NFL Reporter Dianna Russini, Russ Wilson Cut, Jason Kelce Retires And Listener Submitted Takes

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On today's part in my take, we have an awesome, awesome interview with NFL reporter Diana Rossini, friend of the show, also has done some incredible airplane reporting that we will talk about with her. We talked to her on Wednesday last week at the Combine in person.
She brought two sodas for Max. I thought that was very nice.
Yeah, she brought two sodas. Great interview.
We're going to talk some NFL transactions that have happened. We have a hot seat, cool throne.
Hank's number 10 on his top 10 Patriots list, which actually this is where it gets fun because you're going to leave someone out. And then we have Pardon Your Take, a great Wednesday episode for everyone.
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There is violence and then a lot of work to be done.

No place to hang out or wash in.

And then I can't blame all on the sun.

Oh, no.

We're gonna rock down to Electric Avenue.

And then we'll take it higher.

Oh, we're gonna rock down to Electric Avenue. It's part of my take presented by varsity sports welcome to part of my take presented by draft king sportsbook go download it right now you can get a no sweat bet with the code take up to a thousand dollars back in a bonus bet draft king sportsbook today is wednesday march 6, and I have a very important question for you, PFT.
I have a very important answer. Okay.
Should we feel bad for a man who's getting paid $39 million to not work? No. Are you talking about Hank? I'm talking about Hank.
No, I don't feel bad for Hank. I'm talking about Russell Wilson.
Russell Wilson has been cut by the Denver Broncos. We all expected it.
That's the dream. Anytime a coach gets bought out, anytime a quarterback gets cut, and they've got this big dead cap hit, yeah, I would love to get paid millions of dollars to not work anymore.
That is truly, schools should teach classes. If you want to prepare young children for how to succeed in America, teach them the best ways to get paid a fuckload of money

and to not have to work at their job. But with all that comes the territory of being maybe the worst NFL trade of all time.
Herschel Walker has always been the gold standard. Or sorry, yeah, no, Herschel Walker, right? Herschel Walker.
The Cowboys dynasty was started with that trade. But Russell Wilson's trade

When looking back on it

The Broncos gave up

Two first The Cowboys dynasty was started with that trade, but Russell Wilson's trade, when looking back on it, the Broncos gave up two first-round picks. I think they gave up, what, a second-round pick? Two second-round picks, a fifth-round pick.
Drew Locke, Shelby Harris, Noah Fant, and they got back Russell Wilson in a fourth-round pick, and then they signed Russell Wilson to a $242 million dollar contract and he played for the Broncos for two terrible years and yeah I think it might be one of the worst trades in sports history I think uh there was a fleecing it was Seahawks won this trade we can officially declare that now we were still it was still up in the air yeah but now we can say uh yeah the Seahawks you dominated the Broncos congratulations it another win on your schedule. For Russ Wilson, I think you asked me at the end of the season, like over under, Russ Wilson starts 17 and a half more games.
Yeah. I still take the over on it.
I think that there's going to be a team out there that's going to sign him to be a starting quarterback next season. It might be a team, probably a team that's not very good.
But I do think that he's going to start next season. Well, he's cheap now.
Can they sign him for nothing? Yeah, they can sign him for pretty much nothing. So you could sign Kirk Cousins or you could sign Russell Wilson for like 5% of what you're going to pay Kirk Cousins.
I still would probably want Kirk Cousins. You think 5% of Kirk Cousins is better than 100% of Russell Wilson? Yes.
I don't think Russell Wilson's good anymore. I think he's like an average quarterback.
I think at the right system, he could thrive. I think he's, yeah, the number one defense.
He's a weird guy. That's the thing.
It's like you can overlook signing a weird guy if he's going to be good, but Russell's goodness, his talent, is no longer to the point where it outweighs just what a bizarre human being he is. I just don't know where that team's going to be good but Russell's goodness his talent is no longer to the point where it outweighs just what a bizarre human being he is I just don't know where where that team's gonna be uh to sign him as a starter when you look at like who's got openings and Raiders yeah but are they gonna draft someone are they gonna like they're obviously whatever three four five of the openings will be filled by someone who's drafted coming up in a month.
Yep. And then Kirk Cousins, Justin Fields, where he goes.
I just don't know where Russell Wilson fits in in these musical chairs. Maybe I'm wrong, but I just think a team will sign him, no doubt.
I don't know if they'll be like your guaranteed starter. Yeah, what about like a team that's probably going to draft a quarterback and could use some veteran leadership do you want that type of leadership though weird leadership leadership to wear yeah it's weird leadership he's a super bowl winning qb that's a fact true yeah i just i don't know where he fits in maybe i'm wrong i i think there'll be a team to take it that takes a chance and i'm like if you were to tell me that the the stealer signed i would not be surprised by that.
But he wouldn't be guaranteed starter. He wouldn't be guaranteed starter.
Probably not. No, he'd be a QB competition.
He might win the job. If he signed with the Raiders, I think he'd probably be guaranteed starter.
I could see... What about the Dolphins? As a backup? If you're Russ Wilson, would you want to be a backup? For the Dolphins? I don't think you get to decide.

I don't think you get to decide if you're Russ Wilson right now.

But he might.

But Russ might be at the point where if he's not guaranteed a starting job,

he might just retire.

Like Russell Wilson with Mike McDaniel, obviously he'd be a backup.

Fireworks.

Maybe the Giants.

Did you see the report Rich Eisen said that the Giants are done with Daniel Jones? He said the two words that are being used with Daniel Jones is buyer's remorse. Yikes.
At the time, I think Leroy, his ghost might have actually broken the news of his contract. That might be his final scoop.
But when Daniel Jones signed with the Giants, I think all of our reaction was the same, which is like, you should actually, this is a case where you should pay your running back. Yeah.
And yeah and you should franchise tag your quarterback yeah because you had a history of a guy who had an a very good year when they went to the playoffs when it was two years ago and you essentially said this is who he is now not the other four years let's let's bank on him being the same guy and have this not be an anomaly yeah yeah he had a great year and he stayed healthy that year which he normally doesn't do and then you paid him like he was a healthy good quarterback which i guess he was in the most recent season that you saw him but then do you sit back and be like well the other the other seasons weren't so good so we're not going to pay you and they just didn't want him to hit the free market so it's like in retrospect maybe maybe drafting a quarterback in the top 10 because he reminds you physically of your previous quarterback was not the best idea for your general manager. Yeah.
But I think actually Saquon's an interesting dude that's going to be a free agent because I actually would pay him if I was a GM. I wouldn't treat him like the other running backs that are going to be out there.
I'd be like, Saquon deserves a big contract, I think. We have some running backs in D.
i wouldn't mind saquon barkley in dc everyone i think jerry jones would probably want saquon barkley in dallas yeah i think that'd probably be a pretty good fit so one last question about russell wilson before we talk about some other stuff uh do you i i do have a small part of me that feels bad for him and i know that's crazy he's made millions made millions and millions of dollars. He's getting paid $39 million to do nothing this year.
If he chooses to do nothing, he'll obviously be on the team. But at what cost? You've basically become a joke to the NFL.
And everything that happened at the beginning of your career, which was phenomenal, is somewhat tarnished by what happened in Denver because it was just an abject failure and then on top of all of that you have being part of one of the worst trades in NFL history there's a small part of me that feels bad because I bet you if you hit Russell Wilson with some truth serum he'd be like yeah the money is awesome but I really wish that I wasn't a joke yeah maybe but also at the end of the day also also malcolm butler at the end of the day you're you're married to sierra you've got more bathrooms than number of times you've probably had to piss in the last year yeah true uh so things are pretty good if you're rust yeah they're good but at the end like it's one of those deep down your head hits the pillow late at night you're like man i wish that didn't all happen the way it did yeah like things were pretty good in seattle for me yeah i had a fan base that loved me no matter what i did it would have let you like age poorly and and still stuck by you giving you a hero's retirement ceremony yeah yeah it would have been good it would it would have been good for us to stay in seattle um but i i do think that's going to be a couple GMs out there that want Russell Wilson that are like, I can bring back Russ. I can fix him.
I'm going to let Russ cook. But then I think the first – what do you think if we're doing dominoes, if we're talking about quarterback dominoes? Yeah.
Because there's like three big domino pieces. What is the first domino? Kirk Cousins.
Kirk Cousins. Who reportedly is thinking about moving to Atlanta.
Yeah, per Mike Florio at Pro Football Talk, not fan fiction. Mike Florio had some words for you, Hank.
This is a fan fact. He was not happy last night.
I'm going to pull up the tweet. Mike Florio was not happy, and the first person I thought of was you, Henry Lockwood, because you've been giving him a hell of a time online.
Hell of a time. Read it.
I mean, there's like many shows do interviews. I don't know that that proof of anything okay so he had that was the weirdest flex i've ever seen he had two flexes two flexes okay hold on so my actually thought that his uh his caleb williams flex is pretty good the other day on friday oh he's been texting me being like i'm so mad the bears are gonna be good i'm like i feel like you're tricking me yeah i'm gonna pull up the uh the caleb williams he said this one he said last night to the folks who try to dismiss our reports by saying we have no sources or whatever you realize we had like 50 guests on our show last week from indy right you realize pretty much everyone in the league reads pft right you realize i've been doing this for 23 years right i actually didn't realize most of that so yeah you exactly because you're a mike florio hater but the everyone reads pft that's subjective well here's not everyone in the league does having 50 guests okay here's where we're on radio row you can just pull you probably pulled like the vendors off the street and we're like hey how's the popcorn selling i'm gonna i'm gonna back our guy florio for a second because he's in that weird gray area where you have the Shefties and the Ian Rapports who will just trade news.
They have news. They'll give you the news.
There's not opinion. Florio adds his opinion.
So people then take it as, well, he's making things up and it's fan fiction. Florio is still doing reporting like Shefty and Rapport.
He just has a little more personality behind what he's writing and saying like, this may happen, this isn't happening, here's a fun hypothesis. Florio is great for what we do because he throws out ideas and things that could potentially happen that get everyone's brain churning, not just this guy got traded or this guy signed or this guy got cut.
I think where people get confused, though, is because with Rappaport and Schefter and Diana, they report facts. So when they're reporting something, you just assume it's a fact because they're tweeting it.
Florio does that, but then also speculates. Yeah.
So sometimes people are confused where they're like, is this a fact? Well, you got to know your source. It's Florio sometimes, especially in the dog days of the NFL calendar year where there's not a lot happening.
That's when Florio, his mind starts to wander a little bit. And he starts connecting the dots and doing the tea leaves and all that stuff.
And that's fun. But when it comes time to analyze players' contracts and salaries and predict what's going to happen, he's a lawyer.
So he is able to decipher some of the bullshit that's put out there, I think, a lot better than a Schefter would. And I like Florio.
I always say this. He is more like Barstool than he thinks, where, again, Schefter and Rapport are just driven by scoops, driven by getting reports.
Florio's driven by page views, so he knows that. Hmm, you're saying he's doing clickbait.
I disagree. To an extent.
Like, he knows dog days of summer. Let me just write some crazy shit and people are going to click.
Fact or fiction? Fiction. That's fan fiction.
You're doing fan fiction on your part. You're fan fictioning him.
This is Hank Florio. We've all seen the picture.
You're at it again, Hank. And what Florio does, I don't think he does it for clicks.
No. I actually think that the clicks.
Come on. No, no.
Shut the fuck up for a second, Hank. I think that the clicks happen to be a nice byproduct of what he does.
Correct. I just think that Florio gets crazy sometimes, and he puts these dots together that sometimes don't end up happening.
But he does it to entertain himself and because he believes that he might be right. He also speculation i don't think florio ever writes something just being like this there's no truth behind this let me just throw this out there he actually does have kernels of truth that end up being popcorn yeah he does hypotheses yeah either way i like florio i'm not your entire life is a hater hypotheses i know that's what my my whole point is like he's we're more like sometimes i just think He likes to get mad And be like How can people not Take me seriously So he thinks Kirk Cousins He's the best in the biz He thinks Kirk Cousins Is making some sort of Family plan To move his family And his team Down to Atlanta Yeah I don't know what That could possibly be Like is he trading in All of his sweaters At Kohl's Yeah He's getting t-shirts now yeah he's getting just warmer clothes i don't know how that my my first thought was this is like a kid kids enrolling in schools thing yeah but it seems like it's looking house hunting house hunting hello his wife is down there someone's friend someone's friend's cousin is a real estate agent in buckhead yeah and she's actually's actually taken a meeting.
Kirk was Kirk's wife. Kirk was spotted in magic city last weekend behind the curtain.
Yeah. Sampling the wings.
I mean, the Falcons would be real. Like if they sign Kirk cousins, I would maybe pick them to, I would definitely pick them to win the NFC South.
What are the odds right now? What are the odds on the Falcons winning the NFC? Can we look ahead at that? I don't know. Jake, can you look that up? Either way, Kirk Cousins, Domino 1.
Domino 1. I think Justin Fields, Domino 2.
I agree. I think, hmm, Jimmy Garoppolo.
Remember him? Remember Jimmy? Remember Jimmy? No, then I think all the other dominoes are draft picks. And then Russell Wilson.

It probably will go sequentially.

He'll probably get signed before the draft picks.

But I wouldn't be shocked if a team signs Russell Wilson,

then still drafts a quarterback.

They do the old Andy Dalton.

Right.

Russ is our quarterback.

Also.

Mike Lennon had that happen to him with Mitch.

Yeah, also here's Jaden Daniels.

Yeah, Mike Lennon threw out the first pitch,

and everyone was like, Mike Lennon time. Like, whoop, it's Mitch.
What you got, Jake? Plus 1,400 doing the NFC Atlanta. I still don't like it.
It's right in the middle of the pack. I kind of like it.
With Kirk. Just based on the speculation of Kirk.
The Vikings are plus 2,000. So another Florio tweet, we just spent 10 minutes with Caleb Williams.
Condolences to the Vikings, Lions, and Packers. This guy is the real deal, and the Bears will have their first franchise quarterback since Sid Luckman.
Yeah, no, he's jinxing. That felt mean.
That felt mean. He's doing a jinx.
We can't get into specifics for now. Oh, wait.
We're getting very credible indications that Cousins is seriously considering movies family to Atlanta. Yeah.
You know what the original Magic said he was? We can't get into specifics for now. I could say that about anything.
I'd be like, like well can't get into specifics it was it was bethlehem well he can't get into specifics i believe him on this one okay but i can see why some people would be like how can we take this seriously by the way we should have we screwed up on sunday we should have mentioned i forgot well i guess i would say that and then i'd be like wait he had 50 interviews Super Bowl week. Well, it was combine week, actually.
Combine week. Yeah.
Chris Mortensen passing away was sad. Mort was the original.
He was the original newsbreaker. He was the guy who created basically the idea of NFL news.
I don't think that there was ever an NFL reporter that was on television before Chris Mortensen. Yeah.
as a feature of a show and he seemed like a great guy i never got the chance to meet him i don't know if you know i didn't but he seemed from what everybody else has said he seemed like a really like an outstanding human being yeah and you could tell just by the outpouring of you know people saying their stories about him and everything he was just just beloved by everyone. Makes me think sometimes how many,

how much,

how much hate do you think we'll get when we die versus love?

Cause there definitely will still be some hate.

I don't like to joke about death on the show.

Big cat.

Yeah,

that's true.

John your purple gloves.

John Cena.

Yeah.

It'll be love,

but there'll be some hate too.

Oh,

when,

when big cat dies,

somebody's going to post the Taylor Swift video.

Yeah.

Be like this fucking asshole.

He'll be burns in hell.

We'll just be like,

thank God,

the but there'll be some hate too oh when when big cat dies somebody's gonna post the taylor swift video yeah be like this fucking asshole he'll be burns in hell he'll just be like thank god there's one less man on the planet yeah this would be unhealthy does i knew this was happening yeah yeah like oh all those donuts we should have known also be some of that shout out to mort because i think the diagnosis of his his throat cancer which is a super aggressive type of cancer, was that like 2015?

It was a long time ago.

2016?

Yeah.

And so he lived for, what, nine years, eight years after that?

So he, I don't know, it's a very sad day. And it was sad seeing like the tributes because people that you watch on TV all the time that are always having a good time, joking around, laughing, they're like on the verge of tears talking about this guy.

So I wish I got the chance to meet him and he seemed like just a cool dude.

We'll be right back. that you watch on tv all the time that are always having a good time joking around laughing they're like on the verge of tears talking about this guy so i wish i got the chance to meet him and he seemed like just a cool dude would you guys isn't it weird to think though like and it's morbid but we'll eulogize each other like if one of us dies first like hank if you died pft9 would have to do we would be part of the eulogies, right? Who gets to decide that?

Dibs.

No, I think it's like the family decides, but I think they'd be like, yeah, PFT and Big Cat, you guys should say something. Like, there's multiple eulogies.
Yeah, of course. Like, if I died, PFT would definitely eulogize me.
He would be part of the eulogies. I don't know if you, you would probably procrastinate until the last second.
You should be like, this is worse than doing the stand-up comedy.

I think that if Hank dies, memes should eulogize him.

Oh, man.

Memes.

Oh, man.

If Hank dies, we need to remake.

So the stand-up comedy was good.

We need to remake the picture of showing up to my haters funeral and just have Max in

the picture.

That'd be great.

That would be memes.

It would be memes.

It would be, yeah, it'd be memes and Max.

If Dave eulogized you, he would just talk about how you were a ticket taker.

Be like, Hank would still be taking tickets right now.

I think I would have to give a eulogy for Dave, right?

Yeah.

Like, one of them.

Oh, no, Miss Peaches, what'd you do?

Yeah.

Thankfully, he's dead.

He can't complain about his shoulder anymore. That would rock speech is his bite marks on his throat oh no uh miss peaches rocks uh she's very cute and the fact that she looks like a peach yeah kind of takes it to the next it's it's the best life hack ever if you're naming a dog if you name your dog after a noun it's awesome if you name your dog after now and put mr or miss in front of it yeah as the noun becomes cuter it's perfect like mr biscuits yeah um okay jason kelsey retired max thought we were going to lead the show with probably should have led the show but yeah probably should have led the show well i i think you know shout out to the kelsey brothers there he's becoming a full-time podcaster right now which i think he's going to find out is a lot harder than playing football facts um but they've they've done a very good job of uh of playing the game and they they do a good job on the podcast it's very funny show and a good show but they also know how to play the game when you got travis dayton the most famous person in the world it tends to help with ratings when you got the guy being shirtless on TV, chugging beers all the time, winning football games, it helps with the ratings.
So we need Hank. What did we say? Hank was going to date Beyonce? Yeah.
Hank will date Beyonce. And then I think that, Max, you should just give your thoughts on Jason Kelsey as Jason Kelsey.
You can just be Jason Kelsey for a minute. Yeah.
Yeah, i will do anything to emulate jason kelsey and his life for the rest of time he was an all-time dude uh in terms of like nfl lore like six round pick incredible mainstay of the eagles this this past whatever decade plus where they've gone to a super bowl won a super bowl gone to a bunch of big games like he's the guy. Were you sad? Did you tear up a little? Also, his speech was great.
Actually, let me ask you this first. Some haters out there.
I know where you're going with this, and it is disgusting. I agree with you, but some haters.
I'm not one of them. One hater.
One hater out there was commenting on the fact that he didn't put on sleeves.

It's his own thing.

Yeah, I agree.

He can choose whatever the fuck he wants.

I agree.

If he was going to Travis's retirement day and everyone else was dressed as nice and

he wore no sleeves, then yes, I could see I would be disrespectful.

It's your thing.

You choose the rules.

I agree.

He sounds like a real loser.

Yeah, he was. It was an all-time ratio.
who was it it was rico oh no really yeah he's like can't put on sleeves i honestly didn't ratio the fuck out of him ratio him to hell uh but yeah it was it was a great speech it was a great speech he hit everything he talked about nick foals dick um what did you think what was your was great. It had everything.
It was emotional. It was funny.
It was a great walk. That was my dynasty documentary, just him going through each year by year of his career and the highs and the lows.
I cried. It was a lot.
It was very, very emotional. I was not expecting it to get that emotional right off the rip before he even gets a word out.
It takes a good two minutes of him just bawling in his eyes. It was tough.
He was Philadelphia. He is the most Philadelphia athlete I think that there's ever been.
The fact that an offensive lineman was the face of Philly for so long was so big for the city. and I think that there's ever been.
The fact that an offensive lineman was the face of Philly for so long, it was so big for the city. And I think that him being gone is a real problem for the locker room.
He was the leader for so long. And he's also just an unbelievable football player.
Going out last year first-team All-Pro, deserved first-team All-Pro. Could have almost changed the game of football with the tush push he's the best best personality of all time his super bowl speech will always be one of the best speeches of all time he's the best i'm gonna miss him so much yeah uh you bring up a good point though what happens with the tush push next year are they gonna run it yeah they're still gonna run it i don't think it'll be as successful as it was.
Did you see the Wisconsin center?

Actually, finally, someone broke the three cone.

I think it was three cone drill that Jason Kelsey had the record for centers for like whatever it was the last 13 years.

So maybe you draft him.

Good.

That's fine.

Pass the baton.

He definitely gave like a blueprint for other Philadelphia athletes.

Yeah.

I feel like Bryce Harper at he wants so very badly to be what Jason Kelsey is. Nick Ceriani looks in the mirror and he sees Jason Kelsey.
Yeah, yeah. It's good to have a blueprint, though.
It's like you have somebody that everyone wants to emulate, and if everybody could be Jason Kelsey, then you'd be very, very happy as a Philadelphia sports fan. Yeah.
Mount Rushmore of sixth-round picks. He's on it.
He's the Mount Rushmore of Eagles athletes. Yeah.
Mount Rushmore six-round picks. It's Tom Brady, Antonio Brown, Terrell Davis, and then Jason Kelsey.
That's a good round. That's a great round.
That's a great round. Those are some great picks right there.
Yeah. Also, first-team All-American beer drinker.
Yeah. That dude loves beer.
I love how much he loves beer. Yeah, he's the best.
Gotta get him on the pod. We hung out with him once.
Yeah. When? Probably 17, 2016, 2017.
Was it Chris's apartment? It was Bo Allen's apartment. Oh, yeah.
And it was Chris Long, Bo Allen, and Jason Kelsey, and we just hung out. Brent Selleck, too.
Yeah, Brent Selleck, and we just hung out for, I hours it was awesome drink great dude yeah you didn't know that no this is the first I'm hearing of this have you ever hung out with him no oh no I you know what I really I'm actually surprised he didn't mention us in his speech I hate that was a great night it's a great hang I hope so much that he hates Max yeah that'd be so good wouldn't it come on don't say that That would. you're appropriating his culture yeah that's true that's true yeah his his culture is not you just told me that i have to appropriate you look like a guy that gets right you look like a guy who's currently in costume on halloween dressed up as slutty yes jason kelsey like he grew out his hair whenever his hair was growing out that's when i started to then I just never looked back.
He is my inspiration. You're very unsettling in a hat.
I just want to look like him. I want to be him.
Great hats. They're going to be out on Thursday, the Just Cover hats.
Yeah. We got all new gambling merch for March Madness.
I don't look good in a hat, but you will look better than me in this hat. I told Max before we started that he looks like when Forrest Gump went on his cross-country run, he just somehow got fatter yeah that's i mean well we we workshopped that i said i looked like forrest gump you said you look true it was a workshop workshop yeah credit to max actually yeah credit to me it was a workshop the fatter part was funny uh okay what else do we have uh before we get to hanks number 10 patriots uh i saw a pretty hilarious fan last night at uh the the clippers box game okay did you see the guy from taiwan no there was a guy that flew in from taiwan and he held up a poster that said like i flew 15 hours or whatever from taiwan to see my favorite player oh no russell westbrook oh didn't play didn't play brought all his jerseys the the man was wearing 15 russell westbrook jerseys oh my god all on top of each other and he started to take them all off showing the different layers of russell westbrook but at least at least you got to see yannis yeah at least he got to see yannis which is nice that would have but yeah i thought you were gonna say yannis that would have because he got ruled out like an hour before but he was definitely like on a plane overseas and the news broke that like russell hand issue that's brutal that's brutal.
That's a tough flight. That's a tough flight.
You can't. And all your bag is just filled with nothing but Russell Westbrook jersey.
Yeah. I think we're at the point, though, with the NBA that you can't make a long flight to try to see your favorite player with any type of confidence anymore.
No. It's on you.
You have to actually be in touch with the player beforehand and let them know like, hey, I'm considering spending $5,000 on this flight from Taiwan. Would you just promise me that you're going to play that game? Yeah, you need to find, like, a week where they're at home for a straight week and be like, I'm just going to take the whole week because then I might have a good chance of seeing my favorite player play.
Yeah, but I think, Hank, no disrespect, I know that I did crown the Celtics Eastern Conference champions. I think NBA champions on Monday's show.
I think I'm going to ride on the Bucs. I think I got to go with Pat Bev.
Belt to ass. Belt to ass.
They're just 6-0, last six. They're fucking people up ever since they got Gallinari.
They haven't lost a game since they got Gallinari. Is he playing? I don't know.
I think so. Celtics legend.
Yeah, I think he's playing. Never played.
Also, some other people would. He posted the greatest rehab working out videos.
Yeah. Just like skipping.
Yeah, he played last night. He played 17 minutes, four points.
Some people would just point to the fact that the All-Star break did happen, and they've just been good since the All-Star break. But still.
But still, Gallinari. They have been good.
And yeah, I mean, it was actually, no one cares about our bets, but I saw that Giannis was out, and I was like, I'm just going to bet Dame to score over 40 at plus like 400. And then he did, because he just, it was Dame time.
Yeah. Like he, I kind of like that the Bucs have that situation.
A lot of teams, Celtics have it, where their best player goes out and it's like, well, the other guy is really fucking good and he's just going to score all the points and we'll be fine. Okay.
Hank, do you want to do your number 10 Patriot? Yep. This is big.
Yeah. Before you announce number 10, I want to give you just a little bit of background here.
Well, it doesn't matter because the list has already been locked in so we are yeah i know but we already went from what six to number one is that what we did the top six or top seven yes so give us the six through give us six through one and then we'll go back to 10 dante hightower six ty law five julian edelman four teddy bruski three rob gronkowski two tom brady one okay so um when we left the combine on thursday uh i was hanging out with uh a couple coaches and a couple james not to brag but i got a big slap on my back and before i turned around i said to myself that's a coach who's too big and intimidating to coach in the n anymore. I turned around and it was Mike Vrabel right there.
And he was like, what's up, bitch? Which is the perfect Mike Vrabel way to say hello to you. And the first thing that I talked to him about was the fact that you're doing your top 10 Patriots of all time list.
And you haven't announced numbers 10 through 7 yet. And he said, tell Hank if I'm not on that list, I'm going to beat his to beat his ass so just no pressure well it doesn't matter because the list is locked in that's that was my point like i can't right you can't change retroactive i know but just so you know no pressure i hope you put vrabel on there because he's gonna beat your ass i would love to watch that dude he would kick your ass he would fuck you up so bad you'd be crying you'd be bloody oh so would you yeah yeah but i'd put him on my top 10 list yeah he doesn't want to beat who said i didn't okay oh we'll see who's number 10 with that being said number 10 randy moss randy moss yeah only only player on this list to not win a Super Bowl, but he was that good, that exciting.
Record breaker. Best receiver of all time.
Best receiver of all time. When he came to the Patriots, they got him for nothing.
People didn't have high expectations. And then game one, it was apparent he was going to dominate, and that was the most fun season until it wasn't.
But his years in the Patriots were so fun to watch. Him and Gronk are probably the most, obviously Brady, but receiver-wise, they were just...
Unstoppable. Unicorns.
How many Super Bowls do you think Tom Brady would trade to get 19-0? Two, probably. I think he said...
I could be wrong, but I think he said he would trade one or two. Just have that one.
I had memory hold that one that one play at the very end of the first Giants Patriots Super Bowl where Brady just chucks it downfield. He told Randy to reverse fields when he points at him and the ball hit off Randy Moss's hands and they would have been in field goal range.
I'd completely forgotten about that play. The thing with the time was, though, there was only like 14, 12 seconds left.
They were all the way on the other side of the field. They had no timeout.
So people post that a lot being like, what if he caught this? I don't know that they would have gotten down the field and spiked it. But yeah.
It would have been electric, though. Tom Brady would have run the fastest 40 of his life.
Yeah. Yeah.
I don't even know if he did when he was 22 he was 22 i saw that yeah he beat himself i don't even know if they mentioned like the record-breaking season in the documentary i don't think they did insane who's your honorable mention uh my honorable mention ronnie harrison oh okay rodney harrison great guy didn't make great player didn't make the top 10 yeah he got no play in the in the dynasty uh documentary i think he talked yeah i know the helmet catch they mentioned leaving that yeah like talk about the helmet catch and then we'll just do one quick clip of you winning a super bowl my favorite thing about rodney harrison is when he gets on tv on on sunday nights and he just talks about like how how dirty some of these players are and how much they should be suspended for their hits.

Yeah.

And it's like, this is Rodney Harrison telling you this.

Rodney Harrison.

Okay, good job, Hank.

Should we do Hot Seat Cool Throne?

Sure.

Let's do Hot Seat Cool Throne.

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Thank you.

So my hot seat is spring break.

Why?

Miami is opting out of spring break.

Yeah.

I don't know how that's going to work.

I saw the video. But they made a video.

DeSantis was like, we're not.

They made a video that was like, it's not you.

It's me.

We're breaking up like kind of a parody video of Miami residents breaking up with spring break.

And DeSantis said they have a bunch of security measures to stop it.

Yeah, they just... Breaking up like kind of a parody video of Miami residents breaking up with spring break.
And DeSanta said they have a bunch of security measures to stop it.

Yeah, they did this with PCB a few years ago where they stopped letting people drink on the beach.

And then it just kind of ended there.

Yeah.

The war against spring break is raging.

I was never a big spring break guy because I was too fat.

Just having to take off your shirt for a whole week uh-huh you know right after march madness was always daunting uh but for those who celebrate i'm sorry for your loss i never actually agreeing with me there yeah i played baseball so we had yeah it was always like get in shape or just i could just stay in madison and just like drink and hang out and i would do the the latter i did panama city beach one year and panama city beach might be it might be the worst city in america it's just you you leave the actual beach and then you've got guys wearing jinkos riding a bicycle named travis beating up future quarterback beating up future quarterbacks and trying to sell you salvia on the street yeah and then there's an occasional preacher that pulls you signs like i'll give you free pancakes if you listen to me preach to you i'd take that deal yeah i did i actually did take that deal worth it yeah i saw woody harrelson in a waffle house in panama city beach one time during spring break during spring break he was there eating by himself and then as he was on his way out this uh this kid stopped him he was probably like a nine-year-old kid, hi, Mr. Harrelson.
And then Woody asked his dad if they could go out to the parking lot so his son could ride on Woody Harrelson's bike. And then Woody Harrelson just drove around the parking lot with this nine-year-old kid on a Harley Davidson, took a bunch of pictures, dropped him off and rode away.
That's bad. Pretty legendary celebrity, yeah.
Yes, yes. Okay, so spring break, out.
Hot seat. Hot seat.

Feel bad for the kids.

Although Miami spring break, I feel like it's not a college kid destination.

I would agree with that. Yeah, you got to go to Mexico.

Yeah, or you go to-

Like somewhere cheap.

And then you got to come back with all the bracelets of all the places you went to.

Yeah.

I went into Senior Frogs.

I think there's one in Cabo, and we went in for one drink in the middle of the day. And it smelled like puke and like spaghetti.
And I was like, do not miss this. Yeah.
The good news is there's like 400 other beaches in Florida you can go to. Yeah.
My cool throne is having nothing to hide. Oh.
The commercial. I think we talked about it a few weeks ago.
Yeah. We really should have given people a warning about that commercial.
Yeah. Because it hit on a Monday morning and everyone was like, what is this?

Whoops.

We did a commercial where we're basically naked.

You guys came out great.

That one side angle of just like, it's just an upshot of my side boob.

Not great.

I haven't seen the commercial.

I think I came out the worst.

I look like two dimensional.

I don't know.

Big Cat looks jacked.

Can somebody say?

Beryl chested. Send the video because I haven't haven't watched i just walked by max when he was editing something and just our nude bodies were on his his computer yeah apologies to everyone for uh not giving you a heads up because you've probably seen it especially if you're watching the podcast um our bad we should have we should have been like hey there's this new commercial it's a great commercial we love We love body armor.
Also, shout out our billboard. Shout out billboard on Randolph Street.
Hank's just fishing with dynamite now. Across from JP Graziano's Goodnight John Boy.
It's great. You were at a bar on Friday night with the billboard out the window.
It's interesting that we put it outside your favorite bar. Do you even say anything to girls? No, I didn't mention it didn't just kind of keep like nodding towards the towards the window check it out just yeah yawning like oh whoa that's a cool billboard you're so lucky yeah i'm sorry about this video i just watched it that's tough yeah well it was just the fact that it was a monday morning and we didn't give anyone a prep um it's a great ad gets people Body armor.
We love body armor. But we should have been like, hey, there's an ad coming out.
You get to see. And we all saw each other's cocks because they gave us the thinnest see-through flesh-colored boxers.
And I think that – did we talk about this on the show? But Hank's got a big cock pft's got big balls i got nothing well yeah i think we did because we showed up we were so it was a late sunday night still football season then we showed up 8 a.m they're like here's your costume and it's just a two inch like see-through i don't even know spandex boxers yeah it looked like we had we were all like hiding different sizes of birds in our shorts. Mine was like a small sparrow.
At one point, they were saying that was going to be the billboard, and we pushed back. Yeah, I pretty much say yes to everything that's ever been asked of me in my career.
I think that was the one time where I was like, and I think you guys played it correctly because you're like, let's let Big Cat decide this because he's the one who's going to look the worst. No, no, no.
I said I need to be in a bodysuit. No, what happened was somebody asked me, here's the idea for the billboard.
You guys are all going to be nude, and you and Big Cat are going to be holding footballs in front of your crotches. And then Hank is going to be holding a golf ball in front of his.
Oh, man. Blurring it out.
And so I said, i'm down with that but you might want to double check with hank that it's okay because hank's the one that's going to have to live with that visual yeah and i said if i'll make a compromise put me in the jacked body suit and i'll do it they're like no no it's like all right no matter who was going to have the tiny ball in front of our penis was going to end up being like, no, I don't want to do this billboard.

I actually think I'm less like if my penis is out there, I wouldn't really care.

It's everything else that sucks.

I mean, the penis sucks, too, but at least I've told everyone it sucks.

Bad penis.

Yeah, right.

I mean, we're podcasters.

What do you expect?

Yeah.

Okay.

Good hot seat.

Cool throne.

Thank you.

PFT.

My hot seat is Arch Manning. Yes.
I i had that as well because that the one you had hank yeah oh thank you good job well actually my hot seat was uh ncaa football 2024 okay well i'll just i'll just put arch on the hot seat because he's not going to be he's opted out of being in the new college football game um and i i don't really care but it is very funny seeing people because if you just zoom out and look at what you're actually upset about, a lot of people are upset that like a 20 year old isn't going to be in their favorite video game. Right.
And I, so initially I was like the story and I don't know if it's fact, he's like, I just want to focus on football. And I kind of have Arch Manning's back in that respect, because if you're in a football game football game a video game you're going to just play the video game as yourself all the time and then someone pointed out that Arch Manning would be in it and his rating would be like 65 and he'd be a backup and also the Manning name is worth a lot of money yeah maybe that's why he did it and then that that to me is kind of lame so he should just stick with I would he should just do a press conference and be like, listen, if you put me in the game, all I'm going to do is play the game.
And I don't want to do that. I want to focus on football because I actually buy that.
If I were in a video game, I wouldn't be podcasting. I'd be playing myself in the video game.
Let's reach a compromise, EA Sports, NCAA College Football. Arch Manning is not going to be in the game.
However, don't put any filters or blocks on the game that prevent you from making Arch Manning. Correct.
Creating your own Arch Manning. I don't want the last name thing coming up.
Be like, sorry, this last name cannot be used. Right.
You should be able to. If it's just one player, then everybody should be able to make that one player and see who can make the best Arch Manning.
Yes. Agreed.
Agreed. I have another hot seat, just real quick.
Charlotte the Stingray still hasn't given birth. Uh-oh.
It's fucked up. I don't think that she's actually pregnant.
I still think it was a lie. I've been on Stingray watch for the last three weeks.
That bitch ain't pregnant. My cool throne is...
I'm going to put Chris Clemmer on the cool throne. Because I've been watching his solitary confinement stream for the last couple days.
And he is i think he was built for this he seems to be having no problem whatsoever living in solitary confinement yeah it's it's insanely entertaining somehow uh so shout out to chris he's he's a very strange human being oh the strangest he'd show he chose to do this we we had to do the 24 hour punishment and and i was was thinking about it last night. We had games.
We had each other. We had guests popping in.
It was still one of the most miserable experiences of my life. I've been in jail with the Brady Four maybe nine hours where we were locked in a cell.
Absolutely miserable. Oh, jail sucks.
Put it on a quote card. He just chose to do 100 hours.
He was oh you know be funny if i did a hundred hours which i was terry confinement i completely respect it oh yeah insane he's down for anything clemmer's down for anything with like he's if you build more people like clemmer at barcel it'd be great because he is he'll do anything um but i agree with you hank when people are like this is punishment you got to stop this it's like he decided yeah it's his i think he's fine yeah like pft said he's fine he's just living his life he's actually so when i started watching it all the comments were it was right off the bat like the first four hours they were saying climber's going to go insane by the end of this week no he's going to make everybody that's watching the stream go insane yeah because he's doing he's doing fine with it and his the way his brain works is just so strange that you can't help but watch like i tuned in the other day he was putting himself into a suitcase yeah he was just folding his body up times yeah it's really really bizarre stuff but uh yeah i can't stop watching clemmer yeah all right my hot seat is uh anthony edwards you guys see last night anthony edwards uh lost track of time and he missed the tip off of the Timberwolves game. I didn't see that.
So, yeah, he didn't he didn't start the first time. He hasn't started since he was a rookie.
He was at the arena. He was warming up in the tunnel.
He just lost track of time. And so they subbed him in like 25 seconds into the game.
But he did not start the game. This is the kind of thing that you point to when it's like, yeah, the the timberwolves are good but your your star player lost track of just forgot when the game started just completely forgot we should do reasons why teams can't win the nba finals yeah and it would be just anthony ever forgetting and it would just be like chet holmgren's shoulders yeah it was uh there was a man i can't remember his name chris paul just a picture of chris paul for the Warriors.
It was, there was a player, fuck, what was his, he was a man. I can't remember his name.
Chris Paul. Just a picture of Chris Paul for the Warriors.

It was there was a player.

Fuck.

What was his?

He's a pitcher.

Edwin Jackson.

Edwin Jackson forgot.

He put in the wrong Google Maps to a Cubs spring training game like 10 years ago. And he's like, yeah, whoops.

I just drove to the wrong place.

I love that.

I would do something like that. Yeah.
Okay. My cool throne is Dak Prescott.
He got a new haircut. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. So what kind of haircut is it? He also, I think, had a kid, but it was just a regular haircut.
Just a close haircut? Yeah. I couldn't really see any difference, but that is where we're at in the news cycle.
Is that like when moms have another kid and they cut their hair because they don't have time to take care of it? Yeah. Prescott just cut like half an inch off his hair? Yeah.
Well, he went from beard to goatee. Yeah.
Oh, that was what it was. So the aggregators were like the ML football, the Dove Climbing, were like Dak Prescott got a new haircut.
Thoughts? Okay. My thought, yep.
Yeah, that's a haircut haircut and he got a goatee i actually like the goatee he kind of looks good he's got a good jaw looks like well dan quinn a little bit yeah great job besides the fact it's made out of glass yeah yeah uh okay jake your hot seat cool throne jake is back congrats jake you did a great job with the tournament this weekend thank you you, guys. It was a lot of fun.
Yes. Great job.

We had Monday morning golf, so an extra time to get reps in.

Who won?

His name was Austin Eckrote.

First ever PGA win.

Nice.

You were working the bear trap this weekend.

Yes.

Which is a great name.

Post up in the bear trap.

Great name for holes on the golf course, the bear trap.

Yes.

Brought to you by Jack and Klaus, which I wanted to say really badly,

but it wouldn't have made sense. So with the PGA Tour this year, everyone that's won is the biggest underdog ever.
Yeah. It's really weird.
There's been eight or nine events, and there's already been three rookies who have won. Last year in 54 events, three rookies won.
Yeah. If you look at the odds, they're all between like 60 and 500 to one odds that have won.
Yeah. The co-leader after 54 holes, David Skins, was 1,000 to one.
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that like 50 really good players are on the live. I don't know what that means.
No, live. We don't include them in our world golf.
Well, we have the Arnold Palmer and then the players next week. So it's some big events coming up.
Yeah, there's two big boy events if they don't get a big name in either one. Yeah, we need some big boys.
We need some big boys. Yeah, so that was fun.

My hot seat is teams who need a wide receiver.

Oh.

Because Mike Evans is staying with the Bucs.

Yes, one jersey guy.

A lot of people were saying if he had free agency, maybe the Jets, maybe the Chiefs,

but he's not going anywhere, and he had a great year.

Yeah.

He kind of, in a way, hit free agency.

He was just like, I'm going to hit free agency, and then the Bucs were like, here's some more

money.

He's like, okay, thank you. I'll stay.ason light's first draft pick as a gm mike evans he's been there a long time mike evans i mean we we talked about it this fall he is if he plays another three four five years he will be in the conversation for mount rushmore of wide receivers in terms of like his total numbers and the dominance he's had every single season he's been in the NFL.
He's had a thousand yards. Also, Jason Light, very cool guy.
Very cool guy. I like Jason Light a lot, but I still have that red flag in the back of my head with Jason Light that he likes Steven Shea.
And also, he might be James 1-1. Yes, that too.
My cool throne is friend of the program, Dan Hurley. After winning the Big East title, regular season, he went out to the bar and celebrated.
Oh, nice. With fans and students.
First time they won it since 1999. It was a big deal.
Yeah. Love him.
Was he drinking piss? Probably. Literally all Dan Hurley has done since Max joined this podcast is win.
Yeah. It's crazy.
And they, you guys tell me if I'm wrong, this is the best chance for a repeat since the 0607 gators yeah probably yeah yeah i mean usually a team loses some key pieces they did but they're gonna be one seed they have a chance to do it yeah they absolutely do uh okay good job boys let's get to our interview we have diana rossini great interview with diana uh it's been a long overdue to have her on the podcast before we do that pft yeah before we get get to Diana Rossini, she's brought to you by 3Chi. 3Chi is the premier place for cannabis products, and it's just launched its new line of True Strains vapes and gummies that give tailored cannabis experiences.
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That's 3Chi.com, 3Chi.com and find your true strain today. Now, diana rossini okay we now welcome on a very special guest she is a friend of ours hasn't been on the show yet it is her part of my take debut been way too long probably long overdue that's our fault it is diana rossini from the athletic uh lead nfl reporter can i say that yeah senior insider Senior insider from The Athletic, lead NFL reporter.
Can I say that? Yeah? Senior insider.

Senior insider from The Athletic. We're going to talk some combine.
We're going to talk some football. You brought two sodas, though.
Are those for us? No. Okay.
Who are they for? Someone really special on the show. So you broke maybe the story of the year, Super Bowl week,

when our producer, Max Talente, decided to rip farts on a plane with two sodas and a burrito.

And a burrito was the big mistake.

Should we do this part now, Max?

Do you want to?

Sure.

Okay.

It's my show.

Rip the bandana.

It's our show.

Okay.

So why don't you come down and sit down here, Max? Let's just get this out of the way. This is what the people want to hear, and then we'll talk some NFL.
My first question is, Diana, you do have a thing for Philly guys. You're married to a Philly guy.
Is there a part of this entire escapade where maybe you have a little crush on Max? So I've always liked Max on the show anyways. i just never knew what max looked like because i just listen to you guys yeah um so the entire time he was sitting next to me i had no idea that was max and you know the biggest issue i had with this thing was the fact that i'm texting a friend of mine that being pft about just my irritation in the moment and to then reveal the source on it all you had to have

known that was going to happen we have a really good honest friendship i never thought he would

do that to me no because you usually feed me bullshit stories like i 100 thought he would do

that because that's i mean you knew i think i think diana knew what she was doing but she does

send me a lot of bullshit what was the one you sent me yesterday just to scare me

Thank you. I thought he would do that because that's, I mean.
I think Diana knew what she was doing, but she does send me a lot of bullshit. What was the one you sent me yesterday just to scare me? I don't want you to.
Commander's trading out signing Baker. Yeah, that's what I.
She feeds me bad scoops intentionally. I just like to throw something at him just to keep on the cheek.
It felt, it was very funny, and it was great reporting, the level of detail that you presented. So detailed.
It was so detailed. Here's the problem.

Max was sitting next to me,

and usually you make some sort of eye contact with the people next to you.

Not long, right?

Because it's awkward, it's weird, it's tight.

He never even slightly looked to his right.

He just looked straightforward,

almost as if I got to get through this flight

and not vomit.

And he just stunk of hangover.

You know that? It's like a mix of... It's like a little bit of, it's a little bit of BO.
It's a little bit of beer. It was, yeah, no, I put on clothes.
I got right on the airport. It was panic time.
I thought I was missing that flight for sure. Yeah, you were fine.
Once you sat, but I could, the sweat was, it was obvious. You were sweating.
I also had like 20 minutes, like once I got to the airport to get through security, get on the plane. And get food.
Yeah. So we've all been there, right? We've all been late.
But I don't know about you guys, but I just grabbed a bag of chips, something quick. That was probably, that was the smart play.
You get the dry, shitty turkey sandwich that everybody hates. The big, hot, saucy, meaty, beefy burrito.
Yeah, no, I regret it. I regret it.
And then the two sodas. The two sodas.
The two sodas I will fight tooth and nail. I obviously am well aware what I'm in for when I see the man next to me eating the burrito.
I was in for it. You knew it was bad, but then the two sodas, you're like, whoa, this is very bad.

It was two.

It was actually three.

We've been misreporting.

No, because it was. This is wrong.

No, no, no.

This is wrong.

It was the two Pepsis and then the Mexican orange thing that is just all sugar.

This is wrong.

This is wrong.

I went to the burrito place, got the Mexican orange soda and a water. That's never reported.
Never saw you drink a water. Never saw you drink a water.
That's a fact. That is a fact.
And then they came through and I was asleep during the, probably when I was farting. Correct.
During the soda call. And then they came back to me and said, oh, you were asleep for the beverage.
Do you want something? The soda call. The soda call.
The soda call. And that's when I got the Diet want something and you chugged that thing you threw it back i was thirsty you know i missed the the i i was dehydrated i usually listen to podcasts on a plane but i was trying to catch up on work stuff so i was in like text mode and taking notes based off my text of stories i was trying to chase at the Super Bowl.
So because of that, I didn't have AirPods. And so I could hear everything, which is why it was so clear how often you were farting.
And so clear why the music was so loud. The music was.
Who was home over and listens to tech now? Well, it was just, I, it was one of the. It was so loud.
I played something and then it went into like a mix of like this song that you played. And I was, I was in a bad spot.
I like didn't want to like pull out my shit to like change anything. I was like, all right, I'm in this zone.
Let me just stay here. I'll listen to this.
Let me fart my way out of this., I also didn't know I was farting. We had two sodas, dude.
Well, the farts were before the sodas. Do you remember when I got up to use the restroom? Yeah.
Okay, so I was wearing like a sweatsuit, and it was like a little bit of a crop top, and I remember thinking, I don't want to face this guy my skin out you know and straddle him but i also don't want to put my butt on him like i had to make a quick decision yeah um and i and so on the way there i went back and the way back i went front i try to make eye contact with you yeah i try to give him like the just the courtesy like hey dude sorry i'm giving you a lapper like while we're going to bed and he you just you could could – I could have been naked. You weren't even going to look at me.
That's respect. You're obviously very happy, man.
But you weren't going to see anything. You didn't want to see anything.
You just didn't want to obviously continue fighting. So, Diana, afterwards, did it dawn on you like you're on the plane, you're working on all these stories for Super Bowl week.
Did you realize – did you realize did you have a moment where like and the biggest story of super bowl week was sitting right next to me i did not realize that until i got to las vegas and you guys did the show and people were stopping me all week long i would i three times as a different party and people were sending me over soda i was like that's that's cool but that yeah that's my life but i obviously felt terrible about six sodas i apologize that you're you're associated with all these drinks and and obviously the farting thing which everyone is guilty of doing on on airplanes um but i i'm sorry that that he aired that all out i our friendship has changed completely i'm not sorry. Yeah, I'm not sorry either.
I don't retract my report. You can retract yours.
That's the best thing that's ever happened to the two of us. Oh, absolutely.
And you had to know, I don't think that you're innocent in this because content is what drives this whole thing. The second you sent that text, it was being said on air.
That's how it works. I was in a bit of an irritable mood right i didn't sleep much you sat next to a farting no no and even the guy next to me was hung over and eating so i was stuck between these two guys and hank made the best point why was i sitting middle seat you know and you know doing so well no no no i actually i actually gave my my first class seat up to someone in the service.
Thank you. But then, you know, of course, that is not the truth.
I really just wanted to be part of all the action in economy. Yeah, yeah.
We know Donnie knows all of that. So I figured that's where the fun times are in economy.
So here's the thing. I've flown now twice since then, and both experiences, I think I miss you a little on these flights.
No, no, no, no, no. By the way, I found out after all this, we have tons of connections in Philadelphia.
Oh, I got that too. There's like weddings that I guess we've been at together or our friends have been or something.
Because it's Philly, right? Everybody knows everybody. It's just one family.
So you've probably been around Max Farting before. Correct.
So I am now just used to the scent. So it's good to be back with you, Max.
Natural scent at this point. There was a moment when it was like right as she was texting me these updates.
As they were coming in, we're sitting in the hotel room in Vegas. And we're getting ready to record the pod.
And you looked over me and you had this sheepish look on your face. And you were like, was your friend Diana on a plane today? And you knew even before I brought it up.
So it was like, I think you might have recognized her. But you were like, I really hope that wasn't her.
That is correct. But I also didn't know of the farting.
I knew about the burrito, though. So I remember.
But those are one and the same. You put a burrito in that body, it's going to produce farts.
It's a fart machine. If I'm awake, I'm clenching.
I'm like making sure that you're like an easy bake oven for farts. You just like put the food in and boom.
Yeah, correct. But the thing is, it's like I if I knew I was farting, it would have been a different situation.
Is there any possibility? I'm not questioning your reporting, Diana. Obviously, wonderful piece of journalism is there any possibility that i want you to ask that no no you do the other guy that was sitting next to you that was also hung was there a second farter so i'm really glad you brought him up um because he also chose to eat a sandwich he didn't go burrito style and he was one of those type a types like i could tell like he would take a bite wipe his face he was just he was the complete opposite of the man to the left of me um but he i could tell he was struggling too a bit so it i mean what that flight from newark to vegas was about five five and a half hours so yeah that that was up there as one of the worst flight experiences i've ever had and i've thrown up on flights so yeah but that that probably topped it seanott will use that as a lesson before training camp I also ate the burrito extremely fast you I remember thinking that I'm like this guy is a freaking animal I also I would I got about like 75% of the way and I was like I don't want this anymore but then if you think about it what do you do with a quarter of a like you have done with that

like I think by the time we took off. So I, Mike, I was like, I need to finish this.
Yeah. Before we start moving.
You need to make more farts. Have an open burrito.
Right. As a, like, it's not like a sandwich that you can like put back in.
Right. You're like unwrapping it as you're, as you're going.
was i remember thinking i was like this i was like i hope nobody sees this but i need to finish this immediately right i'm sitting right next to you and get to part making and get to sleep was really but i guess those were one and the same obviously i was a little irritable right and the fact that and i just needed a vent to someone and you just happen to be the victim of it well no what happened was i i tweeted out a picture of miley cyrus on tv because it's a grammys night and max was standing in front of the tv and you saw that and you were like is that guy you just tweeted no this is when we landed i saw i was like wait that looks like burrito boy and that's when i texted you i said hey is that a producer of yours that you just took a no i said who's that man in the picture that's what i And then you're like Burrito Boy. And that's when I texted you.
I said, hey, is that a producer of yours that you just took a picture? No, I said, who's that man in the picture? That's what I said. And then you're like, that's Max.
I'm like, oh, I love Max. Oh my God, that was the guy next to me though.
Yeah. So Max, are we cool? Is everything cool between you two? Yeah.
You said that she was your mortal enemy. In the moment you were.
And I still kind of think that. Okay, so then now, you know what? That's good.
Keep the grudge alive. Maybe you have to give him some type of insider information about the Eagles at some point to make it right.
Yeah, that's Max. Come on.
I'll negotiate for you, Max. This should be good.
We'll text. Just don't do what he does and read them out loud to people.
That's not fair because I told you they were going on the show yeah and also the minute you said it again yeah you knew i think you knew what you were doing uh all right diana we're at the combine now we can talk some football uh first of all what what does combine week look like for you are you just walking around just getting talking to everyone getting all this like news i mean is it just non-stop so i went to dinner yesterday at four o'clock and i call it dinner it's not really dinner right because it's four it's like a late lunch i guess and i sat there and i had six back-to-backs meetings with different people and the bartender like four four dudes in he's like are you like in a date like in a dating service here i said first of all why would you ever call me out uh but i said no i'm just taking meetings because i just stayed in the same spot and i just kept i just kept eating and drinking that's a funny visual yeah just a revolving door of just a bunch of coaches nfl dudes just all different agents coaches gms one owner just having conversations catching up just kind of talking about things that are coming up and most of the conversations i'm having now are really just how you doing you know no one really wants to get into the football stuff just yet but um i'm not traveling as much anymore because i change jobs as you guys know so for me it's really just getting back in front of people's faces and being like hey i'm here yeah so you left espn you're now my co-worker at the athletic i write the premium plus newsletter oh my gosh you report um what what was the thought process like when you switched over are you like any regrets about leaving espn because i know a lot of people they're scared to leave espn because the magnifying glass that you're under like the microscope the megaphone whatever you want to call it like there's a spotlight that people think about with ESPN. And then to go out on your own is like, okay, a little bit different change of pace here.
Yeah. I was scared out of my mind.
It was one of those situations where, you know, you got to move, you know, you have to change it, but comfort's awesome. Like I like to be comfort.
I got two kids. The athletic gave me just a pretty incredible opportunity to, to get better actually.
And I think it's been a really good few months. But that first week when I took the job, I was a disaster just trying to understand, like, did I just jump off ship of the best place to work for what I do for a living? You know, it's ESPN.
There's still a gigantic, you know, media outlet. But I figured after about two weeks and I started to actually write and do things with The Athletic, I was like, oh, it doesn't matter as long as you have information.
That's all you need. Yeah.
And The Athletic's great. I read it all the time.
There's always great plugged-in people and you fit in seamlessly there. I have one question about your job that's a little weird.
It's a two-part question. So one of the hardest things I think you probably have to do to do and you could tell me I'm way wrong after a game when you're trying to talk to a player coming off a field how do you approach that because I see that you know I'll see on tv it's like oh there's Diana talking to you know Travis Kelsey walking off the field like how do you because it's got to be like a touch and go situation I'd assume well if it's a good situation it's easy as heck it'svis how are you just lit it up oh how's teller you know like that that's easy that day was bad there was a uh you probably saw it on instagram i was walking off with travis um after they lost to the jets and i mean if you have relationships with these guys they know what you're doing they know who you are and they're just talking knowing that whatever they're going to say probably is going to hit the print and be on television but i wouldn't i don't think talking to players after games is really that difficult but if you have a good relationship that that's usually where it can it can come handy and think about most of the times after games you're talking to the happy people you're not right you're very rarely going up to brock purdy one-on-one on the field being like so this this sucks.
Yeah, you lost Super Bowl. All right, so the second part of the question is you, I would assume it's happened many years in a row, but I know this year you were in the locker room after the Super Bowl.
Do you go to the losing locker room at all? I do. I always swing in there first just to see if anyone's acting up or crying or if anyone just wants to talk about situations because that's usually when they're in their most raw state of right after they lost so i did i circled um and i i was just kind of trying to follow my instincts on things i'm like i think i should probably go see what they're doing in there especially the type of season the chiefs had this year knowing it wasn't as easy as it had been in the past um I bet you they're going crazy.
And oh my God, I have never seen a locker room like that after a Super Bowl win. And I was actually talking to Mahomes about it.
And he's like, it's the year we had. It just felt that much better, even though he's been there before he knows what it feels like.
And obviously, because they've lost a Super Bowl before for them, just the idea of going back to back and being able to kind of prove to everyone this year that, yeah, maybe we didn't have some top dog receivers, but look at us, man. We figured it out, and we won the whole thing.
That's awesome. That has to be kind of a pinch-me moment, being in the Super Bowl-winning locker room, because that's it.
That's where it is. Sometimes one of the hardest things in my job is you have all these conversations, and you're running around, and sometimes you't even know what to do because you're there's so many people you need to talk to and storylines that you want to jump on and there's great storylines i want to go talk to chris jones i want to ask him what he thinks about his future now you know how badly do you want to stay in kansas sea i want to go up to travis talk about what this feels like uh you know so you have to kind of quickly because you're only allowed in there for a few minutes figure out fast who you have to go to and what you want to get and sometimes I I'm in these conversations and there's news there and I don't even realize it until about an hour later I'm like oh my god like I went up to Travis and I was like man this is awesome huh you feel good he's like didn't we just do this conversation I said yeah last year he's like well let's do it again next year let's go for three so he said it to me right after the game right and i was like running around talking to whoever next and then in the back then later i was like oh crap he basically just called it out we're gonna go for three and he's not retiring because there was definitely some rumors so sometimes you have to sort of take a breath in the moment be like okay this this is something uh but that that locker room was really cool That's a really fun group anyways, whether they win or lose.
Even when they lose, I've been around them before. They're all pros.
They're good. Yeah, I think one of the best things that the Athletic does is the post-mortems, whether it's like a coach that got fired and they go back.
They review all the shit that happened there or a season that didn't go the right way. The Athletic does a very good job of covering the dysfunction.
There was one report that you had earlier this year

regarding the Jets' dysfunction.

Memes, our producer, called you a liar.

I think he was very upset.

I think a lot of people were upset about the Jets' report,

but I thought it was pretty well done.

Do you want to address allegations for memes that you're a liar?

Well, which one of the 30 sources did you think lied? Yeah, 30 30 sources 30 sources memes yeah which one did you think 30 people just said you know what i'm going to tell you stories then they're all fabricated memes memes memes who are the 30 also wait wait wait he wants all the sources wait wait That's that's way too many sources so wait 30 is 30 is ridiculous so at the athletic because the standards are outrageously high we're owned by the new york times you have to supply the editors with your list of the people that you're speaking to and we had a list together after putting together the piece and writing it. And it was actually 30 plus.
Oh, more. So, and then attach the name that we send to our editor is the information that person gave us, the quotes, the details.
Huh, memes. So let me ask you a question, memes, just hypothetical.
What if Diana was, what if her name was Dan Rossini and she was a man would you have believed the sources more no huh I don't know interesting seems like being a little misogynistic here no whoever wrote it would be a liar okay I actually believe him on that because he just which part of the story because you obviously read it which part of the story bothered you the most? Which, what detail do you go, she's a liar.

She stinks at her job.

I hate her. The headline.
So wait, so Diana, though, like a big picture, like do you, you have to deal with this all the time. We're fans, no matter what, because we're crazy.
And remember, I live in Jetsland. Right.
So like, has there ever been a specific story that you reported and released that got like

way more backlash than you expected? You're like, what the fuck? I'm reporting. I'm doing my job.
About seven years ago, six years ago, maybe now, I fired Doug Maron, and he didn't get fired. So that was when I was wrong.
You always have to have one really bad one. That was my one bad one.
I will say this jets piece was tough this one i think jets fans are in denial um that would be memes right they just don't want they want to call people liars because they don't want to believe that it's actually that bad that the culture's that awful so don't don't blame the team blame the reporter that you know uncovered all of this blame the play you know whichever however they sleep at night with it so because i live in an area where there's jets fans you know i have people coming up to me and like even just went to the eye doctor and the guy that was helping me was like come on like what do you mean i'm a reporter my job is to give you facts don't be mad at me you know people want me to say all right we dramatized it it's not really that that Aaron's great he's kumbaya with everybody when the reality is it's it's it's a it's a mess in New York it's really bad and per 30 sources true though you're you're you found you're you're absolutely right the Jets fans for some reason they're like this isn't the truth we're like if you wrote that story about the Bears I'd be like she probably missed some things correct yeah it's probably way worse than that so a lot of people have been asking me how i've been managing the jets since then right because they you would think they would hate me right they're great i i love the jets like they're i talk to all of them still because they know i know and they know it's accurate right it's when you're wrong that's where the tension comes with teams and or if you don't um inform a team that a piece is coming out and that's something that we do at the athletic if we're going to put out something with that much intel and information that's going to make the owner the coach the gm that the core everybody the oc look bad you have to call them and say here's what we're doing so new york was well aware of everything that was coming out yeah it's got's got to feel kind of awesome though, when you're, cause you're really good at your job and when you do it well, and you know, there's going to be people like memes, they're going to be like, you're a liar. And it's like, I'm doing my job and I crushed it.
Like I know the truth. I found the truth.
Yes. But I would prefer to tell memes that things are so good.
Yeah. But no one wants to read that.
True. Yeah.
But I i am working a bunch of pieces coming up where it's just like how teams have survived issues that the jets didn't figure out like a like the cleveland browns how they were able to have success after joe flacco deshaun watson goes down like right so sometimes taking the bad stories and focusing on the dysfunction you can then go highlight some of the teams that are doing it right. But again, most people like the dysfunction.
Like I did a whole story on the Panthers as well, where it was, it was like hunger games in that place behind the scenes of everyone killing the other to just stay alive and not get fired by Tepper. And it was a, it was a mess.
It seems to be better from, from what I understand now, but that if you remember that's when we did that story, was like early november yeah there's still so much season left you need to forward that story to peter schrager i think he missed it because he tried to tell us that david tepper is not crazy yeah good guy yeah did you know that he bought his old boss's house and then bulldozed it to the ground yes good stuff normal stuff it's a great move i actually like you know i like it in the evil cartoon billionaire mindset. He is actually, what I think about when I think of the power-hungry owner that doesn't know how to work with people.
Also, if you're that rich, I would never live in another man's house. Owners in general are very, they are unique.
I try not to think about how much money they have when I'm talking to them because I probably would run away like a little girl because they could destroy my life. They could just buy my family or just tell someone to kill us.
Not your dad, though. Your dad could beat up anybody.
Yeah, it's from the Bronx. As you went to high school with Doug Marone.
It's from the Bronx. Don't mess with them.
You remember that? That was a regret. That might have been my favorite.
You guys crushed me on that. That might have been my favorite Shia and Racine tweet of all time.
Wait, wait, wait. Let's set the table because maybe not everybody is aware of it.
When Jalen Ramsey almost got into a fight with Doug Marone, and you said, I think Doug Marone would beat him up because he went to high school where my dad went to high school. My dad's strong.
He's from the Bronx. And I said something like, Doug Marone's from the Bronx, and you don't mess with people like that.
And then, of course, all the award-winning listeners flood my twitter for years by the way and we'll just be like every time the bronx is mentioned be like oh can you beat him up like just whatever it is it's so annoying it's this like mob mentality you cannot and they don't forget like your guys don't forget don't forget we're not reminding them right now let me Let me go. My second favorite Diana Rossini moment of all time was, I think it was at Foxborough.
I think it was 2017. You were working for ESPN.
You're doing the pregame report there on the sidelines. It was cold.
It was giant thermometer season. And you had a glass of water because we were going to show a science experiment of how cold it was.
You filled the water up to the top. And then you said, I filled this water up 10 minutes ago.
Now watch how cold it is. And then you turned the cup upside down and you just poured out a cup of water.
Did you think that that was going to fly under the radar for a little bit? Or were you immediately like, fuck? No, in the moment, I just, my head was just like, just keep going. So I was like, and you see, there's the water.
So it's cold out here, but obviously not that cold but that's all right back to you and you just i just kept going hoping no one would notice that the point of the project was i was freezing the water yeah but i did get some redemption last year they sent me to buffalo it was like negative 9 000 and uh i did it again and it worked it worked yeah i do miss people ask me that you miss espn i miss it all the time i miss the people i with. Obviously, Adam's a friend of the show here, and he was one of my good friends when I worked there.
We're not friends anymore. Yeah, you're off the text thread.
Yeah, they kicked me off their group text. But doing stuff like that was always so stupid and fun, but just being out with the fans, I used to love that.
Yeah. Has there been a player or coach who's gotten mad at you for a specific story where they're like, you burn me or something like that? Like that you're like, fuck, that sucks.
Yeah. Mike Rabel.
He called me the day after an aggregator took something I said that basically said Mike Rabel is too fat to work. Oh, yeah.
That was a good story. So that was that was too fat.
You said he's a large person. He is.
What I shared on the football podcast on The Athletic was that I had dinner with a GM at the Senior Bowl, and we had conversations about how bizarre this last coaching cycle was and how crazy it was that Belichick and Vrabel didn't have gigs. And I said, why do you think that Mike didn't get a job? He said, I think they needed a change there in Tennessee.
But in terms of the next opportunity, I think there's a lot of people who are very intimidated by him. He walks into a room and he's confident and he's physically a big human being.
And it's a little startling at first. Very normal, right, when I say this to you? These are all facts, by way and we love coach for able and he is i mean that's what i'd want out of my football coach correct his his hands are the size of your head right he hit me on the back at the combine a few years ago i like almost coughed up yeah so when that the aggregators took that and changed all this um you know the way i said it so that that wasn't great to to hear from a not too happy head coach to begin well former head coach now um he didn't call me after the piece we did on why he got fired but the piece on him calling him a little fat he wasn't too he wasn't too happy yeah i mean i think it was the body shaming yeah because he only sold the aggregator yeah he didn't see my actual the way it was framed was like mike variable's fat and And GMs don't want a fat guy yeah too fat to coach too fat to coach and i was like wait i like fat coaches that's not that's messed up but you guys know his personality he yeah he's he's not very flowery right so i'm like i see him call i'm like gosh i'm like hey coach what's going on you know and he's like what are you doing i'm like what are you talking about's like, why are you talking about my body? The aggregators really do that sometimes, though.
They're the ones that fans should get mad at, the aggregators, not the reporters. Believe me, they're good in some spaces, especially someone like me who's at a place not as big as ESPN.
I used to go on ESPN, and if you say it, it goes everywhere. So sometimes it's great to have it aggregated and then it's pushed out and then it probably catches your attention if you don't go to the athletic that day.
But most of the time, it's completely misrepresented. And then all these storylines are floating around the NFL.
It's like, what? I have a really hard time right now deciphering. Is this a real report? Yeah, no, there's a lot of clickbait.
There's a lot of people reporting stuff and it's just like where did this come from like deleted tweets it's just weird yeah and then people just grabbing like justin field celebrating in his kitchen i saw it was all over my timeline today and someone's like that was from six years ago someone said falcons the background they're like oh he's going yeah he's like okay don't get me wrong i saw it right when i was like I was like, oh shit, he's traded. Yeah.
That's crazy. So what's going to happen this week? Are there going to be any trades made? Anything big? Yeah.
I think Chicago's going to get moving on this for sure. With Fields.
Yeah. I've been stalking their people all week.
You asked me what I've been doing. So there's some people you can set meetings up with and meet.
And there's some people who just aren't going to do it with you, right? So then you have to figure out where are they going to be. This sounds so creepy, by the way.
But you can figure out just from talking to people around the league who's at what forum or who's going to sit down with CAA or whatever at this time and kind of you just go float in there and hope that you can catch them. So I've been chasing bears for a few days.
I can help you. We can track them down you know them yeah i know ryan so we'll set a trap for him what's ryan saying you uh he told me that i'm actually not allowed to say oh wow it's hard to be a reporter right i think i told you wait tell me exploring all options yeah there was another part of him not allowed to say also i sent him my tape from the combine, and he said, we'll take a look at it.
I don't think he took a look at it. We did a combine last week.
I did. I sent him my 40-yard dash.
I have to check those videos out. Yeah.
I got to see how that is. But yeah, I'm expecting definitely some action there.
I just hope the next few days are actually a little quiet because it's just been crazy. And I mean mean, you guys are on your phones all the time.
You know, if it's your job to be on your phone, it completely messes up your life. Yeah, I mean, we should just clarify.
You're on your phone working on stories. We're like scrolling Instagram and being funny idiots.
True, true. Looking at my college basketball bets.
I'm playing a flight simulator. My thing with that has been the hardest transition for me from going from ESPN to the athletic is the responsibility I do have now in getting information.
So that requires me to be on my phone at all times. And you can't determine when news is going to break, right? So we all have wild stories of when stuff breaks and you're not in a great spot, whether you're driving or you're on vacation, you're skiing.
And I had one actually, and Max, I'll tell you one day what the actual scoop was. But I had someone from Philly call me.
It was when everything was starting to fall apart. And I have a two-year-old and a one-year-old, and it was bath time.
And they're two little boys, so I put them in the bath together.

And there are some people who call you.

There are some sources.

You don't care about the safety of your children. You answer the call.

So they're in the water, and I'm thinking, this is not safe,

but I have to take this call.

So my thought was, all right, I'll pull the drain out,

turn the water off, and they'll just sit there.

They'll be okay. Yeah, they'll be a little cold.
They'll be a little cold. Well, I didn't consider a couple things.
So I take the call. I run and get like a notebook.
So I left them real quick because I have to write down the stuff that this person is sharing with me. And I'm so locked in on the information.
I kind of have half my eye on the boys. And then my two-year-old jumps and joey my one-year-old's just sitting in there and i look and poop and the two-year-old runs out and he goes poop poop and my one-year-old pooped in the tub so i let the two-year-old just run away because he just obviously didn't like it and then i just hear him go so then he throws up and by the way I'm still on the phone.
And I'm horrified that this person can hear it too. And thank God my husband walked in like a minute later.
And he just, you have to kind of decide in those moments when nothing's working. Am I going to cry or just laugh at this shit? Right.
So I just laughed. And he laughed too.
I was just like, what are we going to do? I'm supposed to be this senior insider getting this great story on the Eagles. That's good.
And by the way, he was very invested because it was the Eagles, right? Because I showed him who it was and he's like, oh, I understood why you took that, you know? You know, but what are you going to do? Poop in the bathtub is the worst. What is that? Why do they do that? I don't know.
I've had it a few times. Myself personally, I pooped in a bathtub and then a couple couple times with my kids as well.
And it's just like, you just panic. And you're just like, well, what the fuck? What do we do now? That was my thought, too.
And when it was happening, I'm like, where do I go first? To the two-year-old just running around the house? Or the one-year-old sitting in there? You got to get everyone out of the poop. You don't want them to eat it.
You got to get out of the poop. And then you got to figure out what to do with that.
Apparently, I'm around a lot of disgustingness. It's fascinating to me that you're not disgusted by the poop in the tub, but sitting next to

Max.

That's pretty stupid.

No, but I'll actually have Diana's back here.

There's something.

It's kind of like having a dog where it's like if you see another dog's poop, you're

like, but it's your own dog.

Your own kids.

I am so desensitized to everything.

It's just like whatever.

I've actually gotten really good at timing my son's puke and I'm like three for three on the last three getting them like to the sink or the toilet i'm like i'm pretty proud of myself watching toddlers puke is is well they don't do they don't they don't bend over they don't do anything just stand there yeah exactly just like in the middle of it's like an exorcism they don't say anything they just start puking wherever they are at that moment yeah so. So I actually had a question about this.
Because you, your mom of two, you work all the time. You're incredible at your job.
How do you do it? I don't know how you do it. I guess it may be a compliment, but it is insanely impressive.
Yeah. I lose my mind a lot.
You have to obviously have a good partnership and somebody that gets it. And I married the biggest football head in America who's never played football in his life, but he's just a big nerd.
So it helps because I needed somebody, I married someone that understood it. Um, that's not, I mean, I wasn't looking for that when I met him, but it just worked out that he happens to be, um, oddly obsessed with the NFL.
So I don't ever have to explain why I had to take calls why i have to do certain things in fact 90 percent of the time he's the one getting on me to be like you should get ahead on that or you know you know you should be calling right which is also very annoying but but but it's helpful in trying to balance it all yeah um but i like that he understands the importance and the significance of the work that you're doing it's like some some people marry like somebody that's creating a vaccine for like smallpox or something like honey your work is super important he's like you're working on figuring out if jason kelsey's coming back next year that takes priority over our entire night and he he doesn't really get mad when when i have to like get up from the table or as long as i share it with him because he loves to like know about it yeah like i've answered phone calls in the car on speakerphone yeah and he loves i actually have uh some sources that I'm tight enough now with. They I'll be like, Hey, I'm in the car cab.
And, and he'll like ask a question and I'll look at him like, shut the hell up. You are not allowed to talk just because we invited him.
Cause I made the person aware. So I have one question about your husband.
That's a very important question. I listened to you when you were on with our friend, Ryan Rosillo, who I think he's still our friend he has a weird uh rivalry with me which i didn't know about that he revealed on his life advice uh but when you went on rusillo's podcast you told the story that your husband was like prepping you and being like this is a big day because he's a big rusillo fan big one did he do the same thing for this or no he He doesn't care about us.
That hurts. Damn it.
That's tough. Well, can I tell...
He messaged me right before I got in. And all he said was, be nice to Max.
Okay. That's all he said.
Because that's the way people stuck together. What else is new? I was nervous that you were going to be like, no, he doesn't listen to this stupid show.
No, he still listens to you guys all the time. In fact, you know what he does do sometimes? Because I don't have the time to always listen.
You know, I love you guys. But he commutes a lot, which that's a whole other, man, God bless people who have to commute, especially an hour like he does.
So he'll listen to you guys and he'll just like shoot me a text if you guys had something good just to let me know. So that's cool.
All right, good. That's cool.
I have an embarrassing story about him. it's also tied into Rosillo so I remember when you went on your first date with him you called me and you were like hey I went on a date with this guy and we were talking about sports and I asked him who's one like sports media member that you think that you relate the most to and his answer was Ryan Rosillo yeah I said i said who and not at all but i said who just from like a like a personality standpoint who do you connect to the most like who and and he's like rusillo he just loves at the time i was thinking you know because first date you're putting on your best right you're charming and he was funny and he picked a hermit and he was in a good My husband, he's the most miserable dude ever.
Okay, so it counts. So he's Ryan.
That's why I also love Ryan. I'm obviously drawn to like grumpy ass people.
Max. And I think about it all the time.
I'm like, he told me what he was, right? It was, I chose it. He never lied to me.
He was like, I'm basically a leaner, you know. Ryan, I rayball over again you're going i sound like i am on his body shamer i'm going to ryan's body is banging no ryan is ryan's always been just yeah great looking in terms of his physique and all that and my husband is as well just it's he's not as yoked he doesn't have time right we've got kids and jobs and all that stuff so um but yeah he's he's a very grumpy human being and i'd like to try to be the joy in his life that's that's great that's very philly of him you've been around him you know he's like he's a good dude he he's okay.
He's a guy's guy. Yeah, he's okay.

Sure.

But you've been around my family, right?

Yes.

My family is psychotic.

They're high energy.

They want to have a good time.

And Kev does too, but Kev would rather be alone and just watch a game.

He just wants to watch the Phillies.

Do you know, though, that you're the craziest one in your family?

You think that your family is crazy, but I don't think you're aware of the fact that you're the most insane person in your family. Your sister is the most normal person in the world.
Your parents are lovely. They're a little bit crazy.
You are the crazy one in your family. So I remember PFT was going to come down to my beach house and I felt like I had to warn my parents of like what was coming to the house because...
That's nice. He's a little unique.
Yeah. So I said, Hey, I just want to give you guys a heads up.
You know, my, my friend's good to come down and hang out with us for the weekend. He's got a lot of hair.
He wears sunglasses all the time. Um, you know, and they just weren't really listening.
And when he walked in, they were like, what the fuck? Like, who is this? Who is this who is this person right so we wound up hanging out in like the backyard we're drinking beers and my neighbors start like freaking out that he's there and you know my parents are still like why do people care what does he do i said oh he's just he's just on the radio because they don't they don't understand like i have a podcast starting soon my dad thinks i'm going to be on the fan like he can't he can't separate it so now your competition oh well i thought we were on the same team we're at the athletic which by the way like some of the stuff that you put out the fact that you put it with the athletic now it's just it's so funny to me because sometimes it's believable i'm like this is kind is kind of good reporting that we do at the Atlantic. No, the, uh, no, I was the, uh, the Mark Davis fired Josh McCann.
He was using a fortune cookie from P.F. Chang's.
It's very believable. Did they get pissed off about that? I don't think they love it because it puts our name with false information when we work so hard to be accurate.
Yeah. Wow.
Except for when you lied about the Jets. I'll be putting out my Jets for traction.
Can I ask you a commander-specific question? So Justin Fields is going to be traded. We can say, like, probably, right? I think it's almost perfect.
I think at this point right now, it's going to happen. So the commander's probably taking Drake or Jaden Daniels with the second overall pick.
Is there any chance that that's not what the plan is and we're doing something else? Just based on talking to them this week, they're doing the typical, you know, we're going to do our homework on all of it. I don't think they have a clear-cut answer to what they want to do because there's still free agent veterans there too that could come into washington and washington could obviously trade out if they want depending on on if they're looking to build and get some more picks for the future now kurt cousins is really the story of all this right now in terms of who's going to land him because he's first domino for all of this i mean kurt going back going back to Washington, I mean, that would be – I actually think that would be a really good move.
That's just my opinion. Just because when you look at Dan Quinn, you have a first-year head coach, first-year GM.
Owner. Owner, right? You bring in a guy who, A, knows the city, but B, understands a winning culture, understands what needs to be done.
I think that would be a good first step for this group, but they may want to take a swing and see if they can get a rookie quarterback to step in there. But here's the problem.
You don't know, right? You have CJ Stroud. Oh, my gosh, that's amazing.
Of course, everyone knows that that's the dream. But on the other side of it, you have Bryce Young, and it's nothing against Bryce.
It's just he's going to need some time. He might need more than time.
I'm interested to see how aggressive Washington will be in the free veteran market because that'll kind of tell you where they sit on all this. Yeah.
For the record, I like Kirk Cousins. I think I've done a 180 on him.
You'd want Kirk Cousins back in Washington? I don't know because I feel like if you have this opportunity to take a great quarterback at the top of the draft, get him on a rookie deal, and then build around that, it seems like that's the right move for a franchise that's trying to move on and turn a complete page. You were there during the worst times of the Washington Redskins.
It's been very dark for us. And so having this opportunity to just move forward and start completely new, I feel like that's a good opportunity that would be hard to pass up now if it's kirk cousins to me that feels like they're like trying to win nine games it's like let's win nine to ten games and not try to build like a super bowl contender in the future i mean if that's how you want to look at it but i i see why not continue to stockpile these picks and keep getting better and better in all the different positions no matter what happens i'll spend myself into it i'll be like that was a great yeah that's how you're gonna be yeah you're gonna be into it which by the way i don't know jason right um do you want to meet him i just have never met him so today i see him pulling in or getting out of an uber and i went right out to him i I said, hi.
I said, Diane Rossini, I apologize.

It's taken this long for me to say hello to you.

And he said, hello, I'm Shane.

And then took a bag out of a car and kept walking.

I was like, oh my God, that was not Jason Wright.

I feel like the biggest idiot.

Can I give you a lifeline here?

Sure.

It was a white guy, right?

It was.

Yeah, that's tough. I know.

You just had a mistaken identity.

Classic.

Happens all the time.

Damn.

Oh my gosh.

Thank you. it was a white guy right it was yeah that's tough i know you just had a mistaken identity classic happens all the time damn oh my gosh i'm queen of it i do that all the time i the other day uh we had our athletic summit right so we're here in indy we have everyone just comes together and no one really knows each other because we all work remotely we know each other a little bit but not really so i was like you know i'm just gonna bite the bullet here i'm just gonna go up to people and say hey i'm d Diana how are you what's your name which team do you cover you know plus I'm the new girl so first person I decide I want to go up to is standing right by where like the fruit and the coffee is and I said I said hi I'm Diana who are you and he said I'm Sam I said oh great I said what do you do at the athletic he said I work at the Hyatt oh no oh are you okay yeah what's wrong with me i'm like yeah i can't pick out the right people maybe i'm blind maybe my eye doctor gave me the wrong prescription do do people at the athletic or maybe even at espn are they ever like uh we we report we study the game we watch film why the fuck do people listen to these two idiots yes everybody says that i say to I say it to myself sometimes.
I say it to myself all the time. On really stressful days, like it's free agency days, draft days, even playoffs, I put you guys on because the rest of it's so stressful to me that I'm like, I just want to like slowly start my day.
Feel smarter. Two guys that have no idea what they're talking about.
Exactly. Figure out how dumb these guys are and go the other way.
Yeah, right. That's smart.
Figure out how to go. That's really smart.
Get information so I can have the accurate opinion on it all based on all the gibberish that they say on this stupid show. It's a good palate cleanser for sure.
If you're getting too much, like if you get too down into the weeds and get too smart about football, I actually do think that it's important to remind yourself sometimes that the vast majority of people that watch the sport and pay attention to the coverage just like fucking football yeah and they're us yeah we're idiots yeah i'm starting this podcast i'm not going to try to compete with you guys i'll just be a friend of the show we'd squash you happens oh we well aware well aware but i'm gonna try um so we have a podcast coming up and that's essentially kind of like the tone i want i want it to be informative good football um using the stuff that i know but also kind of just talking regular stuff as well well i can give you a tip i would love some tip please if you want to keep it more casual do what pft and i do where we'll only read the headline of a story because we don't have like a subscription to a certain site. Yeah.
And then we just kind of guess what happens after. Are you subscribers to The Athletic? I am.
I am a subscriber. Yes, I am.
But there's some times where there'll be like a story and it's just like, well, I'll just read the first two sentences and then we'll just go from there. It's a good topic.
Yeah. It's actually not a bad idea because you see what the story is about and then you kind of choose your own adventure as what you think it was written and then you react to what

you think was written and you create a much more entertaining show that way out of pure

fiction.

Yeah.

No, there's a thing that has really helped me over the last few years.

It's credibility.

So I think that's probably some of the...

Non-memes' eyes.

Non-Doug Marone's eyes.

Why didn't Bill Belichick get a job? Why didn't he? Yeah, was it too big? I don't think Bill's that big. I think it was just his big attitude.
Just wanting things to be his way. I also think in Atlanta, that situation, ownership wanted him there.
And the other people on the other side of the football operation did not. Which is weird.
Why wouldn't... That's kind of what Shafter would...
Because then they lose their job. Yeah, but yeah, I get they lose their job, but I don't know.
That's just... Yeah, that's a bad way to run an organization is really what I'm going to say.
If Dave wanted to hire me to be on a podcast, which would mean that your podcast would get canceled, are you going to support my hiring? No. Well, no, we'd squash you like a bug exactly no but what i i guess more i understand the people who are selfishly acting for themselves and being like we don't want bill belchick as someone who roots for a dysfunctional organization and hopefully it's going in the right direction it always feels like a common trend when it comes to bad organizations it's a bunch of people trying to save their own job instead of thinking about the future of the team and how can we get better and like playing the blame game and being like well i didn't draft that guy you draft that guy and this that and the other that's just a bad way to run an organization it is but here's it is so hard to get one of these jobs right you know you you look at the guys that don't have now, and there's a lot of guys on the street outside Belichick and Vrabel who are really smart and should be back in football but can't get back in.
Yeah. So when you're in the spot, you're doing everything to take care of that so you last.
Right. But does that make sense for an entire organization? No.
No, it's dumb. Every owner should hate that.
Right. They should hate hearing that anyone would be in self-preservation mode but unfortunately these guys a lot of these guys have incredible salesmanship to them and they can get an owner to believe in them when that person is really just believing in what they want to do and what's good for them it's and it's very ironic because the reason why bell or part of the reason why belichick had so much success is that he was never thinking about keeping his job he was thinking about what's good for his football team and it's like if you see that why wouldn't you want that yeah and New England's so interesting now too because it seems that they are really pumping up this new way this new post Bill Belichick style gentler well I think they finally realized that um the Patriot way is just having Tom Brady on your team that's a big part of the Patriot way.
I don't necessarily agree with

all of that. I think Bill Belichick had a

gigantic part in all of this. Of course he did.

No, I'm not saying Belichick didn't have a big part

in it. I'm just saying the Patriot way when you

say, well, this is the way they do it.

They're kind of minimizing the fact that Tom

Brady's the best quarterback of all time and that's

a lot of the, like, you could do any

way, but if you have Tom Brady, you're going to be successful. It.
It was like, Andy. Is there a Chiefs way? No, they have Patrick Mahomes.
Well, I was just going to say, Andy Reid said yesterday, someone said, you know, what's the secret to having success? He's like, get a quarterback. Yeah, right, right.
Well, thank you. Yeah, Belichick's the best coach of all time.
I'm just saying, like. But there is a culture.
Yeah, there's a culture, but it's also Tom Brady being the best, and he sets a culture. So I think when people say Patriot way, outside of just the superficialness of the Super Bowl wins and Tom Brady, there is a language those guys speak, players and coaches, and this is just from being around it so much over the years.
I know within two seconds of talking to someone if they're New England. And that doesn't mean because they're cold or they're mean.
they're just a little bit more suspect at first. They don't overshare.
They're very detail oriented. They're usually really smart, actually.
I really like the New England way, but I prefer it, actually, because I see so many other sides and other guys trying to do it a different way. And outside of the Chiefs, I haven't really, and even maybe like mcveigh tree we'll call it who does it a little different but almost similarly um it works yeah but my counterpoint to that would be if the patriots decided to answer all the questions and and be like gregarious with the media it wouldn't matter because they still have tom brady possibly yeah possibly but i'm i think it's interesting that their attack on this is to talk about how they're going to be different.
Yeah, that part is interesting. They probably need to just go do it, right? Just go be the team that has eased up a bit and people want to be there to get free agents to come.
And that's probably what they're doing. That's smart.
Yeah, no, you're right. You're right on that.
So with the Patriot way, who would be your number eight ranked Patriot of all time? The show's coming out, what, Wednesday, right? Wednesday, so two is Friday, one is friday one is no 10 10 who's your 10th ranking patriots hank is hank's got a list going we've released one in episode he's doing number 10 when this show comes out so who is your number eight i'd say teddy brusky oh interesting he's actually hank's third number three he's higher a teddy would be mad that i put him so low as well yeah yeah but throw hank a little bit red meat here whether what are the patriots going to do i think the patriots are obviously exploring the quarterback market both free agents and draft i know that there's some free agents that they're interested in right now that they're having some conversations with their agents so i i still think they're doing the same thing that washington's doing kind of looking at the whole landscape to figure it out. But quarterback is very much what they're homed in on.
And they're also in for a stud receiver. I can tell you that.
Oh, stud receiver. So that could mean through the draft and bring on a veteran.
That could mean two free agents. I feel like you're so happy with this news, Hank.
Do you have any questions, Hank, about the Patriots? He's had a rough – we feel so bad for Hank. He hasn't won a Super Bowl in what, like four years, three years? Hank, literally, Diana, he's had it so great.
He didn't know how the draft worked. He thought that if he traded the third pick for the first pick, the Patriots would keep the third pick.
Yeah. He was like, we'll take Caleb Williams and Marvin Harrison I was like no if you trade the third if you trade up to the first pick you have to give up your pick not theoretically okay uh what are the chances they trade down I don't think very high I don't get the sense that they're trying to turn this thing around now.
The reports are coming

out, but I feel like that's just smoking.

You listened to Elliot Wolfe yesterday

talking about

the things that... Hank, do you know Elliot Wolfe? Yeah, I listen to him.

The things that...

So yesterday

he was talking about the type of quarterback

he's looking for.

I actually happened to... I didn't see it live.

I was sitting at a restaurant

looking up and I was reading the captions on SportsCenter

and so I see what he's saying. He's like,

Thank you. he's looking for and uh i actually happened to i didn't see it live i i was sitting at a restaurant looking up and i was reading the captions on sports center and so i see what he's saying he's like we don't want a type of you know we're going to look at a quarterback's body language um and someone was being very funny at espn they just used the b-roll of mac just like worst body language ever so it was like a little editorializing but essentially was yeah we don't want that like that's not the ideal quarterback that we're that we're looking to build around yeah okay well good news for you good news for you what's the other big store like you can't tell us what story your big story you're working on but like any big league things that you see coming that are gonna be a story i think the whole the fact that the went up, it was like very buzzy when I landed here because that does change how a lot of teams are going to operate.
I don't think significantly though, like immediately when I thought, oh, 30 million each team, wow, we're going to see more teams swing in free agency. But I think if there's any position that will probably see better business would be backup quarterbacks, especially after last year.
We see so many teams struggle uh by not investing in it that was the story of the year right invest in a backup quarterback um sorry um that was to me you know make that effort and uh in memes is well aware that they that they're telling uh zach wilson that he can go seek a trade you know so that the time is over there which yes which we knew so with the backup quarterbacks um the cleveland browns what are they going to do because they i think right now we can say unless something crazy happens and deshaun goes off for the next couple seasons uh maybe the worst contract in the history of professional sports maybe up there for one of them um what are they do they have any options are they just going to have to roll with Deshaun they they still believe in Deshaun that that's they're they're in on that that's ownership they're not going to even if Stefanski didn't want anything to do with anymore which is not true he wants to work with him they they're tied to this and they're going to try to make this work so I look I think there was moments last year where you're like, should the Browns sign Joe Flacco on a long-term deal?

Should he be the guy?

But I don't see that happening.

Although I will say, I talked to people close to Flacco, and apparently he just loved his time there.

He was blown away by Cleveland, wants to stay there.

So I don't see a world where he winds up there again.

But, you know.

Is he going to look for a starting job?

Is Flacco now like, I want to be the guy?

Yeah, in Washington.

Oh, shut up. No, no, I don't.

I think he knows where he's at. He knows his role.

He may wind up pulling off the same thing he did

last year. Why jump back in and do training

camp if he can just hang out,

wait for a team starting quarterback to go

down and then he can get the call and step in.

I'd say that obviously the salary cap thing is boring as hell,

but I'm interested in what the Steelers are going to do

at the quarterback position.

Are they interested in going with a Kirk Cousins,

bringing him in, Justin Fields?

There's a lot of chatter about that.

I don't see that happening.

I'm not saying it won't.

I don't see it.

It doesn't feel Steelers, right?

Yeah, he did say something like Heinz Field was his favorite place to play, which is weird. I don't know if anyone has it as their favorite place.
He did play that Monday night game. Patrick Mahomes gives a catch-up, probably.
Yeah, that's true. That's about it.
But yeah, I agree with you. That doesn't seem...
Yeah, it also feels like the Steelers would kind of be doing the same thing where it's like, now we have three quarterbacks again?. Like what are we doing? Yeah, three quarterbacks that we don't really know.
Right, right. So I do think obviously it's all Bears right now.
It's unbelievable how much attention. In fact, I talked to some people with the Bears right before I came here, and I was asking them how they're handling just all the pressure it feels, all the attention.
I mean there's reporters everywhere chasing them. And they seem pretty calm, I will say.

My sense was just like they're optimistic,

and if you think about it, they're in control.

Things are up.

Things are up for Chicago.

Draft goes through us.

Yeah, and we have the ninth pick too.

It's going to be so boring next year for the Bears

when they don't have the number one overall pick probably.

Well, what if we –

They're spinning all combine. We'd go like, fuck, this kind of sucks trade no one wants to talk to me we trade the ninth pick and then we get another number one pick root against another team you get you get all the number one picks i would just i i love having the number one pick uh all right i have one last question then we're gonna have steven che ask some questions this might be a dumb question but since you've gone from espn the athletic espPN you were obviously on air at games I assume you're not at games every single week so what does Sunday look like now it's amazing I do what you guys do I just sit on my couch do you have seven TVs and watching I don't but I do have a good setup now because I won so when I was at ESPN I was at one game right so my job was to be on sunday countdown cover whatever the biggest usually was like an afc whatever the biggest afc game of the weekend was but now i get to watch everything it's unbelievable it's so fun like it rocks i feel like you guys now like i can hear myself this is amazing this is what people are talking about because it's been almost 10 years since i was not doing football so to be able to just sit there and I love it.
Wait, are your kids in the house when you're watching on Sundays? Yeah, that is hard. Yeah, that is something we're trying to figure out.
You can come watch in Chicago. I leave at like 11 a.m.
and my kids are like, are you going to watch TV? And I'm like, yep. That's amazing that you've been able to work that out.
So we have a little bit of a deal in our house where Kev will watch the boys for all the games where the Eagles aren't playing that time slot. So I love when the Eagles have a night game because then I get the day.
Yeah. And then Philly can do their thing.
Okay. That's a good deal.
So it's worked out. And then the boys wear their little jersey.
They think every football item is Eagles. So they'll just, you know, they point to the Eagles, yeah no that's just eagles yeah i like that kids kids are dumb like that my son thinks that every team in chicago is the bears yeah it's just like we go by wriggling he's like the bears i went back and forth with how i wanted like i think about it a lot actually how i want to raise them because they don't have a choice they're gonna have to be eagles fans my my in-laws are season ticket.
They sit in the last row at the link, like closer to the Eagles in the sky. Yeah, yeah.
The Eagles on the ground, you know, one of those seats. So I have no choice.
I'm married into this. But I would really like Mikey and Joey to not be weird about it.
Because Philly people are very... Oh, that's not going to happen.
Yeah, what do you mean? Uncle Max will make sure they're weird. I just don't know how...
They're going to be painting their chest next year. next year i want them to just i want to love the sport in a way that's healthy that's a no i'm gonna stand up for kev here that's a no it's because it's a good sports town and also what's healthy is to be unhealthy about football the that's what's healthy for guys my household when the eagles win versus when they don't yeah Yeah.
It's incredible. Yeah.
Kev's 37 years old. He's a grown man.
Yeah, no. There's no reason you should be giving me attitude on a Tuesday because the Eagles lost to Washington on Sunday.
He's probably been through this a million times. It's with every sport.
Like Wisconsin lost last night to Indiana, and it ruined my night. Like, it ruined.
I was, like, grumpy, just, like, frowning. And, like, why can't I just not? It's just what we are.
Well, if you lose, if you're an Eagles fan and you lose on Sunday, then you spend the next, like, three to four days dodging articles. You just try not to read all the bad shit that's coming out.
It's like, oh, here's a new article. You have to pretend like you never saw it.
You look away.

You're on high alert to like,

I don't want to consume any content

regarding the game that happened on Sunday.

That's exactly what he does.

He will not look at his phone.

If I talk about, if I even say like,

hey, I heard that.

I don't want to know.

I don't want to know.

He's like, whatever.

Who cares?

It's just a stupid game.

He is a well-adjusted male.

I'll say that right now.

But again, like that's fine. But I'm past.
I'm never changing him But I have this opportunity With these boys To just make them good guys No, no Joey and Mikey the Eagles fans Nice guys finish last They're going to be some real shitheads on Sundays I went real creative on the the names. Max finishes two sodas.
Max, two sodas, baby. You want to get Che up here? Before Che...
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PFT, you have a rollback question? I just... It wasn't the Roback question.
It was just a question, but it will be the Roback question today. Power rank your favorite Jersey short bars.
Oh. I'd go Parker House, Bar A, The Osprey, and Leggots.
No DJs. No DJs.
I don't, I can't do DJs. Max is upset.
I can't do DJs. Why can't you do DJs? So I'm new to that.

So if you're from North Jersey, you stop at a certain area.

And if you're from Philly, you go to the South Jersey side.

So I'm still pretty new to it.

It's all the same disaster.

Except the only difference is you see Jason Kelsey out.

And he's everywhere.

But Max, is there a bar that you would say, I have to go see if I haven't? What's the bar you got kissed in by your dude? White Briar's amazing. Okay, that's fair.
White Briar. White Briar is what he's saying.
So no shower happy hour. This is what they do.
You just go right from the beach. You start drinking.
It's a good time. Yeah, this is stuff you did 10, like I did 10 years ago.
Not now, I can't do it. Yeah.
Although I did do it last summer. My sister-in-laws and I, we just said we were going to go to the bathroom to the guys and we went to happy hour and just didn't come back for two hours.
That rocks. That's cool.
It was actually the best thing we did. It was a good move.
Yeah. They didn't care.
All right, so I don't know if you ever met our junior draft analyst, Stephenven shea he was at one point a senior draft analyst but he's a junior draft analyst so he's been demoted steven is a football nut all he thinks about is the nfl steven what are your questions well i think we covered a lot of the nfl stuff i do have some like, I think NFL insiders are very interesting,

fascinating people.

Like I'm a huge,

I'm a Schefter stan.

Yeah,

I saw that picture.

It was very cute.

Does that make you sad to say that out loud?

No.

Dude,

Schefter's great.

Is it admiration or is it inspiration?

Admiration?

What is it about Adam that,

because I don't think a lot of people would be like,

man,

Adam's amazing.

He's good at his job, but no one wants. Yeah.
No, he looks up to him as a human being as a human being yep yeah do you think he's funny yeah I do yeah Adam chapter is funny yeah well he's not like selling out like Madison Square Garden for like comedy but I think he was probably that's great how much you love a night with Adam at MSg how much how much would you be willing to pay and this is like the full garden one man show the full madison square garden one night you have floor seats yeah i mean oh floor seats you had a couple hundred bucks and that's i mean what's the going rate for that i'm probably in the twos high twos high two figures no high two digits for like main standing or like not standing i don't know this concert will never happen so yeah okay so what's your question sure um so we actually talked at uh the jets facility right after you got the the athletic gig and something that i remember about that time and i'm sure is a struggle for people that leave the mothership, is what do you do with your Twitter handle? Because it was, was it Rossini ESPN? It was Diana ESPN. Diana ESPN.
And now it's DM Rossini. Yes.
So what was the process like to be like, okay, I got to drop the ESPN. What do I go with? So it's funny you bring this up.
This is the big question. Because I feel like you might have changed it twice.
This is the big question. It's funny you bring this up because players have asked me this.
Derek Henry came up to me at camp. I hadn't seen him in like six months.
He said, hey, I got to talk to you about something. I said, what's that? He said, your handle.
You got to change it. You don't work at ESPN anymore.
I said, it's been like three weeks. Like, chill.
So I came up with DM, but I realized after I agreed to it that it's very inviting. DM.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah, DM Rossini.

I didn't think this out, right? Change the DM feet pics Rossini.

Yeah.

It's like a prompt.

Be cool, everyone.

DM Rossini.

I'm asking for it, right?

Just like, come get me and send me nasty stuff, which, man,

some of my DMs are wild.

But yeah.

I mean, it was easy to change, but it was definitely a little bit

of a sad moment because I'd been dying to ESPN for so long. But DM now.
Good question, Stephen. Good question.
That was really important. Well, I noticed that, so I think that's – Do you want to know more about Adam? I can tell you everything.
Yes, I do. I do.
But actually, that is kind of my next question is, like, because you are the senior insider at The Athletic, you are the person there. There are natural rivalries between newsbreakers and insiders.
Like, we have Woj and Shams, obviously. Schefter and Rapsheet have kind of a built-in rivalry.
I don't know if they personally dislike each other, but they're at competing networks. What is your relationship like with other insiders? if somebody beats you to a scoop are you just like fuck fuck jay glazer like i hate that guy or like or are you internally like you know kicking and screaming or are you like all right great job oh no i motherfuck everybody um i'm competitive so it's not personal it's just damn they they thought to call that person first or man they were working that story harder than me i usually put it back on me of like what didn't i do that i didn't get it so living in that world is is dangerous too because then you just get down about it and it's so stupid that's another thing where like i'm so lucky i have a family has nothing to do with football like my dad's a plumber my brother's a plumber they don't give a shit about any of this.
And they'll see me like bummed out about something like who cares? Yeah. But in my world it is everything.
But our relationship, like all the insiders are actually pretty cool. Like everyone gets along.
I wouldn't say like we're best friends. Like I don't want to go hang out with Ian Rapport.
I have no desire. But I see Ian and I'm like what's up? And I think he's awesome.
He's great at his job. And Adam's obviously the best at what he does.
Adam's the king. There's no qualms about that.

There's no one better than him.

But I'm the only woman out here doing it.

That's where it's been a little different for me.

Off, queen.

No, it's crazy.

I give you the question about parenting and stuff.

What you do, it's insane to me.

You deserve all the credit in the world. No, I agree.'m still trying to get better too at it right because i wasn't doing it a full-time job at espn this is full-time now so the athletics been really good about they're just so psyched that we're doing these kind of stories now and i actually had a conversation with an insider recently and he was like are you nuts for writing these these dysfunction pieces? No one's going to talk to you anymore.
And I actually found the opposite. I think more people are talking now because there's a little bit of fear in, wow, this person is digging and they know.
And I don't want to get on their bad side. And I don't want to be that.
I don't want to be like a doom and gloom reporter. But I love this new role of being able to just uncover that that fans whether you know memes wants to hear it or max wants to hear about the eagles and their

dysfunction at times it's it's there and it's why they're not winning yeah so sorry god i just want

to follow up on that because you were you were saying that now you're like writing you were

reporting like basically on twitter on tv before now you're adding in like the writing thing it's

i think it's a mitch hedberg joke it's like going to a chef and being like oh you're a great chef can you also farm you know like two things that are tangentially related but like becoming a writer at this point in your career that seemed like a big ask that was the hardest part about it when they were like okay writing sucks they're like we want you to write i'm like what yeah the last time i wrote anything was just like my email password you know like i don't want to have to do that writing and reading you should be able to face scan correct yeah um then and just like anything else in life is like the thing that you're most fearful of is always the most rewarding when you're able to accomplish it so now i'm doing it all the time and i love i dread it it's like a it's like a report that we all did in school it's just like you dread it but there is nothing better than turning that that in right like when you when i press send to my editor i'm like peace like i love it and then especially when i see it published in the new york times or on the athletic it's it's worth it so yeah it's it's it's definitely been hard though sorry last question you obviously go and visit with a lot of teams and stuff like that. Today, the grades came out from I think it was the NFLPA with grading the different franchises in order of several different factors.
I don't want you to bash anyone, but who are your favorite teams to visit and are the most accommodating, have the nicest facilities, et cetera? I think asking a media person is difficult because we're going to base it on access, right? Like the PR staffs and the team. Not the buffet? Well, the food.
The food thing does annoy me. Like the Super Bowl's food, terrible.
Really? That would be, yeah, I'd base it on food. It made me so sad.
I was like, come on. The Super Bowl in Tampa, the COVID year, amazing.
Oh. So good.
Steve is a Bucs fan. So I would say the stadium outside of Dallas, so Dallas, Jerry obviously does it top notch.
Outside Dallas, the team that does it the best in terms of the kind of food I like is New England because they do pasta, they do lobster roll. They lean into who they are, right? There's some Italian, some seafood, and they take care of their media because they probably knew that they were gonna have the media is gonna have to deal with grumpiness yeah like let's feed these yeah let's feed these guys that's smart um but in in terms of just dealing with different organizations it's all over the spectrum you deal with some teams and they just make your job so hard they and then you deal with people like the chiefs who have every reason in the world to be arrogant and they're not.
They're great.

Patrick Mahomes

is really open to doing stuff.

So that's helpful. But then you'll go

to some teams that are not good at all.

And it's such a pain to deal

with.

But in terms of facilities,

the Jets actually have a beautiful

facility. I like

going there. And they feed you.
That's another thing, too.

They feed you at lunch.

I think I'm a little bit more like you than I thought.

Yeah.

If you feed me, I'm happy.

If you put out a good spread, nothing else really matters.

Yeah.

All right.

Good question, Steven.

Diana, thank you.

Like I said, it was long overdue.

And now that you're a recurring guest, we'll definitely have you back on in the football

season.

Good luck with the podcast.

What's the name of it? Scoop City. Scoop City.
More like Scoop Shitty. Uh-oh.
Is that? Are you scared? Scoop City. Is that Jack Mack? I actually was hoping.
Oh, no. I was.
We got a guy who is actually a very good reporter and he says Scoop City. Well, I wanted to reveal on the show my first guest.
I thought it'd be like a really good guest. Is it Jack Mack? No, it's Max.
Oh. Max is your first guest? Yeah, Max is your first guest.
Max is your first guest. A huge book.
All the listeners at The Athletic are like, what? Who is this guy? Yeah, it's just Max. We're just gonna, we're just gonna put the microphone next to his butt and just fart the whole time.
I'll be number one before you know it. He did finish the two sodas.
We gave him $600 we gave him $600 Good job Max Diana Rossini was brought to you by Pardon My Cheesesteak Big news from Pardon My Cheesesteak In honor of our boy Max and everything That he does for us They're running an exclusive buy one Get one promotion on all beverages This Wednesday through Sunday On Uber Eats only How about that?? That's right. Buy one, get one free.
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I want my order to the max. If you haven't checked out part of my cheesesteak in a while, they added over a thousand locations last year.
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I love part of my cheesesteak. I get it all the time.
It's delicious. No better couch meal in the world than part of my cheesesteak.
No better lunch than part of my cheesesteak i get it all the time it's delicious no better couch meal in the world than part of my cheesesteak no better lunch than part of my cheesesteak and now you can get two sodas buy one get one on sodas thanks to part of my cheesesteak order now on uber eats or part of my cheesesteak.com uh also i don't know if you guys saw this fedex is taking their naming rights away from the commanders effective immediately oh what do you guys think about part of my cheesesteak stadium i like it a lot should we

submit a bid i love that we're gonna submit a bid yeah let's get that bid submitted hank and then when it doesn't get approved we'll just be like we're banned from the nfl yeah the bad boy a cheesesteak.

Yeah.

By the way,

speaking of steaks,

breaking moves.

Breaking moves. Yeah.
By the way, speaking of steaks, Breaking Moose. Breaking Moose.
The one baseball player who keeps us all connected. Who is that? Schwarbo.
Schwarbo. The MLB did one of those TikTok videos, and they asked every single player on the video.
Obviously, it was like probably 35 players how they like their steak cooked. Kyle Schwarber, medium rare plus.
Okay. Love it.
Schwarber. And we love Kyle Schwarber.
We do love Kyle Schwarber. We love Kyle Schwarber.
We should do that. We should do that as a special.
Yeah, medium rare plus. What special? Like a part of my cheesesteak special.

Every cheesesteak would be medium rare plus.

We did order steaks in Indianapolis.

The medium rare was the exact same as medium rare plus.

No, it wasn't.

Yes, it was.

No, it wasn't.

Yes, it was.

No, it wasn't.

That's not true.

Hank, pardon your take?

Pardon your take.

Uh-oh.

A lot of reading.

I think Boston is going to become the new tortured city.

Oh.

The Pats are going to be weighed down by their terrible owner.

The Celtics have had recent success in the regular season,

but always will get face-fucked by the heat.

The Bruins are aging fast

and don't really have a strong chance of winning the cup.

What are your thoughts on that one?

That one's valid.

Although they're really good this season, so maybe not.

Yeah.

I just, the Bruins that I know aren't on the team anymore.

Yeah.

I'm going to get familiar with.

Aging fast.

Pasta.

Julia.

The Red Sox ownership paid their fans and are much more interested in selling the Fenway Park experience and playing good baseball.

That's a fact.

Red Sox owners suck. This totally could come back to bite me in the ass ass but I think the whole city is about to become the new Dallas Cowboys wow the whole city will become the Cowboys I mean you can't torture a city like I've won I think 10 plus championships since I was nine years old like you can't torture that's not torture if we don't win a championship for a few years the The Celtics are the favorites to win the championship this year.
The Bruins are in the top five, I believe, in standings in their division. Patriots, new coach, they're going to be really good.
Top three draft pick. Really good.
That doesn't sound torture to me. You think Patriots are going to be really good? It will happen at some point in your life.
Yeah, championship the next four years. Where everything goes down.
Is there a chance it's going down right now? No. Okay.
The Celtics are like the most fun team that I've watched since the big three. I love watching the Celtics.
They're fun to watch. It's going to be an exciting postseason.
Bruins, I hop on once we get into the playoffs. Max, he's got a crinkle in his face.
Hank, do you ever feel like the best years of your best years of your sports life are behind you though? I think that is a fact. There's no way that.
That's a fact. I'm okay with that.
Like the best sports years of my life were when I was like 16 to 25 and they were the most fun years of my life. I'm never going to, I can't replicate that.
Even if, even I would rather have had the best years of my life be at the age that they were. Then when I'm 30 in Chicago, you know? No, you're right.
That right. I got, I got the prime, the prime years were my life be at the age that they were than when I'm 30 in Chicago.
You know? No, you're right. That rocks.
The prime years were my prime years as well. And if the Celtics win a chip this year, then that extends that window another three to five years.
You're like, oh, we just recently won another one. Yeah.
What were you going to say, Max? You say that they can't be tortured. Would you say the current Cowboys fans are a tortured fan base? Yes.
The answer is yes. Yes.
Yeah, no, there's enough time. That's a long time.
Right, enough time. Yes, but that's what this person is saying, that it could trend in that direction.
By the time I'm 40 years old, we'll be tortured. Yeah, next thing you know, your quarterback's going to be shaving his head.
Right, but the Cowboys are tortured because they won. When was the last time they won? Ninety five.
Ninety six. Yeah.
So. But you would have said 40 like you're like when I'm 80 years old and dying.
I'm a tortured. If you don't win another championship in the next 20 years, you would you would be tortured.
Yeah, but I don't like I'll be I'll be old by then. OK.
Yeah, you will be. Yeah.
Being a tortured fantasy is. People get mad at it.
It's a young man's game. But like, I don't know.
There there's probably some old well yeah but if they've never that's like this sucks they've never they've never won because like hank is hank has experienced being a fan in the same years as like his potential athletic prime so now he's like looking at he's like yeah i gotta i gotta retire yeah i had a great run now I get to watch the other teams do it. Yeah.
I did. Okay.
All right. Next one.
Wait. Also, why can't you be a fan when you're older? No, I'm saying.
Yeah, no, you can. That's right.
But Hank's not looking at it that way. Hank's like, I'm retiring from being a sports fan.
I'd actually think. I'm going to do a press conference.
I'd like to thank the city of Boston. I also think that there's like, when you're older, it might mean just like it gets –

if you have kids and you're 30s and 40s, you got other shit,

your career going, maybe not paying as much attention.

But when you're 50, 60 and you got nothing going on,

your teams probably mean a lot.

That's what my dad looks forward to at night is going home

and watching the Villanova game or the Phillies game.

That's tough.

If I have kids –

I mean, that's tough. What you just described is tough.
What, seeing two national championships? No, but this year, I'm talking about this year. Well, I mean, we're playing good ball right now.
Okay, yeah, put a future on them. Phillies haven't really upgraded, but it's fine.
Okay. If I have kids and then the teams go through hardships, maybe by that point it will be torture.
Yeah, but this is kind of like the last dance for you, Hank. It's not.
You can't. One final chance at a chip.
Jason Tatum is 26. He's 18.
Okay. It's 19, bud.
Sup, King Cat, P.F. Tits, Golf Boy, Mr.
Positions, and Double Soda Don. What does P.F.
Tits mean? I don't know. Dan Hurley drinking what looks like piss before every game had me thinking would you guys drink your own piss before every game of the season if it meant your team would go 17 and 0 and win yes yes without a doubt are you kidding me it's the easiest question ever definitely jake you would drink piss you would not that's a lie oh no if i was the coach of that team oh no we're talking about his fans fans yeah Actually, the question might have been like if you were a coach, but we'll just's a lie.
Oh, no. If I was the coach of that team.
Oh, no. We're talking about as fans.
Oh, as fans. Yeah.
Fair enough. The question might have been like if you were a coach, but we'll just say like as fans.
Yeah, no, as fans, I would do it. Easy.
I would drink piss every fucking Sunday just to have the Bears be in the playoffs. Don't even guarantee me anything, but just be like you guarantee the playoffs.
That would be piss every Sunday, no matter what. Wake up.
Mwash, piss. I agree.
I would do it actually every day.

Yeah.

Not even every Sunday.

You should just do it next year.

Yeah, maybe we will.

Maybe we will.

Tell me I won't, Max.

Yeah.

Tell me I won't again.

I think you guys are all talk.

I don't think we'll drink your own piss next year.

Yeah, maybe we will.

I'd drink Max's piss for a Super Bowl.

That's too far.

His toilet can't even do that. Yeah.
I eat so much asparagus. All right.
Hey, fellas, I'd like to draw your attention to one of the biggest conspiracies in modern college athletics. Did you know that the one and two seed in the WCC tournament automatically start in the semifinal and get three buys? Yeah.
This means that basically every year all Gonzaga has to do to guarantee a tournament berth is win two games.

Well, no.

That's not all they have to do. Even with this ridiculous format, Gonzaga has still failed to ever make a single Final

Four.

It's truly shocking.

Love the show.

But they would have to get that bye.

Yeah, right.

Saying like, oh, well, Gonzaga only has to win two games.

They have to win all the games in the regular season to get the one in the two seed.

Max pulled up the visual.

It's a great looking graphic. Yeah, no, it is.
It's a greater than it. But I like how they do it.
It makes the regular season to get the one in the two seed max pulled up the visual it's a great looking graph yeah no it is it's a greater but i like how they do it it makes the regular season mean a lot more yeah yeah no it's not a conspiracy um it is kind of crazy but it's not a conspiracy looking at the bracket makes me think it's more of a conspiracy because that is a shocking bracket well it's just you got to play well in the regular season yeah and they only have nine teams okay next all right last one i'm so fucking sick of sean payton getting away with being a bad head coach name another coach that gets away with throwing his team under the bus wasting the rough seasons and being so bad that nobody wanted to buy his contract so he had to go on tv for a few seasons he gets away was too much for winning only one super bowl with breeze as quarterback bill belichick gets for being a far superior coach, but Sean is the same guy with much worse accolades. Was this written by Hank? What does Sean Payton know? This is written by Roger Goodell, I think.
I actually kind of agree with this take. I kind of agree with this take.
I'll say this about Sean Payton. He's too miserable all the time compared to what he's done.
Like, you have to earn the right to be that ornery all the time and that pissed off at your own players. Yeah.
I don't – like, the way that he treated Russell last year, who, by the way, was not very good. I'm not, like, going to stand on the table for Russell Wilson, but, like, everything was Wilson's problem last year.
Right. Even when it wasn't.
Like, that game against the Lions on Thanksgiving, when he was like, yeah, it's your fault that this happened and turned out that it wasn't at all. He needs to tone down the pissed offness like a couple notches until he gets to the playoffs again.
It's also a great lesson that if you can win a Super Bowl with a franchise that everyone assumed was never going to win a Super Bowl, you do get way more grace than if you win a Super Bowl with the Cowboys or the Steelers or the Packers. That's a fact.
Yeah. Mike McCarthy and Mike Tomlin win a Super Bowl with you know the Cowboys or the Steelers or the Packers like that that's a fact yeah but also Mike McCarthy and Mike Tomlin have a Super Bowl and they're talked about completely different than Sean Payton because Sean Payton won it with the Saints I think Sean Payton could have been that pissed off and and and like thrown his team under the bus if he stayed in New Orleans yeah but now they's in Denver I think yeah now now it might turn on him yeah if he doesn't if he doesn't, it will turn on him.
Also, Hank, I just remembered you said that the Red Sox ownership doesn't care about the fans at all. Are you excited at all about Theo? Theo's back.
Did you know that Theo was back? No. Yeah.
Theo's back. Yes.
I mean, they haven't signed anyone. They don't do anything.
Well, he's not back. He's like with the ownership group.
So he's not like the red sox gm the ownership group does not care about but he will i think they care about golf they care about soccer they care about nascar nascar they care about everything but the red sox yeah they started it's the fenway group they started with the red sox and now they're on to bigger better things and they know that the they'll sell out they'll still get a lot of money from people coming to games

even though they suck. So why bother?

Yeah. It's a shame.

It's tough. Okay.

Good show, boys. Great interview

coming on Friday with Pat Bev.

Awesome, awesome interview.

In person.

Numbers. 40.

20.

18. Oh, shit.
Did I beat you to that? 77. Three.
Wait, wait. What? Are you looking up Jason Kelsey's number? No.
No, you already said your number. I know.
Pug 99. 99, Pug.
Okay, here we go. And Shane's got 21.
He's at a doctor's appointment But he sent me that Beautiful

What is it

I wouldn't be shocked

If Pug actually goes to a vet

Just sitting next to like a doodle

In the waiting room

Panting

11

I thought that was 77 11 Love you guys Panting. Eleven.

Eleven. I thought that was 77.

Oh, it's eleven.

Love you guys. I don't know what to say I'd say it anyway Today is my day To find you shining away I'm coming for your love again Shining away I'm coming for your love again Take on me Take on me Take me Take on me.P.A.
Take me on the A.P.A. Take me on the A.P.A.
Take me on the A.P.A. Take me on the A.P.A.
Take me on the A. Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Needless to say. Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah. It's okay.
is okay Say after me Life's no better to be safe than something Say after me Life's no better to be safe than something Hey, don't leave me Say, oh, say, oh Say, oh I'll be gone, I'll be gone Things that I say Every little I hold Just to play my memory in the way You are things I've got to do in the way Shine away I'm coming through the daylight Shine away I'm coming through the daylight Take on me Take on me Take on me Take me off Take on me Take on me Take on me Take me off Take on me I'll bring you

Take me up, take me up