The Ryen Russillo Podcast - Bucs-Cowboys, NFL Kickoff, and Going Abroad With Kevin Clark

Episode Date: September 10, 2021

Russillo shares his thoughts about the Buccaneers’ narrow victory over the Cowboys in the NFL season opener (0:25) before he is joined by The Ringer’s Kevin Clark to discuss Super Bowl picks, why some analysts are doubting the Chiefs, high expectations for the Browns and the Bills, Lamar Jackson, rookie QBs, the Titans offense with Julio Jones, and more (10:30). Then they bring back America’s favorite F1-based segment: Going Abroad. They discuss changes to F1 racing teams, the upcoming Italian Grand Prix, and international soccer (45:00). Next, Ryen introduces a new segment for the NBA offseason: NBA Fax, where he talks about the uneasy situation featuring Ben Simmons, Klutch Sports, and the Philadelphia 76ers (1:07:00). Finally Ryen answers some listener-submitted Life Advice questions (1:14:55). Host: Ryen Russillo Guest: Kevin Clark Producers: Kyle Crichton and Steve Ceruti Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We have a loaded Friday getting you ready for the NFL season edition of the Rhyme and Soul Podcast. Kevin Clark, Super Bowl picks, also going abroad, life advice, new segment NBA facts, and why the Dak Prescott story

is the biggest thing from Thursday night's game. We have a packed, packed show today, but I want to spend a few minutes talking about last night's win to kick off another season for the NFL, Tampa at home against Dallas. Great game. A lot of fun. That was one of those classic games where you just look at the scoring of it in Tampa. If Godwin hangs on to the football, you're like, okay, this game's over. And you look back and say, you know, Dallas is competitive,

but still Dallas had a chance to win this thing. Zerline couldn't get a kick, hits a deep one, and then Brady brings it back and they win. So a few things to look at here. Tampa, there's a bunch of numbers here, and I'm going to go ahead and think, because I'm going to do some more of this next week too. Sheil Kapadia, Mike Sando, the Athletic, PFF,

Football Outsiders, ESPN, and the BetMGM totals odds, which are a big part of all the research that I do and kind of put it together in my own little thing for the start of the season. But Tampa, for anyone picking them to win the NFC and make it to the Super Bowl, it makes all the sense in the world. Here's a couple numbers for you. All right, yes, they were one of the healthiest teams. And a lot of times the health thing and the extremes can be luck.

You're really unlucky. I think San Francisco was incredibly unlucky. I think Tampa was lucky. But if you look at the top 31 guys that took 200 snaps or more, so Tampa's roster last season had 31 players that took over 200 snaps. All 31 of those guys are back

for a team that won the Super Bowl. That doesn't happen. I'd even argue the defensive line depth situation is even better and then watching Vita Vea last night just destroy the interior of a Dallas line that I thought at times a Tyron Smith looking better. The right guard that was in for Zach Martin had his moments as well. But Vita Veya, when you're crushing it at the middle, then everything else kind of happens. So you have that part of it. You also have the MGM line there that Tampa has as of right now on wind projections, the second

easiest schedule going. And it's a lot of that has to do with the division on top of everything else. So anyone looking at Tampa and that Brady's arm strength looks as good as it does already. Maybe that slows down. Maybe he finally gets tired, but I don't know what to do anymore with Brady. I really don't. You know, the job is to always have something to say. I don't know what else can possibly be said about Brady to a certain, that also extends to LeBron as well, right? You go, okay, you know, if this guy wins another one, what's it? LeBron, unfortunately for him, but also, I think, also motivated by him, is everything LeBron does is immediately followed by the Michael Jordan element.

All right? Valid, invalid, don't care, but it's a reality. Brady, there's nothing. There's nothing to do. mean we're gonna do bill russell comps for him that's probably not happening but i don't i mean are we gonna have other quarterbacks 10 years from now catch up with pliability and they're all gonna be playing into their mid 40s i mean imagine drafting someone going, hey, we hope he can be our starter for 20 years. I mean, that still doesn't seem normal. So his success doesn't seem normal. He looked terrific.

He's throwing the football all over the place. And I don't even think his receivers were that consistent. I would say the one part about the Brady thing that I think is weird, I don't think the announcers, Michaels and Collinsworth, have to keep bringing up Antonio Brown's off-the-field stuff. But if I were Brady, I'd be like, can you guys downplay that we're best friends? Although Brady played it up. So I don't know of all the guys that I would want people to think were my best friend, Antonio Brown would not be one of my first picks on the other side of the ball. Dak Prescott for like every quarterback

that comes in a league where I'm like, I'm not sure we'll see what happens. Guys kind of put up numbers. He, this guy's just a baller. I mean, he is. Beyond the throws and the physical part of it and the toughness. And it was weird. Some people were kind of saying like, hey, the numbers are huge, but I don't necessarily love the way he was throwing the football. Well, whatever it was, it worked. I mean, you want some numbers here? Okay. This is now coming into this game, so now it's 22 starts, but 21 starts with Kellen Moore. Dak averaged about 322 passing yards per game in 21 stats, and that number bumps up.

All right? This is a much better number. In Dak's last three full games that he's played, 58 attempts, 403 yards, three touchdowns, loss, 58 attempts, 502 yards, four touchdowns, loss. 58 attempts, 502 yards, four touchdowns, loss. 57 attempts, 472 yards, three touchdowns, loss. All right? So we're talking about an average of 58 attempts a game,

going for 460 a game, just under four touchdowns, and a 0-3 record because we knew coming into Dallas' defense. Although I thought I saw some glimpses of things, and some of these games just get out of hand now. You're talking the first game, the humidity, all that stuff. Even Dungy had pointed out at halftime, like cramping up and all these guys. But Dak, for all the conversations that we've had about Dak, I mean, you just can't even put him outside of the top 10.

And I think he's even closer to top five because there's an it factor with him too, which is what Brady has kind of built his career on. Where I think Dak, you know how everybody was arguing like Hooper basketball player and whatever that means. It can feel dismissive if you're only the basketball player, whatever the football equivalent of that is, it's Dak is that he is the Hooper. All right. He's a guy that just goes out there and fucking balls.

And I think everybody buys in, and this is somebody coming off some, some real injuries here, but it also speaks to, to the contract conversation around him that was so ridiculous. For all the people that were arguing, well, does Dallas not believe in him for this or all these different things? It's like, no, man, he just wanted to wait it out and make even more money, and guess what? That's exactly what happened. If you go average annual salary with the new money,

he is third in the NFL behind Mahomes and Allen at $40 million a year. The practical guarantee on this is $126 million, which is in the ballpark of where Allen and Mahomes are. I know two years ago on this podcast, I'm not an NFL insider. I do hear stuff from time to time. Clearly, I'm more plugged into the NBA. It's not even worth debating. But I remember with Chris Long, I was like, you know, this, this angst about Dak not getting an offer. He did get an

offer and it's huge. And he turned it down. And even with a busted of ankle, he ended up bringing in four years, 160, which is like real money. Like he's actually going to get most of this. And if he doesn't get the third year or the fourth year of this deal, it'll mean that he was successful and they worked this all out again. So all that contract talk and some of the topics that were brought up, none of it was relevant. It was him turning down a really big offer, hoping to get an even bigger one. And he got it. And by the way, he deserves all of it. So yeah, Dallas, I don't know what to tell you about your defense. Hopefully that offensive line holds up. Ezekiel Elliott, part of this. Once again, last night was an example of why you don't take running backs

to the top 10. I mean, look, between Fournette, Zeke, I think we all still hold out hope for Barkley, but man, it's tough to take that guy number two. I was going through it. Who are the top 10 running backs that have been drafted in the last decade that have worked? It's only McCaffrey, who played 16 games each of his first three seasons, only three games last year.

So let's hold off and say McCaffrey's forever damaged. But McFadden, I still can't believe C.J. Spiller wasn't a better player in the NFL. But you go back to the last, you've got to go all the way back to Adrian Peterson in 2007 as a top 10 running back selection that you felt good about. So yeah, Zeke, great blocking, but there's still some moments with the football with him.

And I know Tampa's defense is just coming off the numbers last year, not the defense that you want to run against. But I think that when maybe Zeke's going to have some big game and people will be like, oh, wait, is Zeke back? That guy's just not what the price tag is. And honestly, I think that contract with Dallas and Jerry Jones is the only place he would have gotten that deal. But it's just another example, again, of a guy at the top of the draft. We know that most teams won't do it.

There's like one win in the last decade from a top 10 pick. Okay, real quick, I want to run through a couple numbers for you to get you ready for the first weekend for some expectation. All right, Shilkapati, as I mentioned, athletic level, and we're going to have him on again here soon. He points this out with rookie quarterbacks that actually play because we've got Trevor Lawrence starting, Zach Wilson, Lance potentially, Fields potentially, Mac Jones is the

week one guy for New England. Here's the number. Over the last 10 years, 31 rookie quarterbacks who've seen significant snaps, 7 have performed like above average starters. Dak, RG3, Russell Wilson, Justin Herbert, Cam Newton, Jameis Winston, and Andrew Luck. 24 of the 31, that's at 77%,

have performed at a below average level. If you go EPA, expected points added, attribute that number to rookie quarterbacks who played. The median rookie season is Mike Glennon, who's about 23rd in his last full season at expected points at. All right? So for all of these, I'm as excited as you are

to watch every single one of these guys. The odds are three of the five, three of the four are easily below average guys. Or maybe we're blessed with a really special class. It's also important to point out from the same piece, over the last 10 seasons, 34 wide receivers were drafted in the first round. Their median production as rookies, 605 yards. Six of the 34 first round receivers produced 1,000-yard seasons as a rookie. And this is a season where we have Jamar Chase, Waddle, Devontae Smith, Padereas, Tony, and Rashad Bateman all as first-round receivers.

So the quarterbacks and receivers that were all – I'm just as excited as you are about them. We need to always temper our expectations for their production. Final number here, looking at the PFF rankings, positional grouping. I looked at the five worst secondaries that they graded out from last year. Here was the combined record. Detroit, Las Vegas, Jacksonville, Dallas, Atlanta. They graded Detroit as the worst secondary all the way down. The combined record, 24 and 56.

I think their secondary rankings are obviously influenced based on the group positioning stuff that they saw from last year without much turnover. But their secondary rankings from worst to what would it be 27th here atlanta dallas detroit las vegas and the jets so if you're one of those five teams i know there's some outside hope for atlanta turning things around uh they grade them out as the five worst secondaries let's talk with kevin cl Clark and go abroad with Cerruti as well. At the start of this podcast, talking a little Tampa, so let's bring in Kevin Clark, who we're going to talk NFL, getting ready for the NFL season,

and of course we're going to go abroad a little bit because it's long overdue. A lot of stuff going on in the NFL world. Maybe preview the track a little. Okay, Kevin, I'm going Chiefs-Rams. The Chiefs pick is not aggressive. The Rams pick isn't exactly aggressive either. I think there's an argument that they have the best defense in the league.

I love the idea of Stafford with this offense. I'm going all in. There's alarming stats that tell you, man, did McVay help golf along. And now Stafford can do a lot of the stuff golf was bad at. But with Tampa, because we know the health they had was incredible. They bring back the top 31 guys, snaps.

I've been over all this stuff. What were your Super Bowl picks? And if not Tampa, I mean, did you pick up anything from their win against Dallas that you think is important for the rest of the year? So I have Green Bay winning the Super Bowl over Kansas Kansas city. Um, we'll put a pin in that for a second, you know, with last night, Bruce Arians had a really funny comment. He said, he tells the guys all the time, they don't, don't learn anything more from losing as you do from

almost losing. So like, I think they like these kinds of scares and to see where they're at. And Tom Brady likes testing himself, especially early in the season. Remember they were not a juggernaut last year. Um, especially early in the season, Remember, they were not a juggernaut last year, especially early in the season. They won three road games. There's a reason that they had to do that. Tom Brady prides himself on getting better as the season goes along. We've seen that a million times. And so I think this is probably a positive step that they got a little bit of a scare. I think that obviously they have incredible roster talent. I think Brady was doing things, you know, I think over the course of the game, his depth of target. So basically how far he was throwing down the field was a yard and a half more than Dak Prescott, which over a game is a pretty astounding number. And so he's going

to be able, he still has the arm strength. We saw that last night. Um, I think that he's able to, we saw him kind of, uh, put Micah Parsons in a torture rack a little bit. Um, he's still, I know that that wasn't the question, but he still got it. And so I think that that's pretty much all, that was the question I needed answered. Yeah, because there's a lot that actually didn't work out for him. I mean, Godwin didn't have a great night. Mike Evans didn't have a great night. And then, you know, Scotty Miller wasn't really even a factor.

He had that one big catch there later. I think the Gronk part of it's really promising because I didn't think he was all that good last year he came on a little bit the problem with gronk as he gets older too and it was the problem when he was younger he's so hard to bring down that i think he takes way more punishment because he's a mutant and him being fresh week one you saw that happen a couple times where like he'll get up and be like wait am i hurt am i hurt and you're like, oh, I'm hurting. And it's, oh, I need back surgery. Oh, whoops, I need back surgery.

Yeah, like, oh, wait, my spine's busting three spots. So I think his arm strength and not having any kind of running game whatsoever because both those teams couldn't run it against each other last night. I don't think you can run it against Tampa. Every number tells you you couldn't have got the last year. All those guys are back. The Vita Vea part of this is terrific. But I think from a Brady, I mean, this is just what's so nuts about it.

Between the release and the arm strength, and I thought his arm got stronger and stronger last year as he got more comfortable in an offense where he's taking shots. So, you know, week one, I'd say the rest of the NFC is going, okay, well, at least week one, this guy doesn't look like he's taking a step back at 44 years old. Yeah, and you have to remember, so as the season went along last year, they started to use more play action and more motion.

And those are really statistically kind of the cheat codes of modern football. Defenses don't really have an adjustment to it. Linebackers still bite. Safety still bite. Motion still confuses guys. I was talking to Adam Zimmer, the defensive coordinator in Minnesota the other day, and he was saying, we don't have defenses as a whole. We have not innovated to keep up with that. And so you have Tom Brady, who's already dominant, and then he's getting this help from the offense, just kind of a league-wide trend. And so that's important. I think that from a defensive standpoint, Andrew

Callahan made the point last night, the Patriots are going to probably run no huddle the entire game against against Tampa Bay because they want to get Vita Vea and Sue tired. They're going to want to run the ball. And so I'm intrigued to see how these teams make this adjustment. You know, like I joke all the time, but it's actually true. Like I don't I feel like certain teams aren't tested in a given season until they've played the Patriots to see what kind of or Andy Reid to see what kind of wrenches that they throw at them. And so I'm intrigued to see how they attack that defense over a given season.

Going back to the offense, Mike Evans was basically taken out of the game by Trayvon Diggs and then get one reception when Diggs was shadowing him, and it didn't matter. And that's the thing with his offense right now, is that Tom Brady, who, as we know, And it didn't matter. And that's the thing with his offense right now is that Tom Brady, who, as we know, he is so – he likes not just testing the limits but finding out to the exact kind of inch where he needs to throw the ball in a November game. And the more comfort he gets knowing where everybody is. And the continuity part of it is so important to me.

I think you saw last night, Ryan, the improvisation to Gronk for that touchdown. That's only going to grow. I remember talking a couple years ago about the Josh McDaniels, Gronk, Brady triumvirate, and they said the most important thing is it's almost like a basketball team where they don't have to have something in the playbook. They can just say, all right, well, remember this thing we did in 2012? Let's just do it right now. Let's just do it right now.

We're not going to tell anybody. We're not going to tell anybody what we're going to do right now. And that is what's important. We have a Gronk, We're not going to tell anybody. We're not going to tell anybody what we're going to do right now. And that is what's important. We have a Gronk, and it's going to be important. As that offense grows, they're going to be able to do more and more and more of that stuff

because Brady is the master. Right, and I just want to check for people that are like, wait a minute, Godwin had the big catch late, 9 for 105 and a touchdown, but he fumbles that football in. And it was just so funny that Collinsworth brought that up.

Remember how they were talking about this guy never drops a football, and every time they brought up that he never drops a football, he would drop a football. Remember in the playoffs? You're like, you guys keep bringing this up and you're absolutely jinxing him the entire time. But if he doesn't fumble in the end zone that one time, the game's over. They're up two scores. And it's likely, even with Dallas's offense, they're not coming back in that game.

Okay, so why Green Bay then? So I think that the NFC is so bunched up. And I think that, you know, it was funny. I was reading about Tony Finau, the golfer, a couple weeks ago, and they were saying, well, why can't Tony Finau win? And the answer is that unless someone is super dominant, there's just like 15 people who are bunched up at all times, and then it's luck from there, right?

There's a couple of things you can do, but it's mostly luck. And I view the NFC the same way. There are four or five teams where they all have top end roster talent. They've all got the quarterback and it comes down to a luck. And I just kind of think that if you just keep making NFC championship game appearances, eventually it'll get there. This isn't a Sisyphus situation, just rolling, rolling the rock up the hill, but they also have an incredible roster. And I think that the Aaron Rodgers, oh, I don't want to be here. I don't like the front office thing. I think that obscured how much talent there actually is on that roster.

We acted like he was playing for the Houston Texans here. He's not. He was playing for a Green Bay Packers team that has that will, once he comes off Pup, David Bakhtiari was one of the best tackles in the league, have maybe the best wide receiver in the league who i picked to win offensive player of the year in davante adams uh jair alexander is elite like there is some real talent there that i think got overshadowed by the rogers narrative and i i think that they can they have the talent to to get to the super bowl and once that happens it's kind of luck um i'm picking

the packers because they're damn good and they're due. Yeah, the Packers feel like a more aggressive version of Seattle because in a way I feel like nobody talks about Seattle anymore. It has as much to do with the drama. Now, I'm not telling you they look good towards the end of the year. We know how bad the defense was, especially against the pass at the beginning of the season, like historically incompetent levels. But it's still a talented roster. They still win 10 or more games every single time.

I actually think that number at the Colts is one of the more surprising lines. It's so bad, it makes you want to bet the Colts. The Colts are getting two and a half points at home against Seattle with Wentz coming in with a complete unknown. Seattle blitzes a little bit more. They did more last year with Carroll most in the decade. Wentz is terrible against pressure. I'm not telling you, hey, everybody pick Seattle, go to the Super super bowl but they get talked about like a 7 and 9 team which you know again at the

extra game throw whatever record you want on there which i feel like green bay with rogers and all the complaining it's blinding people to be like you know that's why the rogers thing i didn't have a ton of sympathy for him i didn't think he was specific enough i think he was just mad and it's like look you're not on some team that's never getting you know like you're acting like this team has sucked for five years and you're wasting your prime and they're really good and they're they're in the mix you know and to me i guess being one of the teams you can legitimately say wins a super bowl and it's not going to be a surprise should be enough but it wasn't for him uh i'm completely in agreement with you by the way where are you on the Colts in general after this month I don't

I mean you know whether it's the receiving core the overhauling of the offensive line they've actually probably I don't like them how about that let me just put it that way now I do think that the Wentz pushback if he's healthy

there's no way he's going to be as bad as he was last year. You have the two extremes you have last year on the bad side. Right. Yeah. And they have 2017 where he's in the running for the MVP. The years around that he's average, you know, he's he's average, but he's got to figure out a way to stop taking these hits, which he's never quite figured out. It's like RG three with more chances to get hit. You know, Robert Griffin just never figured out like. It's like RG3 with more chances to get hit. Robert Griffin just never figured out, like, hey, you've got to protect your body a little bit. You can't extend

every single play and put yourself at that kind of risk. And if he hasn't figured that out, he's just going to get hurt again. But I don't think he's as bad or as good as we've seen at his extremes. The one thing is interesting because every kid in that generation grew up taking hits. They just take more. Andrew Luck is in that generation.

He took a ton of hits, and obviously that was a different path. But everybody born in 1990 to 1995 or whatever it was, the way they played offense, they just let themselves up for getting punishment. But the best quarterbacks learned how to take hits, learned how to take dives. I mean, I think Kyler Murray is kind of the guidepost for this. He's so small, he has to figure it out, but he just bails and just goes down. If he's like, I'm not going to,

I'm not going to try to extend this. I'm not going to get an extra yard. Like I need to preserve my career. I'm going down. And Wentz is bigger. And I think he thinks he can take the hits, but nobody can take that amount of hits. So if we stay in the AFC and going back through it, you're like, OK, so Mahomes was 14 and one last year. So the last impression could actually be misleading. Once the tackle situation was what it was in the Super Bowl, we saw what happened. They've tried to overhaul the entire offensive line. If that offensive line is good again, I don't know why Mahomes isn't going to light up the league again. And I say that. So there's a bigger question. Let's just start here. Why are people anti the Chiefs? And then we'll get to the other

top teams in the AFC. So a lot of the analytics people think the Chiefs don't have a elite like top three roster or top five. A couple of people kind of came at me for saying that the Chiefs had a top five roster, which I found interesting. If you look at it, which you shouldn't, I think the argument is if you weigh every position equally, sure, maybe the Browns or the Ravens pre this rash of injuries have a more talented roster or whatever. But that's not how this works. That's not how any of this works. Patrick Mahomes is the best player in football at the most important position in football, and that has a lot to do with it. And then you add in Travis Kelsey,

then you add in Tyree Kill, then you add in all the positional, you know, Orlando Brown shoring up the offensive line. The offensive line is probably going to be better in Kansas City than it ever has. And I kind of think that because Mahomes did so well, they lost the tackles, and then he played so poorly,

we've now overrated previous Chiefs offensive lines. They were never the best line in football, and now they have a chance to be really, really good. And I understand a lot of the dorks, and I say that lovingly, hated the Orlando Browns rate, thought it was an overpay. Well, I don't actually see it that way. I think that Patrick Mahomes needs to stay upright and needs to stay happy, happy.

This is a human business. Keep Patrick happy. Brett Beach saw Mahomes in the elevator bank in Tampa after the Super Bowl and said, we're going to fix this. When you do that, you have to come through. And if it takes a first round pick, I'm fine with that. You overpay to keep your superstar happy. He's owed, what, $480 million still? Keep him upright.

Keep him happy. I'm fine with that. Overpaying is a lot better than trying to play the long game with Patrick Mahomes and say, Hey, buddy, we're going to take a year off. No, just keep him healthy. I mean, I think that there were a lot of people in the Chiefs organization who were really scared for Patrick's health, like legitimate health in that game. And Veach told me the toe, by the way, it's one of those things, I know people say this all the time,

that toe, when they fixed him up in the offseason, some of the doctors looked at it and said, I have no idea how he was even playing. So it wasn't just the line. It was Mahomes was beat up, all that stuff. And I think that for me,

for the Chiefs, you have to attack. You have to see the ball and hit the ball every single year, and that's what they've done. And so the idea that maybe the Browns are deeper, I'm fine with. Whatever the Packers are deeper, fine. I'm good with that argument.

But I am pro-Chiefs. You also have to remember, too, the talent you're losing at the tackle positions between Schwartz and Fisher, that's a big deal when those guys were right. Now, they didn't have Schwartz last year, but between the injury and retirement and then Fisher, and then now those guys are gone. And I thought they were a little stubborn with their play calling offensively.

And I left the Super Bowl actually more impressed with Mahomes. I don't know that I could have been any more impressed with Mahomes than I already was. And I go, he made some plays in that game that I still can't believe, but I thought they kept trying to do the same thing over and over and over again. When you mention the Chiefs here, as you said, some analytics people don't like their roster as much as others do, and we can all look at any rankings and just take them however you want, but if you go to the PFF stuff, this is what I think is interesting.

They have Tampa as the number one overall roster. They actually have the Chiefs second, which I like that they're heavily weighting the Mahomes, Kelsey, Tyreek. I agree. Those three guys are that good. So yeah, you want to tell me there's other units that are better than them across the board? Fine, but we're not doing that. So I like that they did that. I don't know if there's enough

national attention to the idea that, again, even if you disagree with PFS rankings, they have the Browns and Bills as the third and fourth best rosters. I don't know that that has made enough noise, and that's why whenever somebody's saying, like, oh, I might go with the Bills, you're like, wait, am I really going to pick the Bills or the Browns?

You feel better about Allen right now as a quarterback than you do Baker, but it's something to be said of, like, you know, you start looking at those units of how the offensive line grades out in Cleveland. I think it'd be surprising if Buffalo's defense wasn't much improved from where it was last year with the way they've invested in their front yeah so give me a sense of like what other guys you know not just your opinion but also when you're talking to teams about what they really think are coming out of Buffalo and Cleveland so I spent some time with Brandon Bean in Buffalo

and we talked about how he viewed last season. Does he look at it as okay, we're going to look at the 2020 season and we're going to evaluate where we were or do you just look at the game they lost to the Chiefs? And the answer surprisingly was they just looked at the game they lost to the Chiefs and they drafted Greg Russo because of it. They did not want to draft two pass

rushers with the first two pick, but that's how the board fell to them. I think in a healthy way, the Chiefs are in their head. In a healthy way. In a way that's like, it's a different comparison, but it's Jordan having the Pistons in his head. That kind of healthy motivation.

They know what their target is. They have enough roster talent, Ryan, where they know that they're going to be in the mix, and so they're just looking for the one or two pieces that can get them to beat Mahomes, which is to get pressure on them and then get lucky and have Josh Allen deliver for them.

It was interesting to me. I had Shil Kapati on the podcast the other day and I said, how do you beat the Chiefs? And he said, I think everyone's looking at it wrong. I think you improve the offense because you have to outscore them. You're not going to beat the Chiefs 13 to 10. You're going to beat them 45 to 40. And I think there improve the offense because you have to outscore them. You're not going to beat the Chiefs 13-10. You're going to beat them 45-40.

And I think there's too much, he thinks there's too much emphasis put on the defense when really it should be you're trying to get into a shootout and hope you can win and make a couple plays. Modern defense is just doing enough. Nick Saban a couple years ago said, good offense beats good defense. That was never true before.

It's true now. Nick Saban has given up on good defense. He knows what modern defense is. And so I think the Browns are a little bit different. I think that they're not looking at the Ravens or the Steelers or the Bills or the Chiefs and saying we have to specifically beat these teams. Andrew Barry is a little more pragmatic, I would say. Spent some time with him a couple of weeks ago. Really impressed with him. But I think that they're more, I know this is a dirty word, they're more process-veland they're not they're not all in on this season or anything like that you spent a lot of time with andrew barry the gm uh of the browns

you have a new piece up that just came out this week he's the youngest he's from harvard everybody kind of knew that you made a great comp there. You're like, this is like Trevor Lawrence of front offices. It hit the Baker extension, what they're expecting with Odell, what they think they have defensively. Like, is this team, if they're coming out of the AFC, is that a surprise to you right now, if I tell you that's what happens? It's not a surprise, but I think that there's three tiers for me of AFC contenders, And I think it's,

I guess you could say four, but Chiefs are alone. Bills and Ravens are on my second tier. Browns are on my third tier. And then there's the Titans and those sort of teams, the Colts, I guess you could say. And I don't really consider that fourth tier serious. But no, I wouldn't be surprised. It would just take a leap from Baker that I don't really consider that fourth tier serious. But no, I wouldn't be surprised. It would just take a leap from Baker that I don't think he's necessarily capable of. Of those four teams, he's the worst quarterback. That doesn't mean he's bad. It just means he's not as good as Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, or Patrick Holmes.

That's fine. I think the extension there is one of the most important decisions any GM has to make in the next couple of years. The Browns have one sort of on the horizon problem. Number one is that they lead the NFL in the amount of what Over the Cap calls high salaries. That's guys making between $8 and $16 million a year. And then they have a bunch of young talent that they're eventually going to have to sign. So they already got Nick Chubb in the fold. Baker Mayfield has his fifth year extension, fifth year option next year. And then he's due for an extension or maybe a franchise tag or whatever but they've got to figure that out but part of

the kind of the runoff of the quote unquote process is that they actually have a lot of really good young players and it's going to get expensive to keep all those guys but I think Barry understands it I mean I just think that I've never really been around the one thing I'll say Ryan is Andrew Barry graduated college a year before

me and I think that in a lot of cases, when a guy has a lot of success and he's 33 years old, 34 years old, there's a lot of animosity around the league or any industry, any industry. And everybody in the NFL is like, no, no, no, dude, this guy is for real. This guy deserves it. There's no animosity. Kevin Stefanski joked about how it was annoying how young he was. And pretty much everybody else I talked to was just like, nah, if this guy didn't deserve it, we'd be pissed off. And like, what the hell is this? Why is this Harvard guy getting this job?

No, no, no. Everybody understands this guy's a legit phenom. And he's in command of a pretty good situation there. The way quarterback contracts usually work is whoever's the most recent to get the extension outgains the other guys. We saw that with Allen after the DAC deal. What happens with Baker?

He's not going to... I don't think he's going to get that. I think he's going to get a little bit less. I think he's going to get a little bit less. And I don't think we're ever going to get to the quote-unquote middle-class quarterback like we did a couple of years ago. If you remember when Ryan Fitzpatrick signed his Bandaid deal, he was like the only quarterback making between eight and $20 million.

I think that's what it was. And that used to be there used to be this huge gap. And now it's going to like from like eight to like 30. And we're going to get there eventually because the way the cap is rising. the cap is rising but i think the mahomes thing set a limit on kind of kind of put a ceiling on quarterback pay a little bit for the next couple years because we know i by the way i ain't the mahomes deal already a bargain already a bargain when you just look at it and and just how court and how the next wave extensions are going to go when you look when you dig into what it could be with tv money which means they're probably going to redo it anyway.

Yes. I know the headline of that number is astonishing, but it isn't. You know, there's a way he could have played this out. I mean, that's why the Dak stuff drove me crazy as I brought up at the top. Like, Dak just kept betting on himself. He was being offered big money. He's like, no, I'm just going to wait this thing out, wait this thing out. So the Mahomes headline is a big one.

offered big money. He's like, no, I'm just going to wait this thing out, wait this thing out. So the Mahomes headline is a big one, but I completely agree with you that if you look at it and the way it's structured, he could have been more difficult about it if he wanted to be. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. So Baker, to me, you're looking at maybe 34, 35 a year, which is a little bit more than the kind of wave of golf Wentz extensions a few years ago. I think that that seems about right. Yeah, 35, 34, that would put him, because now we're looking at like some of the guys that are outside of, you know, the cycle of signing, which is what you always have to look at here.

You know, that would put him, I don't know, outside the top five or something like that. You know, he'd be ahead of golf ahead of Goff, which would make sense. It goes Mahomes at 45, Allen 43, Prescott 40, Watson 39, Wilson 35. So Rodgers is at 33.5. But then again, Rodgers turned down the deal that would have made him the highest paid player in the NFL. So that's kind of separate. I mean, Goff's at 33.5, Cousins is at 33, Wentz is at 32. I'd say a little bit more than that

is fair. And shorter so the teams can get out of it. We know Baltimore is just injury central. Two more guys go down in Edwards and Peters. Any sense on what happens there with the Lamar deal? Probably a little more.

You're probably looking at the 40. Maybe. So it all comes down. And this is something that surprised people around the league that Josh Allen took such a long deal. Because everyone thought when Kirk Cousins took that deal, that the first deal, that

he had provided this new blueprint. The first three year was all the guaranteed money. The first three year, all guaranteed. That the was, bet on yourself with the franchise tag. It doesn't matter. I mean, look at Dak Prescott. Dak Prescott was out for the year last year. It didn't matter. He still got his money.

So there were people in the league who said, okay, we're going to use the franchise tag to our advantage. We're going to use short contracts to our advantage. As you said, you can just renegotiate every couple of years with the TV deals. That has not turned out to be true at all. Um, and these players are comfortable taking longer team friendly deals, um,

that are, and that, that's kind of surprised some people around the league. Um, so this comes down to Lamar Jackson and what his willingness is to, if he wants a three year deal or if he wants a six year deal, if he's, that to me is,

is the big question. I think you're probably looking at 40 million dollars from mar jackson um i'm intrigued to see it because the thing is that kind of the the litmus test here is that eric dacosta and andrew berry eric dacosta is the baltimore gem um they're two of the smartest guys in the league and i kind of like seeing them negotiate quarterback contracts because they're not going to get uh bamboozled they're not going to go into something without doing their research. And that's why I think it's a good, I think a lot of guys in the league

are watching those two things because they want to see how those two guys who are smarter than a hell of a lot of people in the league do it. Lamar, to me, is a fascinating test case. You know, I think that there's, there was a whole thing about whether or not the league has caught up to him. Breer had a good column about this a couple weeks ago

about how much work he's been putting in. I think that Harbaugh told Breer that Lamar on certain days is just not leaving the pocket on practice and is just working on throwing, which is interesting because I talked to Mahomes a couple weeks ago, and he was saying on tape, he noticed last year, especially in the Super Bowl, how much he was bailing from clean pockets, Mahomes now, and that he's working on just staying in the pocket too. And so I think a lot of these guys are trying to train themselves and know they can always move out in the pocket too. And so I think a lot of these guys are trying to train themselves and know they can always move out of the pocket,

but they're also trying to be, and Mahomes literally said this, he's trying to become Tom Brady in the pocket, which is not necessarily his game on every drop back. And so I think that Lamar's next step to me is interesting. The stress he puts on the defense makes it so he only has to get a little bit better at passing and the whole league changes because Lamar, the defense is still real. I mean, I know Ben Solak was in our podcast a couple weeks ago talking about how much, you know, the cover three dropping back, sitting back and letting Lamar throw to them how much that was

working against Lamar last year. I understand that. But if he just takes a little step forward, Baltimore is going to be in really good shape who's your favorite rookie quarterback i'm not talking about talent because lawrence yeah the answer but if you're saying like okay so even uh circumstances no yeah yeah so it's between it's between i really is between Lawrence and Wilson. I picked Mac Jones to win Rookie of the Year because I just think that situation is going to be the best one. He's going to be playing a bunch of big games. He's going to look fine, and they're going to be able to run the ball and push for the playoffs, and then he'll win Rookie of the Year.

I don't think Jacksonville can do that. I really like the LeFleur offense in New York, but I don't think Zach Wilson's going to be able to do that. I don't think Justin Fields is going to see the field for a couple of weeks. And Trey Lance, I just don't know. I really just don't know what his... I think that I think the conspiracy theory around the league, Ryan,

is that Kyle Shanahan wanted Trey Lance to go out and grab that job, and he didn't do it. And I think that I don't know what the timetable is. Listen, Trey Lance looked awesome in the preseason And I think that I don't know what the timetable is. Listen, Trey Lance looked awesome

in the preseason. I think Trey Lance is going to be like, is going to be an elite player at some point. I just don't know from a 2021 standpoint if he's going to be my favorite guy.

So I would say I would say Lawrence all things considered is going to if we redraft at the end of this year it's still going to be lawrence it's not going to be a justin herbert situation where we redraft in january and we go actually the number one guy maybe wasn't the number one guy san francisco's a really great question here and you know when i pick the rams to get out it's like okay but

their division versus what what the buccaneers have to deal with like tampa is going to be at home if the rams play tampa in a playoff game the likelihood that that game is in tampa is much more so than in los angeles yes just based on the divisions alone all right you know look no so you can be surprised what happens here but san francisco's ir designations last year like all-timer so crazy when i've seen some numbers float around like hey look like you can argue the shanahan garoppolo thing i'll tell you right now if i were on a debate show and i just said hey i don't know just tell me which one you want me to do i'll crush either side of that

argument there's so much no i'm serious there's so much evidence that shows it's actually all garoppolo and then there's plenty that you go okay wait a minute if it's all garoppolo why does the head coach clearly not like him enough i don't think there's any mystery with that. I don't think Shanahan has much of a poker face when it comes to this stuff. And the fact that go ahead and, and do what they do to go bring in Trey Lance. Like to me, that's like, Hey guys, this isn't some big secret. Like the limitations of Garoppolo are very obvious. I've seen them. Other people disagree, but yet here we have a coach who's like, no, I'm going to go ahead and take Trey Lance in this spot. But Garoppolo could have one of those moments where they put together some wins.

You know, the defense is solid again. This team, when it was healthy, was one of my favorite teams. I mean, Fred Warner is probably one of my single favorite players to watch in the league. Their linebacker, who's unbelievable. Just focus on him for 30 minutes, man, and you will go, okay, I'm glad I spent that time watching Fred Warner. So San Francisco could find a way to, I don't know, I think just to say them being competitive is an insult. I think there's a version of this where people start, but then they'll talk themselves back

into Garoppolo if they're winning games, because that's what happens with QBs. Even if you think, hey, I'm third and A, I don't think his own staff trusts him. I'm intrigued by the Garoppolo progression. You know, PFF did a study a couple of weeks ago that I found fascinating. So the biggest jump, as we know, is from year one to year two. And then from year two to year four for a quarterback, they about stay the same. And then there's actually a second jump from year seven to eight, which is, by the way, what Garoppolo is right now. From year seven to eight, which is, by the way, what Garoppolo is right now. And I wonder sometimes if you keep the physical ability and hopefully after all the injuries, Garoppolo still has that the game still slowing down for you because you're you're smarter. And I always kind of thought that the early 30s was the second peak of a of a quarterback because they're smart and they're getting smarter and they still

have the physical tools. And, you know, after kind of age 34, 35, it becomes a crapshoot of whether or not, whether or not your body's going to betray you or not. Um, but I think Garoppolo could take a really nice step forward. You know, we heard all of those reports at the beginning of training camp. You know what Garoppolo is playing lights out. It might not matter because Trey Lance is playing even better in practice. And then as Trey Lance had sort of, and again, I really like Trey Lance, but as he kind of, I want to say hit a training camp wall, but he wasn't the phenom that he was in the first couple of weeks of practice.

I think that Garoppolo still looked really good. So I'm completely with you. I think that the 49ers could be really damn good. I think Kyle Shanahan is the second best offensive line of football, which puts him in the mix for second best offensive line in the history of football

because that's just kind of where the game is right now. You're probably looking at it. Rich Coat type one. Rich Coat type one. No, I mean, like you think about obviously like, OK, Bill Walsh, Andy Reid.

I mean, I'm saying like when, Bill Walsh, Andy Reid. I'm saying when this is all said and done, we're going to be looking at Kyle Shanahan as a top 10 offensive mind. In 20 years, when we look back on this, we're going to talk about Kyle Shanahan with Andy Reid. Not right now, but we will. Okay, I got to hit you on Tennessee here a little bit. Bigger concern for you, Arthur Smith down in Atlanta now

or a defense last year that was pretty bad. By any account there, that was a team that had Julio. So it's kind of back to your Chiefs thing like, hey, look, let's just find a way to outscore everybody because personnel-wise on defense, I don't know if they're going to figure out a way to coach this group up to now be average. But I also think the Smith removal from this now, I don't know if they're going to figure out a way to coach this group up to now be average.

But I also think the Smith removal from this now, and they've had some turnover on that side of the coaching staff now for years, I think it's a concern. It's a huge concern. It's like a top five concern for me if you're ranking concerns around the league. So Arthur Smith was amazing. And that's one of the reasons I picked the Falcons to get the NF NFC seventh seed is because I just think that he's going to be able to improve that team year over year pretty quickly uh Todd Downing is the new offensive coordinator he called the plays for the 2017 Raiders that team was bad um and he was fired after one year and I I certainly believe in career improvement and the fact that he's been in the system and he was tight ends coach for them for for two years.

I understand that. Um, but there's going to be a dip and, and you, I think you have to understand, you know, the development of Ryan Tannehill is one of the best success stories of the past 15 years of football at the quarterback position defined Ryan Tannehill

mid career came in as a backup. You know, I talked to Mike Frabel about this a couple of weeks ago and John Robinson as well. And he was taught, they were talking about how one of the things that impressed Ryan Tannehill, impressed them about Ryan Tannehill, was that he

was not trying to win the job when he got there. He understood his role and then he grew with it. And he just kind of did kind of what we're talking about, the see the ball, hit the ball thing. And he just executed every step of the way. And now the next step is being able to do it without Arthur Smith. And I don't

think that you can just plug in Ryan Tannehill's elite number. He was probably like a top five quarterback for large stretches of the last two years. They made the AFC title game two years ago. I do think that you cannot separate those two things. So I'm expecting a dip. I'm expecting them to win that division

because that division is awful. And the Colts, as much as I say it's, we can sit here and say it's not a big deal. It's a big deal that the Colts have that many unvaccinated players and that there will be guys who are going to miss time. That's really important. And so I'm picking them to win the division, but I'm not picking them to be a serious contender this year. No.

And the defense is bad and the defense is not going to be able to bail them out. But this is a quarterback driven decision. All right. You got Packers Chiefs. I got Rams Chiefs. And that means the Chiefs are probably not going to come out of the AFC. That's correct. The Chiefs are going to be like my Spurs thing there where I pick the Spurs to just win.

I picked them like eight or nine years in a row. I was like, just give me the Spurs to win the whole thing. And you ended up being right almost every other year there for a little while. But I don't know. We'll see what happens here with the top of the AFC. Because as you're going through those rosters, and granted, Baltimore with some of these injuries steps back. But there's some really good teams behind them. Whereas in the NFC, you're right.

It's like, okay, is Tampa really going to be this healthy again? But their schedule plays out. As I mentioned at the top, it's the second easiest if you go to bet. I don't want to wade into controversial waters here but do you do you look at this vaccination stuff as as an important part of breaking the season because i just think that there are teams right now where i'm just like i man i i don't know i mean yes is the simple answer that it's a big deal but i i'd have to see a couple weeks and see how this is executed as far as, you know, what kind of penalties we have or what kind of like protocol. Like we've had some stuff in baseball happen in the last couple of weeks.

You're like, wait, how are you handling this? Like what's going on? Like there was a weird story about the Red Sox where one of the players is saying that they said, hey, stop testing. You're like, what? So, yeah, I think the vaccination part of this is a pretty pretty big deal and i know that it's it's a you know it's a dicey conversation for a lot of people and for the record yes i'm vaccinated as soon as i possibly could and i didn't skip the line because i have a successful podcast and i didn't post that content because i didn't that was a great stretch it's like hey did you

get vaccinated yeah you haven't posted it ig yet the fuck are you doing that's home run content like is it hey here you go shot number one down because the best part was there was that little window when people were sharing that they got vaccinated and then it was like oh really you you how did you get it so soon and then it morphed into how come you haven't posted it yet i don't know exactly what that break date was um but we'll uh we'll leave it at that okay I know everybody's been waiting for this. We've brought it back. It didn't go anywhere.

It's time to go abroad. Golazo! Goal! Goal! Goal! Continued economic responsibility demands restraint in government expenditure. And last year, we achieved the largest ever recorded reduction in the budget deficit, 1.5 million. Okay, F1 silly season. Is that what they call it, Kevin? That is what they call it, Kevin? That is what they call it. George Russell to Mercedes, Botas to Alfa Romeo.

Alfa. Alexander Albon is back. He's back. People have been wondering where he was for a year. He was doing weird Red Bull test drives. He's back in a Williams. Silly season is upon us, baby. I love silly season.

That means drivers are moving on. Here are the the standings right now max has seven wins lewis four wins did win three of the first four to start the season uh verstappen is three points ahead of hamilton but it has been a max run he's won back to back belgium i don't i don't know what that was they ran two laps and then russell half points half points that's right half points netherlands though it's just okay let me ask you this is the more seasoned of the two f1 guys does hamilton bitch about tires the entire race every race he's in all the time because he's constantly on the comms being like uh i don't think these tires are going to hold up like oh why did we do that i think you're hearing the hamilton frustration knowing that either max is better equipped with the car

or max has just caught him at skill level at this point so first of all that's that's a big question um lewis does tend to complain in the radio but so does everybody that's just a common these guys are so in tune with the car that they understand when anything is going wrong. And that's a Max thing. That's a Hamilton thing. That's probably an Alexander Albon thing. That's fine. I think you're going to see a couple of changes in the next couple of weeks.

Monza in Italy, where they go to next, fastest track in Formula 1. That tends to lead to a mercedes domination i think they won every race there for five years from 2014 to 2018 they have the best top end speed car on the grid and so they should win and then they go to sochi where mercedes has won every single time since that race came back um I think that was in 2014. So it's a three-point gap right now.

It's a three-point gap right now. And the thing is that the big meme going around right now is that if Max steals one of these, if he steals one of these road games, so to speak, then we're in real dangerous territory for Merck. But if they hold serve, we're going to have a very tight title race. And so I think these two races will tell a story. If Merck still got it, Hamilton will go 1-1 here. How many different names do we have for the Mercedes team?

We've got Mercedes. Silver Arrows. I love the Silver Arrows. When Crofty says, oh, the Silver Arrows. And then Merck, I don't know. I don't know. Okay, but staying on Team Mercedes here. All good stuff there.

Valtteri Bottas now with Alpha. Yeah. His last race, the Netherlands race that Max won. Him complaining about the fastest lap pitting at the end was incredible. complaining about the fastest lap pitting at the end was incredible. Can you imagine an NFL quarterback who knows he's being replaced by a guy who isn't even on the team, and that he's not going to be with, say there's somebody out there slinging it for the Bears.

It could actually be Andy Dalton, although Dalton's not exactly at Botas' level of success. But just imagine if we had full access to the quarterback complaining about play calling the entire time, on top of that, knowing he's not, like the team decided to not retain him because they went with George Russell, which has been rumored for a while. Botas was

on year-to-year deals. He was pissed about it. He said he would have gone to back to Mercedes if they gave him two years. But the frustration that we all saw on the Netflix doc were basically, you're in this great car, but your goal is to always set up for Hamilton to win. And then they have Otis pit for fastest lap. And then they go, nah, let's just whatever.

Hamilton's not catching Verstappen, which was kind of a crazy risk because he was only three seconds behind. If Max were just to take a bad turn or lock up or something, he'd pissing away a win but they still had enough time to get back to podium but then they they pit lewis we're like no you try for fastest lap and bonus is like why did we just stop why did we just stop then and they're like up yep sorry valentory just keep pushing pushing why did we just stop and it was just you could just tell and granted he's finished so there wasn't going to be a ton of emotion coming out of it um one of my best friends from finland i think

i can say that he yeah he just it's just i don't know you'd have to know the backstories as well as anybody that watched netflix part but to hear him just be like okay so you just had me fucking pit for fastest lap and then you decided to pit lewis a lap after i did why did we just do that and they had no answer because he was actually right and he knew he was done with the team anyway i officially feel bad for valterre so i was thinking about this last night i was going for a little walk around brooklyn and uh boat wait you're walking around brooklyn just just keeping your f1 thoughts to yourself thinking He's going for a little walk around Brooklyn. And Botas. Wait, you're walking around Brooklyn just keeping your F1 thoughts to yourself?

Just thinking about it. Yeah, just thinking about it. There are some Jimmy Garoppolo vibes with Botas. And there's a couple of reasons I say this. The first part of it, obviously, is he's being replaced by the shiny new thing. I get it. But then, he's kind of become this joke because he was put in such a good situation, the Mercedes

being the most dominant car in history. They've won every single Constructors Championship, obviously, since he was in there, and Lewis Hamilton led the way on that. But I think that people forget why he was put in that car to begin with. He was at Williams when they were a mid pack car.

He was getting podiums on occasion. He was out dueling his teammate, Felipe Massa. He's a good driver who became a joke because he was in a really good situation and didn't win a driver's championship. And then on top of that, he was very honest about how much he hated the situation. He was very honest,

as we've talked about, Ryan, about how much Instagram comments could get under his skin. And so I kind of feel, I almost feel like he's become a bit underrated just as a pure driver because he's become

a little bit of a punchline. I feel bad for him. I feel as bad for him as I could anybody who makes, you know, tens of millions of dollars and has a great bit of a punchline. I feel bad for him. I feel as bad for him as I could anybody who makes tens of millions of dollars and has a great farm, a modern farmhouse in Finland that we all saw in a spa.

He's got a spa in his house. But I really do think that he's going to become a footnote in history. And I do feel bad for him. George Russell is going to come in and be a completely different role. First of all, George Russell was in the Mercedes last year because of a COVID positive from Lewis and almost won the race, should have won the race.

And he's the future. This is future planning now for Mercedes. Valtteri was never a future plan. He was just going to be the backup. He was just going to be the number two. He was just going to be the caretaker and just try to win some construction championships and help out Lewis. And if he was, you know, he had to give up his spot leading because they needed

Lewis to pass that kind of stuff with Russell. It's going to be a true duel. Botas is not a good as not as quick as Russell as I like to say, but Russell's is going to get opportunities. Botas never got and I understand why he would feel screwed by that. Now he's off to Alpha.

Have a nice career. He'll get some sneaky podiums we weren't expecting on some chaotic race. But I feel bad about his career. Give me a very disturbing NBA F1 comp that you got as you come off your Botas Garoppolo comp. So I got a DM. And because it was a private DM, it's just from a listener. Don't know the guy. Because it's a DM,

I'm going to keep the name out of it because I don't know if the guy wants his name out there. Why? Because he likes F1? Especially not. His marriage could be destroyed. This is an explosive comp. So someone sent me a DM

that I then sent to you and Cerruti. One line, no explanation, no further inspection. Is Daniel Ricciardo the Dwight Howard of F1? I hated that. You hated it? Okay, so I can't

stop thinking about it. I can't stop thinking about it. So let's just break this down. Ricciardo was a top, top guy. Won Monaco. Came out of the gates. Just awesome in the Red Bull many years ago. And at some point, he transitioned into a personality. He's having a wonderful life.

He's made a lot of money. He was the star of the first scenes of the Netflix series. Star of all three. series star all three star star of all three um you didn't like the naked botas in the last one that didn't i respect your hair back because i just look again my relationship with the fins have been strong over the years and so that made a lot because my buddy from finland built a spa in his modest townhome i'm like wait you customized and put a spa down here? And he was like, yeah.

He's like, what? What do you mean? I think he used to smoke cigarettes in the spa. But again, I've argued this. If you're from Finland, cigarettes are good for you. So Ricardo and Dwight at some point became more personalities than competitors. And now

Ricardo is on his third team. Right. Red Bull, Renault, and now McLaren. Yep. And he is just sort of hanging out. And he's getting out-dueled by Lando Norris. He's a bit of a role player

now, which I don't think anybody saw coming. And yeah, there it is when you saw this you thought what ryan i i didn't like it because it made me think because i mean dwight howard's one of my he will be one of my least favorite players of this generation um if that needs to be explained i don't know what i've been doing here over the years. And the fact that Ricardo, who, yeah, I mean, you know, we're ninth in points right now. I just got my McLaren gift box upstairs.

Like I was like, where, cause I may go to the race in Austin. I was invited to go and I think I have to go. It's just a matter of how the football thing breaks down with all that. And yeah, I want Ricardo to be better, but I, you know, it's just a matter of how the football thing breaks down yeah with all that and yeah i want ricardo to be better but i you know it's funny because when i first started learning about any of this stuff which is not very long ago which is sort of the joke this whole thing the first time i would learn about christian horner i'm like all right dude we got it like you've got an english farm you're married to a spice girl like you're so full of yourself at every single turn and then

he starts shitting on ricardo being like oh i feel like he's running and he's running from a race running from a challenge running from a fight running from a fight running from a fight i don't even know what accident i was doing there i apologize to everyone internationally so i kind of wanted him to be wrong and horner's been right and by the way horner's yeah the horner's a stud the entire red bull team everything they're doing like any any ego versus ego thing that I had with, with Horner, I'm like, nah, man, this guy's incredible. And look at what they're doing. And you know, there's other days where, you know, the other Red Bull looks like it's,

it's going to get it done. So, um, I wish Ricardo were in the mix a little bit more as of this right now, he apparently is sitting on pole with a few minutes to go. So this is real live reaction. We're giving you live in the moment F1 reaction. If we get research to double check that right now, I believe he's sitting on the pole here for the Italian Grand Prix. It's FP1. It's FP1. A lot of ballgame left.

But hey, Dwight won a ring, you know? Real quick though. Okay, bringing in Cerruti Saruti sorry here we go no no I just I just everything you laid out Kev is right the timeline makes a ton of sense my problem is isn't Ricardo has fans right like people like him people follow him Saruti is there one Dwight Howard fan you and me buddy I'm not a Dwight Howard fan well okay Dwight Howard was claimed Dwight Howard you you like I want to associate with Dwight he was the best player on the only good thing that's ever happened to us on a basketball court no he burned too many bridges on the way out are you no I can't overlook that I'm sorry just what do you just remember

Rafer Alston fondly that I actually probably remember Rafer Alston more fondly than I do Dwight Howard. Yes, I love Rafer Alston. Jameer Nelson, JJ Redick, obviously Hidu, all those dudes. I don't claim Dwight Howard anymore. And I don't think that many people... I'm stunned that you do, to be honest with you. I didn't think he had one thing. Time heals all wounds.

I would say there's a lot of warts in that 0-9 team. If you look into it, I don't recommend it. And I remember the Dwight Howard era fondly. of warts in that 09 team. If you look into it, I don't recommend it. And I remembered the Dwight Howard era fondly. I had a good time during the era, but I just, again, I had a good time with an ex-girlfriend.

Doesn't mean that I still want to hang out and associate with an ex-girlfriend. It's over. You're dead to me. I'm sorry. That's how it is. I'm Italian. What can I say? I'm just stunned. Who around here is being like, yeah, I'm a huge Dwight Howard fan. He's my guy. And I feel like Ricardo has fans. Rusillo moved very quickly to the microphone when you made

the ex-girlfriend comment. I left it alone. Yeah, we're good. Just leave it alone. But no, again, Ricardo has fans, right? He has at least people who follow him. And even if he's not that great anymore, he still has fans. I don't think Dwight Howard has a dozen fans. Alright, I gotta jump in

because it's not going to Orlando, it's going abroad here, and you two guys, you know. Well, Orlando, Epcot, International City, come on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fair point. Norwegian Pavilion. Okay, so as it stands right now,

yeah, we'll see. We'll gear up for the Italian Grand Prix. Any picks? Any picks from anybody? Lewis Hamilton. Oh, back top of the podium. Monza. It's Monza. Come on. This is an aerodynamic village, pavilion. This is an aerodynamic pavilion. This is

speed pavilion. This is Monza. This is Mercedes. Silver Arrows, baby. Okay. All right. That's all fair. That's all fair. All right. Before we leave you and check your passport here. Not a vaccination passport. Not trying to get political. I've got one of those.

Soccer the other night. I'm convinced soccer never ends. It's on all the time constantly and the soccer community and look i like soccer all right i'm converted i'm just not going to spend a ton of time on it my priorities are elsewhere the bills are paid elsewhere despite our very um all-inclusive segment that we do here so i'm texting saruti going you know what what channel is it on i'm in that took about 15 minutes.

It was like trying to find a wild card game on true TV. I'm like, am I on true TV? What's going on? And then it was Paramount Plus, which I don't have apparently. And then I decided, okay, wait. And then I just asked Twitter and they were like, if it's DirecTV, it's Telemundo. So then I throw it on. And I got to admit, for about a minute, I didn't know which team was which.

You can say what you want. And you're like, oh, OK. And it made sense because I didn't like Honduras' goalie. You know, he got super mad about them not getting somebody atop the box. It was a wide open shot. It was it was bad defensive alignment by the Honduras side. But he gets super pissed at everybody, which is kind of what goalies do. Yeah.

And then he tried to clear it five minutes later. And it was like he topped a drive out of the tee box and it almost led to a goal. And then the U S just pours it on. So you guys go, I'm, I obviously was, I couldn't figure out which channel it was on. And for a minute,

I thought the teams were different. So I'm not exactly your guy. I'm not super locked in on the international stuff. We've always known this about me. I'm more of a UEFA guy. Saruti, thoughts on Greg? Not great. Not great.

I think when your first half was arguably, I mean, we were at DEFCON 1 in the first 45 minutes of that game to use the Booger-McFarlane analysis. Is that worse than 5? I think one is the highest. One's like the nuclear warhead is coming at you, I think. I think that's Deftcon 1.

We were there. Porter has to explain it every year. Go ahead. We were there. And it was awful. That was one of the worst 45 minutes I've ever seen of a U.S. soccer team. And to his credit, he did fix it in the second half. I mean, he'd switch formations.

He made three substitutions, which was 100% necessary. But listen, I think they're going to qualify for the World Cup. I think they'll be fine. But I don't know if I'm ever going to be confident that they're going to make any splashes in any international competition if you're their manager. If that makes sense. I'm right there with you. And we have a golden

generation. And I think you've got to do... It's not the players' fault. It is a golden generation of talent. And I think that you have to get... You got to get a manager who knows what to do. International management is a different animal, and I don't think we have a guy right now who knows where to place those chess pieces.

I just want to give Ryan credit. There were some people on Twitter giving you credit for the U.S.'s comeback because as soon as you started watching, all of a sudden things started happening. You know, you turn on Telemundo and boom, we score three goals and win the game after what was arguably the worst first half I've ever seen. So I just want to give Ryan credit here because people on Twitter were saying that you were the difference in that second half.

Ryan, do you want to go to Qatar? Yeah, 66 minute. So if they had lost that one, that's it? No, no, no so that here's the thing too is we are so early on this is this was the third game of 14 games right because there's there's plenty of games to go obviously but okay yes yes but you know that if they didn't win that game if they lost honduras 1-0 they would only have two points to be way behind mexico they'd be behind honduras they'd be behind canada which all of a sudden, Canada's a good soccer nation,

which is insane now. And they just would have been behind the eight ball. And it was just, it was how it looked, Ryan. It just, it looked awful. And, you know, they're going to have to still

play Mexico twice. They've got to play Costa Rica twice. You know, going to those South American countries or to those Central American countries, Ryan, is, it's insane. Like I was telling you, the fields are atrocious.

The broadcasts are atrocious the fans there's like boo-boo zelos there's constantly horns they throw shit all the time there's exactly it's people think it's so much easier to win in El Salvador or in Honduras than it actually is in reality you got to understand these guys are used to playing in Munich or Rome or London in these awesome lavish stadiums and then they go to playing in Honduras, El Salvador. It's just a totally different vibe. And there's nothing that can prepare a 21, 22, 23-year-old guy who's never been there for that.

So I'll just say it's much harder than people think, but we should be okay now. The grossest thing about playing in some of those countries, there's a famous story, but the air quality is really bad. And so some of our athletes

can't take that sometimes. So Azteca famously, I think it was Eric Ronaldo. The altitude too. Yeah, he coughed up black blood. Yeah, it'd be like, well, whatever. It's like Denver, but LA, downtown LA traffic type of deal. I got to tell you though, I'm going to push back a little bit. US fans want the coach fired every, no matter who it is. That's like the most consistent.

It's like you guys are the Auburn of international soccer. It's every time there's something I constantly hear about how this coach just doesn't understand the roster. He's outdated or his formations or this, or we have this new wave or Being at ESPN all those years when I kind of didn't like soccer because of the guys that loved it so much, I've never heard anybody ever say they were happy with who was in charge of U.S. soccer, the men's national team. I can honestly say I think they're right. I mean, the problem with Berhalter.

Oh my God, so no one's ever good? The problem with Berhalter, though, is that his brother is in a high, I don't know what the title position is, but he's high up in U.S. soccer. So everyone's like, well, he only got the job because of his brother. And, you know, yeah, we won a couple of trophies this summer, but those are not super meaningful. What would be meaningful is playing good in the World Cup qualifiers and doing well in the World Cup.

And I don't think we're... I don't know. Who do you think the last good manager was, Kev? I don't even... I think... So Bruce Serena got a lot of heat in 2006. But I think that he knew what the program was, I would say.

Right? Klinsman definitely wasn't. And Arena came back, obviously. It didn't work. But I'm saying for that whole... I think we now underappreciate, maybe because the year it was in Korea and Japan, it was just such weird with time zones. We don't appreciate how good that core was. And we wanted to push them aside because we thought we could do better. Very Auburn-y, very Auburn-y, Brian Rosillo. We didn't appreciate what we had. And I think that that core and that coaching staff and that backroom in the early 2000s was actually pretty good. I'll give you the Bruce Arena timeline from an observer. This guy sucks.

Get him out. Klinsman gets it. Wait. Bring back Arena. He's learned. Part four, he sucks again. Yeah. Okay?

So that's my casual observation of what that is. All right. This was going abroad. Brought to you by. I was in Switzerland trying to broker some stuff, but since Madoff, apparently a lot of the

asset management companies, the restrictions have been tighter. And some of these are real companies too, folks. So remember that next time we're regulating Swiss banking. We're going to do something new here

during the NFL season before the NBA starts because there's usually always an NBA headline or news topic, or maybe some information that I want to share with you guys. So it's our first installment of NBA facts. The reason we clearly use facts is because if you're arguing with somebody on social media,

you just say facts and then you win the argument. Everybody knows that. Okay. Ben Simmons, what do we got? This week we saw a piece i think was out yesterday brian winhorse esbn.com ramona also with bobby marks helping out on this piece some of the information um where are we at i want to talk about it a little bit more because i

don't know that all of these angles have been explored so the holdout thing first popped up probably about a month or so ago i think it was kind of a passive like, hey, you know, Ben Simmons may hold out from his club representatives to the Sixers. I feel like from what I've heard, the Sixers kind of met it with a bit more of a dismissive tone. Like, oh, OK, you want to do that? But a lot of this is all posturing, just like the public pricing on what a Ben Simmons trade would be. So when I was talking with another team about this, they were like, you know, the thing you always worry about is a player going okay well I'm gonna hold out but instead of getting fined or losing all my money which is what would happen under the CBA the holdout numbers there's a couple different ways this could be done if Philly wanted to do him a favor which

you know I don't know how much animosity there's going to be if this actually goes down and Simmons doesn't report but Simmons could be fined $227,000 for every practicing game he misses. But if you're hurt, you get to keep all that money. And there was another player who I'm not going to name, a big name, traded in the last few years, who wanted out and the team was like, we don't want to trade you. And he said, okay, fine, something scoped and then what are you gonna do and the team knew it so guess what the team ended up trading that player so i don't know if simmons would go that route or is like you know what something hurts you know i'm not feeling great i know that with harden when he kind of was like you know he came back but he was late But his thing was weird because he actually saved himself on the fines by breaking the COVID protocol. Remember when they saw him at parties with his mask off? Future. And that part of it is very, very unique.

So now that we have the stare down with Simmons and Clutch and the Sixers, you have to go, okay, so what kind of personality is Simmons? Is he the kind of guy that will actually be able to do this, follow through, hold out, and deal with this stuff? Now, Jimmy Butler, you didn't have to worry about it. Jimmy Butler was going to go nuclear option, and he was going to do it, and he was going to make it feel real and comfortable the entire time.

Remember, he, when he didn't get the deal he wanted from Minnesota, sat out some of the preseason ramp-up stuff in camp because of a knee deal, right? Then he shows up to the first practice, which I said all of this at the time. It was like magically Rachel Nichols and the jump are there, which, again, is not Rachel or the jump's fault. This is content. Let's sit down with Jimmy Butler. This is a big time news story. Good on them for getting that interview. But the idea that people couldn't figure out how predetermined this entire deal was where Butler's like, I'm going to go off. I'm going to scream

at Scott Layden. I'm going to make fun of the younger players. I'm going to be the biggest asshole I can be in this practice. And then I'm going to sit down and tell ESPN how bad I want out. All of it was calculated. And it worked. And he got moved, ironically, to Philadelphia. So you can do that one, but I think there's people around the league who are like, would Simmons ever take it to that level? But here's the point.

He doesn't need to because he has clutch. Because Anthony Davis, I think we would all agree, as much as I love him as a player, is more of a passive personality. And what he did in New orleans wasn't great but he got his way because he got his way because clutch got their way so then it comes down to do you want to mess with clutch and we can all sit here and talk about how front offices and agents i've brought it up the past off seasons where you're like that deal doesn't make a ton of sense

but a lot of times the teams want to find a way to work with the agent to make sure that relationship is good down the road uh at this point, Clutch doesn't really need to, because you could sit there and say, well, does Daryl need or do the Sixers need a good relationship with Clutch more so than the other way around? Yeah, because if you have good players, you would never sit there as a GM going, well, one of their really good players is available and he wants to come here, but man, I'm really mad at how they handled their business two years ago, so I'm not going to sign the good player that has interest in us as a team. That scenario doesn't exist.

It's not going to happen. If he's a really good player, maybe a marginal one, fine. There would be some sort of payback. But if it's a really good player, you actually couldn't do that to your own franchise. So even if you think Simmons isn't built that way to deal with how nasty this could possibly get, his reps, his agency, they take the lead on this and shield him from it.

I don't know if he's actually not going to show up. I'm just mapping out all those things. Now, as far as the trade stuff, the public pricing that I mentioned before, it's a little bit like listing a house and going, I'll throw a number on and see what happens. That's what all these teams are doing. When I hear about the Minnesota thing that I read where it was like, no D'Angelo Russell or Edwards or Towns,

you're like, are you guys going to trade anybody for Ben Simmons? You may not like Ben Simmons, but you might have to throw in somebody in this deal. And we've since seen that Russell would actually be available. The Sixers also have a challenge here because they have a team that they think can still contend and get out of the East. So it's not like it's all draft picks coming back or all projects. You need a player that actually can be one of the five guys on the floor at the end of a playoff game. So that's a harder trade to pull off because more often than not, the NBA rules and these trades tell us we keep our good guys and we give you a bunch of other things. And now the price has completely changed from where it was Kawhi, who had some injury stuff. But the pricing with Kawhi compared to what the pricing is now with the Drew Holiday, the market has shifted dramatically for how these trades play out. And I think GMs like saying, hey, I have potentially four to seven first round draft picks. And everybody says how awesome that is. And some teams are going to win with this strategy. And there's some teams you're going

to be looking five years down the road going, what do they do? Get a bunch of picks in the 20s and none of the swaps actually happen. So what did you actually get for that guy? But that seems to be the cool way to do these deals. I don't think the Sixers, look, they'll want draft picks, but it can't only be draft picks unless it becomes untenable. So when you look at the Golden State part of this, and I do think that that price at least was close, even if it was ridiculous, where it was Wiggins, Wiseman, and whatever you think of Wiggins, I still think he'd be one of the five guys that would close a playoff game. Wiggins, Wiseman, I don't know if it's also Kaminga Moody and two more picks or if it's one of those two guys and

three more picks. That price is a lot, but it's also a lot if you're Golden State because you're saying, wait, why are we supposed to fix your fucking problem? Ben Simmons is your problem. We like him. You want to trade him? We're interested. We're going to gut every single one of our assets around our vets

and then do you this favor and give you potentially seven pieces? No, we're not going to do that. Now, I know that the part of the motivation is that Clutch actually does want Ben Simmons to go to Golden State. Now, is it the number one choice? No, I think Simmons would love to be in LA. Lakers, maybe down the road. Clippers, don't think there's a ton of interest there, but they would like him to land in Golden State. I don't think Golden State is in a position where they feel like they have to do anything because if everybody comes back, peak, healthy, that's still a really good team. I think probably a top four team in the West, some would disagree. So that's kind of where we have it right

now. Philly, I think even if Simmons were to hold out or do a medical thing here to avoid losing all that money, which you always have to remind yourself of. They're probably good enough with the five guys, with Embiid, Harris, and another year with this backcourt playing together, where they're probably going to win a bunch of games. Maxi another year in, they probably will. It's not like it's going to be a disaster. And as I keep reminding everyone, we can't talk about Simmons the same way we talk about other disgruntled players

because it's four years left on a deal. It's four years, and he's telling teams where he will or won't go. You want details? Fine. I drive a Ferrari 355 Cabriolet. What's up? I have a ridiculous house in the South Fork. I have every toy you in the South Fork. I have every toy you could possibly imagine.

And best of all, kids, I am liquid. So, now you know what's possible. Let me tell you what's required. Let's finish up with life advice here on a Friday. Okay. We mentioned Chauncey Billups crushing a guy in an ESPN pickup game. We had a guy with picture verification. This looks like a pretty intense run here. So I'm just going to share the story.

I was a regular at the San Francisco Equinox pickup game. The Equinox was connected to the four seasons where the Warriors visited teams would stay and hold practice. During the finals, one of your chants, he was doing TV and came to play pickup. I'm a former varsity player from L.A. Is that high school? I guess if you're a pretty big time highity player from LA. Is that high school? I guess if you're a pretty big time high school player in LA, you're probably a decent player.

In good shape, 31-year-old. Okay, we don't care about your mile. He said he can grab the rim. You do? Okay, there you go. Six-minute mile, 6'1", 200. Could still grab the rim. Awesome.

Definitely one of the best players in this competitive San Francisco run. We all went at Chauncey. He destroyed everyone who went at him. No shit. And he seemed to be expending 60% effort. I snuck around to try to steal the ball as he brought it up the court. Alright, that kind of... Now I don't know how much I like this email. His back was turned, but he sensed me

and stuck his ass out and I went flying. Another good player face-guarded him, which culminated in a corner trap for game point. Chauncey picked up his dribble, faded from the corner, and switched to three. He then announces, don't worry, bro. You weren't the first, and you won't be the last. Oh, it took you this to say, I no longer watch NBA games thinking I could definitely take duds one-on-one. They tried this in Boston with Scalabrini. All these guys showed up for this radio thing,

and Scalabrini horrified and embarrassed guys that played maybe high school and small-level college. And the other deal with Scalabrini, he's big. The same day, apparently, at this run, Kenyon Martin yelled profanities at me because I called an absolute hack on my defender for game point. Kenyon was not even in the game, had no connection to this guy, but was so offended by my foul call, Martin yelled profanities at me because I called an absolute hack on my defender for game point. Kenyon was not even in the game, had no connection to this guy, but was so offended by my foul call,

he couldn't help but belittle me. He came on the next game and threw down alley-oops off the backboard. 2016, oh, you walked past Katie. All right, never mind. Okay, all right. Good, not great email, but great picture. Chauncey in the mix. How do we feel about that? Was I too harsh? I think they're trying to steal it from an NBA guy from behind in a pickup game to prove something. I don't necessarily love that, and I like that Chauncey stuck his ass out and knocked you over. But I do appreciate that. I don't want to sound real harsh here.

It's Friday, man. You know what I'm saying? All right, so no follow-up. Let's keep it moving. All right. This one's kind of tough. I don't know. Maybe Kyle can help me out with this one. Okay. 62180. Need some help

how to make friends in college. I just transferred to a big, big 10 school from a small community college. Most of the work was done online. The community college, most people wanted to put their heads down, grind, focusing a little on making friends and socializing. I definitely was more on the side of putting the work in versus socializing. So I could set myself up grade-wise as a transfer, which thankfully worked out.

Add the online part of it. I really had almost zero practice socializing and making friends in the last two years. One more problem. I haven't done any partying in my life. What I mean by this is I haven't had a sip of alcohol smoked or participated in any parties. He says, parentheses, lame, I know, but it just always scared me. Plus, I have no natural desire to try anything. It's not lame. It's not lame, man. You know what I mean? It's actually very hard. And this is not going to be easy because the simplest thing,

you'd be saying, hey, just going to go out and everybody gets a a couple beers and then the shyness goes away and then you know you make memories and have these all kind of stories but don't feel like don't feel that way you know I hate that you said lame I know don't don't feel lame about it you know I mean you're going to be living longer than everybody else I know a lot of socializing happens at parties and I have no experience there either I'm not necessarily against the idea of expanding my horizons and trying that stuff but I definitely need to ease into it so how do you think I should go about making friends? Grades are obviously important, but I want to make good connections and have fun, especially since I only get two years at my new school because of community college. My only real plan as of now was to play pickup basketball and

connect with people there and join a few random clubs. I'm no Bobby Jones. Shout out to the 8376ers. Shout out to the 8376ers. Love that team. But I'm decent and try to be a player. Everyone I play with, you know, play some, okay, we get it. You're a role guy. Despite saying I 76ers shout out to the 83 76ers love that team um but i'm decent and try to be a player everyone want to play with you know place okay we get it you're a role guy um despite saying i haven't socialized much over the last couple years i don't feel as if i'm bad at talking to people whatsoever i think of myself as someone people would want to be around once i get comfortable and know what to do say i don't mean to come off as cocky in any way but i think i'm fairly smart decent looking guy and a good friend so for me it's just all about making sure i can get into

those specific situations so he wants to know how he can do this. My first question would be here, guys. Did you have friends in high school or did you not have any friends in high school? Because it doesn't mean that it's bad, but it's kind of hard to just turn it on at 20 and be this social guy. Now, I think one of the cool things about college is you kind of reinvent yourself a little bit. You can try to, I mean, a lot of it's kind of sort of the fault of who we are, but you can kind of like, hey, here are the things I didn't like about me before. So let me try to like do this all over again and start with a clean slate. And some people pull it off. Some people don't. I also think the making friends thing, some people really absolutely make it a priority.

I never really realized it until I started hanging out with some of my more successful friends that I was like, oh, that's why you keep in touch with all these people. That's why you're always checking in. That's why you're always introducing people to each other. Like you have this Rolodex of people where I think half the day these guys spend just contacting people and then just trying to hook them all up with somebody else. So you're always sort of in the mix. Like I am not and have always been terrible at making new friends when I moved to a new place because I probably just like my core guys so much. And I know it's never going to be like that again. And then I feel like somebody's going to ask me for something all the time. So I've done a really, really bad job about it over the second half of

my life. And I don't think that's ever going to change necessarily. So whatever. But I think you're on the right track here with the basketball thing and joining a few clubs. But really, it's not going to be the club. It's not going to be the person. It's going to be about how important it is to you, right? Any of the things that we really want to change with our lives. You know, once I decided it was all about work and career, then I made that shift. There's other things I still wanted to do. At times I can feel like I can't get my arms around all the stuff that I'm hoping to do in my own life. And I do think there's a downside to going, all right, I want to change all of these things at once because it doesn't work that way. But if you prioritize the way you did with grades

and clearly kicking ass at a junior college and doing well enough to get into a really good Big Ten school, you're going to have to kind of use some of those things that motivated you and focused you to do that in making friends. But then the downside of that is if you're like super, hey, do you want to be best friends guy and be eager, then guys are brutal with it. I mean, women are so much better at kind of buying in. Now, I would say we do a bad job as guys opening up and becoming friends. I think if you wanted to make it positive for women, it's that they're more accepting right away. Then you could also make it a negative and be like, how can you have to be best friends with everybody after like one lunch? But guys can

almost, you know how like when you have no confidence and you're out and you're talking to women when you're younger and they can smell it on you like a cologne that says no confidence. I think guys can kind of feel the desperation if you're trying to make friends. So I'm not trying to psych you out here, but you focusing on making friends is probably more about putting yourself into situations where you are meeting new people, but also trying to be as cool about it as you can. And I know that sounds complicated, but it's true. I mean, I've even had a couple of situations where there's guys in certain levels where I moved out here to LA and i might have been a little too eager because i was like oh these are the guys i'm gonna want to hang out with and then you start checking in but you start checking in and you

know you don't hear back you don't yeah believe it or not number three podcast of sports i don't always get a call back believe it or not so um the other thing too is i'm so much older that i think i'm getting to the point where like some of the guys with young kids and the wives are like what he's coming over like there's just gonna be a bunch of kids here he's cool with that he's like yeah i guess he likes kids but what's his deal he's not married he has no kids he's gonna stop by a birthday party like is he fucking serious yeah it's just him again like hey i got two tickets to this thing like do you want to bring anyone no no i'll just you know all right well you want the second ticket no i'm fine i'll just

i'll just roll in solo like he just went the second ticket no i'm fine i'll just i'll just roll in solo like he just went to switzerland by himself nah don't invite him actually so i'm i'm at a weird age where there's starting to be some questions asked about me about kind of like where my head's at um but because i don't have a family so i i think at the younger stage and i want kyle and suri to jump in here and take over this thing. You've got to be a little, you've got to focus because it matters and make a priority, but you can't let anyone know that you're making it this big a priority because then you're just going to kind of like,

it's like, I know once anybody knows me, they're going to love hanging out with me, but I know that like, you know, let's, I'm not going to say like Josh Duhamel is a great example. Everybody would want to put buddies with Josh Duhamel. I've texted him a few times, like you know let's i'm not going to say like josh demel is a great example everybody would

want to put buddies with josh demel i've texted him a few times invited him a couple things because clearly that would be a world i would like to kick the tires on and i'm saying this because i know if he gets back to him he's just going to laugh his head off because he's actually a really great guy i know when to lay out and not keep asking josh demel this shit all right so there's a perfect example of that i'm not saying you're going to meet Josh Duhamel, but I know that I've got to be delicate with the way I handle that one. I haven't ruled out that we'll hang out down here in Manhattan Beach at some point. I almost put together this mega night with a lot of big names and good guys and it sort of fell through. And you're like, is it me? I'm like, I'm not going

to sit here and start beating myself up internally. I'm swimming in pretty exclusive waters, and if a guy can't make it down for a dinner to meet up with other pro athletes, you're just going to chalk that one up. And by the way, every one of these people have kids. So that's also another problem that I'm facing. All right. I don't know.

Did I just give myself advice, or what did I do there, Kyle? Help us out. I think that was great advice for you. I'm actually in the same. I mean, I was in the same boat that this guy was in my second tour of college because I was gone. I was like freshman. You know, it would have been a lot easier for him if he was a freshman and everybody was at the same orientation and was in the same intro classes and like would walk out together. Like, what the fuck is this about? Intro to psych, huh? the same orientation and was in the same intro classes and like would walk out together like

oh what the fuck is this about intro to psych huh but like now it's like people have made their you know stuff he's this he's what a junior now he said he did two years of community college so i came back as a sophomore after being suspended for a year and i went back to the same college because i couldn't go time out time out oh shit i thought you knew this already no go ahead no i got suspended actually um before a syllabus week of my sophomore year uh with my buddy from home came back uh came with me for like the first weekend and my dad dropped me off and like 48 hours later i was kicked out so i didn't make it to a class okay well how did so you got kicked off classes haven't

even started. A lot of people will tell you, Hey, don't even show up that first week because people are adding and dropping anyway, which is some of that's why I brought my friend. That's why I brought my friend from home so he could see. So yeah, I remember, I remember like thinking that was normal cause we were all doing it. And then you get to kind of like your junior year and you go, you know, it's horrible. first impression as the classes start getting a little more specific towards your major and they're smaller. It's like, yeah, you know, whatever, bad drop. I'll see you guys, class four.

All right, how did you get kicked out in 48 hours? Actually, I got stopped by a bicycle cop and I had like a bunch of Bud Light Platinums in my backpack and I had two big fat blunts in my hands. And the guy actually called my name. I think it was because of the sound that my backpack was making. And we were in like a sophomore dorm. So it's like nobody in that area is really supposed to be old enough to be drinking anyway. And he called my name. I was waiting for a ride and he said my name. And I

just threw the two blunts in opposite direction he's like what did you just throw and i was like nothing and he made me stay there while he went and got back up and so he found like a fake id and beer and whatever and um i just went the next day and they were like look at this file and i just had a huge file already they were like you should have been gone last year so you have to go home for at least a year what else is on the file oh grand larceny with that whole thing i found that thing in the street i told you and um a couple upm stuff and you know like a fight here and you know there was just stuff there was it was like a lot it was actually a large file so it was um pretty privileged to make it through that freshman year. So, so anyway, well, what I was saying is, is like, I then had to take a year off when I came back,

everybody else had transferred from Potsdam shocker to somewhere else. So then I basically had to start all over again. And, um, so I'm basically like, and, and it was, it was kind of hard. It was, people had formed their ways and, and friends and groups and whatever. And they'd already decided if they were going to join a fraternity or not, or be like regular people. And I just had to kind of figure out what to do. And honestly, what happened for me was I was actually selling reservation cigarettes. There was an Indian reservation right there. And so how I ended up with my buddies who are still my friends this day was one of them was buying like fake Marlboro Red reservation brand cigarettes for me. And he was like, hey, we actually need one guy for

intramural football. And that's how I met all my friends is like he brought the guy that sold them. So like, what's your cigarette business is what I'm saying is it's probably intramurals for you. I think you're probably right. Just go to the intramurals and see who's around. for you. I think you're probably right. Just go to the intramurals and see who's around. It might be just a strange, it might be a unique thing to you that brings you towards people, but it's really hard when

people are already friends, so it might be a little unorthodox the way that you make your friends, but I think he's got the exact right idea. Wow. What are you looking at, Ryan? I have a million follow-ups we're almost an hour 45 into this pod so we're gonna have to revisit this another time

um that's that's great though you're right like if you can't smuggle in non-government cigarettes if you can't you know if you can't play intramural football sign up for you know what else i would do try to find like a cool decent you know bar pub restaurant thing where people hang out and there's college staff people there and see if you can you know work you know floor guy or something one night a week you know uh make yourself available i think is what yeah like you gotta what you don't want to do is do a thing where you're like me where you're like hey you haven't left you haven't gone outside in 48 days and talk to another person you know like don't do that do something where it's like okay it's it's like i know your grades are important but not every

single person that prioritize prioritizes some social stuff to get bad grades so you can figure out a way to do it you're gonna have to get yourself uncomfortable here a little bit you're gonna have to get yourself uncomfortable prioritize being in settings where you're meeting other people but you have to as a guy i just tell you settings where you're meeting other people, but you have to, as a guy, I can just tell you this, if you come off as like, hey, do you want to be best friends? Five minutes in, everybody's going to think you're a loser. So you can't do that. That's a long podcast. And I don't want to do anything else now that we know that Kyle had a file that Potsdam was like, why are you still here? Wait, I thought we kicked you out last semester.

I'm trying to think of like the movie or TV character that Kyle was, a younger Kyle. And by the way, for people that are like, listen, Kyle is about as trustworthy a person that I've ever worked with and gets it done. And it, these early mornings, like he's on top of all of it. You're not even 30 yet either. Right? 27. Yeah. He's a young kid. Think about how, how much you've grown in just five or six years or three for real, for real. Left with like a 3.5 too in my major. Actually, that's all that counts, right? The major 3.5. That's what you say. If the overall number sucks then focus on that yeah the major is 3.5 yeah it's on there trust me okay uh there you go that's our podcast three days a week now monday wednesday and friday we're

coming back early on monday trent dilfer will be joining us all season jonathan vilma will be joining us as well uh probably having Danny Cannell stop by. I went on his radio show today. So we have a really good group of guests lined up, some surprises, some other things we're working on. And that'll do it for today's episode. Please subscribe, rate, review, and we'll talk to you on Monday.

Thanks to Steve and Second Chance Kyle. Thank you.