The Ringer NFL Show - Tom Brady Will Return ...

Episode Date: March 14, 2022

Kevin, Nora, Danny, and Ben huddle to discuss the bombshell news that Tom Brady will return for another season. They speculate about what caused this decision, go over the implications, and break down how the league looks with another year of Brady. Hosts: Kevin Clark, Danny Kelly, Ben Solak, Nora Princiotti Senior Producer: Steve Ahlman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Ringer Wrestling show is getting you closer to all things pro wrestling. The Masked Show with David and Kaz drops every Thursday on the feed, along with the new show hosted by pro wrestling superfan Evan Mack called MacMania. Plus, hear instant reactions to all the biggest WWE pay-per-view events with their post-paper-view shows. Check out the Ringer Wrestling show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It is an emergency. Third this week, Ringer NFL show. I'm Kevin Clark.

I'm joined by Ben Sol at, hello. Ben. Yeah, the OG Brady Emergency Pod guest, by the way. No one will take my title. Ben is triggered because I'm wearing a magic shirt and the magic are currently beating the 76ers. I'm also triggered because Tom Brady on retired. That's also unfair. What about Kirk Cousins' one-year extension for $35 million?

I just love how Rust stole Aaron Rogers Thunder, right? He stole his news cycle and then Tom Bray and retired. And Kirk was like, now's my moment, baby. Elite quarterback, Kirk Cousins, getting in the news. Danny Kelly's here. What's happening? And Nora Princeati is in a cab

on the upper east side. Maybe she might be a midtown by now because we haven't talked to her. I'm in midtown now, Kev. We're shooting down Lexington Avenue. Just generally describe where you're going because I don't know the answer to this. Is it a dinner?

So I'm, no, I'm going to show at Irving Plaza that got rescheduled. I would never have bought. concert tickets for a Sunday night. That's not civilized. But it got rescheduled and we had the tickets. So we're going. And then wouldn't you know it? This friggin guy, Tom Brady, decides to throw a little wrench in the plant. So what a guy in a cab. We're doing the pot. Everything's great. Well, he's also in Europe right now. So he was late at night for him. He had the entire day. He went to the Tottenham Hotspur, Manchester United game. He took it all and he met Renaud of all that

stuff. And at the end of his very long day, he decided to send this tweet. I want to not interfere with your concert tickets nor your Irving Plaza show. Give us your take and then we'll get you out of here. The guy loves football. Like, I just think that when we think about Brady, his legacy, what makes him great, right? Like, yes, he works incredibly hard on his body. He has innate physical abilities and sort of like mental characteristics that make him able to do what he does.

But this is a person who never has to work another day in his life, like doesn't need a single more dollar of generated salary ever to live just like a beautiful life for the rest of his days with his family who he loves. And he can't give it up. Like he just can't give it up. He's just a psycho. He's just a total psycho about it. Wow. He's a total psycho. All right. Nora, thanks for stopping by. Well, no, no, no, can we talk about the bucks a little bit more? Oh, sure. I think that this is like, this is sort of more concrete to me is like now I feel like, it changes how they have to look at some of their free agents, right? Like somebody like Ryan Jensen, who I would have thought they would have been sort of

priced out of, right? I think now you have that pull where it's like, yeah, man, do you want to like get a boatload of money from the Jets or do you want to come back and try to win another Super Bowl with Brady? Like it seemed because Carlton Davis didn't get the franchise tag, like maybe it was the end of the road there. I think maybe this changes the calculus there. Like maybe I guess O.J. Howard would be another guy who would maybe fall into that.

So I think like with Brady, my reaction is just like this man is a psychopath. For the books, like this really seriously, I think changes the 360 day outlook for them. So I totally agree. But I want to bring you into this, Ben, because the books have been making some decisions. I mean, Ali Marpet retired. And one of those decisions going through his head was probably, well, at the end of the the run here. They've been making decisions over the past couple weeks for a new era. There were some rumors about a Deshawn Watson offer, that sort of thing. Obviously, that's not going

to happen now. But this changes the bucks how. I think, right. That poll like Nora talked about is certainly there. Like, I don't think this was a mistake that this came right before free agency opened as well. You know, you have 24 hours to respond. It's kind of the, like, the 31 other teams right now is like, hey, you know, we just made ourselves extremely attractive all of a sudden kind of before you, like in the middle of what is the negotiating period. It's not actually the negotiating period yet, but like functionally it is, right? So you have that, but you also then have, you know, kind of not to get too far into the Stephen Ruiz weeds of like cap space is never real, but you have now an internal acceptance of, all right, we can get really, really aggressive

in terms of restructuring and rebuilding out contracts, right, with the intent of opening up more space this year. So to put into perspective who the Bucks could be losing, we know that Ali Marpetis retired. Ryan Jensen is Nora brought up is a potential leave. Jason Pierre Paul is an undrafted, is an unrestricted free agent entering this year. Indomicon Sue,

Rob Gronkowski, Leonard Fornett, OJ Howard, Chris Godwin is on the franchise tag. Carlton Davis is potentially leaving. Alex Kappa is potentially leaving Jordan Whitehead, essentially leaving. So a lot of starters brother. And we can go, now we can look at a Chris Godwin extension

in a different way. And instead of saying, let's try to make sure this is a reasonable deal that we can sustain over a potential reload, we can say, all right,

we'll do whatever you want to lower your cap hit this season because we might have one more year of Brady, right? You tell Carlton Davis, we're going to make you the highest paid corner in the league

just so long as you give us a shallow 2022 cap hit, right? Like you're negotiating ideas flip on their head and it allows you to, you know, the buck didn't have a lot of cap space.

They all of a sudden do have a lot of cap space. just because they're willing to become aggressive now. They're willing to restructure and mortgage that future. In an extremely weak NFC South and in a generally weak NFC, right? Like the AFC is loaded with all the star quarterbacks right now. There is no reason to not pay out of the wazoo in future years to open up space right now. So Bucks Free Agency just got open season on a lot of these guys who are potentially leaving.

They'll sign long deals. They'll sign four void years, whatever you want. Get them back for one season. Let's see if we can do this again with Brady. Danny, that's going on a question to you. It doesn't take much to be a contender in the NFC. Right. What does this look like now?

My first reaction was like, the NFC needed this. We needed this in the NFC. Because, yeah, like so many of the top tier quarterbacks in the NFL, right? I think it's just, number one, Rob Garankowski, probably going to come back now. That's good for the NFL. I love that Brady's still in the NFL. Brady is a good football player. He makes that offense fun.

It's just a good thing for the NFL in general. Um, the, my first reaction was just like, cackling maniacly just because like he couldn't stay away. He couldn't stay away. Um, and I get it. My second question after all this, though, is, are we 100% sure he's playing for the Buccaneers this year? He did say Tampa in his tweet because there was all these rumors like over the last couple of months that he was going to be trying to get traded to the 49ers so he could like

ride into the sunset in the Bay Area, all that stuff. That's probably not going to happen. I just want to throw it out there though. I think that, I mean, the photos were him with the. bucks. Yeah. I'm coming back for my 23rd season in Tampa. In Tampa.

So it's probably not happening. It seems pretty airtight. It'd be tough. On the current timeline of major quarterback movements in the league to come back, if I'm coming back for Tampa and then a week from now, be like, but what if. Right? And so like, I don't know. Like, I feel like if that domino is going to fall, it's going to fall now-ish.

And maybe as we're recording, you'll hear somebody screech because there's a trade rumor or whatever. Right. But like, I'll put it to you this way. I think that Brady retired and almost immediately we started that Niners rumor. And now Brady's back in Tampa. And I think Brady is perfectly happy to stay in Tampa for a year. And then guess what we get to do next year?

Yeah. Brady to Niners rumors all over again. I mean, the Brady last touchdown ball just sold for $500,000 earlier today. Get a refund. And now it's not even the last touchdown ball. He can get a lot of juice. yeah it certainly does but he can get a lot of juice

out of the next couple years of trade rumors and retirement and last touchdown balls and whatever and so to me that I would not be pushing to make any moves I'd be leaving as many narratives open and as many outlets open as I possibly could who's the lawsuit against in that spot

Tom Brady for I'm retiring with the person who sold the ball yeah it's a how dare you lawsuit Mike Evans for throwing it again so that's actually one thing I want to tackle here. Nora, what do you think happened here? Do you think he tried,

you know, Bill had said he thought the Niners were a strong possibility, maybe the dolphins, maybe there was something there. Do we think that he tried Nora to get on another team and the bucks were like, actually you're under contract if you come back, you're playing with us?

How do you, listen, we're just going to rampantly speculate here because it's all we have. Like, all the other insiders are doing the same thing so we can just do whatever. What do think happened. I like on it. So maybe I'm naive. I think he missed it. I think he started to feel left out. But that's it. So he was just like

I'm coming back. He wasn't like, can I please go to the Niners? And they were like, no. He didn't even ask. He even broach it. He didn't even like in the middle of the text to be like, hey, by the way, if you wanted to, I'd love to play for the Niners. He didn't throw that out there. I don't see what the logic

to doing that would be. Right. Like if you're Brady and you're sitting around and you're like, Oh, man, I just feel like I've got at least one more in me. I really kind of have some regrets about making the decision to retire. I kind of would like to give it another go. Do you want to switch teams again? And like I said, the dudes of psycho.

So maybe. But I don't really see why you would want to, unless he looks at it and thinks like San Francisco has a markedly better shot at being a Super Bowl team than Tampa does, which I don't really see if Brady's there in. unless that's the case, I just don't know why he would want to unless it's like a man, I'm just dying to put on a 49ers uniform thing,

but I don't think it is because clearly he's, it seems as though he's happy to unretire to play for the bucks. It doesn't seem like that was the thing that this hinged on. He, for a long time, like there are a lot of Brady quotes from years past where he's pretty angsty about not knowing what he wants to do with himself after football. So a lot of like, this is my identity.

This game has given me so much. My life is wrapped up in this. And I love the competition and I love the everyday work of it. And I don't really know what it's going to be like when it's over. And heart of hearts, what I would guess is he just sort of came face to face with that and felt like, I don't know, I kind of want to be back in the mix. So it's amazing to me because you made the comment, Ben, that we're going to be doing. dealing with where's you going to go rumors next offseason. Right.

He's 44 years old. And we're going to have an entire offseason next year of speculation. Like, this is incredible. And he also gets, he got the kind of the live, like living wake thing when he didn't know if he was retiring for those three days. Then we got two full months of it for this. And we got all of the tributes and all the people saying, you're the goat. you're the best ever played with.

I love you. Robert Kankowski said he wasn't going to play without you, all that stuff, right? I guess my question to you, Ben, is reading the two of these of how he played last year. What does Brady next year look like? The way he ended up the season. He was throwing the ball faster last year

than he ever threw it. I know. What does next year look like? He's your MVP candidate. Right now, I don't not know what 2020 season MVP odds look like. I don't think they're out.

But if they are, Brady is one of the three. three, four highest prices. It's not just like, oh, he's Tom Brady, like it was like Peyton or Breeze. It's like, oh, he's Tom Brady and also he's a sorcerer, right? He is insorseled. He is enchanted. There's some sort of witchcraft voodoo stuff going on that allows him to throw the ball better

than he ever has further than he ever has faster than he ever has. He's going to have Mike Gavin's back. Chris Godwin's out here tweeting sunglasses emojis. He's back. That's what sunglasses emoji means. I'm deciding. Okay, there lost more pet. Get a guard.

I don't know. Like, just go trade a fifth round pay for Michael and Wenow or something stupid. And then you have a guard and you're going to be fine. Like, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, let's do this. He didn't get to do the, like, I don't think he, the retirement tour or whatever you want to call it. Oh, he wants to jeter Rivera, everybody gives him a gift thing. Yes.

Every single game, whether. Yes. So, I want to be clear. I kind of. wouldn't have thought that he would have wanted that, but he inevitably gets it now. That's my thing. Football universe will treat the next year of Tom Brady's career as though every game is their last opportunity to shake hands, get a jersey, like whatever.

All of that stuff is going to happen constantly. And again, I really didn't think that he had all that much interest in that. However, here's the rampant speculation. I wonder if he felt kind of robbed by the way. the news broke of his original retirement. And it's hard for me to really believe that that would motivate a decision like this, but he's...

That's very easy to me to believe. It takes me zero effort to believe that. He's doing it to spite shifty. It's happening. It's easy to believe, but I also think that the 22 opponents are really unsentimental. Here's the road games he plays.

next year. Arizona, Cleveland, Carolina, Dallas, New Orleans, Atlanta, Pittsburgh. And then he also plays the Niners. But it's not like he's got some huge, like, rivalry with the Niners. I don't think he's ever played a He doesn't have a huge rivalry with anybody because there's nobody left. He beat, but, but, but I'm saying if he goes into Buffalo, they could get him like a funny, you know, hey man, he kicked her ass for 20 years.

Here you go. Here's a clock. Right. Like, yeah, if you goes into Miami, they're like, oh, we beat you here, like, four times. Yeah, like that was the thing with Marana Rivera is he would go places and they'd be like, here's a canoe. Yeah. It's going to be like the Carolina Panthers trying to get Tom Brady's last ever game in the Mountain Time Zone. and it's like, nobody gives a hoop, man. You're just making things up. David Tepper tries to give them 5% of the franchise. When I was covering the Patriots, there was a game in Arizona while Brady was suspended, so they can't use any footage from that.

Oh, I remember that game. Grappolo won that game. My co-workers took me to the spot where Malcolm Butler made the interception in the Super Bowl and, like, it was like this big monument. They can do stuff like that. It'll be really weird and tacky and delightful. My big conspiracy theory not to add to this

is, and correct me if I'm wrong, because I'm not on, like, Instagram, so I don't know how things work. He was retired for like what, like seven weeks or something? Where, where, like we never saw retirement break. Like, I never saw this guy, like on a beach somewhere, like, you know, chilling, being a dad. He's a soccer game today. Exactly.

It was at a soccer game. But, like, I find the lack of retirement-esque behavior, like, oh, usually around this time a year, I'd be making sure my body was still right and eating my avocados. But instead, I'm like, sipping margaritas and cabo. Yeah. None of that jaw happened as far as my social media exposure to Thomas works. And so to me, I think this was always, I'm going to get a nice couple months off. to, you know, like call anybody or whatever, hang out a little bit, keep it tight.

I'm going to be ready to go whenever. And then right before free agency comes, Tommy's back. We're going to get another new cycle again. The only thing I saw him do is I pretty sure he was like unveiling his new clothing company or clothing line or something like that. And he was like, this is not the life I want to live. Like, I can't do this. I need to go back.

Yeah, I forgot about the Brady sweatshirt. Brady. Horrible. He's just like, I can't do this. I don't want to do this press junk. I'm going back. The Minnesota twins gave Mario Rivera a rocking chair

made of splintered bats. This is good. This is good. There's going to be video board montages in Pittsburgh of like, here's how, here's pictures of our players when Tom Brady first joined the NFL.

And they're all going to suck. I can't wait. They're going to have been babies. Also, is there any chance that Ronaldo just like age, like age shame? We had a hat trick. He had a hat trick today.

And then he asked him. I know, do you guys see the video? He asked him after the game. You're done, right? And Brady was like, I don't know. I'm going to send a tweet about eight hours.

We'll see. Can we do two exercises? Can we do Ben and Danny? I'm going to start reading out the MVP odds, and you're going to tell me where you'd put Brady in this, okay? Mahomes plus 650, Rogers plus 700, Josh Allen plus 85, 850.

Ahead of ahead or below? So Burrow is it plus 11? And then, Judge, I don't know. Brady ahead of Allen. Brady's like plus 750 plus 800. Okay. So like Brady number one? No, number one.

No, no one. No, no one. After Mahomes and Rogers. I'd have Rogers and then I would have Brady and Alan pretty tight to one another. D.K. Yeah, I agree with that. He's got to be way up there, especially in just like, the NFC right now is just barren, man. Right.

He led the league last year. I had single season records in attempts, in yards, incompletion. He did high volume, high efficacy, 44. Ah! Okay. I agree with all that. What he said. What he said.

The sports book I'm looking at right now has already updated their odds clearly. Super Bowl winner, plus 700 bills, $750 Packers, buck $750 as well. Ahead of the Chiefs, ahead of the Rams. Broncos are on the line there. And then the Niners, the Cowboys, the Chargers, the Ravens. Bengals are after that. Do you guys feel like the bucks are second best in the NFL

tied with the Packers? That feels a little rich, but also like pre-free agency, everything is made up. Nothing is real, you know what I mean? In my head, in my head, I was like,

the Rams should have been below them, but the Rams also might lose everybody. You know what I mean? So it's like, it is tough to prognosticate. I would also say that there's some emotion. Like, I think that the Bronco is going to fifth best out

to win the Super Bowl right after the Wilson thing. It's also people are just excited and want to bet. Yeah, absolutely. So enough for agency. And also, you're almost the way, you know, it's really interesting because Kevin Demoff said this and it's true. And it turned out to be correct. He runs the Rams. And winning is the best competitive advantage.

And that sounds strange. But people want to play for winners. O'Dell Beckham will take a lesser deal to play for a winner. And like if you have Brady, if you have Russell Wilson and Denver, like that feeds on itself. And then you get a better team. So you're almost baking in like, oh, who knows? who's going to want to go play with Russ in Denver or whatever. I don't think that the Broncos are the fifth best team in the NFL,

but I do see a pathway to where you would want to bet them. Nora, can we get an update on what's going on in downtown Manhattan? Yeah, Bobby's here. We're in line. We're just hanging out. I'm only hearing some conversation about Brady and the line. Get them on the pod. Get them on the pod.

Does anybody want to come in the ring or NFL show? I feel deeply uncomfortable with you potting in the middle of this line. So I think we should let you go now. All right. Good talking, guys. This was an amazing performance by you. Thanks, buddy. Bye.

Nora, what a performance that was. I got to say this. I don't believe the Nora theory that he was just like, I miss this so much. I think he exhausted every action. I think you probably, like Bruce Arien said last week, it wasn't going to happen. He's not going to play for another team. Like, the door was closed on them facilitating a nice way out. And for him to go to San Francisco, him to go to Miami someplace else.

I do. I believe Bill saying that. that statement was him saying goodbye to the B. I mean, obviously things ended really poorly there last year. A, B, was his guy that really went downhill quite fast. But also, the Bucks are not going to let him out for any reason. He's, as Ben said, it's not just he's the best player in history of football. He's a top five MVP candidate.

Like, he is the difference from them being a wrecked franchise for a couple years because of, A, people just do whether they're retiring, whether they're leaving, whatever, be the cap stuff is is a little weird um like this the difference between like i i can't imagine one player being a bigger difference in win losses than tom brady so of course the especially when the alternative is kyle trask and we're a fire sale as opposed to like damn it christ godwin sunglasses emoji what not just but also like the the there's sort of a uh the unknown knowns here where it's just like the the the the the the the the the the not just Chris Godwin, but like this year's O'Dell Beckham is like, oh, what's, like, people

want to be there. Exactly. Yeah. We just don't know what that. We don't know. Like having, I can't believe to have to say this. Having Tom Brady is a good thing in general. It helps a lot of different things.

We got a lot of data. We're going to work that, Tom Brady. I've been crunching the numbers. We can get sharp on to confirm this. But having Tom Brady is a good, good thing. Man, this has, this has been a wacky a few weeks. guys, what's next? What's the next dominoa fall?

I would imagine the next dominoa fall is where DeShon Wadsden gets traded to. Right. Which at this point is, right, inevitably going to happen where you've heard like the Saints are super involved in those discussions. The Panthers have never not been involved in those discussions. The Steelers and the Eagles have both been intermittently in and outside of those discussions. Seahawks. Yeah.

Seahawks have been in and out. There's a lot going on. Teams have to feel confident with with the pending results of his civil litigation, which I'm sure something we'll talk about more when DeShon eventually gets traded, and then also, like, project what he's going to play like on his contract after not playing ball for a long time. There's a lot that goes into that. But that right now is the tent pole, right? Everything kind of falls from there. So teams that have a quarterback and don't have to wonder and worry about those dominoes are going to have a nice head start come free agency if we

actually get there without Deshaun moving. Because, like, the whole point with Tom Brady being helpful is when you're the Chargers with a ton of cap space and Justin Herbert, you look a lot more attracted than the Colts, who also have a ton of cap space, but don't have that quarterback right now. And so Deshaun, who's reportedly going to, like, meet with teams and kind of like take this decision over the course of time, might end up being a little bit of a logjam here in the quarterback market, which is going to affect the way that teams, the halves and the have-nots in terms of having a starting quarterback, having a star, play free agency early doors, which

could be really interesting over the next week or so. Yeah, because remember how quickly once it was announced Rogers was going back to Green Bay, then quickly, right off that, another. Russell Wilson. The Russell Wilson news dropped because it was basically like, all right, well, I guess we're going to plan B. That would be the Broncos. And then so wherever the Watson ends up, that news will, again, create another domino effect where then you got other team scrambling.

It's like the musical chairs things. We got to find someone who's going to start with us. Maybe we go start or go trade for a guy like Gardner Minshu, who's been in the news a little bit the last few days or whatever. So that's going to be, I think, the domino effect that happens here. And it's probably going to happen, you know, if not tomorrow, then sometime early next or early this week. And it's just going to be chaos from there.

So like, how many more emergency pods do we do this week? Sunday, this counts because Sunday's first day of week. Two, two more after this. I agree. Deshawn plus wild card. Yeah. Plus a wild card. Listen.

Listen. No, that's the point of the wild card. All right? Nobody was putting Russell Wilson and Devere Bronco swaps a week ago. Except for like crazy Broncos fans. That doesn't count. Listen, here's the real question. Tom Brady said he was retiring to spend more time with his family.

Two months later, he's back. What message is this man sending to his children? I can't handle that with you. What is the takeaway for the kids? Dad, just didn't. Couldn't hack it. Not good enough. What about Giselle, too?

Yeah, that's going to hurt. This is a tough, this is a legitimately tough scene for a lot of people. And in the Brady household, this is earnestly a tough scene. Maybe they're sick him, maybe they're sick him though. Who knows? Well, actually, this is actually sort of similar. This is not the same, different person, different situation. I'm very interested to hear what it comes next.

Yeah, where is this going? When Urban Meyer retired, the first time from Florida, there was a report that his daughter yelled, I'd get my daddy back. and then like a week later he came back and it's like what happened there? Like how does that happen? Like what does she say in that?

You know what? Just let that be. Tom was sitting at the dinner table with the kids and the kids are like, man, like I think Joe Burroughs better than Justin Herbert. And Tom's like, I can't talk to these people.

I, they don't know Paul. They don't know the league, okay? They don't get it. I got to get back to my football people. The thing I've always heard, and this is true of Brady and Belichick,

That if you actually know them, and I'm, you know, I'm, I'm, me nor anybody I am close with know them really well, um, or at all. They're like world class shit talkers. That is the one thing I've heard. Like they're just, they just really slander a lot. Not slander is the wrong word. But like in a, in a, in a, hey, we're just going to like give shit to this guy thing. Like they'll watch games, but like, this guy sucks, right? And I kind of think if you're on the sidelines, like you hate that. Like you're seeing some guy who, You think sucks so badly and you can't beat them. Like that to me is why I always thought it was going to be strange.

Even if Brady didn't even start in September, about October, he'd be like, I hate these guys. I'm going to beat these guys. Like, he's wired like that. He just,

you look for motivation in every corner for someone like Tom Brady. And I feel like he was eventually going to find it in some way and, and come back. There's a reason, and I said a couple times, but he always wanted to play until four. because of the throwing motion stuff and his old coach, Tom House, was able to basically prove that someone like Nolan Ryan was able to throw

and have the mechanics to be a high performance thrower at age 46. And I think that he'd always had that in mind. And so the idea that he was just going to randomly be like, all right, see you later without some devastating injury. It was always a little strange. But again, I'm kind of done being surprised about Tom Brady. You know the memes with Pablo Escobar, the actor of Pablo Escobar, doing the Escobar bit where he's just like,

depressed, like sitting on us. That's just like how I picture Brady over the last like month or whatever, just sitting in his backyard. Just sad. Doesn't know what to do with himself. He's like, I don't have to train for anything. What am I doing? This is so boring.

I need to go back. I need to go back. Kirk cousins, guys? Yeah. Listen. Did Kirk cousins try to upstage them and then realize it's never going to happen? Like, no one cares. Listen, we had two goats.

No, no, no. let me tell you what Kirk Cousin's doing. The same thing he's been doing for six years. He is quietly getting his money and he's leaving out the back door. Just 40 million guaranteed. Two absolute goats of their respective fields.

I had major news drop today. Tom Brady is back playing football and Kirk Cunz is back playing his sport, which is massive guarantees on contracts. Just one year mercenary he gets like 50 million. Kirk's like, oh, oh. My contract is bad.

My cap is $45 million. Don't worry. I'll help you that. One year extension, a couple void years. It'll never come back. It'll never come back to bite you. All this drama. And there's a suitcase with $40 million in the room.

Kirk Cousins is picking it up and he's leaving out the back door. Yeah. Kirk knows his crap, baby. That's all he's doing. He heard Brady retired. He was like, sign it. Sign it now. Sign it now, baby.

Kirk Cousins just tweeted, now that that's out of the way, let's get to work on a Lombardi, hashtag let's freaking go. So lack. You like that? Do you like that? You got to understand.

All right, I got to make sure I get this right. Kirk Cousins' hometown. He is Michigan, right? No, he's from Barrington, Illinois, and then he went to high school. He was born Barrington, Illinois, and then he went to high school at Holland Christian,

Holland, Holland, Michigan. That's 45 minutes where I live. Okay. And Kirk Cousins is exactly like every single person. here. So take that energy, distill that vibe of that tweet, and put it in all of the people by whom I'm surrounded. This is the Midwest, and it is a scary place.

I heard unconfirmed reports to Kirk Cousin since most of the summer to land of Florida. So my hometown and your hometown, or your adopted hometown, to your joint custody of Big Kirk. Let's freaking go. All right, let's get one Miami football take from Kevin, and then we've officially done every bit of the podcast. By the way, hold up. on. I totally forgot about this.

Fieldy H just tweeted this. We get Tom Brady in creamsicle jerseys this year. The bucks are going back to the creamicles. More merchandising opportunities for Tom. No, no. Guys, this is, I have something to say about this. The creamsicles are not good uniforms. They've never been good uniforms.

The nostalgia for them is completely misplaced. As someone who grew up watching these creamsicle uniforms, I believe the first NFL game I ever went to was a creamsical game against the Packers when they They weren't even called creamicles. They were just called the Bucke's uniforms. Yeah.

And nobody liked this. Nobody liked this. And it's not like the Eagles' Kelly Green uniforms. They could come back any second and be an instant classic. I feel that, but exactly how you feel about the creamicles is how I feel about the Kelly Greens. Kelly Greens are good uniforms. They're good, no, they're good uniforms.

But the nostalgia gasses them up. People like these are great uniforms ever. The creamsicles aren't are gas because of nostalgia, but those are objectively cool uniforms. I'm looking at right now. That's pretty damn good. I'm excited. Honestly, like the least cool thing I can think of is Tom Brady and creamicles.

That's a lot of jersey sales for old Tommy. And the next year, he's going to be in a Niners jersey. All right. A lot more jersey sales in the Bay Area. We're going to work that merchandising up, Danny. We're going to get it there. He also can't ever retire now and have people believe him until the September of even then. Like, people are not, it's going to be like a Brett Farb situation.

It's going to be like, oh, he still hasn't filed his retirement paper. Folks were on the phone with Philip Rivers and Drew Breeze this year. Like, come play football now. The Colts are like just for the playoffs, man. Let me just come and play in the wild card round. That's where teams were. Brady will be 55 on a rocking chair, fielding calls from GMs. Come be a rental for four weeks.

If we can, no problem. You know what happens when Tom Brady returns and there's absolutely no other information given to us? Creamsicle uniform discussion happens. Kelly Green uniforms discussion. happens speculating how many more years is going to happen so it'll be the next week will be interesting to see actually like what the tick talk of events was and um ticot is a journalism term for like what exactly happened and not the the team dancing app um but uh just to kind of see

what what happens over the next week and what kind of information comes out it it'll all be fascinating do you guys fill out a bracket not yet no that's what i was doing when this happened all right now it's now i've lost my train of thought i don't know i don't know, I don't really know much about the teams. I know the prospects and I know the ACC. So I don't really know these guys. And no ACC team's going to win in tournament. So I got them always in like, before the Swiss team.

So it's fine. All right. All right. Miami's got Bama. Good luck to them. Miami's got, uh, USC. USC. Good luck to them.

And then we have Auburn if we win that, which is, uh, neither are good magic. We have, we, not a lot of, not a lot of, uh, height. down there in Coral Gables. Coach L. coaching him up. What just six, five guards. We got a bunch of 24-year-olds. They're amazing. I would die for that team, but we're not a lot of NBA talent on that team. Any of the takes, D.K?

My take, and this is not a take, really, is just, I'm happy he's back, honestly. I'm, like, excited. I want him, and I want him to keep playing forever. It's good for fantasy. Would you feel this way? Would you feel this way if, if Russell Wilson had been traded in the Seahawks were legitimate contenders? Yeah. You would. Yeah, absolutely. I don't really, look, I think I care more about Chris Godwin catching 100 passes than I do.

He's fantasy brain. I know, I've completely gone over. Can we do 10 seconds? I care more about fantasy now than my actual team. Can we do? Well, Pete Carroll will do that to you. Hey, can we do 10 seconds on the fantasy implications? Gronks back.

He's going to be a tight end one again. Godwin, when he gets back from his ACL is going to catch, let's say, 80 balls. Mike Evans, not going anywhere. He's back. And then, of course, I think the next question is, where does Leonard Furnett end up? Like, does this mean he signs again with the Buccaneers? Because he was like, Tom Brady's guy, trusted confidant. You know, the guy he's happy to dump it off to.

So I think that's like, those are the things that are important right here. Obviously, not having Cal Trask be the quarterback of the Buccaneers is great for fantasy. Benjamin. By the side, if you're asking me for a fantasy take, you've got to look at my fantasy record. No, no, I would never. I would never. I would never. And you've already given your betting takes. I'm asking for just any takes that you've got in your notes you need to fire off before we say goodbye to the folks.

Michael Gallup deal. Pretty solid. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Five years, 62 million. We think that, I think that's, that's just delightful for Gallup. It's right home base, assuming the guarantees are standard, which maybe we got an update on the guarantees, but I kind of missed it.

Though this whole Cowboys being like, what if we don't have Amari Cooper and Layo Collins? Like, what if that is what was wrong with our offense was Amari Cooper and Lio Collins, that feels like it might get tricky for them. I'm not really sure what the whole Dallas plan is on offense right now. like the deal for Gallup. So there you go. All right. Thank you to Norprinciotti for calling in in a cab and then standing on the corner of 15th Street and giving her takes. That was amazing. Thank you to Stephen Ruiz for texting. They'd be ready in an hour. Steve Allman, thank you for production help as always. Danny Kelly, Ben Solac. Thanks, boys.

Thank you. This has been the Ringar NFL show on the Ringer Podcast Network.