His son obviously kind of knew something, but it's not just as easy as let's trade up and get the player that I like. That's not how things work. But when they return,

because teams haven't wanted to be part of that situation, because there was some criticism and you're really showing your cards the entire time, they've decided when they come back and they do that off-season version, they're going to do a division, which they've done a couple of times in season where they've just covered the entire division.

So when it returns, it will be a division in the off season. Has hard knocks jumped the shark? Because we got to a point where we had three hard knocks each year. There was the offseason one. There was the regular training camp. Then there was the in season one. Now there's different versions of hard knocks with different names, with quarterback on Netflix. The Chiefs have their own version of Hard Knocks. I think it's called the franchise. Or they've just kind of followed the Chiefs all year long. Are we over Hard Knocks in all of the spin-offs of Hard Knocks? Is it too much? Because there was a time I felt like it was a appointment

watching and you'd come in on Wednesday morning or whatever day it was and water cooler talk like you see hard knocks last night you see what they said oh you see what john gruden did andtonio brown he burned his feet that was crazy like what's going on here and i don't feel that buzz anymore around hard knocks i like the off season here tomby i think this is the right move because in season when they do it it's like we're trying to watch games every week we just talked about it you're trying to catch up everyone has their fill of football in november and december it's not like oh we need more football here. The off season, you're hungry for football. And for me personally, I can't, you know, be like, oh, let me put myself in Patrick Bohomes' shoes and feel what it's like

to have this defensive tackle bearing down on me. But you know what? I can be a smart ass and just be like, Joe Shane, what are you doing? If I were Joe Shane, I would have done X, Y, and Z. And I think other fans feel like this. So you do that in the off season. I thought that was a great hard knocks with the Giants in the off season where you're seeing how ownership comes in. You're seeing the conversation with coaches. You're seeing how you stack the draft board. Free agency calls with agents. That is a very fun time in the NFL calendar. And I like it, Tom. I'll be tuned in to the offseason hard knocks. The Giants offseason hard knocks is the best football show inside football show that I've ever seen. And yes, there were great, like some of the classic hard knock seasons.

Like we all remember, you know, the Jets with Rex Ryan. You can think back to, you know, the Browns when it was Hugh Jackson versus Todd Haley in every meeting. Like, that was a pretty entertaining one. To me, where Hard Knocks started to change away from, you know, what I would say is the most relevant stuff. It's not just the, all right, we don't want to show some teams just we don't want to show a guy getting cut. Those are really interesting moments and like highly emotional. Some teams just philosophic, like, that's a private thing. We don't want to do it.

Like, that's part of it. But it's also, like you talk about the Antonio Brown thing where one episode ended and it was that same afternoon the episode aired. it was Antonio and his agent Drew Rosenhouse like walking on to the field. And that had just happened that day. Then all of a sudden, in the seasons that followed, you were a week behind. It would be like the following Tuesday and you'd be like it would end with the preseason game from the prior Thursday. And a bunch of things would have happened since. That to me was part of the allure of Hard Knocks training camp was the like you would actually get news sometimes from it.

Like you would see what happened with that transaction that happened that day. You would know what happened with that guy's injury and how they're feeling about it the day after. Once you got like five days behind, there was no real news urgency to watch it. And so that was a change. But the Giants, the reason that I liked it was it was very honest. It was very open. It explained to people for all the people who are like the cap doesn't exist. I hate that entire line of thinking.

Every dollar you spend hits the cap. eventually. So they were actually explaining when you're budgeting and how you're doing it with cap dollars and cash dollars. And the SACON part of it, which like when you heard, when I heard Joe Shane's explanations, like, their studies on like, all right, running backs over whatever was, running backs over age 27 and like what their durability is and how long they, they maintain their production. That spoke to me because I'm like, all right, I understand the logic. Where Joe got burned on that was Sakewan went to the Eagles and ran for 2,000 yards and won the Super Bowl. It's like literally the worst

case scenario. Because you're carefully thinking to it. Like the odds tell you this. That's a big part of it. In scouting, in the medical and you're evaluating players coming out in the draft of free agents, you're not just going to like, right, this guy's the best player. It's also like, well, what are the odds? How many games is he going to play?

How long is he going to be productive? Are we going to owe him guaranteed money? In Deshaun Watson's case, several years after he's functional and playing at the same level right now. That's what they're looking at with Sacon, which was, yeah, he had a good year but like he'd also have a bunch of injury years. Like what are the odds he's going to stay healthy? We're going to pay him this much where we can go and pay a couple of offensive linemen

and then we go and draft Tyrone Tracy and we put it together that way. Instead, like, logically it made sense. But then it becomes indefensible when the guy goes out there. But like, none of us have the benefit of hindsight we're making decisions. Outcome-based analysis is dangerous. So to me, what they did was fantastic. And I'm taking nothing away from the egos or Sequin, happy for everybody involved. but like it did hurt.

It definitely hurt other teams' willingness to be that open and honest because the outcome was so bad that everyone could just go, see, told you, told you. If Sequin had sprained an ankle in week two and it had run for like 900 yards in the season and the Eagles have been won it down in the plastic, we're not talking about it that way. The Giants still could have not won a lot of games, but we would have looked at everything differently because of the benefit of the hindsight. Yeah, it really wasn't a crazy decision at the time when you looked at the, the state of the Giants franchise and where they were allocating dollars and premium positions.

I mean, that had generally been out. And by the way, they had tried to pay him. They had tried to pay Sequin multiple times. They tried to pay him at the, by the year before. They tried to pay him. The best offer they made him was in March before the franchise take. Once they tagged him, his leverage went away because they had him at a lower number than what they would have had if they had just paid the guy. So the numbers weren't going to get better. You know, Seekwan, maybe, you know, there were times where he may not have gotten the best advice through the course of the process. He ended up with a great deal in Philly. And then last year, I mean, tell me how impactful Seekwon was. If it was last year's Seekwon, instead of two years ago, Seacquan, you'd probably go, all right, I get where the Giants were coming from.

That was tough, Billy, when the owner comes in and says, like, I'm going to have a hard time sleeping if he signs with the Eagles there. So Tom's right. It ended up being basically the worst case scenario for, you know, a GM. And I understand why other teams would then be hesitant to do it. But I'm glad that they're doing it because I think Tom's right. It made for good content. It takes you behind the scenes in an area of the NFL that we can't just see as the games are played on Sunday. So I like it. All right.

You want two quick topics here to wrap up the show? Let's wrap it up. What do you got? All right. So we talked about how the NFL takes money any way that it can to commercialize everything tries to make a quick buck. As part of the quote unquote year of the Super Bowl, which is what it's being dubbed by Disney and ESPN and ABC because ESPN will air its first Super Bowl this year. The NFL and Disney have reached a collaboration. along with champion and fanatics, once again, is involved,

and fanatics in which every NFL team has had, has been made a Disney pairing with a classic Disney character. Each team has been assigned a character. They are now selling merchandise. That is the official character of the team. So if you live in Minnesota per se, the Minnesota Vikings character is from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Thor is now Minnesota's Disney character,

Philadelphia. I have no idea if you're kidding about all this. No, this could be a complete setup. That would be a good bet. He makes up one of these. Give me a team. I'll tell you who their Disney character is. The Eagles have Doctor Doom. Each team has been assigned a Disney character. They're now selling merchandise with the character.

If you like the Giants, I hope you like Reckett Ralph, because that is now your character for your team. Merchandise is out. You can buy it probably way overpriced on the internet. Do you guys have a team, a character, I guess, that would represent you. You seem to be a Joker fan Tom or fan of the comic books. Do you guys have anyone you'd like to represent you as a team from Disney or elsewhere in the world? I do not.

I want nothing to do with this. And just a PSA for the listeners out there who are parents. Let's, you know, without throwing any one under the bus, let's check the quality of the merch. No. We're shelling out those big bucks. Let's make sure the characters' names are spelled correctly and that it actually looks like them and that the sizing is right. I'm just looking out for the consumer out there, Tom. That's all.

I have no thoughts at all on anything ESPN or Disney are doing. But I mentioned five games on Netflix this season starting out. Week 1 in Australia, Rams 49ers can't beat that matchup. Maybe you can have one of the K-pop demon hunters be one of your official mascots there, Tom. What do you think? I've seen that one a number of times. I've heard that soundtrack about 100 times over in the car, so sure, why not? fantastic pivot by Tom there, Billy.

Yeah, it was a good move by him. Honestly, probably should have exercised better judgment on my part. Captain Hook, the Buccaneers official mascot, if anyone was wondering about that. Not interested. No comment. Like Tom said. All right. Billing. Real quick, last topic before we head out, I wanted to give you guys the opportunity if you wanted to eulogize Dali partner, Tim Curry, not Tim Burden, who may or may not have been mentioned earlier in this episode. He's still very much with us. Any thoughts on Dali or Tim, either one of you?

I don't know that I have anything, you know, that anyone else hasn't said it. Dolly Parton does seem to have like a universal approval rating where every corner of my life that I'm looking at, it's like, oh, everybody actually loved Dalai Park. Yeah, and there's not a lot of people that you can say that about. So that's all I have on it. Tim Curry is one of the great that guys of all time. Like I think there's a lot of people who are like Tim Curry and then you show a photo like, oh, you know, whatever, Home Alone too. Like he had so many memorable roles, but it was never somebody who was like in the public. consciousness of like, you know, a superstar.

He had this way of playing villains that was very unique. You know, I think there's something to be said for, and again, he was a very famous actor going all about to, you know, Rocky Horror Picture Show. But the fact that you can go that long and never be like the A-list guy, but being that many classic movies and like the moment you seem like, oh, this guy, this guy's going to elevate the movie. Like, that to me is Tim Curry. What do you got, Billy?

You got something here for us? No, it's a fan of both either? No, okay. I think you're somewhat of a fan of both. You know, it's just sad. Dollywood, obviously. It's just weird how, like, you know, celebrities. And people say that's like rule of three or whatever where three people go, both

on the same age within, you know, a day of each other. It's just kind of a sad thing. So, you know, thoughts and prayers. Yeah, Dali and Tim's families. I got to be honest, Tom, when I thought we were doing 10 most interesting, fascinating people for this episode, I was sure that there was going to be a Jedi-Ure continent. that we were going to have to be very careful about as we discussed it on here. But you know what, Billy, a lesson for young journals.

If you got to do a list of 10, do nine and then wait if anybody might pass away. And then that can be your tent there, a good lesson for procrastinators everywhere. I didn't want to put you guys in a bad spot also because things are still coming out in that story. And it's kind of like, how do we present that? We're still, you know, learning things. Okay. I like that. Maybe the next episode. There will be more episodes, I think.

We'll see if that ends up being the case. Sorry, thank you to Billy Gill. Thank you to Tom Hellasero. Those are 10 stories that I think have our attention this summer as we approach cut down day, the end of preseason, and the start of the regular season. Also, thank you to Christopher Sutton for producing Stefano Sanchez on video and additional production supervision by Connor Nevins and Arjuna. Ram Gopal.

I'm Sheila Kapati. We'll talk to you next time on the Ringar NFL show. 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and present in D.C., Kentucky or Wyoming. Gambling problem. Call 1-800-Gambler or 1-800-My reset. Call 1-88-7-8-8-8-9-7-7-7. Or visit ccppgagbling.org in Connecticut or visit MDGamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gambling helplinema.org or call 800-32750-50 for 24-7 support in Massachusetts or call 1-8778-8-N-Y or text Hope NY in New York for Louisiana. Call 1-8777-7-7-7-8-67.