The Ryen Russillo Podcast - Trent Dilfer on Rodgers, Hope for Winston, and More From NFL Week 1, Plus CFB Observations

Episode Date: September 13, 2021

Ryen opens with his takeaways from the big results from Week 1 in the NFL, including Aaron Rodgers and the Packers getting blown out, the Bills losing to the Steelers, and the Dolphins winning in New England (00:29). Then, he chats with Super Bowl champion Trent Dilfer about the Rodgers-Packers problems, Jameis Winston’s huge game, and why even in a loss he’s impressed by the Browns (13:04). Next, Ryen runs through some observations from the college football weekend (53:34) before closing it out with some listener-submitted Life Advice questions (66:58). Host: Ryen Russillo Guests: Trent Dilfer Producers: Steve Ceruti and Stefan Anderson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Week one, almost in the books. Fired up. A lot of fun. We're going to get to wins that mean something, wins that may mean nothing. We're going to do it all with Trent Dilfer and college football headlines and what it means for the conference shuffling.

football headlines and what it means for the conference shuffling. I don't know what it was about this weekend, but I was just so excited. You know, look, everybody with the NFL starting off, it was just kind of one of those moments where like, hey, things would be pretty great sometimes sitting around. I think the NFL part of this storyline wise is really deep. And that's kind of where I want to start. So the awards thing, I think I may do once a month or maybe just randomly put them in there. I just don't think I'm going to do 18 weeks of awards

like I did last year throughout the entire thing. Tom and Bill Legacy update, maybe we'll get to that. Maybe I'll throw that in there a little bit. But I feel like there's some wins that don't necessarily mean a lot yet. And then I think there's some wins that are terrific signs. So let's start with two wins where I go, hey, nice win. Not sure what it means. Pittsburgh, Buffalo. Nice win. Pittsburgh's offense had one touchdown. They couldn't run the football at all in the first half. They got the block punt. That's kind of what sealed this thing. I think defensively,

even with some of the people missing, you look at, especially if Melvin Ingram's healthy on the other side of TJ Watt, a guy I've always liked, just not healthy. I think some Chargers fans remember when it was actually pretty good at times. But that Pittsburgh defense, I'm good with. I think Buffalo's defense, we're worried about the offensive and defensive lines. I think they just have a lot of options on the defensive line, so I'm still good there. We know Buffalo's not going to run the football, usually.

They don't, going back to last season. They were the most pass-happy team. They and the Kansas City Chiefs passed it on first and second down in neutral settings 63% of the time, but they actually got Singletary going a little bit, and Josh Allen's always going to give you some runs. I know Buffalo week one, Super Bowl potential contender, everybody's telling you you've got maybe a top 10, top five talented roster in the league, and then you lose to Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh's going to feel a lot like last year. And that is a really good defense that I let that talk me into their chances, ignoring the fact that Ben Roethlisberger is like not throwing it more than seven yards down the field. And that's what I saw again a lot yesterday. It's a nice win,

but I think you're lying to yourself if you're a Steelers fan watching Ben throw the football on that offense going, hey, are we going to be maybe even more limited than we were last year? And that's what I would be afraid of. So I don't know exactly what the win means as we start to kind of tear out how many teams you really think could win a Super Bowl. Another one is Miami and New England. Tua had some nice moments, and then he didn't.

It kind of feels like what it's been for Tua. He had a deep ball in the left end zone corner that Jalen Mills broke up with just a beautiful, beautiful pass. Great break up by Mills. But New England, this is kind of a, hey, what do we have as far as the result? Miami wins the game, but Damian Harris, the running back for New England, who actually looks really good, he fumbled at the 11 with three minutes left. So if they kick the field goal, maybe New England wins this whole thing. The weird thing is that I

think the biggest story that's come out of this, despite the result, is that everybody's all aboard the Mac Jones train. I think we know this. Compared to other quarterbacks, Mac Jones probably, and I'm not talking about rookies. I'm talking about Aaron Rodgers, so I get to a little bit later. Like, who do you think put in more work prepping for this season? Mack Jones or Aaron Rogers? Mack Jones. I don't know how Mack did compared to the other rookies. I thought Mack giving the first career touchdown football back to the other guy was like, all right, dude, really? Like you really don't want your first career touchdown in the NFL. So I never know what to do with those guys. Cause if I don't know you, I'd be like, are you doing that? So everybody thinks you're awesome. Or are you doing that? Cause you actually

don't want like who wouldn't want their first football from the first touchdown of their NFL career leaders apparently wouldn't want that. So those are, those are results where I don't really know what to make of it. Although Brian Flores, but if you look at Brian Flores, he's got a nice record, uh, here against Belichick, which is not what most assistants can say, although I would say he's getting Belichick at the right time. All right, give me a couple wins here that actually do feel like they mean something, and I'll start with Arizona putting on Tennessee at their place 38-13. Okay, here's an important number. If you look at Kyler Murray's stats from last season, the offense for Arizona

weeks one through eight was ranked seventh going by the metric that I'm using here. All right. Now you can say, hey, what metric are you using? I'm using the EPA stuff. If you want to argue, go ahead. But let's just put it this way. Arizona had some things going offensively before Kyler Murray's shoulder injury, because after the injury, weeks nine through 17, Arizona's offense ranked around 26th best. That was significant. It was real. The other concerns we had about Arizona was secondary.

I think we still, from a personnel standpoint, should have concerns about Arizona's secondary. But if Chandler Jones is going to go Latimer before, well, I would say after a heavy offseason and before the injury, and go five sacks in that game, were like mutant type sacks um i don't look he's not gonna have five sacks every single game but if you have chandler jones pissed off in a contract year and jj watt who's actually still good by the way if you look at the houston numbers and i know they're not eye-popping defensive player of the year type of guy but he still was a very impactful really good defensive lineman if you put all that stuff together and they have enough up front, then that obviously relieves some of the pressure there on the secondary.

I think there are going to be moments where Arizona's secondary is exposed, but it all comes back to Kyler Murray, where if he's going to do these kinds of things and be steady throughout, and DeAndre Hopkins, who usually has like two or three moments a game where you feel like he's the only receiver in the league that can do it. But again, those secondary concerns, at least in this game, because the front was so disruptive, the receiver duo of A.J. Brown and Julio Jones coming in, one of the best duos that you would think you'd have in the league,

a combined seven catchers, 78 yards. So Arizona held up defensively, and Kyler Murray looked like the guy we saw at the beginning of the first half. Another game here that I think result-wise is a positive, but not so much a negative for the loser. New Orleans at 38-3 over Green Bay. I mean, just smashed him. We now have Sean Payton without Drew Brees. He's nine and one without. So now you're thinking, hey, is it really? The Brees thing is fascinating because if you look at where he is statistically the last couple of seasons, the stats actually look really good.

And if you look at New Orleans offense with Brees over the previous two seasons, we're going 19 and 20. They ranked number one in EPA. Without him during the 8-1 run, that was really about more defense because New Orleans offense was 20. So you're still thinking, man, Brees retired. Was he actually sneaky good? Problem was he couldn't get the ball down the field. He just couldn't. So kind of like we talked about with Ben Roethlisberger and some of those concerns, like, Hey, maybe it'll be efficient. Maybe that completion percentage would be really good. Maybe this guy's going to avoid interceptions, but when it really matters and what the QB analogy

that I'll use now forever is, you know, how I always talk about like the last couple minutes of an NBA playoff game. Like that's really where we separate the men from the boys. Who are you? What kind of superstar are you? Because really, it's in that moment that I care the most. How do you look? How comfortable are you? Are you making the right decisions? Are you forcing shit? Are you the kind of guy that just grew up with Jordan posters where you decide, I'm just going to take a million bad shots because it's the end of the close game? Because it's the same thing with a quarterback. All of the numbers, some of these numbers now are irrelevant there's guys throwing up 300 yards all over the place it's four six minute drill playoff down four can you push the football at third and 13 after a false start or a sack can you make a play and there's

so many numbers that tell you there's all these quarterbacks that are terrific when in fact, I don't know if those guys can do it. And Roethlisberger, I worry about, and clearly Brees couldn't despite these numbers that I just threw you. So now we spin it into a positive in Winston. Oh, I'm going to ask Dilfer about this. I don't know if you can fix somebody from being like mistake-free or as mistake-free as we can expect with a quarterback position when you have 30 interceptions in a season like Jameis did. But maybe, and if it's a maybe, if it's a slight adjustment from, I know the yardage and all the touchdowns, but you just can't win with a guy throwing two picks every single game.

If you're talking one pick a game, that makes Winston a completely different guy. Now, on the Rodgers part of this, we knew this would happen. If Green Bay won, everyone would say we would play the result on this. We would go look at Rodgers, hold everybody accountable. Everybody responded. Nice week one win against a potential playoff caliber team with the New Orleans Saints. Instead, they get run off the field. He's a mess. He throws that D pick.

I couldn't help myself from getting involved with a tweet saying, hey, that D pick was to tell the front office that their guys aren't fast enough. But I actually do like Rodgers. If you've listened to me going all the way back to the ESPN days, and I know we have a new audience all the time, I have been more pro Rodgers throughout his career than I have been anti. I thought at least for this offseason, it got old. It got old, and I don't know if that's the reason they got smoked,

but that's the result that we'll play. When Rodgers, and we'll always do this too, we'll kind of just look at you. When you kind of have the man bun, is this guy playing for West Ham? Is he hosting Open mic? You know, and then we really trash guys for vacation pictures when you lose, right? Like as if him being in Hawaii with Miles Teller is the reason why they can't get it done. Um, that none of that stuff is fair, but it's exactly what is going to happen. So they get smoked and the predictably playing the result is he didn't handle himself the right way. I didn't love his complaints

because I felt like, Hey, you are acting like you're Matthew Stafford. There'd be times where I would see people at ESPN complain and I'd go, can I be treated as poorly as you are? Because I know your deal and I know my deal and you think you have it bad. But when the bad things are happening to us, or we think the bad things are happening to us. We only care about us. All right. We will look at it and go, no, no, but I don't care about you. This is how bad I have it. And then we turn it into this contest to how bad we all have it. We do it a lot in our industry and apparently quarterbacks do it too, but it keeps going

with Rogers. And I'd said, I just need more. I need you to be giving me more information and justify how mad you are with this front office because the team actually does pretty well and yes i know they took jordan love in the first round and didn't really like that but like how long is this going to go on for like five years and he just keeps talking about it all the time but i've always liked rockers i mean if we want to run through a quick just a quarterback deal here daniel jones don't see it. Fourth and four, still wants to run the football. Turns it over all the time. Kurt Cousins, how about him yesterday? You want to talk about

numbers? 36 of 49, 351 yards, two touchdowns, zero picks. The field goal tying drive, third and long through a screen that kept the running back inbounds. So you're like, okay, I guess the touchdown's out of the picture here. You're just going with a field goal and you're like, hey, Rusillo, that was the right call. It got it to overtime. Oh, yeah? How'd you feel when it was third and long, and they were backed up in their own end zone? Or not in their own end zone, in their own territory, and he threw it five yards shy of the sticks to Thielen

with a second defender closing him and another guy trailing him? That throw had zero chance of becoming a first down. That, to me, is Kirk Cousins. Out. Alex Smith. I was okay with him being benched twice. I know everybody really likes him. I thought both times when he's benched for Kaepernick

and obviously Mahomes was the right call. Teddy Bridgewater. I feel like Teddy Bridgewater is the kind of guy that you have, and after a few weeks you go, we probably could do better than this, even if you win a few games. Tua, I root for him. I'm still not sure what's going to happen.

Jimmy Garoppolo, I wasn't into him when he was winning a ton of games. The Cam Newton quotes recently where he said, this is the one team where I had to identify what's going to happen. Jimmy Garoppolo, I wasn't into him when he was winning a ton of games. The Cam Newton quotes recently where he said, this is the one team where I had to identify what was going on. Dude, it's the only other team you've played on besides the Carolina Panthers. Zach Wilson, I don't know. I've heard some of the smartest football people tell me no chance. Guys that scouted him. I've had people that played against him and scouted him.

Drew Brees, Hall of Famer. This is somebody who goes, he has a chance to be the best out of all these guys. So I'd probably defer to Drew Brees, right? But then I remember that Elway, who was going to go down as the greatest. Well, look, he already is one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time. I feel like he's going to get shuffled out because of the new generation and all of these numbers.

Elway, one of the greatest to ever do it, can't figure out how to actually get it right on his own roster post Peyton Manning. So having said all those things with Rodgers, I've always been pro-Rodgers. I really have. I remember getting in the hallway arguments with Cowherd about it because there's this weird number where if you look at Rodgers, it's actually like, oh, in close games, look how bad the record is.

You're like, go through every single one of those game logs. You will be shocked how many times Rodgers actually put the team up and then the team allowed a touchdown or the game winning field goal. So maybe that's the whole point. Maybe that's why Rodgers is mad about it. But whatever it is, he's got to get over it because it didn't help him in week one. Or maybe we're entirely wrong and the Saints are just that much better than. He's going to be joining us throughout the season, and I am thrilled. So let's do it.

Week one recap with Trent Dilfer. Good to see you again, man. I know I want to get to all the stuff that you're doing, too, throughout the season. You can update us on the coaching side of things. Is that cool? Absolutely. Just let me know when you want to talk about high school football. I'm sure people are just at the edge of their seats.

Might not lead the interview with it, but I think people have always been always been interested you you are as good as anyone on aaron rogers uh i i think we all knew it would happen as far as playing the results if they smoke teams as i said in the beginning and people like ah rogers got him motivated and then now it's all on him because of the offseason and they look that bad what happened yesterday well first i'll start i'll start. I think they'll be fine. I think week one lies, week two lies. I even think the first four games this season cannot be true indicators of what you're going to become.

Nobody plays in the preseason anymore. The offseason is limited, yada, yada, yada. So I'm not going to overreact to anything in the first four weeks. overreact anything in the first four weeks. However, I do think there's this lie in football that you can just throw out the balls and be awesome if you were awesome the year before. It's like the guy that hasn't shot, hasn't been playing any pickup basketball,

he's the next NBA-er, he's taken a year off, he's rode the Peloton, He hasn't played a lot of open gyms and he's not just going to show up a year later and bury threes and have his handles and do all the things he did a year before because it hasn't been working at it. And I think the NFL has become that way that there's this, there's this misconception that, Hey, these guys don't need to play a lot in the preseason. They don't need to have a lot of OTAs. They're professionals. They'll figure it out. Timing will be fine. He's been working with Devontae Adams for forever. Communication will be great because they've communicated great for years. That's just not the case. If you're not working on something

relentlessly, you're not going to be good at it. And I think Aaron wasn't with the Packers in the offseason. He didn't do a ton in training camp. They're going to be rusty. That's the easiest word. They're not going to be on their A game. Now, they'll beat some people with their B minus game because they're that kind of good. But they're not going to win that game yesterday. That just wasn't going to happen. And you could see it early on. I think there's one element, other element too. And that is, if you're still bitter about something, if you're still bitter about something, if you're still angry about something,

that carries over. Sometimes it's a good chip. Sometimes those are really good chips on your shoulder and motivate you to play better, and maybe that's what this becomes. But other times it becomes heavy, and John Gordon calls it an energy vampire. Like you just suck the energy out of a

room because you're you're struggling and i think that can be an element could be i'm not accusing him of it but there might be a little bit of a stink around there too and a little uncomfortableness because of what it transpired not just in the off season but with aaron being very transparent uh on mcafee's show and now yesterday on Fox's show. He's airing a lot of dirty laundry. I have no problem with that, but it could be creating somewhat of a stink around the building as well.

Yeah, even if you're all on Aaron Rodgers' side, and I've said throughout it, I've always been a really big Aaron Rodgers fan. I mean, how could you not? How could you be a fan of football and a fan of quarterbacks and not be a fan of what this guy's been able to do? But I just felt like his complaints, like he was taking to a level where I was like, you know, this is the cop I made in

the beginning of the pod is like, you're complaining. Like you got Matthew Stafford in Detroit. And you know, if I'm Stafford, I'm like, you're mad, dude, you're mad. And at some point, all of us, even if we are justified, we,, of course, we always feel justified, we're slighted, you have to turn the page at some point. Like, you have to turn the page. So then it's week one, he's sitting there with Andrews on top of all the Maccabees. You're like, okay, at what point are you now going to say,

okay, the season's started. I have to stop. And he doesn't seem to want to. I totally agree. That's kind of why I talked about the energy in the building. If you're in that building and you have that perspective,

then you're questioning a little bit. It's sucking. It's robbing you of some positive juju. You want good vibes. Well, there's people just like you in that building. They might be management. They might be senior management. They might be in the that building. They might be management. They might be senior management. They might be in the football operations.

They might be in business ops. They might be the equipment manager. It might be the wide receiver. It might be the left tackle. And they're going, wait a second, why isn't he just letting this go? Like, we'd all feel better if this just went away. I also think I've learned a very valuable lesson on leadership in the last 12 months. I also think I've learned a very valuable lesson on leadership in the last 12 months.

Really, the last few years that I didn't really know as a player, as a parent, and even in my time at ESPN. And that's one of the jobs of the leader, the guy that everybody's looking at, is to make sure little things don't become big things, mid things don't become giant things, basically anti-drama. You want to de-escalate instead of escalate. I think it's a tool that some of the great leaders in the history of sport, politics, military have used. When something is that borderline, okay, this could become a big deal. It's my job as a leader to de-escalate it, make everyone else feel better, find tools in my tool belt to not let this become bigger than it is. I think this fits into that bucket with Aaron Rodgers. I think he had a chance. This was a big thing. Or this is a mid thing, right?

This had the chance to escalate as it has. Or it could have deescalated and helped the organization. And I think this is on your point. I think this is still escalating instead of deescalating. And I think it's better for the Packers in general. If you're just looking at the organization winning on Sundays and moving forward, this is one of those issues that you want to deescalate the drama instead of escalate the drama. On the other side for Winston, you know, I thought any competition with him and Taysom Hill may have just been a storyline. I'm glad he's the starter.

I can't help remove all the years. Like, you know, anybody that's like, hey, look at all the yards he threw for you. You're like, look, we all know the yardage numbers, but we also know the interception numbers is it remotely possible like he could be fixed with peyton could he be fixed to the point where now we're looking at all the positives removing all of those bad throws that he always seemed to have in i don't think you're gonna remove all the over aggressive things but i think shauna is a great way of mitigating damage in aggressive situations. Let me explain. So you're taking a vertical shot. Sean loves to throw the ball down the field, by the way. He wants to run the ball on action pass. Now, they didn't do that with Drew towards

the end because that just wasn't Drew's DNA at that point of his career. But when Sean's brain is working full speed, it is run the football. It is take shots. And those shots usually come off action. Now, when you teach those things, I think very different than when Jameis was overly aggressive and it was, what's the term they use there? No. What's Arian's term he uses for being aggressive? It'll come to us. Like if you don't take a chance, you're not going to get a reward. this term he uses for being aggressive. It'll come to us.

If you don't take a chance, you're not going to get a reward. Well, Sean teaches a little bit different, and the old West Coast guys treat this a little bit different. Like, yeah, we want to take a shot. But if we're wrong, we have really good options that you can get to, and we're about efficiency. Now, you could be just as efficient throwing the ball 40 yards down the field if it's the ideal look, but it's not the ideal look.

Listen, we have two, three other options underneath that are, it's a six-yard completion, it's an eight-yard completion, it's a swing route to a great player, Camara, it's a little burst route to another player, it's a shallow, like, we're still good. It's no different than throwing a hitch. So if you're in a call first down play and you have

everybody's running up six yards and turning around, that's a hitch route, right? Well, you can still run two guys really deep and go, okay, we might get a matchup here. And if we do, let's be efficient and take a shot. But if they all run deep with you, guess what you have? You have guys sitting at six yards and you can throw them the ball and we can be at second and two after they get a couple yards running after the catch. And we're still playing ahead of the sticks i think the why behind being aggressive and how to be aggressive and how to mitigate damage on overly aggressive mindsets is what really going to help jamis the most here it's

it's going to let him be him with a backup plan so hey jam, go be you. But Hey, I created this little backup plan that if at any point in this aggressive play call that you're like, eh, that's not the look I want. Guess what? Here's your backup plan. It's Alvin Kamara for four, right? It's the tight end for six. It's another skilled player for eight. And you do that enough and you'll be a 68% completion guy. Your interceptions will go down probably more than half. And you'll still make as many big plays because if you're making good decisions, guess what I'm going to do? I'm going to keep trusting you and keep calling these aggressive plays. So you might get 15 aggressive play calls a game and you might only throw three.

Well, guess what? That Monday when we're or that Sunday when we're sorry that sunday when we're sorry that monday when we're meeting reviewing the film guess what i'm saying is oh more aggressive play calling more aggressive play calling more aggressive play calling because i can trust my quarterback i think it's no risk it no biscuit that's what i was trying to figure out yeah it department was all over that one so thanks to sir rudy um give me give me your thoughts on jalen hurts now you know whenever i think of jalen hurts the pro quarterback and even the guys and you're reading him out of Philadelphia, it's like, let's see how this goes. But it's almost like in the back of their head going, will we have to replace him? I thought their coaching staff and the balance, you know, maybe it's just that game. Maybe it's the Atlanta matchup. But the balance and the way they prepped him for that game, you watch that and go, wait, you might, you might really have something here. I at least think for one game, again, if it's not

lying to us, which it could be, but for one game, like I have a completely different look of like hope towards what hurts could be longer term. Yeah. I was uber impressed. I think that is a really, that coaching staff has bought into kind of a hybrid college NFL offense, which we've seen in Baltimore work. We've seen in some of these areas work. You've seen it in Kansas City, by the way. Now, Mahomes and those skill people make everybody think it's an NFL offense, but it's a hybrid college NFL offense that they just poured gasoline on.

that they just poured gasoline on. When you buy into it, it's very hard for defenses to defend. And what the skeptics will say and what the old school guys will say is, well, you hit the quarterback enough, that stuff goes away. Or force him into must-pass downs and now he has to be a passer. Well, good luck. You have to do that. You actually have to execute on defense to take away all these unique schemes that you're having to see and prep for that you're not having to see and prep for every single week. I thought it was a nice balance of quarterback movement, quarterback run, quick game, screen game, traditional NFL pass. I think it highlighted

what Jalen does well. And then I think you add Jalen, the person on top of this. And this was the thing that didn't get talked about in my opinion enough. Now, listen, I think Jalen needs to get a lot better. I think he needs to become more consistent. I do think he'll struggle at times with consistency as a passer, but also known Jalen since he was 16. He's might be top three competitor I've ever been around. Uh, he's a guy that is very, very self-aware. Uh, he's not, he doesn't get, uh, defensive when there's something to fix. He goes to work to fix it. Uh, he's not going to think he's a finished product. He knows, uh, he's a work in progress. So he's going to do all the right things to get better at the things that people have labeled him not being good enough doing.

So he's not going to get defensive. He's not going to say, well, I'm good enough to do it. He's going to say, well, you know what? Yeah, I'm probably not consistent enough on the mid-range passing game. So you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to work extra hard on fixing my flaws there so that I continue to get better there. He's going to attack competition. He's not going to freak out about it. He's going to be a great teammate. What you're going to hear coming out of Philly, regardless of how this thing goes for the next

few weeks, is that's the dude. There won't be a guy in that locker room, a coach on that team that does not say that's the dude. They're all going to say that is the dude. Like there won't be a guy in that locker room, a coach on that team that doesn't say, that does not say that's the dude. They're all going to say that is the dude. So he's going to be harder to replace once he continues to establish his moral authority in the locker room. Okay, let's, sorry, go ahead.

Jalen Hurts is a great football player. He's a good quarterback that is developing, and the offense is going to allow him to develop maybe at an accelerated pace because they're going to work around his skill set. Okay, let's stay with the young guys then. Let's not just say talent with all the rookies, but who do you think has set up the best for success the quickest?

I really think it's Matt Jones. Regardless of the outcome of yesterday, I thought he was very efficient. Give me all your Matt Jones stuff now that you've seen it a little bit more. Super poised. Obviously, he's established himself in the building as somebody trustworthy. That's the Patriot way, right? You've got to be trustworthy. You don't have to be flashy.

You don't have to do a bunch of the stuff that the media says you have to do. Really what you have to be is trustworthy. Everybody in that building has to trust you. Trust you with the most important position on that field. And there's a lot that goes into that. And he's proven that. He's very, very refined as a passer. He's gotten exponentially better in the last three years.

Physically he's bigger, stronger. He's more put together. Uh, he's a better athlete. He has those subtle little movements. He's not going to win a 40, but he's going to be able to create time and space for himself. Uh, and he is very, very accurate. He throws the ball where, where his eyes are looking. looking um he throws guys open he's an he's an advanced passer like he talking to sark uh sark and i talked a bunch in the offseason just about some scheme stuff but we we talked about mac a little bit and he was blown away how mac would grow uh in the course of the year on his ph in passing. Like he would see how to throw guys open. He would see anticipations and zones.

He would understand defenses and how they were adjusting to them so then he could make adjustments. And you saw a little bit of that yesterday. They're not overly talented. They're okay. So they're going to have to manage offense well. But I do think you'll grow. I think their offense will grow from kind of a management offense

to a more diverse offense as the year goes on because of Mack's skill set. They're going to want to run the ball and play action pass. It's what Mack really did at Alabama. They ran the ball, play action pass, and spit it out on the perimeter, so they're going to do the same types of things in New England I think Max have a really good year I think the Patriots can be good I don't think they're gonna be great but I think they're gonna be good and Max can be one of the big reasons why did you see anything from the other rookies that stood out uh high ceiling stuff you know I think I heard one of the announcers I can't remember who it was uh talking

about oh no it was Dungy last night on the NBC show. And I appreciate what he said. He said, listen, Zach Wilson and Trevor didn't play great, but they did great things. And they showed me enough doing those great things that they're going to be okay. I think Trevor's going to have a Peyton Manning-ish type rookie year. Now he may not throw 472 interceptions like Peyton did his rookie year, but I think they're going to say, keep going, keep pushing, make mistakes, go, don't cower, be aggressive, trust your instincts, and we'll live with some of the growing pains. And we'll support you more as this thing goes on by getting better players in the building,

offensively, defensively, and on teams. You can kind of see that yesterday. I think you're going to see explosive stuff from Trevor, and you're going to see just shake your head, roll your eyes, kind of Trent Dilfer throws from Trevor. So I think you're going to see both of those as Trevor goes throughout this season. Zach, I think you're going to see the splash play and the highly inconsistent play.

The dirt balls, not having his eyes in the right place. They're allowing him to play a little too frenetic. So Trevor's trying to play on schedule but yet aggressive. Zach's playing frenetically. There's no timing to his feet. It's not matching the progressions. He's getting out of there when he shouldn't. But he does enough, like, holy smoke, wild stuff

that you're like, oh, we'll live with that. I think the reins need to be brought in a little more on Zach and be like, hey, bro, you need to learn to play like Drew Brees on first and second down. You need to learn how to play Tom Brady on first and second down. Then you can go try to be Aaron Rodgers on third down or when we're down 14, which we're going to be down 14 pretty much every third quarter of the whole year. So you'll get to be able to go play Zach Wilson, frenetic football in the second half. But hey, in the first half, we're trying to stay in these games. We got to play with a little more structure. Maybe that's what I'm

looking for. Structure, discipline, timing. Uh, if they can get that out of him, I think you're looking at he's better than I thought he was. Okay. So I was not, I didn't think Zach Wilson was like one of these unique talents. I thought he was a really good player. I thought he'd be a good pro. After seeing some of this stuff, I'm like, oh, I think I was wrong on this one. I think this kid can be really good if handled well. And I really think the Jets have to handle him well on pushing him to play with more structure, discipline, and then kind of saying, okay, now go be Zach Wilson and we'll unleash you. All of Brett Favre in Green Bay with Mike Holmgren. It was begging. I just had Brett on my podcast and it was, they were begging me to play on structure with structure on time. And when I

finally bought in, we were awesome. But then they also said, Hey, Brett, there's going to be 15 times a game. Just go be Brett Favre. And we'll live with whatever happens there. And I think that's the Zach Wilson dynamic. Yeah, there's some arm stuff there with Zach where you go, whoa. Scary. It's stupid. All right, so that's why. But as I said at the top, of all the football guys that I'm lucky enough to talk to, guys that have done it for a long time,

the disparity of opinions on Zach Wilson is as wide as any prospect coming out that I can remember for a long time the disparity of opinions on zach wilson is as wide as any prospect coming out that i can remember in a long time i thought him being named team captain was really interesting uh i want i want somebody to tell me i need i need to know you need to dig into your research i didn't i don't i don't find it interesting i've done this before go through every nfl team captain assignment and it's, if you're not the team captain, even a week into your career, that's actually the red flag. So there's one team that doesn't assign captains. And then there's a few other teams that obviously do it weekly. But if the teams that have a year long, I think it was like 23 of the 23 teams. Like you just go, Hey,

you're a captain. Uh, I think it's a team, a thing teams do to, to avoid it being an issue being like, wait a minute, how come this guy's not captain? And it's like, there's guys that have been captains. You're like, there's no way anyone listens to this guy. They just, they just had to give them the seat. So that's, that's the research. Perfect. I, I, I fully agree with your research.

I'll go back. I'll update it again. And I'll, I'll send you all send you all of our work on this. We just haven't yet because it's still early. Seattle, new OC here in Shane Waldron, right out to Gates. By the way, just a quick shout-out to Tyler Lockett, who does not get mentioned enough. That catch he made, that's the hardest catch I think a receiver can make when you're changing your shoulder to the Willie Mays catch. And I saw a couple of guys on Saturday try to do

it and some pot lock. It does it. Nah, no big deal. So look, Seattle, you know, there's, there's some other stuff there with Wentz, which is hilarious because it was a very, like that game was almost Wentz entire career in 60 minutes of ball. But let's just start on the Seattle side, new offense. Russell apparently is just start on the Seattle side. New offense. Russell apparently is happier because it's more collaborative. What did you see? Saw that.

I saw a quarterback that's an unbelievable Hall of Famer. And by the way, he starts every season like this, right? Every year in the first 10 weeks, he's in the Hall of Fame. I mean, sorry in the MVP discussion. But yesterday seemed, and I watched 85% of that game, I would say, at least 85% of the Seahawks on offense. I was trying to bounce back to their games, but it was his. That was his offense.

It had a mixture of Pete uh core values of running the football and being stubborn with the run and bigger personnel settings it had enough of the spread stuff to keep russell happy it had enough of the movement stuff but it had freedom like yesterday's offense wasn't either hey we're gonna let russ cook or or Pete's way of we're not going to even let him in the kitchen where we're just going to turn around and hand it off. It had the balance of we have a little bit of everything. And Russ probably signed off on everything that's being called today. And it's exactly the way he wants it. I thought there was a nice little conservative first down run, run action completion stuff. And there, and he wants to take shots. Like he, he wants to throw, he's maybe the greatest

deep ball pass that's ever played football. Uh, he wants to throw the ball down the field. He trusts his guys. He's got lock. He's got DK. He's got dudes that can go get it. Um, so they want to do that. Then they want to make you feel like they're throwing it down the field and create all that space on the second level and then wear you out on the second level, which they did. And it was almost like I saw Russ as quarterback slash OC. And that's always the biggest thing for me. When I get asked about the great quarterbacks,

not your middling quarterback, not your guy that's just playing well, but we know he's not a great one. But when you're talking about the great quarterbacks, not your middling quarterback, not your guy that's just playing well, but we know he's not a great one. But when you're talking about your great quarterbacks, can you watch them as the coordinator as well as the quarterback? Because I think that's the final piece that when a guy goes, okay, I'm great, I'm doing everything, but it's my car.

Those guys are helping me. The quarterback coach is helping me. The pass game coordinator coordinator is helping me the oc is helping me the old line goes guys helping me but at the end of the day i'm the one running the show i'm driving this car and it needs to be exactly the way i want it yesterday was the first time in russ's career where i said okay that's his offense and i don't and i love b Brian Schottenheimer, who was in Seattle before this, and I think Brian wanted to get him there. I think Pete's really been the reason he's never been at this point. And I think the offseason conversation there allowed Russ to go in and say,

you want to see how great I can really be? Let this be my offense. And that's what I saw from Russell Willis yesterday. Let's at least do a couple minutes on Wentz. We know the health stuff coming in. I've argued he's probably never going to be the guy that we saw in 17. I still don't believe he's as bad as the guy we've seen statistically the last couple seasons.

He started off slow, 10 for 10, then slow again. I think he was three for 11. And then on that 12th throw and that second or that third stretch I'm talking about here, it's a third and long conversion where you're like, man, that looks good. And as I kind of discovered last year with Wentz, I think the guys that did it for a living see throws from him where you're like, I can't believe he just made that play.

And that's why everybody would talk about it all the time on TV, the guys that did it for a living, because the rest of you don't understand how special this is. Look, week one for him, it was all over the place. They lose. The defense wasn't good enough against Seattle. Is there anything that actually stuck out to you from Wentz?

Yeah, I was going to say this about Kars for about two years now. He should stop hunting and learn how to play golf. I'll tell you why. Because golf teaches you that, and I'll use myself an example I haven't played in a couple years but when I played a lot of golf and played a lot of tournaments I'm 6'4 240 pounds and my buddy in Austin who's one of the best amateur golfers in the country weighs 165 pounds

and he would hit it 30 yards by me off the tee. I have another buddy in California that I played a ton of golf with, played all over the world with him. He's 5'8", 185 pounds. He hits it 45 yards past me. Just, you know, Louisiana Bayou type drives. And everybody goes, ooh, and ah. And then when we get up to the green

and I make my eight-foot birdie putt and they miss their eight-foot birdie putt and they miss their eight foot birdie putt make par i beat them by one and you stack that up over 18 holes you i shoot 69 you shoot 75 and there wasn't one drive that i hit that everybody went ooh ah and there wasn't one high towering draw six iron to a back left pin that hits and rolls down toward the eye. Instead, I hit a cut at the pin and played it to the middle of the green and it's 32 feet and I got out of the hole of the par. And then there's that little flop shot that has the funky lie that you're in trouble and you're like, eh, most people don't like it. And I'll hit a little slider and hit it to two feet, knock in the par putt and make my par,

and the other guy's chunking it in the bunker. Here's my point. Playing quarterback isn't about the ooh and the ah. Now, it's awesome when you have it, if you're also making all your six-foot par putts and you're getting the ball up and down off the edge of the green, you're also doing the boring stuff. Carson's got to get better at the boring stuff.

He's got to understand it's not 350-yard drives. It's not the flash and sizzle. Not every single play is the most important play of his career. He's got to just get himself out of trouble. He's got to manage situations. There's probably 40% of the game where it's boring. It's just flat boring. There's nothing sizzly to it.

There's nothing. Anybody can do it, but you got to do it. Another analogy I hear people talk about a lot is making their layups. You just got to make your layups. But here's the other thing in golf that you got to do. Every once in a while, you hook it into the woods and you got a little crack and you're like, huh, I could probably hit some stinger three iron under over, hit a little hook and get it up near the green. Or I can take my pitching wedge and I can go out sideways and just get myself out of jail and then hit the six iron on the green two putt, make bogey, move on to the next hole.

I think that's what you talk a lot. You talk to the Romos and the Elways back in the green, two-putt, make bogey, move on to the next hole. I think that's what you talk to the Romos and the Elways. Back in the day, my day, the Marino, everybody played golf. And they would all talk about how playing golf helped them in a football game because it was perspective. And I think Carson needs a golf perspective on his game where sometimes just chip it out sideways, make bogey and move on and until he gets that you're going to see these wild ebb and flows wow there's been some accusations that you talk up your golf game a lot on this podcast not for me i'm going to keep doing it that's all right really

now again i've you did a few years you said you said it was an amateur and then you sort of hinted that you smoked him all the time so i'm just no no this no this guy this guy has more with more dubs on me than i have on him not the guy in california i own the guy in california okay all right i'm glad we did that because he was like wait you're beating like a guy that's almost on the tour all the time like what's going on here we know you we know the 642 20 that's awesome super bowl ring high school coach oh by the way i'm a stick all right uh i have two more for you because i can't believe it took me this long to get to it i liked what i saw from cleveland yesterday i know the last three possessions are not what you're looking for if you're talking baker like look if you don't

like baker then you're hammering them on those last three possessions. I'm talking Cleveland as a whole, and we know it fell apart in that atmosphere against a superhero. I feel better about Cleveland today, even with the loss. It's funny. People need to know we did not text or talk about this ahead of time. That was me about comments on Cleveland. I feel better about them than I ever have. I think they're real. I think they'll be a big-time contender.

I think they have great perspective. I really do. I think Baker's real. I think they'll be a big-time contender. I think they have great perspective. I really do. I think Baker's matured a ton. I mean, you watch Baker and Pressers, and it's authentic. Like, we're just trying to get better, man. Like, we have big dreams. We think we're pretty good, but we're just trying to get better. I don't think they're going to freak out about this.

They've handled their roster really well. They got beat by magic. I mean, literally,. They got beat by magic. I mean, literally, they just got beat by magic. I told my wife it was a two-score game, and I'm game planning for a game this week, and I'm watching that game. I looked, and I said, Chiefs are going to win this. She goes, well, you say crazy things like that.

I said, watch. But it wasn't anti-Cleveland. It was pro-Chief. Cleveland's going to be 11, 12 win team. They're going to stuff the ball down your throat offensively and then make big plays in the passing game. Here's what I was most impressed with where I think Baker, I've always said this. I think the more he plays like drew the better he'll be. Yesterday, he played like Drew on those third and shorts, fourth and shorts. I mean, the location of those little dart routes, some of the precision passes he made. You're talking windows this big. You're not talking windows this big. You're talking

windows this big. And I'll challenge anybody to get a football from five yards away, put up a bunch of beer cans to see if you can hit the middle one. Well, he was doing that from five yards away, put up a bunch of beer cans to see if you can hit the middle one. Well, he was doing that from 20 yards away on those short yards plays. He was decisive with it. He wasn't turning it down. I think Browns-Baker, the run game, that defense, I think they're going to be one of the top five teams in the NFL. Like, you know me, I'm not going to tell you who's the best, but they're going to be in that chunk of four to six teams that you can see winning the whole thing. All right. Last thought here.

I don't want Chicago on any more nationally televised games. I'm looking at it now. I think they have three more because the discussion around Dalton and Fields, and just as an aside, I was never necessarily the biggest Dalton guy, but A.J. Green should just be shuttled right into the Fields. And just as an aside, I was never necessarily the biggest Dalton guy, but AJ

Green should just be like shuttled right into the hall of fame now because Dalton actually was respectable enough as a starter. And now it's not like he's a hundred years old. Like he's, it's gotten worse. And I'd even say last night, there were some decent moments from him, but the way the fields part of this is talked about, like, I really like Chris Collinsworth, but like Andy throws a little crosser just past the line of scrimmage and they're like, you know, Fields gets to see that and knows that throws there. You're like, come on, he's not 12. Like at some point he will figure this stuff out. Some of it he has already figured out, but it felt like a very pre-production meeting broadcast of the staff telling the NBC guys, this is why we have all of these concerns. And this is the message we're selling. And this is what we're doing on and on. And I felt like there was this absolute buy-in. So my point would be, if the national broadcast of a Chicago Bears game is going to be, this is why Fields isn't playing

and we're further onto the season, then I'll I just, I'll just give up because last night was like three hours of selling that message in a game. The bears are going to have a chance in either way. Amen. I wish, I wish there was no question. I'm sorry, but no, it's and you're right. I think you're leading me towards why isn't Phil playing? Why is Dalton playing? Who cares what the, what the, what the propaganda thing was through Chicago staff to NBC crew.

I get why they're doing it. So if you make a, if you make a decision internally and you know, it's going to be counter-cultural, right? Cause almost everybody's going to want fields, right? The media wants to talk more about rookie quarterbacks and the higher the pick and the fans want it because he's the savior. Basically, that's all that matters, right? Media and fans

are doing a propaganda pitch. I get why they are selling that. This is why we're doing it. I'm an Andy Dalton guy. I like Andy. I think he's a good starting quarterback in the NFL. I think he can get you through some tough times. Couldn't be nicer.

Couldn't be nicer. And he can help you reset the ship. You know, I think from a football standpoint, he's going to lower your, I mean, he's going to raise your floor. I think that's what Andy Dalton is. He's going to raise your floor. I think what they're scared about is if they play fields and he has Trevor Lawrence, Zach Wilson experience where there's going to be giant ebb and flows, they're going to lose their

jobs. I think that's, in my opinion, what I've seen happen in my time with the NFL is when you're making a decision where you're trying to raise your floor instead of raise your ceiling, you're protecting your job. They know they can be okay because they should have a really good defense, although it didn't look great last night. They can play kind of management football and get through the season with the carrot of we just gave Fields the Mahomes year, right? Because it's tangible. Like you can say, this just happened a few years ago.

We had this dude, Patrick Mahomes, that was lighting up practice and we're playing Alex Smith, all up kind of the same player as Andy Dalton. And look what it did for the Chiefs. Oh, by the way, I was there when we did this. So this was part of my plan. So you can sell that long enough

and keep your job till the next year. Whereas if you play fields right now and it goes backwards, you're gone. And there's a new staff coming in with Justin Fields as the quarterback. So that's been my experience in the league. I think most players, coaches would agree with me that that's probably what's happening here. Now, going back to your era, I completely agree. Like I used to always look at, and again, Cam Newton is still, you know, obviously still in the league potentially here. So we're talking still years removed from kind of your core years.

But I remember the Cam discussion. He was not a lock for number one, right? They were like, yeah, maybe you go seven, eight, something like that. And it's like, oh, he's going to go number one. And then I thought, all right, you know what they're going to do is they're going to take their time because if it's a coaching staff that's worried, the best thing you can do is still have hope. You can still have hope. Like a new driver in the back, Trent, you know what I'm talking about. It's if we play him week 10 on and we go 3-3 and we feel pretty good about ourselves, maybe we get to stick around.

So I think the naggy approach, if that's what it is, I totally get it. It's just that nobody does that anymore. So that would be, if I were running the Bears, I'd be like, so wait, we just iced this guy for a year so you guys could save your jobs? Now I'm definitely not keeping you around. But I think you said in the midst of that is, I've been saying this forever, as soon as I left football and went into TV, I'm like, what never gets talked about enough is hope.

Hope sells tickets. Hope gets you free agents. Hope attracts coaches. Hope buys you time. Hope fixes bad stuff that happened. Hope makes crap go away. You sell hope enough as an organization and people keep buying hope. And I think you said it, I think that's what's going on here is you have an

opportunity now to raise your floor with Andy. So it gives you some time to then when you set, you start your second PR push, which is hope, hope, hope, hope, hope. And that buys you time and that keeps people excited and that fills stadiums and that sells merch and he sells Justin Fields jerseys when he starts playing and gives you an off season of narrative, which starts with the draft. Everybody positions their PR pushes around the draft. So right now, PR departments are meeting on, okay, when we get to next May and the draft, what are we pushing? What are we selling?

Well, we're going to be selling hope. Give me some information on your new podcast and what are you and Favre talking about? What's that conversation like? Yeah, it's been really cool. It's called Beyond the X's and O's. It's the journey of the quarterback. We started with a bunch of gold jacket guys,

so Jim Kelly, Warren Moon, Brett F farb steve young's coming on um john lynch uh gm of the niners a lot of people don't know you know he's a hall of famer just went in but he was a quarterback his whole life was a quarterback bill walsh was the one that convinced him he can be an all-pro safety um so and he talks about his journey as a quarterback but also his perspective as an NFL player playing against great quarterbacks now as a GM evaluating quarterbacks we really talk about some of the stuff the mainstream media doesn't talk about because they don't have time not that people aren't interested but they just don't have time the approach I kind of took was you know how when a new quarterback gets signed into a new city, how the local beat person goes in

and does like the life story of that quarterback. So we've done that in a podcast. Most of these guys are buddies, I have relationships with, Kurt Warner was on, he talked about all types of stuff. And I just tee them up. I do very little talking. I try to be creative in where I take them down the road. And they talk about

their journey. We've talked about their first high school touchdown pass and what it felt like, how nervous they were. Troy Aikman told us how his first call to start, he had no idea what he was looking at. He was literally just chucking and ducking, didn't know anything about coverage, didn't know anything about anything. And he was totally vulnerable. All of them have been really, really transparent about how bad they were at some point of their journey, how terrible they were. I mean, Favre, Aikman, everybody. And I think that's been the cool part is having them be able to go, and they all text me afterwards. That was really fun. I don't get to talk about that type of stuff. Like I don't, everybody asks me about the hot button issues, the hot takes,

or what I think of the young guys. Nobody just asks me about what was it like to be recruited in 1979. What was it like to go on your recruiting trip at wherever? What was it like to your first Friday night start? What were you feeling? Then some stuff in the NFL, their NFL journey, how they got to learn. And that's the one thing I've been hammering forever is, you know, these guys are not finished products.

They're still learning and growing. And when you hear Favre talk about how much he learned early in his career, when Aikman talks about these things and Kurt Warner, you know, everybody knows about his journey. But even in St. Louis behind Trent Green, before he takes over how much he was learning at the time, I think just kind of reset your perspective. And then where we're going with this pod is, you know, I have all ever play of the position or Hall of Fame perspective. And then start getting the young guys on and talking about their quarterback journey, which isn't even close to finish. And comparing the front end of their journeys to the front end of the Hall of Fame journeys. It's been fun. Now, it's brutal to do while I'm coaching the team and prepping and all that stuff.

But I just do a lot of listening. And so far, the feedback's been really good. It's called Beyond the X's and O's. You can find it anywhere. team and prep it and all that stuff. But I just do a lot of listening and, and, uh, so far the feedback's been really good. It's called beyond the X's and O's. You can find it anywhere. And I think you'll enjoy it if you're a QB junkie. That's awesome. Um,

I, I love being invited to lead 11. Give me, you know, just a limited time, a lot of perspective. I love talking to all your staff guys. They were great.

So once it transitions into that, I think it would be just as interested if you give it a chance so thanks trent we'll talk to you again soon all right thanks for joining us all right see you man bye before we get to college football i i gotta ask rudy did you all right after after dilfer compared dalton to alex sm, you basically put them at the same level. That, you know, again, off the top, we all know our Alex Smith arguments

going way back to ESPN, but that had to hurt for you. Yeah, I mean, this podcast feels like a personal attack on me. Not what I wanted week one of the NFL season feeling good, and all of a sudden, you're telling me that you've always thought Alex Smith was trash in the open,

and then Dilfer compares him to Andy Dalton, which I just don't think is ridiculous. And you were talking about some stereotypes of guys with man buns. Come on, man. What are we doing? What's the stigma for guys on man buns? That they're great soccer players? They're Euro? They can't be trusted? They're shady? I like Aaron Rodgers'

hair. Wow. I think the Alex Smith-Dalton thing was unfair. It was. I think the Alex Smith Dalton thing was unfair. It was. I think Alex Smith is, yeah. I'm, like I said with Dilfer, I can't believe Dalton's been now this bad. Like, I don't think he was, you know what I mean?

Like, I thought some of the numbers, you know, it was always the thing with Dalton when he would play like in a primetime game. You're like, oh, this guy, this guy's affected by the atmosphere of all of this stuff. It felt real. game you're like oh this guy this guy's affected by the atmosphere of all of this stuff it felt real it felt like when you're watching it real time you're like all right this guy's air mailing some throws because he's just too hyped up for some of these games um they always had pretty good receivers but he still look he still put up decent numbers the team was okay i'd expect a little bit more out of him but even though like alex smith i always felt like as a guy that you had but you could upgrade but towards the kansas city run even when he got replaced from the homes

he you know he was steady he was steady and so I still think he was I think the best Alex Smith was better than Andy Dalton so I'm looking it's not even debatable and I and I would say this I think Andy Dalton and Alex Smith have almost had like the the opposite career arc in that Andy Dalton he gets drafted by a Bengals team uh if I recall correctly like good defense they get AJ Green that same year like they had they had some weapons. That was a good team around him. Alex Smith got drafted in what was that, 2005 to I think the worst team, like maybe one of the worst rosters we've ever seen in the history of the league. And then Alex Smith later in his career was like, oh, yeah, this guy, you know, once he gets weapons, Jim Harbaugh comes in.

He starts winning some games and he goes to Kansas City with obviously Andy Reid. He's brought three different teams to the playoffs. Andy Dalton had success earlier with a great team. And then every time he's been on average team since then, he's shown these probably a below average quarterback. So the two cannot be compared. I mean, this is nothing against Andy Dalton. I like Andy Dalton. And I understand the Bears Bears frustration for not playing Justin Fields because that was a rough one last night.

But Alex Smith is head and shoulders above Andy Dalton. Please. Sorry, Trent. OK, I know. and that's trent's boy right too they're like they're like good friends yeah so i don't know i don't know where that came from just catching strays here for no reason alex was a short of the sticks guy though he was yeah i'm not saying he was perfect he was probably a league average like he was probably 15th right if you're ranking 32 quarterbacks, 16, 15, right around there. Dalton is high 20s. I mean, come on. I think Dalton's average was like 23rd on that EPA thing that I was talking about, which I used last week for the rookies that you should expect first round rookies that play the

bulk of their first season to be Andy Dalton. And there's exceptions. There's Mahomes, Russell Wilson. But Russell Wilson, if you go back to the very beginning, they ran the football and they played like all-time defense. And they didn't ask Russell Wilson to do as much. So I felt like in the beginning with some of the Russell Wilson stuff, it was a little Joe Flacco-ish, where then Divergent Pass, Russell Wilson, Hall of Famer, MVP caliber guy, Flacco. Like, oh, yeah.

Other than that one playoff run kind of propped up by the rest of it all the time. All right. I don't want to turn this into too much More Dalton stuff I'm telling you right now Like I'm looking at the Bears schedule I can't do another one of these three hour National broadcasts about Fields and Dalton I mean I can't I'm already Fields Dalton out Same I can't imagine what Bears fans

Are going through I feel for the Bears fans And I get it but there's just we've already brought This up in the podcast there's just a lot of the content Out there about the Fields-Dalton thing. I think we've covered all the angles at this point, but we got a Steelers game. Are the Bears the new NFC East when it comes to primetime games?

Remember, you would always be like, I'm good with Giants-Eagles when both teams are under 500. Week 16, fighting for a playoff pass. We're good. This team sucks. I don't want to see them in primetime anymore. That's what the Bears are now. You know who we got in primetime next week?

Giants. It's just the NFC East markets. That's all it is. Don't try to figure it out other than they know those are the best TV markets. That's what they're going to do. I want everybody to watch DeAndre Jones. Still want to tuck it and run and then fumble in his third year.

Okay. So I, I remember when I did the giants rant where I just like solo rant. I don't know. Cause it was always weird. Cause I wasn't always solo all the time. Cause it was one of your best rants. It was, we, we put up a video of it. It was, it got, I mean, it got probably one of the highest like an highest like and engagement you know whatever you call it social media metrics that you've ever had because

everyone agrees with you we're just tired of seeing shitty teams in primetime right and then giants fans were you know those that were mad about it they were going to watch the video so then it made the rounds like there was a rams video on golf that led to death threats i didn't quite get um Let's see. Yeah, the Giants video. Because I was just like, we went through it. We averaged up all the Giants offensive output on every one of their nationally televised games

over a short amount of time. They're averaging like 13 points a game for a couple years now in these primetime games. And when I saw the ad for that, I go, oh, Washington Giants, here we go. Okay, let's do a little college football here because I've got a headline, I've got what does it mean,

and then a couple others, a smattering of others. The headline's Oregon going into Columbus and beating Ohio State. Okay. The Ohio State concerns about the defense that Bruce Feldman came on and talked about us before the season, and of course it was met with all sorts of nastiness from Buckeyes fans, which is pretty much, that was like as soon

as Bruce was like, hey, I'm not sure about their defense. You dicks! Well, guess what? We're not sure about their fucking defense. A defense that last year ranked 77th after being number one under Halfley in 2019. Now, we all know what the COVID rules are, right?

If we're fans, if something good happened during COVID, it's real. If something bad happened to your team during COVID, it's like, well, it was COVID. That doesn't count. There's concerns with Ohio State's defense. The team gained 612 yards of offense. That's what the Buckeyes gained. And even when it was the down double two scores, you're thinking, I still felt like, look,

Ohio State's at home. They can still figure this thing out. And they were close to get back into this thing. And C.J. Stroud in the pocket looks more comfortable outside of the pocket. I'm not just talking about the pick where he's trying to get like almost third and 20 back on one throw that led to the pick kind of sealed it. I've noticed now between this game and the Minnesota game, and you know, this is just me, the amateur at home watching, but it seems like when he gets flushed out a little bit,

the amateur at home watching, but it seems like when he gets flushed out a little bit, that's where you can get him, whether it's not just a pick, but the accuracy seems to dip. And I don't know. I don't know if those raw numbers are telling me inside and outside of the pocket. There's actually not that much disparity.

It's just something I've noticed with his throws. It just looks like with Stroud, a little bit when he has to freelance, again, two starts into his career, that's where you might be able to get him. So, Oregon also did this without Kayvon Thibodeau, the best pass rusher perhaps in all of college football. I mean, Leal with A&M is maybe my favorite defensive lineman in the country.

And then they had another guy up front that Oregon was missing as well. So this is a really impressive win for them, and it's a start of a Pac-12 shift that I don't know if it's accurate or inaccurate because really what we're talking about here at the top of the conference is how many teams do we have a chance at the top? How many teams are still alive at the top that gives you a chance? Right now, you're down to two. You're already down to two in the Pac-12. So the fact that Washington gets smoked at Michigan, I don't know what's going on with the Huskies offense.

USC, for those that were up late enough to see that, manhandled by Stanford, who made a change of quarterback. And number six, Higgins for Stanford, looks like the real deal. This really stout wide receiver for them. But still, this is a Stanford team that looked like they couldn't even get past the 50 against Kansas State a week ago. Cal loses to TCU. Arizona loses to San Diego State.

Utah loses to BYU. They got smashed. So you had ranked teams in Utah, USC, and Washington that looked like they have no chance to get ranked again. Cal, the expectations weren't as high there. Arizona, you know, new year with Jed Fish. So you've got UCLA and Oregon, and they're going to play each other actually on October 23rd in the regular season. So what you're hoping throughout all of that is one of those teams after that game and then going into the Pac-12 championship is still alive here. So I'm not going to write off the Big Ten. And this is where it expands out to.

Here's the headline. Now, what does it mean? With the playoff jockeying, I still expect the norm for unpredictable things to happen. That's usually what this sport is about. It has not been the case because the top teams have been putting NFL, sometimes first-round picks after another, at the top rosters, whether it's Thompson, whether it's Bama, right, on and on. Oklahoma, same deal.

Like, hey, these guys are always more talented than everybody else, but now they always have an NFL guy that might always be a first-rounder playing quarterback for them. But this is a – I just – I don't like as soon as Ohio State loses, it's, oh, the Big Ten doesn't have anybody. We don't know that yet. Iowa, back-to-back games against ranked teams, Indiana and Iowa State, they've allowed 23 combined points.

They have some dudes on the defensive line. Petras has been around for a while as a quarterback, and Iowa doesn't play Ohio State in the regular season. Ohio State's probably going to figure some things out, and even if they're averaged defensively, like can Penn State get them? Can Michigan get them? None of us are there yet. By the way, Michigan, even in that win against Washington,

if you saw Bell, the wide receiver, in their first week, he's their best playmaker, incredible wide receiver. He's out for the season for the Wolverines. So if you relate this to the Pac-12 jockeying, UCLA and Oregon are probably going to get eliminated from this thing mid-October if they're still both clean. Oregon has the talent. I'm not sure UCLA is as talented as Oregon.

Iowa, avoiding Ohio State, at least until a Big Ten title game, feels like their best shot. And then you have the Big 12 with Iowa State, who would probably have to beat Oklahoma twice to even be in the conversation. And that would be them getting to a Pac-12 championship game after beating them at the end of the regular season. The point is, as we're only two sort of plus three weeks in

with college football, the good thing and the point that we're trying to make, these things happening this early may lead to some of that cycling through. We're a couple weeks in. Don't just write off everybody. Just write off Clemson because of the ACC and their easy schedule the rest of the way.

Don't just plug Georgia in because their easy schedule the rest of the way. This is good. So maybe we'll start to get back to some of this unpredictability. Two other quick things here. I don't have much more to add to the USC thing, but there was the old line from the Florida AD

when they got rid of, I think it was Ron Zook. Is it Foley? I forget. And it was basically like, what must be done eventually? Oh, no, no. What must be done inevitably must be done immediately. And that's where you're at with Clay Helton in USC. You just are. You know you're going to fire him.

So what's the plan? Because they're home. Coliseum's dead. Stanford looks terrible last week. And conference games are different. They should always be different. I mean, this is not a lesson that we should be teaching ourselves over and over again.

But that was bad. And then how about Texas? They gave up 333 yards to Arkansas. KJ Jefferson, dual threat quarterback for Arkansas. It's like kind of a poor man's Vince Young. Huge. Can really run it. Some throws are good.

Some throws aren't. Texas sends a bench in. Their quarterback Hudson Card for Casey Thompson. And if you talk to any of the quarterback people that are really into the recruiting stuff, the way it was explained to me, they're like, hey, Haynes King at A&M was better than Calzada who came in for Haynes King who got crunched in that game against Colorado.

The backup was shaky the whole game, makes the one throw into the end zone, escapes. Maybe that A&M close win against Colorado is remembered differently. Maybe it won't matter. Depends on what they do in their own division. But Hudson Card was supposedly the best of all of these guys, and then he got benched in his game against Texas.

So it was an absolute ass-kicking by Arkansas. Same thing with Stanford and SC. And much like last week with UCLA and LSU where it wasn't the score, it was just what happened on the field. You're like, man, you're getting pushed around all over the place. And a little scary aside, LSU didn't look all that great against McNeese.

They were 17-0 in the third quarter, I think it was three or four minutes ago. That was not the effort you were hoping to see if they would go out west and lose. So there you go, a little college football roundup. They say money can't buy happiness. Look at the fucking smile on my face. Ear to ear, baby.

You want details? Fine. I drive a Ferrari 355 Cabriolet. What's up? I have a ridiculous house in the South Fork. I have every toy you could possibly imagine. And best of all, kids, I am liquid.

So, now you know what's possible. Let me tell you what's required. Okay, a little life advice on a Monday. Life advice address is lifeadvicerr at gmail.com. Okay, 55130. Monday, life advice address is lifeadvicerr at gmail.com. Okay. 5'5", 130. He says, hashtag short king. Don't go to the gym too much. Forgotten to running like everyone else during COVID.

Couldn't run more than two miles pre-COVID. Now prepping for a half marathon in October. Also going to do 18 pull-ups. That's awesome, man. Okay. He wants us to be really honest here and we're going to be. One of my good buddies, 10 years, signed a one-year lease back in December at the height of COVID because it was a super sweet deal. But a month in, I had second thoughts. I tried toughing it out, but after another two months, I continued to feel depressed and let him know I

wanted to move back home. Granted, I didn't handle this well at all. I blindsided him during the work day to let him know the news. It didn't really give well at all. I blindsided him during the workday to let him know the news. It didn't really give him any sense that I was thinking about moving out. But I did offer that I'd be willing to help find him a new roommate for the remainder of the lease or even pay the three-month rent penalty to break the lease. This was actually very steep because it was three months of our total rent, so essentially six times my monthly rent. All right. He was going to say after three months in, he'd help him find a new roommate for the rest or even pay three month rent penalty to break the lease. Uh, so three months of our total rent. So six times my monthly rent, my buddy, understandably shell shock at

first seemed fine with what had transpired, but then informed me he did not want a random roommate also understandable and wants me to pay the full remaining balance of my rent. We ended up compromising and maybe paying another six months by a termination fee and him paying the final two months of my portion of the lease so that he could continue living there. I thought the compromise was good. It would save our friendship, but it's been a few months since that compromise, but our friendship seems to have not been the same since. We don't talk or text or hang out as much, and when we do, there's an awkward air to it. So I wanted to get your opinion on our compromise. Was I out of line?

Should I have paid the full remainder of the lease? Or was he being unreasonable? How do we move past this lease situation to go back to being best friends like we were before the whole apartment situation? Well, look, you kind of fucked him, man. I mean, you admit it. You know, you love the idea of this lease

because it sounds like you were going to be living in a place you normally wouldn't be able to live in because rental numbers were just getting crushed. Occupancy numbers, or I guess I should say apartment vacancies in major cities throughout COVID, it just started going worse and worse. It depends on what was actually reported and what the real number was. It sounds like you guys got in on something you normally wouldn't be able to get. Now you're there, you don't like it, you regret it, you sign the lease. And I would say from a starter, the reason people live with each other is usually there's some kind of relationship. I'm obviously not saying that for everybody, but in this case, he's thinking,

I want to move into this and I'm moving in with my best friend. Now I got a stranger in here, like, I don't want to do that. I would never do never. Okay. Um, granted, yes, I realized some people have to do it, but in this case, that's not what this guy thought he was going to be doing. So it sounds like you come up with some sort of financial plan here. Like, honestly, what you should have done is just said, Hey, I am going to pay whatever the penalty is. Like you're the one that made the mistake. So if you've made the mistake, you'd have admitted it and you didn't handle it that well. I can't believe you just called him at work and you're like, hey, dude, guess what? I'm out. I don't like it here. I understand you got to take care

of yourself and all that kind of stuff, but you're saying it's awkward now. Think about how he feels about this. He's like, if it were reversed and you go, hey, one of my best friends, we get this place. I'm thrilled. Three months in, he blindsides me. He says, hey, do you want a stranger in here? I tell him no. We try to figure some stuff out here financially. And then it sounds like that. There's one way you phrase this is a little confusing. But I guess the part of this is that you compromised on you paying for another six months.

So I know that sucks for you. And then he got to live there apparently without you. So that's like a great setup for him. So he should probably be a little bit happier about it. Uh, but that's, this is just one of those classic things, especially if you're younger and you haven't had enough things happen in your life yet. Like this might be the first time ever there was some kind of derailment of a living situation. Right. And so now since the first time it's ever happened to you and look, you're going to have bigger challenges and much more frustrating stuff that happens to you later on in life. But like, that's why being younger sometimes can be weird

because you haven't ever gone through anything like this. So I, this isn't really a ruling like, Hey, you're to blame or he's to blame or all that kind of stuff. I mean, you're clearly to blame. I guess there's part of this. You can say, Hey, if you pay the next six months and you get to live there for free, then he should be able to pay the final two months. But if you really care about the friendship, it's either going to be fine with time or you're going to have to just step up again and express to him, look, I was really depressed. I had made a mistake. I missed being home. I couldn't do it. I know I fucked up the whole deal. But if you did end up paying for the

next six months on your own when you weren't even living there, that actually feels like a pretty good compromise on your end if it ended up with him only having to cover two months of the entire place by himself. I think you did enough here, even though this is your fault. Yeah, I would say other than the way the news was broken, which was probably, you know, could have been done better. Maybe not when he's, you know, at work and it's kind of a stressful situation. And just to drop that on you in the middle of a day is kind of shitty. You should probably plan that out better. But what's your friend?

I mean, does he want to, like, live with you and have you be miserable the entire time? You paid a ton of money to help him out and i think as a friend he should understand that you're not in a great position you want to go back home and you're homesick and as much as that sucks for him you did everything you could to make him comfortable too so i don't know i actually don't think this guy was that much of a dick other than the way he delivered the message yeah i think it's one of those things where the other guy has to get over too i mean if, if I understand this email correctly, that he got six months paid for half a place that he had by himself. So I think that's sick. Yeah. I'm trying to like, if he made it three months or maybe that

fourth month. And so that's, I think that's the math three or four months in then six months solo where the other guy's paying for it. Um, yeah, he needs to get over it a little bit little bit. Now, look, I had friends that never really had that many challenges. You know, college was a breeze for them. They always had money. Family was always supportive. It always felt like they were the younger of the siblings, you know, so they were kind of handled a little different. I know I was the oldest, so I think the oldest can be both great

and have other things of it that aren't so great. But I would see them be completely fucking derailed for the slightest little thing and you go like oh man you haven't had like any adversity like none whatsoever so i mean that could be the issue here this could be the first living situation or anything if you guys are that young where there's been any kind of uh adversity for him whatsoever and you know maybe he's just soft you know maybe that's the only thing too is that like if they were like tag team hey we're gonna go we're gonna live in the city together we're gonna have a good time we're both young and then one of them bails it does kind of

screw the other guy's life like i understand i'm sympathetic to work towards why that guy would be upset with you because he's like okay cool now so you want to go home and i'm stuck in this apartment by myself with no friends in the city that i don't really i don't want to live with some random so you are kind of screwing his life up a little bit too especially if he was kind of dead set on being there for a while because now does he have to move home like what's his situation well that's him a ton yeah so i get it but i mean what else are you gonna do if the guy's homesick you gotta you gotta just he's your friend man you gotta support him stefan you want to jump in here we We have no Kyle today. We're very, very lucky to have our man with us in New York. Yeah, I think I think the biggest thing for me is like, why did you let it get to that point?

If that's your best friend, like, why are you being so passive aggressive? But we guys live in the same house. Like you could have told him a little bit sooner than that. You could have like not had Sprint going to call him at work and say, hey, I'm moving out and I'm going back home. I get the part that, I like the part that he's like, yo, I'm going to pay for half my rent for half the year. That's respectable.

I respect that. But this is like your best friend, as you say, like you guys live together. You guys are walking around the same house, eating dinner, watching TV, doing whatever. Like at some point you're going to say,

yo, bro, I'm going through it. I think it's time for me to go home. But you're like calling him're going to say, yo, bro, I'm going through it. I think it's time for me to go home. But you're like calling them at work. Like, yeah, man, I'm moving out. Like I got some money set aside for you. It's like, what? Why did you spring this on me? Like we could have had a conversation and smooth this out.

I think that's going to be the hardest part of the friendship if they're going to work it back out. Is that like you didn't trust me at all to like come to me and talk to me about that i get i understand people have mental problems and those kind of things but like being passive aggressive with your best friend is weird to me that's just my person not again yeah yeah i i don't like the more we talk to sal i'm gonna end this here shortly like if the other guy like what what do we not know about the negotiation like what is what's the other guy's version when he tells his friends about this? Like does he say, you know, at first he didn't even want to pay, you know, so that maybe the compromise that you made ends up being good to us. But was there a weird two week stretch where you guys were fighting this out?

And so it's not even about the money. It's not even him about, you know, being in the apartment by himself the rest of the way. It's about all the time where you guys couldn't come to an agreement, which has damaged the friendship forever. Or the other guy may be insanely selfish and is going, now I have to move and I want to live here three years. You're like, well, dude, we didn't get fucking married. We signed a lease together. And now if you have to move to a lesser apartment because we got an awesome apartment during COVID, we got the COVID rate on this, and eventually the rent was going to go back up. And now your plans are derailed a year ahead of time. Like at some point, like that's not

on me. So there's a lot in here. There's, there's probably a little bit more. I do want to get information. Yeah. Well, we don't, we're good. Um, I do email. So Rudy then. All right. Uh, we had a lot of people chime in with our Daniel Ricardo, Dwight Howard, um, that, that Kevin Clark brought up, uh,

F1 going abroad. We'll be doing that midweek. Uh, shout out to Ricardo and the McLaren team for getting the win at Monza this week. Um, I'm, I'm not ready to do it.

We had 20 something hours of football here at the compound. And, uh, a guy chimed in, said, good day. He goes, as an Aussie, I'm telling you, the only comp for Daniel Ricciardo is Ben Simmons. Both super talented. When they started,

got paid, got popular, then did what every upstanding Australian always does, thinks to themselves, how good is this? I'm worth a fortune, even if I don't do another day's work in my life. It's in our DNA. Think of Ricciardo and Simmons. Think of Nick Kyrgios and Bernard Tomek. Is it Tomek or Tomek? I forget. And the tennis. Kyrgios is always one of my favorites because every time he loses shit, loses again, then I'm told that I don't understand him. I'm like, okay. I just think he kind of sucks to watch play tennis.

He's super talented and he's incredibly soft mentally. He goes, even a footballer who went to the Premier league, Mark Bosnich is the best example ever. He happily sat on the bench everywhere. He played over there after trying just hard enough to get a decent contract. The lazy wanker. He calls him. Do you remember him? Cerruti?

I don't. Unfortunately, no, not, it sounds like, it sounds like that's not your fault because he didn't play. Ultimately, this is just about being an Aussie. It's why everyone loves coming over here.

It's so laid back. You guys are so easy going Why wouldn't we think this translates to our sports people I don't know I don't know enough about the Australian culture For that one I thought you were a little more rugged than that But maybe that's just the football videos

In the cross Australian trucking show I watched an episode and a half of Netflix I didn't like the Ricardo Dwight Howard thing Because everybody likes Ricardo Nobody likes Dwight Howard thing because everybody likes Ricardo. Nobody likes Dwight Howard. To remind everybody about Dwight Howard, the entire NBA was in the bubble and he went to a party by himself.

It was in an article. First of all, I just want the Australian fan base to understand this is the email or generalizing. I didn't like the Ricardo Dwight comp and shout out to, to McLaren again. So we're not, we don't have anything to add to that. It was just a theory thrown this way, but I'm getting a lot of shrapnel, a lot of take shrapnel. It happens a lot with Simmons. Like I'll have kind of a medium take and then bill will either double down on what I said, or he'll just

go off in a completely different direction. And then I get all this take shrapnel and it'll just be out there in the ether. And I'll be like, look, that's not really even what I said, but again, that's the job. All right. So we'll, uh, we'll keep it moving. Okay. One, um, Oh, this is, this is what I'm just going to read this one because everybody sends us in every episode. Annoyed. Can you help me with this? My annoyances with the podcast. I like a lot. I don't love every episode or even every segment of the episodes.

That's fair. So depending on the show notes, that's what I use to know where to jump. So everybody's mad about the timestamps. We don't, we do the timestamps originally. And then once the ads get cooked into the podcast, it changes all the timestamps originally and then once the ads get cooked into the podcast it changes all the timestamps right sruti and depending on the platform if it's spotify or if it's apple it also can be different what i would tell you is to struggle through those extra six or seven seconds when you're navigating the 15 and 30 second buttons back and forth just try to deep breath exhale during those six or seven seconds of your day that's being screwed up by just having to find

the start of the segment you like or the end of the segment you don't like and just fight through it perseverance like our guy in the broken lease agreement just find a way to survive that challenge yeah people are really upset about missing the beginning of the life advice intro and i get it you know it's you know it's obviously uh some great drops there but this is why you got to listen to spotify Listen to Spotify. That usually doesn't happen. Um, so shout out Spotify. There's a shameless plug for us and all your problems will be solved.

There you go. Solving problems. Uh, I got one more here. I think I'll read this one now because I, I think it's a little different. Um, okay. 24, five 11, one 80. Uh, I think he's saying over a thousand pounds for the olympic lifts here well sub 22 5k thousand pound breakfast deadlift squat bench i think that's what he's saying okay

good news here is no physical alter okay so altercation we've got pictures and um the question is should these guys have gotten their asses beat? All right. I was at a local college rivalry football game with my younger brother. I'm going to leave the school names out. His brother was on the team. This guy's in grad school. One of the teams has a COVID rule that if an opposing player is not playing, they cannot travel with the team. But it was basically a very easy road trip. So this rule includes sideline access.

But it was basically a very easy road trip. So this rule includes sideline access. So his brother was sitting in the stands with he and his family, and they're wearing the school gear. Anyway, towards the end of the game, the opposing team fans come over to the front row because they're in the other team's gear, right? We're all following here. They get to talk shit, and there was actually staff that was like on the sideline that the fans were talking shit to too all right trainers equipment managers you

know so the scene continues for about the entire fourth quarter even as the event staff watches they don't do anything um both fan bases were kind of getting disgusted with these drunk guys that kept talking shit to everybody. At one point they look over to me and I tell them, why don't you just cross that fence and talk shit to their faces, to the guys on the team that he was aligned with on the sideline. Is this making any sense to anyone right now? I hope so.

I think I'm following. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. So these guys are talking shit from the stands to the sideline group of guys for the team that our emailer and his family and brother played for right a lot all aligned with so this leads to a verbal back and

forth because the guy emailing and said hey why don't you go and talk shit to their faces across the fence so then he said i could outbench half this team which is strong right which is one of the all time didn't one of the fuck Jerry guys when he was arguing with one of the barstool guys say why don't we play one on one that's also a great way to settle

a fight I don't know if that's true I just I remember there being an argument between those two content providers and the hilarity of one guy said to the other guy, like, why don't we fucking settle this plan, plan 101 to 11? And everybody was like, what? What just happened? I don't know if that's true or not.

I'm going to pretend it was. Okay, so this guy screams out from the drunk fan crew that wants to fight everybody, I could outbench at this team and then our emailer says judging on physical appearance they were not these guys once they said that all of the players um with a team that were seated in the stands uh got really upset but before these dudes got hurt our dad is sitting next to us, and he simply introduced himself as our dad, and they quickly, they shit bricks and left. So he sent a picture of his dad, and his dad

does look like he is that guy. Okay. Can you describe him? What's it like? He just looks like that guy. I don't, he, yeah, I mean, I'm looking at pictures of him now and there's something in his eyes, man.

They're set back. He looks like he's in incredible shape. A lot of adversity. He looks like he's 230. Maybe he's not, but he's thick as hell. And look, there's some other background stuff that I'm not going to include in here because I don't want to give away everything here.

But his his resume is impressive. He goes and our email are also played in college. OK, I understand the cheering and banner between fans and friends. But as Chris Long once said, don't mess with the exhibit, which did Chris say that? I don't know, but if he did, great line. It is a great line. I got screamed at, by the way, when I was at the LSU-UCLA game by hammered LSU fans. It was weird. Yeah, you're the adopted brother of Baton Rouge.

I don't expect every LSU guy in a hat to recognize me. There are also that LSU blackout that I've described before where it's honestly one of the scariest functioning drunks I've ever seen in my life where you're like, wait, this guy's a mess and kickoffs in five hours. And you see him like after the game going pretty solid, liked our run defense. You're like, how are you still standing up?

But it's just Louisiana. You want to talk about built different um they are built every yeah so i was getting screamed at and i had my blue jays hat on shout out to my blue jays connection and i wear pretty neutral stuff so i was walking from the ucla side past the lsu split at the stadium and it was weird and guys were like fuck you you fucking loser ucla loser one guy was like get the fuck out of our country did i already tell this story or i just tell it to you sir really i've yeah i've not heard this story at all wait so this this had to be because you well you probably looked hollywood right you're probably in all black as you mentioned the blue jays hat you had

no lsu stuff on so they're like oh this guy must be some like wannabe like you know ucla fan who's shopping on the bandwagon and they didn't know your connections to LSU. That's probably what happened. Yeah, you nailed it. That's exactly right. It was gray on gray, I think. Decent watch. A slim Lululemon pant.

Yeah. Now, I was going with the John Elliott edition mesh. John Elliott for out there, those that know. Yeah, so I look pretty neutral, but the Blue Jays hat was funny because the guy was like, get the fuck out of our country. And then he goes, go Sox. Like this guy couldn't be getting it more wrong with me. And I just looked and was like, did you think you nailed that right now?

And he was just like shook that I stopped saying anything. I got to tell you, after it happened to me, I have less sympathy for the players that get that upset about it just who gives a shit keep walking it doesn't like it's just drunk people screaming at you know i get ryan come on say that to your younger self i know 18 year old me would not have been okay with that 32 year old me is like i don't give a shit like talk all the shit you want i'm gonna keep walking but 18 year old sruti was not gonna you know walk past that and just be like whatever dude i don't really care you guys are losers i started yelling at one guy to be like tell because then as i walked past it they were like wait it's for solo and i was like tell that fucking guy kind of like

laughing because like the wave of people as they saw me then it was like wait is that guy and then he was like you you know, again, I be pretty arrogant of me to think that every LSU fans going to know who I am. I mean, that's ridiculous. That's not even close to being the truth. All right.

So I didn't think it was that big of a deal. I thought about Russell Westbrook. I thought about Chris long and I just was like, yeah, why don't, why do I, why would I have to sit here and like get mad about this? Like who gives a shit?

But again, maybe I'm just mellowing. Maybe I'm not. Who knows? All right. So to wrap things up, my girlfriend was with us at the game and she's disappointed in my mad about this like who gives a shit but again maybe i'm just mellowing maybe i'm not who knows all right so to wrap things up my girlfriend was with this um at the game and she's disappointed in my behavior she says i should have left it alone being that i'm professionally trained in mma okay so we just got a team of badasses over here i didn't actually plan on fighting them i just felt like somebody needed to tell him to shut the fuck up. So he attached. Yeah. So he, he said, um, he was like, how do we handle it?

Like, look, man, I'll, I'll tell you that I've never met a girl ever. That was like, you know, what I really liked is when you started like yelling at that guy and you almost got in a fight. Okay. It doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. I'm not saying it's zero. So you don't need emails about somebody's sister who likes to fight.

Okay, fine. We get it. Don't argue exceptions. I'm not saying it's zero so you don't need emails about somebody's sister who likes to fight okay fine we get it don't argue exceptions I've never I don't think I've ever been in any kind of thing going back to much younger days where a girl that I was interested in was like that was so cool when you and that guy started screaming at each other sometimes I think there's actually a massive disconnect between what guys think girls find attractive and what girls actually find attractive. Like we always talk about this, like the guy driving down the street who's like revving his engine, no muffler. And you're like, do you think that like this makes you hot? Do you think girls are gonna be like, dude, that guy, no muffler, you know, Subaru, I'm in like, let me get this guy's number. And like, who thinks that's hot? And it's the same

thing. You're 100% right. Like, who's the's like, I'm going to fight somebody at a bar or at a high school football game? There's no way anybody's attracted to that. But guys somehow think that that's cool and that's what they do and they're going to get girls because of it. I don't know. It makes no sense. Yeah, that's kind of crazy.

She crushed his whole ego. She's like, you know how to fight. Why are you trying to get into a fight? You're not impressing me. I know you know how to fight. You're actually embarrassing me, if anything. It must it must be hard though it must be hard for guys who know they can beat the shit out of somebody to like remain cool though right if somebody's talking shit in your face and you know that you can just kick their ass i have i don't know about this because i can't

kick anybody's ass but that must be a hard thing to rein in and just you know because you want to flex your muscles and be like dude if we if you even tried me right now, I would end you. But it should be like the opposite of those three. Like, you know, like it's like somebody who knows they have a gun on. It's like, you know, I know that I could end everything here. Like what if I really want to take it there? I could end this whole thing. He's like, I know what I could do. Like, you should have a little more sense of common.

I think that's what his girlfriend is trying to say to him. So I can see her point. I can see her point. I got to be honest usually the follow-ups for kyle but once you stepped it up to somebody being strapped i i have follow-ups oh gosh where you go maybe we'll just leave this one alone yeah we'll leave it there you're like it's a lot like when you know a guy has a gun on and you're like is it? I've noticed this in the rare occurrences I've had being out with guys that are in the UFC. They are so calm about anything because it's just like whatever. Like it's not.

And, you know, your guy like, hey, you know. And I asked a guy not that long ago because we were talking about I can't give away any of the names. And I go, do those guys ever kind of test you a little bit? And the guy just looked at me like straight face. He's like, no. He's like, they know. He's like, they know. I'm like, yeah, but these are like big, tough guys.

He's like, no. Because they just know. They don't do anything. So, hey, look, here's the point. I get that your girlfriend didn't like it you clearly are going to get over this little bump in the road but you guys are the heroes of this your dad's the hero of the entire event that he got up and said hey i'm their dad what's up and they all back down and all you said was like hey what are you didn't even say anything that bad of all the things you could have said i almost think you

might be downplaying some of the stuff you may have said a little because if you were all this tough, not what is the only thing you ever said was, hey, I'm their dad. If that's what happened, you guys are the winners because then they walked away after they saw your dad. You don't even have to do anything. So I my ruling on this is, you know, I don't think you were asking for any advice, really. Just want to tell us your family was a bunch of badasses. My ruling is clearly on your side of this. You shall, I believe your relationship will survive this.

And nobody wants to fight someone's dad. No, especially if he's this guy, if I showed you the pictures. Alright, hey, we'll be back Wednesday and Friday. Please subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Thanks to Sruti and Stefan for stepping up for this one.

And I hope you enjoy it. No problem. you