Making Sense of Derek Carr + Shedeur Sanders & the Right to Dream Big

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The Heed the Call Podcast is looking forward to the schedule release of the schedule release of the schedule release.

Oh,

pinch yourselves.

There are no off weeks in the off season.

Welcome to Heed the Call.

I am Dan Hansis, joined by my beautiful co-host, Mark Edwards Sessler, Justin Alexander Graver on the ones and twos.

Hope everybody had a lovely

Mother's Day weekend.

I hope all the listeners and viewers

did something nice for their mothers.

That's all I'll say, Mark.

Not here to judge anybody, but I hope you understand that you don't exist without mom.

I do.

That is technically, there's no way to argue against that.

And nor do I want to.

I want to celebrate what occurred many years ago when I was born.

And I'm very, I hope you had a busy weekend too because it was also your anniversary.

Yeah, my anniversary was on Monday.

So yeah, that was an interesting one.

Back to that.

Does that mean you can wrap all the

larger type gift into one message?

I mean, we're 13 years in.

It was kind of like a bit of a double shoulder shrug this morning.

Like, yeah, I mean, this doesn't fit in with this week's plans.

So maybe at some point

we'll address our continued matrimony.

But right now, we just don't have time for it.

Just don't have time.

I hear you.

This is the time of year, in addition to the NFL's belabored schedule release, which will be later this week.

And we'll hit that on some level.

This is also the time of the NFL calendar when the rookie minicamps start to roll out.

And

before we bring in Connor, Mark, I thought, you know, you and I, we should just have a quick talk.

I was thinking,

and I was thinking about this this morning, what would be the best way to present this to you?

Shador Sanders is a rookie quarterback.

Right.

One of seven or eight quarterbacks on the Cleveland Browns right now, and not even the only rookie, not even the highest drafted rookie on the team, but he's one of the rookies.

And I was just thinking how

you are very optimistic about Shador Sanders privately.

And I was thinking that maybe it's time for Mark Sessler

to,

now that we're never going to see Deshaun Watson again,

it's time to come back.

Don't hit us with any of this.

Oh, you know, as a historical Browns.

No, how about we just lean into it and the texts that me and Justin and Connor get,

like you share those type of thoughts on this program.

And they are very, very like pro-Shadora Sanders takes you're selling in private about them.

Like, we'll share a couple right here.

I hope this isn't a violation.

Palms away.

Yeah.

What happens to our country when Shador Sanders throws 22 touchdowns and two picks over the final 10 games of the Brown season?

That's a nice one.

What if he's quietly a Drew Brees type and the dumbfaced NFL was simply penning JFK's ghost-written sequel

to While England Slept?

Pretty good, Mark.

I really didn't think about it until now, Mark text in the middle of a crazy busy weekend for everybody.

But it's kind of this player, everyone's ripped endlessly.

What if he's insane?

And that's the last text he sent.

No, it wasn't.

I think the Browns did something wild and just took a chance.

He's also been wonderful to the fans and city so far.

Not trying to be a super douche, but he's been great, just like Colin.

Oh, maybe the league fed this one up.

Now, I hope this wasn't a violation of our boundaries.

Oh, there's another one.

There's another text this weekend.

I think I missed this one.

This mightn't have been during a little league game.

Nerdy item for another time, Colin.

I'm a natural person to fall for this, but I've watched all of Shadur's pressers today.

Holy shit.

He's, I did, this is the first time I'm seeing this text.

He's a solid, affable guy, pretty selfless.

He just keeps on talking about his teammates and practice.

The hideously annoying Cleveland media better let him be.

Well, that part, I didn't need that to be out there.

But like,

look, like, I realize.

Can I just, before I throw it too, Mark, I love all this.

I love it.

It's totally okay to feel like the greater world is missing on this.

I just ask,

all I ask as your humble co-host is if you feel this, don't keep it inside.

Don't just keep it to our text thread.

Share it with the world.

You are a Browns fan.

You believe deep in your heart that something good can come out of the drama that's always circumventing and surrounding and emanating from your team.

And in this case, you believe in Shador Sanders.

Rise up, stand up, Mark, like that gif, like the meme of the guy at the town hall.

Be that man on this show, this season, for Shador Sanders.

Okay, throwing it to you.

I think number one,

like where I was coming from for the past number of years was, I think, righteous annoyance at an organizational blunder.

Understood.

Right, so

we discussed all that.

There were always new days, and I'm not trying to forgive.

There's probably still some dark remnants inside that building that are guilty for what's happened, no doubt about it.

But

I think it's a breath of fresh air to bring in, they have a much younger team, and like getting Shadora Sanders at least is interesting.

And I am pleasantly surprised by what I've seen.

I was sitting right here.

It was a sunny day out, and I'm sitting right here watching like endless Browns.

Wait, you sit in your podcast chair when you're watching TV too?

No, I just was, this was a setup, and I had my, you know, it was all convenient.

That got a little sad for a second there.

Well, nice.

There's plenty of other places I could go hang out, but I, I, you know, I don't remember the last time from a Browns angle that I kind of dug in and then super nerded out and sounded like a psychotic 12-year-old to my closest friends inside the industry.

So I do understand how that's that, how that can be listened to by various people.

And I'm not saying we're out of the woods or anything, but it's been a a long time since I've felt that optimism inside.

And I'm willing to allow it to be part of the show.

Absolutely.

And do you understand that as your friend, I want you to

feel like the show itself is a safe space.

And anybody that's listening or watching the show that is going to want to like throw a dart at Mark because the Cleveland Browns did something very, very bad four years ago.

Go ahead, but like at a certain point, you got to move on and you can't hold fans accountable for the actions of that team because Mark's love of the Cleveland Browns predated by several decades the completely dog shit decision that they made to trade for Deshaun Watson.

So

we're moving past Deshaun Watson.

I hope you can move past it.

And I think you have.

I just want, you know, let's welcome in Connor Orr now and get his take on it as another lapsed Cleveland Browns fan.

Connor Orr, the very same.

Connor Orr.

He's going to hold my name.

Connor Ord.

When he's here,

Connor O'Neill this Christmas chip

through heat and light.

Connor on a rock.

Take a bite.

Connor.

Connor O'Brien.

Merry Christmas.

That was nice.

You're still

on the topic, Connor.

Nothing better than that, by the way.

Amazing.

That's just the nice thing on a Tuesday morning, right?

Yeah, like who else has a damn theme song?

And I get to just like, and then I just go on with my day after this.

It's amazing.

Very supportive of Mark on this.

I think that it's the attitude that we need to have for life in general.

Like we need to be able to not just compartmentalize everything into this little box of cynicism.

And I know that the NFL kind of preys on this cyclical hope, but at the same time, if we can train ourselves to be a little bit more like Mark in our everyday lives, I think that has wide ranging impacts, right?

Not in every area.

In a number of areas, perhaps.

And, you know, to the people on their soapboxes that, again, will get after, oh, if you're a Browns fan, like you, you somehow are supportive of whatever or whatever, blah, blah, blah.

Like, how about you take a closer look at your own team?

Because I remember Chris Wesling

used to always talk about this, a website that he would refer to often because he would use it, I thought, kind of as a crutch whenever he was talking about the Patriots, various Patriots cheating scandals.

But it was a website, I think, called like Your Team Cheats or whatever.

And it showed all the different ways those teams have all cheated as well.

Like the NFL could be sometimes dirty business in the building of rosters.

If you really want to, you know, dig into.

the pursuit of Deshaun Watson.

The Cleveland wasn't the only team to do it.

And this isn't really a Deshaun Watson story.

I'm just saying, like,

for Mark and other Browns fans to be able to move on from that era.

I think something maybe I missed, Mark, in the draft

because I didn't think the Browns had a good draft.

I don't think the Browns have had a good offseason.

I said, I told you privately that I haven't felt like, and because of the Jets-Browns kinship thing, that something felt so inherently doomed since Tim Tebow was running shirtless in the driving rainstorm in

New Jersey when they traded for Tim Tebow there in 2011 or whatever it was.

But you know what?

That's also,

that's just my hang-up and my thoughts that everything will go wrong for bad teams.

But it's okay to have a belief that something good can happen.

And maybe like the Sanders move

turns into something special.

And maybe it doesn't, but maybe it does.

And that's okay.

I do notice, because I like to watch a lot of like morning sports stuff, for better or worse, that the Browns' helmet is now attached firmly to the scroll on what they're discussing.

Like, suddenly, they're not, they're discussing Chiro Sanders on every talk show everywhere, and they're all shouting at each other.

So, I do think it changes.

Just like they've been through this before, you got to be able to handle it.

And the last little thing I'll say is that the most negative people towards Browns fans that made a tough personal decision to walk away from the team for a bit were other Browns fans.

Like, it was a very split and divided, and it grew a bit toxic.

And I accept that.

Like, I'm not here to rip on them or neither, but, but that's where most of the negativity I found came from towards me.

I think that we, this is the perfect time to outline what an expectation for all fans should be.

90% of fans should hate their owner and should love what's happening on the field, regardless, like irregardless, mostly irregardless of what's happening, right?

I mean, the Deshaun Watson thing was clearly an ownership/slash Andrew Berry joint, right?

So, you cannot like those people, and you can root for the success of Shadra Sanders.

And I think it's a fine line that every fan needs to learn how to walk.

I mean, Dan is no different with the Jets, where it's like, okay, this owner is volatile, he's caused a lot of problems for us, but you know,

why should that mean that I don't like you know, Joe Timan or Elijah Vera Tucker or anything else that has to do with any of this?

And so, or any interior alignment of the New York Jets.

Good example.

Let me see if I can come up with three more.

Yeah,

So that's my thought.

Good.

I love it.

I love it.

We got, you know, it is May 13th, and we're going to take you through what's going on, what's popped up across the NFL landscape in the last few days.

And as we mentioned, the schedule release is coming up, and we'll hit on some of that.

But

let's kind of spin through some news and

have some fun doing it.

Hit it, Justin.

Listen, Derek, you've thrown touchdown passes in Vegas before.

You've been on fire.

Have you ever been that hot in Las Vegas?

Not that hot.

It's probably why I'm going somewhere else.

Nice.

You know, one of the highlights of Derek Carr's career, I guess, in terms of professional success, was the 2023 Pro Bowl skills throwing challenge, which he really thrived in.

After he was named as a

Pro Bowl alternate in the same season where the Raiders had

shut him down the last three games before parting ways with him, somehow he ended up in the Pro Bowl.

And then he did well

in that event.

And isn't that in kind of a weird way

a perfect way to get into the Derek Carr of it all?

Derek Carr, whose NFL career has come to a conclusion.

Carr and the Saints announced on Saturday morning that he is retiring due to a right shoulder injury.

Here's a little bit of a statement from Carr upon reflection of prayer and in discussion with Heather.

I presume that's his wife.

We believe so.

A little presumptive that we would all know who Heather was.

If it wasn't

his wife.

If it wasn't.

Could be like a babysitter.

Why is Heather involved in this, honey?

His neighbor.

It's just like a neighbor that he confers with, like a siglieri type.

Hot neighbor.

Super attractive neighbor.

Upon reflection of prayer and in discussion with Heather,

open parentheticals, probably his wife, closed parentheticals.

I've decided to retire from the National Football League for more than 11 years.

We have been incredibly blessed, and we are forever grateful and humbled by this experience.

So, yeah, so Carr felt pain in his right shoulder in March when he began throwing the football for the first time since his season ended with the Saints when he had a concussion and a left hand injury that shut down his final season in the league.

He informed the Saints medical staff of the pain.

They diagnosed him with a labral tear and

degenerative changes to his rotator cuff.

So

he decides to step away.

And he's marked one of the most difficult players

and certainly quarterbacks to really gauge who he was and what he was.

Your thoughts after Carr walks away in stunning fashion this past weekend.

Well, the one thing I think a couple weeks ago, we were wondering, like, who's lying, who's covering up what's really happening here.

Like, what I do believe from Derek Carr, just to start, is that I do believe he's got his injury that he believes will prevent him from ever being the quarterback he was.

I am mystified on how to really respond to the whole Derek Carr thing because he's in that category of player where, and it was, it was obviously like

Raiders fans early on, like, but when Twitter was really cooking up and, you know, 11 years ago, you get Derek Carr in there, whatever would happen to Derek Carr, like this army of like pro-carr tweeters would come at you with these granular stats to prove that he was actually like a top three to five quarterback.

And me, just to the eye, was like, I get that he's statistically compiling numbers.

I also don't believe he's ever going to become anything more than Derek Carr, the one that I believe I see, which is a top 20 guy, kind of.

I think

I think this was part of the problem with the Derek Carr discourse.

And I'm not pointing a finger at you, Mark, but you just said something that is an example of it.

I don't, as someone who thought would often be on the side of, hey, Derek Carr isn't terrible, somehow that would always seem to get conflated into Derek Carr is a top three to five quarterback.

No, he was never a top three to five quarterback.

And I don't remember anybody really saying that, but maybe there were some people out there that

they were like crazy.

But I'm saying, like,

you know, I think what made him Connor so hard to figure out is what he was, he was never,

very rarely, I thought, bad, and also

very rarely anything more than good.

And he just settled into this area, and it allowed him to stay with one team for a decade and continue to get paid, and then get a second big veteran contract with another team.

And he went his whole career, never winning a playoff game, appearing in the playoffs just once in a one-and-done loss, putting up some really good numbers

throughout his career, but also

never really becoming an all-pro or anything like that.

And at the end of the day,

he's a hard guy to figure out where does he fit in when you talk about how good was Derek Carr?

He's a bit of a mysterious figure in some ways.

I would love to see the alternate spidey universe where Derek Carr doesn't break his leg before the playoffs, that white hot year with Amari Cooper, when the Raiders were all of a sudden like very stunning and interesting.

And then they had to start, I think it was Connor Cook in that playoff game that they ended up.

But

that has the potential to change the trajectory of everything where maybe Derek Carr is still in Las Vegas and maybe he's viewed as this untouchable kind of Phillip Rivers guy.

Like maybe he almost bumps himself up to that level.

On the injury front itself, like I think it's one of these things where

It's interesting because I remember standing at a player's locker, Christy, when I used to cover the Giants and he had a shoulder issue, and he could have played one more year.

And he said, like, my doctor said it's going to impact my ability to pick up my kids.

And I like to pick up my kids, and I like to jump in the ocean, and I like to hold them in the ocean like this.

And he said, if I keep doing this, I'm not going to be able to do that.

So I quit.

And I'm very curious as to what.

Derek Carr was told by the doctors and what pushed it over the edge.

And if we're going to see this come up again, right?

Is he really done?

Is this injury specific, or is this still some sort of theatrical chess move to airlift himself out of New Orleans?

I'm like, I don't know what, I still don't know what side I'm coming down on here.

I think you nailed that because that's the thing that's in the back of my mind, too.

And

is, is this, was this an escape lever?

And it allows the apparently the understanding or the conclusion that the Saints and Carr came to was, I'll walk away from

the 30 million I could could have collected if I just parked myself on injured reserve,

but I'll keep the 10 million guaranteed money that came my way earlier this offseason.

And the Saints and the quarterback said, okay, let's just end this.

And I am curious if that's where it ends up, Mark, where a year from now in a different landscape in the NFL, if he's still not an old man, what is he, 33 or something now at this point, that he could pop up again and say his shoulder's feeling great.

And all of a sudden it was like, oh, did he just kind of play a little bit of a game here?

And maybe that's also part, Mark, of what

the other aspect of Carr that I think makes him not a fascinating figure, but always a compelling one is that he was a hard guy.

He never seemed particularly popular.

And there was no reason for him to be widely disliked.

He was never a guy that was known as an outright bad teammate, wasn't getting in trouble off the field or, you know, wasn't some locker room lawyer as we understood it.

But it didn't seem like he was ever someone that was overly popular with fans.

Certainly, Saints fans weren't a big fan of him.

The Raiders were ready to move on from him as well.

So there's something about Carr that just, I don't know, seemed to rub people the wrong way.

And maybe that questioning about his intentions even here is an extension of that.

Well, because Derek Carr is, I'm glad you bring in the personality because my impression, and I had not hung out with him at all, but like from whether it's hard knocks or teammates' reactions or the fact that Mark Davis was not interested in keeping him him around and neither were the court and the coaches and the Saints fan responding to it.

It's like Carr is this overtly religious person who espouses good behavior and he's never been like an off-the-field problem.

Yet there was also a period where he blocked all of us on Twitter because we were critical.

Oh my God, I forgot about that.

Yeah, we had to bring David Carr, who was our coworker, onto our show to broker some sort of piece of-with the help of Lindsey Rhodes.

With Lindsey Rhodes.

It's like, it's like, and you you know, so he's also got this other thing to him.

To your other question, though, like, and I'll say it, I'll throw it to Connor, but it's like, do I think that it would be not, it would, it's pretty tropey that an athlete after a year to heal and regain perspective and they're still of the age where they can play and you're a quarterback that can make a ton of money.

Yes, it's in the cards that maybe he comes back and wanted not to be part of a broken, an increasingly fractured relationship with the saints.

If God told me to subvert the salary cap and fake retire so I could end up on the Colts next season, I wouldn't need an an agent.

That would be great.

You know, like what kind of advice that would be.

But there's also baby oil gate.

I don't know if anyone remembers that during hard knocks, where it very much appeared like he had lathered his freshly curled arms in baby oil.

I don't know.

The lesser baby oil controversy.

Yeah.

Yeah, not exactly like chief baby oil gate, but I'm just saying all this stuff floats out there.

But I mean, to it,

there, you, there's the, there's our perception and there is the league perception.

And I'm not comparing him to Aaron Rodgers, but I think it's similar in the fact that when you talk to a lot of guys, like every Michael Sean Dugar always makes the great point, like if you play for that long, there's a lot of people who are going to hate you just because there's a large sample size.

But there's also a majority of people who have spoken very highly of him as a person.

So I don't know.

This is all a hall of mirrors.

Like,

if he's playing for the Colts in November, I'm going to feel a little tricked, right?

And

a little one way.

And if, and if he vanishes off the face of the earth in five years, I'm going to be like, you know, that was, he's a pretty good guy, you know?

And he also has the benefit when you're overtly a religious dude and it's out there.

You say, oh, yeah, I'm just praying on it.

And Jesus told me to come back.

What are we going to say?

Well, we can't trump that in theory, right?

We can't.

I mean, what are we going to say?

No, it didn't.

Jesus told me you were buying.

And then on the Saints' depth chart side of things, it's a little dicey.

It could be a tough year in New Orleans.

Let's face it.

They have their second round pick, Tyler Shuck.

Is that what it is?

Chuck.

Tyler Schuck.

It's a tough one.

S-H-O-U-G-H.

Tyler Shuck, second-round pick.

They have Spencer Rattler there.

He was a fifth-round pick in 24.

They have Jake Hayner there.

He was a fourth-round pick in 23.

So a bunch of day two and day three draft picks.

You would think, Connor, as a investing a second round pick that Shuck makes sense as a guy who's going to get some run here to see if he can play the guitar.

But if he can't, and if the Saints

are not set up right now to functionally develop a quarterback, this could

very quickly turn into one of those seasons where it feels like a tank scenario for the Saints, whether they're intending to or not, that this is a team to keep an eye on as a potential number one overall pick in 26 squad.

Yeah, I wrote that over the weekend, which thankfully Derek Carr, you know, in between little league and track and field, had to bang out a Saints column on Saturday, which everyone was really excited about.

But

my thought here is exactly what I said at the time, right?

The New Orleans Saints haven't picked in the top three in the NFL draft since 2006.

That was the Reggie Bush year.

They have not had any opportunity to get premium quarterback play.

Drew Brees was a former second-round pick with a shoulder injury that they had to trade for.

And Mickey Loomis just goes ham and acquires a lot of veteran talent for no reason and keeps the team at 8-8 or 9-8 or or 10 and 7 or 7-10.

And they've never been bad or good enough to get this kind of franchise-altering talent.

This is possibly the best thing that could ever happen to New Orleans.

I think if you're Kellen Moore, it's like, if Tyler Shuck's great, then great.

I look awesome developing a second-round pick.

If we go one in 16,

I get to pick, you know, Nussmeyer, whose dad I think is the offensive coordinator of the Saints, which is really interesting and plays at LSU.

I could pick one of these guys and all of a sudden I get a top five pick to coach.

And that's a good deal, too.

So I don't know.

I think this is kind of a win-win.

Derek Carr forced them to suck, potentially suck, right?

That's great.

Well, based on,

I didn't report this, but I suggested this was a possibility that we now have the Manning family helicoptering in and out of the organizational facility to guide this tank job.

And getting rid of Derek Carr was part A.

We discussed this, and it's like all going according to plan.

Step one.

Complete.

Yep.

And I'm going to be mega PO'd if JC connects with Derek Carr and he's the Steelers quarterback in like three weeks.

And we're just going to strike this entire episode.

By the way,

the other thing about Carr, right?

He's got to be the most polarizing player.

Like, here's the thing.

I think also to the point you were making, Mark, at the beginning of the conversation, fire up that Jordan Schultz tweet or old buddy Jordan

after his combine

apocalypse.

He's still out there in the game.

Way too much criticism for my liking on here surrounding Derek Carr.

Dude had an absolute fantastic career.

Four-time Pro Bowl, 41K passing yards, 257 touchdown passes, finished third in 16 MVP voting, multiple seasons leading the league in passing yards, TDs, and completion percentage.

Yeah, so like there's that.

part of it too.

It's like, let's come down.

But for a second round pick, he was a second round pick, just like Shuck is.

And to have that career, you would sign up for that every time.

But there was just something about

Carr that rubbed people the wrong way.

Is there anybody else you could think of in the last, I don't know, say 10, 15 years,

Connor, like that strikes you as that type of dude?

That

some guys you know, like Antonio Brown, as an example, a guy was kind of a dick and was kind of nuts and caused trouble in his locker rooms and outside in society.

But someone that didn't have any like direct reason for people to

kind of be suspicious of him or outright dislike him, but people did anyway.

I don't know about, well, right.

Direct is the key word here.

Like we're playing lawyer legalese terms here.

In that case, nobody else is a Derek Carr.

Derek Carr is a tentacle of or a minimized example of a Russell Wilson, the sun that

all these other planets orbit around, right?

Like Russ, Russ is.

outwardly, right?

What's his reputation?

He's the children's hospital guy.

He's the one, he's the one that, and I know this is true when even when people, the cameras aren't around.

Like he is devoted to his work, his charitable endeavors, and is married to a pop superstar and all that.

But there are some really odious fumes that come off of the Legion of Boomera that are all like, is this guy a saboteur?

Or was he just young and naive?

Or was he the, what do you want to call it?

The Pete Carroll's entrenched tattletale?

Like, what was he?

We don't know.

It's never been expressly.

And now he's been bouncing across the league like a Mitch Robinson foul shot.

So it's like, you just, you start to wonder about that.

I feel like he's like the top example to me as well.

Another name that jumped out to me, Mark, was another buddy, old buddy of yours, Carson Wentz.

I don't know why Wentz developed such a

this kind of a there seemed to be some locker room issues that he didn't quite connect with his teammates but Wentz was never an overly popular guy.

Like Carr, got multiple chances to be a guy, and it never quite took, and just seemed not to be an overly popular guy.

It would put him kind of in this group as well.

The Russell Wilson all-stars, perhaps.

Well, and the Wentz thing, the trajectory was we believe we have an MVP quarterback on our hands.

Then you're injured, and Nick Foles comes in.

Derek Carr.

Your dreams, right?

Like Derek Carr.

Right.

But then what started to happen was as the organization moves away from Carson Wentz,

we don't like him in the locker room.

Like there's reports that he's not a leader.

He's not this or that.

And that's when everything starts to become a toxic soup.

So I think that's a good one.

As we all know, decided to really go ahead and start to take command.

That didn't help him either.

I've got, you know, I mean, like, there's a lot to pick from right now because I think these people's personalities and just the fate of football is so dug into now that we don't know them.

We know them in such a different way than we would have 20 or 30 years ago.

I remember

there were these weird stories out there about Troy Aikman and his love life, and it was like, but no one knew anything.

And it was like, it all turned out to be garbage, but it was like just rumor central.

To me, I look at like Tua and say, this is, it's not so much personality driven, right?

Because

by all accounts, Tua is a good dude who didn't have the support of his first head coach.

But anyone who is like turning the national conversation into like the civil war between whether Tua is or isn't and then comparing him to other quarterbacks, and then you toss on the fact that like if you're a Dolphins fan, you're like, when he's good, he's good, and he's good in this system, but he's injured half the time.

He's a brain injury away from not being part of the organization, and I'm supposed to sign up for this on a weekly basis.

But when he's not good, or

when autumn turns into winter, I don't know if I can trust any of this.

So, I think he's a polarizing kind of like back and forth type guy.

I will.

One thing I'll say about Tua is: I don't, I think he's, for me anyway, in a different category because he's more like a fascinating subject of like, is this actually a real franchise quarterback or not?

Um, like the in some ways was part of the Derek Carr conversation in that Tua had these great counting stats and everybody seemed to really like him.

He's, he's apparently a stand-up guy, but like because of his injury history and the team's inability to move the ball when the weather changes and they leave South Florida, like that, the question, that's like more a story around him.

I think the guy that we started the show talking about, Mark, Shador Sanders, is another one, right?

Part Punzel.

And he is like, here's the thing.

He might become the biggest one.

He could be.

We don't know yet.

Maybe it's like someone has to go away, Derek Carr, for nine days before he signs with the Steelers

before

Shador Sanders can emerge as the replacement for him.

Because even like in one of those texts that we flew up there, you mentioned how great he was with the media and he looks like just a polite young man.

Like I am sure, given the stakes and the amount of money and speculation and

controversy around him, one of the things they probably did in Camp Money Sanders, what is it, Sanders Squared, whatever his logo is,

was crisis management.

And like, here's how you have to handle this rookie rookie minicamp because right away people are going to have their eyes on you.

So, here's what you're going to say, and here's what you're not going to say.

Like, so maybe that's just, I've been covering the game too long, and I'm a little cynical, but also he seemed a little coached there.

And that's okay.

I mean, that's not a bad thing, but what's going to happen?

I don't have a problem coaching.

I'm just saying, what happens in October if he's third on the depth chart or he's been parked on injured reserved as Connor's laid out as a possibility?

I want to play out like a little clip for you in a second.

Because it wasn't just me whistling Dixie and thinking anything the Browns do is suddenly valuable and without potential problems.

But I think what he has been, he, there's a friend of his also that noted, and I'll look up his name, but he said, look, he's been with Shadora his whole life.

And he's actually, even though you can take the wealth part and say, no, you haven't had a tough life, but he's been in a tough spot where they asked him to go do things, act a certain way, and be a certain type of person forever because you're the son of Deion Sanders.

And a lot of this is transference from people who don't

who was the friend?

Was the friend Heather?

It was, no, it was not Heather.

I will get that to us before the show.

But just take a look.

Tell me if I am just being snowed under by this quick collection of how he spoke.

Here we go.

So shooter, I'm ready to talk about a second new message after the draft.

I said, dude, like whatever happens, wherever you go, that's your first day.

Day two matters more than the draft.

I was 199.

My story's going to be similar.

I was a late round draft pick, pick but we're here now so none of that stuff matters like my job here isn't to prove people wrong like i prove myself right and i fully have self-belief with those people say that's just their opinion i don't truly care they they don't really live in my mental space i'm just excited to be here and ready to work

I know I'm not

on top of goosebumps, Mark.

You're right.

I know, but also you can't find anyone speaking at any mini camp where they're not overrated or like, who cares?

I get that.

But he didn't, it's not like there's this all these after stories connor where it's like actually the family hates the cleveland browns and it's like they seem to be all in on having him have a successful career and i like do you have any issue with like him getting the like let's follow him into the locker room when he uh shows up they show him his new locker and his new setup when they didn't do anything like that for the third round pick Dylan Gabriel

Yes, but I can't, I could have an issue with probably 60 things they do a day.

So I see your point.

But like, I mean, this is that's to the point of like this personality.

This is a different personality, though.

They've not dealt with anything like this since Johnny Manzel, and they're very different people.

To both of your points, like why didn't they just have him act like this during the pre-draft process when he was flunking one interview after the next and rubbing people the wrong way?

He would have been taken in the second round probably before Tyler Shuck.

And maybe we could spin that in a positive way.

And he learned his lesson.

Like, that was a hard, very publicly embarrassing lesson that he learned about life.

And he is, yes, just a kid.

Good luck, Mark.

I hope you're not.

I'm not trying to blow like, you know, the sunshine up everyone's,

you know, various body openings, but like, I'm just saying, I see something hopeful about it in the whole thing.

So,

real quick, last thing connected to the Browns universe because this came through on Monday.

Tough injury news

around a very good young

linebacker for the team.

The Browns placed Jeremiah Owusu Koromoa on the reserve physically unable to perform list.

The team announced he'll miss the entire 2025 season as a result with that designation.

This goes back to a neck injury he suffered in week eight, 2024, colliding with Ravens running back Derek Henry.

Got carted to the locker room.

Scary scene.

And obviously, with this situation, the Browns are taking a measured, careful approach whenever you're talking about the neck.

And so Joke, that's kind of like the nickname, right, that we use for him, Mark.

That's a loss for them, and that's a bummer.

It impacted who they drafted, number one,

linebacker in the second round out of UCLA.

But it's, um, it was a, you could tell right away when that injury happened.

It was just one of those football injuries where you're like, he was rushed to the hospital.

And I'm not surprised this is a decision.

I would say this, just like right up there with Miles Garrett and Denzel Ward, he was the most exciting player to watch on that defense.

And it is a pretty big loss.

And they've known that since that week eight injury.

Bummer.

Go ahead, Connor.

He was the reason they were able to to play that kind of big nickel defense.

He was the hybrid player.

That's why Swessinger fits the bill so well.

But it's going to be tough, especially for him to step in right now.

That was their Shenadote, Shanahan antidote defense.

That now

Shanadote.

I love Shenadotte.

That's great.

In other news, oh, Connor, this is important.

This is, we finally have an answer.

After spirited, spirited debate on this program and a lot of soul searching and just like literal number searching by the number three overall pick, Abdul Carter.

He will be number 51.

Number 51 for the New York Giants.

This comes after Abdul Carter asked literally Lawrence Taylor for his famed number 56.

LT was like, bro, I'm Lawrence Taylor.

I literally do and say dumb shit all the time, and I know this is like a horrific ask.

And then

he was like, all right, let me let me pick the second like most ridiculous person to ask for their number.

So he went and got Lawrence Taylor's Giants teammate Phil Sims, number 11, who has two Super Bowl rings, asked for number 11.

Phil was like, I feel uncomfortable.

I'm going to pretend that my family is saying no to this.

So he got turned down a second time.

And then he ends up with a number that has, I guess, a digit from each of those requests.

So he's 51, and it's a happy ending, Connor.

Put patches all over that thing.

Yeah.

Like, okay, cool.

Now your most exciting defensive player that you've drafted since, I don't know, Jason Pierre Paul is going to wear a fing long snapper number because it's one of the 13 that they have left.

So that's...

So it's all, it's so awesome.

And I can't wait to see all the kids with this stupid jersey on that, you know, has.

Is that going to, if he turns into a star, is that going to honestly like, because you're in New Jersey, you know, that's Giants Country.

Like, is it going to give you a level of anger?

Like, some of that old pre-Chryslertown and country frustration will come out when you see 51, knowing he could be walking around with 56 and a big giant patch with Lawrence Taylor's face on it, or whatever your Fakta idea was.

It's not Fakakta.

Everybody likes it.

Like, you're the only person who doesn't like it.

And it's,

I appreciate you totally gaslighting me here at this point, but like,

I think that like to a man, everyone's like sick, 56 LT Legends patch.

Like I would buy that tomorrow.

I have not heard a single person say it's a bad idea except for you.

Have I put out like a poll, an online poll?

You know what?

We should do that.

Can someone please back?

I don't care about the results.

You can if you want.

I don't care.

I like the idea of like,

let's cut to the United Center in Chicago where some asshole wearing a number 23 Bulls jersey is dribbling the ball off his foot.

That's okay.

Yeah.

I don't care.

Like, there's,

as I said, I wrote a manifesto about this.

Read the manifesto.

There's, there's, no, there's outs.

There's outs in this.

Okay.

No one can wear number 40 in Arizona.

No one can wear number 42 in baseball.

No one can wear number 12 in New England.

Those are different things.

How is that different?

No, we're not going to do this.

We're not going to do it.

Let's not do it.

Honestly, let's not do it.

Okay.

I mean, should we do it?

No.

Maybe, but let's not.

We can revisit another time.

Let's

risk high enough.

Yeah, let's make an agreement to possibly revisit this, but not right now.

A Patreon special where we spend an hour doing this in front of an actual jury, like mocked high school mock trial.

And

Mark watches in horror from the sidelines as our Patreon subscribers go like the stock market.

Ding, ding, ding, ding.

1,900, 800, 700, 600, 550.

All right, Mark, let's pivot out of this with a little BetterHelp conversation because God knows BetterHelp can help everyone.

Yep, that's true.

Some of us, the episode today that you're listening to of Heed the Call with Dan Hansett and Mark Sessler is brought to you by BetterHelp.

That's how this works.

It's easy to forget that we're all better when we have a support system behind us, like this show, for example.

It's not a one- or two or even three-man operation.

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We've got Connor, we've got Jordan, we've got Mike, we've got a lot of people.

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Thank you, Mark.

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Back into the news.

This Trey Hendrickson Cincinnati Bengals situation

don't feel good.

Don't feel right.

As off-season programs, you know, get underway across the NFL.

The guy who's had 17 and a half sacks in each of the last two seasons is still pissed.

He's not happy.

In a statement issued to Adam Schefter.

How about that?

Shefty's like,

Eat that, all the other insiders.

It's my statement.

Hendrickson said the Bengals remain at an impasse when it comes to his contract.

No communic.

Let me get the missive music because this is a missive.

This is a legit missive.

No communication is taken place between my camp and the organization post-draft.

The offers prior to the draft did not reflect the vision we shared and were promised last offseason if I continued to play at a high level.

Coaches are aware of these past conversations.

Rather than using collaboration to get us to a point to bring me home to the team they, all capitalized, stylized, are no longer communicating.

I have been eagerly awaiting a resolution of this situation, but that's hard to do when there is no discussion and an evident lack of interest in reaching mutual goals.

I mean, holy shit.

You know, I am

obviously not a Bengals fan, but I would be just so furious if I'm a Bengals fan.

It's just so I mean this comes this is the same this is happening at the same time that for the second straight year, the Bengals can't even get their first-round pick on the field for rookie minicamp because they're squabbling over what should be very minor details in the contract.

They don't want to pay their first-round pick.

Who's the first-round pick there?

Shamar Stewart.

Shamar Santa.

Yeah, Shamar Stewart.

They don't want to pay him the same amount

that the same the player in the same slot last year got paid.

It's over a relative modest amount.

And so he's he's sitting out camp.

And it's just like all this stuff, it's just always around this organization.

And I would be very annoyed if I'm a Bengals fan.

And that's all I got to say on it.

There is

one quote.

First of all, this is the player that you pay because their defense is the reason they don't get farther in the playoffs the way things look right now.

Their executive VP, Katie Blackburn, I think it was in April, I believe,

said basically publicly, it is on Trey Hendrickson to be happy at some point with what we've offered.

And I don't know exactly what the numbers are, but it's like, it's that attitude and that, like, this has been your, this has been one of the best free agent signings of the 2020s, no question.

And he's been a dominant force for them, and it's never let up.

And the response is, you need to be happy with what we're offering.

And by the way, we're the Bengals, so it's probably going to be a little bit less because we just paid a bunch of other people on the other side of the ball.

So I don't don't know how you fix this unless it's all parse it out as some massive contract at some point.

It feels unlikely with this particular team.

It's frustrating because so many seasons end up coming down to a couple million dollars, right?

And it's like, okay,

this owner recognized the need to sign a slightly better backup quarterback who costs $5 million more than the other one.

And then you have Nick Foles and you win a Super Bowl or something like that, right?

You know, I'm not, that's a bad example, but you know, whether it's a backup interior lineman or something like that.

And this is one of those situations where they can't possibly be more than $3 million apart, you know?

And I hate to say that $3 million is an inconsequential amount of money, but when you own a pro football team, $3 million is something that you should be willing to gamble on the idea that you might get boosted into the playoffs because Trey Hendrickson is there.

And it is this ongoing, and I know, like, Bengals fans that are annoyed listening to this,

kind of mode of conversation around the team will point to, look, don't get on us.

We just did the thing you think said we wouldn't do, which is pay Jamar Chase and T.

Higgins to keep them in the building.

But it's this other like microaggression-type, like, tick ticky-tack stuff, whether it's messing with Trey Hendrickson, who's been nothing but a consummate professional for your organization, an outright stud

for years now, right down to the way they handle their contract negotiations with their rookie classes, that I still feel like my moonshot take is that Joe Burrow eventually is going to be the biggest open market quarterback since Peyton Manning in 2012.

I just don't, I feel, I don't feel any better, honestly, about the long-term health of that relationship because I just feel like they cannot get out of their own way as an organization.

And somewhere, I would imagine Chris Wesling might be nodding his head.

that

some things don't change at the top of the food chain.

And as a result, they'll continue to have dysfunction.

So not, I don't want to make too much of it because this is just a player using a media, his mouthpiece through the media to try to get himself paid.

And it's all part of the dance.

But it's the fact, Connor, that it's always Cincinnati.

It just seems like Cincinnati can't ever get out of an offseason without looking cheap or kind of low rent in some way.

This is the move like, oh, I'm going to get my sack back.

This is the move where, like, if you're unhappy with something with the HOA, like a couple days in a row, you've walked by the basketball court in the the community, and there's been some garbage on the ground, and you're like, okay.

And then, like, the fourth day, you throw it on the Facebook group, and all of a sudden, all hell breaks loose.

That's the Schefter statement move where it's like, I'm tired of this, I'm tired of this.

And then, okay, I'm texting Adam Schefter, and here we go.

So, we'll see what happens.

But the thing is, now they can't respond because it'll look like they're negotiating with terrorists, so they'll have to wait until like July 13th to get them in to, you know, this is

how this goes, you know.

The great dance.

Let's get, let's, Mark, let's get Connor fired up a little bit.

Oh, I think we need to.

Travis Hunter was on an airplane recently,

and

he helped an old lady

get her bags.

Here, this is Sandy Hawkins Combs.

Seems like a very nice woman.

This went viral.

I had the most wonderful flight home from Denver.

I met the nicest young man who sat next to me.

He offered to put my bag in the overhead compartment and help me with my tray.

He was always polite, saying yes, ma'am, or no, ma'am.

Anyone would be proud to have him as a son or grandson.

So polite.

People walking by were saying congratulations, great job, or even taking pictures.

I turned and asked him, who am I sitting next to?

I looked at his Jaguar pants, smiled and asked, Are you an athlete?

He smiled and said, I'm Travis.

Yes, I was drafted by the Jags.

I already told my sons I want his jersey.

He's so humble and down to earth.

I would have never guessed he was a professional athlete.

Jacksonville Jags, you did good.

I will be buying tickets.

United Airlines, thank you for my seat assignment.

And now I throw it to Connor Orr.

Get United Airlines in there.

Great job, Travis.

But we need to stop this entirely.

And this goes back to, and I'm not going to say what quarterback it was.

There was a story about a quarterback in entering fatherhood.

And I read this big long read about it.

He was becoming a man and becoming a dad.

And the wife said, he's such a good dad.

Like when we're crossing the street, he's out front of the kids making sure that they're okay.

That is the bare fing minimum you need to do as a dad to make sure that your kids don't get smashed by an SUV when you're crossing a busy street.

That's not heroic.

That's not growth.

And I would hope that 99% of able-bodied men, if they were sitting next to a nice old woman, United Airlines are spirit.

I don't give a shit where you are.

You always help the person with the bag.

Who's not out there helping a person with the bag?

Like, are you guys help people with bags?

Many, many times.

Many times, Connor.

It is your annoyance at, because first of all, Travis Hunter didn't advertise this.

Nice job at Travis Hunter.

This is not a shot at Travis Hunter.

Yes.

Are you annoyed that an old woman is treating well about it?

It's amazing that when an athlete gets into a situation, we're amazed that they're also capable and emotionally intelligent.

And she didn't just turn to him and he didn't say, football.

Like he knew how to help her put a bag into an air into an airplane compartment.

Amazing.

But like nearly every flight that I've been on have offered to help somebody put a bag into an into a compartment.

Here are my power rankings, show power rankings of

most likely to help an older woman with her bag of the airplane.

I'm going to put, I'm going to, based on this,

Connor at one.

I'm right there, right behind Connor, even 1A potentially.

Very securely in the third spot, I'm going to put Justin, and then I'm going to put Mark in at fourth.

Why do you suggest that I would not want to help?

I mean, it's in my nature to do just what Connor said.

And I'd say, please don't post about me publicly.

I like to do my nice acts, you know,

in the darkness.

Do you agree, though?

Like, this is an agreement, like famous.

I like to do my nice acts in darkness.

Well,

that's not what I was, you know what I'm saying.

Ruden drop, please.

Hidden away.

You got sex addiction?

You got a problem with sex?

You're addicted to sex?

The sex addiction or something?

Connor, You're annoyed at the public's over-response to this.

Just like, oh, my God.

Please do not let James Gladstone hear about this.

Someone make sure this does not get back to Gladstone.

Like, Flash for John.

Flash forward to like a dove tweet that's like, amazing.

NFL player while speeding toward puddle doesn't splash 98-year-old Vietnam veteran with the tires of his car and just gently drives by.

Like, we should, like, this is basic human.

I like that.

Basic human instinct.

Like help the elderly.

Like we, this should not be like, my God.

How many people out there are not doing this?

You should start doing this so that we're not amazed when Travis Hunter does it.

Yeah, it's a great, the bigger question is, are people not doing this?

And if people are not doing this, and I'm sure there are like, you know, buttheads out there that aren't helping out in these type of situations, you know, clean up your act.

And good job, Travis Hunter, for being.

I'm going to

a solution.

Let's say she were sitting next to an able-bodied, young,

strong as can be a woman.

Should the woman not help her?

Because she's like, she's got to do the same.

It's a call to arms to help all elderly, no matter who you are or what gender you come from.

Well, it's true.

Let's be honest.

Save it for your next better help, dude.

Speaking of Dav, let's do a little Dav Klein check-in.

He's on a bit of a heater.

Sometimes I wonder if Dav is aware that we are now tracking his tweets and the words that are in front of the colon and he's being more performative because it almost seems like.

I don't know.

I don't know.

Do you guys agree?

Like, it almost feels like he knows now what he's doing.

And if he does, it becomes less entertaining to me.

But if he doesn't, it's actually better than ever.

I think it's AI.

But then on top of that, I'd say that Dobb Kleinman, that Dob Kleinman, I'll give him one bit of credit from a showman angle because it's reached all these, all this like inspiring colon really only started a couple months ago.

It wasn't how it was written before.

And it is driving people online absolutely nuts.

And so I guess.

I want to say we were ahead of the curve on this, though.

I didn't see anybody else even are is anyone else actually commenting on this or are we just inside our own the TV inside the TV inside the TV on this Dove situation?

Yeah, he slash it slash

supercomputer are getting crushed by people for all right.

Let's check in with some

a few recent Dav tweets.

All right, this one from Mother's Day.

Aura Colon, Giants rookie quarterback.

Jackson Dart spins the football in his hand before throwing it.

That is kind of cool, I will say that.

But

you know what?

I give this one a pass.

That is, as the kids say, pretty good aura.

Probably shouldn't do it for anything that ramps up the level of difficulty in terms of handling the football.

But maybe if he has so much aura, he can do these sort of things.

I don't know.

If I were Brian Dable, I would have thrown him out of practice.

All right, next.

All right.

Oh, this one is

beyond the pale.

Heartbreaking, Colin.

Justin Tucker was spotted working out at a park in Owings Mills.

That's in Maryland.

After being cut by the Ravens.

Tucker is one of the best kickers of all time.

Sad face emoji, Mark.

First of all, capitalizing all time I have a problem with.

This feels like a targeted, almost like hit job where he...

These things, I look at these and they annoy me.

Like heartbreaking.

I don't know if heartbreaking takes us to the root of why Justin justin tucker is alone in this field no and i'm also i'm also wondering there is this weird ongoing theme where dove seems to be supportive of these like sex pests alleged sex pests yeah and i don't know what that says about dove or or culture or what what that's about but this he's had multiple in fact i think it's what originally got on our radar uh he had multiple kind of like inspiring colon like amazing colon deshaun watson rehab uh tweets it was a picture picture of him with his girlfriend initially on vacation where I think he retore his Achilles but not digging into the news job just said heartwarming that brown star Deshaun Watson spending you know a vacation time with girlfriend like okay this is your point of view in the earth I we are allowed to have an independent point of view like who's it heartbreak okay

I have a little bit of a chaos theory here so if you're verified

you have the ability to enter into a revenue sharing program with Twitter.

So I had a friend who had a tweet go like hyper viral and that person happens to

pay to be verified on Twitter and got like a pretty sizable check in the mail for that.

And so I would guess that this is part of the, there's probably some sort of an algorithm here based on engagements and views and commentary on the tweet.

And so by

kind of strategically ignoring the sexual harassment, you are inviting 700,000 comments to remind you of the sexual harassment.

And

I do think there's a financial game here, but

unless you sold the account

to someone else,

if that's the case, we've been snookered.

One more.

It's too late now to bail out of the segment.

Special, Colin.

Raiders.

The music is great.

Raiders star rookie running back, Ashton Genty, perfectly executes a cut-bass drill based on the movements in front of him.

The Raiders will be dangerous next season.

And then the

hands over the face, mouth wide open emoji.

Oh, no.

Special.

It's like the most mundane.

It is a running back making one cut in front of a literal garbage can and then running forward.

Probably could have used maybe something a little more special to incur the special designation, but right started that's that's the dob check-in.

And now you really got me

messed up in the head, Connor, because I think you might be right.

Is this

Israeli wizard?

Is he is he has he been snookering me the whole time for like clicks?

He's purposely trying to engage that way.

In a word, yes.

I choose to believe he's just such a clueless ass

that he doesn't realize, he has no understanding of tone or what in society because he's in the middle of the Middle East.

He's he's kind of living a different life than the rest of us.

Like he maybe doesn't even know like the full specifics of certain storylines.

Like I choose, I chose to kind of take that as what Dobb represented rather than some calculated, callous cynic just driving clicks to his asshole website.

Like,

yeah.

My hope is that it's almost like in the dark night when Michael Cain describes the ruby thief that they were hunting, and it's just he enjoys the sport of it, that he has a bank account that he hasn't even touched, right?

And he just likes driving every, he's almost Andy Kaufman-like in his artistry.

And it's what does he say?

Like, that thief was throwing the rubies away.

You know, like, that's what, that's what Dove is doing.

You know, he's, he's throwing the rubies away.

He doesn't, or maybe he's, maybe he's using this money to get, maybe he's giving it to children for bread.

I don't know what the, what the, the purpose behind this is

particularly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What's the let what's that great scene in uh heat, Mark?

I know you're a big fan of Man.

Is that man?

Is that a man film?

Michael Mann?

When they're trying to figure out if we're going to do one last score, and it turns to

that actor that's in all the Tarantino films and, like, are you in?

Do you remember the scene I'm talking about?

Whenever we do this, I always look like a buffoon, but like.

No, I didn't set you up well on that one.

Not Val Kilmer.

Is it Pacino and

or not?

It's Tom Sizemore.

Sizemore, okay.

who is largely not part of our world at this point?

Best.

De Niro.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

You know, he asks because the entire podcast grinds to a halt.

All right, so in the film, uh,

about the third act,

It was the third act.

And they're talking about whether or not

he should go through

with a heist.

And Michael Mann, I mean,

Seismer goes, well, you know, for me, the action is the juice.

Oh, yeah.

I have no idea how that even connects to this anymore.

But for Dav, yeah, it's not the reward.

It's the pulling off the bank heist on downtown LA or the job they attempted to do after that, which went poorly.

Yeah, very poorly.

Spoiler alert.

Where to go, Mark?

All right.

And other news.

Let's wrap this up.

We'll talk about all the schedule stuff in our next show.

Let's close with a little Zeuser Media Minute.

This guy gets it.

it.

Rich Eisen

heading back to ESBN, the Rich Eisen Show, a program, Mark, that you and I have been on several weeks.

Yeah.

We'll move to ESBN this year, according to our old buddy, another friend of the show, Andrew Marchand of The Athletic.

In addition to his daily show,

Eisen, of course, appears on NFL Network.

ESBN is in talks to purchase the NFL network from the league and Aizen would be a natural fit to host studio shows that blend ESPN and NFL network talent.

That was actually, I just lifted that last bit from our old buddy Michael David Smith of PFT.

So

that's interesting.

A little

Eisen returning to ESPN and just to keep an eye on all the whispers out there, Mark, about NFL media and NFL network and if they all end up in the same place.

And I know there's a lot of consternation there.

That's more of the subject of the media minute today.

Is this a good thing for the football fan if everything is under the ESPN umbrella?

Because that's putting a lot of faith in ESPN to get these various things right, whether it's Sunday ticket or NFL coverage, draft coverage.

It all seems to be potentially heading to the same funnel point, which is Disney and ESPN.

And that's a pretty huge deal.

in our neck of the woods.

And the idea that Eisen, I know right now it's just his show that's going there and not Rich himself, but it seems to be a potential greasing of the skids for something bigger coming.

Like the optimist could say, if you've been a longtime sports fan, that there's something poetic about bringing Eisen back to the ESPN family.

I mean, we're all of an age where it's like, I can think of back then Sports Center was such a big deal.

And I watched him from 96 to 2003 like a billion times.

And I think for us, when we went, he was the first person to come to NFL network when we did like you know you're in a newsroom and when rich eiseland walked through before we got to know him a little bit like um it's like holy shit like i've this guy has been in my hemisphere for decades so i can say that's optimist um an optimist angle and this has nothing to do with rich with this part where the whole sports media and how we um obtain it and all these different like conglomerates and um you know streaming services that feels somewhat horrifying to me in terms of where it's uh where it's going the truth will always

remain the same: in that when all these places funnel things and they program analytically and they think they try to feed exactly what we want calorically down our throats, it's the unique and refreshing and the outside that ends up breaking through and standing out.

And then they go and they try to run and copy that and then analytically program it down your throat to the point where we don't want that anymore.

And then something else breaks through.

And so all they're doing is chasing their tails, but that doesn't impact the way that I feel about Rich, who is one of the NFL's true, good human beings and a great person.

So it will be that part of it I'm excited about.

Yeah.

And if

I may, like, Rich

was very kind to us earlier this season.

He had us on his program when we were just launching Heed the Call and in general just

has been somebody that's been supportive of us, put it that way.

So good luck to Rich on this move and that show, which another old buddy of ours, Chris Brockman, has been with him

since the very beginning.

That has been through multiple iterations of

where it's been, and now it's at ESPN coming over from Roku.

So, interesting.

Keep an eye on it because things are shifting.

Things are changing.

And the company we used to work for, we'll see how that company looks a year from now.

It's hard to say.

Dude.

Strange days.

Come on.

All right.

All right.

That's it.

That's the media bit.

All right, that's it.

Good app.

Good conversations.

Where do we come down to our opening talk, Mark?

Are you going to be pro-Shador optimism on the show?

Or are you going to take that public?

I feel like I outed you, and I just want to,

if I outed your optimism, I want you to know I did it.

I hope it is not as a violation, but as a friend trying to help.

It's like somebody that really wants to go swimming, but they're afraid to jump in.

So you just give them a little nudge from behind.

And at first, like, oh, what'd you do that for?

And then they're like, oh, this feels great.

Tonally, that type of thing.

Yeah, tonally, I agree with what you just said.

The final tweet or the final text wasn't a thrill to me, but that's okay.

It was part of the conversation.

I think in this show, it's alone.

I've tried to show that I, what I'll be and who I am on the Shadora Sanders front and the Browns front.

Good.

Because the one thing you always get from this program is honesty.

What a moment.

That was a little James Gladstone-y right there.

Going out with a Gladstone.

All right.

Connor and I were just, we paused because of it.

To reflect.

Breathtaking.

Yes.

This show exists on a plane unlike any programming.

And NFL media nor

ESPN nor any of the other corporate tentacles

can touch us.

Because we believe

in the power of communication with the audience in a pure and just way.

Thank you.

Your ability to do that, like,

on command is pretty f ⁇ ing impressive.

Because they're all pretty good, you know?

Yeah.

Born bullshitter.

All right.

Walking around the house doing that 17 to 18 times a day.

All right.

Until Thursday, do what you must.

Heed the call.

Nationwide is so much more than a great insurance company.

They're one of America's largest financial services companies.

Like how I'm more than Saquon Barkley, the NFL's reigning leading rusher.

I'm also the NFL's leading husher.

Hush up back there.

Wow.

I might have just set the hushing record.

Well, almost.

For your insurance and financial needs, Nationwide is on your side.

Nationwide Investment Services Corporation, Ember Finn Rick, Columbus, Ohio.