Speaker 1: The following takes place between six pm and seven pm.
Speaker 2: You want answers. I think I'm entitled.
Speaker 3: You answer the truth.
Speaker 4: You can't handle the truth. Truth anight and tonight you're
Speaker 4: not gonna get Lance. McAllister. Good evening. Hope your Christmas
Speaker 4: is going well. Merry Christmas.
Speaker 5: Although a little bit late on moegar in for Lance,
Speaker 5: Lance is back on Monday night for Bengals line.
Speaker 4: This is RNL Carrier Sports Talk.
Speaker 5: Presented by Kelsey Chevrolet on seven hundred wl W.
Speaker 4: Hope your weekend.
Speaker 5: Hopefully your weekend started like on Monday or Tuesday. Nonetheless
Speaker 5: is a Friday night. Hopefully your weekend is off to
Speaker 5: an awesome start. Let's begin with a Bengals update. The
Speaker 5: Bengals are getting set to play their second to last
Speaker 5: game of the season against the Arizona Cardinals at home.
Speaker 5: That game at one o'clock on seven hundred wl W.
Speaker 5: Zach Taylor today ruled Joseph Osai and Charlie Jones out
Speaker 5: for that game.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure either.
Speaker 5: As a surprise, Noah fan officially listed at questionable, was
Speaker 5: a full go at practice today. Sunday's pregame coverage from
Speaker 5: the Holy Grail begins at nine o'clock. College football news,
Speaker 5: the University of Michigan is set to agree to a
Speaker 5: five year contract with former Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham
Speaker 5: to replace Sharon Moore. Whittingham just wrapped up a long,
Speaker 5: lengthy and successful run as coach of the Utes. When
Speaker 5: he stepped down, he said he's not retiring, just needed
Speaker 5: a change. That change will occur in ann Arbor. Ohio
Speaker 5: University has announced that John Hauser has been elevated from
Speaker 5: defensive coordinator to head coach. He was the interim coach
Speaker 5: for Ohio's bowl game victory over UNLV on Tuesday, after
Speaker 5: being elevated to the interim role following the ouster of
Speaker 5: Brian Smith, who was fired a week ago yesterday following
Speaker 5: allegations of quote serious professional misconduct that included claims he
Speaker 5: had a romantic relationship with a student and an allegation
Speaker 5: of public intoxication. College bowl games there are three of
Speaker 5: them on this Friday. One of them took place earlier
Speaker 5: today the game alone Sports Bowl Northwestern knocked off Central
Speaker 5: Michigan by a score of thirty four to seven. The
Speaker 5: Rate Bowl is happening right now in Arizona, New Mexico
Speaker 5: Leeds Minnesota six nothing. Florida International takes on Utsa later
Speaker 5: tonight in the First Responder Bowl. The Miami RedHawks are
Speaker 5: playing Fresno tomorrow in the Snoop Dogg Arizona Bowl Best
Speaker 5: of luxA Chuck Martin's team. You might have heard this
Speaker 5: in the six o'clock news with Matt Reeese. If you
Speaker 5: have tickets for tonight's Cincinnati Cyclones game, I've got bad news.
Speaker 5: Not gonna be a game tonight. The ECHL players are
Speaker 5: on strike, so no game tonight's The two sides have
Speaker 5: been negotiating publicly now for about a week or so.
Speaker 5: If you have tickets, you'll get a refund. You can
Speaker 5: go to Cyclones Hockey dot com. But no hockey tonight.
Speaker 5: Cincinnati was supposed to play the Kalamazoo k Wings at
Speaker 5: the Heritage Bank Center. That ain't happening tonight, So if
Speaker 5: you have tickets, got to go find something else to do.
Speaker 4: There you go.
Speaker 5: There are your sports headlines on an otherwise quiet Friday
Speaker 5: after Christmas. We do have a lot of ground to
Speaker 5: cover between now and nine o'clock when Sterling comes your way.
Speaker 5: We've got the Bengals in the game on Sunday, which
Speaker 5: doesn't matter all that much. In fact, it really doesn't
Speaker 5: matter at all, except except it can help solidify something
Speaker 5: that I think is very important. And we're gonna get
Speaker 5: to this coming up in the seven o'clock hour, because
Speaker 5: there is something very important about this team that we
Speaker 5: have to keep in mind as we wonder how the
Speaker 5: off season is gonna unfold, and Sunday can maybe help
Speaker 5: solidify what I'm gonna talk about in the seven o'clock hour.
Speaker 5: That is a very long winded tease, but we'll get
Speaker 5: to that a little bit later on. We've got some
Speaker 5: college basketball to get to as well. It is remarkable
Speaker 5: that if you're a UC basketball fan, we are where
Speaker 5: we are with this program five years into the West
Speaker 5: Miller era. We'll spend some time on that. Do some
Speaker 5: college football coming up in just a bit. One thing
Speaker 5: that I think is interesting, and I just mentioned that
Speaker 5: Michigan said to hire a new head coach, and I
Speaker 5: think he would be the proverbial adult in the room
Speaker 5: for a program in Ann Arbor that feels like.
Speaker 4: He needed it.
Speaker 5: It's interesting the reaction from fans of Ohio State in
Speaker 5: the immediate aftermath of what went down with Sharon More
Speaker 5: and you can to a degree understand their glee and
Speaker 5: joy at watching that program and Ann Arbor just get
Speaker 5: dragged through the mud, but be careful what you wish for.
Speaker 5: I'll get to that a little bit later on. We
Speaker 5: did recorded this show on Tuesday, and if you needed
Speaker 5: something to listen to yesterday, maybe you heard it the
Speaker 5: year end review show that we do sports talk Year
Speaker 5: in Review show with Lance myself, Tony Pike, and Austin Elmore,
Speaker 5: and we spent two hours reviewing twenty twenty five in
Speaker 5: Cincinnati sports and then along with that a little bit
Speaker 5: of a look ahead to twenty twenty six. If you
Speaker 5: missed it, you can go listen to it right now
Speaker 5: if you want, on the iHeartRadio app, or maybe make
Speaker 5: some plans this weekend to listen to it on the
Speaker 5: iHeartRadio app. We kind of divided the show into separate categories,
Speaker 5: you know, just sort of an overall look at the
Speaker 5: high points in Cincinnati sports in twenty twenty five, some
Speaker 5: of the low points in Cincinnati sports in twenty twenty five,
Speaker 5: and then kind of went through the year that was
Speaker 5: with all the major entities in town, and in the region.
Speaker 5: We didn't do stuff like Cincinnati Sports Story of the Year.
Speaker 5: We didn't do Cincinnati Sports Person of the Year. Lance
Speaker 5: does those things. I think this year's Sports Story of
Speaker 5: the Year was pretty obvious and it leads us to
Speaker 5: and what I think is going to be the sports
Speaker 5: story of the next two months. We'll get to that
Speaker 5: after Traffic and Weather Together, which is coming up right
Speaker 5: now on seven hundred WLW.
Speaker 4: Today night.
Speaker 5: This is RNL Carrier's Sports Talk. We are presented by
Speaker 5: Kelsey Chevroleigh. Lance McAllister is off this evening. Moegor My
Speaker 5: show is typically heard on ESPN fifteen thirty from three
Speaker 5: to six weekday afternoons. It invites you to check it out,
Speaker 5: and that includes the Tony and Mo Football Show, which
Speaker 5: airs on Mondays during football season.
Speaker 4: We have two of them left.
Speaker 5: Will be a Twin Peaks in west Chester right off
Speaker 5: Ice seventy five at the Union Center Boulevard Exa Tony
Speaker 5: Pike Me. Hopefully you talking Bengals Cardinals, NFL Week seventeen,
Speaker 5: the Playoff Picture, do some college football playoff stuff, and
Speaker 5: so much more.
Speaker 4: We hope to see you at Twin Peaks in.
Speaker 5: Westchester on Monday, that show from three to six on
Speaker 5: ESPN fifteen thirty.
Speaker 4: I mentioned we did the Year in Review show.
Speaker 5: Tony was a part of that with Lance Austin and
Speaker 5: myself and we talked about, you know, the year that
Speaker 5: was for the Reds, the Bengals, the area colleges, FC Cincinnati.
Speaker 5: I think the sports story of the year in twenty
Speaker 5: twenty five, at least with five days to go, was
Speaker 5: the Reds made the postseason. Now, you know, it kind
Speaker 5: of got drowned out as October went on and November
Speaker 5: went on.
Speaker 4: Joe Burrow getting hurt, obviously was a huge story.
Speaker 5: The Bengals failing to make the postseason for a third
Speaker 5: consecutive year was a big story. Fans turning on the
Speaker 5: Bengals and what felt like very nineteen nineties esque ways
Speaker 5: was a big story. You know, what's happened with the
Speaker 5: UC football team losing five consecutive games to end the season,
Speaker 5: or I should say I guess four consecutive games to
Speaker 5: end the season a year after they lost five consecutive games.
Speaker 4: That's a big story.
Speaker 5: The area college basketball teams have in and on themselves
Speaker 5: been big stories f C Cincinnati, But I think the
Speaker 5: story of the year is rights made the postseason.
Speaker 4: That's not insignificant.
Speaker 5: When you are a franchise that hasn't made the playoffs
Speaker 5: in a full season in over a decade and you
Speaker 5: get there just a couple of seasons after losing one
Speaker 5: hundred games, it's a pretty big deal. We could we
Speaker 5: could debate how huge of an accomplishment it was, and
Speaker 5: they petered out very quickly once they got to the postseason.
Speaker 5: But I think of all the stuff that happened in
Speaker 5: twenty twenty five, that's the biggest story, right to get
Speaker 5: to the postseason, to show tangible proof that, at least
Speaker 5: to this point that their their plan, their rebuild, their build,
Speaker 5: however you want to phrase it, is working. Is not
Speaker 5: in significant now. It occurred during a year that was
Speaker 5: often very, very frustrating. It was frustrating watching Ellie de
Speaker 5: la Cruz not hit home runs over the final two
Speaker 5: months of the season. It was frustrating hearing management make
Speaker 5: excuses for Elie de la Cruz yet continuing to run
Speaker 5: him out there. They had a lot of guys who
Speaker 5: had some very frustrating seasons. The way that the front
Speaker 5: office handled the trade deadline, you could argue frustrating because
Speaker 5: their biggest weakness was offense and their big acquisition was
Speaker 5: a guy who doesn't hit.
Speaker 4: But at the end of the day, they made it.
Speaker 5: After a fun, thrilling, interesting, chaotic, at times agonizing last
Speaker 5: couple of weeks of the season, after Game one sixty two,
Speaker 5: they were the six team left standing in the National
Speaker 5: League and played in the postseason. That to me, was
Speaker 5: the sports story of the year in Cincinnati. What I
Speaker 5: think the story of the first few weeks of the
Speaker 5: year is going to be is what do they do
Speaker 5: to take this coming year's team and give it a
Speaker 5: better chance to be better than this past year's team.
Speaker 5: Like the story of the year in Cincinnati sports would
Speaker 5: have been the Reds acquiring Kyle Schwarber had they been
Speaker 5: able to pull that off. And I think for about
Speaker 5: five hours on that Friday going into the weekend that
Speaker 5: Kyle Schwarber ultimately signed, I think there's a lot of
Speaker 5: us who kind of convinced ourselves that maybe they had
Speaker 5: a chance. I think there's people with the Reds who
Speaker 5: convinced themselves they had a chance to get Kyle Schwarber.
Speaker 5: Obviously they did not, but trying to get him was
Speaker 5: at least an acknowledgement that they have a big need
Speaker 5: for a guy who could for a guy who could
Speaker 5: hit the ball out of the ballpark. Easy for me
Speaker 5: to say they obviously didn't get Kyle Schwarber said. The
Speaker 5: question becomes now what and the calendar is set to
Speaker 5: flip from twenty twenty five to twenty twenty six. The
Speaker 5: Luise Robert rumors did not take a day off because
Speaker 5: of Christmas. Been connected with the Reds Now for a while.
Speaker 5: He has been connected with the New York Mets. He
Speaker 5: has been connected with a handful of other teams. Luise
Speaker 5: Robert has been the subject of trade rumors with the
Speaker 5: Chicago White Sox for seemingly ever, certainly the last year
Speaker 5: and a half, and when he has been brought up
Speaker 5: in connection to a trade, one of the teams that
Speaker 5: often gets that often gets brought up is the Reds
Speaker 5: twenty seven year old outfielder who had a terrific season
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty three. I guess the question for me,
Speaker 5: and I can ask it to you at five point
Speaker 5: three seven four nine, seven thousand, if the big obvious
Speaker 5: play didn't work, which was a dude who had fifty
Speaker 5: six home runs, last year that was going to be,
Speaker 5: you know, the guy that addressed the glaring need on
Speaker 5: this team, which was for pop protection in the middle
Speaker 5: of the order, but more than anything, a dude who
Speaker 5: can hit the ball out of the ballpark. If just
Speaker 5: going after Kyle Schwarber was an acknowledgment that we need
Speaker 5: a guy who can hit the ball out of the ballpark.
Speaker 4: Does Luise Robert.
Speaker 5: If they get him, satisfy that need coming off of
Speaker 5: season where he hit forty six fewer homers than Kyle Schwarber.
Speaker 5: And I guess more than anything, whether or not they
Speaker 5: acquire Luis Robert via trade, and you would have to ask,
Speaker 5: what is it going to cost? Will they have by
Speaker 5: the time spring training gets here, and certainly by the
Speaker 5: time opening day gets here, well, they have sufficiently addressed
Speaker 5: what was easily the team's biggest weakness last year. They
Speaker 5: got to the postseason largely in spite of their relatively
Speaker 5: anemic offense. Anemic might be a little harsh, but they
Speaker 5: got to the postseason largely in spite of an offense
Speaker 5: that was league average at best in some categories and
Speaker 5: well below league average in other categories. Can they do
Speaker 5: enough over the next couple of months to take an
Speaker 5: eighty three win team from last year and make it
Speaker 5: even better or this coming season, because you know, I
Speaker 5: was asked this often in the immediate aftermath of the
Speaker 5: series against the Dodgers, when the Reds went down in
Speaker 5: two games, pretty quietly, what was this season of success?
Speaker 5: And in a vacuum, I think it's hard to say no, Right,
Speaker 5: they made the postseason, had made the postseason in a
Speaker 5: full year since twenty thirteen, which was forever ago. But
Speaker 5: my real answer was, Oh, ask me in a year,
Speaker 5: ask me in two years, ask me at the end
Speaker 5: of the decade. Because if the twenty twenty five season
Speaker 5: ends up being a jumping off point, if it ends
Speaker 5: up being something that sort of, you know, is a
Speaker 5: step along the way to things that are bigger and
Speaker 5: better than getting to the postseason with eighty three wins
Speaker 5: as the sixth seed and losing in two games. If
Speaker 5: last year it just proves to be a step along
Speaker 5: the way to advancing in.
Speaker 4: The postseason, maybe winning a World.
Speaker 5: Series, then yes, we'll look back on twenty twenty five
Speaker 5: as a success. If it turns out to be the
Speaker 5: high point of this stretch of time, If it turned
Speaker 5: to be the high point of a rebuild that started
Speaker 5: really after the twenty twenty season. Then, frankly, it's going
Speaker 5: to be hard to call the twenty twenty five season
Speaker 5: or anything else the Reds have done a success. So
Speaker 5: what do you do to make next year's team better?
Speaker 5: What do you add to a team that has good
Speaker 5: starting pitching? Has some dudes? I think that they still
Speaker 5: want to build around that they still believe can perform
Speaker 5: better this coming season than last year. And can they
Speaker 5: realistically go to spring training without any major addition from
Speaker 5: outside that addresses a clear weakness and convince any one
Speaker 5: of us they're going to be better this coming season,
Speaker 5: Or if they successfully acquire Luise Robert offensively, can that
Speaker 5: be the centerpiece? And can that take a team that
Speaker 5: had an offense that was league average at best in
Speaker 5: most categories last year and help propel the club as
Speaker 5: a whole to something much much better than eighty three wins?
Speaker 5: At Muleger on Twitter, how you can hit me up
Speaker 5: thanks the Delta Dental. Delta Dental is building healthy, smart,
Speaker 5: vibrant community for all good at Delta dentalh dot com.
Speaker 4: That is the central.
Speaker 5: Question facing the Reds as we get set to turn
Speaker 5: from twenty twenty five to twenty twenty six. Different type
Speaker 5: of question faces the Bengals. We'll get to that after
Speaker 5: the six thirty News On seven hundred WLW twenty one
Speaker 5: from seven o'clock, this is RNL Carrier's Sports Talk presented
Speaker 5: by Kelsey Chevrolet on seven hundred WLW moleg or four.
Speaker 5: Lance McCallister, don't forget Sunday morning. We're at the Holy Grail.
Speaker 5: Kick off at one o'clock. Bengals and Cardinals pregame Sports
Speaker 5: Talk starts at nine o'clock. It is an absolute blast.
Speaker 5: This job is awesome for a thousand different reasons. Getting
Speaker 5: a chance to be on before Bengals home games with
Speaker 5: Ken Brew and Tony Pike is at the very top
Speaker 5: of that list. We have an absolute blast. We'll obviously
Speaker 5: have a lot to discuss as the Bengals get set
Speaker 5: to play their second to last game of the season.
Speaker 5: I just heard in the forecast it should be warm,
Speaker 5: but should be rainy for the game on.
Speaker 4: Sunday. You know many of I wonder if.
Speaker 5: The Bengals win their last three games, which they should.
Speaker 5: They crushed the Miami Dolphins, which was not a surprise,
Speaker 5: especially once Miami bench two at Tenga Mailoa. There are
Speaker 5: seven point favorites on Sunday, although they will have their
Speaker 5: hands full with Arizona's tight end Trey McBride, and they're
Speaker 5: gonna be favored at home against the Cleveland Browns Week eighteen.
Speaker 5: We'll see who for both teams is playing in that game.
Speaker 5: But the Bengals should finish with three consecutive wins to
Speaker 5: end the year. And many have wondered, and understandably so,
Speaker 5: is success by the team at the end of the
Speaker 5: season going to impair judgment by people in a decision
Speaker 5: making capacity once the offseason gets here.
Speaker 4: It's a fair question.
Speaker 5: In this franchise's history, there's a pretty well documented history
Speaker 5: of late season results at the end of a poor
Speaker 5: season influencing decision making. Maybe look no further than Marvin
Speaker 5: Lewis was brought back at the end of the twenty
Speaker 5: seventeen season when it felt like he was a goner
Speaker 5: up until the very end, and yet on New Year's Eve,
Speaker 5: they beat the Baltimore Ravens, knock them out of the postseason,
Speaker 5: put the Bills in the playoffs. All the Bills fans
Speaker 5: support Andy Dalton's foundation, and they bring Marvin back for
Speaker 5: one more year, it can happen. I guess what I'm
Speaker 5: more curious about than anything else is if we assume
Speaker 5: that Zach is going to be brought back, and you know,
Speaker 5: there's reasons for him to there's a lot of reasons
Speaker 5: for you to think that Zach Taylor shouldn't be brought back.
Speaker 5: But if we assume he will be back, and if
Speaker 5: we assume that Duke Tobin's going to be back, and
Speaker 5: as much as he has been in the public's crosshairs
Speaker 5: more than at any point during his time as the
Speaker 5: de facto general manager, I don't recall anybody saying, you know, what,
Speaker 5: Duke's seed is hot. And if we believe, and I
Speaker 5: think this is a fair assumption too, that Al Golden's
Speaker 5: going to be brought back, I guess the main question
Speaker 5: of the offseason becomes this, how do you make changes
Speaker 5: without firings. Now that's not to say that everybody in
Speaker 5: the coaching staff's job is safe. But if we believe,
Speaker 5: and this is the general assumption right now, that it's
Speaker 5: going to be status quo in the front office, status
Speaker 5: quo with Duke, status quo with Zach status quo among
Speaker 5: the main particulars on the coaching staff, how do you
Speaker 5: make changes without firings? How do you make changes if
Speaker 5: you're not changing out the people that are many believe
Speaker 5: most responsible for this season gone awry. Now, the main
Speaker 5: reason why this season spiraled out of control is Joe
Speaker 5: Burrow missed most of it, like I would love to
Speaker 5: despite all their deficiencies and they have many, despite all
Speaker 5: of their issues on defense, despite all the games they lost,
Speaker 5: where you know, the offense put up a bunch of
Speaker 5: points when Joe wasn't healthy and not playing quarterback, the
Speaker 5: games they lost when Joe Flacco did more than enough
Speaker 5: to win. I would take my chances with this year's
Speaker 5: team in a down year for the division and a
Speaker 5: down year for the AFC, playing the full season with
Speaker 5: number nine s QB. And I think if they do that,
Speaker 5: they're a playoff team. I really believe that. Don't know
Speaker 5: if i'd call them a championship team. Don't know if
Speaker 5: i'd you know, have them winning the AFC or winning
Speaker 5: the Super Bowl. But I think they're a playoff team.
Speaker 5: But we can't do that. It's neither here nor there.
Speaker 5: What we can say is that Joe Burrow spent years
Speaker 5: kind of masking this team's issues, and many of them
Speaker 5: kind of bubble to the surface once Joe Burrow was
Speaker 5: no longer there. So how do you fix this? How
Speaker 5: do you fix this? And how do you make changes
Speaker 5: without firings. I don't know that any of us believe
Speaker 5: that the Bengals will do these things, but they are
Speaker 5: capable of being done. Like number one, you can make
Speaker 5: changes without firing people by hiring people like you could,
Speaker 5: you could, you could add And as much as the
Speaker 5: Bengals get a lot of very fair criticism for you know,
Speaker 5: not having the world's largest scouting department, not having a
Speaker 5: full front office compared to a lot of NFL teams,
Speaker 5: They've hired some some folks in the in the front office.
Speaker 5: They've hired an analytics person. Hire more, and don't just
Speaker 5: hire just to hire, and like, hire good qualified people,
Speaker 5: have more good qualified voices in the room. You can
Speaker 5: do that, you can and I'm gonna guess they don't
Speaker 5: do this either. But this is this is kind of
Speaker 5: where I would start above and beyond, you know, fixing
Speaker 5: the defense, which is Duke Tobin's main direct of this offseason,
Speaker 5: examine Zach Taylor's role in the offense. You know, I
Speaker 5: am the first to admit that I don't know the
Speaker 5: first thing about what goes into calling an NFL play,
Speaker 5: and so I kind of roll my eyes when I
Speaker 5: hear people talk about play calling. But you know, even
Speaker 5: when the Bengals offense has been whole and everybody's been healthy,
Speaker 5: they've gone through very long lulls. It's been something we've
Speaker 5: talked about since twenty twenty one, right the year they
Speaker 5: went to the Super Bowl. How come, in spite of
Speaker 5: their weaponry and in spite of having a quarterback who
Speaker 5: is among the league's best offensively, they just have a
Speaker 5: few too many hiccups. Go back to the first game
Speaker 5: of this season against the Cleveland Browns, which feels like
Speaker 5: eight lifetimes ago. They won that game, but remember that day,
Speaker 5: six year QB said, the year head coach. All the
Speaker 5: offensive personnel for the most part being you know, holdovers
Speaker 5: from last year and the year before and the year before,
Speaker 5: and like they were still having a hard time getting
Speaker 5: the play in. Or go back to the game almost
Speaker 5: two weeks ago where they got shut out against Baltimore
Speaker 5: and they're down three scores in the third quarter, and
Speaker 5: it looked and felt like they were simply running out
Speaker 5: the clock, like there was nobody in Joe's headset to go, Hey,
Speaker 5: let's put our foot on the gas here, let's let's
Speaker 5: go up tempo, let's play with some urgency here.
Speaker 4: I just I've wondered this for a.
Speaker 5: While that even if you, as I do, believe that
Speaker 5: Zach has a lot of really good qualities as a
Speaker 5: head coach, is there something about how the offense functions
Speaker 5: that could be better? And is one of those things
Speaker 5: Zach Taylor relinquishing play calling duties. I think something else
Speaker 5: you could change is, you know, how they evaluate college players.
Speaker 5: You know, Schamar Stewart still may end up having a
Speaker 5: terrific NFL career, may end up really helping this team.
Speaker 5: And I actually think there's some things to suggest that
Speaker 5: that will happen if you go back to how he practiced.
Speaker 5: We'll see his rookie season so far has been a wash.
Speaker 5: But when they drafted him, you know, we all remember, God,
Speaker 5: they drafted a guy who had one and a half
Speaker 5: sacks last year, and they drafted a guy who in
Speaker 5: his three years at Texas A and M had four
Speaker 5: and a half sacks, and they bypassed other dudes who
Speaker 5: maybe didn't have Shamar Stewart's measurables, but when you watched
Speaker 5: him on film, they did more. And so is there
Speaker 5: something to be said about prioritizing what college prospects put
Speaker 5: on tape and maybe not prioritizing nearly as much the
Speaker 5: measurables what they do at the combine what the tape
Speaker 5: measure shows, how they look in their underwear.
Speaker 4: That sort of stuff you can make.
Speaker 5: That change, you can change in your philosophies when it
Speaker 5: comes to roster building. And you know, frankly, when the
Speaker 5: Bengals got good in twenty twenty one, that was a
Speaker 5: result of the Bengals embracing more modern ways of roster building.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 5: They kind of had to because they didn't have any
Speaker 5: good players in twenty nineteen and twenty twenty. But they
Speaker 5: used free agency, and they used it wisely, and they
Speaker 5: overpaid some guys, but they needed to. It's not like
Speaker 5: the Bengals have whifted in free agency every single year.
Speaker 5: They've tried to nail it in free agency. That twenty
Speaker 5: twenty one defense had Trey Hendrickson and Von Bell and
Speaker 5: Mike Helton and DJ Reader and Chaudoba a Woozie, all
Speaker 5: dudes acquired from other teams. Well go back to being
Speaker 5: more aggressive in free agency. And that doesn't necessarily mean
Speaker 5: mean paying the most. It doesn't necessarily mean, you know,
Speaker 5: getting the first wave of guys. It doesn't necessarily mean
Speaker 5: you know, you overpay. But it does mean you do
Speaker 5: what they didn't do last offseason, which is take one
Speaker 5: or two guys and then just sort of hope everybody
Speaker 5: else performs better in twenty twenty five than they did
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty four. I don't know that the Bengals
Speaker 5: will do any of these things. I don't know if
Speaker 5: the Bengals will do one of these things but not
Speaker 5: the others. But like this is this is the question
Speaker 5: of the next couple of months, before we get to
Speaker 5: the first wave of free agency, which will be in
Speaker 5: early March, or before we get to the draft, which
Speaker 5: is obviously going to be in late April, are there
Speaker 5: things being done behind the scenes that reflect a shift
Speaker 5: in how they do things, whether it be adding people,
Speaker 5: taking a good heart look at how the offense operates,
Speaker 5: going through a shift in priorities as it relates to
Speaker 5: evaluating college players, getting back to I mean, I cannot imagine,
Speaker 5: and I know it's the Bengals, so I guess anything's possible.
Speaker 5: I would have a hard time imagining that they look
Speaker 5: at this year's defense and don't touch it at all.
Speaker 5: In free agency, my guess is they're gonna add or
Speaker 5: try to at least add NFL caliber starters at nearly
Speaker 5: every position on that group. But that's the thing, Like
Speaker 5: you know, many have said, well, it's going to be
Speaker 5: status quo if you bring everybody back, and it may
Speaker 5: be like Duke Tobin has exhausted a lot of trust
Speaker 5: and goodwill, Zach Taylor has two, and that's fair. I'm
Speaker 5: not sure I trust either right now. But if they
Speaker 5: are gonna bring back those guys, I think Thennett's worth
Speaker 5: at least asking will the same people do things differently
Speaker 5: and the answers can be yes, like people evolved. We
Speaker 5: see it in sports. I've used this example, like you know,
Speaker 5: back in the day, Mike Skrzhewsky didn't want to, you know,
Speaker 5: recruit one and Dons, and then he saw the direction
Speaker 5: college basketball was going, saw the success other programs like
Speaker 5: Kentucky were having, and decided, you know what, I'm gonna
Speaker 5: go get one and dons and won a national title
Speaker 5: like you can. The Bengals, even off the field, have
Speaker 5: done some things they've never wanted to do before, stuff
Speaker 5: that might not matter as much as winning and losing,
Speaker 5: but they have Ring of Honor, uniform, stuff like that,
Speaker 5: so it is possible. If it's impossible, then you might
Speaker 5: as well just shut down the entire franchise. But it
Speaker 5: better worked this offseason because, barring something unforeseen, that's going
Speaker 5: to be the same collection of people that have that
Speaker 5: have been the target of a lot of fans I
Speaker 5: are now all season long. Can Duke and Zach at
Speaker 5: all do their jobs better, different and put together a
Speaker 5: team better capable of achieving better results In twenty twenty six,
Speaker 5: five one three nine seven thousand is our phone number.
Speaker 5: A college football program just hired an adult.
Speaker 4: We'll get to that next.
Speaker 5: RNL Carrier Sports Talk presented by Kelsey chevroletout seven hundred
Speaker 5: WLW seven hundred wl W. This is r NL Carrier
Speaker 5: Sports Talk presented by Kelsey Chevrolet. Lance is off tonight.
Speaker 5: He is back on Monday for Bengals line. More on
Speaker 5: the Orange and Black coming up after the top of
Speaker 5: the Allen Uh, the big college football story today, the
Speaker 5: University of Michigan is hiring Utah's Kyle Whittingham. Kyle Whittingham,
Speaker 5: you know when the Utes were in the Mountain West
Speaker 5: ushered that program into the Pac twelve and then helped
Speaker 5: usher that program into the Big twelve. Thirt team this
Speaker 5: year U see played them and that that's kind of
Speaker 5: when it is when the four game losing streak started.
Speaker 5: That was a good team they had in Salt Lake
Speaker 5: City this year wildly respected won sixty six percent of
Speaker 5: his games, and when he stepped down made it known
Speaker 5: I'm not retiring now. I don't know how much the
Speaker 5: Michigan job was on his radar. Who knows if Alabama
Speaker 5: loses in the college football playoff week, you go to Oklahoma.
Speaker 5: If Caitlin Debora is the head coach of Michigan, I
Speaker 5: do think it's interesting. You know, it's remarkable how much
Speaker 5: things have changed in a year as it relates to
Speaker 5: OSU versus Michigan were a year ago at this time,
Speaker 5: you know, Ohio State had played in and won a
Speaker 5: college football playoff game, but Ryan Day had lost to Michigan.
Speaker 5: Again was in a position where a lot of folks
Speaker 5: felt like he was going to have to win a
Speaker 5: national championship to save his job. I'm not sure how
Speaker 5: much any of that was based in reality, but he
Speaker 5: was basically Sharon Moore and prior to him, Jim Harbaughs
Speaker 5: Pinata for a couple.
Speaker 4: Of years, and losing that game.
Speaker 5: Added an element to pressure in the college football playoff
Speaker 5: that is already there if you're the head coach at
Speaker 5: Ohio State. A year later, Ryan Day has won a
Speaker 5: national title. He has a team that right now is
Speaker 5: the odds on favor to win the national championship again,
Speaker 5: and the Michigan program is in tatters. What's been interesting
Speaker 5: about that to me is like, I get it when
Speaker 5: your arch rival is in tatters, when your arch rival
Speaker 5: is going through scandal, it's fun and it's fun to
Speaker 5: watch your arch rival have to hire a new head coach.
Speaker 5: But it is interesting to me. And I don't know
Speaker 5: a ton of Michigan fans, but I know enough that
Speaker 5: even before we found out the particulars of the weirdness
Speaker 5: that Sharon Moore's situation involved, much of which has little
Speaker 5: to do with football, most Wolverines fans that I either
Speaker 5: know or watched react to that news. We're pretty excited
Speaker 5: about the fact that Sharon Moore was never going to
Speaker 5: be their coach, and it does feel like they have
Speaker 5: hired at least an adult in the room for a
Speaker 5: program that felt like it badly needed it. Whether or
Speaker 5: not they're going to be able to compete at a
Speaker 5: national level, compete for Big Ten championships, knock off Ohio State,
Speaker 5: make regular appearances in the College Football Playoff, I have
Speaker 5: no idea, but I do feel like Michigan upgraded from
Speaker 5: one coach to the other, even if the route they
Speaker 5: had to take was an unfortunate one, We'll put it
Speaker 5: that way. We'll see, we'll see. But that story dominated
Speaker 5: the couple of weeks leading up to the College Football Playoff,
Speaker 5: and a lot of folks were having fun and making
Speaker 5: great jokes at Michigan's expense, and the one thing it
Speaker 5: felt like they needed was like a grownup. Kyle Whittingham
Speaker 5: seems like a grown up. More on that coming up
Speaker 5: here in just a bit. We actually have a good
Speaker 5: Ohio State guest coming up in the eight o'clock hour.
Speaker 4: Duke Tobin's job is hard, but not that hard.
Speaker 5: That coming up after the seven o'clock news, which is
Speaker 5: happening right now on the home of the best Bengals coverage,
Speaker 5: News Radio seven hundred WLW, Cincinnati.
Speaker 1: And the following takes place between seven pm and eight pm.
Speaker 4: That's us eight minutes after seven o'clock.
Speaker 5: This is RNL Carrier Sports Talk on seven hundred WLW.
Speaker 4: We are presented by Kelsey Chevrolet.
Speaker 5: Hopefully you're having an awesome Friday night, a great Christmas holiday,
Speaker 5: and going into what should be really fun sports weekend
Speaker 5: full NFL slate. The three games yesterday were dogs. All
Speaker 5: the college bowl games like the college bowl games, you know,
Speaker 5: folks now with the college Football Playoff and the emphasis
Speaker 5: on it and the era that we're in with the
Speaker 5: transfer portal and opt outs. Look, we have coaches opting
Speaker 5: out of bowl games to crying. How the Bulls, the
Speaker 5: Bulls as we know them, are going like. Both games
Speaker 5: haven't been important in years, but they're still fun to
Speaker 5: wageer on. So you have a bunch of them. Tomorrow
Speaker 5: Miami plays Fresno State. All of this leading up to
Speaker 5: Bengals and Cardinals on Sunday. Reminder, our pregame coverage from
Speaker 5: the Holy Grail on seven hundred WLW will begin at
Speaker 5: nine o'clock. The Bengals offense. You know the thing about
Speaker 5: the game on last Sunday against Miami, a lot of
Speaker 5: folks walked away from it going, Okay.
Speaker 4: What's the big takeaway?
Speaker 5: What's kind of the big macro level takeaway from the
Speaker 5: game against Miami? And for me, it was Bengals beat
Speaker 5: a bad team they should have beaten badly, a bad
Speaker 5: team that started Quinn Ewers, a seventh round pick from Texas,
Speaker 5: making his first NFL start. But more than anything, it
Speaker 5: was that's that's what it should look like like.
Speaker 4: That's what it should have looked like all season long.
Speaker 5: And had Joe Burrow not gotten hurt, maybe it's what
Speaker 5: it would have looked like all season long. An offense
Speaker 5: that is damn near impossible to defend because of all
Speaker 5: the weaponry, an offense with an offensive line that is
Speaker 5: performing better.
Speaker 4: This is right now.
Speaker 5: It's not a great offensive line, but it's easily and
Speaker 5: this is a low bar to clear, easily the best
Speaker 5: offensive line that Joe Burrow has played behind, and they've
Speaker 5: got some younger pieces in the offensive line that are
Speaker 5: obviously worth moving forward with a defense that was solid,
Speaker 5: not great, opportunistic that has holes, but the offense was
Speaker 5: good enough to overcome in the Bengals won a blowout.
Speaker 5: To me, what it was more than anything else, it
Speaker 5: was it was an offense on display that as we
Speaker 5: talk about what this offseason is going to look like,
Speaker 5: you say to Duke Tobin, dude, if you can just
Speaker 5: fix and I hate the whole like just need a
Speaker 5: league average defense thing, but I'll use it if you
Speaker 5: can just fix the defense to a degree that it's okay,
Speaker 5: look at what you have over here, offense. And I
Speaker 5: say that knowing that in the game prior to the
Speaker 5: one against Miami, the Bengals offense looked broken. Joe Burrow
Speaker 5: looked checked out. Offensively, they were a disaster. They got
Speaker 5: shut out against the Baltimore Ravens. But as a general rule,
Speaker 5: this season, the offense has been fine. Think of all
Speaker 5: the games they've lost where they've scored enough points to
Speaker 5: win but didn't Jets game, the Bears game, the Bills game,
Speaker 5: games where the offense was really, really really good but
Speaker 5: maybe not perfect, and because it wasn't perfect, they didn't win,
Speaker 5: Like Duke, all you gotta do, It's not that unlike
Speaker 5: Nick Crawl for the Reds, where he's got this really
Speaker 5: good collection of starting pitchers Hunter Green, Andrew Rabbit, Nick Lodolo,
Speaker 5: And it's like, Man, if you could just find a
Speaker 5: bat or two and then get some guys to be
Speaker 5: better this year than they were last year with that
Speaker 5: starting pitching, you got a shot to be a really
Speaker 5: good team in twenty twenty six. I have a quarterback
Speaker 5: who last year probably wins MVP if they sneak into
Speaker 5: the postseason, a guy who when he is at his best,
Speaker 5: is clearly one of the best in the sport. Offensive
Speaker 5: weaponry that is not going anywhere. If you can just
Speaker 5: take this one part of your team, this one part
Speaker 5: of your team and make it okay, you'll be in
Speaker 5: the playoffs next year. Now I'm making that sound easier
Speaker 5: than it actually is. Duke Tobin last season had a
Speaker 5: defense that was atrocious and did nothing really to it
Speaker 5: that mattered.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: They signed Oron Burks who's done nothing this year, TJ. Slayton,
Speaker 5: who's done nothing this year, and drafted a bunch of
Speaker 5: players on defense who have made little to no impact
Speaker 5: this season, some of whom I don't know. If you're
Speaker 5: like me, I'm really okay with not being a part
Speaker 5: of the team next year, we'll see. But if you
Speaker 5: assume that they're gonna be a little bit more aggressive
Speaker 5: this year, dude, all all you have to do is
Speaker 5: build a defense that is good enough to allow your
Speaker 5: quarterback to make an occasional mistake. All you have to
Speaker 5: do is build a defense that is good enough to
Speaker 5: allow your offense to not have to score every single
Speaker 5: time they touch the football. All you have to do
Speaker 5: is build a defense that is good enough to not
Speaker 5: consistently waste performances where they score thirty five to forty points.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 5: I think the other thing about this offseason is it's
Speaker 5: they've had. Last year I think was one of them.
Speaker 5: It's what was so mystifying about the entire offseason last
Speaker 5: year for me is they had a lot of stuff
Speaker 5: to fix on defense. They also had some uncertainty on
Speaker 5: the offensive line. This year's offensive line, and I referenced
Speaker 5: this a few minutes ago, this year's offensive line has
Speaker 5: performed capably, not great, you know, not league league best,
Speaker 5: but capably, and they've done so with Dylan Fairschild, who
Speaker 5: I think we're all very much on board with the
Speaker 5: Bengals moving forward with Amarus Mims, who probably eventually is
Speaker 5: going to be the team's starting left tackle, and you
Speaker 5: know the acquisition of Dalton Reisner has worked out at guard,
Speaker 5: and they've got some questions about what's going to happen
Speaker 5: long term with Orlando brown spot, with Ted Carris's spot.
Speaker 5: But I think for the first time in quite a while,
Speaker 5: they will go into the offseason without offensive line being
Speaker 5: listed as among their most pressing team needs. Now you
Speaker 5: can never have enough depth may still be an issue
Speaker 5: long term solutions. You should still be looking for them
Speaker 5: at a couple of different positions, but the rise of
Speaker 5: that group has I think streamlined the offseason to do
Speaker 5: list for Duke Tobin, where it's a starting caliber player
Speaker 5: at every level of the defense, with money to spare,
Speaker 5: with money to spend, with cap room at your disposal.
Speaker 5: I think the other thing that's important, Duke Tobin gets
Speaker 5: beat up for his draft classes and his draft decisions,
Speaker 5: and god knows, understandably so.
Speaker 4: They they've had a.
Speaker 5: Hard time replacing so many of the players they acquired
Speaker 5: to make a part of the defense in twenty one
Speaker 5: and twenty two, and they've struggled so much to replace them.
Speaker 5: They're still trying to figure out how to replace Jesse Bates,
Speaker 5: who last played for the Bengals in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 5: They're still trying to figure out how to replace DJ Reeder.
Speaker 5: It's taken them a while, though the outside corner play
Speaker 5: recently has been pretty good. They've struggled for a while
Speaker 5: to replace Chudobi a Wuozie. They've had entire draft classes
Speaker 5: full of guys that you go, Okay, what does this
Speaker 5: guy do? Or when is this guy gonna start to contribute?
Speaker 5: If you look though at the twenty twenty three draft class,
Speaker 5: you'll see a group of guys that I think you're
Speaker 5: excited about being on the team next year, and in
Speaker 5: many cases perhaps even beyond.
Speaker 4: Here.
Speaker 5: Down the stretch in the second half of the season,
Speaker 5: Miles Murphy has played like an actual dude.
Speaker 4: And later than any of us would like.
Speaker 5: Nobody is saying they have to extend him, but I
Speaker 5: think clearly they'll pick up his fifth year option like
Speaker 5: he's played like a legitimate dude, and maybe not having.
Speaker 4: Trey Hendrickson here has help that.
Speaker 5: I don't know DJ Turner, I don't think anybody really
Speaker 5: cares about the Pro Bowl games, but DJ Turner should
Speaker 5: have been a Pro Bowl starter as far as I'm concerned,
Speaker 5: has been awesome for most of the season. Chase Brown
Speaker 5: is a very good player, still has a shot for
Speaker 5: what it's worth it being a one thousand yard rusher
Speaker 5: still I think one hundred and twenty five yards away
Speaker 5: from eclipsing last year's total and yards from scrimmage a
Speaker 5: terrific threat. Perfect Piece fits great that we all like
Speaker 5: Chase Brown. Andre Yoshavas as a sixth rounder from Princeton,
Speaker 5: has been a good pick. I wouldn't let his presence
Speaker 5: on the team preclude me from finding a better options
Speaker 5: the number three wide receiver. But I think we're all
Speaker 5: on board with Andre Yoshabaz being on the team.
Speaker 4: Think anybody would have any major issue with that. Like that.
Speaker 5: Class Jordan Battle. Jordan Battle is going to be a
Speaker 5: starting safety next year. Again, his presence on the team
Speaker 5: shouldn't necessarily preclude them from finding solutions that safety in
Speaker 5: free agency or in the draft. Like, there's five players
Speaker 5: and you could maybe add Charlie Jones as a kick
Speaker 5: return guide to it. There's five, maybe six players from
Speaker 5: that twenty twenty three class that look like Piece is
Speaker 5: worth moving footward with and a number of those guys
Speaker 5: on defense. So you know, six seven weeks ago we
Speaker 5: were all talking about, man the offseason overhaul. The defense
Speaker 5: probably gonna move on from Trey Hendricks, and you basically
Speaker 5: have one guy in DJ Turner.
Speaker 4: They have a lot of work to do.
Speaker 5: But I think there's two pieces of good news. Number One,
Speaker 5: that offense next year is going to be pretty much intact.
Speaker 5: Everybody's going to come back. It's an offensive line that
Speaker 5: is as as good as shape going in new offseason
Speaker 5: as they've been in quite a while. And there are
Speaker 5: at least some building blocks from that twenty twenty three
Speaker 5: class that are moving into what should be the primes
Speaker 5: of their careers, who you not only are comfortable being
Speaker 5: a part of the team next year, but you may
Speaker 5: want to build around for the remainder of the decade. Again,
Speaker 5: and this doesn't get let Duke off the hook for
Speaker 5: the way this team has played this year. Doesn't let
Speaker 5: the Bengals as an organization off the hook for the
Speaker 5: way they have failed for a third consecutive year to
Speaker 5: miss the playoffs while Joe Burrow was in his prime,
Speaker 5: But as as much of an overallaul as they seemingly
Speaker 5: have in front of them. It's a little bit easier
Speaker 5: to start the overhaul when you have some building blocks
Speaker 5: that twenty twenty three class. While maybe slower to as
Speaker 5: send than we would like, it's provided some building blocks.
Speaker 4: And the offense is elite.
Speaker 5: It's been elite this year, even when Joe Burrow wasn't healthy,
Speaker 5: even when they were losing football games.
Speaker 4: It sounds like a lot of work, and it is.
Speaker 5: And you know, they've got to find players in the
Speaker 5: draft who don't take three years to make an impact,
Speaker 5: and they have to find free agents who can make
Speaker 5: an impact almost immediately. And they have to keep number
Speaker 5: nine healthy because, as we've seen multiple times now, when
Speaker 5: when he's not, the whole thing falls apart. But they're
Speaker 5: they're starting from There are a lot of there are
Speaker 5: a lot of like gms or personnel people around the
Speaker 5: NFL who have to figure out a way to take
Speaker 5: a team that didn't make the postseason this year and
Speaker 5: turn them into a playoff contender or a playoff team
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty six. How many of those general managers
Speaker 5: would like to have one side of the ball that
Speaker 5: is pretty much set.
Speaker 4: Duke Tobin has that.
Speaker 5: Again, like you may want a different person in charge
Speaker 5: of the roster may want a different person in charge
Speaker 5: of the draft. I can't argue with you, but how
Speaker 5: many people in his shoes, how many people in a
Speaker 5: similar job have one side of the ball that is
Speaker 5: pretty much set and not just pretty much set, but
Speaker 5: when it's set, is among the best in the sport.
Speaker 5: And that is the case this year. Five one, three, seven, four, nine,
Speaker 5: seven is our number. We'll get to a couple of
Speaker 5: guests coming up in the eight o'clock hour, one on
Speaker 5: the Bengals, one on the Buckeyes, Sterling coming up at
Speaker 5: nine o'clock.
Speaker 4: It's twenty after seven o'clock.
Speaker 5: This is RNL Carrier Sports Talk presented by Kelsey Chevrolet
Speaker 5: seven hundred WLW.
Speaker 4: This is RNL Carrier Sports Talk.
Speaker 5: We are presented tonight by Kelsey Chevrolet on seven hundred WLW.
Speaker 5: The Bengals and Cardinals on Sunday will be played amid
Speaker 5: warm temperatures but probably some rain drops. Pregame covers when
Speaker 5: the Holy Grail starts at nine o'clock, Can Brew, Tony Pike,
Speaker 5: and myself as the Bengals played the second to last
Speaker 5: game of the season Cardinals. Here they are playing out
Speaker 5: the string, according to most who cover the league, looking
Speaker 5: for a new head coach to our plays Jonathan Gannon
Speaker 5: and then the Cleveland Browns.
Speaker 4: Cleveland's going to be interesting.
Speaker 5: Because there are a lot of younger players on that
Speaker 5: team that showed flashes this year. One of them, quin
Speaker 5: Shawn Judkins, got hurt last week. We'll see what his
Speaker 5: offseason entails. It feels like that game a week from
Speaker 5: Sunday is going to be a showdown, so to speak,
Speaker 5: between Joe Burrow and Shadoor Sanders. I don't know that
Speaker 5: the flashes of promise that Shadoor Sanders has shown is
Speaker 5: going to be enough to make them not want to
Speaker 5: draft a quarterback in Cleveland. And obviously there's a lot
Speaker 5: being written and said about the future of Kevin Stefanski,
Speaker 5: a two time NFL Coach of the Year that seems
Speaker 5: to have exhausted his time with the Browns. We will
Speaker 5: see could be an offseason of transition for both Ohio
Speaker 5: professional football teams.
Speaker 4: We are going to get to that coming up here
Speaker 4: a little bit later on.
Speaker 5: We'll do some college football in the nine o'clock hour
Speaker 5: as well. Five point three seven four nine seven thousand
Speaker 5: is our phone number. And uh eight hundred the big one.
Speaker 5: Let's uh, let's talk to Kevin Kevin and Columbus. Kevin,
Speaker 5: you're on seven hundred W l W Kevin, good evening,
Speaker 5: How are you, Kevin and Columbus?
Speaker 3: Are you there?
Speaker 2: Hear me?
Speaker 4: Kevin? Kevin? What's all loud and clear? What is going on?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, yeah, great, thank you.
Speaker 7: Remember when Peyton Manning was a Colt quarterback, they had
Speaker 7: the same problem. They had the best offense and the
Speaker 7: worst defense. I can't remember how exactly long ago that was,
Speaker 7: but what they did is they tired Tony Dunge as
Speaker 7: they're head coach, and his his job was to, you know,
Speaker 7: don't touch the offense and fix the defense. And I'm
Speaker 7: not suggesting fire our coach, but they had the same
Speaker 7: problem just the other Their defense was horrible. I can't
Speaker 7: remember what year it was, but it was when Peyton
Speaker 7: Manning was a quarterback, you know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they had Jim Moore in the early two thousands, right,
Speaker 5: and they had a team that constantly got to the
Speaker 5: post season and then constantly defensively was a train wreck.
Speaker 5: Once they got to the postseason, and ye couldn't stop anybody,
Speaker 5: but it illustrated. It illustrated that eventually, because they tied
Speaker 5: a lot of money into their offense, they eventually broke
Speaker 5: through and at the end of that two thousand and
Speaker 5: five season won a Super Bowl despite the investments they
Speaker 5: had made on offense, and they made some smart acquisitions
Speaker 5: in the draft, a handful of smart acquisitions in free agency.
Speaker 5: Maybe never had any elite level defense, but they didn't
Speaker 5: need one. They just needed one that allowed Peyton Manning
Speaker 5: to be good, but didn't need him to be perfect
Speaker 5: every single week.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and why can't we do that? I mean, I
Speaker 2: don't know how we would do that, or.
Speaker 7: Whether it's firing the head coach, but Bobby, that's what
Speaker 7: they need to do, and they did it. Why can't
Speaker 7: we Yeah, Well, the answer is, I.
Speaker 5: Mean, you know, if you go back to when the
Speaker 5: Bengals made the Super Bowl nearly five years ago, they
Speaker 5: had a defense that they could just throw money at.
Speaker 5: You know, they signed DJ Reader, who at the time
Speaker 5: was the most expensive free agent acquisition on the interior
Speaker 5: of the defensive line in the history of the sport.
Speaker 5: And a lot of folks said, well, God, they overpaid
Speaker 5: for DJ Reader, and they had to because the only
Speaker 5: way you were gonna get good players to want to
Speaker 5: come here was to overpay him. And they acquired Trey Hendrickson,
Speaker 5: and they went god should Obiah Woozia, and they went
Speaker 5: god Von Bell and Mike Hilton, and those signings all worked.
Speaker 5: Plus they traded for bj Hill, they acquired Larry Ogunjobi Like.
Speaker 5: They got a lot of established NFL players from other teams.
Speaker 5: The problem is they haven't been able to replace a
Speaker 5: lot of those guys, and even some of their homegrown players,
Speaker 5: like Jesse Bates, they haven't been able to replace him
Speaker 5: using the draft. Dax Hill is playing well right now.
Speaker 5: It's taken forever for Dax Hill to find a role
Speaker 5: in the NFL. The plan to replace him or replace
Speaker 5: Jesse Bates with Dax Hill didn't work out. They haven't
Speaker 5: been able to replace Choudobia Wuzia, they haven't been able
Speaker 5: to supplement Trey Hendrickson, they haven't been able to replace
Speaker 5: DJ Reader.
Speaker 4: And so they haven't been able to do that using
Speaker 4: the draft.
Speaker 5: Until they draft well consistently, they're going to have some
Speaker 5: of the same problems we've watched unfold this season.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you can't just hope everybody plays better.
Speaker 3: Next year cross your finger. That seems the Reds to
Speaker 3: do the same thing.
Speaker 7: But hey, I just want to hear what you had
Speaker 7: to say, what they might do about next year, because
Speaker 7: he only got Burrow a few more years, right, So yeah.
Speaker 5: Four more years. End of the decade and time is
Speaker 5: ticking right. You don't want to be thank you for
Speaker 5: the phone call, Kevin. You don't want to be in
Speaker 5: the same position a year from now that you've been
Speaker 5: in this year, which is not only on the outside
Speaker 5: looking in of the postseason, but on the outside looking
Speaker 5: into the postseason, with your quarterback expressing some level of
Speaker 5: dissatisfaction with where things are in his career.
Speaker 4: You know I have.
Speaker 5: I have grown fatigued with the Joe Burrows psychoanalysis as
Speaker 5: much as anybody. But do you want to do this
Speaker 5: in a year where Joe is publicly expressing some level
Speaker 5: of discomfort emotionally and mentally with where things are going
Speaker 5: with his career.
Speaker 4: You don't.
Speaker 5: That doesn't mean he's gonna pull a Carson Palmer do
Speaker 5: what Andrew Locke did, but you don't want to do it.
Speaker 5: You don't want to tempt fate. They've got to be
Speaker 5: better at drafting players. Who can make an immediate impact.
Speaker 5: I just talked about the twenty twenty three draft class,
Speaker 5: which is right now proving to be useful. The problem
Speaker 5: is it's taken almost three full seasons for us to
Speaker 5: talk about that class. Duke Tobin last year talked about
Speaker 5: the need to draft players who can made an immediate
Speaker 5: impact defensively.
Speaker 4: That didn't happen now. Maybe Barrett Carter.
Speaker 5: Ends up being really good one day, Maybe Demetrius Knight
Speaker 5: ends up being really good one day. Maybe maybe Shamar
Speaker 5: Stewart ends up playing like a first round pick. None
Speaker 5: of those things have happened this year. This is a
Speaker 5: cheap labor league. There's never been more of a premium
Speaker 5: on draft picks making an instant impact. It just hasn't
Speaker 5: happened here. What will happen right now is the seven
Speaker 5: to thirty News on seven hundred WLW on a Friday
Speaker 5: night edition of Rnell Carrier Sports Talk presented by Kelsey
Speaker 5: Chevrolet on seven hundred WLW, Sterling coming your way at
Speaker 5: nine oh five. Lance is obviously off tonight on Moweger
Speaker 5: from ESPN fifteen thirty.
Speaker 4: Lances back for Bengals.
Speaker 5: Line on Monday evening Bengals line, airing for a half
Speaker 5: hour on seven hundred WLW before moving to Fox Sports
Speaker 5: thirteen sixty on I'm Sorry on ESPN fifteen thirty. On
Speaker 5: Monday night, we have UC basketball as the Bearcats on
Speaker 5: Monday play their final non conference game of the season,
Speaker 5: the tilt against Lipscomb, And you talk about twenty twenty
Speaker 5: six and the coming months ahead. You can't help but wonder,
Speaker 5: if you're a UC basketball fan number one, with five
Speaker 5: losses already and Big Twelve play looming starting a week
Speaker 5: from tomorrow with a home game against Houston, how bad
Speaker 5: might the next few weeks and months get for Wes
Speaker 5: Miller's team. You know, go back a year ago at
Speaker 5: this time, Cincinnati was getting set to start league play.
Speaker 5: They played Kansas State in the first Big twelve game,
Speaker 5: and the Bearcats got through the non conference part of
Speaker 5: their schedule with one loss, was a game against Villanova
Speaker 5: they lost on the road, got through it with one loss,
Speaker 5: and yet still didn't come close to making the NCAA tournament.
Speaker 5: This year they have five A bad home loss from
Speaker 5: a metrics perspective, and.
Speaker 4: What other other other perspective you want to use?
Speaker 5: A bad home loss against Destern Michigan, the loss on
Speaker 5: the road to Zayvier in the Skyline chilea Crosstown shootout
Speaker 5: a not great Xavier team, and then losses each of
Speaker 5: the last couple of weeks to Georgia which ended up
Speaker 5: not being very competitive after the Bearcats had a lead
Speaker 5: in the first half, and then a Clemson loss where
Speaker 5: the Bearcats were down thirty to five in the first
Speaker 5: half before playing very copetitively in the second half and
Speaker 5: losing by three, but still a loss. This plus the
Speaker 5: neutral floor loss to Louisville five losses going into the
Speaker 5: Big Twelve, a league that has six teams in the
Speaker 5: top twenty four of the Kenpalm dot com rankings, and
Speaker 5: so a season that I think for most was defined
Speaker 5: by Wes Miller year five. If he doesn't get to
Speaker 5: the NCAA tournament, UC is going to be in the
Speaker 5: market for a new head coach, not only not making
Speaker 5: the tournament, perhaps, but not making the tournament and not
Speaker 5: even coming close, and not even coming close in ways
Speaker 5: that you know weren't a part of last year's conversation.
Speaker 4: They have eighteen Big Twelve games.
Speaker 5: They're going to be huge underdogs and a lot of them.
Speaker 5: And if you just take the quality of that league
Speaker 5: with how the Bearcats have played, they largely despite the
Speaker 5: addition of Gisel James, like the same team here at
Speaker 5: the end of twenty twenty five as they looked in
Speaker 5: early November. You can wonder how bad might it get
Speaker 5: and could they end Big twelve play with I don't know,
Speaker 5: thirteen fourteen, fifteen losses or more.
Speaker 4: Let's think about that.
Speaker 5: A season that was defined by, well, the Bearcats must
Speaker 5: make the NCAA tournament, we're now wondering if they could
Speaker 5: avoid like as many as twenty losses combining non league
Speaker 5: and Big twelve play. So, you know, I like Wes
Speaker 5: Miller a lot. He has been very good to me
Speaker 5: since he's become Cincinnati's head coach. He's easy to work
Speaker 5: with on UC basketball broadcasts. I've rooted like hell for him.
Speaker 5: But if it was NCAA tournament or BUS and I
Speaker 5: think for a lot of us it was like, all right,
Speaker 5: NCAA tournament or bus, But like, what does it look
Speaker 5: like like do they do they barely miss it? Do
Speaker 5: they did they miss it? Because you know they were
Speaker 5: one of the first four out. They were team number
Speaker 5: sixty nine or team number seventy and you know, they
Speaker 5: played great down the stretch, and the committee just didn't
Speaker 5: like their resume where there are a whole bunch of injuries.
Speaker 5: You know, what did it look like? What's the context?
Speaker 5: I'm not sure any context is going to be needed.
Speaker 5: If this season ends and there's an eighteen and nineteen
Speaker 5: or twenty next to Cincinnati and the lost column.
Speaker 4: It is remarkable that.
Speaker 5: That's where we are in year five, year three of
Speaker 5: the Big Twelve, where it's not are they going to
Speaker 5: make the tournament, but it's how bad might it get?
Speaker 5: And if you watch some of the teams in the
Speaker 5: Big Twelve, Houston, Arizona, who I watched them a week
Speaker 5: ago on Saturday against Alabama, they looked like an NBA team.
Speaker 5: Texas Tech, Iowa State byu UCF has played very well,
Speaker 5: Oklahoma States played very well. I haven't even mentioned Kansas again.
Speaker 5: Go back a year ago. They had one league loss
Speaker 5: and I'm not sure anybody felt great about how they
Speaker 5: were playing, but they had built in cushion, and I
Speaker 5: think the prevailing thought was, well, if they go five
Speaker 5: hundred in the Big Twelve, they're going to be okay.
Speaker 5: I think that would have been the case they did
Speaker 5: not finish five hundred in the Big twelve. Five hundred
Speaker 5: the Big Twelve this year would feel like a miracle.
Speaker 5: So it's certainly an uphill battle for Wes Miller's team.
Speaker 5: And you know, then you start kind of a larger
Speaker 5: conversation about UC athletics. Scott Saderfield is going to be
Speaker 5: back for year four, but the reality is part of
Speaker 5: that program's current brand is that they fall apart in November.
Speaker 5: I think they've lost their last ten games in the
Speaker 5: month of November. I believe Scott Sadderfield has won and
Speaker 5: eleven in the month of November. And while they did
Speaker 5: a lot of really good things this year, this was
Speaker 5: a team in twenty twenty five that was sort of
Speaker 5: the culmination of a lot of guys choosing to come
Speaker 5: back and play at UC despite maybe having a chance
Speaker 5: to make more money elsewhere, some guys maybe taking a
Speaker 5: hometown discount them, you know, spending money to add players
Speaker 5: via the portal, and it all adding up to a
Speaker 5: seven win season that went down with four consecutive losses
Speaker 5: at the end. They obviously have a Bowl game still
Speaker 5: against Navy a week from Friday, a week from tonight,
Speaker 5: in Memphis.
Speaker 4: But still, and as you know, I.
Speaker 5: Look online and I see all the you know, anger
Speaker 5: aimed at the basketball coach and all the anger aimed
Speaker 5: at the football coach. But the common denominator becomes the
Speaker 5: person who hired both.
Speaker 4: And if you're a.
Speaker 5: Director of athletics, and I think is a general rule,
Speaker 5: John Cunningham is a pretty solid administrator, But you're ultimately
Speaker 5: judged by the coaches you hire, and mainly the coaches
Speaker 5: you hire at the two highest profile sports. Scott Saderfield
Speaker 5: may have earned a fourth year at you see, but
Speaker 5: I would stop well short of saying that he's popular,
Speaker 5: and I would imagine he, for a lot of fans,
Speaker 5: is going to go into year four with a specific
Speaker 5: mandate to not only win more games, but along with that,
Speaker 5: of course avoid the late season meltdown. And a men's
Speaker 5: basket fotball coach who is in his fifth season is
Speaker 5: overseeing a team that has five losses already going into
Speaker 5: conference play. Oh and by the way, and I know
Speaker 5: Lance has mentioned this, A bunch has a lot of
Speaker 5: dudes from last year's team which underwhelmed, who have at
Speaker 5: least contributed to high major programs elsewhere. So I think
Speaker 5: one of the interesting storylines for Cincinnati sports in twenty
Speaker 5: twenty six is going to be like, is there a
Speaker 5: new basketball coach and how much patience is there ultimately
Speaker 5: going to be with the person and hired in charge
Speaker 5: of hiring the basketball coach and ultimately overseeing the football program.
Speaker 4: We'll see.
Speaker 5: But I'd be a line to you if I'd told
Speaker 5: you I thought, you know, we'd be here at the
Speaker 5: end of this year with UC sitting there with five losses,
Speaker 5: is still looking to make the NCAA tournament for the
Speaker 5: first time since twenty nineteen that was forever ago, And
Speaker 5: yet it feels extraordinarily unlikely, as much as I hate
Speaker 5: to say this is a Bearcat fan, that Cincinnati is
Speaker 5: gonna come even close to having its name called on
Speaker 5: selection Sunday, And like you know, invariably, they're going to
Speaker 5: be comparisons to what's happening with one program to the
Speaker 5: other across town.
Speaker 4: And Xavier has its issues.
Speaker 5: The Musketeers next game is going to be at home
Speaker 5: against Yukon on New Year's Eve, and the Huskies will
Speaker 5: present a world of problems for a talent efficient Xavier team.
Speaker 4: But I do think in terms of how they've been coached.
Speaker 5: Richard Patino deserves a lot of credit because number one,
Speaker 5: they have gotten better, and number two, they bounce back
Speaker 5: pretty nicely after getting destroyed in the most lopsided loss
Speaker 5: in the history of the Cintas Center and playing well
Speaker 5: enough to be an Okay Georgetown team. Maybe Okay's pushing
Speaker 5: it a little bit, and so yeah, there's a little
Speaker 5: bit of a talent issue, but you do see a
Speaker 5: team that is responding to his coaching, and you do
Speaker 5: see a team that, relative to what they were putting
Speaker 5: on the floor very early in the season, has improved
Speaker 5: for the most part, and it's still going to be
Speaker 5: a very uphill battle for them in Big East play.
Speaker 5: It's year one with west Miller. Unfortunately, it's a year five,
Speaker 5: and without anything to kind of hang your hat on
Speaker 5: to point to as a track record that indicates that
Speaker 5: things will get better, you can't help but conclude that
Speaker 5: they're going to finish with way, way, way more losses
Speaker 5: than anybody ever would have imagined. And in the season
Speaker 5: that is defined by does he make the tournament? If
Speaker 5: they don't come even close, I think most of us
Speaker 5: at that point assume what the outcome is going to
Speaker 5: be how many more coaches John Cunningham gets to hire
Speaker 5: is certainly going to be up for discussion as.
Speaker 4: Things continue to.
Speaker 5: Progress the way they appear they will be progressing seven.
Speaker 4: Forty nine at maleger on Twitter.
Speaker 5: Five point three seven four nine seven thousand is our
Speaker 5: phone number. You'll hear my conversation with Paul Danner Junior
Speaker 5: from the Athletic coming up at eight twenty as we
Speaker 5: talk Bengals, including a guy in T Higgins who will
Speaker 5: spend a few minutes on when we come back. But
Speaker 5: this is our and L Carriers sport Stock. We are
Speaker 5: presented tonight by Kelsey Chevrolet and awesome to have you
Speaker 5: with us. I hope you had a great Christmas sterling
Speaker 5: Coming up at nine oh five. Back to the football
Speaker 5: coming up at to the top of the hour and
Speaker 5: we'll do some Ohio state stuff as well as we
Speaker 5: look ahead to the college football playoff, OSU taking on
Speaker 5: Miami on New Year's Eve, which tons of defensive talent
Speaker 5: on the field for both of those teams, and it
Speaker 5: will be interesting to see how the Buckeyes bounce back
Speaker 5: after losing the Big Ten title game, which feels like
Speaker 5: about seven months ago. Yeah, I started the show by
Speaker 5: talking about the Reds and one of the more mystifying
Speaker 5: things to me about the Kyle Schwarber pursuit, I guess
Speaker 5: there were two. One would be this, Kyle Schwarber is
Speaker 5: from Middletown, you may have heard, and it felt like
Speaker 5: that was ultimately what drove their pursuit of him.
Speaker 4: And by the way, I like a fun story.
Speaker 5: And so if had the Rads brought in the reigning
Speaker 5: National League home run champion due to it fifty six
Speaker 5: bombs last year, and you know, part of the dynamic
Speaker 5: was he gets a chance to play in his hometown,
Speaker 5: that would have been fun. That never should have been
Speaker 5: the primary motivator behind going after Kyle Schwarber. And what
Speaker 5: has not made sense to me in the weeks since
Speaker 5: we found out the Reds didn't get Kyle Schwarber, is
Speaker 5: is why none of the other sluggers in free agency
Speaker 5: were apparently viable options like Pete Alonzo, who recently signed
Speaker 5: with the Baltimore Orioles signed for I think five million
Speaker 5: dollars more than Kyle Schwarber. The Reds made an attempt
Speaker 5: at Kyle Schwarber. We could debate how Earnest of an
Speaker 5: attempt it was. We could debate how serious of an
Speaker 5: attempt it was, but there was an attempt. Why do
Speaker 5: you go after Kyle Schwarber but not Pete Alonzo? Why
Speaker 5: do you go after Kyle Schwarber and not Cody Bellinger?
Speaker 5: Like the pursuit of him acknowledges not just that he's
Speaker 5: from here, but it acknowledge is he satisfies a very,
Speaker 5: very big need, the need for a guy to hit
Speaker 5: the ball out of the ballpark. In the in the
Speaker 5: week since we found out they're not going to get him,
Speaker 5: it is mystifying to me why seemingly the primary, maybe
Speaker 5: the sole, real motivator was the fact that he's from
Speaker 5: here and could have sold some tickets, like what I'm
Speaker 5: looking for as a guy who can hit the ball
Speaker 5: out of the ballpark.
Speaker 4: So there's that.
Speaker 3: I guess.
Speaker 4: The other one would be.
Speaker 5: Why would you really allow five million dollars a year
Speaker 5: to get in the way of signing a guy who
Speaker 5: could totally remake your franchise if your franchise has a
Speaker 5: valuation of one point two billion dollars. And I know
Speaker 5: bringing this up makes a lot of people really uncomfortable
Speaker 5: because one thing that baseball owners have done successfully is
Speaker 5: get people to care about their bottom lines. But Kyle
Speaker 5: Schwerber signed with the Phillies five years, one hundred and
Speaker 5: fifty mil. The Red's offer was reportedly five years and
Speaker 5: one hundred and twenty five mill. Now, in the real world,
Speaker 5: that's that's a lot of money, right, that's a lot
Speaker 5: of money. But in baseball terms, it's five million bucks
Speaker 5: a year. Five million bucks a year, And really, if
Speaker 5: you kind of understand how inflation is likely to work
Speaker 5: over the next five years, it's probably closer right now
Speaker 5: to like three to three and a half million dollars
Speaker 5: a year.
Speaker 4: Was not getting that guy.
Speaker 5: Worth saving the twenty five billion dollar twenty five million dollars,
Speaker 5: especially when your franchise valuation is one point two bill
Speaker 5: I know, when you talk about how much a franchises
Speaker 5: work worth, it's not like they have one point two
Speaker 5: billion dollars sitting in a drawer that they can go
Speaker 5: ahead and pay people. But still, a one point two
Speaker 5: billion dollar entity allowed a guy that could have remade
Speaker 5: their team to get away for five million dollars a year.
Speaker 5: That is head scratching as well. Guess the other thing
Speaker 5: I would wonder is this if the the Luise Robert
Speaker 5: pursuit doesn't work out, and I'd be the first like
Speaker 5: Louise Robert doesn't do it for me. I'm interested in
Speaker 5: guys who are like good now, who are in their
Speaker 5: primes now. Louise Robert's only twenty seven years old. It
Speaker 5: has been a couple of seas since he was an
Speaker 5: All Star. The Chicago White Sox have been trying to
Speaker 5: unload him forever. And as they've been trying to do so,
Speaker 5: one thing that you constantly read is they're waiting for
Speaker 5: him to play better so he can increase his value.
Speaker 5: The problem is he's never really played better, and so
Speaker 5: if he ends up being the centerpiece of their offseason,
Speaker 5: how much better is the team really going to be?
Speaker 4: And if they don't get Luis Robert, then what.
Speaker 5: There are a lot of guys on last year's team
Speaker 5: who need to perform better this year. That would have
Speaker 5: been the case with or without a major addition. And
Speaker 5: there are some guys from last year's team that I
Speaker 5: think you can reasonably expect to produce more.
Speaker 4: Of this season.
Speaker 5: Start with Sal Stewart, right, That guy had five home
Speaker 5: runs in September. He certainly looks somebody who could help
Speaker 5: solve your lack of pop issue. But you're really going
Speaker 5: to go to spring training with just a whole bunch
Speaker 5: of dudes from last year's team and no bona fide,
Speaker 5: no established in his prime slugger added from outside?
Speaker 4: And if it's.
Speaker 5: Luis Robert, is that really somebody who satisfies the need
Speaker 5: for a slugger from outside in his prime?
Speaker 4: AH, count me among the more skeptical.
Speaker 5: U five point three seven four nine, seven thousand is
Speaker 5: our phone number. Bengals, UH and Cardinals. You know, the
Speaker 5: game against the Miami Dolphins solidified something that I have
Speaker 5: believed for almost one calendar year. In fact, it was
Speaker 5: last year's game Week seventeen against the Denver Broncos. It
Speaker 5: kept the Bengals playoff hopes alive. There's an indelible image
Speaker 5: from that game that I think has continued through this season,
Speaker 5: and I thought of it often during the game against
Speaker 5: Miami last Sunday. We'll get to that coming up after
Speaker 5: the eight o'clock news, which is happening right now in
Speaker 5: the home of the best Bengals coverage, News Radio seven
Speaker 5: hundred WOW since ant.
Speaker 1: The following takes place between eight PM and nine pm.
Speaker 3: Sure does.
Speaker 5: It is seven after eight o'clock on a Friday night.
Speaker 5: Hopefully you're having an awesome Christmas weekend, an awesome long
Speaker 5: maybe an awesome two weeks off. I don't know, whatever
Speaker 5: it is. I hope it's awesome. That's the key word.
Speaker 5: I'm oeger in for Lance McAllister. This is RNL Carrier
Speaker 5: Sports Talk. We are presented by Kelsey Chevrolet on seven
Speaker 5: hundred WLW. Here it's on nine. Sterling takes over at
Speaker 5: nine oh five. Looking forward to that, you'll hear my
Speaker 5: conversation with the great Bengals beat writer Paul Danner Junior
Speaker 5: from The Athletic and the Growlar podcast coming up in
Speaker 5: just about ten minutes. As we look ahead to Sunday
Speaker 5: more than anything, and we'll spend some time looking back
Speaker 5: on Saturday. Saturday was another example of why T Higgins.
Speaker 5: I think T Higgins is the most beloved Cincinnati Bengal
Speaker 5: And that might not be the best. It's not the
Speaker 5: best wide receiver on his own tea, and you know,
Speaker 5: Joe Burrow might be in a class onto himself. But
Speaker 5: you know, a year ago, it was almost exactly a
Speaker 5: year ago, Bengals beat the Denver Broncos in overtime in
Speaker 5: a game that we all thought at least might be
Speaker 5: T higgins last home game in a Bengals uniform. That
Speaker 5: obviously turned out to not be the case. But he
Speaker 5: had the walk off touchdown grab and it just you know,
Speaker 5: that would have been cool no matter who caught it.
Speaker 5: It was a game that it was a win that
Speaker 5: kept the Bengals very faint playoff hopes alive. But I
Speaker 5: remember that night putting on social media something like that.
Speaker 5: There's I don't think there's a more beloved Cincinnati Bengal
Speaker 5: and always will be than T Higgins. And then you know,
Speaker 5: there's what he did last week. Now, let me make
Speaker 5: two admissions here. Number one, I would not be opposed
Speaker 5: to all the Bengals best players not playing these last
Speaker 5: two games, not playing these last three games, if he
Speaker 5: count the Miami game, like Joe Burrow, was terrific against
Speaker 5: the Dolphins, but like you can't help but watch it
Speaker 5: through your fingers, like ah Man, because if something bad
Speaker 5: were to happen, you know that risk is implied with
Speaker 5: every play of every game, but it's it's a little
Speaker 5: different when the games have no real meaning. I'll also admit, like,
Speaker 5: I'm not entirely sure T Higgins should have played against
Speaker 5: the Miami Dolphins, but I'm not a neurologist. He was
Speaker 5: cleared to play, he did, and I think what he
Speaker 5: did in order to play is pretty admirable. You know,
Speaker 5: this is a player who two years ago, if you remember,
Speaker 5: the Bengals played the game Week seventeen against the Chiefs,
Speaker 5: Jake Browning was the quarterback. Bengals had to win that night.
Speaker 5: They didn't. T Higgins had gotten hurt just a couple
Speaker 5: of weeks prior tried to play that night, came out
Speaker 5: of the game with a hamstring injury, and was like
Speaker 5: putting himself back in the game without the knowledge of
Speaker 5: his coaches, which may say something about the quality of
Speaker 5: the coaching they're getting, but he was just willing himself
Speaker 5: on to the field in an effort to try to
Speaker 5: help his team extended season. Bengals cannot extend their season. Here,
Speaker 5: you have a guy who was in the concussion protocol
Speaker 5: for a second time within a couple of weeks, who
Speaker 5: was like flying to go talk to concussion doctors in
Speaker 5: Pittsburgh just so he could be cleared to play in
Speaker 5: a game that has no bearing on the playoff picture,
Speaker 5: no bearing on the standings whatsoever. Like I think there's
Speaker 5: a lot of players who would have and you couldn't
Speaker 5: have blamed him for doing this. Who would have said,
Speaker 5: screw it, we're not going anywhere. I got a future
Speaker 5: to think about. I got a contract I'm playing under.
Speaker 5: I'm trying to collect every dime of it I can.
Speaker 5: I'm done, I ain't. I'll see you next year. This
Speaker 5: is a guy who signed up to play here, and look,
Speaker 5: he's making gobs of money.
Speaker 4: We all know that.
Speaker 5: But you know, I thought about this the Thursday night
Speaker 5: game where the Bengals beat the Steelers with Joe Flacco
Speaker 5: playing quarterback, which was probably the high point of the season,
Speaker 5: not that there has been all that many, but that
Speaker 5: was a really fun night and it was a fun
Speaker 5: night that made you think, like, you know what, Flacco
Speaker 5: can keep them afloat.
Speaker 4: They won that game. They were three and four.
Speaker 5: The next couple of games seemed winnable, and that night
Speaker 5: Jamar Chase was otherworldly. Sixteen catches one hundred and sixty
Speaker 5: one yards, made up a play running down the sideline
Speaker 5: where he blocks for Chase Brown, and the next day understandably,
Speaker 5: all anybody wanted to talk about was Jamar Chase. That night,
Speaker 5: T Higgins had six catches for ninety six yards. He
Speaker 5: he was terrific, caught a touchdown pass that night, had
Speaker 5: a critical catch that set up Evan McPherson's game winning
Speaker 5: field goal, and yet he was a footnote. Think about
Speaker 5: what you've come to understand about players who played that position. Right,
Speaker 5: They make a lot of money, but at the end
Speaker 5: of the day, like they for the most part, like
Speaker 5: they want to be the man. There's been a lot
Speaker 5: of good number two wide receivers who have like just
Speaker 5: chased opportunities to be a number one wide receiver elsewhere.
Speaker 5: T Higgins signed up to be at times a footnote
Speaker 5: to Jamar Chase. Where that night team makes great plays,
Speaker 5: nobody talks about it because of how awesome Jamar Chase was.
Speaker 5: T Higgins willingly signed up for four more years of that.
Speaker 5: Like I just I don't know, man. There have been
Speaker 5: a lot of popular Bengals players. There's been a lot
Speaker 5: of popular Bengals players on bad teams. Have been a
Speaker 5: lot of popular Bengals players on good teams, and some
Speaker 5: who have been on both. T Higgins has been on both.
Speaker 5: Jamar Chase is obviously very very popular here and understandably so.
Speaker 5: I think the connection that T Higgins has, though, is
Speaker 5: just a little bit different, and I think there's I
Speaker 5: think there's something about you know, a lot of the
Speaker 5: writers this week wrote pieces about T Higgins, and again
Speaker 5: you can understand why, Like that's for a franchise that
Speaker 5: has been long associated with not winning and at times
Speaker 5: associated with players who don't do the right things, Tevin
Speaker 5: Guy led T Higgins to kind of build around for
Speaker 5: whatever's next is pretty important. So you know, do they
Speaker 5: win while both these wide receivers and Joe Burrow are
Speaker 5: here for the next few years.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 5: Nothing that happened in that game against Miamy Dolphins should
Speaker 5: mask some of the other larger issues the Bengals have,
Speaker 5: And god knows, I've talked about him a bunch, but
Speaker 5: as jaded and as cynical as every Bengals fan can be,
Speaker 5: and I would argue should be, it's still pretty cool
Speaker 5: to see a guy like T Higgins who just comes
Speaker 5: off as being about all the right things. And again,
Speaker 5: man like it didn't have the world's biggest statistical packed
Speaker 5: on that game, against Miamial though the catch he made
Speaker 5: from thirty five out sort of set the tone for
Speaker 5: the afternoon for the Bengals offensively.
Speaker 4: But you got a guy who just there.
Speaker 5: There's more than a few instances of this guy putting
Speaker 5: the team before himself, and I thought he did that
Speaker 5: last week. And I think that's among the reasons why
Speaker 5: this is just a beloved player on this football team.
Speaker 4: And uh, you know, I thought that was the case
Speaker 4: when the team was good.
Speaker 5: I think what he has done in the face of
Speaker 5: some adverse conditions has solidified that. And I think it's
Speaker 5: at least worth mentioning amid what has been a pretty
Speaker 5: rough season.
Speaker 4: Paul Danner Junior.
Speaker 5: You'll hear him talk about T Higgins because he wrote
Speaker 5: about him here in just a few minutes. Five win, three,
Speaker 5: seven four nine, seven thousand is our phone number will
Speaker 5: talk Ohio State Buckeyes with the great Bill Rabinowitz coming
Speaker 5: up at eight forty five, and we are most definitely
Speaker 5: looking forward to that.
Speaker 4: It is a quarter.
Speaker 5: After eight RNL Carrier Sports Talk presented by Kelsey Chevrolet
Speaker 5: on seven hundred WL.
Speaker 4: Dowty nineteen after eight o'clock.
Speaker 5: This is our and L Carrier Sports Talk presented by
Speaker 5: Kelsey Chevrolet on seven hundred wl W. I am with
Speaker 5: Tony Pike on Monday at Twin Peaks in Westchester for
Speaker 5: the Tony and Mo Football Show.
Speaker 4: We hope you join us.
Speaker 5: We'll talk Bengals, Cardinals, NFL Week seventeen, the College Football Playoff,
Speaker 5: and so much more. Covering the Bengals for the Athletic
Speaker 5: and the Growler Podcast. Is my buddy, Paul Danner Junior.
Speaker 5: You know, here's here's among the many things I liked
Speaker 5: about how the Bengals played against the Miami Dolphins. Is
Speaker 5: it at least gave us a rest bite from all
Speaker 5: the Joe Burrow psychoanalysis.
Speaker 6: Yes, we don't have to take the temperature of how
Speaker 6: Joe Burrow is feeling, which is happiness scale today and
Speaker 6: we can just kind of enjoy a day where everybody
Speaker 6: was definitely happy. Everything looked the way that you would
Speaker 6: expect it to look. They played like an offense that
Speaker 6: is built to win a lot of games, even though
Speaker 6: it hasn't won many this year, and you can just
Speaker 6: sort of accept that for what it is right now.
Speaker 4: So what is the best way to process Sunday?
Speaker 3: Is it? Uh?
Speaker 5: You know, bittersweetness. This is what it could have been,
Speaker 5: is it? This is what it can be. Is that
Speaker 5: they're going to use late season success to cloud their
Speaker 5: decision making, is that they're going to screw up their
Speaker 5: draft positioning. How should I process Sunday?
Speaker 6: Well, I think there's different aspects to all of that.
Speaker 6: The drafts isitioning thing you can missmu with that I
Speaker 6: don't really like. First of all, the draft is not
Speaker 6: that great in the top ten anyway, so you're going
Speaker 6: to be seeing a lot of similar prospects in the middle.
Speaker 6: And come on, man, these guys need to go win games.
Speaker 6: There's too many. I'm just not I'm not doing that.
Speaker 6: But I will say I think the lens it is
Speaker 6: bitter sweet because this is what it was supposed to
Speaker 6: look like. I mean, the Bengals, even in their best times,
Speaker 6: haven't eviscerated teams like that. I mean, that's that is
Speaker 6: the way they played offense.
Speaker 2: Defense.
Speaker 6: Special to all of it together is the way it's
Speaker 6: supposed to look on a team that is capable of
Speaker 6: making a run in January.
Speaker 2: And here they are at the.
Speaker 6: End of December looking like a team capable of making
Speaker 6: a run in January, but none of it matters because
Speaker 6: everything that happened over the course of the season, and
Speaker 6: that is bittersweet and that's a little hard to swallow.
Speaker 2: But I will say this, I don't think it's meaningless.
Speaker 2: You do worry.
Speaker 6: What you mentioned is the biggest concern of all of
Speaker 6: this is that it's like, well, I see all of
Speaker 6: these players playing, well, they're coming along. We're just gonna
Speaker 6: bet on them next year and run run the whole
Speaker 6: thing back. I mean, I think there's very clear positions linebacker,
Speaker 6: defensive line that have to have significant, you know, a
Speaker 6: raising of the boats happening there. Like there's got to
Speaker 6: be some higher level play veterans brought in that can
Speaker 6: be reliable and bring you some juice and let the
Speaker 6: players that are currently here either find a way to
Speaker 6: play above them or b role players, which is probably
Speaker 6: kind of of where they sit.
Speaker 2: They just need a couple more starting level players in there.
Speaker 2: That said, this entire year was going to be.
Speaker 6: Based on the development of all of these young defensive players,
Speaker 6: and it had to happen at some point, and here
Speaker 6: we are.
Speaker 2: It didn't happen fast enough.
Speaker 6: Everything that happened in the first ten games of the
Speaker 6: season or whatever happened, there's no way around that. But
Speaker 6: I think the important element to look at it is, Look,
Speaker 6: you're seeing these young pieces start to actually look like
Speaker 6: they are individually developing and taking a next step. And
Speaker 6: that's not just from one game, that's from a continued
Speaker 6: trend this whole second half of the season.
Speaker 5: Did Duke Tobin actually oversee a successful twenty twenty three draft?
Speaker 2: It's like you're reading my notebook right now. I have
Speaker 2: a whole story, a.
Speaker 6: Whole story that is I'm a about to have published
Speaker 6: for tomorrow on the success of the twenty twenty three
Speaker 6: draft and more importantly, the opportunity it affords the Bengals
Speaker 6: to change how they operate and to look at things differently. Yes,
Speaker 6: they absolutely had a successful twenty twenty three draft. I mean,
Speaker 6: if you're talking about what constitutes a good draft, you're
Speaker 6: talking about what you want to get three starters out
Speaker 6: of it, and that's like, man, that's a good draft.
Speaker 6: You know, that's just the way that. However, you got
Speaker 6: to find a way to do that. They have far
Speaker 6: more than that. I mean you're talking Miles Murphy, DJ Turner.
Speaker 6: I mean, they look like real solid level pieces. Jordan
Speaker 6: battle is a part of this team's future. Certainly he
Speaker 6: seems undeniably going to be a starter for them next year.
Speaker 6: Chase Brown is a top running back in this league.
Speaker 6: Andre Josubasi is a solid three or four receiver. However
Speaker 6: you want to view him, like to find those pieces.
Speaker 2: That's real value. I mean, that's that is a good draft.
Speaker 2: It took till year three.
Speaker 6: Sometimes it takes to year three for guys to come around,
Speaker 6: but yeah, I think you look at that way. But
Speaker 6: now they're extension eligible. Now you're gonna see this. How
Speaker 6: are they gonna do this? Is it going to look
Speaker 6: like t Higgins and Jesse Bates and the Jamar Chase
Speaker 6: stuff that was all the off field drama and trade
Speaker 6: requests and bickering over how good they actually are or
Speaker 6: are we going to see an Eagles style early investment
Speaker 6: in some of these guys. These are hits. They look
Speaker 6: to be coming together, like you're seeing that. Go out
Speaker 6: and pay these guys before next season starts and get
Speaker 6: those done and avoid all of the bickering and.
Speaker 2: Off field stuff that happens.
Speaker 6: I think what we have now is an opportunity for
Speaker 6: them to say, hey, look we are doing some things differently.
Speaker 2: Now will that happen?
Speaker 6: I'm probably not holding my breath on a lot of it,
Speaker 6: but I do think it's a great.
Speaker 2: Opportunity to do some of the things that maybe Joe.
Speaker 6: Burrow is referencing, do things a little differently, be a
Speaker 6: little more creative. This would seem to maybe be an
Speaker 6: opportunity to do some of that with a couple of
Speaker 6: these guys from that track.
Speaker 5: Yeah, man, you know to me this this certainly doesn't
Speaker 5: let Duke Tobin off the proverbial hook. Whatever amount of
Speaker 5: criticism he has gotten, I believe he is deserved. I
Speaker 5: certainly believe his role with the organization should be examined.
Speaker 5: But I'm also a believer in giving credit words due.
Speaker 5: And admittedly it's taken Miles Murphy longer than a lot
Speaker 5: of us would like. It's maybe taking Jordan Battle longer
Speaker 5: than a lot of us would like. I certainly wouldn't
Speaker 5: use him as you know somebody that, hey, we're not
Speaker 5: going to take a safety because we have Jordan Battle.
Speaker 5: But he's played well. Chase Brown is terrific. DJ Turner
Speaker 5: should be a pro bowler. Andrea yoshabas for a sixth
Speaker 5: rounder from Princeton was an excellent pick or all five
Speaker 5: of those guys players that could still be here in
Speaker 5: twenty twenty seven.
Speaker 4: I you know that to be seen.
Speaker 2: I think it's possible.
Speaker 6: You get I mean, you get into the dynamics of
Speaker 6: can you pay everybody?
Speaker 2: How much do they want?
Speaker 6: Is there going to be a franchise tag decision of
Speaker 6: all of those things, you know, Miles Murphy, if your option,
Speaker 6: there's a lot of dynamics and ways to go about it,
Speaker 6: and so all of them, I mean, yeah, I think
Speaker 6: I think a good amount of them. I think they've
Speaker 6: got to find a way to do draft, develop Britain
Speaker 6: and still be about that and prove it they're about
Speaker 6: that and this is the best way to do it.
Speaker 2: There's a I mean a long.
Speaker 6: Way to go to get to that, right certainly, and
Speaker 6: a lot of things that happened, But I do think
Speaker 6: they have the ability to do it, and it's a
Speaker 6: chance for them to prove what they really want to
Speaker 6: be about in terms of how they build their roster
Speaker 6: by making sure that a vast majority of those guys
Speaker 6: are around for the long haul.
Speaker 4: All right, So I read your mind.
Speaker 5: I know what you're going to write about now I
Speaker 5: want to talk about what you did write about I
Speaker 5: didn't think and I you know, the big takeaway for
Speaker 5: me after the Denver game, same basic point in the
Speaker 5: season last year, though they were playing for something, was
Speaker 5: T Higgins is cemented as a beloved figure forever. That's
Speaker 5: before he signs his second contract. That's before we see
Speaker 5: him do what he did this past week, culminating with
Speaker 5: his performance on Sunday. I think there's a good conversation
Speaker 5: about whether or not he should have been out there.
Speaker 5: That's fine, But the fact that in a game that
Speaker 5: had no bearing on the playoff race, in a season
Speaker 5: that has gone awry, you have a dude doing everything
Speaker 5: he can to get on the field and then contributing
Speaker 5: and playing his ass off like.
Speaker 4: This is I've said this before.
Speaker 5: I'm not sure there's a more beloved player than T
Speaker 5: Higgins and I've had people say really, and I go, dude,
Speaker 5: you it's it's not just that he's good, it's it's
Speaker 5: dragging himself on the field against Kansas City in the
Speaker 5: game they had to have a couple of years ago.
Speaker 5: It's willingly playing second banana behind Jamar Chase, which a
Speaker 5: lot of guys wouldn't do. It's what we saw this
Speaker 5: past week, culminating with his performance against Miami.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean just talking to him afterwards and him discussing
Speaker 6: the process and how hard it was, you know, and
Speaker 6: I just sort of asked them because I can't imagine
Speaker 6: what it's like to be getting on a plane flying
Speaker 6: to Pittsburgh knowing that you're about to see a concussion
Speaker 6: specialist and wondering what they're gonna tell you, and how
Speaker 6: hard that must be to go through, and to go
Speaker 6: through it all with the idea of wanting to go
Speaker 6: be out there and playing the seemingly meaningless game, and
Speaker 6: then to go out there and do it like that,
Speaker 6: to be thankful to even have been a part of it,
Speaker 6: to have played well, and to care about being out
Speaker 6: there and being a part of this. These are the
Speaker 6: type of guys you invest in. These the type of
Speaker 6: guys you want their locker room. It's topic guys they
Speaker 6: don't have probably enough of that. The team matters that much,
Speaker 6: being a good teammate, being accountable, being available matters that
Speaker 6: much to Tea.
Speaker 2: And doing it the right way like this was not haphazard.
Speaker 6: I'm going to go out there and try to play
Speaker 6: through it and beause like, I don't want to ever diminish.
Speaker 6: It's very murky waters talking about that, but going through
Speaker 6: and making sure everybody, including the top specialists in that field,
Speaker 6: has said it's okay, and going out there and then
Speaker 6: embracing and saying I want to go do it.
Speaker 2: Nobody and guys said this afterwards. Nobody would have given.
Speaker 6: I would have cared at all if he would have said,
Speaker 6: I'm done, I'm done with this year.
Speaker 2: I've got these concussions.
Speaker 6: I just want to make sure I'm right, and no
Speaker 6: one would everyone would totally understand it. But the fact
Speaker 6: that he did do it, I think proved how much
Speaker 6: he is about this team, how much he does care
Speaker 6: about their success, and how much he cares about being
Speaker 6: a good teammate.
Speaker 2: And that wins you games.
Speaker 4: No question about that.
Speaker 5: Paul Tanner Junior covering the Bengals Forthathletic dot Com as
Speaker 5: well as the Growlar podcast. Paul, we appreciate the time.
Speaker 5: Don't forget Bengals and Cardinals On Sunday at one o'clock.
Speaker 5: You will hear the game live on seven hundred Wlwrpre
Speaker 5: game coverage begins at nine o'clock in the morning with
Speaker 5: Tony Pike, ken Brew and myself at the Holy Grail.
Speaker 4: We are excited for that.
Speaker 5: If you're a Ohio State fan, you're excited for the
Speaker 5: college football playoff. You should also be excited to buy
Speaker 5: Bill Rabinowitz's book about last year's national championship team. We'll
Speaker 5: spend time with Bill, coming up right around eight forty five.
Speaker 5: We are here till nine o'clock tonight before Sterling takes
Speaker 5: over at nine oh five. Right now, it's time for
Speaker 5: the eight to thirty news for yours sports talk show
Speaker 5: presented by Excuse Me, Kelsey Chevrolet on seven hundred WLW.
Speaker 5: Lance McAllister is off tonight. He will be back for
Speaker 5: Bengals line on Monday evening. Mullegger from ESPN fifteen thirty
Speaker 5: filling in excuse me. Let's roll through a couple of
Speaker 5: things that either have happened earlier today or are happening
Speaker 5: right now. Bengals Update Bengals Today, Zach Taylor announced that
Speaker 5: Joseph O'sai and Charlie Jones both ruled out for the
Speaker 5: game on Sunday. I'm not sure either one of those
Speaker 5: is a surprise. We'll see if Noah fan can go
Speaker 5: Noah Fan listed as questionable. Was a full go of
Speaker 5: today's workout one o'clock live on seven hundred WLW. Sunday
Speaker 5: afternoon pregame coverage from gil begins at nine toh five.
Speaker 5: The green Bay Packers are gonna be without quarterback Jordan
Speaker 5: Love for their game against the Baltimore Ravens tomorrow night.
Speaker 5: Love was downgraded from questionable to out after he sustained
Speaker 5: a concussion in that epic game against the Chicago Bears
Speaker 5: last Saturday night, So Malik Willis will start green Bay.
Speaker 5: With Detroit's loss yesterday has clinched a playoff berth Baltimore
Speaker 5: likely without its starting quarterback in the game. They have
Speaker 5: to have Lamar Jackson listed as doubtful because of a
Speaker 5: back contusion obviously taken out of Baltimore's last game, so
Speaker 5: Tyler Hunley is set to start for the Ravens. Baltimore
Speaker 5: has a tragic number of one in the AFC North.
Speaker 5: As I mentioned, green Bay is in the playoffs, but
Speaker 5: they can still win the NFC North if they win
Speaker 5: their final two games and the Chicago Bears lose their
Speaker 5: last two games. The University of Michigan has a new
Speaker 5: football coach, Kyle Whittingham is going to replace Sharon Moore.
Speaker 5: Kyle Whittingham just retired or didn't retire. He stepped down
Speaker 5: as the head coach of the University of Utah recently,
Speaker 5: where he had a terrific run. His winning percentage of
Speaker 5: six sixty six or six sixty seven, I guess perhaps
Speaker 5: not entirely reflective of the job he did there. He
Speaker 5: had been the head coach since two thousand and five
Speaker 5: up until this past year. He takes over as the
Speaker 5: head coach at the University of Michigan. You heard Matt
Speaker 5: Rees mention this that John Hawser is going to be
Speaker 5: the new head football coach at Ohio University. He took
Speaker 5: over as the interim head coach for the Frisco Bowl,
Speaker 5: and the Bobcats beat UNLV in that ballgame seventeen to ten.
Speaker 5: There are three bowl games happening, actually one happening right now,
Speaker 5: two earlier today. If you care about ball games, I'll
Speaker 5: tell you that in the game above, Sports Bowl, Northwestern
Speaker 5: was victorious over Central Michigan by I score at thirty
Speaker 5: four to seven.
Speaker 4: The Rate Bowl in Pena went to overtime.
Speaker 5: Minnesota holds off New Mexico by a score of twenty
Speaker 5: to seventeen. And FIU is taking on the University of
Speaker 5: Texas and San Antonio in the Serve Pro First Responderabowl,
Speaker 5: and FIU leads that game in the first quarter by
Speaker 5: a score of fourteen to nothing.
Speaker 4: There's a whole bunch of ball games.
Speaker 5: Tomorrow and one of them will pit the Miami RedHawks
Speaker 5: against Fresno State.
Speaker 4: That is the Snoop Dog Arizona Bowl.
Speaker 5: Of course, the UC Bearcats playing the Liberty Bowl a
Speaker 5: week from today in Memphis against Navy. As a matter
Speaker 5: of fact, I was looking at the unofficial depth chart,
Speaker 5: and there are some things that can happen between now
Speaker 5: and next Friday. Many have said, and I think understandably
Speaker 5: so that if you're playing in one of these call
Speaker 5: them what they are, lower tier bowl games, that the
Speaker 5: last type of team you want to play is a
Speaker 5: service academy because there are no opt outs, and the
Speaker 5: players go to the ball site and they're not out there,
Speaker 5: you know, they're living by military, Navy or Army rules,
Speaker 5: Service academy rules, and things are maybe a little bit
Speaker 5: different for you know, a school that could have opt out,
Speaker 5: so maybe the players aren't taking it quite as seriously.
Speaker 5: But I did notice. I guess there were two things
Speaker 5: in the depth chart that stood out to me. Number One, yes,
Speaker 5: the Bearcats will be without Brendan Sorosby, who has entered
Speaker 5: the transfer portal, but the entire offensive line is still practicing.
Speaker 5: Most of the weaponry was listed on the depth chart,
Speaker 5: including Evan Pryor, and so there are some players who
Speaker 5: could still decide to opt out. There are some players
Speaker 5: who could decide they're gonna hit the portal. But on
Speaker 5: the depth chart that came out earlier this week, as
Speaker 5: was released by the Liberty Bowl, most of UC's main
Speaker 5: offensive guys are listed on it. Defensively, it's a little
Speaker 5: bit of a different story, although it was worth noticing
Speaker 5: that the Bearcats didn't list their play in a three
Speaker 5: three five alignment, which I think most of us agree.
Speaker 5: You simply cannot play against Navy. We will see how
Speaker 5: that game unfolds. One other note, and you heard Matt
Speaker 5: Reeese talk about this in the news. The ECHL hockey
Speaker 5: players have gone on strike, and they've complained about a
Speaker 5: lot of things that I think are reasonable. The travel
Speaker 5: schedule in the EHL. You might not follow the Cincinnati Cyclones,
Speaker 5: or if you do, you may only pay attention to
Speaker 5: when they're at home. But they will have weekends where
Speaker 5: they play games like three games in forty eight hours
Speaker 5: in like two different cities, and so there have been
Speaker 5: discussions about the schedule. There have been discussions about equipment,
Speaker 5: properly sized helmets, stuff like that, and so the EHL
Speaker 5: players have gone on strike, leading leaving EHL teams to
Speaker 5: refund ticket money for games that are not going to happen,
Speaker 5: and one of them would have been played at the
Speaker 5: Heritage Bank Center tonight. The Cyclones were set to play Kalamazoo.
Speaker 5: Obviously that game didn't happen. You will get a full
Speaker 5: refund if you bought tickets to that game. And there's
Speaker 5: a number of Cyclones hockey games coming up. One of
Speaker 5: them is on the twenty fourth, which is one of
Speaker 5: the best, one of the best nights they have on
Speaker 5: the calendar, which is their Teddy Bear Toss, which that
Speaker 5: game is in the afternoon on January the twenty fourth,
Speaker 5: and now that, along with all the other games, is
Speaker 5: in jeopardy because of the ECHL player strike, and the
Speaker 5: EHL has issued a statement saying our last and best
Speaker 5: offer and This is always part of the posturing you
Speaker 5: have with sports labor disputes, where you'll hear the league say,
Speaker 5: or you'll see the league say, this is our last
Speaker 5: and best offer, and it turns out to not be
Speaker 5: their last and best offer. We will see, but nonetheless,
Speaker 5: the cyclones dark for the foreseeable future, including obviously tonight's
Speaker 5: originally scheduled game against Kalamazoo. If you're looking for something
Speaker 5: to listen to this weekend, this was a lot of fun.
Speaker 4: So obviously Lance hosts this show.
Speaker 5: I have my show on ESPN fifteen thirty from three
Speaker 5: to six, and then my buddy's Tony Pike and Austin
Speaker 5: Elmore do the show that's on before me noon to
Speaker 5: three since he three sixty on a ESPN fifteen thirty,
Speaker 5: and so we do this once a year. We take
Speaker 5: the hosts of the three regularly scheduled sports talk radio
Speaker 5: shows and the four of us get together and we
Speaker 5: do a year in review show where we also look
Speaker 5: ahead to the next year. And we've done this for
Speaker 5: years and it's always a lot of fun. It's like
Speaker 5: the one time of year all of us are in
Speaker 5: the same room together and we recorded it on Tuesday.
Speaker 5: It aired yesterday morning. Maybe as you were opening presents
Speaker 5: you listen to Lance, Me, Tony and Austin.
Speaker 4: If you missed it.
Speaker 5: It is podcast and it's a really fun show because
Speaker 5: we look at some of the high points of twenty
Speaker 5: twenty five and there were some like the Reds making
Speaker 5: the postseason, like FC Cincinnati beating Columbus, and then some
Speaker 5: of the low points, and there were many of those,
Speaker 5: like this entire Bengal season for the most part, and
Speaker 5: then we did segments on each of the individual.
Speaker 4: Entities in town.
Speaker 5: We kind of combined college basketball all into one or
Speaker 5: college sports all into one, and then we did a
Speaker 5: look ahead for twenty twenty six and if you want
Speaker 5: to listen to it, you can go find that on
Speaker 5: the iHeartRadio app, where you could also find it on
Speaker 5: my page at seven hundred wow dot com. And it
Speaker 5: was a lot of fun to do and hopefully a
Speaker 5: lot of fun to listen to. A book that's fun
Speaker 5: to read, and I say this as a diehard UC
Speaker 5: football fan, is the book that Bill Rabinowitz wrote about
Speaker 5: last year's Ohio State National championship team. Bill covered Ohio
Speaker 5: state sports, among other things, for years with the Columbus
Speaker 5: Dispatch and now does his own substack. But his book
Speaker 5: about last year's Buckeye's team came out a few months ago.
Speaker 5: If you're an Ohio State fan, you need to read it,
Speaker 5: and you'll enjoy it, and you'll enjoy reading about last
Speaker 5: year's team even a easy even as you hope that
Speaker 5: this year's team can do what last year's team did.
Speaker 5: That is a very long winded way of me saying
Speaker 5: that Bill is going to join us to talk about
Speaker 5: the book and the Buckeyes. Next on seven hundred WLW
Speaker 5: New Moweger for Lance McCallister. This is RNL Carry or
Speaker 5: Sports Talk presented by Kelsey Chevrolet Sterling. Coming up after
Speaker 5: the top of the hour. If you're an Ohio State fan,
Speaker 5: obviously you are gearing up for the college football Playoff
Speaker 5: quarterfinal tilt against the Miami Hurricanes on New Year's Eve nights,
Speaker 5: but perhaps also still basking in the glow of last
Speaker 5: year's national championship run. Bill Rabinowitz is covering both for
Speaker 5: his sub stack. He has written a book, Buckeye Brotherhood,
Speaker 5: How Ohio State navigated a new world to win a
Speaker 5: national championship. It is a terrific read and I say
Speaker 5: that as a Bearcat fan. Bill covered Ohio State for
Speaker 5: years for the Columbus Dispatch and kind enough to join us.
Speaker 5: I guess when you look back to a year ago
Speaker 5: and kind of what everybody was saying about Ryan Day
Speaker 5: and coaching for his job, and a year later he's
Speaker 5: won a national title. They're the odds on favorite to
Speaker 5: win another one. The Michigan program has been in tatters.
Speaker 5: What a difference a year makes, Bill.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it is crazy to think how things changed. I mean,
Speaker 8: I think everyone went to that Tennessee game thinking, you know,
Speaker 8: which team's going to show up. Are they going to
Speaker 8: mail it in or are they going to come out inspired?
Speaker 8: And they blew the doors down and then rolled through
Speaker 8: the playoffs in one of the great turnarounds in college
Speaker 8: football history. I mean, they were as low as a
Speaker 8: team can get after losing the Michigan because all those
Speaker 8: guys came back primarily.
Speaker 3: To beat Michigan.
Speaker 8: You know, oh yeah, they wanted to win the national championship,
Speaker 8: but that was the most immediate goal is to beat Michigan.
Speaker 8: When they lost that game, inexplicably, they're like, what do
Speaker 8: we come back for? Then they had the you know,
Speaker 8: team meeting, it's kind of become famous, and then they
Speaker 8: went on that role and yeah, it's crazy, and you
Speaker 8: think about what's happened in Michigan since then, and looks
Speaker 8: it was kind of in some ways a bit of
Speaker 8: a house of cards there.
Speaker 9: Right especially after Harball left. And it is sad because obviously.
Speaker 8: There's you know, the human the toll it's taken, but
Speaker 8: the boy it's the programs are on different footings right now.
Speaker 5: I hear about brotherhood and football, and sometimes it can
Speaker 5: sound cliche.
Speaker 4: I actually talked with Patrick Ryder, who played for.
Speaker 5: The Bearcats this year, was on that Ohio State team
Speaker 5: and outline just for me, you know how how legitimate
Speaker 5: and real that was. That is I think one of
Speaker 5: the it's the central theme of your book. You've been
Speaker 5: around a lot of Ohio State teams. Was this the
Speaker 5: most close knit one?
Speaker 8: I think so, just because they've been through so much together.
Speaker 8: They you know, they stayed for four years, which is
Speaker 8: pretty unusual. And honestly, if you had asked me at
Speaker 8: the start of the process of writing the book whether
Speaker 8: I would have a title like Buckeye Brotherhood, I probably
Speaker 8: would have said no, because it seems like a cliche, right,
Speaker 8: every team is, oh, we're a family, we're so close,
Speaker 8: or so this, and usually it's it's kind of a
Speaker 8: this is not really the truth. But these guys were,
Speaker 8: I mean, and and time after time, that brotherhood sustained them.
Speaker 3: And as I kept doing their research, and it just.
Speaker 8: Was obvious that that had to be the title, because
Speaker 8: that was that's what it was. I mean, you can
Speaker 8: kind of roll your eyes at it, which is the temptation,
Speaker 8: but it was real and I think that's what carried
Speaker 8: the day for them. That's really what got him through it.
Speaker 8: That and the fact they were really talented too. I mean,
Speaker 8: they don't overlook that they were really talented.
Speaker 5: That that brotherhood, if you will, it's hard to achieve
Speaker 5: in the old way the college football was played.
Speaker 4: I think that's what stands.
Speaker 5: Out to me, right and in this era where you're
Speaker 5: you're seeing coaches across sports have a hard time, you know,
Speaker 5: cobbling together teams and building culture and and and keeping
Speaker 5: it keeping it going from one year to the next,
Speaker 5: I think to me, and you're much closer to it
Speaker 5: than I am.
Speaker 4: Obviously, that's what made what they had last year stand out.
Speaker 9: Yeah, again, you know, these guys could have gone to
Speaker 9: the NFL, could.
Speaker 3: Have made you know, look they at nil money.
Speaker 9: It's not like they were you.
Speaker 8: Know, poor, but they could have in some cases made
Speaker 8: a considerably u you know, the bigger amount and gotten
Speaker 8: closer to the second contract every NFL player, every football
Speaker 8: player once. But they they just felt like it was
Speaker 8: unfinished business, that they couldn't in good conscience leave Ohio
Speaker 8: State without having beaten Michigan and making a run at
Speaker 8: the national Championship and and to have the adversity that
Speaker 8: they did, to have, you know, to have lost to
Speaker 8: Oregon in October, which was a tough loss but not devastating,
Speaker 8: but then lose to Michigan was devastating. It was not
Speaker 8: a good Michigan team. And and they did not expect
Speaker 8: Nobody expected that. I don't think missig expected, you know,
Speaker 8: that that outcome. So yeah, that was that was a
Speaker 8: big part of it. But also, and I think the
Speaker 8: heart of the book is the are the personal stories
Speaker 8: that I that I really tried to dig deep and
Speaker 8: get to ryan days background. I mean, you know, most
Speaker 8: Peolhiostate fans know that his father died by suicide when
Speaker 8: he was eight. You know just what that impact was
Speaker 8: on his life, and and that was kind of the
Speaker 8: first chapter of the book. And then there are other
Speaker 8: players these stories. Jack Sawyer has a had an arc.
Speaker 9: To his story where, you know, five star guy from Pickerington,
Speaker 9: a suburb of Columbus, and his career was just kind
Speaker 9: of okay until the end of his junior year.
Speaker 3: Then senior year, he.
Speaker 8: Wanted to make a big splash and he was one
Speaker 8: minute late to a workout and thought that he'd blown
Speaker 8: his chance to be a captain, you know, and he
Speaker 8: obviously makes the most famous play of the season.
Speaker 9: That's the cover shot of the book is the Sawyer
Speaker 9: scoop and score against Texas.
Speaker 8: And I've got a whole chapter on just that one play.
Speaker 8: Just what guy sat, he hits from every angle, what
Speaker 8: he saw, what coaches saw, what players and coaches and
Speaker 8: ross By Orke the ad what they experienced watching that
Speaker 8: Play's that's kind of one of the fun chapters of
Speaker 8: the book is his people reliving that play. But the
Speaker 8: heart of the book is just the stories of these players,
Speaker 8: one after the other, who overcame adversity, whether it was
Speaker 8: injuries or whether it was not feeling like their career
Speaker 8: had gone the way they wanted it to.
Speaker 3: That was kind of That's the essence of the book.
Speaker 5: Buckeye Brotherhood, How Ohio State navigated a new.
Speaker 4: World to win a national championship.
Speaker 5: Bill Robitdowitz, if if you are thinking of a very
Speaker 5: last minute gift for an Ohio State fan, highly recommend
Speaker 5: really quick. With the college football playoff quarterfinal looming, how
Speaker 5: much should the performance against Indiana's defense in the Big
Speaker 5: Ten title game give folks pauses they look ahead the
Speaker 5: next I guess next Wednesday night.
Speaker 9: Well, we'll find out. But I do think it could
Speaker 9: be a blessing in disguise. I think that day that
Speaker 9: was kind of a weird week. It was signing day
Speaker 9: the Brian Hartline took the South Florida job. They had
Speaker 9: to try to hold onto Chris Henry Junior, of course,
Speaker 9: the son of the former Bengal receiver.
Speaker 3: It's weird.
Speaker 8: I covered Chris Henry as a Bengal for the Dispatch,
Speaker 8: and now I'll recovered Chris Henry Junior. And I saw
Speaker 8: him at a recruiting thing last year, camping last year,
Speaker 8: and I told him, man, he was a man, You're old,
Speaker 8: but had a weird week, and uh yes, I think
Speaker 8: that they probably they will probably help them to be
Speaker 8: humbled some and and realize that they're not invincible.
Speaker 3: But they have to fix some things too.
Speaker 9: You know, the offensive line did not play well in
Speaker 9: that game, and they've got to get some things sticked.
Speaker 8: But I'm not convinced that Jeremiah Smith or Carnell Tate
Speaker 8: was all that healthy in that game.
Speaker 3: I think it. You know, we'll see.
Speaker 8: Look, you'd never know last year all the teams they
Speaker 8: had to buy lost. Now some of those were the
Speaker 8: teams that probaly shouldn't have gotten a buy. But you know,
Speaker 8: there is that concern, and Miami is talented enough to
Speaker 8: beat them, and I'm not sure that they.
Speaker 3: Have been consistent enough and they've got some holes.
Speaker 9: But but you know, that's gonna.
Speaker 3: Be an interesting game. We'll see.
Speaker 8: Look and probably to answer a question you might be thinking,
Speaker 8: or somebody might be thinking, no, I do not have
Speaker 8: plans to write another book.
Speaker 4: Championship. You write a book. That's how it works.
Speaker 9: It's a little tough, you know, doing a book in
Speaker 9: four months with the level of reporting that I that
Speaker 9: I do is I don't think mentally or physically I
Speaker 9: can do that back to back years.
Speaker 3: But but I do.
Speaker 8: Ohio State fans follow me on substack Bill Rabinowitz dot
Speaker 8: substack dot com. That you know, I left the Dispatch
Speaker 8: in September on very good terms. It was my decision strictly.
Speaker 8: I've just been looking for something different and substack gives
Speaker 8: me freedom to write, you know, covered team the way
Speaker 8: I've I've always wanted to do it. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 8: am charging. I mean, you could get a free subscription,
Speaker 8: but I obviously you know what pays the bills of
Speaker 8: the paid subscription. So I appreciate if people would do that,
Speaker 8: you know, and I want to keep doing what I do.
Speaker 3: And so.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's been a weird year because they didn't really
Speaker 8: have much of a regular season that was that had
Speaker 8: any drama. I mean it was Texas the beginning and
Speaker 8: Instring at the end and not much in the middle.
Speaker 8: But now it heats up, you know, now it gets interesting.
Speaker 5: No question, uh, Bill on the Buckeye Substack and Buckeye
Speaker 5: Brotherhood available as we say, Bill, where you get your books.
Speaker 5: Appreciate the time, man, have a great Christmas.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much, all right, thanks mo, appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Good you got it.
Speaker 5: That truly is, and yeah, I'm as big of a
Speaker 5: uc football fan asi'll find that is an excellent book.
Speaker 5: Bill Rabinowitz a longtime Ohio State beat writer for the
Speaker 5: Columbus Dispatch. Check out his substack and fine Buckeye Brotherhood
Speaker 5: wherever you get your books.
Speaker 4: Ohio State and Miami.
Speaker 5: On New Year's Eve night next Wednesday, This coming Wednesday,
Speaker 5: I guess in the Cotton Bowl for the right to
Speaker 5: move on to the Fiesta Bowl to take on either
Speaker 5: Ole Miss or Georgia. A couple of things before we
Speaker 5: get out of here. Don't forget Sunday morning, we're at
Speaker 5: the Holy Grail Ken Brew, Tony Pike and Me for
Speaker 5: pregame sports talk that starts at nine am, kickoff at
Speaker 5: one o'clock with Dan and Laponi on seven hundred W
Speaker 5: wel W Tony and I back for the second to
Speaker 5: last Tony and Mo football show of the year. Will
Speaker 5: be at Twin Peaks in Westchester from three to six
Speaker 5: on Monday afternoon. We have an absolute blast. And so
Speaker 5: if you're not working next week, and God God help you,
Speaker 5: I hope you're not, come on out and join us.
Speaker 5: It is going to be a lot of fun. Anything
Speaker 5: you might have missed. You can find on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 5: or you could just go to my page at seven
Speaker 5: hundred WLW dot com and you could follow me on
Speaker 5: social media. I'll just I'll go with the big two
Speaker 5: as they relate to my life. You got Twitter, which
Speaker 5: I still call Twitter at moegar and Instagram as well
Speaker 5: at moegar, and we post. We also have a YouTube
Speaker 5: channel now, so all that stuff on social media and YouTube,
Speaker 5: be sure to follow and subscribe. We're pretty much done.
Speaker 5: Sterling is coming up after the nine o'clock News. I
Speaker 5: want to thank Russ Jackson the return of Russ Jackson
Speaker 5: for producing tonight, and enjoy the rest of your weekend.
Speaker 5: The nine o'clock News is next on the home of
Speaker 5: the best Bengals coverage, News Radio seven hundred WLW, Cincinnati.