CFB w/ Andy Staples, NFL with SB Champion Mitch Schwartz + Hot Seat/Cool Throne

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On today's part of my take, we've got a football two for great interviews. We have Andy Staples on to talk college football, the madness that has occurred in the last 48 hours in the college football landscape, as well as championship Saturday and college football playoffs.
And then we have Mitch Schwartz, first-time guest, four-time Pro Bowler, Super Bowl champ for the Kansas City Chiefs, talking O-line, talking the NFL right now, what's wrong maybe with Russell Wilson and the Seahawks, who's playing well. Great interview with him.
We're going to recap Monday Night Football. We'll touch a little college football before the rankings come out, do our best guess.
And then we have Hot Seat Cool Throne, a great show for you. And we're brought to you by our friends at Toast.
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Let's go. Boys! Boys! Now in the street there is violence And then a lot of work will be done No place to hang out or wash in And then I can't blame all on the sun Oh no We're gonna rock down to Electric Avenue And then we'll take it higher Oh we're gonna rock down to Electric Avenue It's Part of My Take presented by Marshall Sports Welcome to Part of My Take presented by tostitos the official chip and dip of the nfl today is wednesday december 1st and we did it boys we all won our games this week week 12 goes down in the books slap it up a score gami of sorts first time ever in the history of the show the history history of the show.
Washington football team won Monday night to cap it off. The Bears started it on Thursday.
The Jets, the Dolphins, the Patriots. A 5-0 sweep.
What would that have paid? Probably pretty nice. That's a good question.
I think Billy's got the answer. Billy? I think I saw that for a $100 bet.
It'd be $2,000. So you would still be very, very far in the negative if you had bet that every single week since 2006.
Yeah, but that's okay. It's fine.
Congrats. It happened this time.
We're all in a one-game winning streak for the first time in the history of the show. That's pretty impressive, guys, especially considering that we have to do this with the Jets, the Bears, the Dolphins, and the Washington football team.
Yes. So, Hank, I think that stat might have been wrong, by the way.
I think it might be more. I think it's got to be closer to 20.
Yeah, it's got to be more. I'm just doing the math in my head because the Bears were a short favorite.
The Dolphins were a short favorite. What did I say? You said 2000.
Yeah, it's 2000. Oh, okay.
All right. So, my apologies, Billy.
You still could have. If you had done it just this year, you would be up.
There it is. Exactly.
The 2021 prop bet of the part of my take parlay is it's an earner right now. Let's do it.
Let's do it again. I feel pretty good about it.
I feel dangerously good about the football team. In fact, I feel so good about the football team that I'm starting to now feel bad about the football team because I should never be confident with this franchise.
It's been, I think, three weeks since an embarrassment. Yeah.
That's shocking. Well, I actually think that if you're talking about the entire teams of this show, we are the Roy G.
Biv. We're the colors of the rainbow in terms of football teams.
You have the Patriots that are bona fide good. I think the Washington football team is good-ish.
I think the Dolphins are getting good.

The Bears are bad.

And the Jets are awful.

So you have the whole spectrum of where our football teams lay.

It feels good right now.

I'm just getting this sneaking suspicion.

The hairs on the back of my neck are starting to stand up.

And this is just through years and years and years of learned experience,

which is when things start to go good for this team,

eventually something bad is about to happen. I hope I'm not jinxing the team.
The RG3 hat is 3-0 now since I found that for $5 in Times Square, but it's running into maybe an unstoppable force this weekend against the Raiders, which is the coin flip guy that posted this on Reddit. He's got the coin flip guy has won every single game this year based on his coin flip that he did before week one And now he's got the Raiders beating the football team I don't know if I can beat a coin That actually reminded me Do you know that on Someone alerted to me to this After the Bears won on Thursday On Redline Radio The preview of the season We went through the schedule I'm-0.
I'm 11-0 for predicting Bears wins and losses. That's pretty impressive.
I have, though, a win going against the Cardinals this week because I thought the Cardinals weren't going to be that great. So it's probably going to end this week, but I'm 11-0.
I'm the coin flip guy. I'm the human coin flip guy.
It's also the Dennis Green game. Yes.
Which just, the uniform matchup, it always brings back to 2003, 2004 2004, 2006, maybe a little bit later than that, the Matt Leiner game, where your defense just kind of like came alive in the second half. But yeah, I'm happy with the way that the football team played against the Seahawks on Monday night.
Yeah, they're good-ish. That was like an imposing of our will.
It wasn't a whooping, it wasn't a clown, and it wasn't a beatdown, But it was kind of an imposing of the will. We should have won that game a lot more easier than we did.
Where at the end, obviously, we had a left-footed punter that was in as our kicker. Who was one for six lifetime on field goals in college.
So we didn't want to kick a field goal to go up 11 points at the end. We still ended up with 42 minutes of possession compared to 18.
That means it's 23-0 now. Yeah, which means 23-0.
I feel pretty good about how we looked last time, but right now, I'm kind of realistic. The ceiling on this team is kind of where you were last year.
Losing the Nickelodeon game. Yeah.
That's what it feels like it's all culminating to right now. It's an honor and a privilege to lose the Nickelodeon game.
It is. The other story out of this game, I do think the Washington football team,

they are good-ish.

They are not good, like, yet.

I think if they win next week, if they win in the Raiders,

now they're like, okay, that's four in a row.

You have to be a good team to win four in a row in the NFL.

So they're good-ish, trending towards good.

And it seems like, you know, we've talked about it ad nauseum, but with seven teams making the playoffs, everyone's kind of in the hunt. They're in the playoffs right now, right? We're in the playoffs.
We're the seventh seed right now. So the other story, though, coming from this game is Russell Wilson.
I mean, incredible that he's come back from this injury. Maybe he came back a little early.
Free DK. Free DK.
I'm with you, Hank. Free DK.
It was tough watching that last night because they didn't even target him in the first half. DK Metcalf is an elite receiver.
He would have broken my heart if he had done the dog piss celebration, which I think he... He was wide open on the two-point conversion.
He was wide open on the two-point conversion. I actually, I texted him before the game.
I was like, so you know, if you do the dog piss celebration, I have to pay your fine after you beat me. Friendship over with DK.
And he's like, don't worry, bro. I'm not going to even get a target until like the fourth quarter.
Someone pointed out that Russell Wilson just hasn't thrown the ball to him since the Only Fans thing happened. Ooh, interesting.
Yeah. Russell Wilson, is he the guy who gets the most excuses made for in the NFL in terms of quarterbacks? I feel like...
Matt Stafford. No, but people clown on Matt Stafford.
Like, Russell Wilson, how many times do we have to hear that his O-line's bad? How many times do we have to hear that, you know, he's injured right now? Like, he is not playing good football. He's not been playing good football since Week 10 last year.
He's had some playoff busts. Peyton Manning.
It's weird to me, maybe because he's so nice and positive, but it's just very bizarre to me that Russell Wilson, he's not a top five quarterback right now. No, he's not.
He's not. I think the injury does have a lot to do with it.
He was bad last year at the end of the stretch. I think the injury has a lot to do with it, but you also have to ask yourself.
You just made an excuse for him. No, but wait.
Let me finish. Can I finish? Yeah.
He is also the person that decided to come back four games too early from the injury. Correct.
So that's completely on him. But I'm talking about before that, too.
He had basically last year, the beginning of the season, everyone was like, how has he never gotten an MVP vote? Then they had that clunker member in the playoffs against Jared Goff who was playing without a thumb, which everyone was like, how did this happen? They were a home game in the playoffs, obviously no fans. But I don't know, maybe I would assume they're going to pick him over Pete Carroll in the front office, which is the right decision.
I just think it's more – it's how we frame everything. Russell Wilson is still a very good quarterback.
Russell Wilson is someone that you'd love to have on your team. But Russell Wilson does get in the conversation of the top-level guys, and I don't think he's a top-level guy.
He is not Aaron Rodgers, Patrick Mahomes, Tom Brady. He's just not.
I don't know if you heard this, Big Cat, but Pete Carroll is the oldest coach in the NFL. Pete Carroll is 70 years old.
He won't change his ways. He won't change his ways at this point.
But his way has typically worked for him. His way is to have Russell Wilson on his team, have a good defense, and then have a good running back.
And he's a guy that, like the culture, he can keep a good, he's a positive guy. I think people want to play for him, but it's more helpful when you have good players that want to play for you than when you have bad players that really want to go out there and play for you.
I just think it's – Russell Wilson, every time I bring him up, everyone's like, well, no, there's this and this and this and this. Again, he's a very good quarterback, but if you're talking about the guys that are difference makers week in and week out, he's not that.
He hasn't been that for a little bit. Right now, I joke about Taylor Heineke, how he's Brett Favre with a bigger dick, but he is actually playing much better than Russell Wilson right now.
I would rather have Taylor Heineke on my team right now moving forward than Russell Wilson, which it sounds insane to say, especially thinking back like four or five weeks ago when he looked so bad. But he's legitimately fun to watch.
You don't know what you're going to get when Taylor Heineke steps out there. With Russell Wilson, again, kind of like last week, everything is just boring now in Seattle.
Please don't bore me. Yeah, people were trying to do the Seahawks have never played a normal game after last night's game.
It was actually a very boring game. Well, except for the blocked extra point return for a two-point conversion.
But there wasn't anything truly remarkable about that game. It wasn't crazy Seahawks.
The onside kick recovery at the end, if they had actually recovered it and kicked a field goal, that definitely would have counted. The Seahawks had obviously missed a two-point conversion, but if they won that game possessing the ball for like 10 minutes, that would have been a crazy game.
Yes, that would have been crazy. And it felt like it was going to happen in the moment.
It really did. I was having heart attacks.
My body was – I was looking at my body from an out-of-body – my brain was in the bathroom puking, and my body was dead on the living room floor. Damn.
That sounds severe. I mean, it was bad.
I was going through – like, I've seen this movie before, and it's going to happen happen again. But yeah, as a Washington football team fan, I'm ecstatic with the current state of the franchise.
But again, it feels like, I was joking earlier, I said it feels like we're peaking too soon, and Bubba was like, you're five and six. And yes, that is peaking too soon, as far as my standards go, is looking at the graph on ESPN of the playoff simulator and seeing that we're in the seventh seed.
Yes. In November.
That is, by definition, peaking too soon. We shouldn't be there until like the last two weeks.
Week 17 is when it feels about right for me to slip into that. But I'll take it any way I can get it.
I get to look at that playoff simulator all week and see the little yellow W on there, and then I feel good about myself.

Yes. I want to play a quick game

then about

Russell Wilson. How many quarterbacks would you take

going forward? So not even right,

like just going forward for the rest of their career. Where would

Russell Wilson rank in terms of quarterbacks

in the AFC North?

I would take Joe Burrow and Lamar Jackson.

Everybody except for

the Steelers kicker. No, but seriously,

what would you like?

It's interesting to me that he

I'm sorry. I would take Joe Burrow and Lamar Jackson.
Everybody except for the Steelers kicker. No, but seriously, what would you like? It's interesting to me that he – it's weird.
It's a very bizarre thing, and I think a lot to do with the fact that he's a really nice guy and he's never done anything that's been bad, but he's not playing at a level that he gets talked about in a level that he's not – it doesn't look like that. Are we taking into account his contract or just his play? No, just say his play.
Like I'd take Josh Allen ahead of Russell Wilson. Yes.
I would. Mack Jones.
Yeah. Right now.
Yeah. Lamar.
Definitely. Joe Burrow.
Yep. I'm going down.
Not Carson Wentz. Mahomes? Yep.
Herbert? Yep. Yep.
Dak? Yep. You said Heineke? I would probably, if we're going the rest of career, maybe not.
Yeah, maybe not. Maybe not.
Maybe not. I wouldn't take, I would take Russ, obviously, over Jalen Hurts and Daniel Jones.
Rodgers, I'd take Russ over. Brady? Wait, you'd take Russ over Rodgers? No, Rodgers I'd take Russ over.
Oh, okay, you said Russ over. Yeah, Rodgers I'd take over Russ.
Here's the real question. Kirk Cousins.
No. Yeah, me too.
I'm still Russ above Kirk. Kyler.
Stafford might be where I'd draw the line. But there's a lot.
That's like, I mean, if you list it out, he's probably playing around a 10 to 12 level quarterback right now. He's playing at like Turbo Tannehill.
Yeah. I'd rather have him than Tannehill, but not by a whole lot right now.
He's playing somewhere between Turbo Tannehill and Drunk Dak. Yep.
That's where he's at. That's actually kind of fun.
Yeah, that's a good spot to be in. That makes him sound a lot more entertaining than he's been for the last couple weeks.
All right, let's talk a little college football. We have Andy Staples on, so we're going to break down everything.
But it was a crazy 48 hours. Lincoln Riley to USC.
Brian Kelly to Notre Dame. Everyone's leaving everywhere.
People are shocked that coaches could leave their players. We got the Brian Kelly text message.
That's how his players found out, which does it suck? Yes. Is it shocking? Absolutely not.
I actually think that's the most common way for players to find out right now. Can you imagine how crazy it would be if Brian Kelly got hired by another school and he was able to tell his team that before anything ever leaked out? The text message is the way to go.
It's also just very funny to me because the way the media works now, if anyone knows, everyone knows, right? So the argument was being made, well, Brian Kelly was recruiting a week ago. Well, a week ago he was still the coach at Notre Dame.
If he stopped recruiting, everyone would know that something was up. It kind of just shines a light on what college football is.
When the coaches are with Brian Kelly at Notre Dame say, we found out via text after, or from media reports, after we just left a recruit's house trying to recruit him, so we look like assholes. It's like, yeah, that sucks, but that's kind of how it happens.
If you're at the top level of the game, you're going to have to be making secret backroom deals all the time. And this is just, it's the reality of the situation.
Also, finding out via text, yeah, that's how everyone finds out everything these days. Every bad news.
No, it's just everything in general. People don't actually do anything anymore.
They don't actually work. It's just, I text somebody something, and they text somebody else something to make something happen.
And then they text me back saying, yeah, we took care of that thing. It's taken care of.
And then I text somebody else text somebody else being like hey we're doing this no one actually like gets out and does anything that's not related to texting we live in the cloud constantly um but yeah it's uh the whole the whole world is upside down in college football it is crazy that like the the the power five to power five coaching movement that never really And then it happened in two consecutive days with four Blue Blood programs. People are mad at Lincoln Riley in Oklahoma.
Again, you can't like... I would feel a lot worse.
I felt worse about it like years ago when... Not even years, like a few years ago when players couldn't transfer openly and as freely as they can now.

Because that did always suck.

When it was like, you go to a school for a coach, the coach leaves,

then you have to sit out a year if you want to go anywhere else.

Now guys can move around a lot more freely.

So the game is the game.

Brian Kelly is a habitual see you guys later.

He did it at Central Michigan.

He did it at Cincinnati.

He did it at Notre Dame.

He probably will do it again.

He needs to at Central Michigan. He did it at Cincinnati.
He did it at Notre Dame. He probably will do it again.
He needs a good nickname because you remember people used to be like Suitcase Saban for Nick because he always used to transfer play. He would never stick around.
Brian Kelly, he is the exact same thing. He just doesn't have a cool nickname like that.
It's also very interesting to me. Brian Kaleev.
There we go. Done.
Nice. That will stick.
That will stick. It's interesting to me that all the hand-wringing that everyone did about how the NIL was going to shake up college football and ruin college football, and the thing that shook up college football and I would say kind of ruined college football was just done by the administrators

as always with conference free alignment.

Like Lincoln Riley stays at Oklahoma if they're in the Big 12, I believe.

Probably.

You know what I mean?

That's the thing that I think irritated most Oklahoma fans is they're not used to having

coaches leave.

Right.

Ever.

Yeah.

They are one of those programs that think we are the best program.

We're the best job.

If you take a job at Oklahoma, you're here for life. And so to have him leave to USC, it shook up their brains real quick.
And they're like, wait, this doesn't happen to us. And then that's really the only way that we have empathy for anything these days in America is when something bad happens to you.
Then you understand, hey, this sucks. Right.
This sucks. I'm sorry that I didn't care what happened to you.
But now that it happens to me, you're right. This sucks.
So now Oklahoma fans are like, wait, this should never happen. This is illegal.
Did you see that on the message boards? There was someone who was trying to claim that Lincoln Riley bringing his entire staff to USC was technically illegal because they are state workers. It's violating interstate commerce act.
Yeah. It's like, that's the level of panic Oklahoma fans were in.
They were like, they were essentially the angry challenge flag when there's nothing to challenge, but you just want to stop the game for a second, let everyone know that you're upset with how it's going, and then reset the game. I saw one guy say that he left because he's a lib, and he wanted to get out of Oklahoma and move to California.
California? Okay, yeah. Right, right, yeah.
Just be under stricter mask laws. No, he wanted to pay more taxes.
Right, right. Which is why he left.
He wanted to make sure everyone was wearing a mask during his recruiting business. Yes, exactly.
He was sick of all this. All right, college football playoff real quick.
So we're taping this in the afternoon. I believe it will be Georgia, Michigan, Alabama, Cincy, Oklahoma State as the top five.
Maybe Cincy jumps Alabama. They probably won't have Cincy jump Alabama.
But it feels like Michigan will hop into Ohio State spot it too. Yeah.
Is there any possibility that if Alabama just whomps the shit out of Georgia, which I don't think is going to happen, but if they beat the fuck out of Georgia, is there any possibility at all that Georgia drops out? No. If in the most chaotic scenario? Nope.
Nope. Nope.
Nope. I would, it would be I agree with that.
Unless like the Georgia no, no chance. I agree with that.
None. So, and the way it's set up is that Georgia and if Alabama beat Georgia Alabama would probably go to one and Georgia would go to two or three so that they wouldn't have to face each other.
The Oklahoma State, the best part about all of this news in the last two days is that Notre Dame still has a decent chance to go to the college football playoff. And Brian Kelly, it would be, if you, a lot of people hate Notre Dame.
I'm not a fan of Notre Dame. But if you're a fan of just objectively funny things,

you should be a fan of Notre Dame winning the national title this year

because Brian Kelly leaving Notre Dame being like,

I can't ever win a national title here.

I got to go to LSU.

And then watching his team and his coaching staff win a national title

without him would be one of the greatest sports stories of all time.

Does Brian Kelly get a ring if that happens? I think he probably would demand one. But I don't know if you'd give it to him.
But imagine that. His legacy is he didn't actually ever win a national title, even though it was his team and his team all year, and he just left.
That's what everyone in the world should be rooting for. And again, it's pretty much either Baylor beating Oklahoma State and Iowa beating Michigan or Georgia beating – it's not that crazy for Notre Dame to sneak in.
So the weird part about Notre Dame is they don't have really a plan for who's going to coach the team yet, unless I've missed it, unless they've just announced it. No, I watched the press conference this morning.
They said, like, we're going to do something maybe unusual. A little different.
I don't know what that means. That's what I'm saying, Hank, is there's the best interim coach of all time is out there right now.
If you're looking for an interim coach, this is a better story than Rudy. If Coach O as interim Ed were to go up to South Bend and win a national championship with Brian Kelly's players, as Brian Kelly took his job at LSU, Hollywood would shoot you in the face if you brought that script up.
It would be incredible. So root for Notre Dame to make the playoffs.
Root for Coach O to be the coach of Notre Dame. And yeah, it really would be so awesome if Notre Dame won the title this year right in Brian Kelly's face.
But I realistically don't know who Notre Dame is going to have coached. It's got to be somebody that's been – It's their assistant, Freeman, is the guy everyone's rallying around and wants to be the coach.
That's what they're saying. Defense coordinator.
That's what they're saying, but you would think that they would make that announcement, right? The fact that they haven't said anything and that they've been kind of cryptic with it, it makes me think it's not going to be him. Well, they have the benefit of they don't play in a conference, so they don't have a conference title game, so they don't really have to decide for a few days.
It's just weird. It's weird.
They're probably just waiting to decide if they go to the college football playoff, maybe it's this guy. If they don't, maybe it's like, hey, we're just not even going to name anyone.
We're just going to play whatever bowl game and see how it goes. Well, because the if it is if it is a top assistant that gets there if they go to um like the conference playoff and then they lose resoundingly in that first playoff game it would make it tougher for them i think to sell the fact that they're going to sign that guy as the head coach for the future right it's like you don't want to you don't want to poison them right off the bat right yeah, make a special team guy or the equipment manager your head coach.
Just do that. Or, I mean, Bob Stoops went back.
How about Lou Holtz? Yeah. Bob Stoops is doing the Barry Alvarez special where he just catches a $250,000 check to coach the team in bowl season.
Lou Holtz, we just need more of him. Charlie Weiss.
If you never watched the show on ESPN, I forget, it was a college football live that was Lou Holtz and Mark May, and they would just scream at each other, and they'd get into these debates, and they'd both be wrong, but they'd be wrong in different ways. It'd be incredible.
It was the best television. It really was.
It really was. Why not Charlie Weiss, though? Bring him back, man.
You're already paying him, probably. He doesn't have, Sol Fuego passed away.
Sol Fuego did pass away. He doesn't have his parent living at home that he has to take care of.
Antagonize everyone. Yeah, so the last thing I had on Notre Dame was Brian Kelly met with the team for 11 minutes.
That made people very upset. At 7 a.m.
What's the... How many minutes? I think 11...
How many minutes were you like, good job, Brian Kelly. 11's almost too long.
25? No, no, no. Because then you get it.
25 minutes in a breakfast meeting? No. No, but I'm saying to be acceptable for the masses.
For the masses. I guess maybe I'm in the minority on this because I would rather coach just text me.
Yeah, no, he did. So I get to sleep in a little bit.
I think 11 is a long time. is almost too long there's no meeting i would submit that there's no work meeting that you should ever be in that should be longer than 11 minutes that's like that's once it reaches the level of being counterproductive when you're in a room with somebody talking about something that could be an email for longer than 11 minutes it should yeah it should have been a text It should have been one of those text messages you get for bill pay

where it just says reply Y or N.

Did you receive this message that Brian Kelly is leaving for a ton of money

and does not actually care about you like sons?

Yes or no?

Yeah, there's really no reason to have the meeting.

I think he keeps up appearances a little bit,

and he gets to feel good about himself.

I'm wondering what the percentage of players that attended the meeting was. Can't be a ton.
Although Notre Dame, they make all their athletes go to class and shit. The other thing a lot of people are saying, and I agree it's bullshit, but football players have to wake up at like 6am every day.
Them having a 7am meeting isn't that crazy. i would never get up at 7 a.m.
but billy can you know confirm that i'm pretty sure like athletes they have to lift and shit at like 5 a.m. every day yes it's probably like a pre-lift or post-lift yeah yeah 7 a.m.
they've been up for a couple hours right yeah they yeah we see that the regular america season like that's fucking ridiculous go yeah you forget it takes a lot to be a high level athlete it'd be pretty funny though if if lsu like brian kelly goes down there and he makes them raise their standards for admission immediately yeah brian kelly probably just saw like all the sick players that he could be getting at notre dame yeah he's like i i don't care what their act is i really don't right notre dame used to have uh like rules i not even i don't even think that long ago. I think it was maybe when Brian Kelly started where the players had to eat with all the regular students.
And players would miss meals because the dining hall would close. And they didn't get to eat at the facility and shit like that.
Notre Dame, Brian Kelly got them to a place where they had not been in a while.

And we'll see what happens going forward.

But Notre Dame is a little bit antiquated.

You can say that.

Yeah, the selling point of Notre Dame for a long time was we don't want you if you don't want to be challenged when you come here.

It's like we want players that want to exist in one of the worst environments possible for an athlete. And obviously there's some cool stuff about Notre Dame too, but we're not going to do anything to make it easier on you.
So we don't want players that want to cut any corners whatsoever. Turns out that cutting corners is sometimes really good.
And it gets stuff done. It's easier, which is why people like it.
And Notre Dame is like, if you go to Notre Dame, I always assume the Notre Dame alumni

takes care of themselves better than probably any other alumni.

So that's a good selling point in terms of your future jobs if you're not going to be

in the NFL.

But yeah, there's definitely some things at Notre Dame that are not the same at LSU or

Alabama or Clemson or USC.

They play it a little bit different, and it's probably frustrating at times.

They're convening right now the Council of the Golicks and their Pugs to make the Council's decision. Do they light smoke like the Pope? I did feel bad for Mike Golick Jr.
He did tweet out that he's going to have to do so many phoners this week. Thoughts and prayers.
Thoughts and prayers, man. Thoughts and prayers.
You got this, though. Notre Dame is maybe going to the college football playoff, and that would be awesome.
All right, let's do hot seat, cool throne. Hot seat, cool throne.
When your home system or appliance breaks down, American Home Shield will help fix or replace the covered item, no matter its age. Visit AHS.com slash listen for 20% off any plan.
See AHS.com slash contracts for coverage details, limitations, and exclusions. All right, hot seat, cool throne.
Hank. My hot seat is John Wall.
Uh-oh. I don't know if you guys have been following this story too closely, but John Wall has a crazy high contract.
I think it's like $40 million. It's a lot.
It's a lot. Super max.
And the Rockets are rebuilding. They're trying to grow their youth, rebuild, do that whole thing.
So John Wall was injured. He's now healthy.
He's trying to play, and the Rockets are just saying no. I love it.
So he is getting paid like $40 million. He's saying he wants to play.
He's ready to play. He doesn't want to come off the bench.
He wants to be a starter. He's an all-star.
And they're just saying no. I really don't understand NBA contracts at all.
This really packages it up nicely for me because they traded for john wall they knew what his contract was right and now they are paying him money to not play basketball correct but this somehow benefits the rockets long term they don't want to get too good so they they they want a player who's good that they'll pay a lot of money to that they can then trade have him him play and then have him sit for a while and then trade and be bad with worse players and then in five years be good. Right.
Is that essentially what's going on? Pretty much. Yeah, I still don't get it.
His contract goes through 2023. So two more years.
Yeah, they're saying, I guess, so Kemba Walker got benched For the Knicks because he doesn't play defense And they said they're going to try and trade him Maybe to the Rockets So John Wall in New York would be fucking sick And John Wall's nasty If you want to go to New York Just get really fat John Do the James Harden model Build that wall Just get really fucking heavy And then they'll ship you of town and meet whatever demand you want. Do you want me to tell you a crazy stat? Mm-hmm.
We are 20 games into the NBA season, a quarter of the way through. Yeah, and it's pretty crazy.
That's crazy, right? I just don't – NBA season to me, I watch the Bulls, but I haven't watched pretty much any other NBA. It starts on Christmas Day.

That's when NBA season starts mentally.

Yeah, I agree.

I mean, it's kind of like NBA games.

It doesn't matter to the third quarter.

Right.

It's just like Christmas Day.

It's like, yes, here we go.

Let's just really dive into this NBA season when it's still football season. It's very hard to just, you know, you only have so much time, right? Exactly.
I absorb my NBA news just strictly what they show me on SportsCenter at this point. Yes.
Alright, your cool throne. My cool throne is Mike Tomlin quotes.
Oh. He dropped this nugget today.
Mike Tomlin on Chase Claypool's suggestion to play music at practice. Yes.
Claypool plays wide out. I'll let him do that.
I'll formulate formulate the practice approach i think that division of labor is appropriate that's nice basically like a very quotable way to tell his player fuck off yeah fuck you dude uh yeah chase claypool was like maybe we should play uh i think his exact quote was like we play music during the warm-ups why don't we do it during the entire practice i don't know because you gotta practice Probably have to hear what other people are saying at the time. They don't play music during the games.
Actual games. If you compromise, be like, we'll put music on a practice, but Big Ben gets to choose the playlist.
Oh, geez. And it's just the Pornhub intro music on repeat.
Luke Bryan. All the time.
What was the Christian rock band that he went to the concert? Probably bigger than Ben. Jars of Clay.
I can't remember. DC Talk.
Veggie Tales. That was sick.
All right, PFT, your hot seat, cool throne. My hot seat is Posers.
Posers are on the hot seat. Okay.
Because Kim Jong-un, dictator of North Korea. Yes.
Banned everybody else in the country from wearing his leather duster that he likes to wear because too many people were copying him. So, sorry, you can't pose in North Korea anymore.
That's such a flex, isn't it? To just be like, this looks so cool that I'm the only one in the country that can wear it. I think he did it with haircuts a few years ago.
His haircut. That might be just a natural side effect where it's like, you know my great haircut that everybody loves? No one's allowed to get it.
And everyone's like, yeah man, we know. No one was getting that.
He has the power to do it. I also think that that's not Kim Jong-un.
Who is it? Hillary? He died a while ago. Remember when he almost died? That's right.
But if you look at a picture of him now it doesn't look like the same guy. He was on the train that he takes everywhere that has his own private restroom on it.
Right. Yeah.
And he died. He died.
And then we just he then came back to life and he looks different it's just a hologram i i'm just saying i just like billy look look into a couple replies for me on that he did disappear for a good amount of time and came back looking a lot skinnier uh-huh yep okay thank you thank you that's not how diets work case closed, your cool throne? My cool throne was going to be Mike Tomlin quotes, but Hank got to that already. So I'll just say Connecticut.
I'll just say the state of Connecticut. Pup Punk's playing there on Friday night.
So come out to see the show. It's at Toad's Place.
Toad's Place. New Haven.
Legendary venue. Legendary venue.
Bob Marley, Bob Dylan, Rolling Stones. The Blackout Tour.
The Blackout blackout tour now pup punk friday night uh whole band's gonna be out there you too yeah bono played at toad's place yeah wait you too is the artist that really did it for you i don't know not the stones not dylan not bob marley you too was a shocker yeah you love you too i who doesn't I you're probably that first generation where you got you two program they did onto your iPhone no listen I have a fuck you to send to Bono because where the fuck is Bono been through coronavirus Bono you remember him he was on the cover of Time magazine back in 2005. Being like, can Bono save the world?

Bono, we could have used your fucking help for the last 19 months, you prick.

He sat this one out.

He was like, I already did the AIDS thing.

You guys figure this shit out. Bono and his fucked up glasses were of no help to us.

Once he saw the Imagine song, he was like, fuck.

There's nothing else I can do here.

Yeah, Friday night, New Haven, Quinnipiac.

Big Cat and I are professors emeritus at Quinnipiac. Love it.
So yeah, you guys in Yale, come out to Toad's Place. We'll see you.
All right, my hot seat is me. They put out the schedule for week 14, and they're not flexing Bears, Packers, Sunday Night Football.
So that's going to be fucking terrible. Is that at Lambeau? Yep.
Yeah, that's pretty bad. I don't know why they're not flexing that out.
I was trying to look for a ray of light for you. Nope, you're fucked.
Nope, it's going to be so miserable. What did you predict in your predictions for that one? A loss.
That's unfortunate. That one's going to hit.
I got a feeling. If the Bears beat the Cardinals this week, then I think that I have higher powers, because then I'd be 12-0 on picking wins and losses.
They beat a couple teams that beat the Bengals who were kind of good. They've lost some weird games.
Whatever. That's going to suck so bad.
I'm so much dreading it. Yesterday I was searching when they flex it out because I was hoping they would and then they just didn't because they don't want to.
They want to see the Bears suffer.

All right, my cool throne is Messi because he won another one of those balloon things.

Ballon d'Or.

Yeah.

Best soccer player in the world, no big deal.

Seven of them.

Ballon d'Or.

Wait, but Ronaldo has more than that big cat.

Nope, he's got five.

Tough.

That's an alley right there.

And he's running out of time.

The balloon d'Or. Also, how do you pronounce it, Jake? Ballon de door Ballon de door Alright I gotta look Alright thank you What were you gonna say? Also Ballon de door No I was gonna make a tasteless joke about Ronaldo But feel like the moment has passed You can go for it What a rip Hey he's a rapist Oh Okay Yep I wasn't the joke I was gonna make a joke That, got it.
That was the fact version of the joke I was going to make. That was the skeleton of the joke.
Yeah. It didn't fill in the body yet.
It was satire. Yeah.
But, I mean, Messi hasn't been charged with anything like that. No, just tax evasion.
Well, everyone gets charged with tax evasion. Yeah, like major tax evasion.
Who cares about tax? But, like, that's actually the most relatable thing ever. To not pay your taxes?

You're going to pay them what? Once every four years?

Basically. As long as the government owes you money, they don't care.

And if you move countries, you don't have to. Right, that's true.

I think that's what happened to him. Right, if you spend

enough time on an airplane, you actually don't owe taxes.

Maritime law.

Yeah. What is it? Balloon-de-door?

I can't find anything official,

so I don't want to... I mean, I'll tell you right now, it's...
Say it incorrectly, but... It's Ballon-D'Or.
I would have guessed. Ballon-D'Or? Ballon d'Or? I can't find anything official, so I don't want to say it incorrectly.
It's Ballon d'Or. I would have guessed.
Ballon d'Or? Ballon d'Or. Definitely door on the end.
Got it. But I don't want to say anything without confirming.
I want you to say it. It's Ballon d'Or.
Unofficial. Ballon d'Or.
Ballon d'Or. Ballon.
There we go. That's it.
Ballon d'Or. I feel like the guy at the spelling bee.
They promote the pronunciation. Yes.
Using a sentence, Messi just won another ballon d'or. Messi just won another ballon d'or.
I don't know. Also, Big Cat, people have been, we put the music video out.
Big Cat's scene when he puts the gun in his mouth and shoots himself was improv. Because I saw some people being like, this hilarious doesn't really make sense sense in the story you did improv that and by doing that you've now set yourself up for yeah but they'll get banned from twitter yeah you talk about the at the bank video at the bank music video on the part of my youtube channel it did make sense because at the bank they robbed the bank by by bringing more money to the bank and and i couldn't handle that much money as the bank manager.
It was a reverse robbery to the point where we overloaded the banking system. Correct.
I wasn't going to be able to handle it. I thought it was like you shot the security guard and felt bad, so you shot yourself.
You being the security guard? No, I would not. You felt great about that.
No, definitely not. Billy became the real-life soldier protecting the sleeping kid meme in that video.
This is great. You did a great job.
All right, Billy, what's your hot seat? Cool drunk. My hot seat is the Patriots playbook and the Mercedes-Benz Stadium away locker room.
So I got a little tip last night. Donda? Sounds like a reply guy.
It actually kind of is a reply guy. This is an alleged tip.
Turns out there might be someone in the Mercedes-Benz. Wait, is it an alleged tip like you allegedly got this tip? or it's a tip that's alleged i found some tweets uh about some guy who posted a picture of mac jones's wristband playbook okay first question before we get too far down this road how do you know that that's actually a picture of mac jones's wristband because it was four play flips deep and there was other corroborating stuff.
Okay, again, how do you know that that's actually Mac Jones' wristband? Was Mac Jones' arm in it? And not just a picture of a wristband playbook. Because there's tons of play stuff in a lot of the terminology.
It could have been totally faked, but this is alleged. Now we're getting started.
Got it. So that armband is probably worth a lot of money to many NFL coaches.
But it's the same locker room where Tom Brady's jersey went missing in the 2019 Super Bowl. Oh.
So it might be sort of connected that there is someone going into that locker room or some sort of. Some kind of troll living in the walls.
Basically, or someone working there who's taking stuff. Among the other stuff stolen was Stidham socks which is weird as a creep it's a kind of creepy situation but something to check in on if you know the patriots get blown out in the coming weeks but uh they are also apparently planning to steal tom brady's buccaneers jersey it was just there was a leaked conversation with the person who's doing it and that's oh because they play there next Yes week god okay, so something to check on my cool throne is robots something to check on By the way, I got a DM from somebody the other day that said hey I've been posing as an archaeologist and Billy's DMs and he's been asking me all sorts of questions How can we lie and use this against him somehow? Okay, there's several archaeologists that I've been consulting on a pair of figurines.
If you're an archaeologist, please DM me. A real archaeologist.
Real archaeologist. Also, robots, they lost their virginity.
Not much more that we need to explain there. No, robots can reproduce now.
They just released a... There was a scientific research experiment

where they had xenobots that created...

It's a thing.

It's a thing.

Got it.

Also, cool through on Big Cat

because if you don't like pictures of you on Twitter,

you can get them removed under the new CEO's guidance.

Yeah, what was that?

I was looking at that.

It's private pictures of private individuals. So if you consider yourself a private individual, you can get a picture you don't like taking off Twitter.
That's what it sounds like to me. I don't know if Big Cat would qualify for that.
No, I don't think so. Anyway, if you don't like it, you can take it off.
I mean, it would be very helpful in Big Cat's case, especially when Hank puts out unflattering pictures of him to get Hank kicked off Twitter. Arrest his ass.
Last Cool Throne, Jokic Brothers, they were in Miami and they started playing the Serbian National Anthem in the club they were partying at. Hell yes.
I think the club probably just did that out of respect when they saw them walking in. Exactly.
Or they did it and no one's gonna turn that off. Hank, or sorry, Jake.
My hot seat is baseball writers. It's officially that time of year.
They tweet out the Scantrons heard around the world, and they get roasted. Yep.
Yep. Yeah.
Who's getting roasted the most? I saw Dave Williams. Voted writer.
I don't know if it was this year. He tweeted someone who voted for nobody, and tweeted they voted for nobody.
And that person got roasted. Yeah, White Sox

Dave, it's like a yearly

tradition of him texting me being like, can you retweet

my ballot? I'm like, yep.

Because I love it. I love the responses that

people give. Also, shout out baseball for

actually doing free agency now. That was my cool

throw in the Mets. Oh, yeah.
Shout out the Mets.

They got Max Scherzer. Max Scherzer.

And remember last year when baseball free agency

just didn't happen for three months? People were saying that it wasn't going to happen this year because there's about to be a lockout in like a day. Yeah, what happened to winter meetings? They were saying that they're going to lock out the players just before free agency really gets started.
Turns out that some players really wanted to get paid before that extended lockout. Got it.
So they would know where they could move their families to over the wintertime. So yeah, Scher's got a shitload of money.
Yeah. And he's worth every penny.
Baseball is like, as a sport at this point, they randomly check in and no one really knows the schedule anymore and they're just like, oh, hey, here's the MVP and also free agency started two days ago. Winter meetings are next week in Disney, so I guess they're just ahead of the game this year.
Yeah, that makes sense, though, to get paid to get locked in before. So the Mets are going to have DeGrom and Scherzer as their one-two next year.
Congratulations to the New York Mets on winning the 2022 World Series. Yep.
And they've already – that's unstoppable. They already know how to celebrate because they did that practice celebration last year.
There you go. Remember in spring training? That probably is the best one-two combination if you look at the totality of their careers in the history of baseball.
Yeah, I mean, with DeGrom, it's always DeGrom is injured all the time. And they don't score.
And they don't score. And Javi is now on the Tigers.
Yeah, and Corey Seager to the Rangers. Okay.
Robbie Ray to the Mariners. Are they going for it? What about the Yanks? Yanks are quiet.
Yanks are what they call a P franchise now? Good old poverty franchise? You got Clint Frazier, or closing in on it looks like, the Cubs. All right.
There we go. Also with baseball writers jake uh john hayman just tweeted this out so uh somebody said that andrew mccutcheon was going to go back to the pirates and then he just tweeted the cap emoji back at it and then john hayman says kutch puts a cap on pirates reunion rumor a cap apparently means there's nothing to it love it so shout out john hayman i love it that's incredible everyone

knows what cat means you idiot um all right let's two uh we got two great interviews we got andy staples breaking down all the college football madness and then we have mitch schwartz afterwards talking uh nfl talking offensive line patrick mahomes russell wilson all of it before we do that pft you had a quick word from one of our sponsors yeah our great friends over at movement All protein bars generally taste the same, but not one bars.

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One also has other delicious flavors like birthday cake, maple glazed donut and blueberry cobbler. Find all one bars at a retailer near you or on amazon.com staples okay we now welcome on our good friend andy staples you can find him writing on the athletic you can also find him on his podcast the andy staples show also on sx uh serious xm college football radio he knows everything about college football we figured we had to have you on not just for conference champions, Also on SiriusXM College Football Radio.

He knows everything about college football.

We figured we had to have you on. Not just for Conference Championship Week, but one of the craziest two days, I would say, in college football history.

And that might sound like it's a little bit hyperbolic, but just to set the stage, Lincoln Riley goes from Oklahoma to USC, and you actually said this has not happened before. You saw Jimbo Fisher go from FSU to Texas A&M, but the writing was on the wall.
And it's like this doesn't happen. And then not 24 hours later, the same thing happens with power to power, Brian Kelly going from Notre Dame to LSU.
let's start with that one uh what are your like initial thoughts brian kelly to lsu uh in terms of just the entire landscape my initial thought of all of this was holy shit i mean so i i talked to somebody at oklahoma because i i had been told lincoln riley was giving people weird vibes at oklahoma late. And, and there were thoughts that he might leave.

I thought we were talking about LSU.

So I talked to some people at Oklahoma late last week and I'm like,

so what's going on?

Are you worried?

And they're like, yeah, we're worried.

And I'm like, and then he says on Saturday night,

I'm not going to be the next LSU coach.

I'm like, okay.

All right.

I believe you.

I didn't even think about USC.

I thought USC would go after Kelly. I thought if anybody was going to go after Kelly, that that would be the fit.
So the fact that they kind of swap a route on that just really, I mean, just it's mind-blowing because I had asked some people around Brian Kelly earlier this season. I said, would he ever consider, and this is after USC opened it, would he ever consider maybe going somewhere else where the ceiling might be a little higher, where you're fishing from a little bit bigger recruiting pond and you can get more people into school and it's easier to keep people in school? And the answer is we're always no, as long as Notre Dame keeps doing the things that make him happy, he's going to stay.
But I really do think both of these moves were about finding a place where it's easier to win the national title than where you're at. And Nicole Auerbach, who I worked with at the Athletic, we were talking on the podcast last night.
She made a good point. She's like, so this is more about winning the playoff than getting in the playoff.
Because you have two guys who could get in the playoff, but but couldn't win it so they both went to places where they think they can win it like lincoln riley to oklahoma okay oklahoma's about to go in the sec usc will have a much easier path to the playoff because the conference is easier now you still got to deal with oregon you still deal with utah but it's easier than dealing with LSU, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Auburn, you name it. Right.
So that's what that move was. And then Kelly to LSU.
I think Kelly's hit the ceiling at Notre Dame. Yeah, I think you can't build the depth.
And especially if the playoffs going to move to 12 to 12 teams like at Notre Dame, where you can't win a conference championship. so you couldn't get a bye, you would have to win four games in a row against those kind of teams.
I'm not sure you can build the depth of Notre Dame to do that, but you certainly can at LSU. Yeah.
Also, money is a big factor, too. At the end of the day, like, would you rather get paid, you know, twice your salary to move from Oklahoma to Southern California and coach there? I don't think that's as big of a deal, PFC.
Oklahoma would have paid him almost that much. I think Notre Dame would have paid Kelly almost that much.
I kind of agree with you, Andy, that the money is obviously great, especially the Kelly to LSU. Scott Woodward's going to – everyone knew Scott Woodward.
If you don't know, the AD at LSU, he's a big game hunter. He brought Jimbo to Texas A&M.
He fishes with harpoons. Yeah, he brought Chris Peterson to Washington.
So that's what he does. He was going to make a splash.
But I agree with you that even with the 12-team playoff, essentially what both these moves are saying is that the difference between getting in the playoffs and actually winning the national title,

like there are only a select few teams, schools, programs

that can win the national title.

And Notre Dame and Oklahoma,

because Notre Dame was recruiting at a level

they hadn't recruited at before.

Oklahoma was pulling guys from California

and the South and all these things.

They basically were like, no, we can't do it here.

We're at the ceiling.

We got to go to one of the five spots in the country

that actually can do this.

I don't know. and the South and all these things, they basically were like, no, we can't do it here.
We're at the ceiling. We got to go to one of the five spots in the country that actually can do this.

I absolutely love it when people are saying that Lincoln Riley's being a chicken shit

because he's getting out of the SEC, which, yeah, I think that makes him smart, actually.

That's like a good thing to do.

That's a good strategic move.

Why would you ever want to go and compete against the SEC in terms of recruiting and then all the in-conference games? It's a tough schedule out there when you can go to live in Los Angeles, make a shitload of money, and play a way easier schedule and have a great recruiting base right in that area. I believe the phrase is, he's scared, Paul.
That would be the phrase. And where I live, that is exactly what everybody's

saying. Oh, he's scared of the SEC, Paul.
He don't want none of this. He don't want that smoke.

And that's really what it is. But you're right.
There is an easier path. Now, he has to rebuild

USC, especially along the line of scrimmage. They weren't particularly great at doing that

at Oklahoma. That was what they ran into every time when they got in the playoff,

was they didn't have dominant line of scrimmage talent.

USC can get that.

They have to develop it and we'll see what happens.

But that's where I think that move may,

in hindsight, may not look as prescient

because I do think Oklahoma joining the SEC

will allow them to get those kinds of players

because a lot of those D linemen

that can grow into like NFL D linemen,

Thank you. joining the sec will allow them to get those kind of players because a lot of those d linemen yeah that can grow into like nfl d linemen they'll go to old miss or mississippi state before they'll play in the big 12 right but they'll go to oklahoma if they're going to be in the sec so whoever gets that job i think is going to be able to build an sec roster brian kelly's just going to inherit one.
He's already got it.

They had a good recruiting class coming in.

Your boy Coach O was selling LSU right up to the last minute,

which, hell, if you want to give me $16.9 million, I'll sell it too. Yeah, the best part about LSU and what people –

when LSU gets mentioned as one of the best jobs in the country

and people will say, well, the last three guys won a national title.

I think the crazier part about LSU and why it is might you might actually make the argument it's the best uh pro or uh job in the country lsu has i think like two or three five star commits that they have stayed committed to lsu they're from louisiana they've stayed committed to lsu and they don't have a coach they didn't have a coach for two months that's un unheard of. They're a big commit to a school.
It's a huge commit to a school, not a coach school. You grew up in Louisiana dreaming of playing for LSU.
You're not caring who the coach is. You want to play for LSU.
You want to be in Tiger Stadium. Now, is Brian Kelly going to know what the drain is for on the porch, the patio outside the coach's office on the second floor of the LSU football building? No, he's not.
But you guys know what that drain's for. I'm sure Coach O told you, right? That's when you got the crawfish pot and you need to dump it.
Yeah. Yeah, it's a cultural weird fit, but he's a smart – like, listen, we love Coach O.
Love Coach O. but I think it's not crazy to say that brian kelly is a better x's and o's coach than both les miles and coach o and they both won titles at lsu like brian kelly's a really good dramatic understatement yes right i said it as nicely as possible he's a really really good coach yeah no i i have no the whole cultural fit thing is dumb like urban meyer had never worked in the sec when he came to florida and won two national titles nick saban had never worked in the sec when he went to lsu and essentially created the blueprint for all of these sec programs to win national titles so none of that matters wow in the sec they only care if you care about winning yeah Yeah.
And Brian Kelly clearly cares about winning. So as long as he wins to their satisfaction, which let's be honest, that's pretty hard to do.
They'll be happy with him. And as soon as he doesn't, they'll turn on him.
That's how it works. I'll just say one name for the cultural thing with LSU, though.
They don't want another Jerry DiNardo. That's not Brian Kelly.
But when you bring a guy from Queens, New York to Baton Rouge, that might have been a different cultural fit. I don't think they – they had no problem with where Jerry DiNardo was from or where Jerry DiNardo's accent sounded like.
They had a problem with Jerry DiNardo getting his ass kicked. That was what they had a problem with.
Yes. So what happens at Oklahoma now? What's going to go on there? So they're a great school at taking guys that are familiar with the program that buy into the whole culture in Norman.
Because I don't know if you know this, but Norman isn't really a destination city. It's a place that you grow to love after hating it for a while.
And I'm not knocking Norman entirely because... James Garner is rolling over in his grave hearing you talking bad about his hometown.
Listen, PFT, I don't know if you've been to Norman lately. I live in Gainesville, Florida.
I live in a tiny college town, so I understand tiny college town living. Norman is a bedroom community of OKC.
It's not the hinterlands. Stillwater is probably closer to that, but that's not it.
I think Oklahoma is going is going to be fine i really do if you think about it they've had maybe three iffy coaches in like a hundred years and they all kind of came in a row in the 90s and then they hired their current athletic director joe castiglione and one of his first orders of business was hiring bob stupe's the uh that would be the tequila salesman salesman who is currently coaching Oklahoma in its full game. So I think they're going to be fine.
This is a job that lots of coaches are going to want. But I am curious how that job is perceived.
Because I heard a lot through the year as we were all getting ready for this crazy coaching curious. I didn't think it was going to be this crazy.
But we kept asking people, OK, what would you want? What would you not want? What would your guide like? you know we were all getting ready for this crazy coaching curious I didn't think it was going to be this crazy but we kept asking people okay what would you want what would you not want what would your guy like you know where would you I want to coach and you heard a lot of well I don't want to coach in the SEC but Oklahoma is an SEC job and we have to look at it as such because whoever gets hired is going to spend most of their time in the SEC I'm curious if you're Matt Campbell, who was not one of those SEC –

he was one of those I don't want to go to the SEC guys.

Is it different because it's Oklahoma?

Because there is this – among the coaching community and in college athletics,

they look at Oklahoma as kind of the model of alignment.

The president and the AD and the coach are going to get along.

Everybody's going to pull in the same direction.

You're not going to be dealing with a bunch of crap from boosters.

It's a lot of people who love him. Barry Switzer his hand raised hire the pirate but you've also got Mark Stoops brother of Bob who's done a great job at Kentucky you've got Matt Campbell out there I think with Notre Dame open you're probably not in it for Luke Fickle who might have a shot at Notre Dame yeah Luke F Luke Fickle doesn't feel like he's leaving Cincinnati or Indiana, like the state of Ohio or Indiana area anyway.
Well, this coaching carousel has been so crazy. And remember, Luke Fickle's team, as long as they beat Houston, which I know you guys are close to Dana Holgerson and probably have a very vested interest in that game.
Yes. But if Cincinnati beats Houston, they're in the playoff.
So I don't think Luke Fickle would leave his team for the playoff. I don't think he would take a job and then say, well, I'm going to coach my team in the playoff and leave.
I just don't think he's that kind of guy. That would be hilarious.
How about this? That'd be funny. I got one for you, Big Cat.
I'm ready. Yeah, but Brian Kelly's already done that.
i know i know i i i was actually pointing that out to notre dame fans like you it's it's complaining like cheating on your wife and then the person you cheated on like then cheating on you you're like brian kelly left a 12-0 cincinnati team right before the sugar bowl for notre dame he's it's not like this is uh oh my god how could brian kelly do Luke Fickle did it, that's different because Luke Fickle seems like a guy who preaches loyalty and family and all that stuff. Brian Kelly has proven that he will do this and he just did it to you, which is how you got him in the first place.
Yeah, if you're with a person who was cheating when you two first hooked up, don't be shocked. Right.
okay big cat i've got this is my this is my nuclear oh no coaching carousel scenario for you that i think is i've specifically tailored it just for you okay because i know you have a vested interest here fickle's not the kind of guy who's going to leave a team before the playoff but what if something came open after the playoff yeah what if ryan day was the next bears i knew you're gonna say this and ohio state opened up yeah yeah and then urban meyer went to notre dame which can you tell me just tell me i made the video this morning is it it's not a zero percent chance i would say it's pretty close No, don't say. why would it be zero percent chance sometimes you got to go back well i i just don't know that father jenkins is a big fan of uh of what happened in the steakhouse you're going to confession i don't know that's going to go you're right the catholic church they hold themselves to a higher standard they won't tolerate touching somebody younger than you.
It is always funny when the Notre Dame walks right into it. You just go to a bar or you just go to a priest and you say, hey, I fucked up.
I grabbed a co-ed's ass. And they're like, okay, say Hail Mary and you're good in the eyes of the Lord.
Listen. It's beautiful.
Notre Dame is its own institution. And not to go deep down the road, but it is very funny when Notre Dame alum are like, we as Catholics would not take Urban Meyer.
Like, what? Huh? What are we talking about here? I think you'd take a national title. That's my guess.
I think so, too, but I also think Notre Dame is one of those jobs that there's so many people that would want it. Now, there is another NFL coach coincidentally represented by the same agent as Ryan Day and Brian Kelly who things aren't going that well for him.
He's got a quarterback who everybody thought was back and then he wasn't and his best player just went out for the season. If Matt Rule didn't want him coaching the NFL anymore, now Matt Rule never struck me as a guy who would Bobby Petrino on his team but that's a guy who would kill it at Notre Dame yes yeah wait can I throw out a couple more names for Oklahoma um you mentioned go for Mark Stoops obviously the third Stoops brother Brent Venables that feels like uh what would be a home run hire do you remember they did refer to him as a third Stoops brother when they won the national title? They did, and then they forced him out so Mike could have the job.
He was the fourth Stoops brother. There's a little baggage there.
It's not the same amount of baggage as Josh Heupel in Oklahoma. There's way too much baggage on both sides, it sounds like, for there to ever be a reunion there.
But yeah, I think Venables is one that I would at least look at, but he's been pretty hesitant to take a head coaching job. When you make $2.5 million as a coordinator, I think that probably does limit your options in terms of steps up.
But this would definitely be one of those. I'm going to throw out a couple more names for Notre Dame next head coach.
Tell me what you think. Obviously, Urban, you said zero.
You didn't say zero. You said close.
You said close to zero. Tommy Reese.
Yes, slightly above zero. My guy, Tommy Reese.
Tommy Reese. Tommy Reese.
I think Marcus Freeman. Oh, that's right.
He is Tom now. I think Marcus Freeman would get it if they're going to go with somebody on the staff.
The D.C. just got hired this year.
There seems to be a ton of internal support. Players certainly want it.

I know they're never going to listen to the players, but I do think that's a guy who has shown that he is a future head coach.

It's probably not the same situation as Lincoln Riley at Oklahoma because he had a little bit longer to show what he could do.

But Jack Swarbrick, the AD at Notre Dame, has had a year to watch Marcus Freeman operate. And if he likes what he sees, then I think that's a good fit.
And he's a tremendous recruiter, which is a big, you know, Notre Dame has stepped up their recruiting recently. And you want to try to find a way to stay on that par on that level, because you're never going to win a title if you don't recruit as, as your co-host says, Ari Wasserman stars matter.
What's your other one? I had a couple more. Just tell me, tell me it's not a no for Greg Shiano.
It's a no. I, and I don't think, I don't even think they're going to sign him to a term sheet and then have the fan revolt.
And I, I, I say that's probably a point. be problematic for the Catholics.
Yeah, I don't think so. That was that was that was more of a Tennessee creation to bolster their case of they just didn't think he'd succeed there, which, by the way, they were right about the not succeeding part.
Like he would have hated Knoxville. So they probably did him a favor and he probably got paid for it.
All right. Lane Kiffin.
I would, I would love that. It would be so awesome.
They will never even think about hiring him in a million years, but can you just imagine the tweets? It'd be amazing just to see Lane Kiffin, you know, and he's got to change the way that he does things. He's kind of like, he's bought into the whole whole image around Lane Kiffin and used what people used to use against him as a weapon now for himself because he's like, oh, you're going to make fun of me for being like the swaggy guy that's going to flirt with every mom that walks by? Yeah, you know what? I'm going to put out a million tweets where it shows me like, you know, basically acting like the character that you think that I am.
Well, he's going to send a tweet showing his son doing it. Yeah.
So the tweet of his son in the Grove when all the ladies walk by and Knox is like, whoo. Yeah.
So is he going to stick around? Because I feel like if you're Lane Kiffin, every job is a stepping stone. And it feels like he's had his next move planned out all along the way ever since he got fired but in that weird press conference by the Raiders uh it seems like he's been on a clear trajectory that he's known what he's doing all along and I can't imagine that Ole Miss is going to be the the destination for him unless somehow he gets Arch Manning to say I'm going to go to Ole Miss with Lane Kiffin and even, Lane could move, and then Arch could decommit and follow him.
Well, also, could he have a – I know Dylan Gabriel from UCF just went in the portal. That's a really good quarterback who needs a home for next year.
Could you get Dylan Gabriel as a bridge year to Arch Manning and Ole Miss? So when Miami fired its AD, my thought was they are doing this so they will move on Manny Diaz and then that they will try to hire Lane Kiffin. But as we're recording this right now, Manny Diaz still has his job.
So if Miami doesn't open, I think Ole Miss is in the clear. Although, who knows? I mean, the dominoes of Oklahoma and Notre Dame making their choices could be incredible.
So there may be another job that would pique his interest, but I think Ole Miss is pretty safe right now. It really is amazing that we spent the last month and a half being like, when is USC and LSU, like these two blue bloods, going to be open at the same time? And then we just switched it to Oklahoma and Notre Dame are now open.
We're going to get back to it. Hockey is on.
And no matter the city, no matter the team, no matter the game, whether it's face-off or penalty shots regular season or playoffs win or lose no matter what happens no matter where it happens new amsterdam vodka is there now here is more andy staples i have a question back to l Riley because I have this debate a lot. You know, college football is the one sport where in the back of your head, you kind of have to root for your conference at times because it is a rising tide lifts all boats.
Lincoln Riley going to USC. I've always thought that USC, Oregon's nice.
Cristobal's recruiting at an unreal level. They're playing well.
But USC is the portal to the Pac-12 being back, similar to Ohio State being a powerhouse. If USC is a powerhouse again, the entire Pac-12 will be lifted.
Is that fair to say? I think it will help. I don't think it – it doesn't suddenly make it the equal of the Big Ten or the SEC, but they need somebody who can be near the top every year.
And I think there's room for USC and Oregon to both have great rosters that can be competitive. And that's good for the sport.
Yeah. Because the problem was that the great rosters were pretty much concentrated in Ohio State, Clemson, Alabama, Georgia, LSU, Oklahoma.
That's kind of it. And it needs to spread out a little bit.
And I think you're starting to see it spread a little bit. Like Texas A&M's roster is going to be amazing the next few years.
Notre Dame has recruited at a higher level. So you're seeing it spread out a little more, which should increase parity in the sport.
I mean, I think we're seeing it with Alabama this year. What we're seeing in Alabama is the result of one or two guys a year getting picked off by Kirby Smart or getting picked off by Jimbo Fisher, and suddenly they can't reload the same way they used to be able to.
So I think it is possible for USC to do that. And suddenly you have two potential national title contenders in the league, which after years of having none, it would make it so much better for them.
And it's not a stretch to say that USC will be back relatively quickly because it's not like he took – this is going to be a shot, and I apologize because I actually love uh the way they fought this year but it's not like Lincoln Riley took the job at Nebraska California has insane talent like just think about it this way the two the two Heisman contenders right now who everyone thinks is going to win the Heisman is either going to be Bryce Young Young from Alabama, who's from California, or C.J. Stroud at Ohio State, who's from California, and then Malachi Nelson, who was going to go to Oklahoma.
2023 player, yeah. Yeah, decommitted and probably going to go to USC.
Like, California has insane talent, so it always has sucked to me the last few years where it's like everyone has picked off all their talent and the Pac-12 has become irrelevant. Skill talent has never been a problem at USC though.
Yeah. Their problem is on the line of scrimmage.
Now, they've gotten highly ranked recruits on the line of scrimmage. They haven't developed them very well.
So that's Lincoln Riley's mandate is develop those line of scrimmage players, keep a few of them away from Mario Cristobal because he's been pretty good about going and getting those guys. And if you do that, yes, you can create a national title contender at USC within the next two years.
That is definitely possible. But I heard you say that Heisman thing.
I want to get on my stump. Oh, yeah.
You guys have a big megaphone. I'm a Heisman voter.
Oh, I've talked to a lot of other Heisman voters. I don't like it when people assume you have to pick a quarterback or a running agreed and i just want to talk to my fellow voters here and and ask them to think about one thing as they as they cast their ballots here in the next week if a player isn't the best player in his own county he cannot possibly be the best player in the country.
So Bryce Young, not the best player in Tuscaloosa County. That person's name is Will Anderson.
Will Anderson has 30 and a half tackles for loss. He has saved the Alabama defense this season.
He's the best player in the country. It's not close.

Don't just assume you've got to pick a quarterback.

It is.

You're absolutely right because we're going to get to,

when we get to the college football playoff,

you could make the argument, or you could even make it right now, the top six teams, like the best player on each of these teams

is a defensive player.

Like Michigan won.

Yeah, Jordan Davis. Right.
Jordan Davis, he is one of those guys that you look at you're terrified he just scares you to just imagine a person exists who's that 40 pounds yeah there's that clip of him running down i can't remember what quarterback but he he ran down a quarterback and like was faster than the quarterback that's not fair billy said he ran a four or five hutchinson destroyed ohio state's offense yeah destroyed ohio state's offense completely all right so i mean yeah you're right you're right you should you should vote for i agree it's it's the one year where it's like both these quarterbacks even coming out of the iron bowl when everyone was like that was bryce young's heisman moment he was like 22 for 50 like he had a great drive that was a great drive 97 yard drive great drive but it wasn't like he was lighting the world on fire all game yeah no it wasn't it wasn't one of pft's bucket of beer special games yeah yeah but it was i mean yeah if you're under 50 completion percentage you didn't have your Heisman moment. Sorry.

You just didn't.

We're just trying to will it on these quarterbacks.

Our brains are very simple.

If it does not divide by two, then I know it's a bad game.

That's all I need to understand.

If it's slightly above 50%, then I can be like, yeah, he's a gunslinger.

He took care of business.

Yeah.

That's right.

It's interesting that you brought up the USC line theory because I've had a thought behind that for a couple years now which is just that the food is too healthy in southern california and you can't get much avocado you can't get the kids big enough out there whereas you go you know to some of the southern schools everything's fried you got casseroles you got stuff with butter mayo in it and i don't maybe lincoln riley's going to bring out some of that world famous brisket that he cooks and i knew we were getting to Lincoln Riley's brisket but Lincoln Riley's brisket isn't going to make anybody gain weight because nobody's going to eat it I know that that might be an issue so I mean is there any theory at all is there does that hold any merit whatsoever that the lifestyle is I wrote a story I wrote a story 10 years ago actually more than 10 years ago now because Chip Kelly put me on it. When Chip Kelly was coaching at Oregon, I asked him, what is the hardest player to find in recruiting? And he said the ready-made interior defensive linemen.
They're just so hard to find. So I kind of moved it out a little bit.
And I looked at where every NFL defensive lineman at the time had grown up and made a map of it. And I called sociologists.
I called anthropologists. I called all kinds of different people trying to figure out what's the connection.
Why is it these particular places are the hotbeds? And you've got like, obviously, the Deep South. There's a cluster in Utah and the Pacific Islands for sure.
And I couldn't find any sort of commonality until I overlaid the U.S. obesity map.
There you go. And it matched completely.
It was perfect. So look at the obesity map.
That's where the defensive linemen live, which should not be that hard to figure out. The big people live where the big people are.
Yeah. It's like the South Wisconsin.
It's the, yeah, it's Barry Alvarez when he is introductory press conference at Wisconsin was, we have a lot, a lot of big people in the state of Wisconsin. We've got to keep them here.
Like, that's what he said. He basically called the entire state of Wisconsin fat to their face.
And then he built a program around it he wasn't wrong no he wasn't wrong it makes it makes it makes a ton of sense when you think about it what about i mean i noticed that you haven't talked about your school andy is that a situation where like you got the guy that you thought you wanted right you thought you wanted billy napier but then now all these you know all the blue chip dominoes start to fall. Are you just reminded like sadly to yourself? Like, yeah, that could have been us 20 years ago in that discussion.
I can't ever imagine Florida doing that. Like now they didn't, they did go after Urban Meyer and get him when he was the obvious number one draft pick among coaches, but that was a different time.
And he was coming from Utahah it wasn't like they were going and getting pete carroll from usc so just knowing florida's history i can't i can't picture them going that that route uh the napier thing's interesting because all the florida people were laughing at lsu about 24 to 48 hours ago saying well you could have him. He's right there in your backyard, but you're too snobby to hire him.
And you should have, you should have hired him. Well, no, they, they had their own plan, but I will point this out because I, everybody gets mad at me and like the Texas A&M people hate me when I say, don't guarantee this much money because these things usually end badly.

And they do. But I will remind everyone that the coach of the best team in college football right now was a defensive coordinator when he was hired.
The coach of the team that won the Big Ten most of the years until this one was an offensive coordinator when he got hired. The coach of the team in South Carolina that had a down year this year, but has two national titles in the past five, was the wide receivers coach when he got hired.
The coach who won with the best, probably the best college football team ever assembled, maybe them or 2001 Miami, but 2019 LSU was the D-line coach when he got hired. So you can say, oh, this gives us a better chance.
And maybe it does give you an incrementally better chance of getting what you want, but it is all a crapshoot. It is all a complete crapshoot.
Yeah. I'd like to just really quickly break some news to you.
So this might affect the coaching carousel. This was just filed espn mike de rocco i i saw urban meyer yes per league source jaguars coach urban meyer has no interest in taking another college coaching job and remains committed to rebuilding the franchise so uh i guess nobody was answering his agent's calls yeah so uh you know class act he's returning well listen he's doing the right thing you just gotta make sure got to make sure Jackson DeVille stays healthy pregame.
You can't lose a mascot. True.
And then lose to the Falcons. All right, so let's quickly do a little conference championship.
So I was texting with you last night, SEC championship game. I've already put my bet in because I didn't want to overthink it.
I do not know how Alabama blocks Georgia up front. I think Nick Saban told everyone, told the world last week when he did his speech about when I got here, we were happy to win a game.
Now you guys are complaining we didn't blow out LSU. I think Nick Saban's telling the world, hey, we don't have the team this year.
How do you see that game going and any other conference championship games that you're like, ooh, this one's going to be interesting so I was on the the same kind of path as you when I covered the the Florida Alabama game in Gainesville and when I saw Nick Saban talking after that game and how kind of giddy he was to get out of there with the 31 29 win against against the Florida team that wound up getting his coach fired. I was like, who this? This doesn't seem like Nick Saban, like maybe he knows what his roster is relative to what his other rosters that have won national titles looked like.
And maybe he's kind of trying to manage everybody's expectations right now. And I do feel like that's where they are.
And I feel like Alabama has probably overachieved by getting to 11 and one. But I'm with you.
I think Georgia is going to be very tough for them to deal with. They're going to have a hard time blocking Georgia, a hard time scoring on Georgia.
We don't know about Georgia's offense. You know, will they be able to score on Alabama's defense? Will Will Anderson terrorize Stetson Bennett? I do think Will Anderson is going to make life pretty miserable for him.
But I think Stetson Bennett's actually the right choice of quarterback in this situation because he can move. And everybody keeps assuming, oh, they're going to bring in JT Daniels and he'll save the day.
No, no, no. Stetson Bennett probably is better for what they're trying to do right now.
And George Pickens is their best offensive player. He tore his ACL in March.
He played some snaps against Georgia Tech. He may be ready to come back.
The other thing about the Georgia-Alabama dynamic is Georgia doesn't have to win this game. And I think that's worse for Alabama than if Georgia did have to win this game, because there is no pressure on Georgia whatsoever.
So you can either get over the Alabama hump now or try to get over it later, but it doesn't matter, which means you're probably going to get over it now. And it's still the emotional angle of it.
Like Georgia still people are like, oh, they're in no matter what. They very much want to beat the fuck out of Alabama because it means a lot.
Oh, absolutely. Everybody's always like, with the playoff expanse to 12, nobody's going to care about these games.
No, no, no. All the psychological damage that Alabama has inflicted on Georgia, and a lot of these players were on the roster for that.
Like, no, no. They want to give it back in kind.
Is there any possibility in the world that Georgia wins this game 45-42 and Alabama still gets in the Final Four? The only way I can imagine that is if it's like a four-overtime game, Alabama loses on a terrible call that we all know they got screwed on. Maybe then.
But I think that's the only way. I don't think Alabama's getting in if they lose they would also I think need chaos like they would and maybe not chaos is the right word because it's actually not that most of these games Baylor to win Houston to win right they would need I don't think they'd get in over Notre Dame well one lost Notre Dame team I don't think the committee would do that which I'm rooting for Notre Dame by the way to win the title because it would be nothing would be funnier than Brian Kelly sitting in Baton Rouge and watching his team watching it happen and being like oh whoops like I my whole idea of going to LSU was I couldn't win a title at Notre Dame and then they won one without me and then Luke Fickle is the interim coach at Notre Dame winning that championship yes beating Cincinnati that would be amazing They beat cincinnati matt campbell in cincinnati yeah he's got a lateral move oh but matt campbell yeah why not let's just do it all right so any other any other nothing nothing would surprise me at this point yeah no nothing would surprise any other games i think michigan's gonna probably roll uh who do you have in the baylor oklahoma state game i think oklahoma state wins one.
I've loved watching their defense play all year. I do enjoy that.
This has been sort of the, the Renaissance for defense, not just in the big 12, but everywhere. I mean, George is winning with dominant defense as well at the, at the top of the ranking.
So I think, I think Oklahoma state just has played so well the last few weeks. They they've really hit their groove.
So I think they they're going to win and I think they're going to make the playoff, which for the remaining schools in the Big 12 who got the news that Texas and Oklahoma are leaving, I'm sure that's vindication for them. For Oklahoma State especially, which is getting left behind by its rival, it's got to feel pretty sweet.
Actually, that's now what I'm rooting for. Let me say it this this way i want brian i want notre dame with no brian kelly to beat oklahoma state because then oklahoma state would have gone farther than lincoln riley ever did with oklahoma proving him wrong as well to prove it wrong mike gundy has a lifetime contract now so he can't even get involved in the craziest coaching carousel ever and every coaching carousels had Mike Gundy involved in yeah but wait so you say it's a lifetime contract but I mean we've seen the contracts that these coaches coach on which are true these are the worst contracts ever written in fact it's like so lopsided all all the power is on the side of the coaches none of it is on the side of the university the should start a union against their bosses, the college coaches and be like, we're not going to hire any coach that doesn't put a non-compete clause in their contract.
Oh, it's funny because everybody loves it. And it's just college sports turns everyone who believes in capitalism into a raging socialist.
When when, when, when people are trying to argue against the players making money, it was, it was, well, it's not good for them. No, it's great for them.
As you've seen, the game has not fallen apart. Nothing has fallen off the face of the earth since players have started getting paid.
And then they say, well, you got to put a salary cap on coaches. No, you cannot do that.
In fact, schools already tried to do that. They got their butts kicked in federal court in like 1998.
So it's never going to happen. Somebody's got to exercise some self-control.
And the thing I keep coming back to is I don't know that college ADs understand the concept of replacement value. It's not my problem is not with Lincoln Riley getting paid or Brian Kelly getting paid because those guys are.
They've demonstrated success. They are the closest thing you can get to a sure thing.
So absolutely, you pay them as much as you can possibly pay them. What bothers me is when you get these extensions for these guys that are going eight and four and seven and five, because they're worried they're going to lose them.
Who cares if you're going to lose them? You can find somebody else who can give you eight and four or seven and five. Yeah.
Yeah. It's all great.
It is. Like, it's crazy to see that there's, you know, there's these coaches that are making now what, like a hundred.
Eventually there's going to be a at the top end, though, right? No. Yeah, no, shout out Mel Tucker, by the way.
He's the one, and Matt Ishbaugh at Michigan State for making this all go nuclear. Oh, I do think that drove a lot.
But look, aren't you guys up to like $106,000 an episode now? Well, yeah, that's before taxes, and also we can't buy milk anymore. So what are you going to do with all that money? There's also the cost of living in New York.
Like, if you lived in Gainesville, Florida, your money would go a lot farther. I'm just saying.
True. Yeah.
True. I'd be the king.
I would own seven Publix. Well, and you'd have a moat around your house.
That's what really matters. With alligators in it.
But no, I mean, that's, there's no cap. You're worth whatever someone's willing to pay you.
And until one of these guys realizes, hey, my chances of winning a national title might be just as good with this defensive coordinator over here as this proven head coach, you're going to see the salaries keep going up. Yeah, there might be a bunch of presidents that, you know, they're not used to getting bullied around and pushed around at the negotiating table.
And, you know, they've come up in their own right. They think that they're the most powerful person in that town.
There will be some of those guys that decide, OK, we're done. We're done with this exorbitant stuff unless they're going to pay, unless they're going to put a clause in there saying that they won't leave and then there will be other schools that just say fuck it we don't care lsu exactly there'll be the teams that really want to win that say we are we're going to win at all costs and we don't care what everybody else says so it's it's going to almost be like more of a siloing of power it's it's it's a beautiful that way, but what's funny.
And I, I go back to what I said earlier, like nobody thought the wide receivers coach with the funny name at Clemson was worth anything. Yeah.
And suddenly he turns them into one of these power programs. So the beauty of it is it is so unpredictable.
Large groups of 18 to 22-year-olds are incredibly unpredictable. The sure thing can fail.
The long shot can succeed. And it really doesn't feel like there's that much difference in the chances.
And the best part about all of this is as we talk about how it's so hard to crack into that group, and Georgia will probably win the title, so it still is so hard. We will potentially have a college football playoff with Cincinnati, Oklahoma State, and Michigan involved, which if you said at the beginning of the season, you wouldn't have believed that.
And it makes the season so much more interesting. People have been more engaged.
When Michigan beat Ohio State, it was like this massive catharsis. And it's not like everybody's a huge Michigan fan.

I think most casual college football fans don't like Michigan.

They, you know, Michigan's the,

one of the winningest programs in the sport and they're,

they're viewed as kind of snobby,

but they'd been beaten down so much by Ohio state.

It was refreshing to watch them win.

It was refreshing to see them give everyone else some hope. And.
And I think this season's been amazing and having fans back in the stands and it's just it reinvigorates the interest in the sport. You know, we kept talking about, well, if it's the same over and over, it's going to get really boring.
And I think they're going to probably vote in the next few days to go to 12 in the playoff. I think that'll help, too, because when we're sitting there in mid to late November and there's still 20 teams that have a chance to make the playoff, it's a lot to talk about.
Yeah, it's a lot to get excited about for different fan bases. Andy, we're going to be able to do bracketology for college football all year round.
I'm just going to get to be even more devastated when Wisconsin loses late in the season because it will bump them out of the playoff. No, they'll be like an 11th seed most years, I feel like.
That Minnesota win would have destroyed their playoff hopes. It would have been just chef's kiss for everybody in Minnesota.
Wisconsin will be perpetually on the bubble for a 12-team playoff, and it will break my heart every year.

But, all right, Andy, we've taken a ton of times.

So, Wisconsin's going to be Rutgers in that respect.

Yes, yes, exactly.

I do have one last thing, though.

So, we talked about the Rinky Dink Award, the Heisman Trophy earlier,

the most important trophy.

We're going to announce that, I believe, next week.

We're going to announce the finalists on Friday of this week.

So, I wanted to get your top three nominations for the low man trophy, the nation's best college fullback. I have my own opinion.
I think that there are actually like three realistic options as far as I'm concerned, but one guy is head and shoulders and neck roll above the rest. So I want to hear your take on it.
Yeah. Cowboy collar above the rest.
Absolutely. I want to throw one in there from a small school.
Just make sure he gets the recognition he deserves because he's the kind of athlete that the fullback position, I think, is evolving into. Zach Angelillo from Northern Colorado, a fullback who can just straight up hurdle people.
There are not many of those around. So I appreciate that.
First Italian nominee. Your school keeps the fullback flame lit.
I think that's very honorable and noble. So John Chennault, definitely in there.
It's only $25 to hire him for a cameo. So if you want him to say happy birthday, lead block for you, that's a bargain.
But, and we'll keep this in the Big Ten West, got to keep it in the family. The greatest mullet in college football, he's probably miscast where he is.
He probably needs to be playing for Coastal Carolina. Yep.
Monty Pottebaum at Iowa. Also a name that sounds like he played college football in the 1930s where he would have been also a fullback.
I don't think you can beat that. I love it.
Yeah, they got the bomb squad in Iowa. The combination of fullback and center out there.
Of Linderbaum and Pottebaum. It's awesome to watch.
It's the most Iowa football thing of all time. I think that's a pretty good list.
I'm not going to give my other two that I would put up there. I did look up Zach Angelillo on Twitter.
His pinned tweet is, Who's back of the week fullback hurdles? He tagged us in it. It seems like it's a little too self-promotion-y to me.
A little too on the nose? Yeah, no, it seems like he's going out there, he's trying to make headlines for himself. I think the spirit of the Little Man Trophy is you let us talk.
I mean, if he'd known how to fix his team's bus when it broke down before a game, I think Billy would have had him nominated for Football Guy of the Week. That probably would have elevated his candidacy.
But I appreciate somebody getting the word out. It's an underrepresented position.
So as much publicity as you can bring to it, even if you've got to bring it yourself. We like our fullbacks, though, with a Twitter account and maybe 25 tweets total, and the last time they tweeted was when they committed to the school they're at four years ago.
Yeah. That's kind of the time.
Well, that would be Monty. Yeah.
That's Monty. I believe he's got his senior year highlights pin.
Yeah, right. Did they lose the password to this thing? Like, you just can't even.
I want a fullback with no internet whatsoever. And maybe he follows, like, four guys on a Twitter account his parents set up for him when he was recruiting.
Yeah. And he follows, like.
He's still an egg? Yeah, he follows, like, Eric Church and Kroger. Yeah.
And that's it. That's beautiful.
No, no, he follows Luke Bryan, let's be honest. Fullbacks definitely are Luke Bryan guys.
All right, so I'm watching some of Angelilo's highlights. I'll take it back.
He looks like he's a player that is kind of taking out. That man's an athlete.
Yes. That's an athlete right there.
This guy's good. All right.
Can Jordan Davis or Jalen Carter get a little? Do they have a chance? Because like Jalen Carter will get put in there to block sometimes. And then Jordan got a handoff.
He scored on a dive. I'd say it's a possibility for guys like that.
Like you run into the conversation like is Jeremiah Hall? Is he really a fullback? I think he is really a fullback. See, I have my thinking is that there should just be no real difference between tight ends and fullbacks anymore.
If you have a really good blocking tight end, there's no reason you can't motion him to be right behind the quarterback and right in front of the tailback and run a lead with him. Why not? He's a little tall for it, but if he's a knee bender, he'll be all right.
Yeah, big people are big people. It doesn't matter where you line them up.
He also, Zach Angelila, has Big Cat's tweet, Fullbacks Matter, as his header. There we go.
He's definitely listening to us talk about him, so I'd like to apologize, Zach. Yes, love it.
You seem like a good guy. Love it.
Andy, thank you so much. I'm sure during the taping of this, like four more jobs have been filled, but we appreciate it, and we'll hopefully see you soon.
Thank you, much. I'm sure that during the taping of this, like four more jobs have been filled, but we appreciate

it and we'll hopefully see you soon.

Thank you guys.

Thanks, Andy.

Thanks, Andy.

That was Andy Staples.

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And now for something completely different. Okay, we now welcome on a very special guest.
It is Mitch Schwartz. He's super bowl champion he's a four-time all pro offensive tackle is he retired that's my first question mitch thank you for joining us are you retired because i can't figure it out coming out with the hard-hitting questions right out of the gate yes uh no i'm still recovering from my back surgery you know i had that in february unfortunately the nerve is taking a little bit longer to get right than i would have liked so we're still waiting on that guy to kind of come through um but we're getting there you know it sucks to have you know nerve pain down your calf every day so one of these days it'll turn the corner and start feeling a little bit better that really does suck so that was a bad question by me but i i have been wondering because you're so you were such a good player and i, you know, rehab going on.
And I'm like, is he coming back? Is he, you know, what's going on? But that's good to know that you still might be playing football again. Yeah.
It's still on the table. You know, I wanted to get back to where I was like fully healthy and feeling good.
And then, you know, figure out what the future holds. Um, it's not, as I said, super exciting to, you know, have back pain every day as people who have back pain know it sucks.
And it's something that you just think about and it kind of runs your day to day. So once I can get through kind of this last push and get back to feeling good, I can make that determination on the future.
Um, but yeah, I mean, rehab a few times a week, I mean, that gets boring and monotonous and doing the same activities all the time. And, you know, as you know, as a bigger guy, you can only do so much core activity throughout the day.
And it just gets pretty crappy. So I'm hoping to turn the corner and then, you know, I can get back to the fun stuff.
And is it Mitchell or is it Mitch? If you ask my dad, it's staunchly Mitchell and never Mitch. But if you ask my brother, it's fatty.
And if you ask most other people, it's Mitch. So any one of those three works.
Okay. Yeah.
So you were obviously a very good player for a long time on the Browns and on the Chiefs. And it's your first season without, you know, having that week to week, day to day, you know, got guardrails of being in a locker room and going out there and playing on Sundays.
Have you experienced for the first time sitting down watching like red zone on

Sunday?

Have you become like a football fan or are you just taking time away from the

game?

I've always been a football fan.

You know,

I used to like design by weeks around being at home on Sunday so I can have my

two TVs and watch the games and flip channels and stuff.

I've always enjoyed it.

And I don't love red zone channel because I like like the flow of the game and picking like the better games and just kind of enjoying it. I don't like all the jumping around like, oh, now this game, oh, this game.
And then, you know, I don't play fantasy football, so I don't really care if the fifth string running back is about to score a touchdown. So for me, I like having both clickers, usually like a four game combination, you know, changing the channels, watching the games.
So that has been really fun for me this year being able to you know watch football every week you are right red zone we all love red zone but then you realize like we how we watch the games we watch it uh all of us together we have six tvs so we have five games then red zone and every time they flash to red zone you're conditioned to think some big play is going to happen and you never get a flow of the game so i it's just like it goes and it's jets houston and it's like third and eight and the guy takes a sack and they're kicking a field goal it's like yeah we don't really have to cut to it yeah right money shot compilation sometimes i like to see a little romance yeah we want to see the plot you know and how it progresses all right so i wanted you know like i said appreciate you coming because I've listened to you. You've been doing some analysis.
I think you're really, really great at what you do in terms of talking about offensive line play and how these teams are coming together. So I wanted to talk about Monday Night Football that we just watched.
Russell Wilson and the idea, because now I'm not going to have you say anything bad about the Chiefs, but the idea that quarterbacks, when they sometimes get sacked, it's their fault for running out of the correct blocking. How often do you think that happens in the NFL? It happens a decent amount.
Obviously, offensive line Twitter would like to make you think it happens every single time there's a sack. But as a lineman, you're blocking for a specific spot.
For the most part, the quarterback is like seven to nine or ten yards deep in the pocket. There's a general timeline of when you're supposed to be blocking for.
And once it gets past three or four seconds, that's when you see guys kind of shut down and stop. And they assume the ball is gone because normally the throw is gone.
So if the quarterback's in that general area for a few seconds, it's usually fine. I mean, when a guy starts to bail the pocket or he sets too deep, that's when it gets to be more of the quarterback's fault.
Like I would say a coverage stack isn't the quarterback's fault or the O-line's fault. It's more, oh, the defense played it well and the receivers couldn't get open.
Like if the quarterback is pinballing in the pocket and trying to break contain, cause no's open for five seconds I wouldn't put that on him either so there's less times than you know people think that it's truly the quarterback who just like completely messed it up and ran into a pressure or something like that but it does happen and for the most part any sack tends to get blamed on the offensive line so that's what we don't love to see so in in particular with Russell Wilson, their offense looks a little broken right now. Is there any truth to the statement that Russell Wilson sometimes will, instead of stepping up in a clean pocket or maybe even leaving a clean pocket, will start trying to make a play with his feet that will then get him into more trouble in terms of the offensive line and what they're trying to do? Because it's always been said Seattle's offensive line has been a weakness and they have not done a good job of protecting Russell Wilson.
I'd imagine he's a harder guy to protect than like a Tom Brady or an Aaron Rodgers, someone who wants to stay in the pocket and step up in the pocket. Yeah, it seems like Wilson tends towards holding on to the ball.
I mean, obviously we've seen all the crazy plays outside of the pocket, and so he likes to flush the pocket when he can. You know, there's some of the statistics on how long he holds on to it and stuff of that nature.
It seems like in this particular moment, that offense is, you know, I don't know if broken is the right word, but there's something like fundamentally wrong with it that I don't think they're flowing together. They're not like trusting each other.
And a quarterback in that situation, obviously, he has a ton of belief in himself, as we all know. You know, he thinks he can make the play at all times.
And so he's the one that's going to hold on to the ball and say, all right, I'm going to wait for this guy. I'm going to throw this guy open.
I'm going to run for it. So, yeah, quarterbacks definitely get into that mentality.
And it is tough for the O-line. There was a stretch there.
They did a pretty bad job of like drafting and developing offensive linemen. So there's a give and take.
It just seems like right now a little bit of you know trust broken through that offense he is mr unlimited he can make things happen you're right he believes in himself and that's what amount of time in the pocket is what he requires yeah so he's he's been great over the years at at making those plays where he's running around keeping his eyes downfield and finding a guy who gets open because you can't cover a wide receiver for five

seconds you know after the play breaks down if you have a quarterback that's willing to make that pass instead of you know trying to run for four or five yards or you know take what they can get and keep their eyes downfield that's it's a it's an asset to have that at the quarterback position he's been good at it but maybe just maybe the problem is like he did kind of come back from a a six or seven week injury in three weeks because he is built so different.

Yeah.

19 hours.

Yeah. Maybe the problem is he did kind of come back from a six- or seven-week injury in three weeks because he is built so different.
Yeah, 19 hours. That he's like, you know what? My finger is better because I'm Russell Wilson and my body heals faster than any other man on earth.
And so maybe it could be injury-related. I don't want to give all that to Russell Wilson because part of it's on his game too.
But there were definitely times in Kansas City where there's a guy, his name rhymes with Matrick Pahomes, who would drift sometimes. I had a theory that he would drift to your side more frequently, and then you would get more of the blame for not being able to hold a pass block for seven seconds at a time.
He actually helped me out more often than not because he is right-handed, so he likes. So he likes to go to his right to be, you know, more naturally running to the right and throwing on the run.
And so he could kind of play off my block. If I, you know, push the guy inside, he could go around.
If I was given up pressure around the edge, he can kind of do like step up and like lean his shoulder and duck around and kind of break and tame. So he definitely helped me out.
You know, I know he gets knocked a little bit for being too deep in the pocket or for doing these other things, but like he has such a crazy sense of everything around him.

I mean, we've seen it in his quarterback play, but in terms of, you know, if you go back to the

Superbowl, the wasp play that everyone talks about, you know, he's saying, Hey, do we have

time to run this before the play? Like our line was having a tough time with the 49ers front four.

So like, he knows that that's a play he's going to have to, you know, take a little deeper drop

and buy some time in the pocket. And then as the play's developing, I mean, he dropped to 13 or 14 yards, but there was pressure on the left side on the inside.
And so if he stayed at, you know, eight, nine, 10 yards, they would have gotten home. The fact that he dropped to 13 or 14 yards allowed him the time to like complete that pass.
So he's got this insane feel for things. And, you know, he's always looking at getting better and trying to fix it there's a couple plays a game and he's like hey i was a little too deep on that you know he's honest with himself and with the alignment and uh he tries to help you out as much as possible but i guarantee you he helped me out a lot more than i helped him out did you ever tell your brother jeff like hey cool it man you're like uh odell beckham senior here uh criticizing mahomes going too deep.
No, I mean, I don't think he ever made a compilation set to like incredible music showing off all my best plays. So, you know, he just he had his I did tell him for his breakdowns.
You know, he used to start and just go into like super slow mo and take forever to talk about the play. I was like, dude, you should show the play in full at the beginning.
So people see the play and then start breaking it down. So, you know, got to give myself a shout out there for helping us.
That is smart. It's smart, but it's also in a way not smart because you don't want to give that away up front.
You want to make us keep watching the video until the end because when I see somebody like Baldy breaking down a play, it starts in slow motion and then he just starts screaming about like the offensive lineman's leverage and how how amped up it makes him and yeah but you're watching for like baldy's excitement honestly more than like the play itself so that's a little bit different i mean let's not sell jeff short on this one like he gets he gets amped up too you guys are like for a spoon you guys are like the cuomo brothers he's always out there protecting you yeah yes yes um all right so uh I'm very fascinated with the human element of pro football. This year it feels like no one is great and everyone, there's a few teams, Cardinals, Packers, Patriots look like they're starting to get great, but it seems like week to week you see all these teams, you know, the Titans lose to the Texans.
How much of, like, a letdown game is real and how much of it is a media narrative that we just kind of throw out there when a bad performance happens? No, it definitely happens and it sucks to deal with. I'd say teams tend to have these letdown games more coming off success and then thinking they've figured it out or they have, you know, the secret sauce or you are maybe playing that lesser team for a specific week.
You know, the idea of the trap game, I feel like that's good. That gets talked about and it's, oh, well, this team was looking ahead to the next week.
It's like, no, they were just coming off a big win and they're playing, you know, the Texans and they think, oh, they're not as good. We got this.
We can handle it. And they don't prepare the same way.
You know, they don't practice with quite the intensity and focus. And maybe guys are joking around the the huddle a little bit more so those games happen you know for the the good teams it's been odd to see this year like beatdowns happen yeah like the bills you know the first week against uh pittsburgh obviously the new orleans green bay game was nuts but like all these good teams for the most part have had one or two really bad games and that's what we haven't seen in, the good teams typically, you know, at this point, they're nine and three and their three games are closely contested.
Maybe one kind of odd loss by nine or 10 points. But the variation week to week is pretty crazy.
And I don't know if it's, you know, just the longer season, there's like a weird mental component of it just feels so much longer. Like to me, it's nuts.
There's still like six weeks left. It seems like football's been going on for so long so I wonder if you know there's longer stretches between bye weeks and between Thursday games with the mini bye it's just hard to keep that level of focus that high for like 12 straight weeks yeah what was it like going from Cleveland to Kansas City because Cleveland was obviously you know they were the Browns this was like the peak of the Browns being the Browns when you were there.

And you were a really good player for that team.

But, I mean, it was like a coaching carousel you had.

I don't know how many quarterbacks you had.

Can we do that game where, like, Aaron Rodgers plays, like,

here are all the different wide receivers I've thrown a touchdown to?

Can you name all the Browns quarterbacks that you've blocked for?

Yeah.

In the regular season, it was Brandon Whedon, Cole McCoy, Thad Lewis, Josh Johnson, who I think everyone's blocked for at this point. Brian Hoyer, Jason Campbell, Josh McCown, Johnny Manziel, Austin Davis, Connor Shaw.
Damn. That is a tough list.
It was a lot of guys. So I committed to memory because it's kind of a cool party trick.
But in four years, I had two owners, three head coaches, four offensive coordinators, four general managers. So a lot of turnover.
What was the best year in Cleveland? The best year was 2014. We had Kyle Shanahan.
We started the year 7-4, first in the AFC North. We promptly lost our next five games, finished seven and nine and didn't make the playoffs.
So that was really exciting. But there was a point there.
It was, I think it was either week 10 or 11, but we were five and four. We went to Cincinnati on a Thursday night.
I think they were number one in the division. We beat them and we like smoked them.
It was like 31, 10 or something like that. Brian Hoyer, native Ohio guy.
There were enough Browns fans in the stadium. Then the fourth quarter, they were chanting his name in Cincinnati.
And like that got us to first place in the AFC North. Of course, we had never experienced success like that before.
It was like one of the cooler feelings of my life at that time. Obviously trumped by, you know, the chief's years, but that was, you know, by far the best year we had in Cleveland.
So then you go from Cleveland to Kansas City. Was there like an immediate difference? What was, what was like the biggest thing that you noticed about getting to Kansas City? And you're like, wow, this seems to be competent.
Yeah, I'd say that. It's more than like the staff all trusted each other and just like, this is how it's going to be.
You know, the head coach, Coach Reed doesn't have 20 minute team meetings every day. Like he doesn't have to get up there and establish the culture and talk about accountability and discipline.
You know, again, I had three coaches in four years. Typically it's a newer coach trying to like establish what he's doing.
So they like to have meetings. They like to talk a lot.
You know, the, the better coaches just like, these are the rules, easier expectations, meet them, or, you know, you're, you're not good enough to be here and they bring in the right people to give you the space to trust that. And, you know, players handle some business and, you know, there's accountability with each other and they treat you well.
You know, it's not like the GM is trying to surpass the head coach. And then like the business guy is trying to get into the owner's ear to say, oh, we want this to be the draft pick.
The good organizations, it doesn't run that way. The owner hires either the coach or the GM.
They hire the guy below them. They hire the guy below them.
There's one common goal. Everyone trusts each other and they're all working together.
And so that was the major difference in Kansas City. Yeah, dysfunctional organizations.
it always feels like everyone's out for self-preservation and you can tell like when they're all making moves that are just, I'm trying to keep my job here and we're not. Yeah.
I mean, your team doesn't know anything about that. They've had a clean couple of weeks here.
Yeah. Yeah.
Hey, we're off, you know, one win in a row. No big deal.
Matt Nagy. He's probably going to find a way to make the playoffs and then they're going to give him an extension and I'm going to go through hell again.
Biggest freak in terms of guy that you had to block and maybe also give me offensive line freak too. Like I love hearing about the guys that it's just different.
Like their, their power is different. Their speed is different.
You're like, Oh fuck, this is going to take everything today to today to to to block this guy uh the biggest one that i noticed like on the field was khalil mac we faced him i think when he was a rookie i was in cleveland and we played oakland that year and he's massive in person you probably see him in person at this point like he's huge and on film for whatever reason he doesn't look like 6'4 70 and just like huge thighs and completely jacked. He looked like slightly smaller.
Um, and then you see him in person like, Holy crap, this dude is different. And even Joe, I mean, after playing that, like he would take two steps and just like vortex to the inside and like, you wouldn't even see him and he's already passed you.
And you're like, Oh my God, how's this happening? And honestly, like what Micah Parsons is doing this year kind of reminds me of what we felt like you know going against young Khalil Mack is like the change of direction and how quickly he can you know go from outside to inside or inside outside it's just completely nuts and that was one that we both talked about um O-line guys I mean Tyron Smith has been the one everyone talks about for forever because he's 6'6 he's 308 or 310 his body fat's no joke probably like six seven eight percent like he's cut and built like an awesome defense alignment and he's just got these like huge limbs i'm sure he wears a size like 32 pant which is fucking sucks is another offense alignment to know um he's he's like you assume those guys aren't strong because they're like leaner and stuff, but like he gets his hands on you, the play's over. He's super strong.
Trent Williams is, you know, a freak and he's the best guy this year. You know, he's 6'5", 335.
He runs like he's, you know, 235. So he combined just like insane quickness, agility.
And obviously if you're 6'5", 330, I think he legit ran like a 4'6 or 4'7 at the combine like that's just pure power and force and another guy like is Trent Brown who is with the Patriots now who's like 6'10 I mean I'm gonna be nice to him and say 370 380 you know he's just like there's no one else who looks like him in the NFL. So it's like he has to figure out what to do because he can't look at other guys and say, oh, that works for him.
And I can't look at him and be like, oh, I'll block the guy the same way he did. It's just so different and it's fun to watch a guy like that.
He's an insanely large human being. So I noticed when you say Micah Parsons and Khalil Mack, obviously Khalil Mack has a ton of power and strength but is it harder are you are you more worried about speed than strength when you're blocking well that was the issue I had when I was younger is you see the quickness and like I said you like feel the quickness he gets on you super fast and he's able to you know get inside or get the corner quick but at the end of the day I think he relies on his power and, you know, bull rushing

or we've seen all the clips of him

tossing offensive linemen

and, you know, slipping inside.

So the power is like the root of his game,

his literal strength.

But as an offensive lineman,

you feel the speed

and you feel panic more

from the quick twitch,

you know, that you're seeing on film

or that you're feeling.

And so that's what he uses then

to like throw guys, like I said, upfield, like an offensive tackle is setting too deep and his weight's on his heels. And Mac just like stabs you on the inside shoulder.
You go flying and he gets a sack. So figuring out like the right style to block a guy and what they use as their strength is pretty difficult for offensive linemen.
And he's one that's able to blend the two. And that's why why I mean, he is the freak that he is.
Yeah. What about a unit this year? Like an entire offensive line that's playing really well together.
They might not have the most talented guys, but they're just, for whatever reason they've gelled correctly. What's one team that jumps out to you? I mean, right now especially in the run game, Philly.
I mean they look awesome. Obviously if you follow Baldy, like that's the first team he breaks down every week, but those guys have, you know, gelled together in a way that very few have, especially with a couple injuries.
You know, it's not just like, you know, New England's another one who, when they're all healthy, the offensive line has looked awesome, but they've had a couple injuries and it hasn't looked as good. Like Philly's dealing with injuries.
Both of their starting guards are out right now and they they're doing this and so seeing a left tackle who had never played football until like three years ago become one of the best left tackles he's another freak too yeah six eight three 65 there was an interception this past week and he like ran full speed and destroyed the guy honestly the guy he went to the hospital yeah it might have had a cracked rib or something. My lot of absolutely, it was crazy.

And just seeing a guy that big move that fast, obviously, is the right tackle.

I've always liked watching Lane Johnson.

So that's an O-line that's really fun to watch.

And you get to see some cool stuff that other teams don't do.

Was that ever tough for you out in Kansas City?

Because the knock that we give sometimes to the Chiefs,

and again, when we talk badly about the Chiefs for the most part in the last few years, it's been because they're so good that we have to find something to nitpick. But sometimes they tend to get a little cute with it.
You don't see the offensive line really rolling together in terms of running power down people's throats. Is it tougher to gel as an offensive line when your passing attack is really the key to demolishing these teams and you don't really get to get downhill and maul people together.
It is a little bit. I mean, again, that Eagles O-line somewhat proves the point because they were throwing the ball and Philly was chanting, run the ball on the crowd.
And all of a sudden they just decided, all right, we're going to run the ball. And you've seen the offensive line take off and the confidence they can get from just deciding like, hey, we're going to run it 45 times a game.
And there's like a confidence and a flow that you get into as an alignment when you're running the ball, you know, this particular week, you know, there's a couple of videos floating around of, you know, Frank Reich from Indy. He's talking about their philosophy on running and, Oh, well, we called eight plays for Jonathan Taylor, but five of them were RPOs and we ended up throwing it, you know, which was the right decision by the quarterback.
But those eight plays that, you know, you're calling RPOs, the O-line is blocking run. And on five of them, all of a sudden the defense like stops and runs in the other direction.
And you're either like, oh shit, we had an awesome play here. He didn't hand it off.
Or it's like, oh, well, you know, we didn't really run the ball. And you don't quite get that confidence of knowing like, yeah, we just ripped off an eight yard run and I got to, you know, drive my defensive tackle over the pile as he's trying to tackle the running back.
You know, there's that like confidence in the run game that you don't quite get if a play is called as a run, but it's still thrown and becomes a pass. And so that's something that, you know, kind of the spread RPO teams have to deal with.
It's not that the O-line isn't physical or they're not capable of it. You just kind of lose sense of feeling and that flow of the game that you know a true hey we're going to lean on the run game that's going to be the point of emphasis team you know gets to feel throughout the course of it it is awesome when a team when you know a team's going to run the ball actually michigan ohio state we talked about that uh on monday because uh coach harbaugh said that john mattin texted him and said that was the best o-line play he's ever seen played there's something about watching a team being able to just be like we're gonna run it down your throat and there's nothing you can do to stop it have you been a part of that type of drive or game where it's like you knew that the defensive line had basically given up because there was nothing they could do you just kicking their ass and going forward constantly yeah going back to Kyle Shanahan and Cleveland that was the first time I experienced that at the pro level you know we the first game of the year we went to Pittsburgh we were down I think 24 to 3 at the half which is not super surprising for you know Brown's history and the Steelers at the time and the way we came back was just running the ball like he has a super up-tempo, no huddle offense.
And a lot of that is just running the ball and tiring the defense out. And we were able to run on them in a way that most teams weren't able to.
We came back, we tied the game, you know, Pittsburgh beat us by three, but being down, I mean, especially, can you imagine right now, like you're down by three touchdowns and how do you come back? You just say, oh, fuck it. We're just going to go up tempo and run the ball.
Like that doesn't really happen. You know, we're running those outside zones.
The linebackers have to, you know, run a much longer distance. And so, you know, Shazier was tired and guys like that, they get tired.
The D line definitely doesn't want to deal with, you know, cut blocks and, you know, the stretch on the ball all the way down the field, like, like we did. So when Shanahan gets the run game going and you're're going downhill it's a lot of fun and you can definitely you know tell that it has an impact on the guys you're going against yeah i love it i love watching like the niners even i mean they they kirk cousins end up having the ball twice with a chance to score but there was a moment in that fourth quarter on sunday where it's like they're up eight points and they're just running it and they're running it and running it and running it.
And there's nothing that like the Vikings know they're going to run it. The Niners know they're going to run it.
Everyone in the stadium knows they're going to run it and they still can run it on you. If something just like maybe it's primal about it, but like that's football.
yeah it is primal i mean that's what it gets down to is kind of that like animalistic instinct and your desire to you know

dominate another person like that's the it gets down to is kind of that like animalistic instinct and your

desire to, you know, dominate another person. Like that's the only way you get to do it in a,

you know, reasonable, civilized manner for the most part is on a football field. You know,

that's what I don't really trend towards, like feeling that desire or need that often in my life.

So, you know, this year I haven't like missed that about football, but that's what guys miss

is being able to be physical to impart their will. You know some of these kind of crazy guys who end up getting into fights and stuff down the road because they've got this you know outlet to you know kind of get rid of their physicality on a football field and you know once the game's taken from them they're not able to adjust and so yeah it is that you know pure just like animalistic instinct to to dominate yeah human body craves contact that's what jim harbaugh says yep you're Pretty, yeah, it is that pure, just like animalistic instinct to dominate.
Yeah, human body craves contact. That's what Jim Harbaugh says.
Yep. You're a pretty even-keeled guy, though.
You're pretty mild-mannered right now. Would you snap into animalistic Mitchell when you get on the field? Do you think back at some plays that you made during games, and you're like, wow, I was really a psycho there? No.
They used to joke if I gave any sort of signal of like excitement they're like oh wow emotional outbursts for Mitch like I keep things pretty pretty even that was something I also learned from you know Joe Thomas in Cleveland is especially for the tackle position I feel like more than like guards and centers is maintaining that like consistent mindset and attitude you know I was always one that like I'd get over

excited or over anxious and I tend to like throw my hands and lunge at guys and technique wise that doesn't really work that doesn't benefit me so staying within myself is you know something that benefited me and like even pre-game I'd sit in my locker and like have my eyes closed visualizing and people just assumed I was asleep and you know wasn't really into it so yeah I've always been definitely on the more even-keeled side.

What team right now

do you think is playing the best football and will be in the Super Bowl? The team right now that's playing probably the best football overall is New England. I don't think they're going to – I mean, the Chiefs have one of the easier schedules for the last five or six weeks, however long the season has left.
They have played a lot better in the past month and everything is trending in the right direction for them. I think they're poised for like the run we've all been waiting for.
It's interesting with Arizona because they have the best record. They've won good games with a backup quarterback, which should give them like more credence.
And for us to say, oh, wow, this is a deep team and this is the best overall team team but it feels like no one wants to believe that they're actually the best team um so it's a little bit interesting there uh it sucks to say but like kansas city new england tampa bay or green bay right now yeah it's like all the teams no one really wants to have a lot of success and it's just like oh well they're kind of the best teams again wait so uh to kansas city, explain to us how it went from the worst defense in the league to, oh, my God, they can actually play defense.

How did that happen?

Like, what changed overnight?

Well, they didn't have to play Baltimore and, you know, Cleveland fully healthy.

And, again, some of that is schedule-based.

I mean, it sounds stupid to say, but, like, they went against some of the better offenses in football the first month of the season.

You know, Chris Jones got fully healthy, and they playing him in his correct position, a defensive tackle, not a defensive end. They got Melvin Ingram, who's still a stud as a pass rusher on the outside.
So now he gets to compliment Chris. Frank Clark was injured all a training camp and missed a few weeks.
And so the first four weeks he was back, he didn't really have success. Well, like that was his was getting into game shape now he's in game shape he's feeling good he's healthy so all of a sudden you get you know your three best defense alignment healthy in the right spots and feeling good like yeah that's gonna have an impact i mean you guys when khalil mac and akeem hicks are out like it looks a little bit different yeah yeah i mean yeah maybe it is that simple it's just I love when teams can change like their entire like we go into the season we watch the team for the first half like this team sucks for this this and this and then they figure it out that's always the best part of like sports is like the teams being able to fix fix it and adjust it whereas like a team like the Rams who are watching right now it feels like they went into into the season with a plan they have not deviated from the plan and it's starting to show diminishing returns and you're like well this kind of sucks they stink yeah and there's some interesting stats on like mcveigh teams after week nine just like completely taking a nosedive i guess the prevailing theory is that like he's awesome in the offseason at figuring what to do for the upcoming season.
And they run the crap out of it for the first two months of the year. And it looks awesome.
And then he doesn't adjust as much as teams adjust to him. And so I think we're running into that a little bit.
I mean, obviously Stafford seems hurt. I mean, you've seen more Stafford than most of us.
And so this seems more like the Lions version, whether that's who he actually is or whether that's the injuries taking a toll uh it's kind of hard to discern that but yeah they they changed their offense dramatically i mean they're doing so much more shotgun stuff so much more you know downfield passing they're not just like under center running the same two runs and the same two play actions over and over like it seems like maybe they need to shift back more to that a little bit i mean that elevated jared Jared Goff into almost a Super Bowl-winning quarterback, so maybe go back to making things easier on your offense. Yeah, I mean, Jared Goff had a better season in Los Angeles than Matt Stafford's ever had out there.
I think we can say that as concrete fact right now. You like Jared, right? Yeah, he's a Cal guy, so of course we like each other.
Andyy reed have you ever seen him not wearing shorts you mean have i ever seen him wearing shorts no not no not i thought he always wore shorts no well we always see him at practice and so i've seen you're right you're right you know what i've seen so many pictures of my head i've said i've seen so many pictures of andy reed at practice wearing shorts when it's like 25 degrees outside. Yeah, I was thinking of road trips where he's wearing his get-up, and so he's got to wear pants and that nature.
But yeah, if he has to for business trips, he'll throw on a suit and he'll keep the calves concealed. But yeah, for the most part, he likes his shorts.
Obviously, he's a big man, so he likes the Tommy Bahamas and keeping things loose and casual. Yeah.
Is he just like a day-to-day Hawaiian shirt wear? It doesn't matter if it's like November, December, he's wearing a floral print? I think so. I mean, you tend to wear big man-friendly clothing, especially when you're lounging.
You don't want to be encumbered with something that's too tight and you're feeling're feeling self-conscious about yourself so uh you know he keeps things light and that's why it's nice to have him as your coach when you're an offensive lineman because like he understands what you're going through and he gets it and there's always going to be good food around the building anyway so that's a definite plus yeah so i want to bring up food so um this has been awesome we'd love to have you back on any time uh but we want to you you i follow you on Instagram and Twitter. You have, I would say, some of the best, like, food, Twitter and Instagram stuff that's not – there's a snobby way to do it, and you do it the way that's not in-your-face snobby.
What – give us – give the people at home, because it seems like you take it very seriously, give the people at home a trick or a tip when cooking like steak or any type of meat uh that

you have found has worked. The biggest one for steak is just to use a thermometer.
I think people think that, like, oh, I'm a cool guy. I can, like, poke at my steak and I'll know when it's done.
It's like, no, just use a thermometer. Like, you're not that good at cooking a steak.
All the good places do that anyway. Like you're going to have different cuts of meat.
You know, people for the most part, aren't buying like the same steak from the same place every single time. So, you know, if we made a steak out of you and one out of PFT, like they're going to be pretty different.
One's going to be a bit leaner. One's going to be a bit more buttery, like Wagyu.
And so you can't just go touching those and expect them to both be medium rare and they're going to feel the same. They're going to be different.
But temperature wise, you know, 132 medium rare. That's 132 every time.
So I definitely say, you know, if you're cooking protein and meat, use a thermometer. You know, it doesn't mean that you're not good.
People are going to appreciate a properly cooked steak over you thinking you know what to do, but you're serving them something that's way too cooked. Now, do you actually season the meat or do you let the meat talk because billy just likes to put stuff on the grill and and on his pan just you know nothing just like right out of the packaging you can still taste the shrink wrap on it yeah you're like a serial killer if you're doing that you gotta for me i don't like rinse or wash me but if i take it out of the pack i pat it dry with a paper towel you also want to get stuff dry because if it's wet it's gonna take a lot of energy and a lot of heat to like convert that and basically boil it away before you can actually sear the meat and the sear is where a lot of good flavor comes from so you want to pat this steak as dry as you can with a paper towel and then absolutely you need to season it you know for the most part if anything doesn't have you know salt it's going to taste kind of shitty like that's why you go to a steakhouse the reason the bread and the butter so good is because they salt the shit out of the butter yeah that's why the butter is good here's another tip for anybody at home cooking meat uh take a picture of it in black and white and then post it online and then everybody will get mad at you because they can't they can't nitpick how improperly cooked your steak is.
Or if you cook brisket, definitely post it online because everyone loves to see a nice dry brisket and talk shit on them. Absolutely.
Actually, a real tip is to just let the meat rest. If you're cooking a steak, make sure to let it sit for how long do you usually? Is it like 10, 12 minutes? Yeah, at least five.
Typically, you say 10 and people can't really judge time. So 10 means like three in their world.
But yeah, the idea there is like, as things get hotter, they tend to like bounce around more. And, you know, if you think of getting in a hot tub, like you get some blood flowing, but once you go into a cold tub, it kind of like seizes up and things start to cool down.
And so letting the meat rest means, you know, the juices tend to slow down. And as you cut into it, you aren't left't left with all of them on your plate yeah because you want to cut into it right away but when you do all the juices go out and then you have a dry piece of meat whereas if you had just been patient boom you would have like the stake of your life at that point um i have one more i have one more brother related question for you because this is always fascinating me about Jeff is he says that he, he likes to go to EDM concerts,

which is bizarre to think about Jeff at an EDM I like a rave but he doesn't dance he doesn't like get in the crowd he brings like a folding chair with him and he sits down and calmly stares at the stage and watches the DJ during EDM is this true is he a psycho I was more surprised that he got into into the whole Peloton revolution than he was going to EDM concerts. Still kick his ass with that, yeah.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's an odd one because he's not like an EDM guy.
I think his wife was big into it and dragged into one at one point. And he's like, oh, this is kind of cool.
But I'm not going to be like all these other people. I'm still going to be 6'7", 350, so I'll take a chair and bring a nice snack,

sit down, go into

a trance and just snack my way through it.

That actually sounds kind of fun. Just like getting

hypnotized by the music and eating a shitload of food.

Yes. got a drink named after me not a big deal pink whitney that's what i thought see you fellas i

invented the thing you pigeon pink whitney for legendary moments some uh all right last question

this has been great so everyone whenever we ask someone what the toughest place to play is it

usually is seattle or arrowhead so for you who called arrowhead home for many years uh what is

the toughest place to play in the nfl you can't say arrowhead when when you were at the browns

Thank you. For you, who called Arrowhead home for many years, what is the toughest place to play in the NFL? You can't say Arrowhead when you were at the Browns.
The sneaky, loudest game that I experienced was old Minnesota because of the dome. It was super loud.
We went there, I think it was week two or three, maybe four. I was in Cleveland, and we were competing, and we got down in the fourth the fourth quarter and we had a two minute drive to go win the game.
And we actually did win the game, but that crowd got like full force and it was super loud. And the last play of the game that we threw a touchdown between the O-line and the running back, we were blocking three different pass protections because we couldn't hear, I think it was Hoyer at quarterback, like we couldn't hear him.
And so we didn't didn't know what to do so one side was blocking one thing another was blocking another and the running back was just like doing his thing we ended up throwing a touchdown I think to like Jordan Cameron in the corner or something like it was so loud we couldn't hear him so that one is sneaky you know we went up to Seattle and when I was in Cleveland and you don't really get to tell a crowd's uh you know makeup when Cleveland rolls into into town, they don't get super juiced for that game. So go in there when I was at Kansas city, I think we played a night game up there.
That is very loud and definitely lives up to the billing, but yeah, Minnesota and like 2013, whatever the stadium was called, that one was like sneaky, super loud. And it must suck a lot as an offensive line to like have to deal with that stuff.
Yeah, not ideal i mean for the most part they don't get that loud every single time it usually does uh come out in those you know higher leverage situations but that's why guys say seattle so difficult because they maintain that level of noise pretty much the whole time and including while you're in the huddle you know a lot of you know stadiums play the the music on third down and you, and fans know, oh, hey, it's third and eight. We should be really loud now.
But being loud on the huddle is actually harder on the O-line than being loud at the line of scrimmage. Most of the conversation and all the important stuff has already been given to you by the time you get to the line of scrimmage.
So, yeah, Seattle definitely lives up to the billing there. Yeah.
I've watched that play right now. That was a sick touchdown pass, and it does look like the offensive line is doing – yeah, you can actually see a couple guys go forward and a few guys go backwards.
Wow, you got some serious film archives there, huh? Well, I just Googled – I mean, you have a good memory. I just Googled Ryan Hoyer to Jordan Cameron game-winning touchdown, and boom.
When you have so few wins and one of them is on a really exciting last-second play, you definitely tend to remember it. Yeah, and I like how you said you were like, yeah, we were actually competing, which it was or sometimes you weren't.
Two years in Kansas City, and I had more wins than four years in Cleveland. Yeah, I mean, you make a good point, though, that when you're on a bad team, you don't really get the sense for what each city is like.
You don't get the true Seattle. You probably leave Seattle being like, you know, it wasn't that loud there.
I don't know what the big fuss is. And it's because, well, yeah, they were beating you like 28 to nothing without, you know, they didn't need the crowd.
Yeah. Another advantage of being on a shitty team from like a very selfish offensive line perspective is that in the same way that like the fans don't give you the same game.
And we talked about like the Lowell game earlier. The team isn't giving you, you know, their 100 percent like playoff effort right out the gate.
Maybe in the third or fourth quarter, it's a tight game. They know they have to turn it on.
But like you're not getting playoff level intensity from the get go. Like on the Chiefs, especially once we got Mahomes and we were rolling like every team that's their biggest game of the season that's the one they get up for and so going into games and you know facing a Seattle front four that's maybe at 92 percent of you know they're 100 percent like that's a big eight percent that makes a big difference for you up front so you definitely get a little bit of an advantage you know from that perspective being on a shitty team yeah all right well thank you so much man we would love to have you back on any time and uh i think it would be good too we just keep having you on and we just never let jeff on that'd be kind of a fun running gag yeah i agree i think you know you can only have one brother as a recurring guest and so i think you've obviously chosen correctly yeah you beat beat him to it um thanks so much man best of luck in the uh rehab Thank you guys so much.
I appreciate it. Okay.
Thank you to Andy Staples, Mitch Schwartz. Billy, any wrap up before we hit numbers and send everyone on their way? Yes.
Pardon my take. NFTs are now live at the openc.io-barstool.
Do your best, hackers. Try to steal these.
You can't. Try to right try to right actually if you right click it we will billy will hunt you down i dare you to try to right click any of these nfts there's no way you can steal these and human did a project human kids can regrow fingertips if they're chopped off but adults can't why did you'd you say that? I don't know.
A little animal fact. About the Colts? Humans are animals.
About the Colts? Just saying. Interesting.
Stem cells. Also, just a little heads up.
I don't know if you guys have taken a look-see at week 13 schedule. Not so great.
I did, actually. Not so great.
It's pretty bad. It's not so great.
I think Chargers-Bengals is the best game. Oh, yeah.
There we go. We'll watch that instead.
We'll put it on all six TVs. Fucking love it.
Rick Pitino, Love Week. See you on Friday.
Yeah, that's right. It's Love Week.
Yeah. Enjoy it, guys.
Oh, numbers, numbers. 6-9.
84. 18.
8. So PFT, the Quinnipiac students can go to your show Friday and watch their game Sunday.
There you go. I love it.
Nice little bookend. We'll get you warmed up for Rick Pitino.

Yeah.

I need a new number that's never been pulled.

Jake.

29, 27.

97's never been pulled.

What is that?

97.

91.

91.

91.

91's a second timer.

We have 620, 22, 26, 27, 29, 49, 51,

76, 78, 81, 88.

I'm going to be an 81 guy.

88. Love you guys.

88 degrees. I'm talking away.
I don't know what I'm to say. I say it anyway.
Today's another day to find me. Shine away.
I'll be coming for your love, okay? Shine away. I'll be coming for your love, okay? Take on me.

Take me on.

I'll be gone.

And after your change.

Needless to say, I'm on the sentence. But I feel so a little way.
Thank you. It's no better to be safe than sorry.
Take on me. Take me on.
I'll be gone. In a day or two.
All the things that you say. Is it a for me Just to blame my worries away You're all the things I've got to remember Are you shying away? I'll be coming for you anyway Are you shying away? I'll be coming for you anyway.
Take on me.

Take me on.

I'll be gone.

Get out of here