Speaker 1: These former r Pro linebacker now the host of the
Speaker 1: Lights Out podcast. Our man Shawn Merriman. What's up, Sean? Hey,
Speaker 1: what's up? Guys? Are you doing doing? Good? Man? We
Speaker 1: we were just talking about how television viewing of sports
Speaker 1: has dropped the biggest of any gendre right, uh in
Speaker 1: television news is up thirty one percent, but sports is down.
Speaker 1: Have your your habits changed since the pandemic hit, you know,
Speaker 1: a year ago. Do you watch less sports or or
Speaker 1: you know when it was gone? Are you finding it
Speaker 1: harder to get back to watching it? No, I mean
Speaker 1: not really. I think we've seen the decline because of
Speaker 1: social media. Is I don't think that people less interested
Speaker 1: in sports. You know, we're changing because of social media. Um,
Speaker 1: you know me, you know myself, Like I'm in New
Speaker 1: Jersey right now. Tomorrow I'll be somewhere else, you know.
Speaker 1: Some always traveling. So the only way I can see
Speaker 1: the clips if I'm seeing, you know, clips of the
Speaker 1: highlights on social media. So that's how I find out
Speaker 1: the source of my information, especially when I get busy
Speaker 1: and I think that, uh, you know, most of the world,
Speaker 1: that's what they're doing. No one's really even on the pandemic.
Speaker 1: You know, people are still on social media, whether it's Instagram,
Speaker 1: Facebook or TikTok, whatever you're looking at, you're still finding
Speaker 1: the clips there. So I don't I don't take that
Speaker 1: as people are watching less sports at all. But but
Speaker 1: the difference I would just push back is that news
Speaker 1: is a big time. People have social media to follow
Speaker 1: the clips. They could do, you know, watch CNN on
Speaker 1: their phone. They could watch the news there as well,
Speaker 1: and the numbers just aren't as big. Yeah. But you know, Rob,
Speaker 1: we're not watching news highlights, right, I mean that's really
Speaker 1: what it comes down to. People want to see who
Speaker 1: got dunked on, who got hit hard, who made a
Speaker 1: great catch? Um. You know we were talking about news clips.
Speaker 1: You know, we need to see the whole thing, and
Speaker 1: and and and the entire entirely. You know, we need
Speaker 1: to sit back and see what the context of what
Speaker 1: they're talking about. Um, and to understand and with the
Speaker 1: entire situation is people we all look at we how
Speaker 1: many memes are going around just based off the highlights, right,
Speaker 1: I mean people are waiting for these highlights to happen
Speaker 1: just so you can meame it up. I don't think
Speaker 1: that people are looking for these memes and social media.
Speaker 1: They're looking to uh fireback based on the information that's given.
Speaker 1: That's whether it's five, ten, fifteen, twenty plus minutes, you
Speaker 1: have to watch the whole entire clip on CNN, Fox News.
Speaker 1: What are you looking at? Sean Robbing. I've talked about
Speaker 1: this before, how we've talked with athletes, professional athletes, and
Speaker 1: a lot of them weren't really into watching the sports
Speaker 1: when they were coming up. They obviously were great athletes
Speaker 1: and they just played. Whereas guys like us and and
Speaker 1: others who weren't quite as good. We're watching a lot
Speaker 1: of sports. Were you a guy that watched a lot
Speaker 1: of sports or were you just you played them and
Speaker 1: you were a great athlete. I didn't be honest. Now,
Speaker 1: I didn't even have a favorite team, right, So when
Speaker 1: people ask that's where you go, I grew up in
Speaker 1: Peach County in Maryland. I grew up you know about
Speaker 1: you know, and you would think so, right, But you know,
Speaker 1: I watched Prime Time, I watched Dean Sanders, you know,
Speaker 1: I watched Berry sand As, I watched you know, all
Speaker 1: the guys that you know, Lawrence Till and I can
Speaker 1: tell you the players, but I couldn't tell you the
Speaker 1: other ten players on that on that offensive defense. I
Speaker 1: just watched players and so for that, yeah, and I
Speaker 1: can't really make a correlation to it. But for me,
Speaker 1: I just always had a sense that maybe I'll get
Speaker 1: there one day. And it wasn't just about me being
Speaker 1: a fans that is so interesting. Yeah, you would just
Speaker 1: think and I can see if you grew up in
Speaker 1: South Dakota somewhere, you know, where you didn't have a team,
Speaker 1: and maybe you you didn't have one, But then again,
Speaker 1: Los Angeles didn't have a football team for twenty years, right,
Speaker 1: and people went on and and kind of went there.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the uh, some of these NFL situations
Speaker 1: and quarterbacks, Trevor Lawrence now is being kind of dumped
Speaker 1: on and maybe he's not all that in a bag
Speaker 1: of chips? What do you know about Trevor Lawrence? And
Speaker 1: are you surprised or is this is this typical where
Speaker 1: you know when people start watching film and they start
Speaker 1: breaking you down. Now they're gonna show all the flaws
Speaker 1: when you take the makeup off. No, And you know
Speaker 1: I was a guy I left I left school early,
Speaker 1: and um, you know I was their university l for
Speaker 1: three years, and one of my main reasons for leaving
Speaker 1: earlier is because once you get looked at too long,
Speaker 1: people start to get overly critical. They really do um
Speaker 1: and and also too, I think that people need to
Speaker 1: understand that um there's a lot of chatter being put
Speaker 1: out there purposely. So maybe he do slide to that
Speaker 1: three or four pick. I mean, it's all these things
Speaker 1: are possibilities, and you gotta look. I mean, if you
Speaker 1: are a fan of the game and you know just
Speaker 1: a little bit about the game, you can tell Trevor
Speaker 1: Lawrence is the best quarterback coming out in this draft.
Speaker 1: There's no doubt about that. I Mean, you've got some
Speaker 1: people that's close second, some people that could go second
Speaker 1: or third, but he's undoubtedly the best quarterback coming out
Speaker 1: in his draft. And anybody he's that put anything out
Speaker 1: there otherwise are just putting that information out there. So
Speaker 1: maybe he slipped, you know, maybe it's a it's a
Speaker 1: smoke it's a smoke screen. So maybe that that tenth
Speaker 1: or fifteen teams can jump up to that number one
Speaker 1: or two spots and grab treble treble launch. This happens
Speaker 1: on It's been happening for for several years, you know,
Speaker 1: ten twenty years it's happened. So I'm not surprised to
Speaker 1: be seeing that right now with Trebor launch. That's actually
Speaker 1: a great point. I mean, if I was if I say,
Speaker 1: I was an executive for the Jets and I got
Speaker 1: the number two pick, and I'm talking to a reporter
Speaker 1: off the record, so I know he's gonna quote me,
Speaker 1: but anonymously. Why not throughout there? You know what, Truvor
Speaker 1: Lawrence is really overrated. I mean, I don't think he's
Speaker 1: all that. And you hope he slips, you know, he
Speaker 1: catch get some traction and then you can drift if so,
Speaker 1: you're right about that. I think that's a good point.
Speaker 1: Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in
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Speaker 1: Radio dot com and within the I Heart Radio app
Speaker 1: search f s R to listen live. Um the Kansas
Speaker 1: City Chief Sean. They cut their both of their offensive tackles,
Speaker 1: Eric Fisher and Mitchell Swortz today released them and they're
Speaker 1: they're gonna cut the center. And look, Pat Mahomes took
Speaker 1: less money than he could have gotten, precisely, so they
Speaker 1: keep some players around, but obviously the cap dropped because
Speaker 1: of the pandemic, so maybe it couldn't have been helped.
Speaker 1: But do you think, look, we know some quarterbacks on
Speaker 1: the face of the league, they are incredibly important to teams,
Speaker 1: and they get the lions share of the credit for
Speaker 1: the success or and blame for the failures. But do
Speaker 1: you I think the balance of what they're paid compared
Speaker 1: to everyone else it might be too far out of
Speaker 1: whack because, you know, it seems the show that when
Speaker 1: you get a high paid quarterback, it's hard to put
Speaker 1: a super Bowl team around him. You know, Tom Brady
Speaker 1: took less money all those years, and so he obviously
Speaker 1: was able to have a super Bowl team around him.
Speaker 1: But in a lot of cases, when the quarterbacks making
Speaker 1: huge money, they rarely win the Super Bowl because you
Speaker 1: can't put those great players around them. Do you do
Speaker 1: you feel like there should be more of a balance
Speaker 1: between what quarterbacks are paid and other positions. Not that
Speaker 1: they maybe shouldn't be the highest paid, but that right
Speaker 1: now is just so far out of whack that it
Speaker 1: can hurt teams. Well, if we're talking about quarterbacks, yes,
Speaker 1: if we're talking about Patrick Mahomes, no, you know, it's
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, he's a different breed, you know. I
Speaker 1: think when you start talking about the three or four guys,
Speaker 1: it's just out of this world, right, and he's one
Speaker 1: of them. He's one that you won't we won't see
Speaker 1: another Patrick Mahomes for another ten plus years. And what
Speaker 1: he's capable of doing physically as mechanics, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the type of things you can't coach. I don't care
Speaker 1: how great of a quarterback you go. He he does
Speaker 1: some things that you can't simply coach because of this.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's because of his baseball background
Speaker 1: or whatever the case is. He has thrown motions that
Speaker 1: are unlike anybody the National Football League. So for him,
Speaker 1: I kind of take him out of that category. But
Speaker 1: I understand what they're doing, right. So you've got guys
Speaker 1: um For one, Fisher went down what I think he
Speaker 1: had an achilles if I'm if I'm not mistake, he
Speaker 1: had him achilles. So I've told my I've told my achilles,
Speaker 1: and you're not You're not one for fourteen and twelve
Speaker 1: to fourteen months. It takes you to be one hundred
Speaker 1: percent from the killings. You can go out there and play,
Speaker 1: but you won't be a hundred percent Pax Mahomes. Later
Speaker 1: on during the season, he was getting lit up, and
Speaker 1: we saw that in the Super Bowl he was getting
Speaker 1: lit up. He was, you know, basically running for his life.
Speaker 1: So when you pay somebody that amount of money, you
Speaker 1: need to bring in the best of the best, and
Speaker 1: you need to bring them in right now. And since
Speaker 1: Fisher is not gonna be healthy for the next start
Speaker 1: of the season, you have to start looking to do
Speaker 1: something with him. I thought they were doing him over favor.
Speaker 1: Now if you go over to that situation now, now,
Speaker 1: now we got a conversation on our hands, right because
Speaker 1: in my opinion, that was overpaid. Now, as a as
Speaker 1: a player, you love to see guys get paid, and
Speaker 1: I'm happy for him. He got there. He deserved to
Speaker 1: get paid. Um, but now you're talking about a situation
Speaker 1: where um there. Now they're not gonna be to build
Speaker 1: a team around. He got paid so much money that
Speaker 1: he's gonna get hit. He's gonna have to curry the
Speaker 1: load of the team. He's gonna have a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff on the shoulders, which I don't know if he
Speaker 1: if he has an ability to step up and handle
Speaker 1: but we we definitely talked about in that situation, you know,
Speaker 1: in that in that case, Yeah, that that's the interesting
Speaker 1: part on how it would play out. Where are you?
Speaker 1: Tony Dungee said when he got hurt that it was
Speaker 1: like a blessing in disguise for the Cowboys that they
Speaker 1: could get back to running the football first and and
Speaker 1: and then throwing it. Uh. Now that he's got that contract,
Speaker 1: should the Cowboys go back to trying to run it more?
Speaker 1: Or now because you pay a quarterback that kind of money,
Speaker 1: he has to throw the ball like it's got to
Speaker 1: be about him. Well, I think coach Dundee was correct
Speaker 1: by the standpoint. It was a blessing in disguise, but
Speaker 1: but not for that reason to running the ball. I
Speaker 1: think it was a blessing of disguise because we all
Speaker 1: seen how bad that team is without Dak prescott Um
Speaker 1: and he might be the first player in history that
Speaker 1: value went up by him being out like we've we've
Speaker 1: never we've never seen that before because I think that
Speaker 1: if he had another sub part year, he would have
Speaker 1: never gotten forty plus million a year. We wouldn't have
Speaker 1: seen a lot of day. But that team tanks so bad,
Speaker 1: and so many different categories that we've all seen how
Speaker 1: important he was that team. They got to run the
Speaker 1: ball anyway. That Doc is not a guy that is
Speaker 1: going to throw at a high completion rate. He's uh,
Speaker 1: you know consistently, he's not gonna win games for you consistently.
Speaker 1: Um you know. They got a lot of guys that
Speaker 1: were banged up in the office line. They're gonna have
Speaker 1: to do the same thing that that that case he
Speaker 1: is doing. Go out and started searching for some monsters
Speaker 1: because without that and then running the ball, Dak won't
Speaker 1: be able to carry the load. He's never been that.
Speaker 1: He's not going to be that MH. Sean Marriman lights
Speaker 1: Out great stuff. Man as always checking out on the
Speaker 1: lights Out podcast. Thanks a lot for the knowledge, brother,
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Man. Thanks having me