The Ryen Russillo Podcast - Eagles' Weird 2-0 Start, Deion's NFL Future, Turf Vs. Grass, and More With Albert Breer. Plus, David Shaw on the Death of the Pac-12.

Episode Date: September 15, 2023

Russillo begins by questioning the Eagles' dominance this season despite their 2-0 start (1:00). Next, he’s joined by Sports Illustrated's Albert Breer to talk about Aaron Rodgers's injury, Tyreek Hill’s improved route tree, and more (11:00). Then, former Stanford coach David Shaw joins the show to share his thoughts on the future of college football conferences and what might come next for his coaching career (47:00). Finally, Ceruti and Kyle join to make this week’s Alliance Parlay (1:15:00) before closing the show with some listener-submitted Life Advice questions (1:19:00). The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please check out theringer.com/RG to find out more or listen to the end of the episode for additional details. Host: Ryen Russillo Guests: Albert Breer and David Shaw Producers: Steve Ceruti, Kyle Crichton, and Mike Wargon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

on today's episode we've got a little recap of thursday night football eagles 2-0 people seem to be disappointed discuss that albert breer sports illustrated incredible stuff on the jets rogers future the turf stuff, which is actually really interesting, why he thinks the Niners are the best team in the NFL, and more. David Shaw, former head coach of the Stanford Cardinal.

I want to ask him what he thought went wrong at the farm, went wrong for the Pac-12, and something that we agree on in the future where I think we're the only ones. We've got our Alliance pick and life advice. And a reminder, we're now on TikTok. Follow the show at RosilloPod.

Life advice clips, best parts of interviews, a lot of the highlights from the show. So again, TikTok at RosilloPod. Let's recap a little Thursday Night Football before we get to the meat of the podcast here. So this open isn't going to be that long. But Philly's 2-0 and it feels weird. And it's almost like disappointing.

And I personally am not disappointed. But just kind of seeing how it's all playing out. Some of the numbers that we'll get to here in a little bit. The reason why 2-0 in the NFL, which is just, you know, keep stacking the wins. But this is a team that we think potentially has the best roster in the NFL. Could be other in the argument. We know the O-line is great. The receivers are great. The running back situation might be great here. The defensive front is really good. They get Carter the kid from Georgia, ninth pick in was like, is this guy really going to be a long-term starting quarterback? And now it looks like that question part of it is answered, right? So all of those things go in and the fact that the Eagles have this roster in an NFC where you have a hard time even getting to like six teams and good luck with your NFC playoff predictions

because it feels like there's just a lot of middle in there, a lot of maybe mediocre. So because Philly's 2-0 and it hasn't been dominant, a weird game against the Pats where it looks like they're starting the season on a roll and then it's kind of oddly a game, but that's really the NFL, man. I don't even know if it's team specific as much as that's the way these games all seem to kind of play out with the occasional blowout, right? And then a Vikings game where they turn it over four times and even though it was close and low scoring in the first half, the thing gets out of hand. Like at no point did I actually think the Vikings were as good as Philadelphia

last night, but I guess people just wanted dominance and that's not what's happening. Jalen hurts. If we jumped to his numbers, his QBR in the first two games is 41. Last year was 68 yards per attempt, the lowest of his career, uh, third down conversions. They're just not even close to where they were

defense is allowing 378 yards a game that's the fifth worst whatever they're allowing third down conversions at 44 last year was 32 that was uh that was one of the top numbers. So look, I think it's a lot of stuff. We could just go through and pick at all of it and go, yeah, all right, those stats are not what you'd expect. Like some of them, when I was looking at them this morning, I was like, wow. And that's why this 2-0 start feels a little weird. You can even get into the A.J. Brown stuff

where look at what Philly did last night. They had a touchdown draft. They put them up 10-7. 13 of the 16 plays were running plays. And it felt like it wasn't fair. That's how dominant the O-line and the rushing attack was. Swift goes for 175. It's the most rushing yards in a game for an Eagle in like 11 seasons. And it was even funny watching that drive where I was like, oh, that's right. Like teams used to do this. Teams used to just go, hey, we're tougher and we're stronger and you're not.

And we love our scheme and we love our blocks. And we're just going to run the football right at you. And you're not going to be able to do anything about it. And once you learn that as the Eagles, you're like, okay, we're in control of this game. It could feel like this. It's so physical when it's a physical dominance like that. You're like, this isn't just hitting somebody on the outside

and scoring seven on a possession. This is like a statement within the game. And so then to see A.J. Brown upset, because receivers get upset, he's not getting the ball. He was interfered with on what would have been a touchdown, so it would have made him feel better about it. I like A.J. Brown. I don't know if there's a long history of this stuff

if you're covering the Eagles day-to-day, but I've always really liked him. I think he's a terrific player, but the wide receiver stuff does piss me off at times where you're like, hey, you're winning. They can't stop anything you're doing on the ground. And guess what? Devontae's going to get the balls today, and you're not going to get as many, and you need to deal with that. And I know the Eagles were like, hey, we don't want to talk about it. We want to get into it. Kelsey had a really good quote where he was like, hey, at least we're talking to each other. The real problem is when we're not talking to each other. So at least that for me confirmed that was, in fact, about what all of us thought it was about, like not getting enough balls.

And then sometimes I think about it and I go, you know, it's a little bit like the big man in the basketball deal where you got to let him take five, six shots a game. Because if you want him to box out for 48 minutes, granted, he's not playing 48 minutes. You get the point. If you want him to box out, you want him to set hard screens, keep screening. If you want him to help you on defensive switches, if you want him to do all those things, you got to let him touch the basketball at some point, whether or not he's a professional adult making millions. It's a boring game to play if you never get to touch the ball. And then I think about O-linemen. I'm like, well, they never really get to touch the ball because it would suck for a receiver. If you were a receiver running these routes full speed over and over and over again, running out to run block when it comes to your side and then feeling like

you're never getting a look. But guess what? That's the job. And sometimes it's going to happen. So sometimes when I have a little sympathy for it, then I realize, you know what? I don't think I do have any sympathy, even though the O-linemen don't grow up ever thinking they're actually going to get the ball. So none of that really means anything. That's the point that I'm going to make. I don't care. I don't care about the expectations. I don't care about the bad defensive stats. I don't care that Hertz hasn't looked good for two weeks. I don't care about any of it because they have talent. They can default back to talent. So even if we look at that going, what's up with them? Is this a little mirage?

It's going to take me like till week nine or 10 of seeing this before I'd even come to that because there's still, from a talent standpoint, so much further ahead of everybody else in the NFC that's not the Niners. I'm talking the collective NFC, not specific to the Niners because some people may say the Niners have the best roster, and I might even think that myself. So even though it looks weird, I don't care. On the other side, if you're Minnesota, you have seven turnovers already. You were down 2-0 linemen to start the game. You lost another one who got chucked. That was another thing that was just impressive from Philly. This is a Vikings team

that I'm proud of all of us on this. As people that were non-emotionally attached to anything Minnesota, the rest of us, I'm proud of all of us. So stop and look in the mirror right now if you're in the car. Just look in that rearview mirror and be like, I'm a great time. Thank you. Thanks for doing that. Because we all knew it was fraudulent. They were 13-4 last year with a negative three-point differential. because we all knew it was fraudulent.

They were 13-4 last year with a negative three-point differential. The other teams that were in the playoffs with negative point differentials, Tampa and the Giants. The Giants were 9-7. Tampa was 8-9. You're not supposed to have a 13-4 record, but I was told they know how to win. Yeah, that's a really good thing to say when you know deep down your team's probably super lucky

because they had all these comebacks, right? What was it? Eight comebacks, nine? What was it? Eight comebacks, nine second half comebacks where they were trailing in the second half. That would be a comeback. They were 11-0 in one score games. In their four losses, though, which should have been another sign, they were outscored in just those four losses. They got destroyed. 89 total points, point differential in those four games so as we were watching it happen going like i don't know i don't really trust him wow that's a good record

and if you are a vikings fan you're just saying well no no they're learning about themselves they can close games they can do all these different things and then you watch them the giants against a team that's not great talent wise as we know go in lose that, and it ends in a very familiar play. Kirk Cousins, by the way, did you see his final numbers? 31-44, 364, four touchdowns, zero picks. His QBR for the game was 83. That would have led the entire NFL last season. And at no point did you think,

this guy's unstoppable. And the fumble was huge, but that doesn't get baked into the whole thing. I actually thought it was a little interesting too when Herbstreet was talking about that drive where they got the last touchdown to cover. And he was like, hey, at least we're seeing them fight. And I think it's a nice thing to say, nice thing to say on the broadcast. The easiest touchdown drive in the NFL is when you have the ball late in the fourth quarter and the other team is up two touchdowns. That's the easiest

money you're ever going to make as an offense and as a quarterback. That drive to me means nothing. At least it was only three minutes and not like six minutes where we'll see other quarterbacks like, hey, what are you doing here? You're down two touchdowns. And I think Cousins is probably guilty of that sometimes. But awesome stats, never scared, never scared, not once. I think if you're a Vikings fan, what you should be really fearful of, and there was a graphic that Thursday Night Football used last night. It's like when you look at the profile of who the vikings were last season with the comeback wins the one the one score wins and all that kind of stuff there's like 40 something teams that fell into that profile and 30 of them had losing

records the next year so it's it's hard to be 13 and four in the NFL, but it's really easy to trick yourself into thinking you're going to build on that the next year. Tradition, rivalries, and fight songs are back, and FanDuel wants you to join in on the college football action right now. New customers get $200 in bonus bets guaranteed when you place a $5 bet. That's $200 in bonus bets. Win or lose.

All right, so we have our Alliance pick coming up later in the show. It's a tough week, to be honest with you, as far as the marquee matchups in this one. Do you like Penn State minus 14.5? On the road at Illinois after that Kansas game? Maybe that's a little tasty for you. How about LSU? Nobody watched the Grambling game. They scored a lot of points.

They're minus 9.5 in Starkville against Mississippi State. Is that too much? The total there, 53.5. 43, you guys all be running a fan duel. 53.5 there. Another line that's worth taking a look at, I thought was North Carolina. Win a big game against South Carolina, dominant. App State's double overtime. I don't know

if that's a post-South Carolina letdown or whatever, but if they're anything, they should cover the 7.5 against Minnesota. There are so many different ways to bet on college football. Bet on the money line, the spread, futures, and more. Just visit fanduel.com slash Ryan, R-Y-E-N and kick off the college football season

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Sports Illustrated, Monday Morning Quarterback joins us. So let's do some NFL stuff as we get ready for week two. I'll start with the Jets and Rodgers. I think the quickest thing, hey, is Rodgers coming back next year? this off season, you know, having talked to guys in that building, Sala, Joe Douglas, it really feels like changing teams energized them the same way it energized Brett Favre going to Minnesota, the same way it energized Brady going to Tampa. And I actually like got like a little glimpse of it. This is a silly, stupid story. But, you know, I was there probably a month into camp and this was a practice that was like close to the media and they were running like this scout team drill, right? Like where this,

this, this, this like basically walks for this walks for a period where they, they had scout teams out there. And, um, you know, because of the numbers, they have like trainers and strength coaches and all those people coming in and just kind of like being placeholders out there, you know, like for for the defense and so the second team offense is getting a look and rogers runs out there and he's playing linebacker with like next to trainers and strength coaches and um it was just like one of these little things i picked up and he's like laughing and joking and all that like while he's doing it. And I, I mentioned it to Sala after, and he's like, yeah, he's been doing that for like going back to the spring. And, um, and I said like, that's interesting. Cause this is a guy who was like, sort of like said to be disengaged.

You know what I mean? To some degree in green Bay. And he's like, yeah, we've seen the opposite. It's like, he loves being around the facility. He loves being around the guys. And that's probably, yeah. And, and Robert said to me, he's like, I'm glad he picked up on it. Cause that's probably a good sign of it, you know? Um, and I just think they got a different version of Rogers who the Packers, quite frankly, probably wouldn't have gotten under any circumstance. And I think a guy who goes through all of that for an entire off season and maybe falls back in love with football as a strong way of putting it, but has that desire to go out and prove someone wrong and win and just play the sport again.

When that guy gets hurt four plays into the season, I don't think he loses everything that he built up over the six months prior. So I know that when he had initially talked to the Jets, and this is going back to March, he had told them, if I do it, I'm in for two years. And I know that the Jets also felt like, okay, like, well, that's good. But like, there's the possibility that maybe that won't hold up. Like maybe he'd only be here for a year if we win the Super Bowl or if things go the wrong way for him. But, you know, I think based on the way things went down, my guess would be that, yes, he's back in 2024. And, um, and the jets certainly after what they experienced over the last five months, we'll welcome him back. Okay. So as far as this year is concerned,

what do you think they're going to try to do with the position? I think they're going to give Zach Wilson a lot of runway. You know, and this is another part that kind of goes back into my reporting from, you know, before the trade, when they initially sat down and met and talked about, okay, like, how do we handle this when the Rogers thing became real? And this, this goes back to Brian Gutekunst calling the Jets, you know, right around, like, I think it was the NFL PA All-Star game. So in early February, when the first contact happened, they started to talk about, OK,

how will this shake out? How do we make this work on the depth chart? And if he's here, what do we do with the other quarterback spots? They had sort of set out their ideal as having Zach Wilson back and having Zach Wilson hit the pause button and develop for a year or two behind Aaron Rodgers. Now, there's some awkwardness to that, and they weren't sure if they could make it work. But really going back to the beginning of February, that was their ideal scenario. That does not mean that Zach Wilson is who they thought he was going to be two years ago.

Obviously, he isn't. But that also isn't the action of a team that thinks the guy's just done. So I do think that there's some feeling that with a little bit of a deep breath and a little bit of a break that Zach could continue to develop and become closer to what they thought he would be when they drafted him second overall. Now, the interesting thing about this, Ryan, is that break they wanted to give him that pot that hitting of the pause button gets taken away now you know so he did get to kind of develop in the shadows for five months but that break of getting to watch a season play out without playing gets taken away now so I think that part of it is going to have him entering back into the with all of this in mind it's going to have him entering back into this in a very, very different

spot. And I think where two years ago, they didn't have near enough help around him to get a true read on him. And last year where they were trying to figure out if he could be the franchise quarterback or not. Now, I think they're going to say, let's see if we can just on 90% of these plays, keep your hands on the wheel at 10 and two, and just keep the car on the road. And we'll lean on our defense and we'll lean on our run game. And we have breeze hall back and we have Dalvin cook. And we have an offensive line that we think can develop if Dwayne Brown and, and, and Mackay Beckton come through for us at tackle. And we're not going to ask you to win games anymore. We're going to ask you to game manage. What does he look like in that context?

We don't know because they haven't really used him in that context. So I think it could create a different result. I think they give him at least six, seven weeks to find out. And, you know, they're going to create a united front for him. And they're going to say until they're blue in the face, he's our guy. He's our guy. He's our guy. They're going to give him backing.

But this at least will give them six or seven weeks until a trade deadline to try and figure that out. And then if it doesn't work out, consider their options. Then I have to ask because I enjoy the content as much as anything. Um, we got legitimate Kaepernick updates, uh, this week. What do people inside the NFL think about the media's obsession with this? Stupid. He's been out of the league for seven years now. I mean, that position, that's the ultimate reps position. And I'm not like defending the reasons for him not being in the league, but like at the ultimate reps position. I mean, you remember Ryan, like 20 years ago when like Chad Hutchinson and Drew Henson went away from football for a few

years to play baseball and came back and just weren't the same anymore i know i do yeah i mean well because i mean the cowboys were so fired up about henson in particular too yeah um and he was a great college player like he's a really really good like that's the that's the thing that's lost in that whole brady storyline like drew henson wasn't some slap dick like he was a good college player and so like at the ultimate reps position now you're talking about bringing in a guy who for eight out of ten nfl offenses you got to flip everything upside down and build a new offense for him why would you do that and he's not young anymore you know what is he 36 i think i don't know he's working out though i just wanted to hear your perspective on it because i just yeah i mean that's where it is

and i'm like look i'm not defending the reasons for him not being in the league anymore but like that's not what this is like what's the upside to do there's eventually a realistic like doesn't make a ton of sense you've been out all right let me um stay on this though because you reported on this this week where are we with the grass versus turf thing? I think like for the NFL to get any movement, the owners have shown us like for the NFL to get any movement, they'd have to give something up to get something here. And I mean, I I don't know what your rules are about what I can say here, but, uh, the it's the, well, it's like, I kind of feel like we're at the point with the NFL on this, where it's like, don't piss on my head and tell me it's raining. You know what I mean? Like it's, this isn't about safety. It was never about safety. It was about

the price point of teams at the price point of stadiums and to justify those expenditures, those investments owners feel like they've got to put a million events in these stadiums. And eventually it becomes really hard to maintain grass in these stadiums if you're doing that. And you can do it, but it's going to cost a lot of money. Like, I don't know if you've seen what Real Madrid did, you know, but like you have to do something like that, where it's a really, really expensive, labor-intensive thing to do. And teams just aren't willing to do it. And in their defense, like the it's a really, really expensive labor intensive thing to do. And teams just aren't willing to do it. And in their defense, like the salary cap is higher because they have

these nice stadiums, you know? So like, there's, I think layers to this whole thing, but I mean, you find me the player that would rather play on turf. Roger keeps saying that, like you find me that player. And to me me like there are a couple of smoking guns here number one the packers right the one team where the owner isn't pocketing the difference is playing on this surface that is expensive hard to maintain but holds up great in northern wisconsin in the dead of winter right you never hear people complain about playing on that surface in green bay and it's because they're limiting the amount of non-football activity in their stadium. And they are investing in the surface because all the money for that team goes back into the

football team. So that's one. Here's the other one. There are zero of 32 teams that practice outside on turf. None, right? Why is that? If you're a coach, wouldn't you want your players practicing on the surface they're going to play on? You would, right? Like Wednesday, Thursday, Friday of the week, if they're going to play on turf, wouldn't you want them to practice on turf? Well, why wouldn't you do that? You wouldn't do that because the way players feel, the health benefits, all those different things. So that's real. Like there's a very real thing there. Like with the way that, you know, if you want to judge the teams on their actions, they're putting their players, even the ones that play on, even the ones that play on

turf, they're putting their players on grass every day of the week. And in some cases when it rains outside and they got to go inside of the field house, they'll literally hold veterans out of practice. So they don't have to go on turf on a Wednesday or Thursday. So, um, you know, I just wish there'd be like a little bit more honesty about this because there is a financial benefit to all of this for players. Um, but there's no question that the, the better option from a health standpoint, um, for players is to put them on grass and there are answers out there. You just got to spend to find those answers. That was really good. Uh, okay okay who do you think the best team in the league is san francisco why so i mean why so just definitive i just think the roster i you know i i've talked

to enough people like over the course of traveling during camp and talking to people leading up to the season san francisco's seen as the best roster, you know, when I was there for camp, it's like, you just look around at the different position groups and, oh, there's your various ward and there's Ufunga and there's Warner and there's Armstead. Oh, I almost forgot that Javon Hargrave signed here and there's Trent Williams and Iuke and Debo and Christian McCaffrey. And, you know, we haven't mentioned Kittle. And then the day I was there, Nick Bosa wasn't there and that's their best player. It's just, I think what you saw on Sunday against Pittsburgh was a manifestation of just how loaded that roster is. And it's going to be such an interesting kind of case study on the quarterback because there's

this whole nature versus nurture thing with quarterbacks, right? Well, you're dropping Brock Purdy into damn near a perfect situation. An offense that works for young quarterbacks, weapons, an elite left tackle, a running game, and a defense that's going to probably prevent him from playing behind very much at all this year. How much can you get out of a quarterback when you put him in the perfect situation? And they think a lot of Purdy, like they think in a lot of ways they're getting from Purdy what they would have gotten out of Mac Jones had they taken him third overall that year. So in a way, like that seventh round pick, like could wind up mitigating the damage from having picked Trey Lance over Mac Jones.

But I just see a team that has a proven scheme, schemes that have been in place for a while, has really good play callers in Kyle Shanahan and Steve Wilks, and has the most talented roster in the league. And again, the question is, when you get into those high leverage playoff situations, can Brock Purdy make a few winning throws a game? Because I think that's what it's going to come down to.

I think they're that good. Can Brock Purdy make the four or five throws that they need him to make to win games in the playoffs. We know Josh Allen had the turnovers last year. I don't really count. Like I don't believe the good years were fluky in the first couple of years with real. The first two years were him developing as an NFL guy coming out of Wyoming

with not a lot of talent around him. I've been over his timeline probably too many times. But then to see all the throws, to see the turnovers on a Monday night game, which the Monday night theory for me is when you're that bad on Monday night, it's just even worse to the conversation around you because it doesn't get buried in a one o'clock Sunday game. But is this something that we need to reevaluate in that? Like, look, I still want Josh Allen as my quarterback, but I don't know. Look, I need a few more weeks to even think. Maybe it's even an unfair question. I guess I'm just wondering where you're at with the Josh Allen topic. So two things I would say to defend Josh Allen here. Number one, I do this poll every

year. This year, I got 80 ballots back. It's people who touch the quarterback, whether GMs, VPs of player personnel, directors of player personnel, pro scouting directors, quarterbacks, coaches, offensive coordinators, head coaches. And I just ask them who the best five quarterbacks are going to be at the end of the season. Josh Allen was on almost every ballot. He finished third overall. So the league clearly thinks very highly of Josh Allen. He was behind only Mahomes and Burrow. The second thing is that he has a couple of these every year. And if you look at it, like I think it was maybe four multi-turnover games in 2021, five multi-turnover games in 2022. To some degree, it's part of the deal. Now, I would would say the one thing and i know a lot of people

brought brian dayball up so i do want to interject that into the conversation one thing that i think is really interesting that dayball would do here dayball showed him tape of brady because he'd worked with brady and he didn't show him brady to say like hey here's the greatest of all time like check this out you know it was look at how many easy throws Brady takes. And he drilled it into his head. Look at all these little slants and these checkdowns and look at all the easy yardage Tom Brady's taking. And that was why they signed Cole Beasley. You know, like they signed Cole Beasley to give him outlet throws and to give him easy throws. And that's the one thing with him. That's why I said earlier this week, actually,

and I got killed for it, but the Bills should be the team. If Jonathan Taylor or Saquon Barkley become available in October, they're the team that should consider going and getting him. Because I think if you had a more consistent run game there and a more consistent outlet for him, God, would he take off. Because then you wouldn't be using him in the run game there and a more consistent outlet for him, like God, would he take off?

You know, because then you wouldn't be using him in the run game as much. You'd be giving him some more of those easy throws. And I think that's honestly why they brought Cole Beasley back last year, because they didn't have that outlet guy. That's why they drafted Dalton Kincaid. You know, so I think for Josh Allen, it's always about how much you're putting on him and he's capable of carrying a team. But if you're asking him to carry the team week to week, and it's not even about how good you are

around him, it's how the team's built. It's like, if you aren't giving him like enough of those outlets and telling him like, take the outlet, take the outlet, take the outlet, and you put the world on his shoulders, he's going to go try to be Superman. And sometimes these things are going to happen because he can be Superman, you know so i think that that's sort of the that's the psychological game that dayball used to play with him that i think that they're going to double back on and they're going to kind of keep drilling into his head and i think as kincaid gets a little more comfortable in the offense that's going to help and you know maybe there's a move to be made to add to that as they get closer to the trade deadline good stuff all right let's keep it going j Jordan Love. I got to tell you, I didn't really know what to expect. We hadn't seen him

play. He was a different kind of prospect. Not many of us are watching him on Saturdays. Maybe it's the Bears, but I thought there were a couple of plays, a couple of throws in there where I was like, wait, maybe this is why they're okay with it. And I really liked, I read something that you wrote on it where it's it's always been my point with rogers where i didn't have any sympathy for him and i got kind of sick of it over and over again certainly i have sympathy for him now with the achilles injury but he acted like this green bay roster was arizona he acted like he was was one of the worst franchises in nfl history and in fact he was one of the best with a great track record and maybe because they didn't keep some of

his guys but when you look at some of the pieces in play you're like and i know they were eight nine last year but for the most part they've been in contention and yet he was acting like it was the worst time ever and then i watched love and again i'm gonna say it was the second time maybe it's just because it was the bears but at least after a week i'm going okay wait i like i need to watch him a little bit more because i wonder if they actually have a solution at this position. Yeah. And I think it's, again, it's like what you're asking of the young quarterback. I think that's such a huge part of this that we don't talk enough about is who are you asking him to be? If you go back and you look at that game, there were two of the touchdown drives were created by long punt returns. There was a pick six.

They're not asking him to play from behind. He's not in third and long a lot. They've got a really good running back behind him in Aaron Jones. And I think he's come a long way too in that because you're not asking the world of him. Matt LaFleur said to me over and over again, he surprised me with some of of the stuff he says on game day, like last year against Philly, this was a great story. So like one of the things that convinced Matt LaFleur that Jordan was ready to take over was when he had to start that game against Philly last year. And every week they have, and this is a game he came into as the backup, but every week they have the quarterbacks like rank the

plays in the game plan. And there's the like i love these plays there's the i'm okay running these there's the do not call these right at the bottom of the list and it was like jordan had ranked one of them as this do not call these right long story short like what the eagles were doing to the packers i like from what matt told me was screaming for this one play that was on the do not call list right it was screaming for it and like Matt said to me go like he went to he said to Jordan he said like look like this look is here for us are you comfortable running it and he like looked at him he said like hell yeah you know I want to run that and they run it and they get a 15 yard completion and Matt said to me he's like Jordan wouldn't have done that as a rookie.

He wouldn't have done that as a second-year player. He was like, he was ready to do things in more uncomfortable situations than ever before. And that was a sign of growth. And you saw it again. And there was this great scene. And you may have read this on Monday. But there's this great scene from the fourth and three where they scored the 35 yard touchdown where like Matt was legitimate, like was gathering the field goal team and looked over at Jordan said, do you want to do you want to go for this? And Jordan said, said, yeah, I want to go for it.

And Darnell Savage, your safety was right behind him. And he goes, we got you coach. Like, like if you don't get it the defense is fine and like that's ideal for a young quarterback you know what i mean like he's he's saying to his coach like believe in me trust in me i can convert the fourth and three then the defensive guy is right next to him saying i got your back and you know because the way the defense is played like you're okay you can go out there and play fast and free and the whole game's not on your shoulders i just thought it was a really good example of how like the Packers

have handled this the right way. And, um, and yeah, I mean, I think that this is the right way to do it. I mean, one thing that's kind of come up too, did you know, like the Packers were, I believe 24 games into Roger's career, they were 10 and 14 with him as the starter so i mean it took a while with rogers and i think one thing that a lot of people in that organization learned was you've got to kind of graduate the guy up the right way and they're really committed to doing that with love tyreek uh i don't think i ever bring him up when i think about the best receiver in the end i know i don't um you know i. Because he's so unique. Right. I'm always different. I know Justin Jefferson's the easier pick. I still feel like I lean a little Jamar Chase. I feel like I like his profile better,

but with the injuries, the resume is not going to match Jefferson's. There's a bunch of other guys that we could pick, but I never look at Tyreek and say okay he's he's the number one guy and i thought it was really interesting after the game and i don't always read all the coaches stuff because a lot of it to me is a waste of time but i thought they were really specific both the coaching staff and hill talking about that game against the chargers where hill was like look there's just route stuff that i'm doing now that i just never did before and that would be one of the big reasons why um i would never put him at that but like man after that game you're like this guy's tilting the field in a way that it's just you know randy moss is like always feels like blasphemy comparing anyone to him and i don't care about the numbers with moss because

it's a different era and all that kind of stuff. But when like Moss first showed up, you're like, what the hell is this? And look, Tyree spent around for a little while, but if you're telling me I'm getting a more complete receiver version of a guy that could just run fast the whole time and catch it.

Like that's one of the scariest things in the NFL. I mean, it's like we're eight years in now and he's still running by people you know what i mean like it's like i it's almost like you know like you've got like a you got video on like one and a half speed and everybody else is on one you know like it's just the way he runs by people um the feel he has for everything i mean i like that touchdown he scored on the fade like i don't know if he would have scored that four years ago you know where and it was a really nice ball by two and no question but it was perfect like kind of like catch that ball in traffic the way that he did i don't know

if the chiefs throw that ball to him you know so but you're right like i'm with like if anybody's think listening to this right now like do the image in your head of what you've seen of tyree kill in his career and that fade route to the corner. Like I don't, I mean, maybe there's one there, but like, I never, I never think of that. And I mean, even when he ran that motion where you're like, what are you supposed to do? Like, what do you, I mean, imagine if you played in the Canadian football league, wait, we can't, the league's done. He broke the league. I mean, and it's like, you know, I know. like my home's first year starting where I was in the press box and I saw McCourty take an angle and like, it was like, he was in the middle of field and Tyreek was running up the sideline

and Tyreek made that angle look so undisciplined and so stupid, right? Like, like Devin McCourty, who'd been in the league for over, for like almost a decade at that point is like going like this at that. You know what I mean? And I asked him, I said like, like, what is you know what i mean and i asked him i said like like what is it about him it's like devin just said it's like he's the one guy where it's almost like wearing pads doesn't have any effect on him it's like you always think of a guy as being four three speed but really with pads he's this fast and he's like and you think you know four three speed and then you get out there and you're like, Holy crap. Like this, he just plays at this.

He like plays his time speed, you know? And then you add that to like going into a system where, you know, Kyle Shanahan system, which, you know, Mike McDaniels,

obviously running down there in Miami has always been so detailed about what it looks for in receivers and what it looks for out of receivers. And you get them in that environment where, you know, he's motivated and like, I mean, you see what's happening right now. I,

I I'm with you. Like I, I can remember like Terrell Owens at one point, like when he was really locked in was like, it almost didn't matter what you did with him. You know, like I almost, I felt like he was more unstoppable than Moss at one point.

No, like there was that, that year I was seven where Moss broke all the records. Like I was covering the Cowboys then. Like I was like he was more unstoppable than Moss at one point. No, like there was that, that year I was seven where Moss broke all the records. Like I was covering the Cowboys then. Like I was like, there were things you could do to take Moss away. It felt like there was nothing you could do to take Owens away. Like if he was like, like in that mode. And I sort of feel like that, that that's like where Tyreek is right now, where it's

like, like, what are you supposed to do? And that's the point of like, why I bring up McDaniel because McDaniel shares, he gives you specifics. And by the way, it's not going to cost you games, you know, the way so many of these coaches freak out about it. And then Tyreek is basically separate of McDaniel giving us the same information of like, Hey, there was a route here that like, I just didn't even run last year. And now that I know that this is what they want. And I was excited. Like I was just reading it, kind of just excited to get this information and feel like it was actually valuable.

Whereas like, if I want to be a skeptic of your Jordan Love story, I'd be like, what the hell is the safety supposed to say? Don't do it. Don't let them go for it. You know, right. Week eight, if they're three and five or three and four, are they saying like, no, man, you got this but this was like very real very footbally very specific technical stuff where tyreek's basically admitting like i

didn't even really care nor have to do any of these things but look out so you know it's just another little thing you write down on week one where you're like okay i want to see if this is real um and i think it's like it's like you know like that whole thing with mike mcdain like how does he sell himself to players? I remember having a conversation with him a couple of years ago where he said to me, you know, like, it's like, it's like the antithesis of the Dion thing. Like the advantage Dion has, right. When he goes into any locker, he's got those guys.

Like if you watch that video from yesterday, him addressing his team, like look at the every, the eyes of every player locked in on him like every they hang on every word so he didn't like deon's got that because he's got the skins of the wall mike was almost mike saw himself as like the antithesis of that and so i remember mike saying to me once he's like i gotta be the smartest smartest guy in every room i walk into like i gotta bring i gotta bring these guys something you know what i mean like and that's part of like why he he's so detailed and he's so good at all the little things and it's like you know what i mean like it's the opposite of dion it's like for somebody and i think that there's some element of that with belichick too going way back but it's like

i for me to get these guys to play the way i want them to play, I have to give them the answers to the test. I have to be the smartest guy in the room. And I think you see how he's been able to weaponize Tyree Kill, which it's not like Tyree Kill was coming from like, not to pick anybody, but like, I don't know, Jacksonville. And Doug's done a great job. But you know what I mean? Like, he was coming from Andy Reid. And Mike McDaniel is able to give new stuff which I think is pretty remarkable yeah I need a new default team because I've said Jacksonville

right and Jacksonville popped in my head and it's like that doesn't work anymore that's terrible no it doesn't work anymore I keep doing it too because I kept remembering like when there were some down Tennessee Jacksonville years and Tirico was doing Monday Night Football for us and then he would come on and promote like who you got next next week? He'd be like Jacksonville and Tennessee, because it was pretty good stretch there where the NFL wasn't giving ESPN many awesome games. That was the, that was the default Thursday night color rush game.

That was the, yeah, it was a color rush game. So we've Jacksonville, Tennessee, there was some bad data there, but all of us need to stop dropping Jacksonville as a bad matchup because it's a good staff.

It's a talented team. And like the really funny. Yeah. And I apologize for that. So just put bad team bad team x yes but i'm doing the same thing although when you talk about mcdaniel just because every coach gets fired it'll be weird if he eventually gets fired where people are like a little quirky yeah a little goofy for us all right he's not he's not a little too much really footbally enough um the way that works let's just uh stay on dion for a second this is way too early but yeah what is the like have you talked to any nfl people about this could there be a potential shift

in the way people see the coaching profession because i still think from a recruiting standpoint that's an advantage that you have there that he's not going to have with men in free agency but but is this something that maybe opens up some eyes that were closed before to this option as a coach? Dion has an aura with players unlike any other player. And I can tell you this from for six years walking into locker rooms with an NFL Network Mike Flagg. And there are a lot of Hall of Fame players that worked at NFL Network, Michael Irvin, Warren Sapp. I'm telling you, Ryan, without fail, I would finish an interview with them.

And I didn't know Deion real well, but they would say to me, make sure you tell Prime I said what's up, every single one of them. Like, it was unbelievable and just this like position like the the aura he has like that the place he has among nfl players i think is really unique um and maybe it's because he was the first one to kind of like really flash his personality and you know and that gives him like just an incredible amount of credit credibility with players um and i i say that because i think there's something to that and i think if you want to like look at the trend of hiring the young offensive guru that took hold and really like to

to to a large degree worked right a lot a lot of these guys matt lafleur zach taylor mike mcdaniel a lot of them really worked out um i'm starting to see i think a trend uh and jeff saturday was maybe the bridge too far but i'm starting to see like I think a trend and Jeff Saturday was maybe the bridge too far, but I'm starting to see like where the recent X player, you're seeing a track record of success now. And I think Dion adds to what you've seen from Mike Frabel, from Dan Campbell, from Kevin O'Connell. I think what you will see from D'Amico Ryans, where I think owners, if they're smart, will start to see the real value in these guys in that I think like with each one of these guys, with a generation where it's really hard

to capture their attention and it's really hard to get 53 guys going in the same direction and we're so far past what you and I grew up in, which was you'll do what I say because I told you to. That doesn't work anymore. If you can bring in somebody who immediately, when they walk in the room, is going to have every eye up on them and everybody's sitting up straight and everybody's

paying attention because of who that guy is, well, then you're already playing from the head. And if that guy has an ability to bring in good coaches around him and has an ability to coach himself, now you're really cooking, right? So like, that's like, I remember talking to Braybel about this and, you know, I, I said to him, you know, is there anything you've done to kind of shorten the learning curve? Cause you only coached for seven years before you became a head coach is when he first got to Tennessee. And I've known Mike for a while and he looked at me sideways and he goes, what, my 15 years in the league playing don't count. And I just thought to myself to myself like i'm an idiot for even asking that you know what i mean

like and he's any any he said like do you think the guy who's sitting in a dark room cutting tape is getting better experience than i than i was playing outside linebacker he's absolutely right you know and i think sometimes we discount that because we look at football as such an X's and O's thing. But Mike Vrabel, when he walked into that meeting room for the first time in Tennessee, could relate with every one of those guys. He had been the guy fighting to make the roster. He'd been the guy running down on kickoffs. He'd been the best player on the team. He'd been a premier pass rusher. He'd been a veteran who was just trying to hang on on the way out. He could legitimately relate with every one of those guys. Every one of those guys was going to listen to him at a baseline. So you're already way ahead. You know, Kevin O'Connell, he played

quarterback in the league. You think Kirk Cousins is going to buy into what he's saying now? Kirk knew him before, but I just think that there's something there with the X players that Dion has tapped into. And yeah, Deion doesn't have as much experience as some of these other guys, but his experience is as a head coach. It's sort of like with Jim Harbaugh. Jim Harbaugh didn't want to go be an assistant somewhere. So Jim Harbaugh went to San Diego for a couple of years, got to Stanford, was successful there almost right away. And then it went to thefl and there's a really talented team that's been kind of like up and down and not very good for six or seven years as a bill and he was able to

tap into something and win there so i definitely think there's something to the x player thing that's the most variable answer ever by the way um but it's a good point no it is a good point but i think we were all used to well wait none wait, none of that does count. You're supposed to start all over again and work your way back up. And it happens a lot with some of the front office guys. Like, you know, I'll talk to guys that get done playing and I'm like, you know, do you think you want to be in the front office? And it's like, I spent, you know, between whatever sport you're in, you know, if you're in hockey and it's like, you know, I spent years to late 30s grinding and that's a 20-year window and then i'm gonna go and start at the very bottom again i mean you know look for some guys too that have put some money away it's hard for them to go okay this is the 10-year plan um but to rabel's point maybe i don't know maybe maybe things are a little

different because it was always pretty accepted in basketball you know we've had a lot of people just jump right in we've had people jump in that have never even coached before that immediately become head coaches in the NBA. And I think... Wasn't that Steve Kerr? Am I wrong about that? He'd done front office work, but had he coached before he became a Warriors coach? No, but look, Doc Rivers jumped right in.

Mark Jackson jumped in. Steve Nash got the gig right away. So, I mean, it happens. So, Magic Johnson, that one not as heralded in the past. But, you know, the NFL, we just – we're always thought, like, you can't do it that way. You can't do it that way. And I don't think this means, like, hey, who has no experience

who wants to be a head coach? Like, I don't know that – and owners are getting together, being like, put together a list. John Elway was pretty good as an executive, though. He was until he wasn't, which was weird. Until he weird until he wasn't but like he was at the beginning and he won a Super Bowl went to two Super Bowls and like his experience was running an arena league team before he before he got to I mean playing quarterback and running an arena league team and then he becomes like the top guy the top football guy for the Broncos you know so it it can be done it has to be the right

person too i mean that's part of it obviously but um you know it's funny with rabel because like i i've always felt this way about rabel is like rabel wants people to think he's this meathead when he's really actually brilliant you know he's really really smart but he likes that everybody thinks he's a meathead and dan campbell's the exact same thing like dan campbell wants everyone to think he's a meathead. If you sit down with him for a couple hours and talk to him, you'll walk away and be like, whoa, like that guy has a lot of good ideas.

He's a good communicator. Like I would listen to that guy, you know, but he has this facade. Everybody thinks he's a meathead. And I don't know if like anybody but an ex-player could really pull that off. You know what I mean? It helps being that big is those two guys because we're all visual and the first thing you see is this dude

and i remember like one thing that we had vrabel would never remember it it wasn't that significant but like we had we had some sit down thing with vrabel and he basically was just insulting slash making fun of us it was it was making fun of in a fairly insulting way but he was still a player and i was like am i having a good time or am i having the worst time like i couldn't quite i was like i think i'm actually not enjoying this but uh but he feels he feels his most comfortable when you feel uncomfortable yeah well he nailed it so he nailed it yeah he's got you exactly where he wants you i mean it, it's funny, too, because if we have the ultimate NFL coach fight bracket, like the 32-man fight bracket,

those two guys might be the two to meet in the finals. Over McDaniel? Scrappy, fast, wiry, sinewy? Yeah, McDaniel would probably surprise you a little bit. A little bit. Might be willing to fight dirty, pull out all had a fight he's had to fight his whole life overlooked you know uh hey this was incredible man great visit let's do it again thank you absolutely you got it Ryan

was lucky enough to have him on a bunch of times also we went out to the farm to visit Stanford football uh former head coach and now working with NFL Network. David Shaw's with us. What's up, man? I'm great, man. Good to see you again. So look, you know I'm a big fan and I think it had more to do with just how you handled us when you gave us time. So I just wanted to catch up a year away from it. I know that was kind of funny. I was going back and reading stuff and then UCLA reporters are like why is David Shaw here? And then Chip Kelly's like well his son's on the team. So that's that's a pretty good reason to start But what's this been like going into this fall?

It's been great Yeah, I bumped into a few people and then I started getting calls like hey you're working for chip now. What are you doing down there? But now my son's down there. My daughter's down in Southern Cal also at school. So it's been great to just go down there and be a father and be a fan and enjoy watching practice with the other parents. And I've gone to a few games now, and it's been good to be on this side of it.

You probably can't help yourself, though, of watching certain things and being like, well, why are they doing that? I mean, that has to happen, right? Not that much. Really, it's more of me watching, right? I like to watch football anyway. So I just take things in. I try not to, I evaluate it, but I try not to say this is right, that's wrong.

You know, I just like to look at, Oh, that's a good idea. Oh, I probably wouldn't do that. Oh, wow. That's a great way to, you know, attack three deep coverage or, Oh gosh, that's a, that's a really good blitz in that situation. So I'm just taking it in and enjoying it and getting to know the other parents and cheering for their sons, um, as they play. So, uh, it's, it's been good. I don't, I can't turn off the coach brain. Um, but I can steer it towards just receiving information as opposed to being responsible for what goes on out there. Yeah, and it must, I mean, even though your son's involved in it, the outcome of every play and the anxiety that goes with it when you're the guy in the headset, it's probably a nice little break, you know? it's probably a nice little break, you know?

So you've been around this sports forever. The flip sides of the same coin, it's like a little bit of a break, but you know this, every single coach of every single sport is a little bit of a psychopath, right? There's varying degrees, I should say, of psychopath in all of us. So there's part of me that misses that strain,

misses that intensity. That's why we do it because we love it. So yeah, it's been great to have a bit of a break. I wasn't tired when I took a break. I didn't need a break necessarily. It was the right decision to step away when I did. So part of me was like, yeah, you know, where is that intensity? Where is that competition? But I am enjoying being on, as I said, this side of it and just taking things in and preparing for whatever comes next in the following months and years. I want to get to all of that stuff, but I've always just liked you on the sport. And you said something recently in an interview where I was like, he might be the only other guy that believes this. Cause I thought of it too. Like as all this PAC 12 stuff has happened and I hate it for the PAC 12, I hate it for college football. Everyone that's listened to me already knows the rant. So I'm not going to do it

again. But you said something that I completely agreed with and was like, I wonder if we'll just have a common sense reset in eight to 10 years where as bad as it looks now, programs will go, well, was this really worth it? This doesn't make a ton of sense. It certainly doesn't make sense for the other sports. We know that football is driving this. Is that both of us just being romantic about college football that we grew up with? Or do you think, do you have more, more insight on it as somebody that was involved with a program that was at one point the face of the conference. Yeah, I think it's a part of it is that kind of romantic way of looking at it. But for me, it's also very practical. You've got a lot of things going on right now, right? You've got

these media contracts for these conferences that are that are rather large. And you've got a lot of media entities that are firing their people. Those two things don't make a lot of sense to me. One is we're making a whole bunch of money off this thing, but also these companies, ESPN and all those other companies, or NFL Network, have had to let a lot of people go. Cable subscriptions are crashing. Satellite subscriptions are crashing. Everything's going to streaming.

So there's a new way of watching sports that's coming at us, and the finances don't make sense. So after a while, is it going to be worth being a West Coast team? Are you going to get enough out of it to being in a Midwest or an East Coast conference? And is it worth for that conference to keep those teams in it? So I think when these things start to reset, who knows? Cable might not even exist. Cable TV might not exist. Satellite TV might not even exist cable tv might not exist satellite tv might not exist

the big money contracts might not exist so now hey let's how about this someone's come up with this brilliant idea in about 10 years hey how about if all of our conferences are regional you know let's try that that might be really kind of cool. So I think as these next iteration of these contracts come up, which I think the Big Ten signed the shortest tenured contract, they might look up and say, hey, that was a great short-term idea, adding some of these other schools. Now it probably doesn't make sense anymore, right? The big money contracts aren't out there anymore. Hey, let's make this thing a Midwestern conference again. So my hope is just practically and financially, it's going to make more sense in a decade to go back to the way that it was originally.

Because it's almost like a tech bubble, right? These contracts got bigger and bigger and bigger. And now, what are we selling anymore? and now what are we selling anymore like we can't even i mean everybody's looking for the cheapest way to watch stuff and people cut inscriptions and going to youtube and all these other ways to watch what they want to watch so it just might be a completely different model in about 10 years what was it like you know still being the head coach and knowing that the pac-12 was in trouble you know like i know the history of it going back going back to Larry Scott and the promises and then the expenses and over and over and over again, but being involved in it and how frustrating it all must've been. What was that like as the season started getting close to a breaking point of what we have now? Well, I won't profess to know that we would be here,

but it was troubling. Like we didn't know where it was going to go. Um, it's like sitting in that, that little boat and we're out for a nice little, you know, a nice little ride and like, Hey, is that a waterfall? I hear rumbling. I don't really see anything over the horizon, but is that a waterfall? I mean, that's kind of how we felt like having all these conversations with the other coaches, with the athletic directors, with even the university presidents over a bunch of different things, really starting with COVID and beyond. We had all these different powwows. And the most important principle to me, especially being at Stanford, so it was magnified, is that, hey, everybody else is playing by a different set of rules. Everybody has more money. Everybody has more this. Everybody has more that. We're on the short end of

these sticks, and they're just point after point after point where we could have gone one way, and then we went a different way. And I don't want to put it all on Larry Scott. It's not all Larry Scott's fault. But not adding Oklahoma and Texas to me was the beginning, right? That was a done deal. That would have vaulted the PAC-12 or PAC-14 or whatever we would call ourselves to a different stratosphere. And then we couldn't work out the Longhorn Network and the PAC-12 Network. So that disappeared. When that didn't happen, I think it looked like, oh gosh, we're not just staying stagnant. We're kind of taking a step back because it was obvious that here are two marquee universities and athletics programs that were looking for something else. And they came to us first.

Now they're going to the SEC. So that was a big blow. What I would love, and this is kind of unfair to a certain degree, but I think it makes sense to me. It would be right when an athlete does something wrong and they, they issue the standard athlete apology. Um, I'd love to see, Hey, dear Pac tool fans, you know, we're not expressing a lot of culpability, but we understand a lot of the decisions that we made have led us to this unfortunate time. And, you know, we apologize to you for where we are.

Sign all 12 university presidents. You know, like, hey, let's just admit it what it was. It wasn't one decision. It wasn't one thing. It wasn't one person. It was kind of thing after thing after thing. You know, we didn't we didn't play all games in the COVID area, which the other conferences did. We didn't sign the contract that was presented to us multiple times the last couple of years that we chose not to. We kind of set the table for the conference to dissolve. It's not the conference's fault that it dissolved, but a lot of those situations put USC and UCLA in a position to say, hey, we're tired of getting tens of millions of dollars less than every other major program. We want in. So they jumped. And we tried to hold it together and we presented another way and we

chose not to take it. And more universities said, hey, we have to look at what's best for us. We're also tired of getting tens of millions of dollars less than everybody else. So there are a lot of little decisions that led to the programs deciding to leave. I also wonder, you know, one of my favorite things that I've got to experience my career is, and villages would be the wrong word, but these football communities, right? Where everything is different and everything is special and there is a regional feel to it and more so other places in the country than others. And, you know, I didn't understand Stanford. I

didn't know anything about it. Obviously Stanford, steve my producer would tell me all about it here's a kid from a valley town in connecticut a very blue collar town and he ends out at the farm and you know i drive through the front and i'm walking around the campus and i got to know a bunch of the alums and there was just something that was special didn't mean it was more special there, but it was special to this group. And it started to make sense to me. I was like, man, you start to walk around this place and the whole thing, but there's very clearly a disconnect between Stanford football and then the university. And part of that could be looked at as a positive of like, look, Stanford's doing big, big things. But if I were to rank all the power five programs and think like how how aligned they are about caring about football, I don't know if Stanford's ahead of anybody.

I don't. And right now is the wrong time to not care about football to survive. And so I wonder how much of that has to do with Stanford's current situation as opposed to the bigger situation that we're aligned with on the Pac-12. its current situation as opposed to the bigger situation that we're aligned with on the Pac-12. Yeah, as much as what you just said gave me a little bit of a stomachache, I think everything you said was very fair. But I think if you look at Stanford in a long continuum, there were just times where it was together and then not, and together and then not. And just knowing that I've been associated with Stanford since I was a kid. My dad coached there in the 70s, and I went to school there, and I came back and worked there. So a lot of it has to do with the administration and what's going on. There was a time before Jim Harbaugh was hired that everybody said the exact same thing.

Um, and I, Jim gets a lot of credit and deserves a lot of credit. Um, it was Bob Bowlesby. Bob Bowlesby said, we are going to make this work during an economic downturn. We are going to invest in football where everybody else is cutting. We're going to invest in football. He did a great job of, of communicating with our president and provost. John Etchemendy was the provost. And just the provost kind of runs the university. And we had a lot of budget conversations like, no, we need to build. We need to invest. We need to do these things to help football because football is what's going to fund everything else that's just what's going to happen

and etch etch got it and you know the university president was was like hey you know what he's also a businessman right um said okay let's look at it and let's take and then what happened we build a good football program and then all of a sudden boom we're in the orange bowl playing against virginia tech and wiping the floor with them and had probably the biggest gathering of Stanford alums anywhere outside of campus in Florida for this bowl game. And both the president and provost looked at that and said, hey, this is actually a good thing for us. And also what happened was applications went through the roof. And they're like, oh, there is a direct correlation, which all of us in sports know.

There's a direct correlation between how well you do at the front porch sports. And for most places, it's football. And for some, it's basketball. Some of it's women's basketball. Some of it's women's soccer. Like when your major programs do extremely well, that's the most visible thing. And it inspires people to pay attention to your university. It's just part of what happens.

It's not my opinion. It's a fact. It's what happens. So this empirical data given to some really smart people, like, hey, let's do this thing right. So what happens is we go on this amazing run. Didn't lower our academic standards. We became the place that young people who had football ability and great grades and high test scores and a desire to do something special in and out of football, we became that place.

So it happens over time. People move on, et cetera, and we have a new president, new provost. Both high academic people. Both love Stanford and want to do what's right for Stanford. And for a while, we had to backtrack and say, okay, gosh, we have to sell this back to a new university president and a new provost who were both on board, but maybe just not as versed. And I think the biggest issue, and I love Stanford, and no one can tell me they love Stanford more than I do, maybe as much, but nobody can tell me more. As an alum, as the head football coach, as a person who is emotionally vested in the place, it's tough when the world changes and we don't change.

So it's been a slow change at Stanford and it's understandable. We don't want to lower academic standards, but we didn't embrace NIL. We didn't embrace the transfer portal. And if you don't embrace the NIL, you don't embrace the transfer portal and you don't lower academic standards, which I'm saying we shouldn't, boy, now you're really playing a different game than everybody else. and if you're playing a different game than everybody else you better be awesome you better be great but the problem is you can't get the athletes you can't get all of the student athletes that you would normally get in a different world at a time where we did where we were that iconic combination of athletics and academics um and and stanford's

just been slower to change with the world which i also understand saying stanford and all the things that are important to stanford but also realizing that part of stanford is leading right if we're going to invest in sports we need to lead in sports we can't follow we can't wait we can't be stagnant. I think that's what we've been for multiple years. And what's happened in the last couple of years has really been the difficult part of this, which is Stanford is more open now to the transfer portal. There are a lot of invested parties around the university that are helping keep up or

catch up a little bit on the NIL space, which is awesome. But it's been slow. In a world that's moving really, really fast, it's hard to move slow. So got a new president. The search is going on right now. We've hired a new provost. There's new leadership there. And as an alum, especially especially i'm looking forward to stanford getting back to that point where we are leading uh in sports and not um really kind of being stationary i know i've spent more time at stanford with you than maybe i promised um but i have to ask one more because it's just and for those that don't know david's story too as he mentions his father coaching his father was going to get the head coaching gig ends up up going to Bill Walsh. And then David essentially fulfills a family's destiny by

becoming head coach and then winning his coach ever. So for you to step down after a couple of rough seasons, I remember it was like in the beginning of some of the seasons weren't going well. And I was like, if I could hire any five coaches, Shaw's still on my list. And people were like, what's wrong with you? And I was like, look, I get the recency bias, but he had this thing rolling and he kept it going post Harbaugh and they're putting pros in. And I just loved everything about it. I loved your approach. Maybe you hypnotize me a little bit. So you know that, you know, I just was like, I'm all in with David Shaw. And for you to have to go, I'm walking away from the thing that outside of my immediate family has been the thing I've been most associated with. What was that like?

So I have to say this, like I didn't leave and I've been very open. Anybody can look at any interview I've given. I've been completely honest. I didn't leave because I was burned out. I didn't leave because we were losing. I still believed in the kids that burned out. I didn't leave because we were losing. I still believed in the kids that we had. I thought we still had an opportunity to build and grow. And it was kind of like this nexus of everything, all these lines coming together to where we needed a new approach as university, right? We needed to make changes in our football approach because the world was changing. And the week of that last game really hit me about Tuesday, right?

The previous weeks before that, I had set the off-season program. We had made all the decisions on how we're training the team all these different things and i was all in i was there and about tuesday it was kind of like hey you know this would be the perfect time for someone else to come in with all the changes that need to have happened university wise athletic department wise football wise you don't make the big changes with the old coach. You make the big changes with the new coach. And it kept hitting me like, this is the perfect time for someone else to come in and build. I could rebuild, but this is the perfect time for someone else to come in and build in the middle of all these different changes.

And the biggest thing, and some people have said, I don't know what you're saying. Some people have said, gosh, I really understand that. The word vision, I think kind of gets overused. Like we put some kind of mystical thing around it. Like this guy's got great, you know, that's just long vision. But I've always looked at it as I'm very practical. And I look and I set the off-season program and I looked at it as I'm very practical and I look and I would set

the off season program and I looked at the calendar and it kept hitting me. Like I don't see myself following through on this. Like for the first time in forever, I like, I can't see myself doing this. Like it looks like it should be for someone else. This is the perfect time for someone else to come in and do these things. I can't, I want to do it. I would love to do it, but I kept looking at him like, you know what? I can't see myself doing it. Like, I think this is it. This is,

this is the perfect time for me to step away. And, um, it was unemotional. It was, you know, I didn't shed a tear. I looked at the guys and said, I feel, I said, I feel bad that I'm leaving at this point to a certain degree. I said, but these kids are going to be great. I already knew that a lot of the older guys were going to grad transfer and go other places. We had a nice group of young players. I'm like, this would be a good starter group for a next coach coming in. He's got a lot less young guys. And I'd been involved with a group on campus to talk about NIL and the changes that need to happen.

And I'm like, you know what, that group's going to be good without me. So I looked at it and I said, you know what, this is just the perfect time to step away. My son was finishing his senior year of high school. My daughter had gone away to college and came back and was looking for the next place to go. daughter had gone away to college and came back and was looking for the next place to go. I'm like, gosh, if there's a better, there's no better time for me to come back into my house and actually be present as I get two kids ready to go back off to college. Um, like every, from every angle, I looked at this, I'm like, this is the time to step away. And it was an unemotional decision. It was a practical decision. And with each passing day from Wednesday, Tuesday to Saturday, I was like, yeah, this is it.

So that's what all that went into it. And I love the place. I still love the place. I cheer for the guys. I root for all the sports. But for me, the 12 years was unbelievable. And that would change a thing. If you take 10 unbelievable years and put two bad years on the back of it, I think anybody would take that. And I think also me

walking out the door, like, hey, you know what? Throw some of that blame on me. I'm not going to fight it. You know, take, give me those last two years. That's fine. I'll take the first 10. Give me the last two too. Don't put that on the next person. Let the next person build, you know, take give me those last two years. That's fine. I'll take the first 10. Give me give me the last two, too. Don't put that on the next person. Let the next person build, you know, tell people I did a terrible job. That's fine. That doesn't bother me one bit. I love what we did. I love who we did it with. I love how we did it. I love the results that we got. And another thing you mentioned, Bill Walsh. Another thing that I played for Bill and got a great relationship with Bill. He was outside of my dad was my first real mentor in coaching and there's a famous line that bill had said that's always gone around the coaches um since he said it was like you know after 10 years you know it's

tough you know after 10 years anywhere you are any sport that you coach after 10 years of being the head coach you know it can be tough and a lot of coaches have gone a lot longer which is great and i i that kept getting in my hair my hair too like yeah i was here for 12 years as a head coach 16 overall including the time as the offense coordinator under harbaugh like that's a long time it's really time for somebody else so that's kind of a whole bunch of stuff to answer that question um i still feel great about it i haven't regretted it one day um i still root for stanford like i said but i'm also looking forward to the the next chapter of my career i don't know if you'll be honest with me here um when you had

it always always what was the best job offer that you were offered to leave Stanford? Oh, I take it back. I won't be honest with you. Let's say this. There were, I'll say this, starting after my first year, 2011, from 2011 until 2019 for sure. And there were a couple after 2011, 2019, I was probably offered on average two NFL jobs a year. Not necessarily like, Hey, we want you to interview, but like, Hey, if you just come here, like we really like you. Um, so it wasn't two every year. years it was one some years it was three some years it was four um and there were a few other college jobs in there too um but there they were never an option for me like i said like i couldn't see myself going anyplace else

during that that 12 year span 12 year span i love what we were building i love what we were doing i love the program more than anything which like you said you spend time on the campus i mean during that 12-year span. I love what we were building. I love what we were doing. I love the program more than anything, which like you said, you spend time on a campus. I mean, you may not be honest with me here, but where else during that 12-year span could you go and interview the caliber of people that we had on our campus?

What other program had a Richard Sherman, a Doug Baldwin, an Andrew Luck, a Christian McCaffrey, a David DeCastro, a Zach Ertz? These unbelievable human beings that were great football players, Toby Gerhardt, great football players, and then also great people. So I'm like, these are my people. These are who I want to be around. In the back of my mind, I would always say at some point there's going to be a time for the NFL. But to go anyplace else during that run, I could not see leaving.

And like I said, I enjoyed every minute of it. I enjoyed all those people, all the people I worked with, the young people we were able to coach and teach and push to achieve some great things. Wouldn't trade it for anything. I knew about some of the NFL offers, so I'm not going to name teams. I just was curious.

So I'm backing you at least on that. So here's kind of the final thought. Do the offers stop coming in now? I put it out there very early when I decided to step down that I was not looking for another college job. So I, that I put that out there. Don't ask me, don't look for me. Don't no search firms. Don't bring it up. Athletic directors don't even ask, um, ask when and if I do get back into coaching. I truly believe it will be on the NFL side. So put that aside. And as many people know, I was going to take a year off before I decided what next to do.

But then I got this unbelievable call from the Denver Broncos. I really enjoyed that process. I got two other calls, um, that didn't end up being interviews, but were very, very intriguing. So, um, I do believe, uh, there's still a market out there for me on the NFL side. Um, more than anything, it's about finding, um, an agreement on process, right? Everybody wants to win a championship. It's not like, oh, I want to bring somebody in that wants to win. I want to go to an organization that wants to win. Everybody wants to win.

But it's about the process that you want to go through and the personalities of the people there working together to put something together that can be special and win a championship. So that's really what I'm focused on now. I'm watching a ton of NFL film. I never stopped watching NFL film. I studied NFL offenses and defenses because that's what we were. We adopted a lot of college philosophies, but still, we were running NFL offense the entire time, running NFL defense the entire time. So we always watched NFL. So I've already been invested.

I've done the NFL draft for the last, I think, 11 years, 11 out of 12 years, whatever it is. So my head has always been in the NFL game. Now it's really preparing for the day-to-day of the NFL, getting up to speed on all the, all the personnel, all of the schemes, et cetera, staying connected with all the coaches and really preparing myself for a potential opportunity coming this, et cetera. Um, staying connected with all the coaches and, uh, really prepare myself for a potential opportunity, um, coming this, this winter. Well, I'm rooting for it. I hope it happens. I want it to happen. I imagine, uh, at some point it will. And in the meantime, if you need to see David Shaw, you can see him on NFL network game day live starts on Sundays, but I really appreciate this time. I think we did more on Stanford than I promised,

but you're just so good. So, um So I hope to catch up with you soon. All right. Thanks, David. Sounds great. Thanks, Ryan. The Alliance rolls on. How did everybody do last week? I know I lost.

I flipped on Texas Bama and then, you know, screwed it up. So what do you guys got? I had the, I thought you won, Kyle do you guys got? I had the... I thought you won, Kyle, no? No, I had seven and a half, and they went by seven. Oh, man, that's a bummer,

because I saw they came back. I had the over, or the under, I'm sorry, in Alabama, Texas, and I think it was like 16-13 heading into the fourth quarter. I'm like, this is awesome. It was like 54 and a half, and there was like five touchdowns

scored in the fourth quarter. Yeah, kind of like Thursday Night Football, where I was like, oh, this thing's going under. And they scored 21 points in five minutes. Yep. All right. So, wow. That's our first 0-3 alliance. Hey, listen. Going 0-3 is just

as hard as going 3-0. Some would say harder. Okay. So that means on the season, Kyle and I are still tied. So let's have Cerruti go first. I know that's not normally how it would work, but go, go for it.

All right. I don't even really know that I like this bet, but I'm going to go back to the Alabama, uh, situation. I'm, I think a bounce back win here is in order. There is minus 33 and a half minus one 10.

I'm going to take it. It's a lot of points, but Saban just murders non power five teams. Like he just, historically he just murders them. So I know that everyone's questioning the quarterback. I know it's a road game at USF, South Florida, not South Florida, your dad's South Florida of 10, 15 years ago,

and they're actually a decent team. So I think Bama might drop a 50-burger here. I think USF struggles to score two touchdowns. This is also testing the Rosillo theory of like, can we see Bama struggle against like bad teams or lose to a bad team? I think they bounce back and blow this team out.

So I know it's a big number, minus 33 and a half, but I'm taking Bama to win big. Hey, one of my favorite approaches in college when I was betting as much as I possibly could, which is amazing because I didn't have any money

and somehow I still was able to place bets. But I love, hey, a team I think is good after a loss. And look, they should still beat South Florida. But it's a tough week, man, because you either have to be really dialed in on some of these big underdogs, which is where the smart guys are going to figure some stuff out here, or you're going to have to lay some massive points for the teams you're more familiar with. So, unfortunately, I think I'm falling in the same category.

So, that means I'm going to lay the 29.5 of Ohio State hosting Western Kentucky. Western Kentucky is 2-0. I've watched zero minutes of them. And they've actually put up some points this year. But this feels like the kind of make or break Ohio State game where we need to see them roll. We need to see the quarterback look better. We need to see the offensive line look better. And I think at home before Notre Dame, it would make sense if they're going to be any good,

that this would maybe be the impressive blowout game. So that's what I'm going with. This is a, a slim week for featured games. Kyle. Okay. I'm going with a gut. Yeah.

Just like you said. So I'm going with a gut feeling Yeah, just like you said, so I'm going with a gut feeling. This is Syracuse-Purdue. I used to date a girl at Purdue, and I went to visit her from Potsdam once, and she left me to walk around the town because she didn't get me a ticket to the game. Syracuse lost, so we are picking Purdue plus two and a half, and that's going to get you minus 115 odds. Go, Purdue.

Honestly, I like that pick better than any of them for that reason alone. Just sound betting advice. I love it. You want details? Buy. I drive a Ferrari 355 Cabriolet. What's up? I have a ridiculous house in the South Fork.

I have every toy you can possibly imagine. And best of all, kids, I am liquid. So, now you know what's possible. Let me tell you what's required. Life advice. Life advice. RR at gmail.com. What's good?

Yo, to Saruti and Kyle. What up? Went to the gym today before the taping how about that early oh my god are you serious where that check-in is at 8 49 a.m pacific time what time did you go in uh as soon as i got out of bed at seven and i was like just go man get out what'd you do um i do like i'm just not into legs i did um you are yeah uh basically i'm just kind of bouncing around from machine to machine that i could find and then i do a little free weights uh but is it true that you lose more weight if you do less cardio and more lifting i've just somebody just kind of told

me this like you're like don't do the whole hour in the gym uh moving around which is what i you know was doing previously is that true i think that is actually true wait say that again like you lose like you you burn more calories or whatever by like doing the doing the cardio and then like going lifting some heavy shit which in my brain was like oh you just run the whole time and then you burn more calories i've heard that's not true i don't know what that is but i know if you actually want to lift lift, you shouldn't do cardio before it. That's my experience with it. And this kind of shit, like have fun logging into a Reddit page on this.

But I just don't think I think it actually makes a lot of sense that you shouldn't do heavy cardio and then go lift. I think you should do three to five minutes of light cardio, warm yourself up, get the heart rate. And if the if the goal is to lift that day, then lift lift and then if you want to do cardio after do your cardio after but doing it all together in the same day um unless you're going for like a real like who knows are you training for something no doing keto but not really because i'm still drinking beer but keto doesn't make sense to me either it's like eat meat and cheese and then your body will start like losing weight but i I don't know. I know. I'm so kind of resets it.

I'm so fucking confused on who is on the pod today. All right. So when I went, when I went back, uh, my, my stepdad, like,

you know, who's always been like a fucking fat guy. He like looked amazing. He's like, yeah, I'm eating. I mean, it's not a mean word,

is it? Like, I, maybe if you put fucking in front of it, but I, I mean, the way you delivered that sentence, it didn't seem, he looked amazing. My mom's like yeah i'm eating i mean it's not a mean word is it like maybe if you put fucking in front of it but yeah i mean the way he delivered that sentence it's a little aggressive he looked amazing my mom's like he eats terrible he eats steak and cheese all day and he drinks a gallon of milk and i came back and i saw him and he looked he's drinking a gallon of milk a day as an adult crazy son of a bitch i tell you he's the guy who told me all he's the guy who told me all about uh reincarnation and at different levels and stuff.

But so I don't take everything. He apparently was a dairy farmer. So he looked incredible. And he was just like, yeah, man, I'm doing I'm just doing this stuff. I'm eating meat and cheese. I was like, well, that sounds like a great fucking deal. But I'm drinking beer. So I think that's the one thing I haven't unlocked yet.

Can we have a full Kyle? I think because it's week one going into week two. The time would be right for the audience to get a full Kyleyle dossier on like where you're at right now okay uh do you want to share your weight oh i don't keep a scale in the house okay it's like my wife i did go to the doctors and i almost asked her and then i didn't but i don't know uh my grandma thinks i'm losing weight you have no idea what you actually weigh. Yeah, probably around between 260 and 70 somewhere. But my grandma said I probably lost some weight. But she says that like every other time I go see her.

So I don't know. People are going to hear that and be like, 260, 270? I'm like, dude, Kyle's a big fucking kid, man. And he's tall. How tall are you? Like 6'3"? 6'3". Yeah.

Just confirmed in the doctor's office. First found out in the bar, and then we confirmed it in the doctor's office first found out in the bar and then we confirmed in the doctor's office so that was cool both work um okay so if we put you down at like six three two sixty five and this is where people are like wait i would kick rossillo's ass um maybe you the quitting smoking thing was short-lived fair yeah it felt really long but yeah it's probably like a month all right back on it um crazy nightmares from those fucking patches tell you that just people with guns keto but beer right but what are the keto rules uh i'm not entirely clear but i think it's like almost no carbs, lots of meat, fats, stuff like that.

I guess something about how your body breaks down fats and keep the sugar out. So I think there's probably a little sugar in beer too. But I've been setting a timer. I roll into the frolic room, throw two, two and a half hours on the timer. Alarm hits, I'm out of there. Mostly. Unless I'm waiting for a ride you have a personal frolic room time limit notified by an alarm on the premises yeah just when i think you can't

be any more fascinating well you know just trying to balance everything out you know this is not an attack kyle thing by the way this is all fucking incredible inquisitive yeah we're just trying to figure it out like i just part of growing up yep yep okay married check working on a little addition of the family i don't know if you want to keep that private or not i don't even know if you are so we can leave it out you can leave it out i thought you said something though overtime right you know what i mean oh it's working okay so uh hey kyle uh all right i think we i think we have it yeah we got any emails or what no i think we have i just wanted to update where we were at right now all right and grandma thinks i'm skinnier so i might be 260 no but you're working out. You're working out is the big point here.

Is the Nigerian guy helping you? No, you know, that was just sort of like, it was a pipe dream, if I'm being honest. I mean, that guy doesn't even show up for work sometimes. They're like, hey, have you heard from him? I'm like, no, no, I don't. You don't even work there. They're asking if you see him.

He called me at two in the morning. I'm sure he wanted to go hang out or something, but I didn't answer and now he's not at work, so. Oh my God. oh okay all right all right we've got all right that's all we needed we just needed we needed a six-month check-in that's all yeah okay all right here we go uh out of nowhere layoff have really only been listening for the past year or so, but love the pod. 31 years old, 5'11", 170. Kyle would dominate this guy. No real player comp or personal records to speak of. Been really getting into running though.

My wife and I recently moved to Brooklyn from Philadelphia, where she had just finished her residency program. I've been working with the same company, marketing agency for reference. For about four years in Philly, I was in an extremely good place with the company, was recently brought on to some larger accounts and communicated with them that we were moving, which was met by extremely open response. My boss and their boss had no problem at all.

Quote, there are some people we would worry about working semi-remotely, but you are not one of them. End quote. This was obviously a huge relief while we were planning the move. Jumped to two weeks after my wife and I moved in, the company shuts down one of the accounts I work on without any heads up to the team. Fair to note that this is one of the four accounts I work on. I hear throughout the day that a couple of people have gotten laid off. I'm sure you know where this is going. 4.30 rolls around. I get a meeting request request for 445 with one of my higher ups. We all know how this ends. I get canned. I have a couple of questions. One, I mean, no way this was not part of the plan ever since I told them I was leaving, right? Or is that just

being overly self-aggrandizing? Two, one of my former coworkers that I work with extremely close with on the account that led to my termination, but not in a a very different capacity she was not terminated and was honestly been fairly dismissive about the whole thing not being rude per se but just half-hearted i know it's so crazy maybe two leads into one is this worth something confronting her with or will just be a waste of time that ends in me being even more irritated three like dot dot dot dot them right yeah look you lost your job and you're bummed out right and the funny thing is and believe me there's there's going to be a moment where this is going to be the best thing that ever happened i'm serious like this i'm not going to say that for everybody that gets let go like certainly when it happens in my industry the thing that's like

the hidden nasty part about it it's like oh hey all your contract gets paid out like, yeah, but then I'm not allowed to work anywhere else. And if I do want to work somewhere else, I got to pay you all that money back where, you know, there's only so many jobs that are on the air. And then now I'm not going to be on the air for like a year while I'm collecting checks. And everybody thinks I have this like free vacation when in fact, like my career may have been derailed. But since you're 31 31 since you work in a field where there are many options if this is where you were with this company you being there another couple years although maybe a little sense of security and certainly the money part of this all has to be factored in you aren't going to be in their plans anyway whatever their plans were you weren't going to

be a part of them so they might have done you a favor to hit the reset button a lot sooner than you wanted to. Now with moving and then having the wife part of it, which is actually in this case a bonus, but you feel like you have real responsibilities and all that kind of stuff. Like the immediacy of this is annoying. And there's also a big ego thing. I have friends that have been laid off and the only thing that they couldn't get over was the ego part of somebody else telling them to go away, that they weren't wanted anymore. When in fact, it opened up all sorts of opportunities. And when I talk about that clock speeding things up, now you are forced to kind of look for something or make the changes where, you know, you can become a little too content, you know, content can be great. It also can be terrible if you have goals. And I think there's another part that's specific

to you here. I know there's with all the strikes going on and there's a video going around of this guy i kind of can't tell if he's english or like an evil guy in an australian movie but he was talking about how people don't want to work anymore and you know because there are more people that are employees as opposed to employers well no one's ever going to side with aside employer. And by the way, his whole message, it was aggressive. It was dismissive. And I understand why it wasn't very popular, but there's been something in there that I've even just thought about when you look at the economy is that do people really think that this is it now? That after the pandemic, that nobody is really going to have to ever go into an office again?

Do people think that that's normal? I think there are people that could work remotely and be more efficient. I think we also know that most of the places we've ever worked, if everybody got to work remotely, we know there's more people that would just take advantage of the situation and be less productive. If you're listening to this, you're like, hey, I disagree. Maybe that means you're on the shorter list. I believe the shorter list of being more productive. So if you tell an employer like, hey, I want to work remotely and they tell you it's okay, maybe it's because you did do them the favor and they were thinking about letting people go.

And that's why they said that. Back to your point one or two, right? There's a real chance. You could ask the girl that's your coworker. You can follow up. It's not going to be anything. Even if it's a small win, it doesn't really mean anything if she tells you, hey, actually, they were going to phase you out. But I do think there's a lesson in this just across the workforce in general is that if you're making it easier for

a place to move on from you and you're in a tie with the other person in your department, right? Person A, person B. All right. Well, person B moved. Person B doesn't come in anymore. Person A is down the street and they're here all the time. Like, what do you think they're going to do? Again, if it's a tie between what the two people bring to the company. Yeah. I mean, I've never been laid off, been fired a few times, but I think when you get, when you get laid off, it's like, nobody wants to do this. Right. And it could be random. It could just be looking at, um, not random, but like, you know, it's like, nobody wants to do this. Right. And it could be random. It could just be looking at, um, not random, but like, you know, it's like the office, like there's a department

that has three people doing the work of two and maybe you were just in one of those departments and yeah, you did move. So I guess I could see what, if one person's utilizing their office space, like every company's trying to figure out how to, you know, tell, tell people how to get back without like saying stuff that's illegal or, or whatever those tactics are., you know, tell, tell people how to get back without like saying stuff that's illegal or, or whatever those, you know, tactics are, but you know, companies want people in the office. And even though like you, like these, these layoffs might not have been on the docket when you told people that you were leaving. And so everything might've been fine until they were like, all right, we have to look at what we have here. So I don't know. I wouldn't, I wouldn't

like bother the person who's still working there because that's a good way to be like ostracized. And not that you're like, Oh, I want to make sure I hang out with my happy hour buddies from Philly now that I'm in New York. But I just don't think it's going to come off. Like, what is this person going to be able to tell you this, this late, this lady who's happy? She might be like, Hey, they never liked you. Or once you moved, you know, to confirm whatever it is. All I'm telling you is you've told us you've given a secret though, right? I mean, you're asking somebody for something that's like, you know, to confirm whatever it is. All I'm telling you is you've told us you've given it a secret though, right? I mean, you're asking somebody for something that's like, you know, not going to be in a memo. I don't know. This isn't the CIA

as a market. Yeah, I was going to say if that makes you feel better, ask the questions. It's probably not going to, it's like it's the answer is probably going to hurt you. I feel like potentially because it's going to be maybe a truth bomb that you didn't really want to hear that you didn't want confirmed. But if you, you know, if you really want the answers, I said, I would say go for it and ask him. Don't be a dick about it, but ask them.

You know, I've been laid off. I've talked about the show before. It sucks. But it was, you know, I know everybody kind of says this and it's cliche or whatever, but it actually was kind of the best thing that ever happened to me. I didn't really like what I was doing as much as I thought I would. And, you know, it's just kind of weird because the stigma is it does suck because you're sitting at home, you kind of feel useless. But the weird thing is, this is kind of,

and I'm not a financial expert, Ron, you probably would know better than this than I would. But it just seems like this is part of the economy now. These companies just lay people off, man. It's just a cycle of things that keep happening

and they let people go, rehire them. It happens a lot in tech. Obviously, it happens a lot in Silicon Valley. I'm sure it happens a lot in marketing. There are just certain fields. I have a couple of buddies that work in the mortgage industry. It's a disaster because interest rates have been a mess. It just feels like the economy in general blows and this is the way it is. So I know it sucks and you probably

feel like shit right now. But one, it can be a really good thing for your life and to get your motivation back on track. And two, I just think if this is part of the way being a 31-year-old in the 2023 economy is. It's not awesome, but it just... And it's weird too, because I don't think older generations understand that. I remember talking to my parents about it, not that they were mad or disappointed or whatever. They were just concerned for me. And they worked for the same company for 40, 50 years. You put in the work and then you retire. That's just not how it is now. People jump around a ton.

People get laid off. People move jobs. You should always be looking for other jobs just for your own personal career. Yeah, I know it sucks, but it could be a good thing that happens to you. Obviously, you said what? Your girlfriend was in medical school? Our wife. She seems like she has a pretty good situation so you're probably hopefully okay

um so i don't know it feels like the state of the world i imagine for you right now but it but it trust me it isn't right but layoffs are new i i think no but it does feel like i don't know maybe i'm wrong it just feels like it happens way more often it's way more just normalized now maybe it also feels like it could be covered more and then of course if talk about generational stuff, then you're just dealing with more jobs and more potential jobs that are lost. But you didn't say anything in this email about how much you love the job. It could be as simple as the account was gone. And it's like, hey, we account's gone. Now we actually need. So maybe it wasn't. Maybe you telling them you want to work remotely and they told you the truth. Maybe it was all going to be fine. Maybe it has nothing to do with that remotely.

Maybe it was just, hey, they lost a big account. You were on that account. We have less money coming in. We got to figure out a way to tighten the belt here. But, you know, there's a weird game of like, I have to make sure I'm so valuable that this never happens to me. And the real truth that I at least, you know, granted, sometimes I feel like I'm disconnected from the real world, even though all of my jobs have basically become corporate jobs, even though it doesn't feel that way when you're consuming the content, right? And you're like, this isn't a corporate job.

ESPN was a corporate job. It was. It was like, I just happened to be on the air. Seriously. But it, it's really about you. And like, did you think you were going to be there that long? Like,

I don't know, to maybe Suri's point with younger guys. Now you should never be going into anything thinking that. And I, Oh, I always kind of like the, the belief of, you know,

we don't really make changes until we are forced to make changes. Right. You'll get the checkup where it's like, hey, you need to stop doing this. You need to start doing this. Relationship where it's like, hey, I'm going to do all of this stuff in my spare time while I'm still working here. It, it becomes a little bit more easier. It's easier to become motivated when you go, okay, now, now I don't get to come into this place anymore. So anyway, look, a side note, good luck. Sorry that happened to you. Um, and I'm sure there's a lot of different perspective on all that stuff. And I don't know the definitive answer, but I do know that you'll look back on it at some point. As Saruti said, as I've said, there's more often than not the story goes like, oh man, that's crazy. I would have stayed there another couple of years and it's the best thing that happened to me because there's a lot of people that have that story.

How old is too old to kick somebody's ass? 24 years old, 5'9", 175, all-time bench max of 300 pounds. Finally, an effective use of two and a half instead of the all-too-frequent Mr. 220. Yeah, look, I mean, I get two and a half on the 300 to say like, hey, I got three bills. Pick up basketball comp, short Jalen Brown, left hand included. For a bit of background, it's unbelievable that Jalen Brown is now the guy.

He is known. There's plenty of guys who can't go to the left, but he is now. If there was a Mount Rushmore, the other faces would have fallen off in social media world. So anyway, okay. I have a small group that I play pickup basketball with before work at my local Y. Recently, I moved to a suburb of my city that's forced me to start going directly from the Y into work to save some travel time. Before the move, I had successfully avoided the jungle that is the Y locker room. But I'm now faced by a locker room with a heavy senior citizen population. Seniors love the Y. Everybody knows that.

It's great value. My dad loves the Y. Does he? Yeah, my dad loves it too. Last week, I was on my normal route from the court to the shower when I struck up a seemingly innocent conversation with a man.

We'll call him Jeff. That was at minimum 70 years old. This conversation carried over to the locker room as Jeff hammered me with random questions. Growing tired of the conversation and wanting to get to work, I left Jeff with a cordial nice talking to you as I went to the shower uh the shower is a typical open room with 20 or so shower heads along the wall I played basketball in high school shout out uh so not unfamiliar with the territory showering other men yeah covered approximately four minutes into my five minute shower Jeff

walks in takes the shower head directly next to me We were the only two men in the shower room. At this point, I've gotten as short as possible in my responses to Jeff's increasingly personal questions that included, what days do you come to the Y? What time do you finish playing basketball and start getting ready for work? Do you shower here every time you work out? What time do you get in the shower? Right. What kind of soap do you get in the shower what kind of soap you use should we think up i quickly wrapped up my shower only to be directly directly followed out by jeff this jeff guy's inquisitive uh who had been in the shower for maybe 45 seconds it was at this point i noticed jeff was you guessed it completely erect i did not guess that I was not gonna guess that

either nope wasn't gonna guess it what would you have done if you were me in this situation I basically froze went silent left the gym to hopefully never see Jeff again I had friends tell me I should have punched the old geezer out or that I should notify the why that an old man is on the loose in the showers I feel bad to beat up an old man but this may be one of the times it's acceptable also I'm very regular with my, so Jeff would have not had a hard time tracking me down. 70's too old, if that's the question. It's too old to throw a beat down. It also, like, what if his meds were, like, wrong that day?

I don't know. Maybe he was just having a bad day. I don't know. Get the fuck out of here. I don't know. I'm going to be honest with you, Rudy. I thought about the meds thing, too. know like maybe you're just having a bad day i don't know i don't know i'm just saying i'm gonna be honest with rudy i thought about the meds thing too take a couple too many blue pills you know what if it was like a caffeine boner pill where he was just the caffeine had just hit and he started getting like

super questioning just chatty as hell and it was just leading him like one of those water sticks. Like you go try to find a water. Come on. How often do you shower? Is it out of the realm of possibility? He also didn't know that he was erect. Like I'm just saying old people sometimes they just don't care. I don't know.

You know, you just, I don't know. Is 72 young to not know that? I wouldn't have done anything. I would have froze. I would have left. I would have not talked to Jeff again. I'd give him one chance with an erection around me. Second erection.

Then I would handle it differently. But I just think this is, I like this email. Well, not really, but I like the email because you did what most people would do, which is also what most people would say they wouldn't do. Right. We're going to have all sorts of friends. Right. We're going to have a fucking thousand Chuck Norris's email in the show

telling us what they would have done. And like, look, I had the moment with the stalker where I've, I didn't, I didn't know. I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know what was going on until by the time I figured it out,

he was walking away. And then I told everybody, like, how come you didn't kick us out so we didn't do all these different things? There's nothing easier than telling the person in the awkward situation how you would have handled it when you weren't in the awkward situation.

And I think the nice thing is is that you didn't immediately punch him. This guy may be the worst. Tough hang. Don't want to see him again. I would. But, you know, you might have to go. You might have to go phase two if he gets real friendly with you the second time.

Just like an absolute undressing might be the wrong word here, but just let him know. Hey, Jeff, I'm not down for any of your shit because like it's awesome. You can tell him off. Tell him to leave you alone that you never want to talk him and to fuck off because you don't work with him. He's not your wife's brother's neighbor. You know, this is just Jeff at the Y and you can tell him off pretty sternly. And then you can keep going about your business. He's probably going to be so scared of you at 31 and that 300 pound bench with a two and a half that, you know, you he'll'll he'll likely take the

hint unless there's something else going on with him or whatever so yeah i like that sir rudy brought up a potential scheduling mishap that led to early arousal uh look i had a guy when i was a teenager he jumped in the hot tub i was 16 he jumped in the hot tub with me we were the only two in the hot tub i have a rule as i got older as if the people are under 20 that are in the hot tub like actually i don't really want to get a hot tub with anybody anymore but like if you're at a resort and all of a sudden like two kids jump in actually it happened in majorca i went up to the roof deck i'd gotten this nice like heated pool thing and then two kids jumped in and i'm like i'm getting out of here and by the before I even had a chance to get out, the parents came over because they didn't want their kids

in a fucking pool or the pool guys on day three were calling me a lone man in Spanish. So I, I, uh, I, I look, I get in the hot tub. I could sense something was like, this guy's pretty friendly and then i go into the shower and then i get out of the shower and i'm getting changed i put my clothes on and i feel this light padding across my back the guy was toweling off my fucking wet back shower right well i tell you i would have kicked his ass right i couldn't have 16 then me no chance no chance but you just go like what the fuck i mean the weirdest thing about that story is then i started hitchhiking and he had like a white uh cabriolet and i was like whatever i'll get in i got in short short memory

yeah i was like this guy just tiled you off and now you're i was like i don't know it's winter in the vineyard i can probably head in the same direction and then riding to ride you know yeah i need a ride and then he was like what do you like are you like an army brat and i was like does anyone know where where you are right yeah right right no but then i just started acting like as heterosexual as you ever possibly could and that was that was the solution to that i don't know what the deal is here it could just be an old guy who's real friendly, who fucked up his, his pill schedule with it. I do.

I do just feel like you can't have a, a zero tolerance policy when it comes to punching old people. Like there has to be like any old person that just like, and that granted, this is fucking insane and weird. And you got to ask around too. Maybe could you ask other people there about Jeff? You should.

Good point. Yeah. So you're saying a zero tolerance policy, meaning you can't never. You should not have a like, hey, anytime an old person does something weird, I'm going to punch them. Oh, I thought you meant there. There was you not to have like there's sometimes when you should be punching an old person. I don't know. I've just seen too many of the old guys fighting each other, you know, by the pit, by a pickup truck or something.

And they're like, you know, know 60 not even like 75 old those guys go down like a fucking ton of bricks and they stay down so i mean who knows that when you say an old guy maybe this is an old guy strength guy what kind of weight is he pushing yeah i guess if he's stronger you feel to feel better about what if you get your ass kicked and he's a wreck yeah while it happens yeah yeah i love the saruti ask around thing hey what's up with jeff oh boner jeff he's armless real friendly but uh he just you know what i mean yeah he was in korea never been the same okay that's that's not that weird for the Y I mean it is obviously incredibly weird

but that's shit like that the Y is like the bus dude the Y is like the bus it's the bus of gyms oh my god I've told this story about when I took the bus ride from Hartford to pick up a Land Rover which I think is also maybe

if you try to think about like, what could you potentially be the only person in the country that's ever done? Because anyone, is anyone taking a Peter Pan or Greyhound bus from Hartford to pick up a brand new Land Rover? And so I was, I was on the Saturday morning bus and you know, the guy next to me was cracking a bud pounder in a bag and he asked if i wanted some and i was like actually maybe yeah a little bit and then uh another guy started

yelling at everybody and then yelled on the phone to some girl it was the most vicious awful violent stuff they say and the thing is is you would think like oh it's kind of the same like somebody should have said something there wasn't one fucking person on that bus was saying anything to this guy i was like i'm not other dudes we're all looking at each other and i'm like i'm not fucking saying anything to that guy i'm scared to death of him eyes front one headphone out and he i mean it went on for an hour yeah and no And no one, no one was saying anything to this guy. He owned the bus. It was his bus.

Okay. I think that covers a lot of stuff. Yeah. Wow. All right. Thank you, guys. Have a great weekend. Thanks to Mike Wargon.

Thanks to Saruti, Kyle, Ryan Rosillo Podcast. Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Bring your spotlight. We'll be right back. RG in Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Tennessee, and Virginia. Call 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 in Arizona. 1-800-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org. 4-slash-chat in Connecticut. 1-800-9-WITH-IT in Indiana. 1-800-522-4700.

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