Speaker 1: Be Around the NFL Podcast Drinks It's coffee black. Welcome
Speaker 1: to another edition of the Around the NFL Podcast. Up
Speaker 1: Greg Rosenthal in a room filled with some heroes. We
Speaker 1: got heroes here, Mark Sessler and Chris Wesley. Hey, Greg,
Speaker 1: I mean you don't need to do that. We're missing
Speaker 1: Danny dan Hands. This are our fearless host spending some
Speaker 1: quality family time over the weekend. He will be back
Speaker 1: with us at the all important Talent Summit for all
Speaker 1: of NFL media held in swanky uh Santa Monica on Tuesday.
Speaker 1: We'll be there. Hopefully we get some interviews from there
Speaker 1: for a show later this week, but for now, it's
Speaker 1: just the three of us. That's it. Speaking of only
Speaker 1: drinks black coffee. I have never drank a full glass
Speaker 1: of coffee in my life. Really, wait a minute, although
Speaker 1: I've never seen you, like even discussed coffee on any level,
Speaker 1: so I'm not I guess I shouldn't be surprised. No, why,
Speaker 1: what's the reason. It's like dirt water? It tastes nasty
Speaker 1: to me, doesn't appeal to you. The more it's kind
Speaker 1: of like why, And the more you drink it, the
Speaker 1: more like you can taste the differences between and the
Speaker 1: more you like. I had to switch over to black
Speaker 1: coffee because I felt like my manhood was was being
Speaker 1: challenged by my wife, Emmica, who only drank black coffee.
Speaker 1: I made to switch. Your wife, who once told you
Speaker 1: to come on this show and declare that you wear
Speaker 1: the pants in the relationship, I mean, she's she still
Speaker 1: stands by that there's a bee line of of themology there.
Speaker 1: I think she's a badass. I'll take that. Well, No,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't disagree with that. Um we uh.
Speaker 1: I saw Chris over the weekend. He hosted uh kind
Speaker 1: of a pre Father's Day dad fest. Um, it's a
Speaker 1: Dad's Summit invented by Connie Fox Colleen Wolf. But you
Speaker 1: held it this year at your house. It was a
Speaker 1: good time. Yeah, she and her friend Kristen. And to me,
Speaker 1: the Dad's Summit is a testament to how cool the
Speaker 1: daughters are. That they fly their dad's out here, or
Speaker 1: the day fly out here. However they get out here.
Speaker 1: They have this amazing like three day fast just celebrating
Speaker 1: their dads. It seems like a really cool idea. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, Greg and I have young children and you
Speaker 1: hope that when your children are the age of Kristen
Speaker 1: and Colleen, that they would want to be around. Yes,
Speaker 1: over that course for a full weekend. I think that's
Speaker 1: testament to the whole gang there. I was sad not
Speaker 1: to mak it right. Yes, the fathers are fun to
Speaker 1: hang out with your kids, you don't want to be
Speaker 1: around you still mark on, I think so. I know
Speaker 1: that it sounds like I've I've advertised a level of
Speaker 1: chaos on the home front just because they were so
Speaker 1: small for so long. Yesterday I was telling someone was
Speaker 1: the first Father's Day where we got to the night
Speaker 1: it was like this entire day passed and it was
Speaker 1: a plus from wire to wire and the kids are
Speaker 1: at the age where they can kind of they made
Speaker 1: like little posters and stuff. You know, I got that,
Speaker 1: you know it's I I like, I got a Father's
Speaker 1: Day get where I went to a bookstore and bought
Speaker 1: a book for myself as a Father's Day gift. The
Speaker 1: best way to do it. So you're saying, like the
Speaker 1: first five or six years that you have children, it's
Speaker 1: just a too chaotic to it. It's cute, but there's
Speaker 1: no but children aren't oriented to celebrate really anything but
Speaker 1: themselves for longer than about ten or fifteen minutes when
Speaker 1: they're small and I don't need to be all day.
Speaker 1: That that that was good. We ended up somehow and
Speaker 1: Echo Park wasn't really a plan. Uh and uh paddled
Speaker 1: some Swan boats. I mean, you don't get much more
Speaker 1: dad than I've It was Actually it was great. It
Speaker 1: was not Instagram photo. It was not a plan. Um,
Speaker 1: and it ended up being beautiful. We all had a
Speaker 1: great I'm wondering why you were wearing a life preserver. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like for if it's so close upshot, it looks like
Speaker 1: I'm almost badass enough to be on a real boat.
Speaker 1: But no, it was just like a paddle boat. And
Speaker 1: that'll get you tired. I mean I felt like after
Speaker 1: an hour of paddle boating around and I'm kind of
Speaker 1: carrying them you're doing all the paddling was too, but
Speaker 1: I think I was. You know, I got news for you.
Speaker 1: You're forty years old. Now anything will get you tired. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, so this show hopefully won't. We've already uh
Speaker 1: chatted a lot, so maybe that's gonna ruin um my
Speaker 1: my overarch an idea here let's be honest. It's June.
Speaker 1: It's June. See how much the NFL do we need
Speaker 1: to talk about after having three big shows last week.
Speaker 1: I say, for this show, we keep it tight, we
Speaker 1: keep it right, and we have nine things that we
Speaker 1: care about, three each. We each care about three things.
Speaker 1: We keep it to three minutes each, and it's just
Speaker 1: like a power packed episode and everyone goes on their way.
Speaker 1: I like that a lot. Interesting to see, interested to
Speaker 1: see how this this has never happened before, that we
Speaker 1: actually kept it tightened right. But I think you know
Speaker 1: there's something in podcast. I mean, this side of the
Speaker 1: table highly doubts that any show clocks in it less
Speaker 1: than fifty seven minutes or any show start time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well check on that. Yeah we uh yeah, we gotta
Speaker 1: mix it. You know, there's something to be said for
Speaker 1: leaving wanting more. So here we are. It's the nine
Speaker 1: things that matter that we care about on June seventeenth.
Speaker 1: If it's not listed among these nine things we don't
Speaker 1: care about, it does not matter. Are if a two
Speaker 1: day or whatever has happened in your life, we don't care.
Speaker 1: Let's start the clock. Erica tam Posse Right now, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna start with kind of the big news of the day,
Speaker 1: you know, that's traditionally what we do new news off
Speaker 1: the top, which is the Nikos Sarrio drama between the
Speaker 1: Texans and the Patriots. Over the weekend, we learned that
Speaker 1: the Texans withdrew their attempt to interview Nick Cassario, the
Speaker 1: Patriots executive, after the Patriots filed tampering charges against them.
Speaker 1: There was statements that made it clear it was kind
Speaker 1: of done at the ownership level between Robert Kraft and
Speaker 1: Cal McNair and uh, the Texans are standing down and
Speaker 1: Cassario is remaining a Patriot. I was really surprised by
Speaker 1: this outcome. Where are us? Absolutely? To me, it seemed
Speaker 1: like the what's the same The water is already over
Speaker 1: the damn or whatever I thought it was. You know,
Speaker 1: the horse was out of the barn. This was this
Speaker 1: was done. I thought that, you know, the kid has
Speaker 1: already fallen off the swan boat. There you go everything
Speaker 1: about this situation. Asians screamed, the Texans are getting their man,
Speaker 1: and the Patriots will just let this guy go where
Speaker 1: he wants to go. And the Patriots dug in their
Speaker 1: heels and said, this guy is valuable to us. We're
Speaker 1: not letting him go. It's almost like a year after
Speaker 1: the Josh McDaniels anti drama that this occurred. It's like
Speaker 1: they seem to have corner, have cornered the market on
Speaker 1: keeping their own if they don't like where they're going,
Speaker 1: but I I do. It's interesting cause Bob Quinn got
Speaker 1: out of the building, John Robinson got out of the building.
Speaker 1: They're both gms. And I stick to this thing that
Speaker 1: I think they are going to try to find a
Speaker 1: way to make Nick Cassario their transition man post Belichick,
Speaker 1: and that that insane with Josh McDaniels. I may be wrong.
Speaker 1: That's just why I think they're digging in so hard
Speaker 1: on these two individuals. I I thought it was fascinating
Speaker 1: that he went to ownership level. You got the sense
Speaker 1: that otherwise maybe that wouldn't have happened, That McNair was
Speaker 1: standing down, that Robert Kraft might have been particularly upset
Speaker 1: because this guy Jack Easterby had left as well. I
Speaker 1: don't really know, but maybe now this gives the Patriots
Speaker 1: time to give Cassio whatever he wants in terms of
Speaker 1: money and a title, and that's one option. The other
Speaker 1: is that he really does want to leave, which felt
Speaker 1: like that's what everyone was reporting, and so that's kind
Speaker 1: of the second part of the story that I want
Speaker 1: to hear report. And if he does really want to leave,
Speaker 1: maybe they still do work out a trade or something
Speaker 1: with a little less you know, tampering heat or maybe
Speaker 1: I don't know, the Texas go GM free for a
Speaker 1: year because they're already halfway there at this point, and
Speaker 1: you have that job is just about done for the
Speaker 1: right and you gotta lock up Clowney, but they have
Speaker 1: they have other people in the building they could trust
Speaker 1: to do some things. But then you then you bring
Speaker 1: in Nicossario next offseason minus tampering charge nonsense. His contracts
Speaker 1: reportedly ends at the end of this season rather season,
Speaker 1: and so then they could bring him in. I don't know.
Speaker 1: The whole thing is, Uh, there's a lot of very
Speaker 1: stage to me that I think is a mystery. And
Speaker 1: to me one of the biggest mysteries is how much
Speaker 1: is Jonathan Craft really running the show? And to me,
Speaker 1: what Mark said about having your transition phase, like it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to end with Brady and Belichick, maybe Josh
Speaker 1: McDaniels and Neck Scessario is a good replacement for those two.
Speaker 1: And we're Dan here like the level of the well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that is it tried to speak for Dan Wes. You
Speaker 1: you have one more thing that that you care about
Speaker 1: that we care about this week. Well, I got to thinking,
Speaker 1: and this may be a better question for Mark because
Speaker 1: we're the same age. And this really I think, like
Speaker 1: most questions, Yeah, what percentage of your adult life, let's say, success, achievements,
Speaker 1: self image, family, friends, would have been possible had the
Speaker 1: Internet not been made available to the masses at the
Speaker 1: exact moment you entered the adult world. Okay, and so
Speaker 1: that's just wait, so that's on your mind. Yes, I
Speaker 1: think for me, it's like, would not be possible had
Speaker 1: the Internet not Let's say I'm ten years older, so
Speaker 1: at age instead of age twenty one, the Internet takes off.
Speaker 1: I'm thirty one years old in the internet. Is it
Speaker 1: too late for me to become a sportswriter? Is it
Speaker 1: too late that any of this ever happened? Like even
Speaker 1: keeping it just at um on two things quickly. One,
Speaker 1: this career that we're in right now would never have
Speaker 1: happened without that because I just hit the Internet at
Speaker 1: the right time to start spamming newspaper editors when there
Speaker 1: were newspapers back in the day with a billion emails,
Speaker 1: and it led to over many years, you know, other
Speaker 1: jobs and getting this job through internet stuff. Secondly, I
Speaker 1: essentially met my wife in person, but then we communicated
Speaker 1: for months over back in the day my space, and
Speaker 1: had that not occurred, I don't think we'd be married today.
Speaker 1: So thank you the internet did matter. That's a good
Speaker 1: call because yeah, I'm ok and I met long distance,
Speaker 1: and there was the emailing was was big of that,
Speaker 1: but also Skype way back in the day, you know,
Speaker 1: putting the old headphones on and having a freeway to
Speaker 1: call for hours at a time when I could not
Speaker 1: have afforded, like long distance calls a large percentage west
Speaker 1: we are I often think about that like our age,
Speaker 1: we're we're on that cusp where we experience life without
Speaker 1: the internet and then life with the internet, and obviously
Speaker 1: our kids are never gonna experience that. And that's why
Speaker 1: I think we can kind of like dip in and
Speaker 1: out of social media a little more than younger people can,
Speaker 1: because it's like they don't even have a choice. They
Speaker 1: just happen. Well, we are too, But there there's like
Speaker 1: I think there's a it's an easier to sort of
Speaker 1: turn it off and on because it's just not always
Speaker 1: been part of our lives. West and I were born
Speaker 1: in log cabin, so there's many areas you're five years older,
Speaker 1: which actually does change the Internet equation, because the Internet
Speaker 1: was up in like cranken by the time I got
Speaker 1: to college. I'm also same here, though not a college graduate. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I would have left the post
Speaker 1: office without the Internet. I doubt I would have moved
Speaker 1: to Tybee. I definitely would not have moved to California.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be working for Greg Well. I wouldn't have Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have had that job. I I got into
Speaker 1: fantasy sports writing on the Internet at a time when
Speaker 1: it was basically just starting. Like there's only a handful
Speaker 1: of those jobs even existed in the world at that time.
Speaker 1: Will there there was no such job five years before.
Speaker 1: There be no podcasts, I mean, and there maybe there'd
Speaker 1: be some format to listen to stuff, but we'd still
Speaker 1: be having to drive around in your station wagon, you know,
Speaker 1: like like extra long to listen to a full podcast
Speaker 1: before swinging back around into your house and using fascinating.
Speaker 1: I feel like we might have to revisit that question.
Speaker 1: But now we're onto the third thing that that we
Speaker 1: say matters. This is a this is another news item,
Speaker 1: and you know it happened over It happens essentially the
Speaker 1: day after our last show last week, where we found
Speaker 1: out that Pat Bowl and longtime Broncos owner, died at
Speaker 1: age seventy five. And I think, to the younger fan,
Speaker 1: you really have very little concept of Pat Bowling because
Speaker 1: he struggled with Alzheimer's and he really was not the
Speaker 1: public facing owner of the Broncos for so long. But
Speaker 1: I go, I, I do remember, you know those memories
Speaker 1: you have in your first football fan and as a
Speaker 1: Browns fan when they were locked in those three a
Speaker 1: f C title games against the Broncos over the course
Speaker 1: of four years. The third, the third one that happened
Speaker 1: in eighty nine was a blowout and largely in memorable,
Speaker 1: but the first two were obviously classics. The drive in
Speaker 1: the fumble and what the contrast that I remember that
Speaker 1: made me heighten, that heightened my anxiety as a very
Speaker 1: new Browns fan, was that Cleveland's owner, art and model
Speaker 1: pre everyone hating him, was a rather beloved figure because
Speaker 1: he had tried so long to get a championship in Cleveland,
Speaker 1: and he was during these two games and most Browns games,
Speaker 1: a hot, nervous wreck, like you could just feel his
Speaker 1: nervous energy from the shot. They'd show up in his
Speaker 1: sweet he slumped over in his chair and just waiting
Speaker 1: for something bad to happen, and then they cut over
Speaker 1: to Pat Boland and there'd be like a cool wind
Speaker 1: sweeping through his hair. He'd be in a big fur
Speaker 1: coat in sunglasses, and I was like, they have essentially
Speaker 1: like a Don draper Ish figure at the age John
Speaker 1: Draper would have been at that time running the show.
Speaker 1: And we have this guy who is a massive, hyper
Speaker 1: antsy guy running in Cleveland Brown's team. Very concerning, but
Speaker 1: if you look at his career, and I think he
Speaker 1: did he actually there's an anecdote that he dropped that
Speaker 1: fur code because a lot of Broncos fans thought it
Speaker 1: was a little too sheehy and not really representative of
Speaker 1: their country living out in the West. And so he
Speaker 1: was someone that by the end of his tenure, was
Speaker 1: incredibly close to many of his employees. Look at this
Speaker 1: seven Super Bowls, three hundred wins in thirty years, twenty
Speaker 1: one winning seasons. They are a team that had posted
Speaker 1: a league high a hundred regular season wins in his tenure,
Speaker 1: in the second best winning percentage in the NFL, which
Speaker 1: was the first up until a year ago. He was
Speaker 1: a pretty remarkable and we talked about bad owners on
Speaker 1: this show all the time. He was the reverse for
Speaker 1: owners in in just about every sport. They are people
Speaker 1: of accomplishment and achievement who never got the credit or
Speaker 1: the public uh sort of image that they want. They
Speaker 1: want to be out there, they want to be acknowledged.
Speaker 1: But the best owners realize it's a public trust, like
Speaker 1: owning a newspaper, that it's for the region. It's for
Speaker 1: the city and that region of the Denver Broncos. You're
Speaker 1: talking Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, this whole Western United States roots
Speaker 1: for this team and identify with them. Because beat Pat
Speaker 1: Bowland gave the team to the region. He didn't try
Speaker 1: to keep the team for himself in his own glory,
Speaker 1: I guess well said. And he cared so much that
Speaker 1: when Josh McDaniels went down in a house of fire
Speaker 1: in Denver, it was because of this sort of unoriginal
Speaker 1: videotaping scandal Part two where Boland basically shifted gears entirely
Speaker 1: and brought an entirely different coaches from then on out.
Speaker 1: Because of that experience. Well, the one the one thing
Speaker 1: that comes to mind with Pat Bowl and he knew
Speaker 1: even we're just gonna have that's our fault. We need
Speaker 1: to be thinking about the third speaker. We don't have
Speaker 1: a warning. I think that makes it exciting. It keeps
Speaker 1: all on edge, and like we can talk about a
Speaker 1: bron goes to succession plan another time, a lot of
Speaker 1: family drama. There no family drama in the Tom Brady
Speaker 1: What is all this? Oh well, it's lingering into Gregg
Speaker 1: getting killed twice here. No, I love that. I mean
Speaker 1: that is Pap Bolan's shining moment. It was good to hear.
Speaker 1: I wanna bring up something that hasn't been talked about
Speaker 1: at all on this show, which is Tom Brady's contract situation.
Speaker 1: And I usually think that, like contracts for quarterbacks are
Speaker 1: kind of an over talked about, uh topic on this
Speaker 1: show or just on any show, but this one it
Speaker 1: it strikes me that it's interesting because he's going into
Speaker 1: the final year of his contract. Nothing's been done, nothing's
Speaker 1: been talked about, There's nothing happening in the public eye,
Speaker 1: which I think is great. That's kind of how they
Speaker 1: do things. But I would expect the contract that sometime
Speaker 1: this offseason. And it really is interesting because we've never
Speaker 1: seen anything like him playing this well into this long.
Speaker 1: How are they going to do that and when is
Speaker 1: it going to happen. I kind of expected to happen
Speaker 1: before this season starts, because it doesn't make sense to
Speaker 1: me to have Tom Brady playing out a final year
Speaker 1: of his contract. That would be weird. But what kind
Speaker 1: of contract do you give Tom Brady right now? Are
Speaker 1: they gonna like make up some of this guaranteed money?
Speaker 1: I don't I don't even know. But it's just something
Speaker 1: as we're heading into this dead time that I thought
Speaker 1: was kind of a topic to just throw out there.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't it be odd or bizarre or strange if all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, after all these years, tom Brady said,
Speaker 1: I want my money. I want what I owed, I
Speaker 1: want what I'm do, I want over time, for all
Speaker 1: of the years I took less money. This is a
Speaker 1: guy who has made it clear he takes less money
Speaker 1: because a his wife makes seventy five million dollars a
Speaker 1: year or used to anyway, and be he knows, and
Speaker 1: he knows it helps the team win. He knows that
Speaker 1: they can build a better team and have their championship
Speaker 1: window is more wide open than other teams. But because
Speaker 1: they're all century, quarterback takes less money, and you could
Speaker 1: argue kindness to team and also of what my wife
Speaker 1: makes as zero factors. If you wanted to, you could
Speaker 1: say other players could care less about where that's coming from.
Speaker 1: That's extremely self. Let's do that. It's that we talked
Speaker 1: about their succession plan. They have no succession plan at
Speaker 1: quarterback based on some drama that's happened in the past
Speaker 1: couple of season. I don't know. I hear that the
Speaker 1: Jared Stidham buzz is starting. Well, let's see how that works.
Speaker 1: About that, it's more of thet It's like the guaranteed
Speaker 1: money and kind of the are they gonna put their
Speaker 1: money where their mouth is? Is Tom Brady gonna put
Speaker 1: his money where the mouth is too, And like make
Speaker 1: this a contract where it's guaranteed for the next couple
Speaker 1: of seasons, and like, hey, we are actually all on
Speaker 1: board with this guy playing until he's forty four, forty five.
Speaker 1: It's not a one year thing, like it's just never
Speaker 1: been done. And as a Patriots fan, I'm definitely curious
Speaker 1: to see where what happens. Have you ever wondered how
Speaker 1: many young quarterbacks look at this example and say, it's
Speaker 1: a tremendous competitive advantage to marry a supermodel. Why don't
Speaker 1: I do the same thing too? I mean, there's only
Speaker 1: so many gisells, right, I mean, there's only so many
Speaker 1: out there, But there should be like a line forming
Speaker 1: of quarterbacks saying, hey, look, Tom Brady showed us it's
Speaker 1: a huge competitive Maybe Mary, like an heiress like Serena
Speaker 1: would have was would have been a good catch, just
Speaker 1: like any any woman making any an incredible Yes, Sierra,
Speaker 1: that's either. I don't think it's like too far afield
Speaker 1: from the way some quarterbacks think they're. They're not like
Speaker 1: you know that, they're not like marrying total dark horses
Speaker 1: that work at like right aid the whole. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just like scary when that voice comes in and
Speaker 1: if anyone recognizes where that's coming from, let me now, Wes, Well,
Speaker 1: this is gonna be the fifth thing that we care
Speaker 1: about on June seventeenth, and there's only nine. So we
Speaker 1: are living in in terms of sports, we are living
Speaker 1: in the analytics revolution. This is what the century is
Speaker 1: brought with moneyball, and it's all rooted in Bill James
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies and eighties. You go back and
Speaker 1: father Pete Palm or some other guys who were into analytics,
Speaker 1: and it was sort of outsiders bemoaning what the insiders
Speaker 1: were doing with sports, that it's sort of this caricature
Speaker 1: of the old timey scout with the chaw in his
Speaker 1: cheek saying, I can tell where this guy is gonna
Speaker 1: be good, just by the way he's walking off the
Speaker 1: plane or the bus, and all these outsiders said, well,
Speaker 1: that doesn't ring true to me. I'm skeptical. That's what
Speaker 1: we've been dealing with the last twenty years. My prediction
Speaker 1: is the next big sports revolution is going to be
Speaker 1: the counterbalance to analytics. It's gonna be a response that
Speaker 1: basketball is not as great of a sport as it
Speaker 1: could be because everybody's standing around taking three pointers. Baseball
Speaker 1: right now is sit on your ass baseball. It is boring.
Speaker 1: It's more like softball. And the next wave of sports
Speaker 1: revolution is going to be Let's get the sport to
Speaker 1: be as beautiful as possible, to be as rewarding and
Speaker 1: as entertaining as possible. Can the sport reach its apoge
Speaker 1: Bob Knight used to tellers players, you're not playing against
Speaker 1: the competition, You're playing against the perfect form of basketball.
Speaker 1: And I think it's gonna be led by former players
Speaker 1: who are really intelligent, and it's gonna be led by
Speaker 1: former analytics guys who were into the movement and take
Speaker 1: a step back and say, what are we doing to
Speaker 1: our sport? I know it's smart, but is it beautiful? Well?
Speaker 1: I think analytics, you know, good analytics, front office minded,
Speaker 1: you know, folks have always wanted to integrate, you know,
Speaker 1: the actual scouting or whether it's the input from players
Speaker 1: and coaches with the numbers. It can't be such such
Speaker 1: a I don't know what the word is for. Just uh.
Speaker 1: You know that you're just married to take and that's
Speaker 1: all you're thinking about it. Uh. And I think that
Speaker 1: has happened. But I think that's something to give you mine,
Speaker 1: especially with the n b A of like, is it
Speaker 1: making the sport? Baseball has a bigger problem than basketball.
Speaker 1: Right now in terms of what the analytics are doing
Speaker 1: to it, because ultimately, if you're winning, no one cares
Speaker 1: about whether it's pretty or ugly on a team by
Speaker 1: team basis. But you know what I mean, But everyone's
Speaker 1: asleep at the wheel. There's nobody in charge of making
Speaker 1: sure the sport is its best form, its most rewarding form.
Speaker 1: Everybody's in charge. The conditioners are because they're hands strung
Speaker 1: by the owners. Well it's fun, and the owners are
Speaker 1: told by their analytics guys, this is what's important. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think in the NFL we haven't really even seen
Speaker 1: I think we're just starting. And even though a lot
Speaker 1: of teams don't advertise it in and are very into
Speaker 1: analytics and using data as much as they can, I
Speaker 1: still think it's pretty early in the process for football. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: The trick is like we can see certain teams jumping
Speaker 1: out of the others analytics wise over the course of
Speaker 1: the last decade to five years to now. But like
Speaker 1: that movement is it's it does work? Does one team
Speaker 1: start that? It's good question? This one is I want
Speaker 1: to throw this out to the group versus winding on
Speaker 1: for three and a half minutes. But I love what
Speaker 1: I One thing that I do get excited about football
Speaker 1: and I don't want to like manufacture stuff that I'm
Speaker 1: not actually into is the concept of like the berserker
Speaker 1: team that we spend all off season talking about. We
Speaker 1: expect a B C and D to go to the
Speaker 1: playoffs or even like these two teams to like fulfill
Speaker 1: their potential and reach the like the Browns for instance,
Speaker 1: even the Jets. They're gonna make the playoffs for the
Speaker 1: first time in a long time. Who is the berserker
Speaker 1: team that no one even sees at all that is
Speaker 1: going to f everyone's expectations and plans up with a
Speaker 1: nine or ten win season that gets him into a
Speaker 1: wild card. And for me, I'll throw one out there
Speaker 1: and we don't need to. I don't need to linger
Speaker 1: on for me, when looking up and down the list
Speaker 1: the Bills, I would say the Bills are a team
Speaker 1: that in the in the a f C East could
Speaker 1: do some damage and sneak into the playoffs because they're
Speaker 1: well coached and the well run a year before or
Speaker 1: two years before people expect. I love that pick into me. So,
Speaker 1: I mean everything depends on the quarterback, right right? Is
Speaker 1: he the guy who so many people decided before he
Speaker 1: even took a snap would be a bust because he's
Speaker 1: not accurate enough, he doesn't read the field well enough,
Speaker 1: his instincts aren't that great. Or is he the guy
Speaker 1: who looked like the best athlete on the field and
Speaker 1: a lot of the games he played good. Question, there's
Speaker 1: only so many options because even a team like I
Speaker 1: don't know if the forty Niners even qualifies as like
Speaker 1: as such an underdog. I thought you give them too
Speaker 1: much credit. On this podcast. The Forts were always talking
Speaker 1: about how they're gonna be good in their coach. I
Speaker 1: think they have, they have, they have, they don't win
Speaker 1: football games. The Cardinals would certainly be an option. The Lions.
Speaker 1: I think the NFC North is too good for them
Speaker 1: to do it. You know what I hate to say, Well,
Speaker 1: the Bengals came to mind a little bit, the Bengals.
Speaker 1: The Bengals are one that I've kind of given already.
Speaker 1: This other part of me is a little afraid that
Speaker 1: the Giants are gonna be better than than people think.
Speaker 1: The Bucks and the Giants are two that popped into
Speaker 1: my mind that like, if things go right for the Giants,
Speaker 1: I don't think that's the worst for the Giants, they
Speaker 1: win six games, I think they could win nine or
Speaker 1: ten if things If things went really well for the Giants,
Speaker 1: why not name a less talented roster than the Giants.
Speaker 1: They do a couple of younger players. I think if
Speaker 1: things go totally right for most NFL teams, I think
Speaker 1: they could win more than six. I mean, the Dolphins
Speaker 1: probably have less talent than the Giants. I can't think
Speaker 1: of another Raiders. No, I think the Raiders had more
Speaker 1: talent than the Giants. Giants is the skill position players.
Speaker 1: I always picked the buckspace. I just picked like five
Speaker 1: different The main defense is part of the game, right,
Speaker 1: and that's why I think defense is That's why I
Speaker 1: think the Bucks have a lot of upside, not just
Speaker 1: arians with Winston, but just because their defense has been
Speaker 1: so bad year after year that if the coaching is
Speaker 1: just better and they get to twentieth on defense a
Speaker 1: little bit of luck, they could scrape out ten wins. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess. I mean we're talking about a coach he
Speaker 1: decided he had enough. M that's suddenly you're anti Bruce Areas.
Speaker 1: You're that the king now that he's with Davis Winston,
Speaker 1: your anti famously said I don't need to sleep on
Speaker 1: a cot when he was into football, he said that
Speaker 1: now he's already done. I guess like the the completest
Speaker 1: part of me, that the part of me that has
Speaker 1: done seven hundred, eight hundred of these shows, I don't
Speaker 1: know how many of we maybe or whatever, feels like, uh,
Speaker 1: we should get Josh mccccount's retirement into this program just
Speaker 1: out of respect for Josh mccount. So I'm gonna throw
Speaker 1: away the other couple of ones and throw Josh McCown
Speaker 1: officially retiring in as the seventh thing we actually care about,
Speaker 1: because this is a man who is I think misunderstood,
Speaker 1: especially by people who have just paid attention to the
Speaker 1: last few years, and they think of him as like this,
Speaker 1: you know, backup who's really good at helping out the
Speaker 1: guys underneath them, and he's a great guy and all
Speaker 1: of that, and that's all true. But Josh McCown to me,
Speaker 1: was the ultimate like five tool like baseball player that
Speaker 1: really couldn't put it all together. That was almost over
Speaker 1: hyped at some level. And it's not that he was
Speaker 1: taken high in the draft. He was a third round
Speaker 1: pick and he bounced around. But this guy man had
Speaker 1: a cannon. This guy could run, This guy could make
Speaker 1: any throw on the field, and he was fun the
Speaker 1: best dunkers in the NFL. Fun as hell taking the
Speaker 1: lead candidate, but fun as hell to watch as a
Speaker 1: young player. But just kind of maybe like a Josh
Speaker 1: Allen maybe didn't put it all together, like mentally or
Speaker 1: whatever it was for a while in his career. But
Speaker 1: just for the kids out there who don't remember what
Speaker 1: he was like on the Cardinals where he hadn't okay
Speaker 1: a couple of seasons, he had a big time moment
Speaker 1: knocking the Vikings out of the playoffs. He had another
Speaker 1: season where I think he was about seven and seven
Speaker 1: as a starter. I mean, this guy had tools. This
Speaker 1: guy was like loaded and was a lot of fun
Speaker 1: to watch, just in terms of his skill set, not
Speaker 1: in terms of like being a mentor or whatever. He
Speaker 1: seems like a throwback, and I mean that's just gets overdone.
Speaker 1: He's a throwback in the way that Johnny Unitis can
Speaker 1: be drafted by the Steelers, cut be actually playing sand
Speaker 1: football and then turned into a Hall of Famer. Josh
Speaker 1: McCown at like age thirty three, went to the UFL,
Speaker 1: and then he was coaching high school football, not like
Speaker 1: in his spare time. That was his job coaching high
Speaker 1: school football. And then he had a whole another career
Speaker 1: after that, right he somehow he was a smart guy
Speaker 1: that somehow, you know, it was just a great guy
Speaker 1: to have around and then realize, how can I use
Speaker 1: this skill set that maybe I like burned through early
Speaker 1: in my career because he had nine starts, but he
Speaker 1: had how many different one to three? Four? He had
Speaker 1: eight nine different teams during his career over eight. Let's
Speaker 1: stop calling like EJ. Manual a journeyman when you've got
Speaker 1: Josh McCown on like half a dozen teams plus three
Speaker 1: Josh McCown is kind of the definition of a journey
Speaker 1: And sometimes it was pretty ugly. That Buck season that
Speaker 1: he was the starter was one of the worst. Like
Speaker 1: that was. It was just like he was just taking
Speaker 1: a bullet for them basically and just like wasting out
Speaker 1: a season. But I just I don't think we're done
Speaker 1: with him. I think the same way that Tony Romo
Speaker 1: went to television, it's not it's not going to be
Speaker 1: to that immediate notice of people. But I think he
Speaker 1: talked about and is going away piece. Coaching is a
Speaker 1: passion of his. He is around the league. People are like,
Speaker 1: this is someone we wanted our coaching app. I think
Speaker 1: he's going to be a super fast riser and it
Speaker 1: helps because he looks like someone shout out of Madman
Speaker 1: within a fantastic haircut. He is. He looks the part.
Speaker 1: He's a great leader, and he's a mentor. Yeah he know,
Speaker 1: he absolutely is, and but just happy trails. That's what
Speaker 1: I want out of a backup quarterback. I don't want
Speaker 1: like the guy who's gonna come in and not make
Speaker 1: any mistakes and not kill you. I want someone that
Speaker 1: comes in the game and makes it more fun to
Speaker 1: watch and just as like a little crazy. He he
Speaker 1: is kind of a chrisch fan. Bryan Fitzpatrick, it's over.
Speaker 1: I would um nominate Mark to go and then I'll
Speaker 1: wrap it up because mine it's not really about sports.
Speaker 1: It's sure mine is, uh veers pretty heavily away from
Speaker 1: sports too, but why not do two in a row. Um.
Speaker 1: The thing that I am honestly very excited about is
Speaker 1: the movie coming up soon. Once upon a Time in Hollywood,
Speaker 1: Quentin Tarantino's ninth film, I do think honestly, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be a very different kind of film from his previous ones.
Speaker 1: And we know that it's about nine nine. We know
Speaker 1: that it's about um, Hollywood, it's about it's mixed in
Speaker 1: with Sharon Tates killing and all that stuff. And they've
Speaker 1: made a billion movies about that topic and most of
Speaker 1: them have been done horribly wrong, and they're and they're
Speaker 1: basically just a regurgitation of what we already know. When
Speaker 1: you put Quentin Tarantino's worldview on it, and he has
Speaker 1: the okay from the Tate family after they read the
Speaker 1: script and saw what he did. I think that's a
Speaker 1: big part of this. I would give you two things
Speaker 1: if you're interested in this topic to look. Last week,
Speaker 1: I saw a movie, The Wrecking Crew, that starred Sharon Tate,
Speaker 1: and it also had a dangerously overly tan Dean Martin,
Speaker 1: who have made me show that movie stars of that
Speaker 1: age they're just simply old, like Brad Pitt still looks
Speaker 1: essentially younger than most people that are thirty five. That's
Speaker 1: not how it worked back in that time. But that
Speaker 1: was her last movie, and go watch her in that
Speaker 1: and tell me what you think of her after seeing it.
Speaker 1: It is so it is she she's not the greatest
Speaker 1: actress on the planet, but there's something about her spirit
Speaker 1: that's pretty crazy. There is a book called The Family
Speaker 1: by Ed Sanders. If you've read Helter Skelter, that book
Speaker 1: is a crazy departure from what Vincent Bugliosi wrote in
Speaker 1: Helter Skelter, which was not rushed but written quickly after
Speaker 1: the case and as the case was going on. This
Speaker 1: was a poet and a songwriter who was hanging out
Speaker 1: with a lot of people in the story while he
Speaker 1: was writing it. And there are some crazy things involved
Speaker 1: in there. And people should remember that Sharon Tate's father,
Speaker 1: who was a colonel in the in the Army. I
Speaker 1: believe he spent years researching this case undercover, going into
Speaker 1: the hippie community trying to find out what happened is
Speaker 1: There are a lot of divergent tales back then. This
Speaker 1: movie won't go, I think, too deep into that world.
Speaker 1: It's going to talk about the DiCaprio and Pitt Hollywood
Speaker 1: relationship in the end of Hollywood, at the end of
Speaker 1: a Hollywood era interesting. I spent a lot of the
Speaker 1: early offseason reading about old Hollywood, and it is fascinating
Speaker 1: to read the stories. Um, the characters involved. That was
Speaker 1: a different time in America. Is has there been a
Speaker 1: movie that's come out in years that is more up mark?
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a movie made for you, and
Speaker 1: it does look like a lot of fun. I like
Speaker 1: it when the secondary characters, like I can't Timothy Oliphant
Speaker 1: has a big role. I loved him at the Oliphant
Speaker 1: like Luke Perry is in this movie. Kurt Russell's in
Speaker 1: this movie, al Pacino's in this movie. He just like
Speaker 1: wish cast his his lineup of actors, and it's typically
Speaker 1: people that someone hasn't seen in a film. For Jackie
Speaker 1: Brown is an example of that. Like that, that's what
Speaker 1: I love. And I think he's going to go all out.
Speaker 1: He says it's last movie. I don't buy it. Let's
Speaker 1: go to the last I mean, we don't even need
Speaker 1: about Let's go down. And there was only nine things
Speaker 1: in the world that we care about this week and
Speaker 1: West has the final one. Well, I call this topic
Speaker 1: what they don't tell you about cancer. Um. I was
Speaker 1: incredibly open throughout the whole process, and I was told
Speaker 1: that I can't believe you revealed so much and to me,
Speaker 1: that was always weird. Why wouldn't I am on this podcast.
Speaker 1: It's public, of course, that's part of our lives. But
Speaker 1: I've been quiet since sort of the end of chemo.
Speaker 1: I haven't brought people along for the ride. And what
Speaker 1: they don't tell you about cancer is that you lose
Speaker 1: your identity, that there's a vulnerability. Like for me, I
Speaker 1: was a staunchly, fiercely into, pendent person who didn't need anyone,
Speaker 1: didn't rely on anyone. Well, you you're so vulnerable you
Speaker 1: have to rely on people. You're on a feeding tube,
Speaker 1: you can't feed yourself, you can't really function. And Keisha
Speaker 1: and her mom took care of me. You guys came
Speaker 1: and see me. But along the way, you lose your identity.
Speaker 1: And I just want, like ask our listeners be patient
Speaker 1: with me. I haven't been the same person after cancer
Speaker 1: as I was before cancer, and I'm still trying to
Speaker 1: figure out who I am, and I think I've sort
Speaker 1: of lost that centering that most people have, and I'm
Speaker 1: still trying to figure out, like what am I going
Speaker 1: to be from my next thirty forty years or whatever
Speaker 1: it is. So that's my quick word on what they
Speaker 1: don't tell you about cancer, you just lose who you are.
Speaker 1: I don't think you lost the element um that I
Speaker 1: like about you, your self awareness. Though some people would
Speaker 1: just not even realize that that's all happened to them,
Speaker 1: you're the analytic side of you, but also other things
Speaker 1: are able to see that that transitions happened. Well, I
Speaker 1: think you think about that stuff more after you go
Speaker 1: through something like that. You you, I think necessity have
Speaker 1: to be a less selfish person, a less self centered person.
Speaker 1: You can't just sit around thinking about yourself all the time. Well,
Speaker 1: you you're a different person. I mean everyone is always
Speaker 1: like a different person than they were a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago. But when you have something that life changing
Speaker 1: and transformative, I think what I'm getting from you is
Speaker 1: just that you feel like you're still Chris Wesseling. But
Speaker 1: how could you not be like a different person. And
Speaker 1: then just you know, putting that with what whoever the
Speaker 1: old Chris Wesseling was, and kind of making that all
Speaker 1: marry and feeling that that's you. Well, have you ever
Speaker 1: noticed that Jerry McGuire's memo is basically sanity Like he
Speaker 1: writes his memo and it makes sense, but everyone's afraid
Speaker 1: to jump on board. Everybody's afraid to buy in. But
Speaker 1: we all have Jerry McGuire's memo in our lives and
Speaker 1: we never really let it out because we're afraid of
Speaker 1: the backlash. And to me, what I learned from cancer
Speaker 1: is I'm sort of just gonna throw out I'm gonna
Speaker 1: use Jerry McGuire's memo. I know these things are right,
Speaker 1: and I don't really care what the back last year is. Lakisha,
Speaker 1: your renee Zellwigger absolutely see. I think I don't know
Speaker 1: if you would have I don't know if any of
Speaker 1: this that's happened to you, the the amazing chapter in
Speaker 1: the last couple of months, would have happened had you
Speaker 1: not gone through this change. I think there is certainly
Speaker 1: a large part of that that I've changed as much
Speaker 1: because of Lakisha and her positive, relentless positive outlook and
Speaker 1: energy as I have from cancer. What when you when
Speaker 1: that makes you Tom Cruise and that means you're gonna
Speaker 1: beat Justin Bieber if you ever see him, I promise
Speaker 1: you you will. Do you think well when you say
Speaker 1: this and you're bringing this topic up for the listeners too,
Speaker 1: is it because like, why why do you want to
Speaker 1: bring it up for the listeners now? I guess I
Speaker 1: think like there's a part of me that's still, um,
Speaker 1: really stubborn and really outspoken and really opinionated, and I
Speaker 1: talk over people in the room, and I know listeners
Speaker 1: get upset with me because of that. They probably get
Speaker 1: upset with all of us because of that. But I'm
Speaker 1: trying to shed more of that part of me, and
Speaker 1: it's hard, Like that's who I was for a lot
Speaker 1: of my life, you know. Yeah, I don't think you
Speaker 1: need to change. Don't shed it all though, Yeah, totally
Speaker 1: who you are, and I don't think I don't think
Speaker 1: you could if you totally tried. But if if you're
Speaker 1: saying that you're you're a different person and you have
Speaker 1: different priorities, I think that's natural and hopefully we all
Speaker 1: that happens for all of us. I just hope that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that, um, you know that you just start
Speaker 1: writing books and you're no longer on this podcast in
Speaker 1: a few years or something. Well, writing books, I mean,
Speaker 1: they don't just write themselves. Like an Eli Manning retrospective
Speaker 1: is what we need from West. You've really really gone
Speaker 1: through transition six hundred and seventy Eli Manning novel. I've
Speaker 1: always seen more of a dabbler than I finisher, and
Speaker 1: it's hard to be a dabbler and write books. Look
Speaker 1: a look at this, it's just started. Wants to get
Speaker 1: on the road. I mean that was a hard turn,
Speaker 1: uh for Mark Sessler, Chris Wessel, Eric at Sampose. We
Speaker 1: did it. We'll see you Thursday, m