The Ryen Russillo Podcast - Rebuilding in the NFL Should Take Two Years and the Wentz Market With Kevin Clark. Plus, ‘S.W.A.T.’ Star Jay Harrington.

Episode Date: December 18, 2020

Russillo shares his thoughts on the back-and-forth over whether Ben Simmons is available for a trade with the Rockets (3:30) before talking with The Ringer’s Kevin Clark about rebuilding in the NFL, why Kevin predicts a massive QB movement in 2021, the market for Carson Wentz, the Steelers' and Saints' recent struggles, believing in the Rams, reevaluating Cam Newton, and more (10:00). Then Ryen is joined by actor Jay Harrington to discuss his career, including ‘Better Off Ted’ and ‘S.W.A.T,’ the differences between comedy acting and drama, the challenges involved in shooting a show during the pandemic, and more (55:30). Finally, Ryen answers some listener-submitted Life Advice questions (1:34:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Here is the plan for today. This is an awesome show. We got Kevin Clark who talks about football with him. Also, actor thespian Jay Harrington. He was nice enough to say hello to me when I first moved to LA and was hanging out at the Santa Monica Equinox. That's the Malibu

phase of my odyssey out here. I was like, who's this guy? He's on SWx. That's the Malibu phase of my odyssey out here. And I was like, who's this guy? And he's on SWAT. He's actually pretty successful. And he's just a totally normal guy from Massachusetts. So I just want to talk to an actor that's not at the DiCaprio level, that's at the level below that and what that career is like and everything.

So that's going to be a lot of fun. And we'll do some life advice. I can't wait to do these ones with you a little bit later. There's been a demand for more Kyle. I don't know if that's Kyle forwarding those specific emails to me, but I don't think Kyle is not a seeker of attention. He is not. I would never do that. You wouldn't. I actually, that's why I'm bringing it up. So I just wanted you Kyle to know that, or no, I want the audience to know that your request for more Kyle has been acknowledged. So, you know, what we should do is we should do a Kyle specific life advice where

it'll be younger dudes instead of me being like, that's a crazy thing. And some of these college kids, like if I had gone a different path, I'm old enough to be their dads. If I were really weird in high school. Some of you guys would be a few years into your 401k already. But that's not the case. That is not the case. And look, if you're 16 and you have a kid in high school,

it doesn't necessarily mean you're weird. So all the guys that have kids at 15 and 16 years old, shout out to you. So there you go. Big reminder, Monday night, I think it's going to either drop or it'll be into Tuesday morning. Maybe we're taping it Monday night. Bill Simmons,

House, myself, big NBA preview including the over-unders for all the teams. Somebody did say, man, a lot of these numbers look pretty low. It's like, yeah, that's because we have less games in the regular season. I was afraid I might pick 30 overs. I'm like, I just don't see it. I think they the regular season. So I was afraid I might pick 30 overs.

I'm like, I just don't see it. I think they're better than that. I think they're better than 42 wins. You're like, no, no. All right. So again, make sure you subscribe to this podcast, Bill Simmons podcast. We're going to do a massive NBA preview like we do every year. All right.

I want to start with just a little quick opening. It's not even a rant, really. This isn't a massive thing here because I've been hammering the rants this week. But on the James Harden trade stuff, it was pretty funny seeing the timeline. Now, you know, two weeks ago, I had said I thought Simmons was available to trade. The reason I said this, because that's what I've been hearing. And Shams said Simmons is available. And then Shams immediately, obviously, Daryl Morey, the GM now.

Well, not GM, the president of the Sixers. Elton Brand still technically the GM. It was clear based on the tweets on Thursday that it was, you know, the Sixers have reached out to us, you know, the whole deal. And now we're saying that, you know, Simmons is not available. OK, first of all, Daryl Morey is never going to say a guy is available. He doesn't owe that to any of us. That's not the job. The job is to answer to his ownership, to make the best deal for his team. But those that

I don't want to mean like, Hey, those that are pretty plugged in, there's a difference between the news that you get. And then the stuff that you hear and the rumblings now for a while have been that Simmons is available on Harden trade. Okay. And that's why I said it and felt comfortable about it, but I'm not going to do in a podcast. Hey, Simmons is going to be traded for Harden because things change and you don't really know. And by the way, Houston with two years of control on Harden, they have more options than maybe you realize. So Harden can sit and demand just Brooklyn.

And as we've seen, I don't think the Brooklyn thing matched, you know, team for team, but we've also seen historically trades where it didn't look like it matched and they just sort of happen. I think that's where agents get involved a little bit. Like, do me a favor here. We'll figure it out a little bit later. There's also agents that will straight up threaten a front office and go, if you don't do this for my guy, I'm going to make sure none of my clients ever signed with you. And if your agency is powerful enough and represents the right people, you can get away with some of that stuff. So

there's a lot of stuff that goes on that I'll never know about. And that's where I thought this whole thing was important. Now, Woj, this morning on ESPN, was talking about how this deal has been expanded to include potentially more teams, which I think makes sense. Now, some of this is strategic. Sometimes you get a piece of information and you're like, why is this person sharing this information with me? Okay, well, they're doing it maybe because they want this information out because it helps them. But you've got to be around long enough to understand that. Well, you'll get info and be like, I don't really want to share this. Look, I'll tell you three years ago when Kyrie got traded to the Celtics, I got a source who's

been terrific on stuff was like, look, this Kyrie thing's not happening. Winning solves everything. He's going to come back. And Kyrie's different, which was a really early prediction on knowing Kyrie. And I almost, I'm so glad I didn't do this. I almost tweeted out something where I was like, you know, senses are that Kyrie's going to be there, ready to go, camp beginning of the season, see how it goes, see if everybody gets along. They're going to be winning games. They're close.

They're still close to competing. So this thing might blow over. And then he competing. So, you know, this, this thing might blow over. And then he was literally traded, I think less than 24 hours later. And I remember being like, oh my God. Cause I was telling some of this stuff to, uh, to one of my friends and he's like, what are you going to do? I was like, I don't know. I go, I need to, I would really need to check on this. I go, but this guy's pretty good. And he would know. And he didn't know. And he didn't know. He thought he knew and he didn't know. But as far as the hardened part of this, and this is the other classic one, national guy says Simmons is available for hardened.

Local guy in Philadelphia says Simmons isn't available. First of all, it's all semantics too, because when you say Simmons has not been included in a trade package, well, if a trade hasn't officially been proposed, then you've covered your ass that way. You can say, I never offered him. But you have these conversations with other teams. You'll be like, hey, would you be willing to do this? I don't know. I don't know.

And I don't know might mean yes. This isn't espionage. This isn't treason. There aren't these hidden tapes to expose somebody for not telling the truth. You have to play the game with the other teams. You also have to play the games, the media, but the national people, the guys that are really, really good and really plugged in a lot of their information, they're getting from other teams that are going, Hey, you know, is available. You know what they're trying to figure out. And there may be a third team and all this stuff. So I always thought the Simmons thing was a potential trade there, and that was pushed more on Philly's side.

And I don't care what Darryl says. I don't. And I don't blame him. He doesn't owe any of us anything. But if a local reporter in Philadelphia is going to say, I talked to, say, Darryl, or I talked to somebody in that front office, and they're denying it. This is where being the local guy, even though you have the advantage of knowing your team better than any of the national guys do. I respect the hell out of anybody that has to be in the beat. And when things are normal in the locker room all the time, putting in all of that time,

all of these thousands of hours that you're with just this one team and you know, I'm inside and out, you're probably more likely to be misled, um, on some of this stuff because you may not be in it. And I be, and I don't mean this as a criticism, you, if you're following one team and locked into it, you may have great sources with that one team, but a lot of times you will find out stuff about a team because you're talking to other teams. And that's where a national guy, and I'm not including myself in that situation, but the national guys, the Wojas, those kinds of guys crush it because there are other teams going, Hey, you know, you should

check on this. So, uh, that's where we're at. I don't know if he gets traded immediately. I've just, like I've said, I've always felt very comfortable in saying that I think Simmons, that part of it's available for Houston. If they want to go ahead and do that deal. Um, the other thing that didn't make any sense, which I've touched on is is that the price would somehow go down the longer this went for Harden. I don't really believe that. Most people disagree with me. We've already been over it. And then the part where some teams would be scared off because of that article that came out talking about how Harden was difficult and everything was on his terms. And there's only two years left. Look, the Celtics should probably not have traded for Kyrie knowing that in two years he could leave and not sure if he was going to dig being in Boston.

Luckily for the Celtics side of it, they didn't give up a ton. There's not this trade or this player running around every night where you're like, I can't believe you gave up that guy for two years of control with Kyrie. But other teams, if they can put a package together, you'll never, like sometimes you have to be bold. Some guys are really bold about this. So maybe it isn't Philadelphia, but I've always felt Simmons is available, and I'm not off at that point. And if he doesn't get traded to Philly

and everyone in the front office in Philly says Simmons is never available, never available, I'm just, I don't blame you for saying that. I'm not going to believe you. Okay, we have Kevin Clark on all sorts of stuff. How to rebuild in the NFL, off the Steelers, the Rams, love. Cam Newton follow-up NFL, off the Steelers, the Rams love. Cam Newton follow-up

on his earlier story is going to be right now. Kevin Clark joins us, the king of slow news day and NFL coverage at The Ringer. I want to get to your most recent slow news day

with Adam Schefter. Sure. But we start with the other stuff. Okay, rebuilding. Football. Yeah. You are a Magic fan,

so you know the pain of rebuilding. I don't think in the NBA, there's really anything other than do we get draft picks or are we a destination? Do we have assets when the next star is mad, which is really, as I've said for years now, the job of the GM is to have some pieces to even get you in the conversation because there's always a mad superstar and it happens all the time more often than ever. But in football, we always kind of felt like, hey, figure out the quarterback, get the quarterback. So what do we know right now? Because you're writing a piece on this. I love this topic.

I don't know if it's changing. So take it any direction you want to take it in. So there's a lot more waiting around in the NBA because I think I've studied and talked to the people who have had the best quick building jobs the last couple of years. And I think the way to approach this, and I know it sounds oxymoronic, is quick but patient, if that makes sense. And it should only take about two years for you to figure it out. You look at the Buffalo Bills

who took a massive dead cap charge in 2018. A year later, they're in the playoffs. They basically just gutted their entire roster. A year later, they're in the playoffs. Two years later, they're competing in the AFC. The Miami Dolphins did something similar. You have to take your medicine early and get all the bad contracts off your books, all that stuff. And I think the biggest part, Ryan, is that the culture starts to build at the beginning of the rebuild. I think in the NBA, there's a little bit more waiting around in the sense that, okay,

hey, we're really targeting summer 2022. These guys are coming up or whatever. And in the NFL, I think it becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. And so with the Dolphins, a particular team I visited last year, I remember going to press conferences and a reporter there was like, we haven't asked about the games in a month. Like, we just don't care about the games. We care about the draft. And we care about free agency. And we care about how this rebuild is going. And I asked Brian Flores when we had a meeting later.

I said, Brian, what is it like to coach a team where no one cares about the games? And he wasn't mad at me. But he kind of got very passionate and was like, you go run down in the kickoff and tell these guys that these games don't matter. You go run down in the kickoff and tell these guys that these games don't matter. And you could tell that they were planting the seeds of the rebuild because you need good players, but you also need the culture. Jason Kelsey had an amazing rant this week. Did you see it? Yeah. So he basically said, nobody in the locker room cares about the future.

Nobody in the locker room cares about the draft picks, all that stuff, this whole tanking thing. And I think that the balance you have to take as a GM when you're building is that the roster doesn't care about the future. And so you have to build a culture at the same time you have to build a team.

And so I guess if you look at the Colts or you look at the Dolphins or look at the Bills and the Browns are a separate category this year. This is a year where you should not be getting better.

But if you are getting better, you've done something right. There is a blueprint. And I think it mostly involves around doing what needs to be done immediately. Again, whether that's getting the bad contracts off, uh, augmenting with that augmenting youth with veterans, building, building a base with the veterans, excuse me, with the youth and bringing in flexible veterans, mid-tier veterans, the bills have done that really well. The dolphins this year have done that, uh, really, really well. Uh, I just think that there's maybe, I think there's a lot of lessons bad NFL

teams can learn because I think that the NBA style process has been attempted in the NFL. It doesn't work. Contracts are too short. Injuries happen too often. If your rebuild is taking more than two years, you should probably look at your rebuild. In the Dolphins case, the Bills case, and the Colts case, they never got the top overall pick. They never truly tanked. Everyone thought the Dolphins were tanking last year. They were just bad and young and growing.

But I think that I think that they're just if you study these teams, there are, you know, 25 to 26 organizations where they might make excuses. And the teams that are getting better this year are not doing that.

And I think you can look to those teams for lessons on how to get better without tanking, without all that stuff. Whenever it comes to this stuff, right? Everybody wants to sound smarter than everyone else, right? Hey, here's our philosophy. Here's what we're going to do. And if it works, it works. But a lot of it's luck. It's definitely luck in basketball. If you land in the wrong year with the right picks, it doesn't matter. I mean, you can have the fourth pick in a good draft or the first pick in a bad draft. And there you go. I also think, and I don't mean this to be hostile, but I think nerds like tanking. Um, I don't know what that means. And sometimes I'm super nerdy about stuff. So I'm, I'm including myself in the group at times where from the outside, we want to pretend that we have it

figured out when it's so dismissive and basically insulting the people that have the jobs as if we know better than they do. Now, sometimes we do. Sometimes guys have these jobs and they're really bad and they execute a plan. Sometimes there are great plans that don't work out. The quarterback thing, this is where I want to stay on it because none of it works unless you have the quarterback. And the same way in the NBA, none of it works unless you have one of those special players that really don't come along nearly as often as we'd like to think that they do so when Cleveland took Baker one because I've heard from teams saying really the only way to do this to solve it is just keep drafting them just

keep drafting quarterbacks yeah you know like if you think you probably know the first year and just because you drafted somebody and say you have a bet, like just draft another guy, just keep taking swings at this. Cause it's so hard to get one of those players. And I remember talking with a host that said, well, you know what,

if that's the case, then the Browns, and this was somebody probably trying to be a little bit smarter about it. The Brown should take Baker one and then somebody else for, and I'm like, okay, well that's where they, they looked at doing that yeah I know and

I talked that was me I talked to them about that that was that was my story okay that's insane that's where you're moving no but that's where you're removing the reality of actually having a quarterback it wouldn't work the only way it would work is if the other guy got hurt and absolutely sucked so I don't know if you, so when you wrote that piece, because then it actually became a topic on the radio show that I was doing, I don't know how you say to the guys like, hey, get after it.

Or maybe, I don't know, are reps overrated? Or do you have to, like, I just can't imagine that you'd have two personalities that go, yes, this is absolutely going to work because for one to work, you're completely stunning the other. And I don't know. I mean, take it again where you want to work because for one to work, you're completely stunning the other. And I don't know.

I mean, take it again where you want to, because it sounds like you may sneaky still believe in that philosophy. I don't believe in that philosophy. The Dallas Cowboys did something a little bit similar where they obviously drafted Trey Aikman and they also use a supplemental draft pick in 1989 on Steve Walsh, the former Miami quarterback. So they did in quick succession have two first round quarterbacks. Okay.

And Jimmy Johnson knows what he's doing. I think that where the Browns are coming from in that particular situation is that they had the biggest problem in sports, which was they're the Browns and they need a quarterback. And you've seen the Jersey with the names of all the Browns quarterbacks and just the fact they couldn't solve that for 20 years. And I think they looked at that draft and said, let's, we have the draft capital. Let's end this once and for all. And it's funny because I don't even know who they would have taken with the second. I don't, I, you know, Baker is, is okay. This year, the ball is coming out cleaner. He's still one of the worst passers in football under pressure. We can get to that later. But I think that the, I think it's

about throwing resources when you have it at the biggest problem. But I think that the, I think it's about throwing resources when you have it at the biggest problem you have. And that's why I think they were looking at that. I don't think it's a good philosophy. And I also think that getting the quarterback, although it's the most important, the competence of quarterback is the most important thing. Well, you can win without a super duper star. I mean, look at, look at the damn Rams. Okay. Even though oddly enough that golf was the first overall pick. But Goff was... Dak Prescott, who was in

that draft, is better than Jared Goff. But I think that for me, I think that what you do... No one wins, and Jason Kelsey said this yesterday, no one wins because they draft the quarterback. They win because they take the quarterback and figure out what to do with him.

And I think that's the most important thing, and I think No one wins because they draft the quarterback. They win because they take the quarterback and figure out what to do with him. Okay. And I think that's the most important thing. And I think that, you know, is Tua going to end up being the best quarterback in the 2020 class? Actually, probably not. But are the Dolphins in better position to win the next five years than the Chargers? Yes. Are they in better position to win than the Bengals? Yes, absolutely. And Tua might end up being the third best quarterback

in that wave of quarterbacks, but it doesn't matter because he went to the best situation. So competence of quarterback is really important, but I don't necessarily know if the ceiling is the most important thing in that situation. Listen, Mahomes is a different quarterback, even though he's the best quarterback in football by a mile. Mahomes is a different guy if he goes to a different situation.

And so I'm more about now, like the last two years, I've become way more invested when I talk to people about culture and all that stuff. I've seen a lot of teams that are bad with great players. I haven't really seen a great team with a bad culture. Do you think there's anything, too, and I'm going to give your friend and my old producer steve cerruti the credit on this one yeah um because i know you were tight because of your magic love but he brought up a really good point in a pre-show meeting years ago that's why i still

remember it and he didn't even know that he was right and that's the kind of conversations i like but you you enter the conversation by saying if you want to rebuild should you try to get the rest of this other stuff figured out and i don't think cerruti is necessarily the first person to ever bring it up, but it was the first time we were kind of like debating it as a topic in the pre-show. And I loved it because, and I'm not even sure I necessarily agreed with it because it's like, man, I've seen plenty of teams think they have other stuff figured out and the guy behind center sucks and they're seven to nine and it doesn't even matter. But could there be a two-year window to try to get the rest of the stuff right, figure you're still not winning that many games,

and trade for a guy that's done it before in the league and maybe that's Carson Wentz that we'll get to maybe it's the market for what Stafford could be or Matt Ryan I mean you just chuckled big time at Carson Wentz but what are you better off trying to I mean have you talked to anyone in the front office who said we actually want to try to go for that we want to build everything around it we want to lay the foundation and then the house itself is the quarterback. I think it's more situational. If the Dolphins had gotten the eighth pick this year

because they accidentally won one more game and then they are not going to reach for the fourth best quarterback or they're not going to use all the draft capital to trade up or whatever, maybe that's when they go out and they get a trade. I think that there's going to be massive movement. A lot of people have talked about this the last couple of weeks. There's going to be massive quarterback movement

this year. And that a lot of that has to do with the fact that there's going to be new GMs in a lot of different places and whether or not I actually don't I think the Eagles are kind of stuck with Wentz. I've been shocked when I talk to people at how well thought of Wentz is around the league, even right now, even

on December. Okay, why are you shocked? Because when I watch him, no one, no one, has more hopeless situational plays than the Eagles. Like, the snap happens with Wentz. Things look bad. They get worse. You know, and, you know,

Seth Galena at PFF had a really good piece this week about how much better everybody was on Sunday with the Eagles. The offensive line looked better. The wide receivers looked better. Something is broken. I think we default too easily to, oh, this guy's broken. Carson Wentz is broken. He's really, truly broken

right now. Maybe he gets the OTAs next year in the training camp and things move forward. But I just didn't see anything with Wentz this year. When I was looking for some numbers earlier today for a piece I was doing, he's pretty bad in basically everything, whether that's the red zone or under pressure or whatever. He's really bad. And Jalen Rager was talking this week about how he and Jalen Hurts were working on chemistry after the practice or whatever. And we heard so much about chemistry,

chemistry, chemistry with Wentz. Oh, he needs to build the chemistry. It appears that Jalen Hurts has built chemistry in about five minutes. And so I don't know what the problem was with Wentz, but there's just something there. Now I'm surprised because the cap hit is huge. I thought that when I heard, okay, that maybe they'll try to trade Wentz.

Well, you're going to have to limit the trade partners to teams without television, without internet connections. That was my thought. Okay. We're just going to get that. We're going to call the GM who doesn't watch football and we're going to trade him Carson Wentz. But the more I talk to people and to people, my podcast last week, Jay Glazer and Jeremy Fowler have both said it.

It is not just that he's thought of highly. It's that the egos of NFL people are such that they look at Carson Wentz and see the success he's had. And they say, well, I'm that guy. I'm the guy who's going to fix Carson Wentz. I had this Wentz epiphany that I've talked about a lot where I couldn't believe how many people who played the position and evaluate the position loved him. And I was like, what? And last year I was fine with the excuse making because the roster around him towards the end and they put together enough wins to get to the playoffs. He gets hurt in the playoff game. I felt like those weren't excuses for Wentz.

It was the reality of who he was throwing to, street-free agents. And you go, all right, it's not great, but look at the situation. And this year, you're right. He's just straight up bad. He's bad in a million different ways. The stats are, if you really dig into some of the stats, are even worse than you would think they were. But he makes throws

that have people that throw a football for a living freak out and the people that evaluate that freak out about it as well and that's why i i'm not surprised on it i mean look you're far more plugged in than i could ever dream of when it comes to the nfl but i'm not surprised i'm not surprised that there's a stronger market for him. And now the media has taken it like as if no one would ever trade for him. I don't, I don't believe that the problem is it's a four year, $128 million contract that kicks in. The extension part has not kicked in yet.

It hasn't kicked in yet. Um, but I'd also like to see more from Hertz, believe it or not. Like I'd like to see a little bit more before I'm ready to say they found their guy, because if he becomes, I don't know, somebody who's going to start for a team for five plus years, that would actually surprise me based on what I saw in college from Jim. It just would. I agree with that. I don't think he was perfect, but I think that he gave him something.

And defense is that he had 106 rushing yards. And the biggest thing for me, especially like on that Miles Sanders run or whatever, defenses knew they were going against a legitimate offense instead of just Wentz just kind of fumbling around back there. And I just think that it was just a different team. And I don't know if he's the next 10 years in Philadelphia, but he's the next three weeks. Yeah.

Okay, so let's touch on something you'd said, which I believe read, heard Stafford, whether it's Matt Ryan, Detroit's overhauling that thing. Atlanta has already done that. You said that there's going to be a lot of quarterback movement. What's realistic at this point, even knowing that there are going to be surprises? Sure. So I think the cap stuff, the fact that the cap is not going to rise as much as it normally does, or it might stay flat or whatever it is. We don't know the cap number. We just know there's cap uncertainty. I think

that's going to depress the market a little bit because you can't take these huge dead cap charges. If the Eagles said, you know what, we must move on from Carson Wentz, even though they've told ESPN they're not going to do it, or he's still their guy, whatever, long-term, I don't know how realistic that sort of thing is. I think Matt Ryan is in the same boat where the cap chart is just massive. And if you come in and you're the GM and you say, we have to move on from this core. Daniel Jeremiah was my potty a couple weeks ago. And he said, I'd blow up Atlanta because I'm looking at the division and I see a stacked New Orleans team and a stacked Tampa Bay team.

And you've got a window here where you're not going to do anything with this core. So you might as well just take a step back for two years, let them win the division, do whatever they need to do, and then build on it. And there's a reason Jacksonville is seen as a really good job for a head coach or a GM is because they just have a blank slate. I think people like blank slates more than middle-of-the-road teams right now. They don't want to build around Matt Ryan. They don't want to build around Matthew Stafford.

And so I think Stafford is probably much more of a realistic option. He's three years younger than Matt Ryan. The contract is such that I think the dead cap, if they trade him post-June 1st next year, is only $13 million, which is totally fine. Mike Sando had a comp in talking about potential Stafford trade that kind of blew my mind

and makes total sense, was that numbers-wise, playing-wise, all that stuff, the comp for Stafford trade that kind of blew my mind and makes total sense was that numbers-wise, playing-wise, all that stuff, the comp for Stafford is Carson Palmer. And if you think about the situations they were in, if you think about how Palmer ended his career on a really good Cardinals team

that was in contention for the Super Bowl, I think that that should be his ending. And Dan Orlovsky is really close with Matthew Stafford, said as soon as the new GM was hired, as soon as the GM was fired, that it's time to trade

Matthew Stafford. I think there's momentum building towards that. And I think that there's, it depends on who it is because everybody, whether it's Atlanta or Detroit, they all face the same question,

which is, do we try to maximize what we have now or blow it up? And I think that it just comes down to the personal preference of who gets those jobs.

I don't like when it turns into you tried it with Stafford, move on. You tried it with Matt Ryan, move on. Because now you're bringing in somebody who's worried about keeping his job in three years saying this means now you're going to have to take a swing on somebody who's never done it.

And as we know, the numbers are okay. Go ahead and draft the guy. You buy in. I still think there are front offices that go, are we sure? We're like, I don't know. We need a quarterback. And the other three guys are gone. All right, we're taking this guy in. Like, I really, I really think that happens.

And so there can be this momentum of, ah, I just go ahead. Like we're real quick to say, ah, they need to do something different. All right. If they're blowing up, so get everybody out of there. All right. What if you blow it up around the guy and say okay let's try to get three more years out of stafford or ryan and and maybe two years from now overhauling the roster we're back in it as you just said at the very beginning this thing the rebuild shouldn't take as long um i heard once i know i just want

to say on your point is i once heard the brandon whedon pick was a bit like that that the browns big board was so on tilt and they didn't know what to do and they just kind of picked Brandon Whedon. Yeah, I think it happens. I really do think it happens. They were just like, oh my God, this draft is not going where I thought it was. Oh my God, we just picked Brandon Whedon. I heard that's what happened.

It's like an Anthony Lynn timeout where you go, do we call a timeout in overtime? There's not a second overtime right yeah well i don't know they're gonna run the clock all the way down and they're kicking a field goal so they're gonna blow a minute here and we're gonna get the ball do you guys want the ball back with three minutes or two minutes left having to score a touchdown i don't know like what do you want what do you want you know what let's just call one all right hey we how many do we have

okay let's call a timeout. I'm talking about Thursday night football at the end of it. I am not a every coach sucks. I'm not a fire everybody. I'm not a play calling is bad. I defer that I know all of these people know way more about football than me. But it's just a tough look when somebody who's willing to admit the things he doesn't know goes, I can't fathom why you wouldn't be calling a timeout immediately. when somebody who's willing to admit the things he doesn't know goes, I can't fathom why you wouldn't be calling a timeout immediately. And the fact that you called one after you burned 20 seconds means you weren't ready.

Awareness is as big a part of this job as anything. Yes. The Chargers thing is just so strange to me. And I think because they get the rap of not having... I'm glad the national media is kind of on this now because they're such a weird franchise and i just hope that they can not make justin herbert's life a living hell for the next four years that's all yeah that would be that would be cool are you off the steelers feels like people are off the steelers so i'm off of them in the short term and until I see otherwise,

um, Roethlisberger just hobbling around. Um, he's not using the, the deeper intermediate part of the field. Saw some analysis from that last couple of weeks where he's just, he can only make certain throws right now. And I like the talent around him.

Um, I, you know, someone like chase Claypool, like a super duper star in the beginning of the season. TJ Watt still leads the league in pressures on defense, make up as Patrick as elite.

I think that they have a... They will have a similar outlook to the New Orleans Saints, who are starting Drew Brees on Sunday, it looks like, according to Adam Schefter. They have such talent, and they're going to have

a quarterback who is banged up, who does not throw the ball down the field. I mean, we talk about Drew Brees. We've been saying he can't throw down the field for, for a couple of years now. He's a yard less. It's so bad.

He's a yard less in the air than he was last year. Okay. He's like every air, every air yard number that I go through. Like I like that next gen stuff and it can tell you some stories. And then every now and then you'll be like, wait, that doesn't make any sense. You're like, yeah, he just has a good number

and he hasn't been that good. Breeze is always at the bottom of all of them. Like it's hard to find one. Alex Smith is charging. I will say that on how low the depth of target is. Alex Smith is in the hunt to replace Breeze. That's why he was benched by Harbaugh. And then Smith had like a weird thing in Kansas City where he actually just getting the ball down the field

to get so that was weird because my Alex Smith number that I say to all Alex Smith people is there was a third down number there for like two years where he was throwing behind the sticks for like an entire year and you just went we can't we can't do this man you've got to take some shots to give us you can't all be on the receiver to get the first down after the catch. So I guess what I'm saying is that the Saints and the Steelers are in the same situation, and they're going to have to rely on the talent around them, and then a quarterback who generally knows what he's doing but can't do everything he's ever been able to do. I think when you get into the playoffs and you're going against a Packers team or even a Rams team

or a Chiefs team in the Steelers case, I think that that starts to catch up with you. And I think that this season is probably more of a mess than we think. And I think that the difference between this season and other seasons is much bigger when you talk to people inside the league. And I talked to someone a couple days ago who basically said that the Chiefs chief success masks how inconsistent and kind of how much of a mess this is from week to week and how if the chiefs weren't as dominant and weren't able

to solve their own problems as quickly we probably talk a lot more about how every team is just super duper flawed right and so i think that there's um i think that with, I think that predicting what's going to happen in January is getting less and less of a good idea. And I think that when I was talking to Jake Wayser the other day about this, he was saying, you know, there's bonding in the locker room and there's you know as glazer put it people saying i would die for the guy next to me in my in my locker room they don't even know these guys this year they can't eat team meals like they see each other practice and say this guy there's probably guys they don't even know you know each other's names um there's isolation quarterbacks i mean everything is so different this year i've actually spent and this is gonna sound weird i spent a lot of time studying leadership

and why guys play hard or whatever. John Maxwell? And all that stuff. More like, I mean, not John Maxwell. Do I need to read Maxwell? No, I think he has a bunch of those books you see at airports. I bought one when I was younger. I was trying to get my shit together. Are you a better leader from it?

I would say my leadership style is assertiveive there's a book there's a book called masters of the air by donald miller it's all about fighter pilots in world war ii about the bombing raids and it's mostly about the bombing raids but there's some stuff in there about why guys care about the people on their team that is as good as anything i've ever read like guys they don't care. They didn't care about... At a certain point, they did not care about serving their country,

even though they were bombing Europe all the time. They only cared about people inside their plane. And they would make these packs and really interesting stuff. Do you think you're a leader? I am a certain type of leader. Yeah. I'm a leader.

Yeah. But I'm not a classic... Well, I'm not like. Yeah. But now I'm not on that classic. Well, I'm not like a classic like Brady. Maybe I am like a like a I'm more of like a a lot of leading

by example. I would say like an Elon Musk type. I don't know what an Elon Musk type leader is. Could you expand on that? I would say a nonconformist.

Sure. I would say I like to put people in my orbit. I like to put them in positions to exceed. I'm like a Belichick type. And if I know people can do well, I only want them doing that thing. I don't want to put them in position to fail. I want them, okay, you do this well, that's your job. Do you offer praise when it's not deserved? Sometimes if I need to get somebody going. If I need to get somebody going. If I'm just like this guy, and I don't really have it. Everybody I work with, whether in all mediums here at The Ringer, is really good at their jobs. Yeah. Now, when you're hosting a show like I was, I could, I could hear an argument for not a great leader, but I could hear an argument for a great leader, which is, I think that's, that's perfect. The mark of a true leader.

Yeah. Just is that some people think you're a bad leader. Yes, yes, exactly. I've also heard that those that seek leadership and don't attain it is like the worst thing ever. So you're just better off being a follower you know because there's nothing worse than a bad leader like i don't like guys on all the sidelines that i've been on where you can just tell where the guy be like come on fourth quarter this is what we got to do it and you're just like yep this guy's not good at it he's not good i would also say that like someone like marcus mariota is considered like the best leader. Anybody's ever been around. And then it turns out he just got injured a lot and this wasn't very good

and it didn't end up mattering necessarily. So there's, you have to be, can't put the, you know, the cart before the horse and leadership. You do have to be a good quarterback first. Yeah.

I heard no more was a bad leader, but that's the thing is like, the problem is, is if you're the best player on a team, then everybody expects you to be the leader. and sometimes that doesn't necessarily happen all the time like nomar when he was with boston was just a bummer of a time he's a really good player and he seems like he's mellowed out a little bit i don't really know him we worked with him a little bit at espn um but he he was just somebody who was really really good and then in boston everybody's

like okay well this is the guy you know this is the guy that's going to be a leader. And it's like, no, I'm actually, I just want to kind of go out there and do my job. Like, I'm not great. I'm not going to do speeches. I'm not going to get guys to rally behind me. Like Kevin Millar may have been a better leader just because of personality, not because of numbers. So now we're talking about the 0304 Red Sox, which I didn't want to get to. So I would say this, I would say that the NFL has had problems understanding the younger generation of quarterbacks, someone like Jared Goff or even someone like Marcus Mariota, where they're a little quieter in the huddle. A lot of these guys played no huddle in high school or college or whatever. time like guys are going i don't know if he's going and the tape wasn't always great his second year he was better two years ago i thought on tape but they're like i don't know about this guy in the huddle and it doesn't matter i mean herbert's been putting together one of the great

rookie seasons the position we've ever seen gms love to see like one play where where the quarterback grabbed offensive lineman's face mask on the sideline but not not too many but just like one or two over the four years. And I think that that's, they're starting to understand that stuff matters less and less on the field and the huddle.

I think it's more, I think leadership to me in football is like work ethic and building chemistry and not being a jackass and like that sort of thing. And I think that there's, I think that GMs and coaches

don't necessarily understand. Listen, almost all teams have done studies on understanding Gen Z and how they learn and how they interact and stuff like that. And I still don't think they get it. Yeah, my biggest thing would be don't hold hands. Like eventually, you know, direction. Yeah.

Don't waste people's time. If you want to give people feedback, give them one piece of feedback and then move on don't give five pieces of feedback because then they're just not going to retain it all um you just brought up a great point if i'm a projected first round pick if i'm justin fields this week if i'm mac jones or kyle trask or who knows i'm asking one of my offensive line buddies based on this podcast i'm like hey at some point like in the second quarter i'm gonna come over to the sideline and yank your face mask at me and i'm gonna say do you guys want any raising canes tonight like i'm not even gonna

be actually swearing but it's gonna look like i'm super intense and then i'm gonna point at you and you're gonna nod as if you accepted my leadership that guy's draft stock's gonna fucking skyrocket i would be if i'm a qb, if I'm any guy, coach, you just invented something that's perfect. This is like, it's totally different. I want Alabama to have Devontae Smith complete a pass for less than two yards and totally gets blown up so that like a lot of Heisman voters go, that's my guy, he attempted a pass.

I want quarterbacks that are projected NFL draft picks to start grabbing their friends' face masks to convince all of us that they're intense. They care about winning and they're great leaders. This is amazing what you just did. there started to be guys who would coach players on how to go through the combine interviews and they realized what coaches and gms wanted to hear and then the gms and the coaches realized that like before blurting out like it's you know it would be something like you know uh they would say like hey man how you doing and the quarterback would just be like well i'm doing well i had a great relationship with my high school coach from the time I was in ninth grade. And they'd be like,

what the hell? It's like everybody one year came in and they had the exact same talking points. I love the, did you, when's the last time you cheated on your girlfriend? Like as if you're going to be tricked, like you won't want to admit it,

but you'll go, Oh, Saturday. And you're like, Oh damn it. And then they go, yeah, can't read a defense. And what if the guy goes, I cheated on my girlfriend all the time. What's up?

Had 20 sacks. Are they going to go like his edge, like his first step, don't like that he's not faithful? I get that it's not the answer it's how he answers it i just think it'd be hilarious if a guy was like yeah i'm a dog man dog what was the bangles i heard the bangles used to ask civil war trivia questions or something i i don't what what happens like what happens when you get them wrong I think they want to see what you do when you're put in an uncomfortable situation wasn't there a big thing where where

Matthew Stafford uh got extremely upset probably correctly because the 49ers uh grilled him on his parents own divorce yeah I don't know i mean yeah because especially at that age i don't know i wouldn't want to talk about it then but at the same time too if i were that age and i'm potentially the number one pick i'd probably just start blabbering left and right about it but i'd be like what are you gonna do like have me break down i'm still still hanging on to a lot of stuff emotionally i'm not always I'm not always there. I'd be like, okay, this isn't our guy. Let's take somebody else. All right.

Let's get back to your Saints thing. Yeah, my Steward's point. My Steward's point, which is that I think that you have to already have built something as far as a cohesive culture or whatever it is. And you have to have a bunch of self starters. And I think with Tomlin and Sean Payton, both of those guys have built something where it can run on its own. And so that's why I'm a little bit more optimistic about this team than I normally would be is that the most teams are at huge disadvantages when it comes to that stuff.

And I don't believe the saints and stewards necessarily are. I don't think Ben Roethlisberger is the greatest leader in the world, by the way. But I think that there's just something there with those two coaching staffs and the continuity and all that stuff. Listen, I'm coming around to the Packers winning the NFC, but I would not be surprised if the Saints make a run here. Okay, let's stay in the NFC then,

because the three seed behind the Saints and the Packers, the Rams, there's two coaching parts that I want to hit on here. Is it safe to say that for all that you had some incredible McVay tree zingers, like you were kind of the go-to, you could have rebranded yourself as the McVay coaching tree zinger guy, but the McVay trees worked. Has it? Oh, resistance. Or we don't know.'t know no no we don't know yet so i think in some

places like green bay it has definitely worked uh but i would also say that that's that's the shanahan i think that's listen first of all it's the shanahan tree you're right okay right it is it's the shanahan tree and so with green Green Bay, he came up with Kyle Shanahan. Yes, there's a McVay connection with Zach Taylor. And within Cincinnati, he hasn't necessarily worked. Sean McVay is still an awesome coach. We're seeing that this year. And so I think that the Andy Reid tree is probably still number one over the last 20 years.

I would say the Shanahan tree is right around there. Matt Nagy doing a terrible job of carrying the torch for the Andy Reid tree right now, but Eric Bien-Ami is going to bring it back up next year. I think that, yeah, I think that the McVeigh thing... Kingsbury's considered a Shanahan tree guy, right? I guess, yeah. Well, I guess maybe more on style. So the Zach Taylor one, it's tough to argue that one.

I think at least Arizona, even with some recent midseason blips, they're heading in a better direction than they were. And I still would include Shanahan in the tree because it's actually his dad's tree. So I don't know. I just think for all the people who are like, oh, this is all you're going to do. There's more wins than losses, at least right now. Can you come in? Let me ask you a question. If Goff plays really badly and they get to the Super Bowl,

like Goff is one of the worst players under pressure in football. He's along with Baker Mayfield. I think their rating is like 45 or something when there's people in their face. Out of 1,000? Out of 1,000. Out of 158.

I look at it two ways. I think that Jared Goff being average and the Rams being good obviously makes Sean McVay look good. But is there... How do you view kind of the credit that you give McVay for developing Jared Goff

into an average quarterback, I guess you could say is the question. Should we expect more out of him because he plays in such a good system with Goff, or is McVay maximizing Goff to the point that we should be impressed just based on what we've seen in the past from Goff? I'm more impressed because I thought Goff was so bad his first year. Yeah, that's my thing. But part of that's Jeff Fisher, right?

Easy. I was just, you know, it's funny as I was just talking about Jeff Fisher the other day. Do you remember when they gave him a $7 million extension just for moving? Absolutely. Yeah, that was great. They tacked on another year at, I think, $7 million.

And then whoever broke the story came on my radio show. They're like, well, Ryan, he had to move a franchise. I was was like he's not out fucking packing the mayflowers all right he's not boxing up stuff so anyway um that's two weeks ago jared goff is from shilkapati at the athletic his average pass traveled three and a half yards past the line of scrimmage and he still threw for 351 yards because the rams had the rams had 253 yards after the catch that's yeah so that's why I look at McVay is now do you see things that Shanahan does against McVay where it's it's just Shanahan knows everything McVay is going to do so Sal and everybody's totally on the same page because it's weird that they've beaten him twice I think I think it is I think it's a

little bit of that I think that I that McVay taking a step back and obviously Shanahan's always going to know what McVay wants to do. But I think that the fact that McVay took a step back and I saw people compare the Rams with the Ravens actually where once kind of the book got out

on that offense, they took an entire year for them to make adjustments. I think with the Rams, I think their ability to bounce back from an uneven offensive line banged up 2019, I think it just shows you that Sean McVay is a better coach than we even thought. I've just been hugely impressed.

I was joking last year about how Sean McVay was the new Chip Kelly where he had one pitch. He used it. They figured it out and it was over. That, to me, even though I was joking last year about how Sean McVay was the new Chip Kelly, where he had one pitch, he used it, they figured it out, and it was over. That, to me, even though I was joking at the time, that's not... I think we know now he's got a number of pitches, and I've been hugely impressed with it. The Shanahan thing is probably always going to be there, though.

The Rams part of this with McVay is the headline. The headline should be the defense. I had somebody who I really trust, who I think is terrific, who's with a team, was like, you know, you guys need to start talking about Brandon Staley, the defensive coordinator for the Rams, the way you talk about McVay. Because Staley's going to be the next head coach, but he's the McVay of defense, the stuff he's doing.

And I understand not playing, that there are limitations, but he was taking me through it, and that a lot of the stuff Staley's doing and i understand not playing that there are limitations but he was explaining he was taking me through it and that a lot of the stuff staley's do so i checked around and more people are like yeah like people are looking at what the rams are doing that the rams are doing things defensively in a way that if it were an offense we'd all be freaking out and talking about it but we just don't do that with defense yeah uh staley and we talked about this a couple weeks ago when i drafted brandon staley in our coaching staff that's right draft Yeah. Staley. And we talked about this a couple weeks ago when I drafted Brandon Staley in our coaching staff. That's right.

Draft. I took Staley probably before anybody else. That was October. I think you were on that early. My God, I was on that early. And I think that we see is still a lot of the same things, which is they can stop the run without committing to the run.

And they know how to play the past in a really interesting way. And the point I made back then is a point that's been made by a couple people, including Seth Galina, that the revolution that already came to offenses is coming to defenses with more college schemes, just understanding everything. I don't want to... Actually, I'm going to write the story. So if anybody out there is thinking about writing the story after I say it,

you're not allowed to until I write it. Brandon Staley was a blogger four years ago. I swear to God, he wrote for a website that I read all the time called X's and O's Labs. He was a coordinator at

James Madison, something like that. Right, but he definitely was coaching, just so people understand this. Oh, no, he was coaching. He was coaching, so people understand this. He's super tapped into the internet. He understands how to explain these things and how to make connections and all that stuff. His rise this year has been incredible. There was hype. I remember Peter Schrager was actually the first person I remember to hype Brandon Staley up

after the hire was made because there were a lot of questions. He was born in 1982. He's only 38. Bad year for coordinators. He was the outside linebackers coach in 2017 in 2016 he was the secondary coach and defensive coordinator john carroll in 2014 he was at james madison he was he was a graduate assistant at 20 in 2012 at tennessee who was

that was that uh duly jones derrick duly wow super staff it's really I mean the Dooley tree probably underrated he was a graduate assistant but like he I I kind of think that there's a next wave of of coaches who understand how to use the resources of the internet and stuff like that and the fact that Staley was just writing for this website while he was coaching a couple years ago is really fascinating to me. Very early, I think maybe second week, you wrote a big piece

about Cam Newton. How did 31 other owners let this happen? How did he go to the Patriots? Are you writing part two? Why 31 other owners passed on Cam Newton? I think we see it.

I think we see it. I think that, you know, to defend my piece, I'll say a couple of things. Number one is that, obviously, the things we saw in September that led me to make those declarations have not continued. So I was wrong. What I mean by that, the declarations I'm talking about is saying, if you're an owner right now, you should be yelling at your GM for not offering Cam Newton any contract.

I think that there are still red flags if your GM did not call Cam Newton for $1.1 million. He was available and there were two teams that called a former MVP who was on the open market and ready to accept the minimum. And he was ready to be a backup or whatever. the minimum. Okay. And he was ready to be a backup or whatever. And so the point of the piece I wrote was basically saying like, if you didn't do your due diligence, you should feel bad.

Okay. I actually still believe that. Cam Newton is the 884th highest paid player in the NFL. The Panthers are paying more money to Cam Newton this year against the salary cap than the Patriots are. And so I think that the process on that whole thing was illuminating. What I was totally wrong about is how productive Cam Newton could be.

And I'll take my medicine on that one. I thought the COVID stuff was obviously strange. But I think as far as just the recovery from that and how the Patriots have looked in the past two months. But I would say that I thought that there was a way this offense could look, and it just hasn't been efficient. And I think from a team standpoint, the Patriots are cooked once the defensive opt-outs happened. But offensively, I had a little bit of optimism that Kim Newton could build sort of a rushing attack that could be interesting. The wide receivers have not been much help,

but I had a vision for this that I think we saw at the first three, four weeks of the season that just didn't carry on. So I was wrong about Cam Newton, and I don't think there's much wiggle room there. A couple things. We had no idea historically how bad Seattle was defensively, especially in the secondary the first month of the season. It was off the charts terrible. So his big out against them.

They got Miami pretty good. No, but I'm saying that first, I think the first four games or something, when I look at their numbers and they were like 80 yards worse than the second worst team through the year, I was like, gosh. And so they're like, okay, wait, maybe Cam. I thought the Vegas game was a bad sign because they won and everybody's like oh cam figured it out and i'm like i don't know i don't think cam is good and the weapons are terrible

and i actually think he's really hurt now now i think he's really hurt watching him in that rams game get down to a knee on the huddle and then watching him try to get up and they had great camera access to it you could see it on his face so i don't even know like i didn't love his throwing motion before. I have no idea what the hell's going on now. So I'm actually backing you up there a little bit. So I didn't want to make you feel like I was coming at you. Last thing.

Last thing. Slow News Day. It's terrific. Check it out with Kevin on our ringer web page. You had Adam Schefter on. I got to admit, it felt like Schefter was campaigning a bit for an Emmy nomination. Do you feel used? No. I mean, a week ago, Chris Collinsworth came on and said he wants his MVP vote back.

If Slow News Day becomes the place where we start campaigns, I'm fine with that. You know? Okay, I need to think of mine. Didn't Arnold Schwarzenegger go on Jay Leno to announce his candidacy for California's governor? It's the same thing. It's the same thing. Yeah. It's the same thing. So it was same thing. Yeah. It's the same thing. So, it was a great episode. I thought he was an amazing guest. An amazing guest. I think he was

maybe one of our best ever. He also, and this is important. Take it easy. One of our best outside guests ever. Non-ringer affiliates. I think that he understood,

he got the show. Like, he knew the segments and stuff. Yeah. No, he's very rare. It very rarely happens with people who are outside the Ringer universe. Like he'd clearly seen it before. And I think that we all had after we logged off a little bit of elation that like Adam Schefter knew like how the show worked because most people just log on and like, what is this a podcast? Adam Schefter was not that. I'm going to try to do a bad job then next

time. I'm going to try to get it as little as possible. So I'm looking forward to that one in 2021. Yeah. Well, anytime you want to come on and do a bad job, you're more than welcome. Can't wait. Looking forward to it. Thank you, Kevin. Anytime, Ryan. Alright, just a moment. We're going to talk with Jay Harrington, actor,

famous guy out in Los Angeles on getting his career started and where he's at now with the CBS show. Okay, our guest is an actor. His name is Jay Harrington. You may know him from SWAT, where he plays Sergeant David Deacon Kay. He's also been to Desperate Housewives, Suits, Nash Bridges. I went through his entire resume in preparation for this. But the cool thing about Jay is that back when I was living in Malibu, I would use the famous person Equinox, which is up in Santa Monica. It's just funny, Jay, because like that Equinox, it's just something about Santa Monica. I think it's closer to work for people. Maybe it's closer. A lot of people like lived a little bit inland from there. And there's all sorts of people in there. And you were nice enough to say hi to me. And I'm always kind of like in my own little zone where i'm like huh what's going on and then you know you're from mass and you're this really accomplished guy so you're really nice to me when i was first trying to get my feet wet out there no i saw you i'm like that's that's priscilla what the hell is he doing here um and yeah i think you're most recognizable from the the nba celebrity all-star game where i saw you yeah that wasn't that was i trying to get into that so many times it's a tough

it's a tough sell to get anybody to i saw i was kudos to you for getting on there at all yeah well it's an espn product so you'd like to think you'd be able to get into it at some point um but it is it is tough and i'm not super proud of of that performance uh going into it but your whole thing like whenever you research you, I'm actually a little disappointed that your PR people need to get on it a little bit more because the first thing that comes up is Basketball Celebrity League,

the Entertainment League, and then they were going over stats and everything. So what's that all about? Is that league actually as good as I hear it is? Because I heard that stuff to get into. It was.

I mean, it's no longer in existence, but there was a time when it was actually an NBA product. So we would get, it was i mean it's it's no longer in existence but there was a time when it was it was actually an nba product so we would get it was called nbae nba entertainment we would get full bags of jersey like whatever team you wore that season it was you got the jerseys the socks the every kind of gear you could get and of course i'd always lobby to be the celtics so i have a whole ton of Celtics gear. I was on Raptors, the Heat. So you get all this cool stuff.

And then what you find is... Can you guys demand trades too, like the real NBA? We had like draft stuff where you would try to lobby. So my best player for five years, my team was mostly Dean Cain for years, Bob Myers, who at the time was the agent so the Bob Myers the Golden State Warriors Bob Myers yeah so it was I think the first

championship I'm looking at the celebration and I'm like wait that's Bob I didn't I never really paid attention to their GM situation but he was an agent at the time and he had played situation and but he was an agent at the time and he had played at UCLA um and he was our big man unfortunately his real game is that he's like a spot-up three-point shooter so he'd have like 30 rebounds but 28 of them were his own miss on the

layup because his strength bring that up yeah no his strength was the three point he would just run down the court stop pop and run backwards it was going. It was going in. So we won once. But it was great. I remember trying to throw a full-court pass with a few seconds left against a team that had Jason Sehorne on it. As I'm letting go, I'm like, okay, that's an all-pro defensive back safety. What am I – okay, yeah, of course he picked it off. But so it was fun.

We got to play with all sorts of guys, actors, producers, and then athletes. Rick Fox was on the team for a little bit. Yeah, it was great. Yeah, that's good then. Those are pickup games. Every now and then at ESPN, a guy would watch us play, and the ESPN league was pretty good, but rarely did Jalen Rose want to play in it or something and then

chris chris mullen would come by and he would just shoot it from 30 not even warmed up suit and you just not that you needed a reminder that a guy at six seven who shot the lights out his entire life is a good shooter right there would just be these little moments and then every johnson would come out and yell at us he'd be like this is some bad basketball this is bad and he would just he would be like you guys suck and you're like all right all right relax but yeah that's everything with your resume always brings up all the hoops and everything but the reason i think it's funny is because that gym it's got a bunch of like a like remember one time and i'm not trying to like be weird about it because everybody's kind of sticks to themselves but it is a weird deal when you come from the

east coast and you're working out at a gym in west hartford and then all of a sudden you're like is that hillary swank on the pull down like what's going on here and she does work out there and then it's really sweet i've talked to her she's so nice and then there was um the one that actually i felt bad about after the fact was the guy that plays toby in the office who's like a big show runner too and i saw him working out and he was dressed like toby would be working and he had like tens on the bench press and I brought it up on Simmons podcast. And then it just went. And I go, you know, if there's guys trying to break into TV writing,

I probably shouldn't start goofing on a show runner. But it was just fascinating that it was as if Toby were fully in character working out. And I was like, all right, I'm just going to leave this guy alone. You just got to learn. Button down shirt on. Yeah. The reason I love that gym back when they had gyms was that I would go midday and it was usually quite empty. Um, so it was, you know, and it's right near my house. So I love it, but I miss those days when you could go to a place and work out. Let's go backwards a little bit

because there are a lot of people that when they're younger, they'll say, hey, I want to be an actor. You're from Massachusetts. A lot of people, it's just family, you know, finding a way in. I know your background a little bit, but what's the moment where you go, this is actually something I'm really going to pursue and you pack up and get after it?

Well, when I realized that if I go to college and major in theater i'd never had to take math or science ever again that was a big part of it but i'd done i'd done it since i was a little kid there was a theater on cape cod down the street from my house and um with three boys and you know no cable and when it was raining out there's not a lot to do and we went down there they had classes and i just kind of got into it and when you're a boy auditioning for and it was like adults were teaching they were having summer vacation I'd had some amazing teachers from New York and from Trinity Rep in Providence Rhode Island but when

you're a boy audition there's not a lot of boys doing stuff girls at that age were into it so I was getting roles all the time and I kept going and going. And I was doing a play as an early teenager in Boston and the casting director saw the play and asked me to come out of audition for a McDonald's commercial. And I had no pictures or nothing. I just was still in high school and I got it. And they flew me to L.A. and I was here for a week and did a McDonald's commercial. And that's when I kind of realized I could make money doing this. That's fun. And I had this sort of ignorance about it. So when I was going through college and Syracuse is where I went and I went there on purpose.

I chose that place because they had sports and they had a campus, you know, I could have gone to NYU and studied theater, but I was 17 as a freshman. I wanted to be in a campus environment. And so it was well-rounded. And then by the time I got to New York, I just always had this ignorance like, yeah, this is what I'm going to do. And it's carried me kind of through, I think. Is it being delusional though? Because sometimes I'll tell younger people,

like sometimes being delusional is the best thing you could possibly be like. We've probably had friends where they're not the best looking guy and they'll be hitting on the most beautiful woman and you go, why are you doing that? But then in a way I'm like, you know, I kind of envy that he doesn't think twice about it.

And that could be a huge benefit in your career, but then it also can get to the line like anything where you're like, don't be so delusional that you actually are annoying to be around. And you have to work. I mean, I have people ask me all the time about advice. You can't really give advice for how to be an actor in every, every path is going to be different. But you just, I knew it's what I wanted to do. I studied.

I continued to study when I was in New York for a few years, when I came out here, finding class, just kind of. What's studying though? Can you help us understand like what it's like to actually learn like,

oh, this is something that will make me better at this. Well, I mean, there's lots of ways for preparation. You get a scene from it, whether it's a TV show or a play of ways to, for preparation, you get a scene from whether it's a TV show or a play and you work with a partner and you get up in front of other people and do it and have them, you know, tell you how they think. I mean, that's a big part of scene work, but, um, there's, there's, I think you have to have inherently some kind of, not a gift,

but you have to have it a little bit. bit um and then it's just like a sport i mean you have some kid that's was the best kid in your high school and you thought that kid's going to be a pro and then he didn't do anything because he didn't put any work in so it's similar in that way um just like sports like with the ncaa you got basketball you're watching these guys in march and then you only have ever heard of seven of them afterwards because you realize the pool is so huge and the talent is that's not a lot of slots in there for but can it be something where you go hey i didn't know what i looked like i mean this may sound absurd to you okay so i'm just going to ask is like a person that doesn't understand it but if you watch back a scene where you go i don't like

the way my face looks here and then somebody teaches you hey have this kind of reaction and then you almost have go-to moves like in sports where you're like all right that's jay's doing his thing he's doing kind of a side smile because he's a swat guy but he's he's tough and like do you end up having go-to things that you learn that work better that make you a better actor i think i mean i guess you could probably interpret it that way for me and for this show specifically the writers have written for me in such a way that i you know just listen just listen the biggest key to acting is listening to the other person and you get the most one of the directors always jokes when he's editing the episodes he always goes he can always cut to me even when i'm not talking because i'm

listening and i'm giving him you know know, reactions to what's happening. And that's a big part of it. I mean, someone said to me when I was a little kid, acting is reacting. So it's, it sounds simple, but I mean,

it is, it's simple. It's not easy, but it is simple. Sean Ryan, um, is part of SWAT creator, the shield,

which is, I think historically will be remembered as a show that really pushed the boundaries of what the roles were supposed to be. And, you know, whenever we go back and look at this, this golden age of television, it's, it's brought up with Oz. It's brought up with the wire and Sopranos. What's it like work with somebody who, you know, you've had this relationship with, and then he's part of swap where I feel like the trust has to be there. That's, that's unbelievably, it just has to make you comfortable, more comfortable in a way where you're like, all right, this is a big deal. It's a CBS show. It's on all the time. It gets big numbers. I am your main character,

but the creator part of the creation team here is somebody I've worked with in the past. Yeah. And, um, you know, I actually did an episode of the shield. Um,

and I got, and actually you mentioned Nash bridges, which is such a random, um, IMDB was one, you know, episode, but he actually wrote on that show too, which was just a coincidence. But he, you know, when we started the show, the first episode, this is three years or four years ago, our team leader shoots an unarmed black teen in South Central LA and gets fired. And so we were sort of ahead of stuff at that point in terms of storytelling.

But what ended up happening the first season or two is we were, we were asking Sean for more of that, more shield, more shield. And his thing was be patient because first of all, that's not the kind of show this is. We're not going to get into the Rampart scandal. We're not doing that. However, we got to let these these when you're doing network television the shield was different because fx had never had a tv show so he could kind of it was an experiment in a sense whereas this is a little more formulaic like let's the first two seasons you got to bring the audience in so they

can understand who these characters are then by season three season four if we get that far that's when you can start getting into stuff. And we're doing that now. We're, we're, we're, we're addressing all sorts of issues within police, you know, that stuff that's out there right now. But, um, cause I had some trepidation going into this season when we were off this time, I thought I'm playing, you know, white police officer in LA. This is, this is going to, what is my responsibility going to be but um so you know like you said it's trust and and he had success before so how how much because you know i was reading something

recently like where it was basically blaming police roles and television to being complicit the way that policing is looked at now and we've probably changed the way we talk about all of it now in the last few years with the heightened, I don't know if awareness is the right word or what, or more people realizing what's going on or the debates about what's going on. But how does that impact what you guys are doing when you're trying to tell a story and when you get a script? And how different is maybe just playing somebody in law enforcement today in television than it was five, 10 years ago?

Well, what's different from the get-go with this show is, and what's interesting about SWAT in L.A. specifically, it's still the go-to for all places all over the world to come train, or SWAT team members from L.A. will go to other countries and train. It's the best tactical training there is. These guys, you don't just get in because you know somebody. These guys are the best at what they do. And I follow them on social media.

Even more than nine times out of ten, they respond to so many calls. They're always ended without incident. Their goal is to go in and to diffuse the situation. When you're talking about a hostage with a weapon and whatever it may be, because of the training they do. So we always had this idea that we're not just, this isn't like a cop where we come up and you see the body, like what's going on here? What do we got? That was good though. You delivered that line well. That was like the beginning of every single SVU. Right. And the difference in our show is, in those shows, it's the first few minutes you find out what happened,

and the rest of the hours, who did it. Whereas ours is, we show what happened, and the hours spent trying to, we know who did it, and we're trying to get them. But the respect I have for the guys, and I've met a bunch of them, that help us with our stuff. We have a technical advisor all day who's a retired San Diego SWAT team member. These guys, they don't just walk around and look for trouble.

I mean, they're only getting called when it's dire, and they know every time they're going in that there's a chance that they'll die. And what's crazy is that they've only lost one SWAT member in Los Angeles in the 30-something years history. It was Randall Simmons. Yeah, he's the only officer. And the story is crazy. They went and responded to an incident. A guy had his dad hostage.

He was the second or third guy in. The guy just was running down the hall and fired a gun without looking, and it hit him, and they just kept on with what they do. They stepped, the team just kept moving and moving and advancing. They, they got the guy. And then like the last guy,

they bring out the officer and he was down and that's the only person they've lost. And it was the saddest. There's a, it's great thing on YouTube about him, but it's pretty remarkable that that's the only officer they've lost. How important is it to you that the real guys that do it respect at least the work you're putting in to try to make it look as real as possible?

Because I got to imagine that like, you know, there's probably some SWAT guys that watch a show and go whatever. No, we're actually, I swear we do. I get guys that write me that because of the work we put in our guy, Odie Gallop, who's actually from Maine. Oh, no kidding. Yeah. In San Diego. He's there every day. work we put in our guy uh odie gallop who's actually from uh from maine who's kidding yeah in san diego he he's there every day so since the beginning we trained for two weeks with him before we even started and um i'm at the point with with weapons and i just it's so second nature

and when we're going into a room we kind of already know how to how to breach and where to go and and um he's he got a comment in a newspaper paper recently from the last episode just just how fluid we are and and it that's what i when we're doing those sequences i want to make those guys do the opposite of what you said to actually say wow they're doing it correctly i guess i was just going by internet and that no matter what you do it was just just going to be like, Oh, I can't believe, I can't believe Jay would be the second in on clearing that that's, he's in the wrong position or something. Just go like, all right, all right. All right.

No, I know it was one, I had one post once where I was standing there in between a take. So it was like seconds before rolling. And my gun was just at my, you know, my, my primary weapon was hanging in it. And I, I wrote, have a safe Labor Day weekend or something. And someone's like, oh, the irony, his weapon's hot. Because it wasn't unsafe, but we were about to shoot. I'm like, ah, can't win.

You can't win. Leading up to something like this, because I do want to, you know, I'm kind of jumping around timeline here-wise, where I imagine like anybody that sets out to do something special like this you're like may you know will i be a leading man will i have the these other roles uh and there's only so many spots open very few people ever get to achieve that so then when something comes along like hey it's cbs yeah it's you know the residuals alone this is going to run it's going to rear it's going to be all these different things when you're looking at this opportunity like what is that moment like with you and your agent and hoping this works out? Clearly the relationship with Sean, I would think would give you some sort of benefit or an

advantage. You know, I don't know how that works up, but I imagine this is the kind of thing where you go, yeah, I get that. I'm not going to be nominated for an Oscar here, but this is going to, this is going to end up being something that is my thing where, you know, money-wise I'm going to look, I'm not trying to get in your pocket here, but's it's a living where all right i'm gonna have a comfortable life perhaps because i'm able to attach myself that could run for for 10 seasons yeah that moment still hasn't hit me to be honest i don't mean i i'm very if you knew all right i mean if you knew me you should if you knew the car i'd ride like i still have my 2005 yukon denali i'm i'm very i own a place in santa monica but i'm i'm very I own a place in Santa Monica but

I'm I'm very you know that's that's not my style so I still think well that would be great but who knows um but the moment yeah it was a big thing for me it had been a tough couple years leading up to getting really close on stuff and not getting it and um I changed a few things I hit the gym a little harder I just wanted to make a change just to feel better. I put on some weight. And then I was, I would use, I would shave all the time, but I was using this razor that I liked and it broke this electric thing. And so for two weeks it was sold out at Amazon and I just was letting my face grow. And my wife at the time said, you should keep, keep that going.

It looks good. And I had a beard all of a sudden and swat comes along and the people running the casting said no no we like jay but he's not right for this and my agent pushed and pushed and um thankfully sean ryan had said i've seen so many actors for this role can i start to see some people that have done comedy because people that do comedy tend to have something going on behind the eyes and they're they understand timing and comedy's hard comedy's way harder so I went in and they were like oh who's the new kid in town so yeah it was a great sort of culmination of so many things and uh my Justin Lin directed the pilot he did Fast and the Furious the franchise he's done a million of those and he um he his first movie um that he directed after his indie that got him all the

attention was Annapolis with James Franco um and Tyrese that was written by my one of my close friends from from home from Wellesley um Dave Collar so Dave then text Justin and I got I had people working all like because I night. Because I went in audition. I felt good. So then I'm like, let me see, you know, throw everything at him. And it worked out. You're going to laugh at me in my research for this.

I watched you in a hotel room maybe 10 years ago with an English guy do an interview on the lead off to Better Off Ted. Which for those that don't know, Jay was the star hotel room maybe 10 years ago with an english guy do an interview on the lead off to to better off ted oh yeah which for those that don't know jay was the star of that it probably felt like this is my moment and it gets canceled after what two seasons and yet everybody loved it everybody loved it you broke the you broke down you know the fourth wall of of the camera you would address it other characters did it it was a cool concept it it's one of those shows where it's like hey

everybody loves this and now we're canceling it and you had a different look it's also you know what 10 years ago so you just looked a little bit different but how frustrating is that moment where you go wait i've got my thing this is amazing people love it and yet we're done with it already and i think that like the rest of development you know was went through something like that and then it was survived there's a couple other examples of that and went through something like that. And then it was survived. There's a couple other examples of that. And it felt like this is one. And then it's just gone in two years.

And it's worse is that every few months it's on all these picks of, you know, the top 10 shows to watch, like during quarantine, that you may not have seen. And it was the best, you know, and it killed on Netflix and Hulu. And people would say, how come it's not on anymore? I said, well, where'd you watch it? Oh, I watched it on Hulu. Well, yeah, it's not on anymore? I said, well, where did you watch it? Oh, I watched it on Hulu. Well, yeah, that's why. Because when it was on TV, you didn't watch it. It didn't do well in the ratings, unfortunately.

But yeah, critically, it's across the board. It's one of those, you got to see the show. And it's so now pertinent. So we're actually going to do a table read of it right before New Year's for charity. The writer reached out to me and to Portia and to Andrea and Jonathan and Malcolm and even Isabella, who was my daughter. Oh, wow. Yeah, she was 10.

She's 21 now, so it's a whole different... The whole dichotomy of all of it is going to be very strange. Do you miss doing comedy then? Yeah, I do. I mean, I loved it. I had the best time. I mean, I got to do like 10 or 12 episodes of Hot in Cleveland with women from every

generation of comedy from, you know, Valerie Bertinelli and Jane Leaves and Wendy Malick and then, of course, Betty White. Like, I got to work with her for almost a year. So those are fun. The hours on comedy, that's ridiculous. You go into work at 10 o'clock on Monday for an hour.

Tuesday, maybe two hours of work. A few hours, then Friday night you tape. It's like being a bank teller. It's the best. But I'm enjoying this now. What's a day like SWAT on then? Well, now it's different. It used to be 12, 14 hours at least every day.

And we do nine day episodes. But one of those days is you're doing two episodes at once. You have two units going. So you're like, where am I? Which color shirt am I wearing? Because I forget that that ninth day was always now because of everything. They've shortened everything. We have 10 hour days and we take a full nine days to do just one episode so it's actually been a lot easier on

us and the crew so throughout this because you know from what i've heard and we were talking a little bit about this that i mean there becomes priority shows that through a pandemic let's figure out how we can get these on swat is certainly that so what what was it like getting this thing even restarted with all the uncertainty of whether or not, you know, you're going to get to this fourth season of taping episodes? Yeah. I mean, I was going into it wondering if we're going to get even asked to come back because of what's going on in current climate about police. But once we started, I mean, they, they made all these agreements about safety and protocols and it's challenging for us sometimes because they're asking you. And look, it sounds stupid.

I'm just but when you're on a set and you're about to do it, I was doing a scene with the woman, Brie Blair, who plays my wife. And the scene calls for some affection and some reassurance from a husband to a wife. And they got to have us like six feet apart, right? Rolling into it. You're wearing a mask, but you're trying to rehearse with an actor. And like, I can't really see their face. So it's like, or, you know, I, sometimes it's a little bit frustrating and it was getting to me more a while ago. And I've had to make a decision like, look, you got to get over this.

This is it. We're lucky to be working. And I don't want it to get shut down. And this crew is depending on all of us. And I think CBS and Sony probably thought they're in good shape, these guys, maybe we can start with them and see how it goes. You know, as opposed to a show that might have an older cast member or whatnot. So it was a lot going in, but we're, we're, we're doing it. I mean, we've had a couple hiccups, but not really even, um, a couple of cases that were positive of crew members that are like one who's in construction. So he's never actually on set and it just, we're,

we're lucky, but we're doing, we're also, we're paying attention to the rules and doing the best we can. To be on this kind of show then, is it to the point, doing the best we can to be on this kind of show. Then is it to the point, is it the first time in your life where it's, it's auto now you're just recognized everywhere. Like,

no, I don't, I don't know. I don't think so. I still get that. Like, do I know you from high school kind of look, you know,

or like, um, but I, I, it depends where I go. I mean, if I'm in an airport sometimes, or if I'm like in Vegas,

when there are people from the Midwest, but in LA, you know, and, and I'm in an airport sometimes or if I'm in Vegas, when there are people from the Midwest. But in LA, no. And I guess in Boston too when I'm home, I'll get some of that. I had a fun one in Boston actually two years ago. I was staying at the Liberty Hotel. I stay there all the time. I love the hotel. That's the best hotel I think

anywhere. If that was in a Florida or Miami or just that just that decor that's that place yeah it's just the setup i mean it's when it's packed in the lobby the balcony lobby area it's almost overwhelming you're like wait but it's great because you're staying there you just go and then alibi downstairs i don't know what it is and for those that aren't listening it's not even the location necessarily because it's it's right there like um stirro it's not even the location necessarily because it's it's right there like um sterro it's right next to sterro but it's walking distance to the garden it's really like towards north station

the hospital's right there it's it's not the the location of it it's that it was an old jail yeah and so there's all this really cool stuff going on inside of it and it just i don't know it's my favorite place i can't believe you that. It's my favorite place to stay too. So, well, I don't know if you know that, you know, on weekends there's like a club and I think alibi is what it is.

And there was a lot, like a line down the street. And I just come from meeting a couple of buddies up the street and I'm walking back and I'm like, Oh geez, now I'm a guest at the hotel, but I kind of walk up and guys like, Oh,

can I help you, sir? And then, uh, Boston PD is guys like six, five just looks over me. He goes, what's up Deke? kind of walk up and guys like, can I help you, sir? And then Boston PD, this guy's like 6'5", just looks over me and goes, what's up, Deke?

And he like said, come on in. I'm like, hey, all right. Yeah, for those who don't know, Boston's not, you know, Boston would be the kind of place where you'd be like, all right, the line's over there, buddy. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, like, oh, SWAT? Yeah, whatever. No, I get that. I get the police officer, Santa Monica, I'm driving six months ago and I'm at a four-way stop sign. It's my turn to go, and they're next. And I go, and I kind of turn in front of him, and my window's down,

and he goes, hey, what's up, SWAT? So I thought I was about to get pulled over, but it turned out. And I see these guys. They'll just give me the nod. You guys shooting? All right, good. Well, stay safe. Was there a moment, like when you got off the plane and you moved in, like,

when did you move to LA? How old were you? Uh, uh, let's see. Um, 22 years ago, I drove cross country.

You drove. Okay. Um, people have told me, you know, I think there's, there's people that a lot of people listen to the podcast, you know,

like, Hey, you know, what's, what's that like? I've been told you have to have no choice. Like success is your only choice. And then it still doesn't guarantee anything. But those beginning year where you invited out here, you'd done a few things. You're like, all right, I'm going to give it a shot. I'm going to give it two years. I'm going at UCLA, which helped. So he was here. And then one of my best friends from college is Taye Diggs, and he was shooting a movie. He had just done How Stella Got Her Groove Back,

and he had like a couple movies lined up. So he was here. He's a New York guy. So I had that and then a high school friend. So I came out here, and I thought, I had just done a little indie in Boston. I had a little bit of VHS tape. I had my McDonald's commercial and like two scenes in this movie.

And my first place I lived, the neighbor was, I was here a week and she's like, oh, my friend's in casting. I'll set you up. And I thought, oh, here we go. This is LA, right? Yeah. She literally picks the phone up

on a Friday night in her apartment. We're kind of meeting people and she talks to this woman. She said, okay? Yeah. She literally picks the phone up on a Friday night in her apartment where I'm kind of meeting people and she talks to this woman and she says, okay, good. She said, Monday, go meet this woman. So I do and her name is Randy Hiller. She's now the head of Disney casting but she was an independent

casting director. I would go to her office, she sets me up with meetings and just was so sweet and she just kind of took a liking to me and just had to do like this thought of yeah i trust me this is amazing because it's normally not like this at all it's two years of fake lunches and hope you know no and i and you know here i am now i'm like getting a little back then you could audition for everything once i got an agent i mean i auditioned for will and grace like they just saw everybody back in the day. Now it's all, I think when movie stars came back to do television, it became much more of creating a list of who they want.

But back, you know, you would just get auditions. I'd have three or four a day. So it was just quantity, quantity, quantity. I was counting the payment. And at the same time, I'm driving Tay around town because he doesn't have a license because he grew up in New York. And I'm driving him. One of the best stories I had is he got an audition for any given Sunday.

So I drive him down to USC's campus and we go on the field, the practice field, and it's Bill Bellamy, Michael Jai White, who played Tyson in that HBO movie. Was Jamie Foxx there? No, he wasn't. He hadn't got it yet, but it was puffy. It was Sean Combs was who they wanted as the quarterback. So he's up there.

Oliver Stone's got a camera set up. George Seifert is there as the tech advisor. And Diddy can't throw. I'm on the sideline throwing balls to these actors. You've seen him dive? Diddy's not an athlete. I think on the sideline throwing balls to these actors. Did you see him dive? He's not an athlete. I think it's okay. I'm throwing balls to the guys

because no one else was around to throw other than Elvis Gerbach and Joey Galloway. They're just now showing what they want the guys to do is a 10-yard out. He's like, Joey, line up. I'm right there on the sideline and he goes and you hear him like it turns and gerbach just throws it's like you could hear it

and all the actors were like and my buddy tay's like i mean the ball came in at 100 miles an hour so they all had like red chests after about three hours but yeah i had some fun like that kind of helped having someone that was had broken um and it made me kind of like if he could do it i could do it because we were we were kind of we were friends in college and doing plays together so that helped and having my brother around and uh that was a good experience he called me his sophomore year he had an apartment he was in the drama department ucla and i just broken up with a girl I moved here with. It's a Friday night at midnight. And he's like, come over.

We have a keg. It's a theater party. And I was like, I'm not going all the way over there to hang out with a bunch of 21-clickers. No one does that in LA, right? Yeah. I was knocking on his door before he'd hung up. Like, oh. Yeah, that's the thing about LA. When I first lived here, I'd be like, yeah, I'll come visit you.

I'll come visit you i'll come visit you and then i go oh wait no one visits anybody unless it's it's within the same neighborhood um which is totally fine like i'm okay with it i'm not sad that i'm not driving up to beverly hills more often um what's what's the closest you came on the thing that's like the big thing that you're like oh oh man, if I had gotten that. Well, I'm trying to think of like... Not to say that SWAT isn't huge. No, no, no. I know what you're saying though. Is there something I came close on?

God, that'll come to me. There's a couple. I mean, one that, but it didn't go. It's just an example of how tough things can be, but it kind of answers your question. But it was called the Playboy Club. It was a TV series that lasted very quick short but i was up for it against the guy who got it eddie sibrion and this other guy and i i auditioned like 10 times and then i went on a movie a set and they filmed it like they were really looking for this character and

the director came up to me after the first 10 minutes and he goes there was something you did the first time you came in and i was like i just lost this job to myself like i don't i'm doing the same six pages about 30 times i don't even know what i'm doing anymore um but there are a couple that i that i've gone in for and got close and i just can't quite remember right now let me ask you this then maybe it'll come to you while i have to ask you a different question. Was there a, you said something really important there, I think for anybody that,

you know, when you're pursuing the tough stuff, all right, musician, you know, on air, your thing's far more impressive than me just sitting here chopping it up about sports. But to be around Taye Diggs, it can almost seem insulting when you say, well, if you did it,

I can do it, but that's not what you're doing. It feels more real. Like it smells real. It's like, wait, this is a guy I know that did this. So it's not to diminish your accomplishments. Exactly. Being around it and being around somebody who really did it is really inspiring. And now it also depends on where your head space is. I mean, if you're an incredibly negative person and you just turn it into something negative, but if you're positive about it, but I have to imagine even with that part, which I think is a cool part of the story, were there moments where you go, you know what? Maybe I'm out of here.

Like, did you almost quit? No, because I never, no, I never did. Because I, when I was telling you about the quantity, I had so many opportunities. I was getting close most every time I was never, the feedback was always, yeah, we like them. It's just, you you know and i'd get called back and i'd meet and you believed it in this town that's amazing i did because you know if you go in and just meet like if you're just the casting director and i read for just you

the next step is you're going to have another session the next day with the two guys who wrote it or the the girl and the and the her sister who it's their story, and maybe a director. Now you do it again. Now they go, okay, yeah, we do like this kid. Let's bring him in for round three, which is in front of now network executives, the suits. So that was happening consistently. So it wasn't that they were saying, no, we like him. It was more I was getting to that point.

I just wasn't getting over that hump. But I knew I'd had stories. There was one ABC show that I got close on wasn't getting over that hump. And, but I knew I'd had stories of, there was one, um, ABC show that I got close on called dirty, sexy money. And it was Peter Krause that got the role and he had done sports that I remember. I mean, he's Peter Krause is phenomenal. So he, he got it. But the guy who directed the show is Peter Horton, who was 30 something. And he's a big television director. And he was telling me hang in there Patrick Dempsey they didn't want him for for uh um Grey's Anatomy because he had done so many shows and pilots that hadn't had any success so they were kind of nah we're good with him we don't he's great but we just don't want him so that right

there like you're talking about McDreamy. Yeah. So yeah, you hang in there when you know that you're putting out that you're doing your part, that, that part will come the next part. Last question. Who's the best basketball player of all the actors?

Um, of the actors. Well, yeah, you've been around. Yeah. I mean, there's one,

um, I got to give him props. So Tim Daly, you know, from Wings. His son, Sam, is a pal of mine. And he is legit. He played at Middlebury. Right? So he might have gone against you guys.

But he's a legit player. Dean Cain is a great... I mean, he was a great athlete. He played football. Played for the Bills. Yeah, that's a good one. Because most guys when it comes to basketball, we both

know this. They're like, yeah, I play a little ball. Yeah. You go, oh. Wait. Not to like you have to be awesome or something but basketball basketball is a weird sport and like guys that golf who know they suck kind of admit they suck yeah i think basketball is the sport the casual guy has the least self-awareness about where they're at so that if somebody be like oh i'd like to play and you take it seriously in a pickup game then they're like whoa what is what's going on here and then look i've been in a couple pickup games where i go i don't know that i'm comfortable in this game because holy shit like

this is this is a completely different level so well i so you know you've talked a lot of basketball but i grew up playing hockey and i still play out here and that's been similar to the nba league this is a private skate that Jerry Bruckheimer who's a huge hockey fan um it's been going on for 20 something years and it's on Sundays that's a really high level skate but I've been playing long enough that I I have no problem keeping up but what's so fun is like last summer Malcolm P.K. Subban comes out and skates with us I presented at the NHL Awards. So two weeks before he comes out, he hadn't skated since the end of the season.

He comes out and plays with us. After one shift, he comes off. He's like, whew, boy, I'm sucking wind here. Let's go, let's go. And then by five minutes in, he's flying, and he's, like, tripping everybody and scoring and celebrating. This is with nobody watching. This is just 20 guys having a pickup.

But the next weekend I'm in Vegas presenting at the NHL awards and he's in the green room with Austin Matthews. And he's like, Oh, Hey, what's up? Hey, Austin,

this is my D partner. Jay. I was like, yeah, that's right. That's a rare combo. Rarely does anybody pull off the basketball-hockey combo, especially where we're from.

Well, that's why basketball, I would admittedly be, I'm not that great. I just am a competitor. And I see the game because, I think because of hockey, I see sort of that what's going to happen thing. Like, defensively, I just know where a guy's going to probably, so I'll get involved with steals and stuff like that. And if I had the ball skills to run point, I would,

but I definitely, my skill set was knowing where guys were supposed to be and getting that ball before they even got there kind of thing. So that was my skill, but I wasn't, but I can shoot, you know. You're just a taller Steve Nash. Yeah, that's right. That's all. My favorite part about your career might be

that you finally had to look a little bit older to like nail all these auditions. You were like, man, I wish i had aged prematurely i mean i was fighting the gray in fact i'm better off ted they asked me to make it i had this gray patch here and they said can you color it and once i let it go it's like oh yeah people respond so yeah exactly i had to get older to get more work but but the good thing is hopefully I'm this age for at least another while. Yeah, just ride this out. You're aging tears.

I think I got this one for a little bit. I hope you do too. Anyway, check out SWAT, Jay Harrington, man. I really appreciate the time. Yeah, Ryan, thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed that. Just a really normal guy. It was cool to have a guy like that be that excited to come on the pod

because as soon as the name came up, they were immediately like, yeah, yeah, let's do it. So that felt cool. just a really normal guy. It was cool to have a guy like that be that excited to come on the pod because he was, as soon as the name came up and they were immediately like, yeah, yeah, let's do it. So that felt cool. So I hope you liked it. We're going to get to life advice here. 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 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. Okay, I have a few life advices here. Let's see. Let's see. All right, let's get to this first one. Again, lifeadvicerr at gmail.com. All right, here we go. I'm a 24-year-old CPA accountant. I have been working at a large firm in Atlanta for the past year and a half. I took the job in Atlanta despite my dad owning a smaller firm in my hometown that's located outside of the city.

able to build my own brand and being able to live in Atlanta, the only drawbacks are the hours, 50 plus hours a week, often slow horizontal growth, which means I won't be paid my worth until my early to mid thirties. Despite having a great experience so far, I still wonder what firm would be better long-term fit for me. My dad's firm would allow me to get a higher salary faster, be my work boss and work 30 to 35 hours a week. However, I would have to sacrifice working with coworkers I consider friends and will potentially have to deal with my dad's former employees that I assume I got the job because I got nepotism, which I would. Okay. Let me just read that line again because it was good. I have to deal with my dad's former employees that assume I got the job because of nepotism, which was obviously the case, but I'm also talented and deserving. Okay.

Let me know what you think. Should I value what I should value when weighing the decision? Kyle, feel free to throw in a thought. I'm telling you the people, the Kyle fans are out there. Hey, this is a really good one. It's on the surface. And you think about nepotism. Nobody's like, yeah, I mean, what's sick is nepotism. It's awesome when people get jobs because of who they're related to. I don't know that anybody would say, hey, nepotism's awesome, but if I were the product of nepotism, I'd probably look at it a little differently

and be like, hey, it's not that bad. Nepotism has a few issues. First of all, when somebody's given a job or they're allowed to cut the line because of nepotism, there's just resentment. There's just resentment, There's just resentment. And that would be, I get your point, because you don't want to be in this situation

where everybody's looking around at you, talking about you behind their back. Is it going to? That's just what's going to happen to you. The other problem with nepotism that you're not going to run into here, but we definitely ran into at ESPN, would be if one person were given an

opportunity, even if that person had done big stuff for the company and probably deserved a favor, then now the next guy was asking about his kid or there's somebody else saying, Hey, can you hire my wife? Or, you know,

we had some situations at ESPN where we were hiring people based on nepotism for somebody who didn't even work at the company. And you're like, wait, what's going on? And those are jobs. Like those are jobs that are, that are going away. And, and guess what happens when the layoffs happen? Those people don't lose their jobs. And it ends up being like a lot of people getting pissed about it. And it's just kind of a weird thing to introduce into a work environment, even if it's deserved.

Because I think in some cases you're like, hey, you know what? This person actually ended up being really good and they deserve this, even if they were able to cut the line a little bit and get their opportunity. So my biggest thing was as soon as you bring it in, then other people are like, wait, I deserve this.

If this person got this, because that's what we all do. It kind of gets back to that thing we were talking about with the HOA. We're like, how come that guy bought? Why does he have a shed? What if I want a shed? Now the HOA is like, are we going to have 60-something sheds? By the way, we had some great HOA feedback. We appreciate the HOA people that are out there that reached out. We had a

couple of guys that worked for HOAs that were like, yep, nailed it. And they want our guy to go back at them and ask for the minutes from the meeting, which are legally bound to have those minutes. You have to have minutes. Minutes are recorded notes. I loved when I first learned the term minutes. I just thought it was hilarious. It was a long time ago. But yes, check our guy for the shed build. Ask the HOA for their minutes from the meeting of when they approved your shed. Done. Case closed. You know what I'm talking about here? All right. So back to our nepotism case here. You were at this small firm. It is your dad's firm. And this isn't going to be the same thing as like a big corporate deal where all of a sudden some kid's an investment banker at 22 out of Colgate, right? You're not going to have to worry about that.

I'd also say this for people that are worried about nepotism and being the product of nepotism in positions to succeed because of it. At the end of the day, who fucking cares, man? This stuff is hard enough as it is. This stuff is hard enough as it is. So if I had a father who was a GM of a basketball team and I came up through scouting, I would take the job because it's an awesome job. And if it were something I wanted to do, I'm not going to turn down the amazing opportunity because my dad or my mom is able to place me in something where I have this advantage. So yes, nepotism sucks, except for when I can benefit from it. So yeah, I know people are going to talk shit about me, but I'm not going to turn down the job so that everybody knows that I'm, I'm for the common man, you know, on this case, I don't know that any of us should be turning down advantages. I'm talking to this one person right now, their father has an incredible job, an incredible career. And the guy's like, I don't know if I really want to do that because of nepotism. And I'm like, I don't know. You know you'd be on the path for an amazing career and an amazing life, and it's in an area that interests you. So it's noble to be concerned about it, but the rest of us that are turned off by it, you don't owe us anything.

You don't. So you take the advantage. Again, especially when it's this really hard stuff. Now, we're talking about just the accounting part of this. It's your father's company. Your life is going to be easier. You said you're friends with these coworkers. And as far as the employers and the clients like this is kind of how it works. When I was going to become a general contractor, guess what was going to happen? I was going to work for my father. I was going to learn about pricing out stuff. I was going to learn about working with subs.

I was going to get my license. I was going to do all these things. I was packed up and ready to go home and do it because I wasn't going to get on the air. And then magically that night I ran into a show, the radio station manager, the night I stopped and had a cheeseburger before I was going to catch the last boat home in Boston, I was packed up. And then the guy was like, do you have a meeting tomorrow with me? I'll tell that story another time. I told him before, but I was ready to go. And the only reason I was going to do that is because I was like, Hey, look, I can eventually be my own boss. I know I'll like that better than working for somebody else. I kind of like the outdoor thing.

I kind of like, you know, the, the like the idea of building something and finishing a project and then moving on to the next one. If I can put together enough money that maybe I can build my own house one day, or I can get involved in the real estate side of this, it's not a bad thing. To become a general contractor, to me, I still sometimes think about it. I know I would like it, but the only reason I was going to get a headstart at think about it. I know I would like it, but the only reason I was going to get a headstart at all, it's not like my father had this massive company. He would just build one house at a time basically. And I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I'd had a degree. I knew I couldn't work in an office. And so I was going to do it. And you know what?

I wasn't going to apologize to anybody in the work site. And I know the guys running the Bobcat and the sheet rockers, everybody else. I actually think those guys still would talk shit about me, but I don't care. Like fuck them seriously. So anyone listening to this, that's worried about the nepotism part of it. You can sit there and not take advantage of it and struggle, or you can take advantage of it, but bust your ass, you know, put in the work, put in the work. And eventually when you put in the work and you do a good job, they can say, Hey, this person got a headstart because of who they were and who they related to. But the person actually deserves a job. And if you deserve the job and produce,

then none of that's going to matter in a few years. Now, the only thing I would ask you is are you cool not living downtown Atlanta? Cause you're younger. It sounds like you don't care. And if you don't care, that's, that's great. If you already want to move back to your hometown, you're going to be further away from the city. Um, but I, I personally look at this and think it's, it's actually kind of cool that you're worried about it, but I would, I would stop worrying about it. There's nothing you can do about it. And if you're going to kick ass and be successful, then people won't worry about this in a few years. They won't. And by the way, as far as the customers, like they may like it way better that you're taking over the firm and years from now, you know, you, you continue this business and you have an in with these people because they're like, oh, you know, so-and-so's

son is running it and he's really smart and he's good at this. Unless you're lying to us and you're a disaster, which I don't think, I don't think you would do that. Kyle, anything to add there? No, I mean, you still got to do the job. I was driving trucks and cutting grass and I got hired to park cars and get coffee. You still have to do the job. It's really up to you what you do with it. If you suck, people are going to know. It's a fact.

There you go. Well said. Okay. This one is important. This one is important. Okay. And I don't know if this guy's going to like everything I have to say here, but he emailed us. Okay. His question starts with this. Who's the bigger asshole in the below situation?

My fake name is John, and I work at a smallish wealth management company that has around 40 people. So 40 employees. I'm 31 on the cusp of getting my own clients, but still working as a support person for two other advisors, one being the CEO himself. All right, so for those that don't understand how this works, he's not going out and finding his own clients and managing their money, right? He's working with somebody else who has their clients. He's in support of them. So at this point right now, and I don't know, 31 for some people at a smaller house, maybe that's older, maybe 31 on the cusp of getting his own clients, as he says, that's a perfect gauge. I mean, each firm is different. There's no set of rules. There's no, look, all of our schedules are different, even though we don't like that. Okay. So just, I wanted everybody else to be able to follow along with this. All right. Because of this, I feel somewhat stressed out and often feel like I don't have time in the day to complete all my tasks. Our firm has a woman in HR. Her fake

name is Jane, who's in her late 30s. Originally, I got along fine with Jane, but recently she's gone to our CEO and complained about me on a few different things. I just had my year-end review, and these things came up that obviously Jane complained about. I get the feeling my CEO doesn't really care about these things, but is annoyed that he's even had to discuss them and therefore is probably somewhat annoyed with me. That's definitely true. The last line is, without even reading any more of this, yes, your CEO is annoyed that HR is complaining about you, even if he thinks that complaints are stupid. So yeah, dicey.

Not the end of the world, but not something you want to be doing. Generally, my review was overall very good. In 2020, I achieved a financial designation that's helped give me credibility. Signed up, what is this, an interview? Signed up my first client completely? An interview? Signed up my first client completely on my own. Okay, there you go. Was given a $10,000 raise.

They gave me some good constructive criticism. I got to tell you, the raise for 10 grand in a management company with 40 people, I don't know if that's a great sign. But again, maybe I don't know what's going on. All right. So they gave me some constructive criticism on how to improve communication with clients and also gave me a ton of compliments on my work ethic and effort. I'm going to jump in here. Were the criticisms far more specific than the compliments? Because that's a bad sign. All right. Because remember these management books and these leadership people, they'll be like, you know, make sure you always end on a positive. If you got a review and be like, you made no sales this year and we think you're cheating on your wife or their secretary, but you're always very positive with coworkers. That would be an example of like, wait, one good,

one bad. No, no, no, no. All right. One of my bosses said I should consider more work-life balance and make sure to use more of my vacation time. I do have a fiance and we just moved into a house together. That's good. I was worried about that. You have a fiance, just so everybody knows, still working. We just moved into a house together, so I have some work-life balance, but planning a wedding and moving has been stressful as well, obviously. The problem is the HR woman complained about me doing a few different things. Okay, so he has three complaints here that he's sharing with us. So I appreciate the detail on this. First, we have a temperature check for COVID when we enter the office each morning, we take our own temperatures and sign a form to verify our temperatures that they're not too high. I failed to do the temp check probably

about once every two weeks. My reason is there are two elevators in the building, one of the front, one of the back. I used to park in the back and use the elevator in the back because my car has been dinged while parking in the front. We share an office with the doctor's office, which has old people coming in and out all the time. All right, old people open their cars, smash into you. This is science. It's true. Sorry to the old people listening, but it just happens. You do it all the time. Also, my office is right next to the elevator in the back, so it's easy access. The temperature check station is near the front elevator, and I don't see it when I get to the back of the elevator. I'm not an anti-mask

or anti-COVID person, but just out of sight, out of mind type thing. I offered to pay for a separate temperature check station myself and set it up in the back so that I don't forget.

HR said, we have a second thermometer, but I'm not going to do that because then I would have to walk to the other end of the hall to pick up the check-in sheet each morning just for you.

Her office is right near the temperature check station in the front. Okay. This is concerning. When I would forget, she would walk down to my office to complain that I failed to check in and I would immediately apologize and do the check-in. Honestly, I'm generally in a rush to start working at 7.30 and my mind isn't on the temp check. Finally, she went to the CEO to complain and the CEO told me I can't park in the back anymore. He acknowledged that while it's unfair and stupid, if I forget to do temp checks, then people will question whether I can handle clients. Valid point, but I thought Jane made no effort to work with me on the situation and it could have been resolved in a different way. So I don't know if I attack that now or wait. Let's wait.

We'll keep reading. Second, she said, I print documents and leave them on the printer without picking them up. I admit to having done this and sometimes leave the document on the printer for a couple hours. Generally, it never lasts the whole day, although I'm sure this has happened. We have a lot of printers in our office and almost everyone is guilty of the same crime. I found other things on the printer and never complained about it. I generally just remove the papers from the actual printer, put them next to the printer, which is what most people in our office do.

Third, every quarter we send out bound books that contain the client's investment summaries. The advisor I work for generally waits until the last minute to get these reports done, then asks that I bind them and send them out via UPS. This advisor sat into my review and acknowledged this very fact. Jane has complained that I don't put the binding supplies away when I'm done. They're left in a common area, but don't affect anyone else's ability to be productive. It's not like she needs the space to complete her work or anything like that. They're out of the way. This has definitely happened before, but I'm rushing to get the reports sent out.

Door by UPS, pickup time at 4.30 and often end up driving to the UPS store directly at 5.30 because we missed the 4.30 pickup time. I don't know if I'm right or wrong on this, but if somebody's doing investment summaries, I'd imagine they'd want to wait until the very last minute on those. So I know that that's probably just the reality of it. I've almost always cleaned up the next day or later that night. I've come back to the office at 6.30 and put the stuff away before. Basically, I feel like she's taken real steps to affect my career, my income for trivial

things. She also leaves every day at 4.30, doesn't work with clients, and in my opinion, has an easy job. She does do some real work billing, but is responsible for things like arranging our health insurance plan, holiday calendar, pizza parties, and other things that don't pay the bills. I feel like I'm working way harder than her to bring in revenue and feel like she has an administrative type job that doesn't produce any revenue for the firm. You're right, but your whole tone in that is bad. That's a problem, and we're going

to address all of these. I've acknowledged that it doesn't matter what I think about these things anymore, and I have to do better now that they've been documented in my review and the CEO has given me direction I must follow. However, I've completely ghosted Jane in small talk communication. If she has a business question or needs something from me, I respond in a polite manner. However, she says hi to me in the hallway. I just and keep walking cool um we don't see each other much remember we're on opposite sides of the building i recognize there are some asshole traits although nothing as bad as littering but i do feel uh like she's the bigger asshole and has done things to a co-worker that i would never do do you agree who is a bigger asshole okay a lot here the first thing

is handle the fucking covid check-in. All right. You're 31. This is, this is really stupid. Like you, you look like an asshole on this one. I get you show up to work. You're focused. I could be that way when I was at ESPN, walk in the doors. Hey, I've got a show to do today. And that was every day. And all I cared about was the show, the show, the show. And somebody would say, Hey, can you talk to an affiliate here? Hey, I want to ask you. I'd be like, no, you have to leave me alone. I have this amazing Cincinnati Bengals segment that I'm working out in my head.

I'm going to be in the office. Nobody bothered me. But sometimes you have to talk to the affiliate. Sometimes you have to do the things that you don't necessarily want to do. And in this case, we're talking about the safety of the workplace that you're lucky it's even open and people still have jobs.

Take your fucking temperature and do the check-in sheet. And the fact that you say in the email that you forget maybe once every two weeks probably means you forget more. And you already know this. You already know this. But the second you take some responsibility, you immediately turn it back onto this HR person for telling on you. Now, let's examine the HR part of this. We have HR listeners. Some HR people are amazing. Some are not. Guess what? Just like everything else.

There are times where I've worked with people where I felt like, is this person just bored? Is this person bored? And now they're trying to find, like we had somebody in PR who I knew didn't like me and someone, something would come up every now and then. And I'd be like, this person's making this a bigger deal because this is their job and they're trying to seem important. And you know what? Maybe that's the case, but that's her job and it's not your job. So her job is to make sure you do this and you don't do it.

And now she told the CEO and you're right. The CEO is worried about managing millions of dollars, I imagine, for a bunch of different clients. And as soon as he fucks up something, he's dealing with the real stress of people being mad at him and potentially firing him as the money manager. And you at 31 can't figure out how to just make sure you check your temperature every fucking morning. Set an alarm on your phone. Temp check, you know, 725. If you pull in, if you walk in the doors every day at 730, have your alarm every day, have an alarm that goes off that says temp check 725. Have your alarm every day. Have an alarm that goes off that says temp check 725. I totally get how focused you are and all that kind of stuff, but you're costing yourself like social equity with the rest of the workforce because you're the guy that doesn't take his

temperature all the time. Okay. And you're the guy that like, as soon as you say it's stupid, now I can't park in the back. Well, you're the one that fucked it up. You're the one that fucked it up. You're the one that fucked it up. And if the CEO, it's cool. It sounds like you actually have a cool CEO who's saying, Hey, yeah, I know it's kind of stupid, but whatever, because you know what he wants to do?

Manage people's money, grow the business, not screw up, not cost clients hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars. You know what he doesn't want to do is hear about the 31 year old guy who can't take his fucking COVID temperature. All right. That goes without saying, and you already know this stuff. Now the problem is like, Hey, I print stuff. And then she gets mad. I'm with you. That's stupid. Why get mad? Why can't you? But now you're on

her hit list. All right. So now every time you do something stupid, you've become the person that she's going to tell on, which sucks. And you may be, are not fully deserving of that, but guess what? Just pick up your pages. And the reason why I'm saying pick up your pages is because your third complaint about the binder, you're like, I usually put them back. This is a bad sentence, man. The advisor sat into my review, acknowledged the fact, Jane's complained that I don't put the binding supplies away when I'm done. They're left in a common area, but don't affect anyone else's ability to be productive.

You're probably right. They just want you to put them away, man. They just want you to put them away. It's not like she needs the space to complete her work or anything like that. So that makes me worry that maybe you are a bit of an asshole. Like, seriously. Like, you're not wrong that the binding equipment doesn't impact her day, but that you care this much about whether or not, just put it away. Just put it away.

You know, and I'm not telling you I've always been perfect. I'm not telling you that I haven't had moments. I remember when I was at Trenton, I used to print out every single page and like, oh, you're printing out a lot of pages. And I'd be like, are you serious, dude? Are you serious? But then I thought, why? And I didn't feel, I didn't recognize this at the time. I didn't get it until years later, but I was like, why would I want to fight that fight? Just print out print list stuff. Or if I'm printing stuff, make sure I get it immediately so it never sits there. So no one can see all of these pages that I'm printing out to do show prep for an Eastern league game. I think there's a bigger thing here so let's fix it

let's fix it because now whatever you're doing and now when she's saying hi and you're not saying hi back because you're mad at her and you might be right about a bunch of these different things but the covid one is inexcusable and you know repair repair thisair. Repair this. Fix this. You're obviously a very smart guy. You're on the cusp of something great here by getting your own clients, right? You haven't complained once about the job except for the HR part of this. So I assume that you really like this and you're into it. And again, I can tell you're smart and you have a fiance. So there were parts of this where I go, hey, he's got the fiance. If he were by himself, I go, is he socially like off and, and doesn't realize this, but

you're actually aware of the things that you're doing wrong, but you're justifying them a little bit too much. And then you're redirecting the blame where it's like, you don't want to take a hundred percent of the blame because you're annoyed that the other person's annoyed. And again, I'm not telling you that you're not necessarily wrong. Like I don't want to be told on for not putting stuff away, but that wouldn't happen to me because I was on TV. Um, I would, I'm not telling you that you're not necessarily wrong. Like I don't want to be told on for not putting stuff away, but that wouldn't happen to me because I was on TV. I would, I would do this. They've invested time into you. They've, they've invested whatever

their resources are to make sure that you're going to be somebody that can eventually manage money and get your own clients. Right. As you said, you're right on the cusp of that. You cannot sacrifice that. And you don't want to be looking for a job right now either. All right? It sounds like your CEO likes you and is on your side. I would do this. I would, and this is, this doesn't even have to be, it sounds like you like your CEO, so this would be genuine. The power of a written letter is unbelievable.

Nobody does it anymore. I would over the break, write a letter out to them and take ownership of this stuff and go, Hey, look, the COVID that's inexcusable. It's because I actually care. Like, nah, don't do that. I care too much thing, but it's going to, you know, when I come into work, I just lock in. I can't believe I put you in a position where anyone would wonder about me as a client relation person. I totally get where you're coming from. I want to hit the reset button and put some of the stuff behind me.

And I'm going to reach out to Jane and HR just so you know. All right. And don't blame anybody else. Even if it's times like I would, I would at work and my thing's a little different because if a radio show was getting something and I wasn't getting something and I felt like we were on the same playing field, I'd be like, you guys are gonna be kidding me. And look, ESPN towards the end, they were just not into your boy's show. I think me seven months after Cannell being gone and just figuring it every, every day without any budget

and any plan whatsoever, wasn't exactly like the greatest position to be in. And I'd look at another show and go, well, Hey, what's going on there. But a lot of times you kind of can't do that. You can't be sitting there, but well, Hey, Jane, she leaves at four 30. Who gives a fuck? She's an HR. You decided to make money. If you want to leave at four 30, go get an HR job. You know what I'm saying? So who cares? Who cares what her day is or isn't who cares that she's not bringing money in. I don't like that. You said that either. Cause you already know the differences. You chose a path that's going to be harder and more rewarding. She chose a different path. So respect her path. And who cares? Who cares when she leaves? All right. It doesn't matter. You're not, you're not even competing for the same things, but now she's

messing with you. So then I would reach out to Jane and go, look, I need to do a better job and I need to do a better job understanding what your day is like and what your challenges are. And honestly, dude, you don't even need to believe this part of it. What you need to do is kind of a small office reset where you reach out to the CEO, explain these things, take ownership for it, going to move on and stop being a tough guy in the hallway with Jane, write her a letter and go, even though I didn't understand it at the time, I understand that you have a job to do and i am going to be respectful of that i want to have a different dialogue i want

to hit the reset button if i'm doing something that you don't like reach out to me and i let's come up with a solution immediately and fucking 2021 daytona beach who's in all right that's it there you go problem solved so i don't you know There you go. Problem solved. So I don't you know, I know it's a Friday and I don't want this to fuck up your weekend, but you know, you just need to hear from somebody because clearly no one else has said it to you at this point.

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