The Ryen Russillo Podcast - NFL Week 9: That Was Weird. Plus Trent Dilfer on the OBJ Dilemma, Aaron Rodgers, and the MVP Race.

Episode Date: November 8, 2021

Russillo shares his thoughts on a strange NFL Week 9, including the Bengals’ fall from grace after losing two straight games, the Bills’ loss to the Jaguars, Rams-Titans, Chiefs-Packers, Vikings-Ravens, and more (0:39). Then Ryen talks with Super Bowl champion Trent Dilfer about the release of Browns WR Odell Beckham Jr., communicating with frustrated receivers, Packers backup QB Jordan Love’s regular-season debut, Lamar Jackson, and more (11:55). Then Ryen quickly hits on the weekend in college football (51:38), before answering some listener-submitted Life Advice questions (58:30). Host: Ryen Russillo Guest: Trent Dilfer Producers: Kyle Crichton and Steve Ceruti Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Press Box is here to catch you up on the latest media stories. Hosted by Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker, these guys have the insight on the biggest stories you care about. Check out The Press Box on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We're going to do 15 minutes on week nine, trying to sort through it. We're going to talk with Dilfer about how receivers and quarterbacks handle each other, and then a bunch of other great stuff that we're going to get to with him. A little college football and life advice, including maybe a fake one, but it was entertaining.

Week nine. Week nine. Good luck with this one. I'm going to focus a little on the AFC here. We all know this was an absolutely crazy week with the results and some of the stuff that happened. And I wonder if we're going to be better off just kind of looking at this week of this self-contained thing or if we actually learned anything.

Let's start with Cincinnati. Remember, they were the number one seed in the AFC two weeks ago. Today, they're 10th and out of the playoffs. They're last in the AFC North. That was two weeks ago. We're like 10th and out of the playoffs. They're last in the AFC North. That was two weeks ago. We're like, man, this team is talented. Burrow, I take him over a lot of other guys. I don't think we ever put him in the group of maybe some of the top tier young guys

that we're always mentioning all the time, whether that was Herbert, and maybe it's closer there than we think. I don't think it was the Lamar group, not Kyler Murray for me either, but we really liked him, and now he's actually tied with Sam Donalds who's a mess by the way with 11 interceptions so Cleveland comes out and smokes him but I also think if we were going to do this story

you know if the game had gone another way Cincinnati's driving the football down and I'm kind of thinking like alright how would I talk about this game and then it would maybe turn into a Burrow versus Baker thing and I think most of the public would say hey I'd rather have Joe Burrow but for a day Cleveland reminded us what their talent level is. And it really is a very talented roster. And Miles Garrett, single-handedly, I guess a defensive player, wrecks more games probably

than anybody other than Aaron Donald. So the Jets' loss for Cincinnati, I guess it could have been an alarming thing, but we just see some losses. I mean, hell, Tennessee's the one seed. We'll get to them a little bit later. They've got the number one record in the NFL at 7-2. Excuse me, the number one record in the AFC at 7-2 because Arizona's still 8-1 with their amazing win against San Francisco without all their players.

But Cleveland just smashes them, and they're the number two running team in the league. And the other part of this is without Odell, the numbers are pretty clear. They're a better football team without Odell Beckham Jr. Now, Odell's gone. I'll admit that I think when you do a sit-down on ESPN with Lil Wayne and you talk about how much Eli Manning essentially sucks and he's your quarterback, there's a better way to handle that. And it's kind of the same thing all over again,

although I'm not sure it was nearly as bad. It was also surprising how many people supported Odell for being like, well, look, Eli can't get the ball down the field. You're like, yeah, I know, but I still think there's a better way of doing this. Okay. Here's the thing is, and I went through Shil Kapati's work on the athletic. He had a piece up on Odell Beckham and who he's been as a receiver here. It was late last week on the athletic again. So 29 games for Odell with Cleveland, 114 catches, week on The Athletic again. So 29 games for Odell with Cleveland, 114 catches, 1,586 yards.

If you look at Odell with Cleveland, among the 99 receivers that ran 500 routes since the start of 2019, Odell was 43rd in yards per game. He was 33rd in yards per reception. In his time with Cleveland, the drops went from 6% to 8%. That number there on the drop part of it put him, of the 88 wide receivers

who had at least 100 targets, he was towards the bottom. The drop percentage went higher. Look, here's the thing. And again, his drop rate was 63rd out of 88 qualified receivers. With Odell in the lineup, over the average, depending on what metrics you want to look at,

Cleveland averaged out as the 20th best offense in the NFL. Without Odell, it was 8th best. Now, is it all on Odell? No, that would be unfair. I think there are times where I'd watch games where I felt like it was Odell's fault, and I thought there were other times where Baker just flat out missed him. I think with certain receivers, if you're supposed to be a true one, a tier one, you make a lot of those nasty contested catches, and his contest rate actually went up a little bit. times were like, hey, look, I would watch a play and be like, with Joshua Hopkins, that would never happen. It would never happen with him. Some of the other guys that I think are clearly the number one guy, or at least in that first group, and Beckham hasn't been that in a while. I don't know if he's ever going to be that. He's still only 29. Clearly, another team's going to want

to take a shot at it, but it always feels like Beckham's the guy, depending on which side of the argument you're on, it's like, oh, okay, well, here's another quarterback. So like, okay, we're doing it again. Here's another quarterback that couldn't get you the football when actually when you're not there, they're a top 10 offense in the NFL. And it comes down to something that's very similar amongst all of us is that we just don't really like admitting it may have been us. If something doesn't work out at work, how often do we say, you know what? It was me. I just didn't bring it. I wasn't good at it. Just flat out, not good at that job, deserve to lose it. No, we're just going to make a million excuses and talk about where all the things around us prevented us from being better. So we'll see what happens there. But the stats really can't be denied at this point. And over a long stretch of

having Beckham and yes, two injuries, they're a better offense without him. So we'll see what happens. So the Browns smoke Cincinnati. Let's take a look at the rest of the AOC. The Bills, since they lost week one to Pittsburgh, had scored 35, 43, 40, 38, 31, and 26. Then they score six points against Jacksonville. This is the number one defense in Buffalo by a wide margin. So they hold Jacksonville to nine. Could have been worse.

I don't know. Did you guys see the field goal kicker miss three straight field goals because of penalties? I can't even imagine how bad he didn't want to go out for the third one. Four total turnovers on the season

in the previous seven games, three against Jacksonville. Actually, Buffalo has been running the football better this season than maybe you would think, but they couldn't do it yesterday. And I'd imagine this is another perfect example where maybe Cleveland showed us something and we're learning more about Cincinnati. If I'm a Bills fan, yeah, the pass happiness, the ratios,

people are starting to point out like, hey, maybe when you throw it 50 times, it becomes a little easier to defend. You need a little bit more balance. But I'd argue that there are some stats that tell you the Bills actually had a little bit more balance in the way they're talked about. but I don't really know what to do with the outcome of that game. I mean, Jacksonville beat Buffalo, and now Buffalo's five and three, and they still might be the team that we'd all like the most in the playoffs, except for Tennessee, who goes into LA last night. Now, let's revisit. Tennessee's seven and two, Now, let's revisit. Tennessee 7-2, the one seed with seven playoff teams now. The Rams turn the football over, make it easy for Tennessee, but hell, they won the game. They don't have Derrick Henry. Ryan Tannehill, this is easily the worst season that he's 11-8, so the stats can't be argued. Their schedule actually

graded out as the toughest, and after that Rams win with seven more to go, it grades out as the easiest, which is another part of this that's pretty crazy. The Tennessee Titans are 7-0 against last year's playoff teams with their only losses inexplicably against the Jets and a loss that actually makes a ton of sense now against Arizona in week one. So is Tennessee really the best team in the AFC? Well, I guess you could pick Baltimore, who had a great comeback, and we're going to get to some of the Lamar numbers here in a second. Buffalo, who even at five and three, I'm not ready to quit. Buffalo, who even at 5-3, I'm not ready to quit. The Chargers, who get a nice win yesterday after some shakiness,

but again, it's still Philadelphia. You think if you're a really good team, you probably put it on Philadelphia, who's rebuilding right now and probably changing over a lot of their personnel from the guys that we're seeing play this season. So Tennessee has, even though without a great defense, an average offense, missing their most important offensive player, they have the easiest schedule to go. So they still might end up being the one seed. We're going to be sitting here entering the playoffs being like,

I don't really know what to do with them. Speaking of other things that have changed quickly here, although I don't think you realize this, Kansas City's a half a game out of first place in the AFC West. Now, granted, they're in third because the Chargers and Raiders are both five and three, but Kansas City is five and four. Jordan Love had a rough day for Green Bay. You can tell it's bad

when Aikman, and then this happens every now and then with quarterbacks, and again it's Love's first start here, so I don't know what we were really expecting. They couldn't move the football at all. I think they were zero for nine in the first nine third downs they had against the Kansas City defense that's allowing 6.4 yards per play, last in the NFL, and Green Bay scores seven points.

They did actually outgain Kansas City in this one, but the Chiefs are, with the rest of the schedule here, a bunch of division games still to go, so a chance to make up some ground there. They've got the Raiders again. They've got the Broncos twice. They've got the Racos twice. They got the Raiders twice and they have the Chargers one more time. They lost to them by a touchdown as you remember in week three, but the Chiefs are actually a half game out, although in third place in the AFC West. So there's actually still alive

despite the fact it still looks like a mess. You're at home against the Packers and the best you can do is score 13 points. So maybe it gets back to kind of some of the stuff that we learned about in the Ravens' comeback against Minnesota is that, all right, if everybody's playing you the same way, you have to adjust to it. And I think Lamar Jackson at times with a zone defense because everybody was afraid to turn and run with receivers man-to-man against Lamar and then have Lamar just run all over the place, that there was intermediate throws that Lamar struggled with.

This is not an opinion. It is fact. The thing is, is he's figured out how to hit on some of these intermediate throws. So Lamar, who was zero and six in his first three seasons with down 10 or more, has three comebacks this season. He did it against Minnesota this weekend. He did it against the Colts and Kansas City earlier on. That's three 10 points or more comebacks this

season, most of the NFL. Now, we always worried about Lamar having to come back in a game because of these numbers and having to air it out. He's airing it out on the intermediate throws, and he lit it up in the second half yesterday, 19-24, 201 yards in the second half. And honestly, I think the MVP conversation is down to Lamar and Kyler. I don't know if Lamar is going to win it again. I don't know if people are going to want the story thing or it's harder to kind of win it that second time. And Kyler sitting out and realizing that Colt McCoy actually is the most amazing backup you can have because it's almost unfair.

That's sort of a joke. But Arizona not having Hopkins, A.J. Green, Chase Edmonds goes out with a high ankle sprain in the first quarter in that blowout against San Francisco. That might be the best win considering your personnel part of it, but San Francisco is 0-4 at home, so maybe that's just not that good of a team other than Fred Warner. But Arizona and Murray and I think Baltimore and Lamar are really what you're looking at here with some of the MVP conversation.

Denver-Dallas, again, no idea except that Teddy Bridgewater, just when you're about to doubt him. Teddy Bridgewater is the quarterback version of Iowa. Just when you think Iowa is like you're over the Kirk Ferentz thing, like, hey, this isn't going to work, then they'll have some magical little run for a while where you're like, man, look at Iowa again. And then it all falls apart,

and then they're not relevant for a couple seasons. Just when you think you're ready to make a change. First of all, Iowa's not going to ever get rid of those guys. But you understand the point. Bridgewater has not been very good this season, and then they absolutely stomped Dallas, who's been statistically one of the best teams in the NFL this year. I think the best lesson for the entire Week 9 NFL experience is to go weeks from now, like, remember how weird Week 9 was? Because other than Cleveland putting it on Cincinnati, which I don't know a lot of us saw coming,

I think we saw a lot of results that may not mean actually anything a couple weeks from now. Every other Monday, we've got Trent Dilfer, Beyond the X's and O's, his podcast, you should check out. Let's start with a bigger topic here, and that's Odell. He's gone with Cleveland. We know that he, in my biggest issue with Odell was that, okay, it's everybody's fault again now.

And I'm not saying it's all on Odell. Baker probably could have done something better, but the numbers are the numbers, and it's almost undeniable that they, for whatever reason, have been a better offense not having Odell. And it's not like Stefanski isn't a terrific offensive coach on top of everything else. So we also saw Darnold and one of his receivers, Robbie Anderson, get into it as well.

Let me start with Odell on this part of it. What is it like when you have a receiver who has his previous heights and it seems like he's never happy, receiver's going at quarterbacks. What's your best story? What's your best example of when somebody just laid into you? All right, so I'll unpack all this this i'll start with the odell thing and i think fans need to understand because we're in this general it's been 10 years now of fantasy football madden splash sizzle like the game has become a headline and the headline is talent and if you have a bunch

of weapons, talent, you're going to be good. Well, your fancy team might be good, but does that always make you a better football team? And here's the curse of alpha receivers. If they are pros and if they buy into team above self,

you want as many of them as you can get because they create a ton of space. They're dynamic. They win one-on-ones or everything you think they are. But if they are high volume guys, meaning they have to have a lot of volume to play well, they actually hurt your offense because a great offense works. And I'm, I wish I could come up with a great analogy here,

but it's, it almost is fluid within the game of they do this. We do that. We do this. They do this. We do that. Uh, you dictate terms based on, uh, what the defense's weaknesses are. So you're not just reacting to a defense's weaknesses.

You're dictating terms by formations and motions and play calling and action passes and movements and blah, blah, blah, RPOs, blah, blah, blah. But when you're trying to get one guy the ball because he's a volume guy, it disrupts all that. So if you notice yesterday, the Browns, I think nine different guys caught receivers. They were super efficient in the passing game. Yards per attempt were way up because you're not force feeding a guy. You're not forcing the issue. You're running your offense and trusting that these are professional athletes. They're going to get open. They're going to play well if they're within the structure of the offense. So this happens a lot that, and Odell's the poster child for right now. He is every bit as good as everybody says he is,

but he's a high volume guy. So his fit, as they're talking about new fits, is only a place that is a high volume perimeter wide receiver place. He cannot go somewhere or it'll be the same promo over again where it's system driven. So everybody says the Patriots, right?

Well, the Patriots are system driven as anybody. They only changed one time and that was for Randy Moss, arguably him and Jerry Rice, two greatest receivers that ever played, and a massive vertical threat. If you notice when Randy Moss went to the Patriots, it wasn't just get him the ball.

It was score with him getting the ball. It was the vertical stuff. It added an element to their offense they'd never seen, but they didn't adjust the system to force feed him. It's a long-winded answer. I'm all about receivers, and this is where I think you'll like the story. I'm all about receivers having the freedom to communicate however they want with quarterbacks. If they can take it also, Daryl Jackson, remember that name? Yeah. career that he had. Well, in the beginning, Daryl came from Florida, was very outspoken,

had a lot, was a very emotional player, and would have these outbursts. And it just, Matt was a young player and just didn't really know how to handle it. I take over, and this is a conversation I had with Daryl. I said, hey, Daryl, I am totally cool. If I miss a ball, if I miss you, I throw it high or something and you start MF and me coming off back to the huddle. I said, if I can do the same thing, when you blow a route, when you drop a ball, when you're late in substitution package, when you're lazy at practice, when you're late to a meeting, like I'm cool two way street now, can I, I'll let you hold me accountable any way you want if i can hold you accountable any way i want deal he's like deal he didn't know what he signed up

for right be careful what you ask for if you just got it so all of a sudden daryl screws up in practice and i'm 15 yards down the field down his throat and he's like wide-eyed and he pushes back on me i I'm like, this is cool. You can yell at me. Coaches think we're crazy. I mean, we're in the middle of practice. We're yelling at each other. And I'm like, are you good with this? Because I'm going to keep going. Yeah, I'm good with this. I'm going to get you too. And it kind of became fun because what these receivers need, they need to vent. Their job's hard. Think about it. You're running all the time. You're getting it. You're running all the time.

You're getting hit. You're blocking in the perimeter game. And also, your salary is based on how many balls you get, right? So you have to be productive. And I always appreciated the receiver that if he's going to work hard, if he's going to do everything he can, I want to put myself in his shoes. And when I miss him, or when I don't see him open, or when I throw a ball behind him, that if I throw it in front of him, he's going to score with it.

He should be able to vent because if he vents and gets it out, he's going to reset and be better for the next down. I'm not into this. And I coach my high school team this way. I'm not into this. Everybody has to keep everything to themselves, hold it inside, never let anything out. I let my quarterbacks talk back to me. They have to do with respect. They're high school kids. They need to learn a respectful way to do it. But I'll tell them, hey, listen, I got no problem. If you're mad at me about something, tell me you're mad about it. If you're frustrated with something, come over to me and tell me you're frustrated. I'll even give you the freedom to say that's a crappy play. Don't ever call that again.

I'm good with that. Let's just make sure we communicate on a two-way street. So it worked brilliantly with Daryl. I think Matthew ended up having a similar relationship with him. And I had it with receivers my whole career. Now, I never had an OBJ, but, you know, I guess the long, long, again, another deal for a long-winded answer, but the point of this is that you can't put everybody in a box

and expect everybody to act a certain way. They have different personalities. They have emotions. They need to get it out sometimes. And sometimes it needs to be done to a guy they trust. And if they trust the quarterback, then that's the perfect guy to do it to. Who was the worst?

Who was somebody you still just like, he didn't do it the way I needed it to be done? Well, I worked through it, but Antonio Bryant was rough. Antonio Bryant, he would lose his mind. And I had the same relationship with him in Cleveland and in San Francisco. And we had, A.B. and I had a really good relationship but there were some tough sledding there there were some times I had to tell him this Daryl Jackson story like I had to say you you learn how to

receive it too like some of these guys think they can get they can give it but they can't take it and it's got to be both like if you're going to give it if you're going to have outbursts at the quarterback outbursts at the coach whatever it is you gotta be able to take it too um when they give it so ab was rough uh shannon sharp was the best ever like he was just he's just the best period like he's the best receiver i played with the best guy to deal with these in-game conflicts with uh give me a shannon story story Shannon was matter of fact like he would come back to the huddle and be like that was BS that was a terrible throw fix it

and be like yeah you're right nothing had to be said it didn't hurt your feelings it was just he was right like Shannon was right that's the funny thing about him on TV now now he plays this role where he purposely will take a side on something. I'll give this about Shannon. Shannon

sharp was right about almost everything you ever had an opinion on when I played with. So game planning, he was usually right on where their weaknesses were in game. He was right about how they were playing us. He wanted to play. He was right. It was going to be open. He wasn't the guy that was open on every play. He was the guy that was right. When he said something, you're like, well, he's probably right. Cause he's proven he's right most of the time. So you really didn't get defensive about it. It was like, yeah, that was, I should have seen that safety went this way. You were running the seam. I don't know why I didn't look at that. I was late, whatever it is. So he was the best. I'm trying to go through the guys that are relevant. Alvin Harper was rough because he had just come from Dallas.

He had just come from Dallas and all the stuff they had accomplished in Dallas, and he thought he could bring that to Tampa. And our offensive system, he was more frustrated with our system. He would just lose his mind on why we were running these baloney plays like this is garbage i just came from norb turner and defense does this we do that throw me the ball score touchdowns and all of a sudden we're running this archaic stuff and i'm as frustrated as him as him and he would just i mean he would lose his mind he was like i i can't believe you guys are doing this stuff when you know he just won what three super bowls doing it the way i kind of think I know what I'm talking about.

That was rough. I guess I don't need more from you on it because you covered it. And there's not. But I just like when I see the Robbie Anderson, Sam Darnold one, I wonder and I get he's frustrated with Sam at this point. I mean, Sam's making some throws where you're watching him going, you're this many years in the league, and you're not seeing the defender. That's the thing I always think about NFL quarterbacking is when you'll watch the All-22 and you'll see some of these throwing lanes and you go, oh, that's like that next level of understanding of

that guy's not open, and that guy's not open either. He looks open, but he's not open. And you have to get those throws eliminated from, you just have to know immediately, whatever that is, it's not there. Even if I think it's there, it's not there. It feels like Sam's still making throws that you go, why did you think that that was there? When Anderson's losing it on the sideline, I don't know the full scope of it. It looks bad. It looks like the receiver's showing off and he's going to let this guy have it. It's the last thing Darnold needs right now. Darnold

kind of tries to ignore him. But then at the other times, I'll watch a game where the quarterback knows he threw the pick, he read it wrong, and then he immediately, Romo was the king of this. He would look at every receiver and he'd be like, oh, you know, he'd throw the pick and he would every time he would look back at the guy saying, how come you cut off that route? And I'm

not saying it wasn't accurate sometimes, but quarterbacks get away with it in their way too. So don't make it just about the wide receivers. But that's one with a young Darnold where you're like, that's probably the last thing he needs right now for everybody to see this. Yeah, and let me put a ball on it with this. I don't say it's right. Listen, I think ideally everybody has enough emotional regulation

that those things don't happen. That would be ideal, right? There's an ideal way. There's this pretty cute, comfortable way that we would all like it. That's probably best. It's just not reality. The reality of the NFL and college now and even high school is it's contentious. It's a dynamic, it's emotional. Everybody's watching and there's going to be conflict. And I think you have to understand

that sometimes like in a house, what if every married couple, what if there was a hidden camera in your house and every fight was caught on camera and everybody had an opinion of your fights? Like my wife and I've been married 29 years. The joke is we've probably been divorced 30 times for 10 minutes, right? And we're never going to get divorced, but you have these rip roaring fights and you're like, oh gosh, I got to do that better. And, oh, that was wrong. Cross the line there. I'll ask your forgiveness.

Let's move on. It's a way of explaining the emotional conflict that happens in NFL football. And every once in a while, it's not handled ideally. But that doesn't mean everybody's bad and wrong, and the team's going to explode, and Robbie and Sam aren't going to have a good relationship. Like you learn how to recover from those moments like you do in your, in your marriage. Did you have Jordan love in any of your camps? We really didn't. He was kind of a late bloomer. I didn't know much about him. I studied him really hard when he was coming out a talented kid. Uh, I was, my concern was, has he seen and processed enough football? He's a smart kid.

I think he can. But I was really skeptical on whether he could process at a high level right away. I thought he'd be a guy that needed a few years learning the speed, learning the looks, learning how to process the information and and you saw that yesterday like he was really good on basic stuff and then third down it was atrocious because he was asked to see a lot and do a lot process a lot um but he is wildly he's his talent is everybody says he is just gonna take time yeah it's the first game yeah you know i don't i like his voice i will say this i thought

he was poised i didn't think he looked rattled ever i didn't think he got outside of himself like you see some young guys who try to be superman and it's a disaster like i thought he played the best he good considering the circumstances outside of third down i want to ask you about roger just because you know him so well i know we don't want to recap everything from last week although when I go back and look at the August comments the thing that jumps out to me I'm like wait did you want credit for not judging people for not doing something that you actually didn't do also like that's weird and I think there's part of him that's like I fucked with all of you guys and you believe it it's like well we didn't really know how to press you're the one that kept using it was a semantics thing no one realized it at

the time and then some of the explanations from this past week, like I would say this, at least Kyrie gave us a horrible excuse. All right. What does this mean for Rogers in the locker room? Yeah, it's an interesting one. That's really the only thing I care to talk about with it.

I actually think you believe it or I think it's going to play well. That's how crazy the NFL I actually think you believe it or I think it's going to play well. It's it. That's how crazy the NFL is. That's how crazy a locker room environment is in the modern day NFL. Aaron is looked at as a father figure to a lot of these players. He's looked at as he has conviction. players. He's looked at as he has conviction and NFL player will respect you whether he agrees with you or not. If you give him the why, if you spend time building that relationship with said player,

right. Um, and if you, if you kind of are standing up to the man, right? Like that's kind of what the NFL vibe is about. And I, it crazy as this sounds, I think this is going to play well with his teammates. Now it's not going to with his coaches. It's not going to at the front office. It's going to be a disaster. But with his teammates, they're going to be like, yeah, man, my boy Aaron stands up, man.

My boy Aaron messed with the media. My boy Aaron, like he didn't cave to these nfl protocols like my man aaron's in for us right it's not just about cave into the man and right or wrong i think that's going to be the vibe you have what you have 60 guys in the locker room basically now with the practice squads expanded rosters and everything you're to have 50 of them pro how Aaron handled this. You're going to have a few outliers, but I think for the most part, this can play really well in the locker room.

I don't know how, what it ends up, the long tail this is with the organization. It's already contentious, but with his players, as crazy as it sounds, I think it plays pretty well because most of the players i talked to it wasn't about the vaccine it was about the protocols and mandates and singling out guys that chose to make a choice not to take the vaccine it was almost as if they were trying to manipulate they felt this is not trent over's opinion this is what they said to me they felt

as it was just another thing where the NFL wants to have a stranglehold on us and wants to be able to tell us exactly how to live our lives. And we're young men, right? They're all, remember in your 20s, you think you know everything, you don't know squat. Same things in your early 30s. Like everybody in their 20s and early 30s

thinks they figured out the world. They've read a bunch of books. They've listened to a bunch of podcasts. They think they have all the answers and they really don't know squat. And that's, that's your demographic in the NFL. So they're all pushing back against people that are telling them how to live their lives. And I think they're going to look at Aaron as somebody that didn't cave to that.

Again, not my opinion on what I think about vaccines or whatnot. It's how I think it'll play in the locker room. Okay. Lamar yesterday, his third comeback down double digits. And I was looking at some of the more in-depth stuff with him. I always felt like he was inaccurate on throws that were oddly there for him. I think with him, you got to have a decent catch radius. You know, you got to adjust to some of his stuff, but it's, it's very clear now that he is kind of gone. All right, this is, this is what

it is. Now I'm at this level. Okay, wait, now this is what you're doing to me. And he's, I feel like he's figured out another gear. I don't know if the stats are ever going to be as clean as the MVP season where it was just, you know, astonishing efficiency, but it gives me better hope for him now in a playoff setup where before, if they were behind, you didn't know if they could come out of that one dimension and be two

dimensional. Now with some of these comebacks, Trent, I feel like he's, he's understanding the zone coverage. He's understanding the throws that are there for him. He's more consistent on those throws. We saw that again big time against Minnesota yesterday.

Three double-digit comebacks in nine weeks, two in the fourth quarter is remarkable. The hardest thing to do as a quarterback in the NFL, or one of the hardest, is to bring your team back from a two-score deficit. I'll largely do because it's when pass rushers gets to pin their ears back and where coverages get to be flooded. So you're, you're working against the two hardest things from a offensive standpoint,

which is pass rush coming at you. They don't have the threat of the run play action and they can take extra people and put them in coverage. They can jump your concepts. They can play, let everything sit in front of them. And for him to do this three times, like I said, twice in the fourth quarter is remarkable. And when you watch how he did it, I agree with what you're saying. He does it both ways.

He just doesn't do it with playmaking. He does it with the Tom Brady death by a thousand cuts method too. Like if we go back to the Kansas City game, there's a ton of like six yard completions eight yard completions eight yard completion four yard completion six yard completion like and they'll run i mean and they'll mix in runs too and they'll abandon it like other teams right well they're explosive in the run game so they're not one dimensional the run game where they just turn to the tailback and you know you get your four yards like why'd you run that like they're gonna run some arc inside zone rapper play and get you for 26 on first down if you don't have people up in the box so uh it's pretty remarkable i you know i think i don't think

they're very good on defense i don't think they're the same ravens team we've seen before but they're the team in the afc that i'm most bullish on because of that because they're they can play any type of football with you now like they can play the muddy boring game that they're gonna have to play against Cleveland and Pittsburgh and then they could play the explosive game that they're gonna have to play against Kansas City um the Colts uh who we saw Titans possibly um you know these teams are bills although they weren't explosive yesterday, but teams that are really explosive, you can see him winning that way as well.

The kid's amazing. He really, this was the biggest thing I said coming out. And so I've always been bullish on Lamar. He was coached so hard in college. He was coached by a crazy man, literally a crazy man. And that man coached him so hard and was so relentless on him. And he didn't break he got better he always got better so you could always see little things he would work on and

there would be improvements the next year and then he said it I was at the the Titans Ravens game was that two years ago when the Titans went up there and beat him and his pres he was embarrassed after the game and all he said was well I'm gonna go to work on fixing the things that got me in trouble he owned it last year he owns it I'm gonna said was, well, I'm going to go to work on fixing the things that got me in trouble. He owned it. Last year, he owns it. I'm going to get better at some things. He owns it. He goes to work at it.

It gets better. You have that much talent and you're that coachable and you're that hungry to get better. I mean, three years from now, he might be better than he is now. As long as his body stays as freakishly athletic as it is now, and he keeps making these improvements playing the position, I mean, I think you're going to be talking about Mahomes and him and these freaks,

these three or four freaks that are just physically better than everybody else and have changed the way the quarterback position is played. Yeah, because I think some of the frustration with him is, you know, I wonder how many people, like I was watching ESPN

and they were saying, you know, the goalposts have never been moved on a quarterback as much they've been moved on lamar and i would say okay in the beginning if you watch them in college you do the limitations if you've watched certain scenarios playoff games in particular you go okay well there's a significant drop off here you could always hear the quarterback analyst kind of like pointing out like i don't know i don't know because you think like wait a minute are they so one-dimensional built a certain way that they can? But now he's starting to do some of these things that I felt like we didn't see before.

And then when you win an MVP, I think a lot of this stuff isn't that complicated. It's not that the goalposts have moved. It's just that it's the same when we look at NBA players. If we think of you as a top five or top 10 guy, we expect you to go a certain distance in the playoffs. And the NBA star, this equivalent, is the NFL quarterback. And if Lamar's winning MVPs, if we think of them

as a potential team coming out of the AFC, and I agree with you, other than that Chargers game, which looks like an aberration, the defense has not been very good at all. He's carrying this team,

which is why I think he's in the conversation with Kyler for MVP. It's just that he's being potentially compared to that top five or six group, that tier one guy every single week. You are the difference maker, and he plays that way.

And when there are moments where maybe it doesn't look that way and you start saying, well, hey, would I still take a Kyler ahead of him? Would I still take a Josh Allen ahead of him? Would I take a Herbert ahead of him? Clearly Mahomes. Herbert had all this momentum a couple weeks ago and now we're kind of all over the place with the Chargers. I think that's really what it was. It wasn't,'t hey let me find new ways to be critical of him it's now we're raising you to a level that we want to see if you're on par with some of those guys and i think up until i don't know midway point of the season it was still a fair question to ask if

he was certainly in that top five or six group yeah i you know here's how i always talk about that yeah i want you named all those quarterbacks and as a coach i'll put my coaching head on and somebody played quarterback my answer is yes i'll take any of them you can go 12 deep and my answer would be yes like everybody wants to compare the best of the best the nfl what they're forgetting is that you are tied to whoever your offense coordinator play caller is. It's actually, it's a pairing. It's not just the quarterback you want. You want the quarterback with the guy that's helping them. It's 50-50. And if you are, if you take Herbert, if you like the way Herbert plays, then that's probably the style of football that you're

accustomed to. If you like the way Russell Wilson plays or Lamar plays, that's the style of football you're accustomed to. I think if you ask, let's take a guy that's not coaching anymore. That's a legendary offense coordinator and head coach, Norv Turner. If you got Norv on the show and said, who do you like better between, and just lift off to eight guys, you'd say, I like them all. I would just change how I coached each one of them.

I don't need Troy Aik. I proved that, right? I don't have to have Troy Aik. I don't know if I'm, this is probably a stupid answer, but it's different flavors of ice cream. Ice cream's awesome. I mean, every ice cream's awesome i mean every ice cream's

awesome i'm a mint chip guy you might be a rocky road guy like you like rocky road i like mint chip they're both awesome that's nfl quarterbacks right now it's just what systems are they playing in who's calling their plays have they built it around them what people do they have around them are you open do you want to play everything on rhythm and safe and careful i mean look what they tried to do in new england last year when they had cam newton like they tried to build it around him but now they have mac jones who plays a lot like time tom brady so it looks like the offense tom brady played it because that's what they're accustomed to coaching that that's the type of offense they're most comfortable with but you can't tell me josh mcdaniels can't

coach anybody because he coached tim Tebow in the playoff. So, again, I don't know. This is one of my all-time Doug from the movie Up squirrel moments. I'm off on a tangent, but it's a frustrating conversation. I get so frustrated because I want to look at the quarterbacks and be like, dude, they're all really good. The ones we're talking about are freakishly good. It's what system are they in?

Who's around them? Lamar's playing with what is third tailback, fourth tailback? Running backs, I mean, they've gone through. That's what I meant. Yeah, they've gone through running backs like crazy. These guys are really good. Appreciate them for what they are, who they're playing with, what systems they're in.

We don't have to compare them all the time. It's kind of a dumb argument. I don't know that it's dumb, but it's also, I get your point, but it's also, it's what we do. It's just what we do. You know what I mean? Like whenever I say like something about a basketball player and somebody be like, can't we just appreciate their greatness? I go, no, that's not what I signed up for when I started doing this years ago. Like, that's just, it's just not what we do. Your approach is probably the better one, but when we were week two or three into the college football season and my partner, Canal, would be still a lot of football to play. Yeah, but I got 15 hours to fill. Yeah, that's fair.

Yeah, you got to talk about it. I will say this. Let's use Kyler Murray. Do you think Kyler, because is he still an MVP candidate when Colt McCoy goes out there and looks just as good? Well, it's not fair to compare anyone to Colt McCoy. We all know how I feel when Colt McCoy goes out there and looks just as good? Well, it's not fair to compare anyone to Colt McCoy. We all know how I feel about Colt McCoy. I'll just say, like Aaron Rodgers goes out there and their team can't score points. The Cardinals go out there and put up, what, what do they end up with, 40? I think the Niners are a mess. I do too, but Colt looked amazing.

My point with Kyler is this, is could Kyler play in New England? I think Kyler actually is that guy. I think he could go anywhere. I like Kyler better than Lamar. I love Kyler. First of all, I did a thing a few weeks ago. I thought Kyler was the runway MVP, so I'm not bad on Kyler. I'm just kind of using everybody's argument against him. I can tell you from a system standpoint, Tyler Murray can't plan her center, flash the ball at six yards until an eye backs, get to nine steps, one hitch to a deep out,

go back inside to a deep cross, work all the way back to a shallow. He's never played football that way. That's just not the way he's been played. That's the way he's been groomed. Put Kyler in a four wide receiver set where he's got to manipulate the pocket and make time and throw a sidearm and sprint around and, you know, can play on rhythm too. And he's unstoppable,

but these guys are system fits. The greatest of all of them are still system fits. They still like playing a certain way. They, they have a, they gravitate towards playing a certain way. That's why it was so shocking when LeFleur got to Green Bay and convinced Aaron of the deep play action stuff and the longer shot, because Aaron had become a spread, get it out quick, quick game, five out, five eligible guy.

Like with McCarthy, that's where they had morphed to, and he had a lot to do with that. So then to get him to play another style was like, wow, this is awesome. If he can do this, they're going to be explosive. Well, guess what happened? They kind of morphed back into the spread stuff and gotten away from some of the power play action stuff because he

gravitates towards playing that way. All these quarterbacks want to play a certain way and they're at their best when they play that way and only, I don't know if any of them can play all the ways. Mahomes is the guy that can probably play an error. Those are the two that could play in any system,

any which way they're comfortable with all of it. And Mahomes isn't even playing that well this year. Yeah, I think Brady, because I've seen so many different versions of him, but the argument against him would be, other than Moss, how often are you talking about him being a deep threat guy throughout his entire career? Here's the thing about Brady.

Again, he's the greatest of all time. You can't have words to describe Brady, but I've talked to their coordinators. It is hard to protect Tom Brady. You have to spend extra time in your protection plans, and Tom does that. The great thing is Tom helps with that. He's like having a coach.

But the movement game, he couldn't play in San Francisco's offense. Kyle Shan wouldn't know how to call plays with Tom Brady. Because so much of what they do is movement-based. It's the half rolls. It's change the launch point. It's the nakeds and boots, the throwbacks. You need a certain level of athleticism to play in Kyle's system. Now, if Kyle had Tom, I'm guessing he

would change his system and build it any way Tom wants it. But my point being is Tom doesn't do that. And those are tools that NFL coaches use to help with protection. It takes a burden off your offensive line. Well, with Tom, you have that burden every week. The biggest thing, the number one thing you have to decide is what is our protection plan in every personnel grouping, in every formation, against every blitz, against every sub package. And you're talking about hours upon hours upon hours because you don't have the luxury of saying, oh, we'll just naked to the field this time we'll boot to this pass rusher or we you know we'll down block this guy and move the pocket

like you go play aaron donald and he can't you have to have a double team a chip a thump all this stuff because you know where the launch point is going to be and so does he yeah and by the way when i say i would rather have Kyler over Lamar, I think there's an argument to say, well, Lamar stays healthier than Kyler does. So I could very well lose that argument because Kyler got banged up in the ankles in that game where they almost came back and beat Green Bay.

I just think there's an arm talent thing and a consistency with Murray that I like a little bit better than Lamar. And I'm not even mentioning Wilson and Brady and Rodgers. I'm just kind of talking about some of the younger guys. It's funky to, from my seat,

how I look at football. Now I've never thought the quarterbacks, the state of quarterbacking has never been better. Uh, and when we start, start comparing them and I get your answer to you got 15 hours of Phil, you're talking about NBA players. I like that,

that rebuttal. I just hope people understand how freaking good these guys are. Like when the old guys are saying how good the young guys are, you know, it's good, right? Cause most old guys are crotchety. They're jealous.

They wanted to make more money. How can chase Daniel make $ 60 million dollars when i'm you know in the hall of famer made 20 you know i usually get that stuff right that's a fair one though it is a fair one but all these old guys sit there and go holy crap like that guy's amazing but they do amazing things even when they play bad i think this is why as quarterbacks, we're so gracious when a guy has a turd burger for a week because we're like, yeah, play that good for that long, you're going to have a bad one every once in a while. That one just didn't go well.

But he'll bounce back because that guy's frigging phenomenal. Here's the last thing I'd hit on. I haven't watched any stuff this morning. Usually I do on Monday morning to hear all this stuff. But how do you explain how some of these teams can be so good in the lose or play the way they did yesterday? Right? I mean, that's got to be a topic.

I tried in the open. I said the best thing to do with it is probably just to go, hey, remember week nine? Because I'm not going to write off Buffalo now. No. I don't think Tennessee is the best team in the AFC. No, great, and I live here and I love them, but no, I agree. Pittsburgh's still in the mix.

Yep. Cleveland. But New England's a playoff team, and they're actually good. Look, I think New England's actually good. Matt Jones is the best rookie quarterback by far. How he's played. No, because the fit. Because how he's played.

Because he's the best forever. I'm saying right now because he's the best forever i'm saying right now he's the best um you asked me that you text me about an afc team and i want to say the browns i would not want to play the browns now because they know they are going to play great defense down the stretch they will play great defense they're going to run the football and that is everybody else hates it when you run the football now they're not going to force feed a player, right? It's just going to be equal opportunity. Who's ever opens,

it's going to catch the ball. Baker's like, it's like a giant bird lifted off Baker. Like I can just go run the office. Yeah. People's Jones. Is it going to have people all over? Cause there's a media support for Odell and there's a player support for

Odell. Cause Odell's like, um, so Rudy was saying it to us. It's almost this Iverson thing where he's looked at by a younger generation of football players as this hero.

I get that Justin Jefferson's wearing the free Odell shirt because they're LSU guys, but it's kind of like, cool, he's freed now. Go ahead. Go ahead. You guys deal with it.

Exactly. I think football in the NFL was 17-week season. I heard Chris talk about this a little bit last night. I think that is an issue. I think teams are freaking out how to keep their players healthy for a 17 week season.

I think there's a mental fatigue. There's almost a fear factor in it too. Like one game added one game. The reality of it is not that huge of a deal, but gosh, it gets talked about enough and you start, it becomes this thing in your head of, Oh my gosh,

I got to play another game. My body already hurts at the end of the year. This week, this year's extended, we're going to go to the playoffs. This is a marathon. How am I going to do this? And you hear the media saying it and it just becomes this, this thing that gets in your head. Here's the other thing too. I'll just tell the fan. They're not as great as you think they are.

And they're not as bad as you think they are. And that's just standard. Like, what we're told in football at a young age is when you go watch the film on, in the NFL Monday, high school Saturday, college Sunday, the day after the game when you watch the film, it will never be, ever, and this has held up as good as you think it was when you win.

And it'll never be, no matter, throw eight interceptions, it'll never be as bad as it felt when you play bad. It's always somewhere in the middle. And that's the NFL. The Jacksonville Jaguars, yes, they're one of the worst teams in football, but they can beat anybody any week if they play really well and you don't. And the other thing that's going on in the NFL is this. It's younger.

And with young people, young people don't want to handle success. And it's a message in sports in general that doesn't get shared enough that success is harder to handle than failure. You're conditioned to grow up dealing with adversity. You know you have people in your life that can help you deal with adversity. You hear about dealing with adversity all the time. You bounce back from adversity. Channels are that bunker mentality in us when you go through adversity.

But success is like rat poison, as Nick Saban says, right? Success, when not handled right, can destroy you as a player and can destroy teams. And when that happens, what happens in the NFL is you start having some and people don't hold you accountable for how you're handling success. And then it catches up. And that's why you see these giant dips in pro football. Because think about it, these guys have all the money in the world. They have everything at their fingertips. And when they start to have a little bit of success, now they open up their ability to go experience these things in season. And when you take that attention away from preparing for the next game, well, then all of a

sudden, all of a sudden complacency sets in. Really, complacency is code term for partying, yachts, private planes, concerts, NBA games, women. Yeah, you can go on and on, right? When you have everything, go to Wall Street, get these young guys. They make all this money on Wall Street. What do they do? They become train wrecks because now they have the world at their hands and all this auxiliary time, and they go smoke blow, I mean,

snort blow and do all these other things and grass yeah they become train wrecks because they don't know how to handle the money at a young age and the success every nfl player has to deal with this it's the hardest thing about playing in the nfl is dealing this with the success and the stuff that comes with it and i'll put a bow on it with this that's one more reason why tom brady the greatest of all time, because he can do anything. There's nothing this man doesn't have at his fingertips, nothing. And when I say he could literally have anything and he chooses to eat healthy, watch film, hang out with his kids and not do all the things that he could be doing. And while you 24 year old, one pro bowler in you, first contract,

you, instead of doing what Tom Brady is doing, is going out to the club till 3 in the morning. You're playing video games with your boys until 2 in the morning. You're going to a new fancy steakhouse every night and ordering $1,000 bottles of champagne. Why are you not handling success well? And Tom Brady is because he says no to all the things he could say yes to, and you say yes to all the things you should be saying no to.

I would suggest that Tom early on would still say yes to a few things. Not during the season he didn't. Not during the season. Off-season, but not during the season. I'm talking during the season. Off-season, you guys go do whatever you want want go do whatever you want in the off season but in season you have a job to do and they're the building full of people's depending on you making good decisions and when you don't make good decisions because you're feeling yourself and you have all this

ability to go do stuff you are killing your football team and i've seen i mean i saw it 14 years on every team i was on, except the Ravens, the Ravens, those guys go do anything. And they didn't do any of it until one day a week after the game. I want to have a Ravens one night off podcast with you. I want to, I want to ask you about that. I'll just give you a teaser. The week the week before the Super Bowl so that first week is dead. There was a warehouse party in downtown Baltimore

that Brandon Stoke and I went to. And I'll call Stoke to make sure I get permission to tell the story. It was in my 14 years it was the craziest thing I'd ever seen in my career. It was awesome.

Perfect. Trent Dilfer, Beyond the X's and O's, the podcast and head coach, lives football. Thanks, man. See you, brother. I want to touch on college football just for a little bit here after week 10, but we're going to have Canel on Wednesday. The college football playoff committee rankings will come out Tuesday night, and I'm just

going to do way more on it then, but I have just a couple quick thoughts on that. If you read or hear from somebody that gives you their top four and they're definitive about it, I'm not sure that I would listen to them. I mean, clearly, if I had to come up with my four, I'll give you my four. But after Georgia, good luck. Good luck with this one. And my guess is considering where the committee had everybody last week having Cincinnati sixth behind Ohio State, behind Oregon, behind Michigan State, behind Alabama.

Michigan State's going to fall. They'll probably be back to seven or eight, maybe eight, but still in front of Michigan. We'll see. The AP ranking right now, Michigan State's eighth, so Michigan's ninth. They kept them in front of them. Notre Dame's still creeping up there at seven, making Cincinnati's resume look better. But look, I just don't think Notre Dame was great when they beat them. So let's run through this a little bit here. Bama's offensive line is an issue. It was an issue against A&M, and it was an issue against an LSU team.

They were favored by 28, 29 points. LSU was missing like six NFL guys and a couple other players. They had a hard time even scrimmaging this week. Now, if you tell me that LSU made it close because it's Bama, it's LSU, it's a game that's meant almost a play-in game for a long stretch over the previous decade, again, more so for Alabama than LSU, and that LSU is maybe one of the three teams in the country that doesn't lose that game on the bus ride to Tuscaloosa.

I mean, bus ride is into the stadium. Then I would hear some of that. But I'm telling you, this LSU team's actually gotten pushed around at times this year when it didn't make a ton of sense. And they were missing a bunch of their guys. They were missing their top three corners. And they had a chance to win this game twice against Alabama. Alabama ran for six yards against LSU. Alabama's offensive line is a problem. And I don't mean in the cool NBA tweet way.

Um, I would hate to see Alabama's O line against Georgia's D line. Cause look, there's other little sneaky secret about Georgia is offensively, sometimes I'm not sure about their passing attack. I mean, JT Daniels got into action against Missouri. I don't know if they're going to want to replace Stetson Bennett or if they're waiting for something to happen to go back to JT and they don't want to disrupt anything.

But this team is all about their defense. The personnel means everything. They deserve to be number one. But I don't think they're like crazy balanced because maybe they just don't need to. Maybe we don't need to see them have some sort of shootout. But I think even the hardest core of the Georgia fans out there would go, I'm still not quite sure who we are at quarterback.

Maybe that doesn't even matter right now because Bama's old line was a problem against A&M. Like I said, I don't know if it's the safety blitzes. I don't know if it's identifying things. I don't know if it's communication. Clearly Saban was like, when we needed to run the football to run this game out, we couldn't do that, and that's an issue. I also don't love the idea of Ohio State's offensive line against Georgia's D-line. Ohio State in a battle with Nebraska, who's better? What's a better situation there? Is Nebraska better than LSU? Probably not. I wouldn't think so. I'm sure I'm going to hear that argument from some people.

But Ohio State, whose offense is like number two in the country in yards per play, their defense is cranked back into the top 20. The other part of what we do is we compare you not to necessarily who you are right now to the other teams. We compare you to what our expectations are of you. And at this point, Bama and both Ohio State are below what our expectations are. But they're probably still both in the mix here. Oregon's win against Washington

I think is actually a little bit better than Ohio State against Nebraska because of the weather conditions. They ran the football well. That Washington game was a really weird game in general. They had fourth down, deep down, eight points and they decided to punt and they threw the ball out of the back of the end zone for safety.

The whole backdrop to that game was weird where the coach was like, we don't recruit with Oregon because we're different academically. And then Coach Lake got into a thing with one of his players. It looked like he hit him in the head. Then he said he didn't, which was kind of weird because it was like, I don't know, it kind of looked like you did. I think the only thing I feel comfortable saying because even with Cincinnati, the Navy game,

Navy tacked on some points there late to make it look closer, but Navy's 2-7. They were up 14-12 with a half against Tulane, who's 1-8. Tulsa fumbles at the goal line, which is assuming a lot. Say they get in, they still have to get the two-point

conversion, so I don't like just saying, hey, they should have lost at Tulsa. Well, Tulsa had to do some other things. Tulsa's 3-6. So that's three straight weeks where the game is somewhat competitive against 2-7 Navy, 1-8 Tulane, 3-6 Tulsa. Tulsa ran it 57 times for 297 against Cincinnati. I love Cincinnati's secondary, and I do like their quarterback. But that's the problem. When you play in that that conference and then you have a couple of weeks in a row where you're, you're not They were losing to Kansas a couple weeks ago.

They were outgained by Kansas 4-12 to 3-98. They're 91st in yards per play allowed. Oklahoma's resume is worse than Cincinnati's. So I would probably still have Cincinnati ahead of them. I guess Oregon's still ahead of Ohio State, but I'm just telling you

after number one, I would probably write down my next four and shrug and go, all right, there you go. That's how I feel about it. Because I'm telling you, anybody that thinks, if you think you can make a clear argument taking apart another team and propping

up your team, I promise you the reverse could probably happen as well. Because you're going to start saying, hey, where's Bama's really good win? Where are they? And it's a fair point. Ohio State, hey, they're back on track. They smashed four bad teams over a month.

And now they look like a team. Again, Tulsa, speaking of three and six Tulsa, I felt like Tulsa physically hung in there with Ohio State when I watched them play each other. So good luck to the committee, and we'll dissect it on Wednesday. You want details? Fine. I drive a Ferrari 355 Cabriolet. What's up?

I have a ridiculous house in the South Fork. I have every toy you could possibly imagine. And best of all, kids, I am liquid. So, now you know what's possible. Let me tell you what's required. By the way, before we get to life advice here, I want to thank the listeners for the reaction

to last Friday's podcast. I know when we were putting together, and we still have a couple things that we haven't released yet that we taped that are a little bit different, just because we'll see something, I'll say, hey, let's get a request. Then we kind of just tape it when we're going to tape it, and then stuff will happen, and NBA season starts on top of everything else.

So I'm not even really doing any NBA stuff today, and I'll pick it back up Wednesday and Friday. But you're like, are people going to like this? Scott Galloway, a little different. And then the John Elliott part of it for life advice to the fashion guy. And the response was unbelievable. I was actually a little surprised. And it makes me feel so good that you guys liked it

because we want to do some different things every now and then, knowing that for the most part, 90% of this podcast is football and basketball anyway. So although I have a huge hot stove request in, nobody loves a hot stove league like this guy. And also we have a cba negotiation on top of everything else and i few get as aroused as i do about cba negotiations so um thank you thank you thank you seriously uh because it meant a lot to everybody here on the show that everybody seemed to like it so much and i'm sure some people if you want to email and say hey i didn't say

anything but i hated that show thank you you. Thank you for that too. Lifeadvicerr at gmail.com. Okay, our man is checking in. This past summer, I hit it off with a girl who interned at my workplace, but things are starting to get tricky. I was hoping you guys could help me out. Background, I got to know this girl pretty well over the course of the summer, being by far the youngest two and both single people in the office who were always in a flirty state and went out to the bars together a few times before she left. While things never really

progressed past flirtatious suggestions and drunk dancing, we still text and Snapchat daily and are now at worst good friends. I'm out of college and working full time. She's from the town I'm working and her family still lives here and she intends to move back here after she graduates. But for now, she's away at college for a senior year and it's worth mentioning her college is halfway across the country. Here's my problem. At least three or four times a week, I'll get some version of the classic 1 a.m. you up text. Uh-oh.

These always include a profound or important sounding opener. Can I ask you something? Or I need to tell you something. Problem is, whenever I respond asking her to elaborate, she never answers, at least not until the next morning when she basically tries to blow it off and move on. Okay. I'll be the first to admit that being an alpha male who controls the conversation situation has never been my strong suit. I'm 6'2", 220. While I consider myself a decent-looking guy, most of my buddies think she's out of my league. Not a complete mismatch, but let's call it a 6 versus 11 tourney matchup. My conundrum is, how do I react to these interactions going forward?

In my heart of hearts, I want to respond right away, especially if it's a conversation that might lead to a deeper, more meaningful result. But is it time for me to stop giving her the attention? Should I wait a while before responding? Be honest and tell her that this behavior annoys me. My buddies think it's just immaturity on her part, seeking attention where she knows she can find it. She's 21, living up her senior year. I'm 24, working a full-time job back home. It bothers me, probably more than it should, because I genuinely like her, but it's hard for me to gauge how genuine her feelings are in return. Should I feel

honored that I'm her go-to late-night text, or assume it's just because she isn't getting attention from someone else? I want her to know I'm there for her, but don't want her to think of me as the guy she can always fall back on, take advantage of. Any advice from the gang would be greatly appreciated. Also, she's coming home for winter break in a month month and she definitely wants to hang out and hit the town all right the first thing i jumped out is fuck your buddies that are like she's out of your league

okay what they don't understand and this is the assembly line theory where um if you're just around other people long enough and you're not in the more traditional settings of having to meet people for the first time, bars it's tough, house parties a little bit better, gym, you never know because it's this battle of

I should leave everyone alone to but somebody's going to talk to her. Do I want to be the guy that just watches and not do anything? Because then that kind of sucks but at the same time too, leave people alone. So this is great because you're out of the workplace. So you could be yourself in the workplace and you connected with her in a way that most people aren't going to. So your buddies don't get this. The reason we call it the assembly line theory is that I had a buddy who was home for work and I think he spent the entire winter break putting stuff in a package on an assembly line. And he said after four weeks, he had like fallen in love with this disgusting 50 year old woman because he was just around her. He's like, dude, I don't know what to tell you. And we were like, what? He's like, dude, I'm kind of into her. And we're like, no, you're not. Like you've just been, that doesn't make any't make any sense he's like dude eight hours of packing boxes you tell me so um that's what happened to him i don't think they

ever followed through on any of that um i guess i get it like all right she's texting you but then she doesn't follow through if she's doing it three four times a week she she drunk three or four nights a week doing this that seems weird. I would not overthink this. You clearly like her. There has to be something with you that she kind of likes. You could go hardcore with this and say, hey, guess what? I love that I'm who you text. I don't love the way it makes me feel when you don't follow up and you blow it off all the time. So if you have something important to ask me, ask me. If you have something you have to tell me, tell it to me. Now, it could go one or two ways. She's like, man, this guy's awesome. Real Don Draper shit, as we've referenced before. Or she's going to be like, hey, relax, grown up,

you know, and then you blow it. So I would, because it seems like your preference out of all of these things is to hang out with her. I would just let her send the dumb text and I would just play it along and write it out until winter break. And then you're going to find out what you need to find out during winter break. So I would not jeopardize it with adult grownup stuff, although you could, and it might work. I would just let her keep texting. It's not that big of a deal. Like, you know, exactly what's happening. She's having some drinks. She's thinking about you. She's sending you a text. Now she's sending other guys texts. Probably we could all do a better job of not pretending we're the most special person in the world. Um, but I would,

um, if you're interested in her, which you are, you've been thinking about this, you're writing an email to show about this. I would just kind of slow play it, let her send the stupid texts. And then when you see her,

you'll see her and then you'll figure it out. Then that's how I would handle it. Kyle. This seems so easy to me. Just walk, stay in the middle. Don't go on either side of the spectrum. Just don't answer the text and then answer later, my bad, sorry. And then as you're getting closer

to winter break, you ramp it up, maybe start answering some late night texts. I think that's just be like, well, what is he doing? Maybe I'm not sending some engaging enough stuff to him. What is he doing that he can't answer me now all of a sudden? And then, you know, I think she might be getting a little excited to see where you're at. Come winter break, just get a look at you and see what's going on with you. Check you for hickeys or whatever. But I just think that... Check you for a hickey? Have you had to check somebody for hickeys ever?

No, I have... You've been... No, I'm cutting it out. Don't worry about it. I'm cutting it out. It doesn't matter basically what i'm saying is i think you should just be cool and then start ramping it up ever so slightly as you um get closer to coming home yeah but here's the problem is that when she comes

home she's going to go back to school and you're kind of in the same position as you were to start so this is like you're playing the long game here like he has to be in for the long play for at least what a year probably at least like six eight months all you need though is just to get the face time to restart everything recharge the batteries and then you could ignore text all over and then just make sure you get back to him in a semi-timely manner like sorry missed you i just think you guys need to focus on the fact that his preference is to hang out with her right yeah exactly not to text weird stuff right that's what you're saying yeah but that's part of but he has to kind of play along like i think he has to play along with this and and not let it annoy him or let not let her know, you're right. To not respond to the text for a day or something

is probably the right move because it's going to freak her out a little bit, but I still don't think... Because, I mean, he's going to turn into like, oh, wait, now he's not here at my beck and call every single time I shoot him a text in the middle of the night and then don't follow through with a thought. Like, hey, I'm checking on him to see if he'll respond,

and then he responded, so now I don't have anything interesting to say like that's annoying yeah i get it the whole thing but it doesn't it's not a lot of effort to just what are we in november for a couple more weeks to go oh hey what's up you know whatever but i do like your thought kyle on not texting back one of the nights but i wouldn't play totally hard to get here if your preference is yeah i spend time with the person. I agree. Would you also agree that the in-person visit and the long-distance things,

not for relationships, but for dancing around this thing, we don't know what's going on, but when you see each other, doesn't that recharge the batteries a little bit? And that's all it really has to do is just get to that point. And then he can go back to whatever this game he's playing is. Right. And then he can ride it out for this game he's playing is. Right. And then he can ride it out for another spring semester after he spent time with her and has real feelings. And then he can go crazy while she's going nuts during senior week.

6'3", 220. I mean, come on. He's got options. Yeah, but his friends don't think he's hot. Well, listen to our podcast from last week about what to do to make friends and meet girls. Turn those maybes into why nots.

People really liked your maybes into why nots. So we had a lot of follow-up on that. Okay, this one's probably fake. But I'm reading it. And yes, everybody, we know that the Nick Chubb thing was fake and that I guess it was from a book, but it was also maybe in a TV show too. I don't know.

All right. Hi, Ryan. 5'2", 180, female, thick, double Cs. What's up? That's the spelling, by the way. I broke up with a guy over his take on Russell Westbrook. You're the only one who's going to understand this. There's no way this is real,

but we're going to be reading it. Our relationship was casual but consistent. He's divorced and older, has some money. He loses small amounts of it sports gambling because of his horrible takes. One of these takes is that Westbrook is better than Curry. We also live in Milwaukee and he's a Lakers fan. He was late to the Giannis bandwagon, but this year he's all in on the Lakers again. His personality is Westbrook-ish too.

He's a workaholic, which I respect, but he's also overbearing and intense, which is why I kept it casual with him. He basically thinks Curry is soft and would be a dud in any other era, while Westbrook is the next version of Kobe. On opening night, we were arguing about this after seeing our Bucks win. He didn't even care because he was focused on the Lakers. Then Curry beat Westbrook

and we got into a fight. As you can guess, there's more going on. He's generally kind of a boomer, self-centered, but he's passionate and entertaining. Now he's begging for me back and sending me Curry clips and saying things like, you were right all along and you're so much smarter than me. His texts are Westbrook style. A high volume, low efficiency.

We had a similar breakup a while back over something much bigger. He sent me a lot of try hard feminist clips after that and I just rolled my eyes kyle do you have a folder of try hard feminist clips you send your girlfriend when things aren't working out no i think i might even need a definition of what that is yeah i don't know i don't know what that this feels like the same thing now he's convinced us all about westbrook because it ended that night but our problems go further back he'll apologize and all but like westbrook because it ended that night, but our problems go further back. He'll apologize and all, but like Westbrook, he's ultimately about himself. Well, I need a team player. I know he'll say the right things, but he'll just revert back to getting his. That's fine because our relationship

was casual. I didn't expect much, but now I want a guy who sees the whole court like Curry. Maybe I'm too much of a basketball nerd, but I'm beginning to put my relationships in these terms and it's making sense. Should I give this guy another shot? It feels silly to break up over this. Or should I aim for something higher? My two serious relationships were not ideal. One was a Ben Simmons who could see the floor but was way more timid than my current guy. The other guy was flashy on the outside

but sketchy when you got to know him like Kyrie. I know I could keep a curry, but where do I find one? Am I not grateful enough for my Russ? Okay, well done, well done. Where do I find one? Am I not grateful enough for my Russ? Okay. Well done. Well done. I would say this about Westbrook.

It is hilarious for somebody who's at times felt like he was on an island with the Westbrook stuff to watch him now that he's with L.A. And more people are paying attention to these horrible things he does late in the game that lead directly to losses. It's one thing to take a bad shot and miss. It's another one to just decide, hey, I'm not going to defend anybody. I'm just going to run around and not have any plan and have no one know what I'm doing

and help defend when I shouldn't. I'm just going to do a bunch of stuff that doesn't make any sense and I'm going to do it multiple times at the end of close games because that's what I've done in my entire career. And people are noticing it now because he's on the Lakers. And people in LA are going, wait, what? What's going on here? So look, I would tell you, there's not many Currys out there. So good luck. You can do better than Westbrook.

Come on. Don't settle for a Westbrook. Don't be the Lakers in this scenario. If you think you can do better, try to do better. Don't, don't, don't feel like, don't do the pie in the sky.

First off, I think there's a chance this is real. Do we think, do we have, do you think it's real? I don't. I don't think the chances might be real. Well,

especially when it gets to the Ben Simmons part. And then a Kyrie gets thrown in there. Am I not grateful enough for my Russ? This is 100% a dude sending in an email. Well, creativity is a 10. I would just say, if you are the person in this scenario, and a lot of people are like this, who are looking for their Steph Curry,

who are looking for their 10, their pie in the sky, their perfect person to date they often overlook you know your five-time also your borderline also who's a good person to marry but you're like oh no I'm looking for myself curry no no the all-star is good be better

than Russell Westbrook though that would be my advice Kyle it sounds like you're going to lay out on this one yeah it's definitely a dude I think you made his day by reading his what I really just want to know is how long did it take you to write that that's really the only thing I'm interested in good job by you getting on this podcast that you clearly like

so nice I thought he did a good job but now I'm afraid that I'm opening up the invitation for more people to try to come up with different stuff like that and we get to sift through it. I just thought it was funny that Suri still tried to give some life advice on this clearly fake thing.

The best part about dating a Curry... Try to help people, Kyle. If your boyfriend's a Curry type, does it mean when he shows up, everybody's having a much better time too? There's no... Just there's freedom of movement. Yeah, he's buying people drinks.

100%. Yeah, he brings the he's the guy that brings the bottle bakers. Everybody's up a level. Yep. And what's Westbrook is the guy that's stealing other people's drinks and doesn't pay his bar tab. That's that kind of guy. He jumps off of a balcony

and you're like, why don't you just use the stairs? He was like, it's quicker. Like you, you landed on my car hood and he just goes, what? I just do me. Did I not get there quicker? You'd be like,

well, you do get there quicker jumping off a balcony and smashing my car hood. But there was a staircase like whatever. It's gotta be a more efficient way to do that. Whatever. Stop haters. Like, yeah.

Okay. Thank you to Kyle and Steve for today's podcast. Thank you to the great Trent Dilfer. And we will see you with a big college football and some of the NBA stuff on Wednesday. Outro Music you