Mark Schlereth In Studio, NFL Divisional Round Preview + Fyre Fest Of The Week

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Speaker 1 On today's part of my take, we have our old friend Mark Schlerith in studio. Great interview with him talking about the NFL divisional round.

Speaker 1 We break down offensive line play, talking about run games, talking about who he likes the most, and also his badass dad.

Speaker 1 We are going to break down every single game for the divisional round. Great weekend of football ahead of us, and then we'll finish with Fire Fest.

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Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 1 let's go.

Speaker 1 to be done.

Speaker 1 No place to hang out or washing,

Speaker 1 and then I can't blame all of the suns. Oh, no, we're gonna rock it down to Electric Avenue,

Speaker 1 and then we'll take it higher.

Speaker 1 Oh, we're gonna rock it down to Electric. Part of my take

Speaker 3 presented by Barstone.

Speaker 1 Welcome to part of my take.

Speaker 1 Today is Friday, January 20th, and we have the NFL divisional round, which in my estimation is the best weekend in the NFL schedule.

Speaker 3 I'd say it's close. It's a toss-up between this and Pro Bowl weekend, the pageantry, the flag football game, which is actually a flag football game this year.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Eli versus Peyton.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's going to be incredible to watch. But no, this is, I'd say this and wild card weekend.
Excuse me, super wild card.

Speaker 1 Super wild card weekend.

Speaker 3 Super divisional round weekends, also pretty great.

Speaker 3 I can't choose. It's like choosing between your children.

Speaker 1 It's just something about it. I think what it is, is if you get, like, when you think about football and your memories, you remember the championship games.
So it's like getting, you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 You obviously remember the Super Bowls, but you always kind of remember the championship games.

Speaker 1 So getting a ticket to that memorable spot, like a Final Four spot, feels so huge for the team, the fan base, everything.

Speaker 1 And you get four matchups. All these games feel like they're going to be great games, tight games.
I'm just, I'm so fucking excited. I just love football.

Speaker 3 You know what? This weekend, maybe more than ever that we've seen recently, has some of the premier logos in football matching up against each other. The Giants and the Eagles match up.

Speaker 3 NFC Beast rivalry, that's going to be incredible. The Cowboys and the 49ers,

Speaker 3 too iconic. And maybe it's like a little bit of nostalgia first.
Oh, it's definitely.

Speaker 3 Because thinking back to my childhood, besides Super Bowls, I'd say NFC Championship games are maybe the ones that I remember the most.

Speaker 1 Right. In some sense, these two teams.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Bills, Bengals, feels like late 80s, early 90s. Yep.
The Jaguars being the Jaguars.

Speaker 1 I'm in on the Jaguars just being the team. Like we've talked about endlessly.

Speaker 1 They just pop up and they spoil the party every few years. And it's like, maybe it's this year.
I don't know.

Speaker 3 I'm going to be jagging off on Saturday.

Speaker 1 I'm going to probably be jagging off as well. So, all right.
So some business we got to get to, and then we're going to get to every single game. Billy's going to the game.
So,

Speaker 1 the bet that never died, Billy's going to the game. It has nothing to do with the bowling bet.
Billy's going to the game, and it's a big test for Billy football and his maturity. He just turned 24.

Speaker 1 He's going to the game, he's going with memes. He's promised two pieces of content,

Speaker 1 multiple

Speaker 1 controls is that two? So that means

Speaker 1 one and a half content. Yeah, I'm taking the over.
Yeah, over one piece of content from Billy from this weekend. And the deal is going to be he's going to make a video, a vice video about Chiefs fans.

Speaker 1 We're going to put it on the part of My Take YouTube. And if it gets 100,000 views in the first five days that it's posted, he will get fully reimbursed for the trip.
Fair? Very fair. Very fair.

Speaker 1 I think you can do it.

Speaker 4 I'm very confident, very excited. I'm actually really thankful for the opportunity.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. I mean, it'd be great.

Speaker 3 There's still a chance that I just decide to go myself on Saturday morning.

Speaker 4 You're not allowed to hang out with me. Because I want to create the content individually.

Speaker 3 You're not allowed to hang out with me.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

Speaker 3 I got so many people

Speaker 1 from people in Kansas City.

Speaker 3 I never even wanted to.

Speaker 1 He said it for me. I'm just saying.
Fine. You know what?

Speaker 3 You're not invited to my birthday party anymore, Billy.

Speaker 1 Seriously? No. Yeah, sorry.
I'm not coming.

Speaker 3 You just talked your way out of it.

Speaker 1 Sorry. I already RCVP.

Speaker 3 I got so many good suggestions on places to drink beer and eat meat in Kansas City.

Speaker 1 I might just wake up on Saturday morning and hang out with me. Oh, you say YOLO.
You should just send those to Billy just so he knows what places to avoid. Stay away from the phone drinks and

Speaker 4 these places. Yeah, so we wouldn't even hang out anyway.

Speaker 3 So, yeah, I'm pumped to see what you come out of this with. I want to know more about the Kansas City Chiefs Super fans because it seems like breaking bad as a fan base.

Speaker 3 Seems like everybody's doing meth, committing crimes. I want to know more about them as people.
And I want to see Billy get in and get out of a place without getting drunk.

Speaker 4 I have a Charlie Day pin board of the different Kansas City Super fans. How'd that work out for him?

Speaker 4 Not good.

Speaker 1 You're like Claire Danes. Verbal means.
You know the episode where he lost his mind and they're like, there is no Pepe Sylvia? You have that.

Speaker 4 But Verbal mean, me, Charlie Day, pinboard wall, different Kansas City Super fan Instagram account.

Speaker 1 Charlie Day is one of Billy's

Speaker 1 heroes. I looks up.
He's amusing.

Speaker 3 Have you ever seen Homeland with Claire Danes? Because that's similar to what she does. She goes psycho.

Speaker 1 Hall of Fame crier.

Speaker 3 Crier deep breather. She has a septum problem just like this.

Speaker 1 This is Bromeland with Billy football.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So I'm excited, Billy. Let's see over under the amount of beers you drink on Saturday.

Speaker 4 Well, it depends on if.

Speaker 1 Can't answer that correctly. Literally.

Speaker 4 It depends on

Speaker 1 certain challenges

Speaker 1 that arise. You could have just said over under half a beer, smash the under, and I wouldn't have known.

Speaker 3 Or it's like Billy's essentially saying, I'm probably going to get asked to drink a beer at some point by somebody, and it'd be rude of me not to drink that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it'd be like going to someone's home and not taking off your shirt. Well, let's say you're trying to infiltrate a group of super fans.

Speaker 3 You got to act like them. You got to hit the pipe.

Speaker 4 Like, yeah.

Speaker 1 All right, so if you drink five beers, you have to also rob a bank. Yes.
Okay. That's fair.
Yeah. And smoke meth.
Yes. And make meth.
And get into a fight. We got to.
And an orgy.

Speaker 1 A lot of things you got to do on one Saturday.

Speaker 4 I'm doing CIA rules.

Speaker 1 When are you flying there?

Speaker 4 Friday, so there's stuff planned for Friday.

Speaker 1 Okay, good. I was going to say,

Speaker 1 I was worried that maybe you'd land at noon on Saturday and be like, all right, let's go do it. And it's like, everyone's ready to go into the game.

Speaker 3 I heard memes planning with him. Memes is keeping Billy on a pretty short leash this weekend.

Speaker 1 This is his first

Speaker 1 NFL game. Yeah.

Speaker 4 It's going to be a tour de force.

Speaker 3 A tour de force. Billy,

Speaker 3 you need to work on underpromising and over-delivering.

Speaker 4 I know.

Speaker 1 It is a weakness.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 It's going to be chill.

Speaker 1 It's going to be chill. Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's going to be chill. Jackson Mahomes, if you're listening, try to get into TikTok.

Speaker 3 We need you to find Jackson Mahomes.

Speaker 1 Oh, actually, I'll throw that in there. You don't even have to get 100,000 views if you get an actual TikTok with Jackson Mahomes.

Speaker 4 I was thinking about that.

Speaker 1 That's your golden ticket. Okay.
So

Speaker 1 if all else fails, you've got to find Jackson Mahomes and do a... I want a Wiggle Dick TikTok.
It's got to be dancing.

Speaker 4 He hasn't done a TikTok in a very long time. So then

Speaker 1 you got more, yeah.

Speaker 3 You got to do a coordinated dance with him.

Speaker 1 You're like the guy who found Bobby Fisher. Exactly.
I don't know. I watched that movie.
I don't know if that's actually. Oh, you're the guy who got.

Speaker 1 Who's

Speaker 1 the guy who made the workout videos who's stuck in his house? Oh, Richard. Richard.

Speaker 3 Sherman.

Speaker 1 Dreyfus. No, I was going to say Pryor.
Come on, guys. I got COVID.
Richard. What Geer? Some G.
No, Richard. What do you do? Richard Gere? No, Richard Simmons.
Simmons, Simmons.

Speaker 1 We're really smart.

Speaker 1 Also,

Speaker 1 you got him out of your house. Yeah, out of his house.

Speaker 4 Do you have any leads? DMs are open. That was,

Speaker 1 hey, can people do my work for me?

Speaker 3 No, no, no, but like, there's always a lot of people.

Speaker 1 You're an investigative journalist.

Speaker 4 Yeah, but you need anything is great.

Speaker 1 Okay, and

Speaker 1 let me just say right now,

Speaker 1 stop right now what you're thinking.

Speaker 1 Do not send him fake leads that will

Speaker 1 get this whole investigation confused. So don't send him places that aren't real, and don't tell them to go places.
Don't do that.

Speaker 1 Don't you dare do that, people.

Speaker 1 Don't do that.

Speaker 3 So this is just a small sample of some of the DMs I've gotten for stuff to do in Kansas City. Check this out.

Speaker 3 You should stop by. I've got a nice apartment you can crash in.
We have plenty of Coors Light and complimentary pot.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 3 So don't go to this guy's.

Speaker 1 That sounds like you have to pay for the beer.

Speaker 3 That's true. Plenty of Coors Light.

Speaker 1 They would have said compliance beer.

Speaker 3 And I bet it's really bad weed.

Speaker 4 Don't smoke weed, sir.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you got to pay for everything else except the weed.

Speaker 1 Okay, that's one order of business. Sweet.
So good luck, Billy. I'm excited to see what comes of this.

Speaker 4 Two videos, I promise.

Speaker 1 Okay, over one. Just say over one.
Over one video. Because what if you make three? 0.5.

Speaker 3 1.5. I'm underpromising.

Speaker 1 Oh, over 15.

Speaker 3 You're going to come back with at least a video.

Speaker 1 A video.

Speaker 1 A single video. And then the other one is we're doing the Ray Allen bet.
So this is winner gets to tweet the Ray Allen tweet and then not discuss it for 24 hours.

Speaker 1 Hank, Max, myself, PFT, and Billy are all in. It's going to be very simple.
It's elimination. Everyone gets one pick this weekend.
Whoever wins gets to go to the next one.

Speaker 1 And then we'll finish it with a super b if we get to the Super Bowl, there's multiple people. We'll do props and stuff, whatever it is.

Speaker 1 But everyone has one pick that they love for the weekend that we'll get to as we go through the games. You can shout out your one pick.

Speaker 3 And no, no cheating on this. So I'm mentally going to make my pick.

Speaker 1 I've already made my pick.

Speaker 3 I've got my pick locked into my brain

Speaker 1 now. Okay.
Now.

Speaker 1 I've had my pick locked into my brain since Monday and it might, or Tuesday, and it might be a game of the year. Now.

Speaker 4 Okay. I've been switching between two picks back and forth.
Nice.

Speaker 1 Like the reality.

Speaker 4 But I might be there soon.

Speaker 1 Nice. Nice, nice, nice.
And winner gets to tweet it. It's going to be fun.
All right, let's get into the games.

Speaker 3 I have my pick, too. I know.

Speaker 1 Okay. All right.
Yeah, yeah. Good.

Speaker 1 We'll get to your game at the end.

Speaker 3 It's the last in chronological order, We know that. We'll get the schedule of the weekend.

Speaker 1 We know you're.

Speaker 1 No, you don't. Oh, okay.
I actually do. There's one or two that could be.

Speaker 4 Really quickly, thank you to everyone who retweeted the video to get to 2,500 retweets for 15 seconds. We did do it by the end.

Speaker 4 There was a lot of evidence. We tried to get, we actually probably hit it a couple times.
So thanks, everyone, who did it. We did it.

Speaker 3 We did it, Joe. Yeah, my favorite part of Billy's video was the very first word of the video was a lie.
Literally the very first word.

Speaker 3 It started out, it's like nice dramatic music, camera panning in, and Billy goes, centuries ago, football was invented.

Speaker 4 Football was invented centuries ago.

Speaker 3 I guess two? Century.

Speaker 1 Well, no, it's more than 100, right?

Speaker 3 It's 100.

Speaker 3 It's over 100 years. Centuries means 200 years.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I guess that would be. Well, it's in the second century.

Speaker 3 There are as many centuries as videos Billy will be making over this video.

Speaker 1 But we are in the second century of football.

Speaker 4 19th century? Yeah.

Speaker 3 20th century. But you can't say 21st century.
But you don't get to say centuries ago if it's not two. Well, that's two.

Speaker 1 It was

Speaker 1 spanned multiple centuries. 20th century.

Speaker 1 It spanned multiple centuries.

Speaker 3 But it's not centuries ago.

Speaker 4 You know, I think you might be wrong on this one.

Speaker 3 I think that you're doubly not invited to my birthday party. You're not invited next year.
That means double double.

Speaker 1 You're not invited next year. Sorry.
See ya.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Jaguars Chiefs. The game Billy's going to be at.
Right now it's sitting at

Speaker 1 Jaguars plus 9,

Speaker 1 and over-under is 52.5. I think we might have snow in this game.
Did I hear that?

Speaker 1 Weather might be not real.

Speaker 4 Yeah, 38 degrees.

Speaker 1 Snow.

Speaker 3 Slightly slower.

Speaker 1 If you get to go to a snow game, that's going to be so sick. Damn it.
Arrowhead.

Speaker 3 I'm concerned now about the Jaguars. The Jaguars are a lot of things, but a warm weather team, or excuse me, a cold weather team, they're not.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And I'm still going to say fuck it and bet on the Jaguars because Trevor Lawrence Saturday. They just seem like a team that fucks everything up.

Speaker 1 So I'm pretty confident the Chiefs are going to win this game, but

Speaker 1 they don't cover big spreads, and the Doug Peterson aspect always like...

Speaker 1 Doug Peterson has reached a level for me coaching where it's like, they always got a chance.

Speaker 1 They always got a chance with Dougie P.

Speaker 1 Doing some crazy shit.

Speaker 3 When he he moved in to Philadelphia and he became the coach of the Eagles, do you think he felt like a little

Speaker 3 how much of the Philadelphia front office was like customized Andy Reid stuff that Andy had set up around the he got his chair just the way that he likes it? Yep. The setup.

Speaker 3 Dougie P probably had to go in there and rearrange the entire office.

Speaker 3 I don't know if there's like a little bit of animosity if Andy Reid doesn't like Dougie P because he he filled his shoes in Philadelphia.

Speaker 3 But Andy Reid off of a bye is just unstoppable. Dougie P in the playoffs is kind of unstoppable.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 3 It seems to me like this is all pointing to the Jaguars making it a fucked-up game, covering the spread, Chiefs advanced.

Speaker 1 So remember, these two teams did play each other. This was before the Jaguars went on their winning streak.
I think it was like week 10 or 11.

Speaker 1 And it was the game, so the Chiefs won by 10, but it was also the game. Dougie P started the game with an onside kick.
They recovered it.

Speaker 1 I think also the Chiefs had a couple turnovers, and the Chiefs still won by 10. So So it feels like they might have already pushed it as far as they can.

Speaker 1 And I am worried about the Jaguars' past defense against this Chiefs' offense. It does feel like quite a mismatch.
And Mahomes, I mean, we just always forget about it.

Speaker 1 We just need to remind ourselves it's Patrick Mahomes at home. He's never lost.
Although he has lost at home. But he hasn't won on the road.
He hasn't won on the road, but he at home in this round.

Speaker 1 I feel like he, I mean, this would be the fifth straight AFC championship game the Chiefs are going to if they win this game. I think it's insane.

Speaker 3 I think they're going to win, and the Chiefs are very, very good. I just don't want to discount the Jaguars yet because they're liable to do some fuck shit in this game.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, and they will empty the tank. There will not be a trick play that goes unused in this game from Doug Peterson.

Speaker 1 Yes. So anyone have a pick on this game?

Speaker 4 Chiefs, Jags over 52.

Speaker 1 Okay, over 52 and a half. That's Billy's pick.

Speaker 1 Yeah, this game, all these games are awesome. I also love that we have eight teams left, and you can kind of poke a hole in all eight.

Speaker 1 Some of them you can poke in an even bigger hole, but it doesn't feel like we have one team that is so dominant that is just going to cakewalk to the Super Bowl.

Speaker 3 Yeah, Max, how do you feel as a Philly guy? Who do you side with more? Doug Peterson or Andy Reid?

Speaker 1 Oh, good question.

Speaker 1 Thank you.

Speaker 6 Doug Peterson.

Speaker 3 You said that like it was obvious. I mean, Andy Reid was a great guy.

Speaker 6 I know Andy Reid is an all-time Eagles legend, but...

Speaker 1 Andy Reid kind of set the bar.

Speaker 6 I love Andy Reid.

Speaker 1 Don't get me wrong. Sounds like you don't.
Sounds like you really don't.

Speaker 3 Put the camera on yourself.

Speaker 6 The camera is all myself.

Speaker 6 You guys love putting words in my mouth.

Speaker 1 Hank, Hank, Hank can agree.

Speaker 1 Don't, don't.

Speaker 3 He is your enemy. I would say without Andy Reid, there is no Doug Peterson in Philadelphia.

Speaker 6 But rings are rings.

Speaker 1 It's like Super Bowl. Flags fly forever.

Speaker 6 Flags fly forever. There's a statue of Doug Peterson outside of the link.
There's not a statue of Andy Reid.

Speaker 3 There should be a statue of Andy Reid.

Speaker 6 I don't hate that idea either, but right now there is one of Doug Peterson.

Speaker 3 A bigger statue of Andy Reid wearing his Michelin man coat.

Speaker 3 I love this time of year for Andy Reid because Andy has, believe it or not, he's slimmed down a bunch over the last like five, six years. He still likes a good cheeseburger.
We know that.

Speaker 3 He's still like a fat guy at heart, but he's lost a lot of weight recently. But when he gets cold, when he bundles up, he still has the old fat coach that he puts on.

Speaker 1 He looks like the stay puffy.

Speaker 3 Yeah, he looks like the Andy Reid of old, which is always fun to see. And we've talked about this before, but I think it's been a while.

Speaker 3 A fat coach has never won a Super Bowl besides Andy Reid.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Right?

Speaker 3 Like Mike Holmgren is probably the closest.

Speaker 1 He was skinnier than.

Speaker 3 And when Ballpark knows

Speaker 1 when he won a Super Bowl, Belichick has gotten a little heavier, but he's, I wouldn't call him fat.

Speaker 3 No, I don't think that a fat coach, a truly fat coach, has won a Super Bowl.

Speaker 1 I guess Mike Holmgren, he was chunky, but he got bigger as the years went on. But he was chunky-ish when he won it with the Packers.
But yeah,

Speaker 1 for the amount of mass that is involved in football,

Speaker 1 you'd think more fat coaches would win.

Speaker 3 Yeah, when Andy won, he was a big boy, but he wasn't the Andy of old.

Speaker 1 Yeah, what are you going to say? Am I crazy?

Speaker 4 Did John Madden not win a Super Bowl?

Speaker 1 Yeah, but he was actually kind of jacked. Not jacked, but he was.
He just.

Speaker 1 I wouldn't ever cons.

Speaker 1 Was John Madden fat? I'm looking.

Speaker 1 I think he was just big.

Speaker 3 He was definitely fat for his time.

Speaker 1 Like, is David Baker fat?

Speaker 3 No, I think he's just.

Speaker 1 I think he's just big.

Speaker 3 He fills out his frame.

Speaker 3 John Madden was overweight when he won the Super Bowl, but he would, I would not call him fat.

Speaker 1 Also, that was back when like overweight was like a sign of power.

Speaker 3 Look at this, Billy. Here's a picture.

Speaker 1 It should be today, but it doesn't.

Speaker 3 Here's a picture of John Madden on the sidelines.

Speaker 1 All the Instagram influencers, oh, skinny's in. No, no, no.

Speaker 1 Being fat means that you're well-fed, means you're rich, means you have power.

Speaker 3 Did you see that one dude's post a couple weeks ago about how small penises are actually the most beautiful thing in the world? Yeah, they're cute.

Speaker 3 And back in the old days, back in the classic days of your.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's not. He's not that fat.
He's not that fat. He's a big guy.

Speaker 4 But his pants are high-waisted, so you can't see.

Speaker 1 Okay, so a couple fat coaches have won the Super Bowl. It's rare.
It is rare.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 So that game,

Speaker 1 Billy has one pick on that game. Next game up.

Speaker 1 It is Saturday night. It's going to be a war.
Giants plus seven and a half in Philadelphia. Over-under is 48.
I've done some prying, Max.

Speaker 1 I've heard some reports that Jalen Hurts is looking good, feeling better. So that's good.
I did your job for you.

Speaker 6 Lane Johnson, I've heard, is just.

Speaker 6 I heard that he lifted a 325 pound man off the ground today, and that is growing. It's just fantastic.

Speaker 1 Wait, I thought it was his stomach. No, it's thigh.
It's his thigh?

Speaker 6 Leg, thigh growing.

Speaker 1 Stomach.

Speaker 6 I don't think it's stomach.

Speaker 1 I think it's leg. Sounds like hip.

Speaker 6 Could be hip.

Speaker 1 Hip saddle area. It's leg.
But he lifted a 325 men

Speaker 6 better than expected.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 1 think that's my pick, by the way. Okay.
The Eagles or the Giants? Oh, I'm going to go with the Eagles. The Eagles.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Now, this might hurt me because

Speaker 1 I'm going to poke a hole in the Giants, and I know that the Eagles, the Eagles have been talked about, obviously, all year,

Speaker 1 didn't play anyone. You know, they're frauds.
There's been some conversation about that. I do not think they're frauds.
But the Giants,

Speaker 1 I just want to list their wins just so that we can remember this for a second. They beat the Titans a bad Titans team week one.

Speaker 1 They beat the Panthers a bad Panthers team, a really bad Panthers team week two. That was when the Panthers were like spiraling.
That was Matt Rule Panthers.

Speaker 1 They beat the Bears, the worst team in the league. They beat the Packers, which at the time the Packers were still considered Super Bowl, so I'll give them that.

Speaker 1 Ravens, remember that Ravens game where the Ravens were winning all game and then the Giants were able to come back? The Giants had that knack.

Speaker 1 They're a very good football team in terms of keeping it close.

Speaker 1 The Jaguars, remember the Jaguars got stopped at the one-yard line? Yeah. Okay, so good start.
Not going to take anything away from that.

Speaker 3 That one-yard line stop reminds me of, I think that was the first Giants Super Bowl that they got with Eli, where I want to say week two, week three, they had a goal-line stand just like that that propelled them.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so they started

Speaker 1 six and one. Good team.
Since then, so since they were six and one, their wins have been against the Texans, the Commanders, and the Colts.

Speaker 3 Okay. One of these three is not like the other.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they also tied the Commanders. Yeah.
In the Commanders game, the Commanders got screwed. We did.
So, again, I think the Giants are good.

Speaker 1 I also think that the Vikings weren't good, and they played a perfect game. And I think the Giants have some issues stopping the run that will be exposed by the Eagles.
And I like,

Speaker 1 we work with a lot of Giants fans.

Speaker 1 I think if you're a Giants fan in your DNA, with the way that those two Eli Super Bowls worked out, they have like the confidence of anything can happen, which I don't blame them because anything did happen those years.

Speaker 3 I think that most Giants fans right now are happy to be here. Right.
They've reached the point in the season where they win a playoff game.

Speaker 3 That's huge for them. Nobody expected that.

Speaker 3 Now, at this point, they're like, you have to get yourself amped up for this weekend by dropping the anything can happen line, but you know that you've got a flawed team. Right.

Speaker 3 And you know that you're not a great team just yet.

Speaker 1 And Brian Davis's a great coach.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah, yeah. You know that maybe in the future you're going to be able to put something together where you will have expectations next year.

Speaker 3 But right now, it's tough to beat a team three times in the same season.

Speaker 1 It is tough to beat a team three times, but I'm just, I'm doing this because I'm pointing out that the 2011, 2007 Giants teams, and like I said, most Giants fans, when they start to get, like, those teams weren't great and then they got great.

Speaker 1 Like, they played great down the stretch. They played great football leading up to it and then going to the Super Bowl and winning the Super Bowl.

Speaker 1 This team, they played great for the first two months.

Speaker 1 They were bad. They were objectively bad for the last two months.
They beat the teams they should have beat, and then they went and played the Vikings, and everyone loves them in this game.

Speaker 1 And I don't really get it.

Speaker 3 They got very lucky at the end of a few games, but again,

Speaker 3 it was really well coached, so it was one of those you make your own luck type situations. But they do occasionally shoot themselves in the foot, and you haven't seen that since Plaxico.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so what's your biggest concern in this game? Mine would be Daniel Jones just playing out of his mind because he has been absolutely spectacular.

Speaker 6 That's not my biggest concern.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 6 Before I get to that, I also want to add one thing. We've been talking a lot about point differential in the NFL.
The Giants are also a team in the playoffs that have a negative point differential.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 3 That's fair because we've got a lot of different things.

Speaker 1 We've been given this about the Vikings.

Speaker 1 The Giants

Speaker 6 had a worse point differential than the Vikings.

Speaker 3 But the Vikings also had a much better record than the Giants. Correct.
So it's kind of to be expected that their point differential will be worse.

Speaker 6 But they had the second lowest point differential in the playoffs behind the Bucs, who had a losing record.

Speaker 3 So that makes sense. Okay, so it sounds like you're giving a lot of bulletin board materials to the Giants right now.

Speaker 6 Yeah, if the Giants are listening to this podcast, I'm happy to give them bulletin board materials.

Speaker 1 There's okay.

Speaker 3 Well, there's honestly definitely at least one member of the New York Giants that's listening to this podcast right now. So I want you to address your comments to that person, that individual.

Speaker 3 What are the Eagles going to do to him on Saturday?

Speaker 6 Listen, the Giants are a cute team. You know,

Speaker 6 they have this new coach.

Speaker 1 He's a good coach. He's a good coach.
He's a really, really good coach.

Speaker 6 I wouldn't be surprised if the Giants score first tomorrow. Dable has a good script going for the first series.
They come out with a touchdown.

Speaker 1 Kafka, yeah.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 6 at the end of the day, the Eagles are just a better football team.

Speaker 1 That was probably

Speaker 6 a better football team. If Jalen Hurts is

Speaker 6 80 to 85 percent because he's not going to be 100 percent tomorrow, but I don't think he's going to eat it.

Speaker 1 He's not. Why not? Because he's not

Speaker 1 in that line of thinking. You're right.
He's not going to meet it.

Speaker 3 I love how in Max's mind, there's it's like a video game where if you just like select Jalen Hurts as a character, it will tell you that he's 82% exactly healthy.

Speaker 1 He should maybe eat a pizza like Ninja Turtles. Yeah, or like help or like walk over a medical kit and then hit himself with a stem.

Speaker 1 But what happened?

Speaker 3 How do we know if he's 82%?

Speaker 6 That's my analysis.

Speaker 6 i've i've seen some some

Speaker 1 throws of practice this week i'm giving 82 i'm giving 85 so they weren't good no no no it was a hundred percent is like the best in the nfl so 85 i don't even think it's throwing i think it's you'll know how injured jalen hurts is by the first 15 plays how many times he runs That's really what it will come.

Speaker 1 Like, if he's running, if they're running the real offense where there's designed runs, he's moving in the pocket, he's not afraid to

Speaker 1 tuck it and go.

Speaker 1 He's 100%.

Speaker 1 If it's, uh-oh, like, you know, we're using the running backs. We're not using Jalen Hurts.

Speaker 1 There's an element of the offense that doesn't look the same as it did when they won 13 games or 14 games, then

Speaker 1 I'll be a little concerned.

Speaker 6 That's the only thing I'm scared of this entire game.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 3 Are you a little bit worried that they beat you by losing 16 to 22 in week 18? That was a statement lost by them.

Speaker 1 That was. Nah.

Speaker 8 22-16.

Speaker 1 People are going to hop off.

Speaker 3 No, but I said, no, but Jake, I said

Speaker 3 that the Giants beat them 16-22 because they lost. That's fair.
Wow, people are going to jump all over you, Jake.

Speaker 1 They are going to jump on you. I don't know ball.

Speaker 1 I just, and again, I understand where Giants fans are coming from because if you win a Super Bowl against the Patriot, you beat Tom Brady twice, and you did it with a 10-6 team and a 9-7 team.

Speaker 1 That would put in your brain that anything is possible. Like, just get in the dance and magic can happen.
So I get that.

Speaker 1 I just look at the Giants in the last two months, and they played incredible against the Vikings. But other than that,

Speaker 1 they were kind of sputtering down the stretch. I guess it doesn't really matter.
I don't know. I'm talking about, I think the Eagles are going to kill them.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think it's going to be a wamp.

Speaker 1 And I think that people are going to talk themselves in the Giants. I think the Giants are going to get bet.
And I think the Eagles are going to kill them.

Speaker 3 This strikes me as a big-time, raucous environment in Philly. The Lynx can be popping.

Speaker 1 Should we throw anything at them?

Speaker 3 Xfinity Live is going to be a lot of fanfights, I feel like.

Speaker 1 Should we throw shit at them, Max? No.

Speaker 1 Tell Eagles fans. So do not throw anything? Do not.

Speaker 6 Do not.

Speaker 1 What if there's a bad call?

Speaker 6 The refs are, I mean, that's different.

Speaker 1 So you are condoning throwing stuff at the refs?

Speaker 6 No, no, not throwing, but, you know.

Speaker 3 What about celebration?

Speaker 3 After you win, if you win by 14 points and you got a hoagie in your hand.

Speaker 6 Well, that's just feeding, that's just feeding the fans.

Speaker 3 And feeding the birds on the field, yeah.

Speaker 3 Are we going to have a Philly fan run onto the field and scatter their parents' ashes out of the coffee can at this game?

Speaker 6 No, class. It's going to be pure class.
Okay.

Speaker 1 We have a whole.

Speaker 6 I'm getting ahead of myself.

Speaker 1 I'm getting ahead of myself. Okay, so you have the Eagles.
Hank, do you have a bet on this game?

Speaker 1 I do. Oh.
Not. Oh.

Speaker 1 Nice. What do you think about this game, Hank?

Speaker 3 I mean, it's really just the battle of the two teams I kind of hate the most, so I don't really care. I think the Giants can win, though.
I like the Giants

Speaker 3 and the Jaguars in the Hungry Hungry Dog.

Speaker 1 Whoa. Yeah.
I do. All right.
I like Dable. Like Dable, Patriot, Pelichek.

Speaker 3 Debal. Debal.

Speaker 3 I, you know, he's likable.

Speaker 1 He's of all

Speaker 6 the scum in this game.

Speaker 3 That's the only thing I can really look at and be like, I like that guy. So.

Speaker 1 No, Dable is like, he has quickly become, and obviously we've had him on before, great dude. He's quickly, though, become with his look, the goatee, the sweatshirt.

Speaker 1 He's become one of my top five favorite coaches just to watch move on the sidelines.

Speaker 3 He's got great vibes.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Top five coaches you like to watch move on the sidelines.

Speaker 3 Okay, I like Pete Carroll. Pete Carroll has got to be on the wet outside.
Pete Carroll. Especially.
I like watching

Speaker 3 Mike McCarthy move on the sidelines. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I do, but

Speaker 1 in a different way. Waddle around.

Speaker 3 In like a funny type of way.

Speaker 1 I like.

Speaker 1 I think DeBall's in there.

Speaker 3 Yeah, DeBall's in there.

Speaker 3 Vrabes.

Speaker 1 Vrabes is a low-key one where it's like his anger just seething out of him. It's like a pot boiling the whole game.
I'd agree with you there. Who gets our last spot?

Speaker 6 Dan Campbell.

Speaker 1 Dan Campbell. That's a good one.
Dan Campbell. Yeah.
Top five coaches you like to watch move on the sideline.

Speaker 1 Top three you don't like to watch move. Todd Bowles, number one.

Speaker 3 Cliff.

Speaker 1 Cliff.

Speaker 1 Cliff's up there.

Speaker 1 Lovey. He's not coaching anymore, but he's very boring.
He's on the sideline. He doesn't do anything.

Speaker 3 He gives big-time dungey vibes on the sideline.

Speaker 1 I also would honorable mention top five coaches I'd like to watch move on the sideline.

Speaker 1 Matt LaFleur, just just to see his brain trying to calculate how many field goals his team needs. Yeah, that's always good.
That's good.

Speaker 3 Loki McVay does a lot of really good covering of his mouth with the play card. He's always pacing back and forth.
He's got a lot of energy. So as much shit as we give him, I kind of like watching him.

Speaker 1 And Tomlin, too. Tomlin usually

Speaker 1 pointing to the camera.

Speaker 3 He's got like, you know, Tomlinson. Pumping people up.
Especially when his clone is sitting right behind him. Yeah.
That's always good. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay, that was fun. Quick off the top of the head.
All right. before we get to, are we good with Eagles Giants? Everyone good? Everyone got their thoughts out? I mean, Andy.
Andy.

Speaker 1 Well, no, did we say, oh, we didn't say Andy.

Speaker 3 No, Andy's got Andy Watts. Any fat guy just counts.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 9 Man, I'll tell you what. When you're hungry out there, you start acting like a rookie quarterback in his first game, making bad decisions, messing up the basics, being all out of sorts.

Speaker 9 That's where Snickers comes in, man. That thing is packed.
Roasted peanuts, nugget, caramel, milk chocolate. It's like the MVP of candy bars.

Speaker 9 And when you bite into it, boom, it sorts you out, gets your head back in the game of life, satisfying your hunger. Remember this.
Snickers handles your hunger so you can handle everything else.

Speaker 9 Snickers satisfies, man. That's a winning play.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Sunday. God damn it, do these games rule? Bills Bengals.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to say that the Bengals already won 7-3 because that will trigger Bengals fans. And I do have a future on the Bengals.

Speaker 3 Well, you're right, because I would say that they won 14-3. Because did you see how they were moving the ball

Speaker 1 on that drive? They were driving, you're right.

Speaker 3 They were not going to be stopped.

Speaker 1 They were driving.

Speaker 3 The Bengals outscored the Bills so far this year by 11 points. There's a negative point differential there, Max.
That's a fact. So we need to call that out for the Bills as well.

Speaker 1 The Bills are wearing their blueberry uniforms.

Speaker 3 They're good. They're good in the Blueberry uniforms, but I just, I personally don't like them.

Speaker 1 I don't like them either. I like the white and the blue.
Yep. Or the all-white.

Speaker 1 There's something about the blueberry that, yeah, I'm not a big fan of. Is DeMar DeMar Hamlin going to be at this game? Yes.

Speaker 3 I believe so as well. DeMar Hamlin, apparently he's been at the facility all week.
So my guess is they're planning some elaborate skit where he leads the team onto the field.

Speaker 3 I'm told that he's not going to be thrown through a table, but that would be

Speaker 3 maybe the best moment in sports history if they had the balls to do it. Yes.

Speaker 1 I think this is the rat line of the weekend. The Bengals plus five and a half over under 48.5.

Speaker 1 I think that the Bills might destroy him. So, my over, I'm taking the over in this game.

Speaker 3 Okay. And that's kind of the defense mechanism that I have whenever our friends play each other, and I can't pick one.

Speaker 1 That's fair. I would be wearing

Speaker 3 the classic double jersey if I could, the Burrow and Allen. Would that be the Berlin? The Berlin jersey? That's what I would be wearing if I could this weekend.
Aloe.

Speaker 1 Aloe? Aloe.

Speaker 3 Those are two good choices.

Speaker 1 Rub some aloe on it.

Speaker 3 Now I need to make two separate jerseys that have Berlin and Aloe on them. Yeah.
But

Speaker 3 I I like the over, so I'm just going to take the over instead of choosing one of them. 48 and a half.
I think there's going to be some points in here.

Speaker 3 Even if I if you put a gun to my head, I would say I would bet on the bills.

Speaker 1 So you know what I mean about the five and a half? Like, I think the Bengals are just as good as the Bills. Why is the line five and a half?

Speaker 1 It feels like everyone's going to wake up and say, hey, you got to take the Bengals. They're just as good.
And that it never... There's never an easy win.

Speaker 3 I think the injuries on the Bengals are too much. I think what we saw last week from the Bills was, to use a word word that you'll probably hear a million times, aberration.

Speaker 3 You know how like once every year they teach football guys one big word? Aberration is that word. I think last week was the aberration that we saw.

Speaker 1 So, okay, so I disagree a little bit just in the fact that the Bills have been careless with the ball this year. Like that, this game comes down to can the Bills stop turning the ball over?

Speaker 1 And then will the Bengals like insane playoff luck, which is, I'm not, that's not a knock. I know that some Bengals fans will get upset.
Like, it's better to be lucky than good.

Speaker 1 They've had some great bounces in the last two years in the playoffs. Will that stop or will it continue?

Speaker 1 Like, the Bengals make no sense at this point in terms of how they're able to win some of these games. They just keep winning.
And it's probably just Joe Burrow is like, you know, he's the best.

Speaker 3 They believe that they can win.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 That's half the battle. It absolutely is.
And they know that they also have a lot of players who can make huge fucking plays, like Trey Hendrickson or Sam Hubbard or Jamar Chase.

Speaker 1 Like, they have dudes that can step up in big moments, and they have.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I'm still thinking that if I had to bet on it, I would bet the Bills.

Speaker 3 And I think that they're going to get out to a lead, and then I think the Bengals are going to throw the ball, score a bunch of points. So over 48.5, that's what I'm going with.

Speaker 1 So I'll be

Speaker 1 hoping I'm wrong that the Bills are going to destroy them just because I have that Bengals future. But again, it is our two friends, and

Speaker 1 I do love Buffalo. And I mean, Buffalo getting to the Super Bowl this year would just be...
the best story.

Speaker 3 It really would. It would.
You know what? This game is tailor-made.

Speaker 3 We're ready to have a hell of a weekend with Kansas City Chiefs fans because there's a good possibility that the Chiefs blow out the Jaguars.

Speaker 3 If there's a game that's going to be a blowout, I would say that's probably right up there with any of these.

Speaker 3 The Chiefs could blow out the Jaguars, and then a lot of Chiefs fans hate us because we spend all of our time sucking Joe Burrow and Josh Allen's dicks.

Speaker 1 But even though we

Speaker 1 also criticize for sucking Mahomes's dicks.

Speaker 3 But that's the disrespect card that you have to go on if you're a Chiefs fan right now. It's like they don't respect Patrick Mahomes enough for being being great.

Speaker 3 So we could find ourselves in a situation where Joe and Josh don't play so great, and then the Chiefs blow out the Jaguars, and then next thing you know, Chiefs fans just have a full week of shitting down our throats.

Speaker 1 Yes. Well, I mean, I do appreciate AWL's playoffs.
I mean, it's different for them as well.

Speaker 1 They basically pour over, like, if you're a fan of one of these teams, you pour over every single thing we say and then harp on like, you said this, you said that. I like that.

Speaker 1 That's the playoff intensity.

Speaker 3 Playoff speed's different on the internet.

Speaker 1 It is. Like, you accidentally say Asante Samuel is not that good, and then he has the best game ever.
Like, that happens. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, it's just, I appreciate AWLs picking apart any slight at their team, even if we, like, even if we also compliment their team as well.

Speaker 3 Well, maybe sending Billy down there as a token of our appreciation will take some sticks, or maybe it'll make things worse. We're sending our best boy.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
He's on the front lines, and he's a sacrifice.

Speaker 3 He's cannon fodder.

Speaker 1 You can have him. Yeah.

Speaker 1 If you become part of Kansas City and they just take you as your, as their own i will not fight isn't that how isn't it wouldn't you want it that way like what if you call us on sunday you're like guys uh this really nice family they they adopted me they said i'm just gonna be here forever now uh they got me a job as a butcher in in the back of one of the uh in one of the butcher shops making some of the best you know barbecue in the world uh so i'm not coming back would you like us to fight for you or no that's okay you can leave me okay okay we'll let you go that's that's how uh springtime got started in greek mythology.

Speaker 3 They kidnapped Persephone, and she had to stay down there half the year. Maybe Billy just becomes their version of.
What's her name? I think it's Persephone. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Down in

Speaker 3 Hades. Down in Hades, yeah, but Kansas City's Hades.
Yeah. She probably had a great time down there.
Probably got railed out like a motherfucker.

Speaker 1 Airtight.

Speaker 1 Hank, do you have a bet on this game?

Speaker 1 No. Oh, that's interesting.
So you and I have both not selected a pick, and we only have one game left. That is interesting.
That's very interesting. Okay, last game.

Speaker 3 This is going to be my game of the year.

Speaker 1 Oh, mine too.

Speaker 3 I'm taking the Cowboys.

Speaker 3 Same.

Speaker 1 Is the Cowboys your pick?

Speaker 3 Cowboys, my pick. Mine mine.

Speaker 1 No shit. Game of the year.
Cowboys. I wrote it down.
When you're like, you don't know what I'm going to pick.

Speaker 1 Damn. No shit.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 This is going to be a fun weekend

Speaker 3 for part of my take because Hank has fully embraced his inner skip Bayless.

Speaker 1 Do you have your starter pack? I want you in full Cowboys gear.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah. I have a Dak jersey on the way.

Speaker 3 I bought some Jordans yesterday. Oh, Mark.

Speaker 3 I got what? Skip. Can't lose any shoes.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And I need to get

Speaker 3 jean shorts and some fake earrings. Yeah, I was talking to Hank about the fake earrings yesterday because we got to have him at least rocking like one little diamond stuff.

Speaker 3 And Hank was like, well, my ears used to be pierced, so the holes are there. I don't think that's how ear piercings work.

Speaker 3 But he was like, I can get them re-pierced. I think you definitely have to get your ears re-pierced.
You can still see.

Speaker 1 I can still feel them.

Speaker 3 If I put an earring through, it would go through a lot easier.

Speaker 1 Okay, so let's do that live on air. Having had them pierced,

Speaker 3 a nice earring hank you gotta i as much as i would like to just stab you through your ears live on camera i feel like you gotta go to a mall camera that's how well that's how i pierce him he's gonna get his ears are gonna get so infected yes

Speaker 3 that's how i pierced him originally do it me and my friends literally just pushed earrings through each other's ears you did what oh my god

Speaker 1 how long did it take not long it was quick and easy what did your mom say when you came home i feel so bad for you i've met your parents they're wonderful people it was a bad time they had to deal with a bad time in the Lockwood House.

Speaker 3 That was the least of their problems. Do you have any pictures of you as like a teenager, as a rowdy young boy with your ears pierced?

Speaker 1 We need to just send them an apology.

Speaker 1 Like, I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 We've taken Hank in for the last decade.

Speaker 3 We understand what you went through. I actually, I think Hank might have always been a Cowboys fan his entire life.

Speaker 1 He just didn't know it. He didn't know it.

Speaker 3 He was just born in the wrong ears.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he existed.

Speaker 1 Yeah. You live in the troll world.

Speaker 3 Did you have two ears pierced?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah,

Speaker 3 Hank, you were born a Cowboys fan. Fake ass earrings.

Speaker 3 This is like our son discovering

Speaker 3 his true personality. Yeah.
And he's coming out to us as a Cowboys fan.

Speaker 1 And we were like, no, absolutely not.

Speaker 3 No son of mine.

Speaker 1 We need to get him into conversion therapy. You're not a Cowboys fan.

Speaker 1 I might make this my game of the year, and I'm going to take the over.

Speaker 1 I love this over. I love this over so much.

Speaker 1 I actually,

Speaker 1 Hank, you ready for this? I absolutely think the Cowboys can win this game. Yes.

Speaker 1 46. 46.
I absolutely think the Cowboys can win this game. I'm very nervous about this game.
I am.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 in fairness to what I talked about with the New York Giants and what they went through at the end of their year and not winning a lot of games and winning against really bad teams, the 49ers have also gone through a pretty shitty stretch of teams that they've dominated.

Speaker 1 So since their loss to the Chiefs, they have won every game since. They beat the Rams.
They beat the Chargers, the Cardinals, the Saints, the Dolphins count because the Dolphins did have Tua.

Speaker 1 The Bucs, who stink, the Seahawks, the Commanders, the Raiders, the Cardinals. A lot of teams that weren't very good.

Speaker 1 And here's what my biggest concern is.

Speaker 1 If the Niners get like, The Niners have been in a lot of games where they've been much better than the other team. This is a game where the talent is pretty similar.
What's that going to look like?

Speaker 1 You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 They are so talented and they've been able to roll over so many teams. Now they play a team that has as many stars.

Speaker 1 That's no pun intended because they are the Cowboys. But I'm a little nervous what that looks like if they go down.

Speaker 1 If you have to start making some decisions here where it's like crunch time and Brock Purdy, I still think Dak will at some point go back to bad Dak, but it might not be this game.

Speaker 1 I think the Niners are going to win, but I'm very nervous.

Speaker 3 I think the Niners are going to get enough pressure on Dak that he's going to make some mistakes. Their defense is good enough.
And with the Cowboys, I think they

Speaker 3 sometimes we talk about the Cowboys a lot more because they're the Cowboys. Right.
And we talk about their players, and we overhype their players.

Speaker 3 I actually do think that this is a very talented Cowboys team. It is.

Speaker 3 So Dak should be good, right? In theory. Theoretically, Dak Prescott is a good quarterback.
CeeDee Lamb is one of of the best receivers in the league.

Speaker 3 You've got Micah Parsons, who could be a defensive player of the year.

Speaker 1 Michael Gallup, I love Michael Gallup. I always think he gets slept on.

Speaker 3 Yeah, you've got Tony Pollard, Ezekiel Elliott, who will be fat next year. This is the last skinny.

Speaker 3 If you're doing a guy off, I actually think that the Cowboys could compete with just about anybody. And then Dan Quinn may be the defensive coordinator of the year.

Speaker 1 But Mike McCarthy's a big, fat idiot.

Speaker 3 It's true. I need to know what sweatshirt he's going to be wearing.
Are they going to let him draw his own sweatshirt again this weekend?

Speaker 1 They might. Imagine Cowboys Eagles NFC Championship game.
I will probably try to fist fight you.

Speaker 3 It will get ugly. Is Mike McCarthy going to smash a watermelon before this game?

Speaker 3 Inquiring minds need to know.

Speaker 1 The one thing that I

Speaker 1 feel is in the 49ers' favor is the Cowboys' defense after they lost Anthony Brown, they haven't really been able to fill that second cornerback role, and their past defense has been not as great.

Speaker 1 So they kind of fell off a little bit of a cliff at the end of the year. That would be like if Brock Purdy is slinging it, if we're rocking out with our Brock out,

Speaker 1 I feel confident. But you keep saying he's a rookie quarterback, and it makes me nervous.
And I also,

Speaker 1 I've been trying to, like, pump myself up. Like, this has to end now.
Hank's trolling, relentless trolling.

Speaker 1 Back to not only us, but the AWL.

Speaker 3 At some point, you're just going to admit I'm correct.

Speaker 1 No. Yeah, if they win the Super Bowl.
Yeah. Right.
But that's not going to. If they don't, you're going to admit that you were a troll this whole time.
Oh. Yes.
There has to be an.

Speaker 3 If they lose this round, then I would be trolling. But if they make the NFC championship, that's what we're going to cash out.

Speaker 1 Now. Ah, he paused.
He paused.

Speaker 3 I do think that Mike McCarthy has learned, and he's becoming a little bit self-aware because he made maybe the best coaching move of the week this week because Brett Maher obviously missed missed four extra points in a row, something had to be done.

Speaker 3 He brought in kicking competition, and it was the most genius piece of kicking competition possible. He brought in Tristan Viscaino to compete against Brett Maher.

Speaker 3 Tristan Viscaino missed a shitload of extra points last year. He stinks.
Nice. This was a great move by McCarthy.

Speaker 3 The only way that you can help your kicker's confidence improve is by bringing in a much, much worse kicker, a really shitty kicker, and have that guy get beat out by Brett Maher during the week.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And then be like, congratulations, Brett.
You got your groove back. You found your swag again.
So he brought in the worst kicker he could find on the open market, a kicker

Speaker 3 who's so bad that he got cut by the C words. I almost said

Speaker 3 the Los Angeles team.

Speaker 3 And so that guy stinks. Let Brett Maher see that he's better than at least one other professional kicker.
And next thing you know, he's going to go out there and hit all of his actors. I like that.

Speaker 1 That's actually good.

Speaker 3 I think that's a very smart move that McCarthy.

Speaker 1 That is very, very smart.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I love this over, though. I think the Niners can be beat deep, and I think the same goes for the Cowboys.
So

Speaker 1 I think points, points, points. Boys, boys, boys.
The one thing I'm nervous about overall, and you guys can tell me which one you think,

Speaker 1 it doesn't feel like it can't be four home teams winning. It doesn't work like that.

Speaker 1 And maybe it will. But it feels like you have to find out which home team is not going to win.

Speaker 1 And the Cowboys have.

Speaker 1 And the Cowboys have to be the number one pick of that. Just by point spread alone.
Fuck. Probably.

Speaker 3 I still like the Niners. I still like the Niners.
Brock you like a Purdy Kane. It's going to be.
This is going to be a whomping. Hank's going to go home crying this weekend.
Okay, good.

Speaker 3 You're going to go crying home to your mama, Hank. No, no.

Speaker 3 Be like, mom, I pierced my ears again. Yeah.

Speaker 3 If the Cowboys lose, you should have to call your mom and tell her that your ears are pierced again.

Speaker 1 Okay. Yeah.
Max, what do you think about the Cowboys? Are you nervous? I want the Cowboys.

Speaker 1 Oh, yes. Oh, now I can.

Speaker 1 He doesn't mean that. Yeah, he does.
I do mean that. Yeah, he does.
Could you imagine a Cowboys Eagles NFC championship?

Speaker 3 Yes, I think. Well, I think more about the Giants, but yeah.

Speaker 1 I've already given the verbal okay

Speaker 1 for our good friend Roan, who's been on this show before,

Speaker 1 to destroy Hank's life if it's Cowboys Eagles.

Speaker 3 If it's Cowboys Eagles, they need to bring back the jail that was underneath the vet. Yes.
They need to reopen.

Speaker 3 They need to have like a FEMA camp set up outside the link just for all the arrests that are going to happen. I want a full.

Speaker 1 Also,

Speaker 1 when I told

Speaker 1 you,

Speaker 1 full before kickoff.

Speaker 6 The last time was the Viking, was Eagles. The last time the NFC Championship was against the Vikings, and that was an issue.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Vikings fans. Cowboys, Cowboys, Eagles, it's going to be.

Speaker 3 It will be a war zone. It's going to look like Mogadishu out there.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it is.

Speaker 1 I got to beat the Giants. All right, we got to beat the Giants.
We got to beat the Giants. We got to beat the Giants.
We gotta beat the Giants for the playoff game. Yeah, we gotta beat the Giants.

Speaker 1 We gotta beat the Giants. We gotta beat the Giants.
I am at like a

Speaker 1 10 out of 10

Speaker 1 excited, fearful for a Bears playoff game. I'm like at a solid 8 out of 10 for the Eagles with this future because it's like set in on me like, oh,

Speaker 1 this would be significant. Hank,

Speaker 1 when I told Rome that he could verbally take you down, he said he actually would just hire someone to beat you up. That's fine.

Speaker 1 Send a goon over. Yeah, we're going to send goons after you.
uh you are such i can't i'm just looking at you right now i

Speaker 1 cannot believe you've done this i love it because i love content but as a person

Speaker 1 you're taking this personally should i know i'm not you're taking this person

Speaker 3 you know i'm an analyst i look at numbers i try and find good value and the cowboys before the playoffs was great value no i love i'm like revell like i don't i don't it's it's feelings aside i just did this purely for value you feel bad for a league but this is tremendous content it's tremendous value of content.

Speaker 3 I love the African Big Ass Fever, but this is tremendous value.

Speaker 1 I love the content. But you know what? I'll say what Jake said before you came in here.
I hope you get hit by a bus. No, that is not true.

Speaker 1 Jake said that.

Speaker 3 God said that. It was a train.
He said a train.

Speaker 1 I said that. It was just me, Max, and Jake in here.
I was like, I hope Hank gets hit by a bus. Jake goes, whoa.

Speaker 8 One thing we should note for this game, too. Kyle Shanhan rocking his legends part of my Take Cody

Speaker 1 press conference. Yeah, so that's a great point, Jake.
That was really cool to see.

Speaker 3 It feels awesome to root for people that support us. Yeah.
Like, there's something really nice about the fact that it's a symbiotic relationship.

Speaker 3 We want the AWLs, all of them, to do great at whatever job that they've chosen, whatever line of work that they're in. If they're in a high-pressure situation,

Speaker 3 we want you guys to succeed, except for Hank, who wants you to throw up all over your face.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's great to see Kyle Shane. Kyle Shannon is the NFL head coach.
He's an incredible coach, storied family, all this stuff. And he's wearing our little old podcast.

Speaker 1 The biggest week of the year for him.

Speaker 3 The biggest week of the year for for him so far you remember when we started this podcast it was it was me you and hank in my living room yeah and we just like had nothing but stars in our eyes wondering what the future could possibly look like and now we've got the head coach of one of the best teams in football hosting a playoff game if if you had told me back when we were sitting in your kitchen in austin when we were starting this show yeah that someday in the future before the divisional round the head coach of the san francisco 49ers would be wearing the part of my take sweatshirt i'd be like yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 1 We're really talented. But if you had told me that Hank would be rooting against that guy, I'd be like, well, that makes even more sense.
He's a troll fuckface. Yep.

Speaker 3 So that means if the 49ers beat the Cowboys, then...

Speaker 1 No, no, no, no, no. Hank, Hank, I'll defend Hank here.
Hank is obviously, you know, riding with our boy, one of the best interviews we've ever had on this show, Dak Prescott.

Speaker 3 Correct. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Correct. I think his last thing that he said to his publicist as he was hanging up was,

Speaker 1 that went awful. Those guys are weird.

Speaker 3 I think he said, they wanted me to talk about porn stars.

Speaker 1 You did.

Speaker 1 I mean, you're horny, Hank. You showed up on the ponk list.
That's fine. Yeah.
Big time. Don't forget.

Speaker 1 Don't forget.

Speaker 3 I know what Hank's doing, and I keep trying to tell myself not to pile on, but it's really fun to pile on, Hank.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it is. And also, I did get a text message.
I will not name who.

Speaker 1 Someone who might be competing in the entire divisional round, you can just decide whatever team

Speaker 1 that I only shared with PFT, and it was very funny.

Speaker 3 It was a very funny segment. It was a very funny segment.

Speaker 3 Remember, if you guys told me in 2016 in Austin that you guys were just going to be name-drop in NFL style.

Speaker 1 I didn't name drop-down.

Speaker 1 He said name drop.

Speaker 1 Who did I name?

Speaker 3 I'm like, damn, they sold it.

Speaker 1 Who did I name drop? Wait, who did I name drop?

Speaker 1 What name did I name drop? Tell me what name I named. Some player, like some player.
No, I said coach. Someone who's involved in the NFL.
It could be a fucking towel boy. Player.
You don't coach?

Speaker 1 I'm not. No, we don't name drop on this.

Speaker 1 It could be anyone. It could be a fucking friend.

Speaker 3 It could be a ticket salesman. We don't name drop on this show.
I just hope that our good friends like Joe and Josh play really well this weekend.

Speaker 1 And Dak.

Speaker 3 And Dak. Yeah.
Great friend. Great friend.

Speaker 1 Great friend, Dak. Okay, do we do Mount Rushmore? We should do one.

Speaker 3 Dak. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Shut up.

Speaker 1 Dynamic Dak.

Speaker 3 I did try to troll Hank out of that bet last week, but to Hank's credit, Dak did.

Speaker 3 He had, what, like, 30 rushing yards? At least. Incredible.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, you were right. You were right on that.
I'll take Miles Sanders.

Speaker 3 Do Saquon. McCaffrey.
I'm going to go Josh. Okay.

Speaker 1 Josh. So

Speaker 1 you can bet it in the Barcelon Sportsbook. Josh Allen, Christian McCaffrey, Miles Sanders, Saquon, all to go over 50 yards, and we'll be boosted.
Love it.

Speaker 3 Do you want to get spicy with it? What? What if we put in a Boston Scott touchdown, too? Oh.

Speaker 6 He scored a touchdown in

Speaker 1 the past.

Speaker 8 What if we did a Mount Rushmore for four touchdowns against the Giants?

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 four guys to score.

Speaker 1 Why don't we do both? Four to score.

Speaker 3 Why not both?

Speaker 1 Let's do a Mount Rushmore and a four to score.

Speaker 3 All right, so we'll put Josh Allen in as the fourth. For rushing.
For rushing. And then we'll do four to score.

Speaker 1 Boston Scott.

Speaker 3 Boston Scott. Dak.

Speaker 1 Should we do one each game?

Speaker 1 Are you really? Is your pick really Dak? Or are you trolling?

Speaker 3 I've never trolled in the show my life.

Speaker 1 So Dak's going to score a touchdown?

Speaker 3 I don't don't think that's going to be.

Speaker 1 All right, fine. No, no, no.
Okay, all right.

Speaker 3 Kittle, kittle, kiddo, kittle. All right.

Speaker 1 Oh, all right. Nice.
He loves you, Hank. I love him more than you guys.

Speaker 1 I don't know about that.

Speaker 3 No, I'm saying, I love him more than I love you guys.

Speaker 1 Oh, no, yes, yeah. No, I know that's true.
Yeah, yeah, that's facts.

Speaker 3 Kelsey in the Chiefs game.

Speaker 1 Kelsey makes sense. So Boston Scott, Kelsey.

Speaker 1 Let's... Should we go?

Speaker 1 Should we go...

Speaker 1 Stephon Diggs didn't score last game. Yeah.
I feel like that's going to happen.

Speaker 8 Zeke or Tony Pollard?

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 we already have Kittle. Let's go.
Should we go Diggs or Dawson Knox?

Speaker 3 Diggs is good.

Speaker 1 All right, Diggs. All right, so check those out, Barstool Sportsbook.
I'm just so fucking excited for football and to shove it down Hank's throat. That's separate.

Speaker 1 And we're streaming everything, so watch us all weekend. We're going to be streaming it.
Max, that stream on Saturday night is going to be war.

Speaker 1 I'm ready. I'm ready to go to battle.
You're ready for war? Yeah, okay.

Speaker 3 Ready to go to battle.

Speaker 1 Okay. All right.
Let's get to our wonderful friend, Mark Schlarith, in studio. Give it up for Chicago.

Speaker 10 Sebastian Maniscalco's new stand-up special, It Ain't Right, is coming to Hulu on November 21st.

Speaker 1 30 years ago, Jeff Bezos, complete nerd. Bezos now ripped to shreds on his super yacht, and the boxes keep coming.

Speaker 10 Sebastian Maniscalco, It Ain't Right, premieres November 21st, streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers.

Speaker 5 Terms apply.

Speaker 3 And now, here's Mark Schlareth.

Speaker 1 Okay, we now welcome on one of our old-time, long-time OG recurring guests. It's been way, way too long, and he's here in studio.
It is stink. It is Mark Schlareth.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's actually, I want to apologize on behalf of me and PFD because we were thinking, like, oh, who should we have on for the playoffs? We're like, we haven't had Schlerith on in forever.

Speaker 1 That's a bad job by us.

Speaker 7 Wow, I appreciate that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Because

Speaker 1 you're like one of the founding members of the history of this podcast.

Speaker 7 Well, I appreciate that. And it's always fun to be on with you guys.
And I watch

Speaker 7 you guys are all, you can't, like, you can't go on to Twitter and not see you guys. You guys are all over the place, all the social media stuff.
So I keep tabs on you. Okay.
Right.

Speaker 7 And I've kept tabs on you forever since I coached you in Little League. So, you know, you're like a son to me.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you're right.

Speaker 3 It's funny you brought that up because I was going to wait to talk about that, but you were my baseball coach and my basketball coach. I think you coached me in baseball for three years.

Speaker 3 And it was funny because I was telling this story the other week. You related everything.

Speaker 3 Your main piece of coaching advice would be like, you can't get complacent. You can never get complacent because you know what happens when you get complacent?

Speaker 3 That's when the Jacksonville Jaguars come in and they beat you in the first round of the playoffs when you're favored by 20 points and then you have to deal with that.

Speaker 3 I remember you giving that pep talk to us like five or six times because that really stuck with you. Yeah.

Speaker 3 When the Jaguars kicked your ass?

Speaker 3 Is that still something that you think about every now and again?

Speaker 7 Yeah, there's no question. And

Speaker 7 it's the catalytic event in the lifetime of the Denver Broncos when I played for them that led us to back-to-back championships.

Speaker 7 We would literally be in the huddle in a game going, like two years later, going, hey, you don't want to have that feeling again? Yeah. Let's get our, like, get your shit together.
Let's go.

Speaker 7 And that was literally talked about. There wasn't a day that passed over the course of the next two years where at some point that game didn't come up.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, you can't lose to a lefty quarterback.

Speaker 7 No.

Speaker 1 Mark Brunel, like, you can't let Mark Brunel beat you.

Speaker 7 Right, exactly.

Speaker 1 He tried on TV.

Speaker 7 The other thing, the other thing that

Speaker 7 you can outthink yourself as a coaching staff and as a football team. Like, there is something, and I talk to teams about this all the time: having an identity, right? Knowing who you are.

Speaker 7 It's important to know who you are, what you're good at, what you're not good at. And the other thing is, you can't be perfect.
Like, you can't, like, not everything is the perfect place.

Speaker 7 Sometimes you've got to, and I use this all the time: you've got to use that Globo Gym mentality. We're better than you, and we know it, right?

Speaker 7 And you just got to come out there and say, this is who we are, this is what we do, and we're going to whip your ass doing it.

Speaker 3 So, Globo Gym, they beat average Joe's, right?

Speaker 7 No.

Speaker 1 Okay. No, average Joe's.

Speaker 3 I'm seeing a crack in the mentality there. Right.

Speaker 7 No, average Joe. But they thought they were.

Speaker 1 Sometimes, yeah, sometimes that's. That's what happened.
Well, that's actually what I was wondering is we saw this past weekend, the Bills Dolphins game, and I'm wondering,

Speaker 1 the Bills were sloppy. They weren't like they looked sloppy.
Right.

Speaker 1 Is there an element of overlooking your opponent in the playoffs? I noticed the playoffs, but was there a part of it like Skylar Thompson, what could he do to us?

Speaker 1 They're not maybe as focused or feeling as much pressure versus like going up against Patrick Holmes. Was that part of the Jaguars beating you guys? Like, hey, we're better than them.
We're good.

Speaker 7 I think it's always part of it, you know. But again, my big thing was in that game.
So

Speaker 7 you go back through kind of our

Speaker 7 ascend or our ascending into the upper echelon of the NFL at the time. Is

Speaker 7 we, we, like, Terrell Davis probably averaged 25, 27 carries a game, like every game that year. And in that particular game plan, we were all like, hey, if we get this look, we run it.

Speaker 7 But if we don't get this look, it was all kind of a check with me scheme. Right.
So the bottom line is the way they played us, they checked us out of our running game. Right.

Speaker 7 And a lot of times coaches will be like, hey, we can be perfect. I think Terrell Davis had 14 carries in that game for 95 yards, and he had averaged like 27 a game up to that point.

Speaker 7 And so the bottom line to me is: let's not get too tricky. Let's not like

Speaker 7 do what we do. And

Speaker 7 it's one of those learning curves.

Speaker 7 The next year we ran them out of our building. We put 300 yards rushing on their ass.

Speaker 7 But

Speaker 7 it's a painful lesson to have to learn.

Speaker 3 For those of you that want to look it up, it's 1996, I think, 96 season, and it was 30 to 20 in the, or excuse me, 30 to 27 in the divisional round. You guys were your 14-point favorites.

Speaker 3 Yeah, oh, yeah. And I actually, I have,

Speaker 3 I printed this out for you.

Speaker 3 This is our picture

Speaker 3 of us. That's Coach Stink over there on the right.
Yeah, yeah. You want to take this back? That's your son, Daniel, right there.

Speaker 3 I'm next to him. And that was a legendary team.

Speaker 1 Yes, it was a legendary team. We were a team team.
So there was an MLB player on that team. There was, yeah.

Speaker 1 I actually was ahead of the Major League Baseball player in the rotation, in the pitching rotation. Right, yeah.

Speaker 3 Because that was prior to Daniel's growth sprit that he had.

Speaker 1 Yes,

Speaker 1 I am taking that with me because that's a hilarious picture. So, talk about the run game and what you guys did.
When you watch Kyle Shanahan and the Niners,

Speaker 1 like, well, let's start here. Is it like a borderline erotic? Because I watch it sometimes and I'm like, it's so beautiful.
Watch when they, when they

Speaker 1 block correctly and guys are running free in these enormous holes, there's nothing like it in football. It's prettier than a pass game.
Yeah,

Speaker 7 it is incredible, and it's funny because

Speaker 7 as I travel around doing what I do now, calling games for Fox, like there is, and I talk to coaches all across the board in the offseason, I probably talked to 12 coaching staffs, like members of coaching staffs.

Speaker 7 There was not one team in the NFL that I talked to last offseason that wasn't studying the Niners' run game. Because

Speaker 7 it's that good, and there's so many different elements to it that make it good.

Speaker 7 The shifts and the motions, what they do is you shift and then you motion back, and how you snap the ball.

Speaker 7 What you end up doing is every time you shift or motion, the defense has to adjust because of strength.

Speaker 7 So you're changing the strength just ever so slightly, and then all of a sudden you get them to move, you know, a foot or so one way, and then you motion across and you snap it before they can move back.

Speaker 7 And now, what I've done is I've created an angle for my offensive lineman to basically you're stealing, you know, you're stealing 12 inches. Right.
That it could be a movie. Right.
Stealing 12 inches.

Speaker 1 You're stealing 12 inches.

Speaker 7 So you're stealing that space, and you're creating great angles for tight ends, fullbacks, guards, tackles, and all that stuff.

Speaker 7 The other thing they do a phenomenal job of is they will use that motion, use that shift, and use the versatility of personnel. So they've got a fullback that can play tight end.

Speaker 7 He can play the Y tight end, the F tight end. He can play fullback, tight ends that can play fullback, tight end.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, you, yeah, they have, I saw a clip where it was like they're 21 personnel. The reason why the Niners are so successful is it was on that specific play.

Speaker 1 They had Kittle and McCaffrey as tight ends and Debo as their running back.

Speaker 7 Sure.

Speaker 1 It's like, what the fuck?

Speaker 7 Yeah, and then all of a sudden you got McCaffrey running routes and Debo playing running back. And so you've got all this stuff.

Speaker 7 But the way they do it, and this will be easy to conceptualize. So let's say that we're running 19 handoff.
Okay. It's the same play for us 100% of the time.
The concepts, everything is the same.

Speaker 7 But But all we have to do is change point of attack, who's got who.

Speaker 7 So one time you run 19 handoff and Trent Williams is single-blocked on the defensive end. The next time you run it, he's in combination with a tight end up to the next level, right?

Speaker 7 The next time you run it, now the tight end's on the opposite side, but you motion the fullback, and now you're in combination with the fullback.

Speaker 7 The next time you motion Debo Samuel down, he cracks a defensive end and you pull around.

Speaker 7 So you're running the same exact play. It changes not at all for the offense, except for one or two guys have to change the way their blocking assignment at the point of attack.

Speaker 7 But for the defense, that one play, we can run it six, we can have six different blocking assignments in that one area. And for the defense, it looks like six entirely different plays.

Speaker 7 For us, we change one guy's responsibility. We run 19 handoff six different ways.
It doesn't change. It changes for one guy.

Speaker 7 The other 10 guys are doing the exact same thing they do on that play every time but the defense it look it's completely confusing right yeah and so it it's it's how they do it they do a phenomenal job they're the best in the business at at running the ball and and they do a night they just do a great job yeah it is beautiful to watch it actually it's it's poetry in motion when that offensive line that that blocking scheme gets cracking and what they do is they have you kind of touched on but they they make different players essentially play offensive line.

Speaker 3 They've got probably like 10 guys that could be that could execute these offensive line blocking schemes. It's gorgeous to watch.

Speaker 3 For my money, Trent Williams is my favorite player to watch in the open field when he gets going

Speaker 7 on a screen and you see the defensive back see him coming and he's like that oh shit moment yeah where he just like lays him out into the turf who's your who's your favorite offensive lineman to watch play trent williams yeah trend williams is like so i'm i'm at practice i'm at a niners practice and trent williams like he's throwing football like he's throwing corner routes to wide receivers, you know, during practice.

Speaker 7 And he's throwing 40-yard bombs that are just like unbelievable. So I'm ending up talking to one of the coaches about just watching him, how much I love watching him.

Speaker 7 He goes, first off, the guy is a freak show. Like athletically, he's an absolute freak show.

Speaker 7 Like the dude can go down to the basketball court and he's just slamming and, you know, and doing crazy things. Athletically, like I said, he's just throwing dimes out there.

Speaker 7 But Kyle was like, he's one dude that practice stops. Like, other professional athletes stop what they're doing to watch him practice.

Speaker 7 And he doesn't, like, he, he does not give a shit if he misses a block. He's not trying to block you.
He's trying to murder you. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like, he's literally trying to murder you.

Speaker 7 Right. And so, like, there's a lot of guys that are afraid, well, if I miss a block, you know, they may say something bad on me in the broadcast.

Speaker 7 And so I'm going to sneak off the line of scrimmage and I'm going to position block. He is literally trying to shorten your neck on every play.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 I love watching him play because some of the things he does, they're not, it's like, it's not humanly possible. And yet he does it.

Speaker 1 And his balance, too, is just insane.

Speaker 7 He's an incredible athlete.

Speaker 3 They had him in motion at one point last year. You remember that?

Speaker 1 Yeah, against Green Bay.

Speaker 3 They worked him almost as a tight end. He got like a nine-yard head start.

Speaker 7 Not fair.

Speaker 3 Downhill block. Being fair, you brought up him throwing passes.
How sick would that be to have an offensive lineman throw a touchdown touchdown pass?

Speaker 7 Oh, it would be great.

Speaker 1 That would be big for the big men.

Speaker 7 Yeah, it would be huge because you've seen him catch him occasionally. Yeah, there's no question he could catch him.

Speaker 7 But I could see him getting him on the edge, like line him at fullback, and then have a direct snap to him or something. He's outside off the boot keep game, and then all of a sudden just never see

Speaker 7 it.

Speaker 3 If they're up by 30 points against the Cowboys, I need to see that out of Kyle. Kyle listens to the show.
Yeah, he was wearing her hoodie the other day.

Speaker 3 Kyle, a little bit of coaching advice one-on-one. You're up 30 points against Hank's Cowboys.
Just clown the shit out of them.

Speaker 1 Yeah, just dominate them.

Speaker 7 On your behalf, I will text Kyle and I'll give him the play call. Like, this is what we want.

Speaker 1 This is what we drew.

Speaker 1 In studio, ready to go.

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Speaker 1 So, all right. So, I want to get, I want to talk about the other playoff games, but we also have to talk because you are, you know, Broncos legend, live in Denver.
What the fuck happened this year?

Speaker 1 Jeez. I, I, I, like, I actually, when I was thinking about like, we should have stink back on.

Speaker 1 I was like, man, I just want to hear what from his perspective, from his eyeballs, because we saw from afar, but you're in it. Like, you know, it.
You know how it all works. What happened?

Speaker 7 You know, interestingly enough,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 7 I

Speaker 7 was perplexed as anybody about

Speaker 7 how you go from being

Speaker 7 a nine-time Pro Bowler to essentially forgetting how to play football.

Speaker 1 That's what it essentially looked like.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 I think what you really have to understand is from a coaching perspective, and just from a player's perspective, one of the biggest jobs that you have as a coach, like every coach can see a juicy matchup, right?

Speaker 7 And you say, man, I want to go after that matchup. But your real job is to mitigate potential disaster.

Speaker 7 So if I got a juicy matchup, but it exposes a dude that can't get the job done, you got to just say

Speaker 7 it's more important to protect the guy that I have on my team than going after the juicy matchup and I'll find something else, right?

Speaker 7 And I think forever, all the narrative out of Seattle was let Russ cook, let Russ cook, let Russ cook.

Speaker 7 And he wanted to become, you know, a Drew Brees type of control everything, Peyton Manning, control everything from behind the line of scrimmage and let me operate.

Speaker 7 And I think what we really saw more than anything else is Pete Carroll knew what his player could and couldn't do. And Pete Carroll basically put his foot down and said, uh-uh, you ain't doing that.

Speaker 7 We're going to do it the way I want to do it. Yeah.

Speaker 7 And so I almost feel like there was a humiliation process that went on during the course of the season where Russell actually had to come to grips with the fact that I'm not quite ready for primetime when it comes to that.

Speaker 7 And I'm not saying he's not a good player.

Speaker 7 I think he can still be a great player. I don't think when you hear the narrative of, oh, he lost his athleticism, that's baloney.
Like, he can still move around. He can still throw the ball.

Speaker 7 But, like, you can't operate, you can't operate everything from that.

Speaker 7 When all of a sudden you line up formationally and by your formation, you dictate the coverage you're going to get, and you say, here's what we're going to do. We're going to throw it to this dude.

Speaker 7 Or if that dude ain't open, if they take it away, start hold the ball, scramble around, and make something big happen. Like, Russell is as good as there's ever been at doing that.
And

Speaker 7 I think we took the restrictors off a little bit and

Speaker 1 the engine blew up. Yeah, burned the house.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I always say, hey, you can get a good meal in a crock pot, right?

Speaker 7 Let's not burn the kitchen down. Let's just let it simmer for eight hours, right?

Speaker 3 Let Russ order takeout. Yeah.

Speaker 1 that's fine. Yeah,

Speaker 1 let Russ get takeout. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it was.

Speaker 3 We kind of bought into the whole Hackett, Russ-Wilson combination because we went out there. That's another miss.
We should have talked to you when we were out in Denver this year. I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 We were in your backyard. We didn't say hi.
That's okay.

Speaker 3 We kind of bought into the whole experiment because, like, Nathaniel Hackett, great guy. Very friendly guy.

Speaker 1 Great dude. Love him.
Great dude. Great dude.

Speaker 3 Turns out maybe he was not ready for primetime.

Speaker 1 Worst coach of all time.

Speaker 1 Of all time.

Speaker 1 Great dude. Great dude.
Great. Great dude.
Listen, great dude. Fantastic.
He's the worst coach ever.

Speaker 3 As a human being, you couldn't ask for a better person.

Speaker 3 As a head coach, the worst.

Speaker 1 The worst. Maybe ever.

Speaker 3 In any sport, maybe, but awesome guy, all-time guy. Even better human being than a head coach.

Speaker 1 By far. That's what I'm saying.
By far.

Speaker 1 Way better.

Speaker 7 Way better.

Speaker 1 Way, way better.

Speaker 3 So we bought into it. We wanted to root for him because he's such a nice dude.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Terrible head coach.

Speaker 3 He didn't work out. Now your Broncos are looking for another head coach.
Report just came out yesterday. They're letting Condoleezza Rice help to lead the interview process,

Speaker 3 which I was saying it might be like the whole when they asked Dick Cheney to find George Bush as vice president. Surprise it's me, Dick Cheney.
Connie might nominate herself. Right.

Speaker 3 But if it's not going to be Condoleezza Rice, who would you like to see as the head coach of the next Denver Broncos?

Speaker 7 I would love, I'd love to see Sean Payton become the head coach.

Speaker 7 How you go wrong with that? Like, one of the things I always say

Speaker 7 when it comes to head coach, like fear is an important aspect of being a head coach. Yep.

Speaker 7 And there's two types of fear. There's the biblical fear.
You know, you hear the fear of the Lord.

Speaker 1 Old Testament.

Speaker 7 Right. Well, the fear of the Lord is really about,

Speaker 7 it's not fearing, it's not being afraid. The fear of the Lord is about awesome reverence or respect, right? So you've got to have reverence and respect.
That's got to be part of it.

Speaker 7 Like, you've got to respect your coach, and you've got to have reverence for your coach because he's the guy leading the organization. But you need fear.

Speaker 7 Like, you need literally butt pucker type fear that if you don't get your job done, you will get cut. You will get benched.
You will get punished. That's going to happen.

Speaker 7 And it's not only for the players, probably more importantly, your coaching staff needs to have fear. If I don't get my guys coached up, if my guys don't perform, I'll lose my job.

Speaker 7 And this guy doesn't play that way. And so you've got to have that aspect within your organization.

Speaker 7 There's got to be some healthy fear and there's got to be some punishment involved. Like, if we don't play well, it can't be, hey, you know what, we'll get him next time.

Speaker 7 We had a great Wednesday practice. No, there's got to be some consequences for not playing well.

Speaker 1 I would imagine it can't be too much fear because it felt like Nathaniel Hackett, great guy, coached with too much fear. Because he was like

Speaker 1 guessing himself. Right.

Speaker 7 Like, I'm talking about your players and the assistant coaches need to be afraid of the head coach.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so, yeah, that's true.

Speaker 3 Nathaniel Hackett might have been too nice to

Speaker 3 run so everybody, no one feared him.

Speaker 1 He took all the fear for himself, no one else. He's a fear sponge.
Yeah, he was a fear.

Speaker 1 I like that.

Speaker 7 A fear sponge.

Speaker 7 I think the other thing that happens to coaches who have never been a head coach before is when you come up through the ranks and you're a quarterback coach or you're an offensive coordinator, whatever, there's a real relationship that you develop with your players.

Speaker 7 Right. Like there's a real closeness to that that you develop.
And then I think the issue is that when you become a head coach, you basically step away from that to a degree.

Speaker 7 And now all of a sudden, you're coaching the coaches, you're managing the football team, you lose a little of the connectivity to your roster. And

Speaker 7 that whole friendship thing, you can still have a great relationship with your players, but there's a kind of delineating line.

Speaker 7 And I think some guys, one, they don't know how to step away from it and they miss that aspect of it. So you grow almost too close to your player.

Speaker 7 Like, like Mike Shanahan and I are really good friends, and Mike is a mentor, and we spend time together, and we study film together, and he helps me out with my career and my football knowledge.

Speaker 7 And as a player for Mike, I knew that if I didn't perform, I would get cut. Right.
And I could see Mike cutting me.

Speaker 7 And right after he cut me, I could see him going, hey, man, I'm going to have pizza at the house tonight. You want to swing by? Like, oh, yeah, I just cut your ass and you no longer play for me.

Speaker 7 But come have a slice of pizza, man.

Speaker 1 It'll be great. It's not personal.
It's busy.

Speaker 7 Yeah, it's just the way he is. And so I think sometimes it's hard for coaches who have always grown up as that coordinator or as that quarterback coach to be able to

Speaker 7 create that delineating line between them and players. That makes sense.

Speaker 3 It actually does. And knowing what we know about Coach Hackett, that seems like it would be a problem for him.
Like he wants to be friends with everybody.

Speaker 3 Another side of fear that maybe we could talk about is the fear that might be going through a kicker's head right now. Brett Maher for the Cowboys.
He's missed now five straight extra points.

Speaker 3 He missed four in that one game. Right.

Speaker 3 But he's missed five extra points going back to the game against the Commanders week 18. There's something in his head.
Obviously, he's got the yips.

Speaker 3 I don't know what that looks like inside, like what that feels like for him, but he's in a bad place right now. I can't imagine that.

Speaker 3 He's going to want to talk to his teammates about like what he's going through.

Speaker 3 As far as the locker room, have you ever been around a kicker that's just, for whatever reason sucks? Do you talk to that person? Do you let them be?

Speaker 3 What would you do if you were in the Cowboys locker room?

Speaker 7 Well, okay, so the first thing that I would do, and part of it is because I'm a dick, but there's part of it that would be because, you know, I want to kind of

Speaker 7 make the environment okay and laugh a little. I'd probably have like a bucket of

Speaker 7 Kingsford charcoal in his locker when he got there on Wednesday, like when first day of practice. And I'd have a note there with that charcoal that would say, hey, my anniversary is in February.

Speaker 7 And if you could shove one of these up your ass and make a diamond for my wife, it would really, it would really be helpful to me, right?

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 but something lighten the mood a little bit. Lighten the mood a little bit.

Speaker 7 I had this, I played with a guy by the name of Dave Wyman, played linebacker in Denver. And Dave was

Speaker 1 an intense dude.

Speaker 7 Like he always, like he walked around. You know, the guys that just walk around and always look angry?

Speaker 7 Like, that was Dave. Always angry.
And, like, nobody really felt like it was one of those things, you joke around with Dave. No, he's too intense.
Like, he may punch you in the face, right?

Speaker 7 And so we're playing a game against the Raiders. It's a Monday night game.
And Dave

Speaker 7 basically breaks the Adam Apple. of uh it's called a lyrnix or larix lyrics or whatever it is i can't even pronounce it but he of jeff hostettler was the raiders quarterback right

Speaker 7 and and so he's he's getting fined and he is like, like livid and upset about this because, you know, like people are calling him dirty and cheap and it was accident or whatever.

Speaker 7 And so, of course, what do I do in the training room? We have a little skeleton, one of them little skeletons, right?

Speaker 7 And then I, so I grabbed the little skeleton because I'm always the first guy in there. I grabbed the little skeleton and then I go to the equipment room because we had all those little mini helmets.

Speaker 7 And I grabbed a Raiders helmet and I put it on the little skeleton. And then I made this plastic neck protector.

Speaker 7 And I wrote on the neck protector, you know, the Dave Wyman, you know, Adam's Apple protector type of thing, right? Yeah.

Speaker 7 You know, I make sure that's in his locker so when he comes up, and, you know, and you could see that he wanted to fight me, but at the same time, he was like, he appreciated, it broke the ice.

Speaker 7 Yeah, right. And then everybody, and then everybody laughed about it and busted his balls about it.
And like that, that is important.

Speaker 7 That's how guys show each other they love each other.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's like the balloon starts to fill up and there's all this tension and no one wants to touch it, but it takes one guy to go over there, pop it. All of a sudden, everything's fine.

Speaker 3 Yeah, exactly. So somebody needs to fuck with the kicker is what you're saying.
They need to like

Speaker 3 pull a joke up because he's probably more uncomfortable not having his teammates bust his balls about stuff.

Speaker 7 Right. That's exactly right.
And then it releases the tension. And hopefully, that's enough for you to go out and make a few kicks and not be so uptight about that.

Speaker 1 I like it.

Speaker 3 You mentioned the training room. How many surgeries did you end up at? What's your final total?

Speaker 7 Well, I had a heart surgery not too long ago. That wasn't my football related, but that was my 30th.
So I had 29 that were related to just playing.

Speaker 3 Jesus. That's so many.

Speaker 1 So I just had Stink try some Stell Blue coffee. How many cups of coffee do you think he drank a day before his heart surgery?

Speaker 3 Six.

Speaker 1 20.

Speaker 3 20 cups of coffee.

Speaker 1 That's 20.

Speaker 7 Yeah,

Speaker 1 it's not a problem.

Speaker 1 And just so we're clear,

Speaker 1 the coffee drinking didn't make him have to have heart surgery. No.
The doctor was like, actually, if you weren't drinking all this coffee, you probably would have been dead 10 years ago.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's remarkable. That's what they say.
Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 That's why I drank 15 glasses of wine a day.

Speaker 7 All this coffee has saved your life, is what they said.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 It all made sense, though. He said 20.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 3 So 29 surgeries. And I remember that one of your surgeries had something to do with your retirement because you were about to sign a contract to extend your career, right? Right, right.

Speaker 3 Like 2000, 2001.

Speaker 3 You didn't think that you were done yet.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I actually thought I was going to play.

Speaker 7 I thought I was going to, because my last year, I was actually playing really well for about three or four games.

Speaker 7 And my knee got so bad to the point where,

Speaker 7 like,

Speaker 7 the reason I retired is my knee was so bad, and I had multiple surgeries that year. And so I had a surgery.
I played a game against Cleveland. I think I gave up three sacks.

Speaker 7 I couldn't, I literally couldn't move.

Speaker 7 I pretty much sent a dude that nobody's ever heard of to the Pro Bowl that year.

Speaker 7 That game alone sent the guy to the Pro Bowl. And so I ended up having surgery right after that game, the Monday after that game.
I come back

Speaker 7 and

Speaker 7 I'm working to try to come back the next week and play a Monday night game against the Raiders.

Speaker 7 I'm in practice and it's kind of snowing. And we had these, we didn't wear jerseys when it got cold in Denver.
We had sweatshirts that we put over our pads.

Speaker 7 And it was snowing and it was kind of hard to make out who was who. And I didn't have my glasses at the time because I wore glasses.
And so I'm kind of squinting. And I'm, I'm, I thought,

Speaker 7 I thought that it was some practice squad kid that was practicing for me. And I'm watching this kid.
He looks awful.

Speaker 7 And I'm like, oh my, I'm like one of these, you know how you watch somebody and you're kind of almost embarrassed and you're like, oh, God, this is bad. And I'm, so I'm watching.

Speaker 7 I'm like, oh, this kid is not going to make it. This kid can't play, right?

Speaker 1 This is awful.

Speaker 7 And so then we, and I go, whoa, rewind that for a second. They rewind it one more time.
And so now I'm squinting. I'm looking.
I'm like, oh, my God, that's me.

Speaker 1 Oh, geez.

Speaker 7 And at that point, I was like, shit,

Speaker 7 it's time.

Speaker 7 I didn't realize I looked because you're always the last to realize, right? And I'm like, that's how bad I look. Like, dude, this is, I'm not helping.

Speaker 1 I'm hurting us right now.

Speaker 7 And so I ended up playing that. I ended up playing in that game.
I played like seven plays, man, and my knee was so bad.

Speaker 7 I missed a block. TD got hit for no gain.

Speaker 7 I just picked myself up and I limped to the sideline, took my helmet off. I go, I'm done.
Done.

Speaker 1 I'm jealous.

Speaker 7 That's crazy. That was it.
That's the last time. That's the last play I ever played.
The last play I ever played, I basically screwed it up and got TD hit in the teeth.

Speaker 1 Hey, you're welcome.

Speaker 3 Yeah. At least you did it to yourself.
You said, okay, I'm done. Yeah.

Speaker 3 I can recognize it myself because I think a lot of people stick around and they have to have that conversation where they get cut the last time. And that's kind of fucked with your mind a little bit.

Speaker 3 If you're forced into retirement, something you've done for so long, and the last thing that you have in the league is a conversation with somebody being like, hey, you stink, you're fired. Right.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's the old saying, you don't retire from the league, the league retires you. Right.
Yeah, so walking away, I feel like

Speaker 3 you set yourself up nicely for your second career here

Speaker 3 by knowing when it was time and walking away.

Speaker 7 Yeah, well, it was pretty easy to see that it was time. When you can't block people people anymore, and that's what your job is, it's like

Speaker 7 probably a good time to get out.

Speaker 1 All right, so segue off that,

Speaker 1 the Bengals. Yeah.

Speaker 1 They have lost three out of their five starting offensive linemen.

Speaker 1 Are they like, I can never tell because sometimes you watch it, and Joe Burrow can make up for a lot. Sure.
But

Speaker 1 you could see actually in the second half against the Ravens, I don't think he took a single five-step drop. No.
And that's what their offense is built on is Jamar Chase and T.

Speaker 1 Higgins getting deep and being able to burn guys. So what is the fix or are they just kind of screwed?

Speaker 7 Yeah, you know, the easy fix, people will say, well, they got to run the ball, right?

Speaker 1 Right. And put in a tight end.
Oh, ship. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 7 You, you got to, you got to do that.

Speaker 7 Really, it comes down to this. You're going to throw the ball 35 times regardless.
Okay. So let's just, on average, you're going to throw the ball 35 times.
So

Speaker 7 if you give up seven or eight sacks in a game,

Speaker 7 like everybody will point to the offensive line and say, you suck. And I'll point to the coach and say, you suck.
Right. You give up seven or eight in a game, you guys suck as a coaching staff.

Speaker 7 So what you have to say is, okay,

Speaker 7 we got 35 times we're going to throw the ball. How can we basically squeeze that down to about 10 times when my offensive line is kind of hung out to drive?

Speaker 1 Has to really block for an extended period of time.

Speaker 7 Right. So how do you do that? Well, okay, so you say, let's take it 35 and and let's just make the math easy.
So let's say you throw five bubble screens slash swing passes slash swings.

Speaker 7 So now we're down right to 30. 30, yep.
So then you say, okay, let's say we're going to throw five three-step drops where you can come off and actually kind of run. So now we're down to 25.

Speaker 7 Now you're going to say there's two types of play action. There's the run.
play action, right? Where you hand the ball, you make it look like a handoff, right?

Speaker 7 They boot keep out the backside, but everybody's just coming off the ball. It's real run.
So that's the easiest stuff in the world to do. So we do that five times.
Now we're down to

Speaker 7 20. And so then I say, okay, now what about five-step drops that have zero hitches? So I know the five-step drop, like the like all go is a five-step quick throw.

Speaker 7 So I can actually run block and all go. Right.
So how many times can we get a five-step drop that doesn't have a hitch? So I know that I can treat that five-step like a three-step. Right.

Speaker 7 So now I'm down to now I'm down to what, 15. Yeah.
So now I go, okay, now I need five more out of that. So what do I do? Okay, let's go play pass.
Now, play pass is a different type of play action.

Speaker 7 Play pass is not the run action, it's the actual seven-step drop back. But we keep a running back in on one side and a tight end on the other side.

Speaker 7 We flag the football, we show that, and now we're running two-man or three-man routes. So now all of a sudden, I've gotten that down to 10 times where my offensive line has got to hold up.

Speaker 7 And if you can't hold up in those 10 times, then you really suck. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But they might, like, they might. I feel bad for the Bengals because they did.
So let's say we give up that.

Speaker 7 We give up three sacks. We can survive that, right? We can survive that.
But

Speaker 7 what I can't do is give you, I can't give you 17 to 20 legitimate pass rush opportunities. I got to cut that down to 7, 8, 9, right?

Speaker 7 And so if you can do that as a coaching staff,

Speaker 7 then you can have success. Now, if you get down by,

Speaker 7 you get down by 10, you get get down by 17, then you're screwed because

Speaker 7 you're going to have to basically throw it a bunch.

Speaker 1 It also just speaks to Joe Burrow's greatness because the Bengals, to their credit, last year they go to the Super Bowl, their offensive line was their biggest weakness.

Speaker 1 They addressed it in the offseason. They put resources into it.
Guys got injured. Alex Kappa got injured.
Leo Collins got injured.

Speaker 1 I think it's crazy because if you had to pick one guy who's behind a bad offensive line,

Speaker 1 it might be Joe Burrow because I don't, there's something about him, he has no fear.

Speaker 1 Like he will stand in there till the very last second.

Speaker 7 He's like he is legit all balls.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Like all balls.

Speaker 7 All balls. And it's it, I marvel.
We had this, we had a reunion, Super Bowl 26 reunion. We did it on Zoom.
Joe Gibbs spoke. We had probably had 35 guys.
So you would have loved it.

Speaker 7 I should have invited you. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But you weren't part. Yeah,

Speaker 7 you were just a fan at the time. But you were like, now you're

Speaker 3 two years years old. Right.

Speaker 1 Now that you're part of the Titan. Oh, the 91?

Speaker 3 Yeah, 91. Or, as it says in the back of my jacket, the 1992 Super Bowl championships.

Speaker 7 Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 91 season.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 7 But Joe Gibbs got on the Zoom. He was talking about it.
Do you know that we played 19 games on the way to a world championship? We gave up nine sacks on the season. Jesus.

Speaker 7 Nine total sacks on the season.

Speaker 1 That's what Burrow took in the Titans. And the Titans.

Speaker 7 And that's what Joe was referring to. He's like, this kid took nine sacks in that game.
He goes, we gave up nine and 19 in that season. That's crazy.

Speaker 7 And the fact that he stands there and just takes it in the teeth.

Speaker 1 I know. All balls.

Speaker 1 That's insane. Yeah, he's all balls.

Speaker 1 Like, something is wrong with his brain in a good way where he just doesn't have the fear element of his brain because you'll see the pass rush coming and he'll just be like, if I can get another half a second out of this, I can get Jamar Chase will be open.

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Speaker 1 Yeah, it's crazy. So, so in that game, who do you like? Bills or Bengals?

Speaker 1 You called, did you call both?

Speaker 1 I did not call.

Speaker 7 I've called Bills games and Bengals games, but I didn't call a Bills. I didn't call either of those teams this year.
Yeah, this year I did not.

Speaker 7 I like the Bills in this particular game. I mean, I do think, you know, I think that Josh Allen, sometimes

Speaker 7 sometimes athleticism,

Speaker 7 we call it, we've always called it arm arrogance. That can get you in trouble a little bit.

Speaker 1 I also think that there's not enough talked about, and I don't want to be the guy who's like, because, you know, we're friends with Josh, so we are very biased towards him. I I love Joe, too.

Speaker 1 But the UCL injury that he got against the Jets halfway through the season,

Speaker 1 his throws have been a little bit, like, there's been a few times a game where maybe it's like he doesn't, he's not trusting or he's trying to make a throw and his arm can't fully make the throw.

Speaker 7 Yeah, it can't catch up to him.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's right. It's like there's that little bit, and that's where some of these mistakes are coming from.
And he has been playing with that injury for the rest of the year.

Speaker 7 Right. Well, when you're used to being able, like, when you're used to being able to fit it in any window you want to fit it in, right? And you're just going, like, it's like a

Speaker 7 deGrom throwing 103, right? Just let it eat. Right.
And you're like, I'm going to just let this thing eat. And all of a sudden.

Speaker 1 You'd say 10% off. Say he's 10% injured.

Speaker 1 That could be the difference in an interception again.

Speaker 7 Right.

Speaker 7 Especially, and I always say, I always say, I think one of the biggest things, and I've talked to a lot of young quarterbacks about this, just the biggest difference between college and professional football.

Speaker 7 And like

Speaker 7 the biggest kind of takeaway is what is completely covered in college is wide open in the NFL.

Speaker 7 So you would look at it in college in the college game and say, I can't make that throw because it's covered. And in the pros, you're like, what are you doing? That's a wide open throw.

Speaker 7 And to change your mindset that way, to go, that's wide open. Now, for Josh,

Speaker 7 it's even a tighter window because he's got so much arm talent. So you take a little bit, like you said, even 10%, and you're used to making that throw.

Speaker 7 And that 10% lack of velocity or whatever is the difference between somebody tipping it and you know most interceptions happen off of tips anyhow.

Speaker 7 Like those are the things that end up happening to you. So now you have to be a little, you've got to be aware of that.
You've got to be judicious.

Speaker 7 Like I became a much better football player late in my career as I lost athleticism because

Speaker 7 I came to the realization. I can no longer count on athleticism to get me out of trouble.
So essentially, I can't get myself into trouble.

Speaker 1 Like

Speaker 7 I just got to be that that much smarter in the way I approach the game.

Speaker 3 You also got better at cheating as you got older. You learned all the tricks.
Yes, there's that's that's what the Bengals need to do.

Speaker 3 They need to just, their offensive line should just cheat as much as they can this week. They can't call it on every play.

Speaker 7 I

Speaker 7 listen, I'm not going to disagree on anything. As a matter of fact, you'll love this.
So, Russ Grimm, original hog.

Speaker 3 Are you a hog, by the way? Yes.

Speaker 7 But I'm on

Speaker 1 the second generation.

Speaker 7 Yeah, 2.0.

Speaker 7 But Russ, when I was a young player and I was playing at that point, Russ was like, he'd play, like, he'd start the first four games of the year, and then Raleigh McKenzie would come in for him because Russ was just beat to a pulp from all the counters that he ran.

Speaker 7 So I'll never forget, I'm coming off the field, and Russ was like, hey, man, hey, man, let me ask you a question.

Speaker 1 I was like, yeah.

Speaker 7 He goes,

Speaker 7 where was the umpire or whatever? But where is he lined up?

Speaker 1 I'm like, what?

Speaker 7 Where is he lined up?

Speaker 1 What are you talking about?

Speaker 7 He goes, when you break the huddle, don't you find where the um I'm like, no, why would I, why would I look? He goes, dude, what are you, an idiot? You got to find that guy. I'm like, well, why?

Speaker 7 He goes, because if he's outside of you, you can yank a dude down with your inside hand. If he's inside of you, you can yank a dude down with your outside hand.
He goes, you got to start thinking.

Speaker 7 And it was one of those situations. Now, a lot of people don't know.
Russ Grimm Hall of Fame offensive guard, he was also our emergency quarterback. That's crazy.

Speaker 7 Like, Russ was the smartest player I've ever played with, but he would, would literally study stuff like that so that he knew where he could get an edge at all times. That's awesome.

Speaker 7 And as you grow and you get older, and obviously, kind of the

Speaker 7 inventions that are the necessities, the mother of invention, like as you start to lose some athleticism, you start to understand, okay, where can I cheat this thing?

Speaker 7 Where can I, you know, where can I get an advantage?

Speaker 7 How can I use this from a positioning standpoint? Or how can I funnel a dude to funnel him into traffic so he can't, like, you start to learn all the little tricks.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Another great offensive line, the Eagles this year. So they're dealing with some injuries, but it seems like, I don't know, Max has reported exclusively that they're getting healthy.

Speaker 3 Is that right, Max?

Speaker 1 Max is a big Eagles guy.

Speaker 6 They're fine. I'm hearing great reports from Lane Johnson in practice.

Speaker 3 Okay, so first reported by Max, they're fine. They'll be fine this weekend.

Speaker 3 It seems like they should just stomp the Giants, but there's something about the Giants that are really well coached. Their offense is fun to watch.

Speaker 3 It seems like they run a Chief-style offense with the personnel that they have, and they've gotten the most out of the talent that they have.

Speaker 3 What do the Giants need to do to be able to beat the Eagles this weekend?

Speaker 7 Well, I think, you know, obviously quarterback run is a big part of what they're doing with Daniel Jones, and coaching is so important.

Speaker 7 I think Brian Dable's done a great job of basically saying, hey, here's what... Here's what Daniel Jones can do and here's what he can't do.

Speaker 7 And let's make sure we mitigate what he can't do and let's put him in a position to to have some success right let's use because

Speaker 7 they've been trying to make him a drop back thrower forever and he's just like let's face it that he's gotten better at it but that's not what he does so now they're not asking him to do as much of that stuff so that's that's the number the number one thing that i think he's done a great job with um and then i think

Speaker 7 and and i talked to wink martindale their defensive coordinator about this a couple of years ago I'm calling a game when he was a coordinator in Baltimore.

Speaker 7 And against a prominent NFL quarterback who had great athleticism, I go, well, what's the game plan? You know, we're close enough to where he'd go, okay, this is what I want to do.

Speaker 7 He'd be like, I'm going to make this guy throw it 40 times.

Speaker 7 And you're like, really? That's, that's, yeah. I'm going to make him.
So I'm going to line up five downs. I'm going to line up with eight guys in the box at all times.

Speaker 7 And I'm going to run blitz. I'm going to try to get him behind the chains.
But I want this guy to throw it 40 times because, like,

Speaker 7 I know they can run it. And if we let them run it and let them set up their play action and let them have the quarterback run and let them do all these things, we'll get blown out of this game.

Speaker 7 But if I can eliminate all that and make this guy beat us throwing the ball now, Jalen Hurts has proven that he can throw the ball.

Speaker 1 There's no question. He's got good guys to throw to.

Speaker 7 Great guys to throw to. But you are so busy trying to take away their run game because their run game is so good.
One, like some teams are big and strong. Some teams are fast and athletic.

Speaker 7 They're big, strong, fast, and athletic. I think the Eagles are phenomenal.
And Lane Johnson's a great player. Jason Kelsey is one of the funnest guys in the NFL to watch.

Speaker 7 They're really good at everything, but they can run the power, just a straight, you know, punch you in the mouth downhill power game.

Speaker 7 They can run the athletic kind of pin and pull, get outside on the edges, pull the center, do all that stuff.

Speaker 7 They can beat you that way. They've got the quarterback run game as well, the RPO game.

Speaker 7 So

Speaker 7 they've got everything from a run standpoint. So you're so busy, you know, getting shell-shocked by that, then all of a sudden they're play action off of that stuff.

Speaker 7 They're really hard to defend. So if they can get it to the point where they just shut down the run, sell out to do that.

Speaker 7 Like, I like your chances with a quarterback who really has only played one game in the last month, who's coming off a shoulder injury, saying, dude, if you like for the Giants, if you beat us and you beat us, throwing it on us a bunch, then tip my cap and say you won.

Speaker 7 Good job. Like, you guys got us.
But I think the only way you're going to beat them is to make Jalen Hurts beat you.

Speaker 7 And he may still beat you.

Speaker 1 Yeah, right.

Speaker 7 But I think it gives you the best chance to win.

Speaker 3 And Boston Scott's probably going to have three touchdowns. He just always seems to

Speaker 3 be.

Speaker 7 He is a Giants killer, isn't he?

Speaker 3 Yeah, so this is like the Dexter Lawrence. If Dexter Lawrence can plug up every hole this game, and then Jalen Hurts has an off day throwing the ball, that's the recipe.

Speaker 1 I still would take, like, what you say makes sense, but having A.J. Brown and Devontae Smith out there is a game.
Oh,

Speaker 7 listen, I think it'll be a close game. I still take the Eagles.
Yeah. Like, but I'm just giving you a scenario of how it could happen.

Speaker 1 The most likely.

Speaker 3 And listening to you describe the Eagles' run game. Max was just over there nodding his head the whole time.

Speaker 1 I mean, that was unbelievable.

Speaker 3 That was just a great description of the birds.

Speaker 3 You got 12 inches to hide over there.

Speaker 1 Yes. So, all right, last game that we didn't talk about, Chiefs, Jaguars.
I have a question actually about last weekend when you're watching the Jaguars Chargers.

Speaker 1 How mad do you get being an offensive lineman watching the Chargers not be able to run the ball when they have a 27-0 lead?

Speaker 1 I think the stat was they ran it seven times, seven design plays in the second half for seven yards.

Speaker 1 And you're like, because I was saying on Monday's show, it's a win for meatball brains like us who are like, yeah, you still got to run the ball.

Speaker 1 Because, you know, there's a lot of people out there who think that, hey, well, it's better to pass on first. And I get all the analytics behind it.

Speaker 1 But, you know, like as an offensive lineman, if you don't let those guys fire off the line and run the ball, like it's hard to run the ball when you need to.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I always look at running the ball as

Speaker 7 the running the ball is not popping a 19-yard draw on third down and 12. Like, I don't give a shit about that, right? Running the ball is when it's third down and three, can we convert?

Speaker 7 Like, when it's the red zone. Like, I get people all the time tell me, hey, you know, we had eight guys in the box, so we didn't want to bang our heads against the wall.

Speaker 7 Well, what happens when you get in the red zone?

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 7 Because you always have eight or nine guys in the box in the red zone because the safety's got their their heels at eight yards. So what the hell is the difference?

Speaker 7 Like, you have to learn how to run it in those situations. So, yeah, like, like, you had seven, you're up 27 to nothing.
Your running backs got seven carries. Yeah.
Right.

Speaker 7 Travis Etienne at 20, down 27 to nothing, got 14. Right.
So, like, like, don't, don't give me that, that issue. I had one person said, well, you know, they were only getting one yard of carry.

Speaker 7 And I said, well, let me ask you a question. Okay.
They only got one yard of carry. I get that.
I go, how many yards do you get on an incomplete pass? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, zero? Yeah.

Speaker 7 Right. And then an incomplete pass takes about seven seconds off the clock.
A run, if you use the clock properly, will take down, let's say, you know, it's of the 40-second clock.

Speaker 7 Let's say you snap it

Speaker 7 with five seconds left, right? So you use 35 seconds, and the run takes five seconds. So that's 40 seconds versus seven seconds.
Right. Right.
And you do that enough times. It goes back to this.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I've picked up some consulting jobs, just run game consulting jobs over the years. And

Speaker 7 it goes back to a conversation I had with a coach about running the ball. And this particular coach says to me, hey, listen, man, I want to run the ball better.

Speaker 7 And so I said to him, do you?

Speaker 7 And he goes, yeah, like, I really want to run the ball better. And I want to, you know, pick your brain about the zone running game, the wide zone.
And I go, so he goes, I really want us to run.

Speaker 7 But I said, do you?

Speaker 7 And he goes, yeah. And I go, but do you really? And he goes, Yeah, I want to run the ball better.
I go, Okay, let me tell you what I hate about you.

Speaker 1 This is, and this is like an insulting job.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I've been hired. So, let me tell you what I hate about you.

Speaker 7 He goes, Okay, here we go. And I go, You'll run it three times in a row and you'll get two yards of carry and you'll throw your arms up in the air and you go, Fuck it, we can't run the ball.
Right.

Speaker 7 I go, but you'll throw seven incompletions in a row, and you won't think twice about it.

Speaker 1 Right. And I'm like, What, what, like, what's wrong with you?

Speaker 7 And so, I always look at it from a perspective of, to me, what's the hardest job there is? Well, to me, playing offensive line is the hardest job there is

Speaker 1 on a football team. I mean,

Speaker 7 one,

Speaker 7 every time you're matched up, you're matched up against a superior athlete,

Speaker 7 and you're expected to win 100% of the battles. And you give up one play, a tackle for loss, or you give up a sack in a critical situation,

Speaker 7 you're a piece of shit, and that guy goes to the Pro Bowl that you just gave it up to.

Speaker 7 And you may kick his ass for 64 plays in a row. You give up the one play.

Speaker 7 And so

Speaker 7 it's a really hard job. And then the five of you have to be so connected to actually play well together.
And so I always look at it from a perspective of, one, again, mitigating potential disaster.

Speaker 7 What's the hardest job? Well, the hardest job is the job the five guys do up front together.

Speaker 7 So we need to make sure that we do the best job we can of supporting those guys and giving them the best opportunity at success. How do you do that? Well, you got to run the ball.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 7 Right. You got to have the short passing game.
You got to let those guys come off.

Speaker 7 And so I always have that perspective when it comes to coaching. And that's what I try to sell to the organizations that I work with.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you're right. There's a lot of coaches that, yeah, they just give up.
And it's like, I love watching a football game when an offensive line or a team just starts leaning on them.

Speaker 1 And it's like, it doesn't work in the first quarter, but come the fourth quarter. These runs that were two-yard runs are now six-yard runs.
And it's like, that's why you run the ball.

Speaker 7 But

Speaker 7 why do offensive coordinators do it? Because that doesn't get them head coaching jobs, right?

Speaker 1 True.

Speaker 7 Like, if you develop a young quarterback and you throw it all over for 300 yards and four touchdowns, you know what? That's like Viagra to 80-year-old owners. Oh, man, they can't get enough of that.

Speaker 7 So

Speaker 7 that's what they look for. So a lot of coordinators do it almost backwards.

Speaker 7 Like, hey, man, if I can create this, that gives me a better or a leg up to get that, you know, that job, as opposed to saying, hey, man, this is the best way to win on a consistent basis.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 3 I'm disgusted by that stat that you said. That Los Angeles had seven runs in the second half, 14 to the Jaguars who were down by, what, 27 points?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think they passed the ball 25 times, and there were eight runs total.

Speaker 7 One wasn't as good. One was a quarterback.
One was a quarterback.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 7 Seven rushes to their running backs. They had, so Eckler had five, and then Kelly had two.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Damn. It's crazy.
So,

Speaker 1 Chiefs, Jaguars, you think,

Speaker 1 I mean, I know the Jaguars are.

Speaker 3 They've got a history of doing these sort of things.

Speaker 1 Going on their own divisional rounds.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it goes back to my days. It does.
Thanks for bringing it up.

Speaker 1 The history of the Jaguars is very funny that it feels like every they go stretches where they're the worst team, and then they'll have little stretches where it's like they pop up and they'll make a crazy run.

Speaker 1 You know, they did that. They went to the AFC Championship game when they beat you.
They went to the AFC Championship game against the Titans of the year. The Titans went to the Super Bowl.

Speaker 1 They went against the Patriots. They'll have these little moments where people kind of discount them and they make these runs.
Do you think, I mean, the Chiefs,

Speaker 1 the Chiefs are just, I feel like we forgot how good the Chiefs were because they make it seem so bad.

Speaker 7 But the Chiefs, especially toward the end of the season, because

Speaker 7 the end of the season, they were playing teams that weren't as good as them. They were like

Speaker 7 a cat on the porch playing with a half-dead mouse. That's what the Chiefs were doing, right? And so

Speaker 7 that's kind of how I looked at them. And so I was like, there's some boredom there.
Andy Reid is 7-1 in the playoffs coming off a bye week in the divisional round. That's crazy.

Speaker 7 I think he's 27-4 all-time.

Speaker 1 Coming off a bye week.

Speaker 7 His team is ready. They're a good team.

Speaker 7 Kansas City is one of the toughest places in the National Football League to play.

Speaker 7 They're a really good team.

Speaker 7 Do I give Jacksonville a punchers chance? Yeah. But I think one of the things that I would say, hey, this is a matchup plus for the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Speaker 7 I think their defensive line is incredibly physical. I think they can control the line of scrimmage.
They shut down the run. Kansas City doesn't care.

Speaker 1 Like, Andy Reid doesn't want to run the ball.

Speaker 7 He really doesn't.

Speaker 7 So Andy will look at that and go, hey, we'll develop a few screens.

Speaker 7 Every now and then we'll pop a draw. Who gives a rip?

Speaker 7 We'll control the middle of the football filled with Travis Kelsey. And got, you know, I've got

Speaker 7 the guy I've got playing quarterback is a unicorn. Like, he's a freak show.

Speaker 7 So I,

Speaker 7 like, could they win? Yeah. Will they? Probably not.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So, all right.
So my last question. This has been awesome catching up with you.
I need an update on your dad, who is just a beast.

Speaker 7 Poolside is still 83 years old.

Speaker 1 What is he benching?

Speaker 7 Oh, I bet you he could get, like, I bet you he could get a couple reps with 225.

Speaker 1 83 years old, 225. Like,

Speaker 7 Stink will sometimes just tweet about it or like you know post like uh or we've had him on when he's talked about it like his dad is like just a man's man through through yeah there's no question he is a uh he's a freak of nature um by the way he just he actually just retired oh at 83 at 85 for him yeah at 83 56 years at state farm damn 56 years he just retired and and so my mom passed away last year from covid and so um

Speaker 7 that was one thing I called the game in Pittsburgh, jumped on a plane and flew up to Alaska,

Speaker 7 got to say my goodbyes. And one of the things she told my dad

Speaker 7 why she was not leaving the hospital. She was going to die in there.
And we all knew it. But she told my dad, please retire.
I want you to find. Because

Speaker 7 he just wouldn't do it.

Speaker 7 And so

Speaker 7 it was one of the coolest things,

Speaker 7 and not to get too emotional, but one of the coolest things I've ever seen is

Speaker 7 watching my father, who had been taken care of by my mother for 50 plus years, watching those roles reverse.

Speaker 7 And it's literally,

Speaker 7 it's like

Speaker 7 watching the metamorphosis of going from caterpillar to butterfly. Like, my father went from always being taken care of to being the primary caregiver.

Speaker 7 And it's one of the most beautiful things I've ever got to witness in my lifetime.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 he's still, he's freaking awesome.

Speaker 7 The dude is, like, he'll send a picture. He goes, don't show your wife this.
And he's on a freaking, he's on a ladder on top of, he's got one of these, he's got a front end loader up in Alaska.

Speaker 7 He's like, got the front end loader all the way risen. And then he's on top of a ladder on the front end loader

Speaker 7 at 83 years old, fixing a light bulb

Speaker 7 in this big lamp we have in the front of our house. And he's like, hey, I got the ladder tied pretty tight in the front end, the bucket of the front end loader should be fine.

Speaker 1 I'm like,

Speaker 1 which you freaking call somebody

Speaker 7 to come replace. Now I got to change this light bulb.

Speaker 1 You're like, oh, Lord, have mercy, dude.

Speaker 7 But I guarantee my father is going to die in that. He'll die in that, like, shoveling snow in his front end loader.
And they'll find him like in three days. Like, nobody's heard from him.

Speaker 7 Somebody go check on him. And he'll just have a a big grin on his face, frozen solid in Alaska in his front end loader.
And I'll be like, it'll be one of those things for me.

Speaker 1 I'll be like, man, he went the way he wanted to go. Just doing work.
Yeah, just working. Exactly.
That's awesome. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Don't show your wife this.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm not going to. Yeah, I'm like, I'm not.

Speaker 7 But my wife would get a ticket and fly up there and give him a verbal, like verbal scolding.

Speaker 1 285 and 83. What a beast.
What an absolute monster. Well, Stink, this has been awesome, man.

Speaker 1 we got to do it again before, you know, not let time pass again. But yeah, you're the man.

Speaker 3 Have you ever hung out with

Speaker 1 a guy?

Speaker 3 What's his, Jake Plummer?

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 Jake Plumber, have you been to his mushroom farm?

Speaker 7 No, I have not been to Jake's mushroom farm.

Speaker 1 He lived to be 150.

Speaker 3 Next time we're in Denver, we got to get the whole band together. We were there for Grit Week last year and spent about like, I don't know, three hours at his mushroom farm.

Speaker 7 Jake is a piece of work.

Speaker 1 Awesome guy. Awesome.

Speaker 3 Really interesting what he's up to out there. Next time we're out there,

Speaker 1 we'll do a podcast together. Yeah.
That'd be great. Love to.
Yeah. All right.
Well, thanks so much, Mark. We appreciate it and excited for some football.
All right. Sounds good.
Yeah, me too.

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Speaker 1 Okay, let's wrap it up. We got Fire Fest of the week.
By the way, Hank,

Speaker 1 you tweeting out that UCF.

Speaker 1 For people who have, or maybe new listeners to the show, the original cat bet was Duke getting to the Sweet 16. If they didn't get to the Sweet 16,

Speaker 1 Hank would have had to get a cat. And this morning, he tweeted out the UCF game from that year where they had a layup to win the game.

Speaker 3 I think it was two layups.

Speaker 1 Yeah, a layup and a putback. And it hit every part of the rim.
And that put me in a bad place.

Speaker 3 I was so upset with that.

Speaker 1 I was so mad.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it was tweeted I saw from a Slander Duke account that was like, Can't believe Coach K had this team and almost lost before the Sweet 16.

Speaker 3 And I forgot how close it really was.

Speaker 1 So close. And that's why, even though you're a scumbag piece of shit and I hope you get hit by a bus, that's what Jake said, not me.

Speaker 1 I do love that you have found your way into being a Cowboys fan because it does make great content. It makes the best moments.

Speaker 1 Like the best moments of this show are when we have natural adversarial positions.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I'm cooking up a sick profile picture, so check that out.

Speaker 1 I can't wait.

Speaker 3 My Firefest, nothing.

Speaker 1 You got to also put on tweet notifications to Skip and Will Kane and just respond to all their tweets.

Speaker 3 You said it, Skip.

Speaker 1 Yeah, like, yeah, let's go, boys.

Speaker 3 Love your new show on FS1. LeBron, he's a Cowboys fan, too, right? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah, you and LeBron.

Speaker 3 That's great. Hell yeah.

Speaker 1 You don't need that.

Speaker 1 No, he's a fan of Pat Bev's show, so we're cool, kind of. Not really.

Speaker 3 Nothing too serious in the Firefest world. I did, I was.

Speaker 3 I'm about to destroy your legs. Billy's going to destroy my legs.
I'm looking forward to that.

Speaker 1 Squam again.

Speaker 3 There was two days ago, I was going to the bathroom. There was a female woman in front of me that works here walking out of the building.

Speaker 1 Female woman?

Speaker 3 She was wearing glasses.

Speaker 3 And I thought it was someone that I knew. I was like, oh, see you later.
Have a good one. And I said her name, Tara.
Thought it was Tara. She turned around.
Was not her.

Speaker 3 I'd never met this woman in my life, but I guess her name is like Cara or something close to her because she turned around. I was like, Oh, see you later.

Speaker 3 And then I, and then I was walking in the bathroom. And I walked in the bathroom.

Speaker 1 I was like, Oh my god, that was so awkward. Oh, man.

Speaker 3 But shout out to her.

Speaker 1 She works here? Yeah. You don't know her name?

Speaker 3 I do now.

Speaker 1 We have, we know everyone's name.

Speaker 1 We have several

Speaker 3 female girls that work here. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Some of the finest women work here. Women.

Speaker 3 We got binders filled with female chicks.

Speaker 3 But yeah, it was just, you know.

Speaker 1 Also, yeah, for anyone who says that Barstool's misogynistic, Hank almost got that woman's name right. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And it's a company policy.

Speaker 3 If you're walking behind a woman and you say the wrong name, they turn around and they're like, you just lost. Guess that ass.

Speaker 3 It was, yeah. It was, I mean, again, like

Speaker 3 it wasn't that crazy, but.

Speaker 1 No, I mean, that sucks. That's one of those moments that you're just like, you want to shrink.

Speaker 3 And it was because I did not have to say anything.

Speaker 1 Like, she was in front of me. Right.

Speaker 3 It wasn't like I was walking by her, like I, but we're friends. I was like, oh, you know, see you later.

Speaker 1 And then last time Hank does something polite, he gets punished.

Speaker 3 This is how you become an incel.

Speaker 3 You're just trying to be nice to a woman. There's no room in this world for nice guys like Hank.

Speaker 1 All right, PFT?

Speaker 3 My Fire Fest of the Week is I've become a Photoshop guy. It's something I used to make fun of.

Speaker 3 Like all the replies underneath an Adam Schefter tweet would just be like these really intricate Photoshops of players that people wanted to have on their teams teams and it's really odd fan behavior.

Speaker 3 So then I started doing the just drawings on on Instagram on the stories to just do my own versions of the Photoshops. But we've got a great graphics guy now, Shane.
Shout out Shane.

Speaker 3 He's a SeaWords fan. And I just asked him if he could make me Lamar Jackson in Commander's Gear Photoshops.
And he's been sending me two to three every single day.

Speaker 3 And I just have a surplus of Lamar Jackson Commander's Photoshops that I'm just putting online. I DM'd one to Lamar.
Let me see if he replied to it yet. To be like, hey, Lamar, is this real?

Speaker 3 I saw this online.

Speaker 3 So I've just been, I've been putting out a shitload of actual Photoshops that are good, like good quality, that now I've just become an unironic Photoshop guy.

Speaker 3 And it's the old saying, like, you either die a meme or you live long enough to become a brand.

Speaker 3 And now I'm at this point where, like, this is part of my brand is being the strange psychopathic fan good at Photoshop. I like it.
So

Speaker 3 I don't think I can turn back.

Speaker 1 I don't think that's. No, no, no.
This is you now. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And really, this is the highlight of my offseason as Commanders fans: just being like, imagine if this really good player was on your team. Right.

Speaker 3 And then he gives me a half second of joy, and then I go back to my cruel reality.

Speaker 1 It is fun to look at photoshops of players on your team.

Speaker 3 You want me to. You got any requests?

Speaker 1 Yeah, give me Devontae Adams in a Bears uniform. Okay, all right.

Speaker 1 I'd like to tweet that out.

Speaker 3 Devontae Adams, Bears. Yep.

Speaker 1 Devontae Adams, Bears.

Speaker 3 DeAndre Hopkins, Patriots.

Speaker 1 God damn it. Can we get

Speaker 4 Aaron Rodgers Jets?

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, I got you. That'd be pretty dope.

Speaker 1 I got you.

Speaker 1 It's going to cost you. He stinks.

Speaker 4 That'd give me a high.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Contact high be around.

Speaker 1 I say this, like, I could just text Shane, too. Yeah, no, I'll do it.
I'll do it.

Speaker 1 My middleman. I don't want to get caught with the Photoshop.
No, I don't know how I got this.

Speaker 3 You don't want to touch it. You don't want to possess that.

Speaker 1 All right, My Fire Fest. It's an ongoing story, but I need

Speaker 1 any parents out there, I need some help because,

Speaker 1 okay, you can help. I've told the story about how my son just gets up randomly and just like, hey, time to get up.

Speaker 1 He now has followed the rules that like it's not time to get up, but he, I think I'm too nice to my son and he just wants to hang out. Last night he got up at one in the morning.
I woke up.

Speaker 1 He was just sitting next to my bed. Wasn't saying anything.
Just sitting there. I was like, what are you doing? He's like, oh,

Speaker 1 I wanted to see you. Did it again at five in the morning.

Speaker 1 I think I got to start nagging him.

Speaker 1 Or maybe that will actually make him like me more. Oh, he's, dude, he's got a Spider-Man.

Speaker 1 But he just wants to hang.

Speaker 3 I got a dumb question.

Speaker 3 And this will expose me as not being a father. Can't you just lock him in his room?

Speaker 1 I thought about that, but I think he'll freak out. And I actually said, I'm like, I'm going to lock the door tonight.
He's like, no. So I think that would probably cause.

Speaker 3 I would just lock him up.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Teach him that all the snacks are unattended in the middle of the night.

Speaker 1 I don't want him going down the stairs in the middle of the night. That would be.

Speaker 3 You're a sick flex that you've got a staircase.

Speaker 4 When I was like literally that age, I realized that if I woke up in the middle of the night, like my parents would get pissed if I went to their bedroom.

Speaker 4 But I realized all of the cookies and everything were totally unattended.

Speaker 1 Okay, maybe that's actually not a bad idea, Billy. Maybe just put a bag of cookies in his room, eat them.

Speaker 1 Because I would rather that than getting, like, he just wants to hang out in the middle of the night every night. Just sit.
I mean, waking up and having a child just sitting next to you on the floor.

Speaker 1 And he wasn't even saying anything. He moves like a fucking ninja.
I caught him the other day doing this at three in the morning. I heard like something.
I woke up. I went to the door.

Speaker 1 He was sitting next to the door, slowly opening the door with his hands. So he's like,

Speaker 1 future sneak.

Speaker 3 He knows that he's not supposed to wake you up.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So

Speaker 1 I think I got to just start being mean to him because he's just, he wants to hang all the time.

Speaker 1 I like what.

Speaker 1 Just be like, nah, dude, we don't. We're not boys anymore.
Don't call me. Don't text.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think just, I'm with PFT.

Speaker 1 Yeah, lock him up. Lock him up.
Yeah. Lock him up.
He's got a lot. That will probably be a problem, but I might try it.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, just do it once. Yeah.
See what he does.

Speaker 1 Lock him up. Lock him up.
Maybe he likes it. I don't think so.
I don't think he'll like that. But yeah, maybe.
Or maybe I just lock my door.

Speaker 3 You know what's crazy is like, if you were to give me the option of just getting locked in my room for a day right now, that'd be fucking sweet.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he's got some toys in there.

Speaker 3 Yeah, if you're locked in your own room with all your favorite toys in a television,

Speaker 3 I'd love to get locked up for a day.

Speaker 1 That's the crux of the issue. I need to become less fun than his toys.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 He has toys in there, and he's like, I'd rather hang out with dad. Or you want want in the morning.

Speaker 3 You move your room downstairs. You say you're not allowed to go downstairs.

Speaker 1 Yeah, maybe. I don't know.

Speaker 4 Bro, can I hit you with something deep?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 4 What if it's like he goes off to college one day?

Speaker 1 And I'm wish he was sleeping on my floor. Wish that he was waiting for me.
Yeah, no, I think there'll be a lot of things I'll miss when he goes off to college.

Speaker 1 I don't think waking up multiple times in the middle of the night, having a three-and-a-half-year-old sitting right next to my bed and scaring the fucking shit out of me will be one of those things I miss.

Speaker 1 But you might be right. You might be right.

Speaker 1 All right, Billy, you're a firefest.

Speaker 4 I got into this bowling competition.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, all

Speaker 1 Billy L.

Speaker 4 Spent the whole season being like, yo, at this time, I'm not going to get the punishment. This one's going to suck.
And then just totally agreed to it.

Speaker 4 And I'm ready, but it's going to be one of those things where after this moment, not going to deal with it until the day comes. And then I'll deal with it then.

Speaker 1 It is going to make the bowling competition so much more fun just watching you get mad that Jake and Max are better bowlers than you.

Speaker 4 Oh, I know that 100%.

Speaker 1 Right, but you still, I know you. I'm going to get pissed at you.
Yeah, you're going to get pissed.

Speaker 3 But you could probably, if you throw it harder than them, you might be able to.

Speaker 3 I know what's going to happen, and that's Jake is going to get out there and just absolutely kick the shit out of Billy, and Billy's going to just rage.

Speaker 1 Not a real sport. Rage.

Speaker 3 You're going to hate it.

Speaker 1 Yeah. You're going to use this.

Speaker 3 You're probably going to do something really dumb during the live stream because you're so mad that Jake's a better baller.

Speaker 4 Like you give a gigantic ball that's heavy as fuck in my hand.

Speaker 1 Anything happened? I'm very excited for this. And you only now, Jake only has, it actually worked out so perfectly that Jake has barely an edge and Billy got at it.
Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1 And PFT, and I will not slow play the hot dogs, but I'm not going to force myself to eat them very fast.

Speaker 3 I'm going to, I might get foot longs.

Speaker 1 Yeah, really quick.

Speaker 4 Do I get any

Speaker 4 of those hot dogs? I'm 300?

Speaker 1 No, no, no.

Speaker 1 I'll eat hot dogs for you. PFT's eating hot dogs for Jake.

Speaker 3 You just have to do a 2, what is it? 270?

Speaker 1 270. 270 is pretty.

Speaker 1 But of course, the way it's going to work is you're not at 270 until we finish the six hot dogs. Yeah.
So you'll be at like, you know, for maybe an hour, you'll be at 290.

Speaker 1 Max is also guaranteed he'd be done in 60 minutes, which I don't.

Speaker 6 Hank has guaranteed that on my behalf, but it will also happen.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 he guaranteed it.

Speaker 3 Max has it in him.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he does.

Speaker 3 Also, we haven't mentioned it, but shout out the headgear that Billy and Max are wearing right now. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 Brand new winter hats out.

Speaker 1 Those things are sick.

Speaker 6 10 a.m. Friday morning, so it could be by the time you're listening.

Speaker 4 I've taken this home. It's actually super comfortable.

Speaker 1 And what is taking it home? You're wearing it right now. I know, but I know, but

Speaker 4 there was one here like a couple days ago, and I took it home.

Speaker 1 And then you realize it was super comfortable.

Speaker 4 Then I realized Max, like, no, we need to sell them today, and I took Jake's.

Speaker 1 Oh, okay. So I'm wearing Jake's right now.
They are good hats. You guys both look awesome in them.
Also for the bowling challenge, we have a very special guest. Very special guest.
Like

Speaker 1 I don't know who got that, but I tip my cap to them because that was fucking awesome. So get excited because there will be a very special guest and it's going to be an awesome stream.

Speaker 1 I'm legitimately excited to hang out in a bowling alley for PFT's birthday. Same.
Yeah, me too.

Speaker 4 It's going to be fun after the fact.

Speaker 8 It won't be fun.

Speaker 1 No, no, no, it's going to be fun for us the entire time. It's going to be fun during the

Speaker 3 entire time. Jake, you're going to get to go bowling.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And drink beer and be hot dogs.

Speaker 3 We're going to have a full birthday party and then probably leave, and then you're going to be bowling for another like six hours.

Speaker 1 Yeah, right. We're going to have fun.
It's going to be for us. Fun? It's going to be a lot of fun.

Speaker 3 Pizza, bowling. It's a joint birthday party, though.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Thank you.

Speaker 3 I appreciate it. Can we invite Stu?

Speaker 1 Yes, Stuke. Yes.
Stu can come.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's his birthday, too, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Stu can come. Stu can come and heckle.

Speaker 3 Who else's birthday is it? Who is in birthday week? Danny Woodhead?

Speaker 1 Wasn't there someone recently?

Speaker 3 Katie Nolan.

Speaker 1 Let's see. That was an awkward silent.
I wasn't going to say anything. I almost said something.
She's not invited. No, she's not.
Oh, our co-workers. It's not your birthday.

Speaker 1 That's maybe what I was thinking. Oh, yeah.
And also Riggs and Richard.

Speaker 3 Justin Tibberling.

Speaker 1 Riggs and Chuck.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, Riggs. Yeah, yeah.
Chuck.

Speaker 3 Jackie Robinson.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 He's invited.

Speaker 3 What do you got?

Speaker 4 It's crazy that you said on your birthday.

Speaker 1 We're just going to pull. Andy Molinakis.
Is that him?

Speaker 1 He's January 30th. I wish you could.
He lives in New York.

Speaker 3 See if Annie Mellon. If it's your birthday, you're allowed to come.

Speaker 1 How about that?

Speaker 1 Don't do that. Don't do that.
Absolutely not. Don't do that.

Speaker 1 Not open to the public. Not open to the public.

Speaker 3 You have to show ID.

Speaker 1 No, it's not. Not open to the public.
We live in New York City. There will be many people out there.

Speaker 3 Remember when we tried to marry someone, PFT?

Speaker 1 Yeah. We married a brother and sister.

Speaker 3 How many people out there do you think that are listening? What's up? Our January 30th and 31st birthdays.

Speaker 1 I would say total, at least 200.

Speaker 3 It's a great day. It's a great day to be born.

Speaker 1 It's actually the city? No, no, in general, listening

Speaker 1 overall. I mean, people would fly if we did the deal.

Speaker 1 I would say 1,000. Maybe.

Speaker 1 It is a great day, but it is.

Speaker 1 I'm reminded as I get older, like, you probably have the same thing, PFT, where you were gaslit when you were a kid into thinking that January birthdays were good. They suck.

Speaker 1 Like, every time I see someone who has a birthday, I have the numbers. Everyone who has a birthday in June or 2000.
I'm like, that rules.

Speaker 3 You can do it so much more fun.

Speaker 1 January is just the worst month ever.

Speaker 8 January 31st is the 278th most popular birthday.

Speaker 1 Oh, January 30th.

Speaker 8 It's rare. January 30th is 318th.

Speaker 1 Oh, even more rare. Wow.

Speaker 3 What do you guys think is the most popular birthday?

Speaker 1 Wait, wait, wait, wait. Yeah, I was.
Okay.

Speaker 3 I was going to say October.

Speaker 3 No, he said nine months after July 4th. You think people are fucking...

Speaker 4 That's when I was born.

Speaker 1 So no, nice. Patriotic, baby.

Speaker 8 Nine of the top 10 ten are all in September.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 weird. So March?

Speaker 1 Same college days.

Speaker 3 People have sex on our birthdays.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And then the babies are going to be a little bit more.
No, it's like holidays.

Speaker 6 Same master's day.

Speaker 1 Our math is really bad.

Speaker 1 It's like holiday season. September is literally the ninth month of the year.

Speaker 1 It's like holidays, New Year's. Yeah, yeah.
Okay, that makes sense. So not our birthdays.
Kind of. Not really.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 8 Jake, Firefest. Before Firefest, a little bit of breaking moves, which you'd appreciate, big cat.

Speaker 1 Breaking moves for the third straight season. Devontae Adams? No, it has nothing to do with football.

Speaker 8 For the third straight season, ACC coach is retiring basketball without a retirement tour.

Speaker 1 Mike Bray retiring in a season. Yeah.
Oh, he's gone. Yeah, he's retiring.
Today. Well, he's finishing out the season.
Oh, so it is a retirement tour.

Speaker 3 That is a retirement tour. That's Chip Bray.

Speaker 1 That's a retirement tour. Well, not a full story.
For fuck is that Chip? Full season. Yeah,

Speaker 1 that's a decent thing. His conference play started? He has.

Speaker 1 They're bad. Hank knew that.

Speaker 8 My Fire Fest is one of the locations for Mount Rushmore and my New York City restaurants. It's closing.
Which one? Hillstone.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 No, but not all of them.

Speaker 8 One of the two locations.

Speaker 1 So you go to the other one.

Speaker 8 Well, it's going to be so much harder to get in.

Speaker 1 The one right here is not closest.

Speaker 4 27th and Park.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's the one closest.

Speaker 8 I love Hillstone. One of my favorites.

Speaker 3 What is Hillstone?

Speaker 1 It's like a steak, but it's one of those steak places you can't do.

Speaker 8 They're the best bench to pay for it. You can get sushi.

Speaker 1 Okay. Yeah.
You get everything. My favorite.
Tammy. I'd love to go.

Speaker 1 Want to go? Yeah, let's go. Let's go for my birthday.
Okay. Yeah.
Sick. Okay.
I also. Oh, no, no, no.
That was for me, Hank, and PFT. Got it.
You can come too.

Speaker 3 I read that

Speaker 3 our good friend John Rossine's favorite place, Bar Coastal, just reopened. Different name.
Whoa. Word on the street is they've got the same guy cooking the wings that cooked the old wings.
Oh, wow.

Speaker 3 Might be worth checking out.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 8 So, Hillstone.

Speaker 1 Still alive, but not really. Are we in the trust tree?

Speaker 1 I might have muted John Rothstein. I I don't think I have any involvement.

Speaker 3 I don't mute John Rossing just for nights like when DeMar Hamlin

Speaker 3 and John Rosstein, like in the middle of everybody being like, prayers up for DeMar. John Rossing's like,

Speaker 3 Syracuse basketball, more consistent than the jackass trillion.

Speaker 1 Rather nice

Speaker 3 watching this game is like having a cardiac arrest.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like

Speaker 1 within 20 minutes. Yeah.
I'm going to unmute him when we get closer to March. It's just, you know, during football season, I, you know,

Speaker 1 scheduling and all that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I could do without it. All right.

Speaker 1 Hank, have you ever gotten this? We're going to do lottery ball.

Speaker 3 No, I have not.

Speaker 1 Really?

Speaker 1 Really? Damn. Sure? Positive.
All right. We have all the money in the safe.
So we're all set. We're all squared up.
So if anyone gets it, they get all the money in the safe.

Speaker 3 Let me go 17.

Speaker 1 Nice.

Speaker 8 18.

Speaker 1 Hank?

Speaker 3 Let me look at my DMs.

Speaker 1 I'm feeling it today. 20.
Give me a number, too, Hank, from your DMs.

Speaker 1 Sorry. Come on, Hank.

Speaker 4 How do you not have a number?

Speaker 3 I have so many. There's so many giants.
I mean, Cowboys fans that have overflowed my DMs. You should just all be numbers.
49. Give me one, too.

Speaker 3 As a Cowboys fan, that's dope. You mentioned Skump.
Cowboys Yankees fan, welcome aboard. No, give me a number.

Speaker 3 No, I'm just trying to fire through.

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 1 one, one, okay, 49 and one. I do you want 49 or one?

Speaker 3 Oh, no, this guy said 17, 14, or 66.

Speaker 1 All right, so I'll go 66.

Speaker 3 I want 49.

Speaker 1 Okay, 69,

Speaker 3 17.

Speaker 4 I'm feeling it.

Speaker 4 I'm just going to will it to win.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God. If Billy gets this, he's just not going to do a video because he'll just reimburse

Speaker 1 with the money in there.

Speaker 1 Would I say 66?

Speaker 1 willing it uh 97 oh damn

Speaker 1 way offhand you're never gonna get it the second time ever ever ever ever gonna get it love you guys iguanas are invasive in florida fall out of trees when it gets cold

Speaker 1 day to find you shy

Speaker 1 oh i'll be coming for your love up gay shy

Speaker 1 I've been coming for your love okay

Speaker 1 You've been so good to me

Speaker 1 Give me you in me

Speaker 1 You've been so good to me

Speaker 1 You love

Speaker 1 Saturn

Speaker 1 Wait for me.

Speaker 1 I'm sitting here. But be somewhere.

Speaker 1 Shall I learn to find me shall take? Say after me.

Speaker 1 Life's the better to be safe and sobbing. Say after me.

Speaker 1 Life's the better to be safe and sobbing. We let you say

Speaker 1 life.

Speaker 1 But just to play my worries away,

Speaker 1 you're all the things I've got to remember. You're shy and away.

Speaker 1 Love and coming to the end of my life.

Speaker 1 You're shy and away.

Speaker 1 Love and coming to the end of my life. You can't.

Speaker 1 Say on the came.

Speaker 1 all

Speaker 1 day on me,

Speaker 1 take on me all

Speaker 1 day,

Speaker 1 take on me,

Speaker 1 take on me,